Ambrosiaster : Someone who has been bought does not have the power to make decisions, but the person who bought him does. And because we were bought for a very high price, we ought to serve our master all the more, so that the offense from which he has bought our release may not turn us back over to death. — COMMENTARY ON PAUL'S EPISTLES Cyprian : We ought then, beloved brethren, to remember and to know, that when we call God Father, we ought to act as God's children; so that in the measure in which we find pleasure in considering God as a Father, He might also be able to find pleasure in us. Let us converse as temples of God, that it may be plain that God dwells in us. Let not our doings be degenerate from the Spirit; so that we who have begun to be heavenly and spiritual, may consider and do nothing but spiritual and heavenly things; since the Lord God Himself has said, "Them that honour me I will honour; and he that despiseth me shall be despised." The blessed apostle also has laid down in his epistle: "Ye are not your own; for ye are bought with a great price. Glorify and bear about God in your body." — Treatise IV. On the Lord's Prayer. Cyprian : That, being redeemed and quickened by the blood of Christ, we ought to prefer nothing to Christ. In the Gospel the Lord speaks, and says: "He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that taketh not his cross and followeth me, is not worthy of me." So also it is written in Deuteronomy: "They who say to their father and their mother, I have not known thee, and have not acknowledged their own children, these have kept Thy precepts, and have observed Thy covenant." Moreover, the Apostle Paul says: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or hunger, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, Because for Thy sake we are killed all the day long, we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we overcome on account of Him who hath loved us." And again: "Ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a great price. Glorify and bear God in your body." And again: "Christ died for all, that both they which live may not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again." — Treatise XI. Exhortation to Martyrdom, Addressed to Fortunatus. Cyprian : But if in Holy Scripture discipline is frequently and everywhere prescribed, and the whole foundation of religion and of faith proceeds from obedience and fear; what is more fitting for us urgently to desire, what more to wish for and to hold fast, than to stand with roots strongly fixed, and with our houses based with solid mass upon the rock unshaken by the storms and whirlwinds of the world, so that we may come by the divine precepts to the rewards of God? considering as well as knowing that our members, when purged from all the filth of the old contagion by the sanctification of the layer of life, are God's temples, and must not be violated nor polluted, since he who does violence to them is himself injured. We are the worshippers and priests of those temples; let us obey Him whose we have already begun to be. Paul tells us in his epistles, in which he has formed us to a course of living by divine teaching, "Ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a great price; glorify and bear God in your body." Let us glorify and bear God in a pure and chaste body, and with a more complete obedience; and since we have been redeemed by the blood of Christ, let us obey and give furtherance to the empire of our Redeemer by all the obedience of service, that nothing impure or profane may be brought into the temple of God, lost He should be offended, and forsake the temple which He inhabits. — Treatise II. On the Dress of Virgins. Irenaeus : And again, to the Philippians he says: "But our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus, who shall transfigure the body of our humiliation conformable to the body of His glory, even as He is able (ita ut possit) according to the working of His own power." What, then, is this "body of humiliation" which the Lord shall transfigure, [so as to be] conformed to "the body of His glory?" Plainly it is this body composed of flesh, which is indeed humbled when it falls into the earth. Now its transformation [takes place thus], that while it is mortal and corruptible, it becomes immortal and incorruptible, not after its own proper substance, but after the mighty working of the Lord, who is able to invest the mortal with immortality, and the corruptible with incorruption. And therefore he says, "that mortality may be swallowed up of life. He who has perfected us for this very thing is God, who also has given unto us the earnest of the Spirit." He uses these words most manifestly in reference to the flesh; for the soul is not mortal, neither is the spirit. Now, what is mortal shall be swallowed up of life, when the flesh is dead no longer, but remains living and incorruptible, hymning the praises of God, who has perfected us for this very thing. In order, therefore, that we may be perfected for this, aptly does he say to the Corinthians, "Glorify God in your body." Now God is He who gives rise to immortality. — Against Heresies Book V John Chrysostom : Mark, accordingly, how he secures his ground. For having said, "Ye are not your own," he adds not, "But are under compulsion;" but, "Ye were bought with a price." Why sayest thou this? Surely on another ground, one might say perhaps, you should have persuaded men, pointing out that we have a Master. But this is common to the Greeks also together with us: whereas the expression, "Ye were bought with a price," belongs to us peculiarly. For he reminds us of the greatness of the benefit and of the mode of our salvation, signifying that when we were alienated, we were "bought:" and not simply "bought," but, "with a price." "Glorify then, take up and bear, God in