Ephrem: Prayer to the Most Holy Mother of God

"But, O Virgin lady, immaculate Mother of God, my lady most glorious, most gracious, higher than heaven, much purer than the sun’s splendor, rays or light . . . budding staff of Aaron, you appeared as a true staff, and the flower is your Son our Christ, my God and my Maker. You bore God and the word according to the flesh, preserving your virginity before childbirth, a virgin after childbirth, and we have been reconciled with Christ God your Son.”

~St. Ephrem the Syrian (ca. 306–373 AD): from Prayer to the Most Holy Mother of God.

Augustine on Heretics

"FOR WHILE the hot restlessness of heretics stirs questions about many articles of the Catholic faith, the necessity of defending them forces us both to investigate them more accurately, to understand them more clearly, and to proclaim them more earnestly."

~St. Augustine: The City of God, Bk. 16, Chap. 2. (5th cent.)

Isidore of Seville on Heresy

"THEREFORE, heresy is so called from the Greek word meaning 'choice', by which each chooses according to his own will what he pleases to teach or believe. But we are not permitted to believe whatever we choose, nor to choose whatever someone else has believed. We have the apostles of God as authorities, who did not themselves of their own will choose what they would believe, but faithfully transmitted to the nations the teaching received from Christ. So, even if an angel from heaven should preach otherwise, he shall be called anathema."

~St. Isidore of Seville: Etymologies, 8, 3. (7th cent.)

Cyprian on Heresy

"WHOEVER has been separated from the Church is yoked with an adulteress, is separated from the promises made to the Church. Nor shall he who leaves Christ's arrive at Christ's rewards. He is a stranger, he is sacrilegious, he is an enemy. Who has not the Church for mother can no longer have God for father."

–On the Unity of the Catholic Church, 6.

"NEVERTHELESS, the Lord allows and suffers these things to be, while each man's will free, so that while our hearts and minds are tested in the crucible of truth, the sound faith of those that are approved may shine forth clear and undimmed."

–On the Unity of the Catholic Church, 10.

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Augustine: Happiness

“NO one is really happy merely because he has what he wants, but only if he wants things he ought to want.”

~St. Augustine: In Ps. 26, Enarr., 2, 7.

Jerome: "To be a Christian"

“TO be a Christian is the great thing, not merely to seem one. And somehow or other those please the world most who please Christ least.”

~St. Jerome: Letters, 58, 7.

On St. Augustine

“WE have ever had in communion with us Augustine of holy memory for the sake of his life and merits; never has the breath of evil suspicion tarnished his name. We have always kept him in memory as a man of such great learning that my predecessors ranked him with the foremost masters. Unanimously they held him in high esteem, for all loved him and paid him honor.”

~Pope St. Celestine I


“CATHOLICS venerate you as the restorer of the ancient faith, and while they look up to you, the heretics—an even more testimony—detest you.”

~St. Jerome: Letter to St. Augustine (No. 195 among letters of St. Augustine).