“Christians are not distinguished from other men by their abode, their language, or their manners. They do not dwell in separate cities, or use an extraordinary style of speech, or follow an unusual mode of life. They neither propose a system devised by human ingenuity, nor countenance, like others, some human dogma. They live in Grecian, or foreign cities, each where his lot is cast, and in clothing, food, and other usages of life, comply with the customs of the place. And yet their deportment and their relations to society are wonderful and confessedly paradoxical. They inhabit their respective countries, but only as sojourners. They share in all things as citizens, and endure all things as foreigners. Every foreign country is a fatherland to them, and every fatherland a foreign country. They marry like others, and become parents; but they do not expose their offspring. They place a common table, but by no means a common bed. They live in the flesh, but not after the flesh. They pass their time upon earth, but their citizenship is heaven. They obey the established laws, while by their lives they transcend the laws. They love all, and are persecuted by all. They are not understood, and are condemned. They are slain, and are made alive. They are poor, and they make many rich. They suffer want in every thing, and in every thing they abound. They are put to shame, and in the midst of their degradation they are covered with glory. They are defamed, and are vindicated. They are cursed, and they bless. They are injured, and are courteous towards those that injure them. They do good, and are punished as evil doers; but even when enduring punishment, they rejoice as being raised to life. They are treated as foes and barbarians by the Jews, and are persecuted by the Greeks; but their most bitter enemies can assign no reason for hating them. In a word, what the soul is to the body, that Christians are to the world. As the soul is diffused through all the members of the body, so Christians are spread through all the cities of the world. The soul indeed dwells in the body but it is not the body; so Christians dwell in the world, but they are not of the world. The invisible soul is garrisoned, as it were, within the visible body; and so Christians are known as the inhabitants of the world, but their reverence for God remains unseen. The flesh hates and fights against the soul, although the soul injures not the flesh, but only restrains it from indulging its pleasures. And the world hates Christians, although they do it no harm, but only oppose its pleasures. The soul loves the flesh and the limbs that hate it; and so Christians love those by whom they are hated. The soul is shut up in the body, and yet it protects the world; and Christians are shut up in the world, as in a prison, and yet it is they who protect the world. The immortal soul * dwells in the mortal body, and Christians dwell as strangers, amidst the corruptions of the world, looking forward to the second appearing of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.”