DIOGNETUS, EPISTLE TO, one of the early Christian apologies. Diognetus, of whom nothing is known, has expressed a desire to know what Christianity really means—"What is this new race" of men who are neither pagans nor Jews? "What is this new interest which has entered into men's lives now and not before?" The anonymous writer, after attacking idolatry and the ceremonials of Judaism in the usual way, proceeds in a passage of great eloquence to show that Christians have no obvious pe culiarities that mark them off as a separate race. In spite of blameless lives they are hated. Their home is in heaven, while they live on earth. "In a word, what the soul is in a body, this the Christians are in the world. . . . The soul is enclosed in the body, and yet itself holdeth the body together : so Christians are kept in the world as in a prison-house, and yet they themselves hold the world together." This strange life is inspired in them by the almighty and invisible God, who sent no angel or subor dinate messenger to teach them, but His own Son by whom He created the universe. No man could have known God, had He not thus declared Himself. "If thou too wouldst have this faith, learn first the knowledge of the Father. For God loved men, for whose sake He made the world. . . . Knowing Him, thou wilt love Him and imitate His goodness; and marvel not if a man can imitate God: he can, if God will." By kindness to the needy, by giving them what God has given to him, a man can become "a god of them that receive, an imitator of God." No early Christian writing outside the New Testament appeals so much to modem readers. The best edition is that of Otto, Corpus Apologeticum, vol. iii. (3rd ed. 1879), based on accurate collations of the one ms. which contained this letter and which perished by fire at Strasbourg in 187o.
See also Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers (shorter edition), and (very conveniently) Kirsopp Lake, Apostolic Fathers, vol. ii. (in Loeb Classi cal Library).