"NOW thus is faith; when a man believes in God the Lord of all, Who made the heavens and the earth and the seas and all that is in them; and He made Adam in His image; and He gave the Law to Moses; He sent of His Spirit upon the prophets; He sent moreover His Christ into the world. Furthermore that a man should believe in the resurrection of the dead; and should furthermore also believe in the sacrament of baptism. This is the faith of the Church of God. And (it is necessary) that a man should separate himself from the observance of hours and Sabbaths and moons and seasons, and divinations and sorceries and Chaldæan arts and magic, from fornication and from festive music, from vain doctrines, which are instruments of the Evil One, from the blandishment of honeyed words, from blasphemy and from adultery. And that a man should not bear false witness, and that a man should not speak with double tongue. These then are the works of the faith which is based on the true Stone which is Christ, on Whom the whole building is reared up.
"Furthermore, my beloved, there is much besides in the Holy Books about faith. But these few things out of the much have I written to recall them to your love that you may know and make known and believe and also be believed. And when you have read and learned the works of faith, you may be made like that tilled land upon which the good seed fell, and produced fruit a hundred-fold and sixty-fold and thirty-fold. And when you come to your Lord, He may call you a good servant and prudent and faithful, who on account of His faith, that abounded, is to enter into the Kingdom of his Lord."
~Aphraates: Demonstrations, 1, Of Faith, 19-20.
Syriac writer (c. 280-367) surnamed the "Persian Sage"; Bishop of the monastery of Mar Mattai, on the eastern shore of the Tigris, near the modern Mosul in Mesopotamia.
• Aphraates, "the Sage", by Pope Benedict XVI
• Aphrahat, Wikipedia
