---
title: Description of Early Christians to Diognetus
tags: [Quote, Patristics]
summary: I ran across this beautiful description of the early Christians in the Letter to Diognetus while reading the first volume of the Ante-Nicene Fathers.  If only we could be true to this description, how much better salted would the world be by our presence?
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---

> For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by
> country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For
> they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar
> form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any
> singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been
> devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men;
> nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any
> merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as
> barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has
> determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect
> to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they
> display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of
> life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as
> sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others,
> and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is
> to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as
> a land of strangers. They marry, as do all [others]; they beget
> children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a
> common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but
> they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth,
> but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws,
> and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love
> all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and
> condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are
> poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet
> abound in all; they are dishonoured, and yet in their very
> dishonour are glorified. They are evil spoken of, and yet are
> justified; they are reviled, and bless; they are insulted, and
> repay the insult with honour; they do good, yet are punished as
> evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into
> life; they are assailed by the Jews as foreigners, and are
> persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to
> assign any reason for their hatred.\
> ---Translation from *Ante-Nicene Fathers* Vol. 1, ed. Alexander
> Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe.

I ran across this beautiful description of the early Christians in the Letter to Diognetus while reading the first volume of the Ante-Nicene Fathers.  If only we could be true to this description, how much better salted would the world be by our presence?