Letters of Ignatius 4

1I do not command you as though I were someone important. For even though I am in chains for the sake of the Name, I have not yet been perfected in Jesus Christ. [For] I am only now beginning to be a disciple, and I speak to you as my fellow students. For I ought to be trained by you for the contest in faith, admonition, endurance, and patience.

2But since love does not allow me to remain silent concerning you, I was therefore eager to exhort you to run in harmony with the mind of God. For Jesus Christ also, our inseparable life, is the mind of the Father, just as the bishops established in the farthest parts of the earth are in the mind of Jesus Christ.