Desert Fathers : She also said, 'The devil sometimes sends a severe fast which is too prolonged; the devil's disciples do this as well as holy men. How do we distinguish the fasting of our God and King from the fasting of that tyrant the devil? Clearly by its moderation. Throughout your life, then, you ought to keep an unvarying rule of fasting. Do you fast four or five days on end and then lose your spiritual strength by eating a feast? That really pleases the devil! Everything which is extreme is destructive. So do not suddenly throw away your armour, or you may be found unarmed in the battle and easily captured. Our body is the armour, our soul is the warrior. Take care of both, and you will be ready for whatever comes.' — The Desert Fathers, Sayings of the Early Christian Monks Gregory of Nyssa : No one can say that he has strayed from ignorance into some silly fancy of separating, locally, the supreme from that which is below, and assigning to the Father as it were the peak of some hill, while he seats the Son lower down in the hollows. No one is so childish as to conceive of differences in space, when the intellectual and spiritual is under discussion. Local position is a property of the material: but the intellectual and immaterial is confessedly removed from the idea of locality. What, then, is the reason why he says that the Father alone has supreme being? For one can hardly think it is from ignorance that he wanders off into these conceptions, being one who, in the many displays he makes, claims to be wise, even "making himself overwise," as the Holy Scripture forbids us to do. — Against Eunomius, Book 1 Jerome : "I have seen all things in the days of my vanity: there is a just man, that dies in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that remains alive in his wickedness. "Similar to this is what the Saviour says in the Gospel: "he who finds his soul will lose it, and he who loses it on account of me, will find it" [Matth. 10. 39.]. The Maccabees are seen to die on account of their justice by the law and justice of God, and martyrs too, who shed their blood for Christ. On the other hand, those who at that time ate the flesh of pigs and sacrificed to idols after the arrival of the Lord, they are seen to live in this world and to live long lives on account of their wickedness. But it is the endurance of God in secret which causes suffering in those who are not holy, so that they have wickedness in their life, and not to visit sinners for their crimes, and it is as if he saves for the sacrifice so that he can give to the former eternal goodness, and to the latter eternal wickedness. The Hebrews suspect the righteous, who die for their righteousness, the sons of Aaron, since while they think they live righteously, they worship a foreign fire. And they say Manasseh was impious and lived a long life on account of his wickedness, for he then lived a long time in a long reign after having been corrected in prison. — Commentary on Ecclesiastes Origen of Alexandria : But neither these, who love more, nor those, who hate, hold to the rule of truth, and the ones lie through love, the others through hatred. Whence it is fitting to put reins upon love also, and to permit it only so much liberty of roaming as will not let it plunge over precipices. It is written in Ecclesiastes: "Be not overly just, nor think things greater than yourself, lest perhaps you be struck senseless". Following this example, I can say something similar: do not love a man "with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole strength"; do not love an angel "with your whole heart, with your whole soul, with your whole strength", but keep this precept, according to the word of the Savior, for God alone. For "you shall love", he says, "the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole strength". — HOMILIES ON THE GOSPEL OF Luke 25