, 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 subordinate 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." "Then shalt thou on earth behold God's life in heaven; then
shalt thou begin to speak the mysteries of God." A few lines after this
the letter suddenly breaks off.

Even this rapid summary may show that the writer was a man of no
ordinary power, and there is no other early Christian writing outside
the New Testament which appeals so strongly to modern readers. The
letter has been often classed with the writings of the Apostolic
Fathers, and in some ways it seems to mark the transition from the
sub-apostolic age to that of the Apologists. Bishop Lightfoot, who
speaks of the letter as "one of the noblest and most impressive of early
Christian apologies," places it c. A.D. 150, and inclines to identify
Diognetus with the tutor of Marcus Aurelius. Harnack and others would
place it later, perhaps in the 3rd century. There are some striking
parallels in method and language to the Apology of Aristides (q.v.), and
also to the early "Preaching of Peter."

The one manuscript which contained this letter perished by fire at
Strassburg in 1870, but happily it had been accurately collated by Reuss
nine years before. It formed part of a collection of works supposed to
be by Justin Martyr, and to this mistaken attribution its preservation
is no doubt due. Both thought and language mark the author off entirely
from Justin. The end of the letter is lost, but there followed in the
codex the end of a homily,[1] which was attached without a break to the
epistle: this points to the loss in some earlier codex of pages
containing the