Letters of Ignatius 55

1For I do not want you to please people, but to please God, as indeed you do please him. For I myself will never find an opportunity like this to attain to God, nor can you, if you remain silent, receive credit for any nobler work. For if you remain silent and leave me alone, I am a word of God; but if you desire my flesh, then I will again be merely a cry.

2No, grant me nothing more than to be poured out as a libation to God while an altar is still ready, so that, forming yourselves into a chorus in love, you may sing to the Father in Jesus Christ, because God has graciously granted that the bishop from Syria should be found in the West, having summoned him from the East. It is good to set from the world unto God, so that I may rise unto him.