your body, and in your spirit." Now these things he says, that we may not only flee fornication in the body, but also in the spirit of our mind abstain from every wicked thought, and from driving away grace. "Which are God's." For as he had said "your," he added therefore, "which are God's:" continually reminding us that all things belong to the Lord, both body and soul and spirit: For some say, that the words "in the spirit" mean the gracious Gift; for if That be in us, God is glorified. And this will be, if we have a clean heart. But He has spoken of these things as God's, not only because He brought them into being, but also because, when they were alienated, He won them again a second time, paying as the price, the blood of the Son. Mark how He brought the whole to completion in Christ, how He raised us up into heaven. "Ye are members of Christ," saith he, "ye are a temple of the Spirit." Become not then "members of a harlot:" for it is not your body which is insulted; since it is not your body at all, but Christ's. And these things he spake, both to make manifest His loving-kindness in that our body is His, and to withdraw us from all evil license. For if the body be another's, "you have no authority," says he, "to insult another's body; and especially when it is the Lord's; nor yet to pollute a temple of the Spirit." For if any one who invades a private house and makes his way revelling into it, must answer for it most severely; think what dreadful things he shall endure who makes a temple of the King a robber's lurking place. Considering these things therefore, reverence thou Him that dwelleth within. For the Paraclete is He. Thrill before Him that is enfolded and cleaves unto thee; for Christ is He. Hast thou indeed made thyself members of Christ? Think thus, and continue chaste; whose members they were, and Whose they have become. Erewhile they were members of an harlot, and Christ hath made them members of His own Body. Thou hast therefore henceforth no authority over them. Serve Him that hath set thee free. For supposing you had a daughter, and in extreme madness had let her out to a procurer for hire, and made her live a harlot's life, and then a king's son were to pass by, and free her from that slavery, and join her in marriage to himself; you could have no power thenceforth to bring her into the brothel. For you gave her up once for all, and sold her. Such as this is our case also. We let out our own flesh for hire unto the Devil, that grievous procurer: Christ saw and set it free, and withdrew it from that evil tyranny; it is not then ours any more but His who delivered it. If you be willing to use it as a King's bride, there is none to hinder; but if you bring it where it was before, you will suffer just what they ought who are guilty of such outrages. Wherefore you should rather adorn instead of disgracing it. For you have no authority over the flesh in the wicked lusts, but in those things alone which God may enjoin. Let the thought enter your mind at least from what great outrage God hath delivered it. For in truth never did any harlot expose herself so shamefully as our nature before this. For robberies, murders, and every wicked thought entered in and lay with the soul, and for a small and vulgar hire, the present pleasure. For the soul, being mixed up with all wicked devices and deeds, reaped this reward and no other. — Homily on 1 Corinthians 18 Tertullian : And suitably does he add the question: "Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? " What has the heretic to say? That these members of Christ will not rise again, for they are no longer our own? "For," he says, "ye are bought with a price." A price! surely none at all was paid, since Christ was a phantom, nor had He any corporeal substance which He could pay for our bodies! But, in truth, Christ had wherewithal to redeem us; and since He has redeemed, at a great price, these bodies of ours, against which fornication must not be committed (because they are now members of Christ, and not our own), surely He will secure, on His own account, the safety of those whom He made His own at so much cost! Now, how shall we glorify, how shall we exalt, God in our body, which is doomed to perish? We must now encounter the subject of marriage, which Marcion, more continent than the apostle, prohibits. — Against Marcion Book V Tertullian : A price! surely none at all was paid, since Christ was a phantom, nor had He any corporeal substance which He could pay for our bodies! But, in truth, Christ had wherewithal to redeem us; and since He has redeemed, at a great price, these bodies of ours, against which fornication must not be committed (because they are now members of Christ, and not our own), surely He will secure, on His own account, the safety of those whom He made His own at so much cost! Now, how shall we glorify, how shall we exalt, God in our body, which is doomed to perish? We must now encounter the subject of marriage, which Marcion, more continent than the apostle, prohibits. — Against Marcion Book V Tertullian : So, again, when he is ascribing certain praiseworthy actions to the flesh, he says, "Therefore glorify and exalt God in your body," -being certain that such efforts are actuated by the soul; but still he ascribes them to the flesh, because it is to it that he also promises the recompense. — On the Resurrection of the Flesh Tertullian : And thus if, from the moment when it changed its condition, and "having been baptized into Christ put on Christ," and was "redeemed with a great price"-"the blood," to wit, "of the Lord and Lamb" -you take hold of any one precedent (be it precept, or law, or sentence,) of indulgence granted, or to be granted, to adultery and fornication,-you have likewise at our hands a definition of the time from which the age of the question dates. — On Modesty