I write unto you, fathers, because you have known him who is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because you have overcome the wicked one. I write unto you, little children, because you have known the Father.
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
I write unto you, fathers. 1 John 2:13 Why first sons? Because your sins are forgiven you through His name, and you are regenerated into a new life, therefore sons. Why fathers? Because you have known Him that is from the beginning: for the beginning has relation unto fatherhood. Christ new in flesh, but ancient in Godhead. How ancient think we? How many years old? Think we, of greater age than His mother? Assuredly of greater age than His mother, for all things were made by Him. John 1:3 If all things, then did the Ancient make the very mother of whom the New should be born. Was He, think we, before His mother only? Yea, and before His mother's ancestors is His antiquity. The ancestor of His mother was Abraham; and the Lord says, Before Abraham I am. John 8:58 Before Abraham, say we? The heaven and earth, ere man was, were made. Before these was the Lord, nay rather also is. For right well He says, not, Before Abraham I was, but, Before Abraham I Am . For that of which one says, was, ...
I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known Him who is from the beginning. Fathers, we know, are proud of their experience; and therefore he fitly congratulates them on having known the Ancient of Days, who is from eternity. For, as S. Augustine says, "Christ is new in the flesh, but ancient in His Godhead." He adds, "Remember, ye who are fathers, if ye forget Him who is from the beginning, ye have lost your fatherhood."
I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one. He passes to that stage of life which rejoices in its strength, and is full of concupiscence. He congratulates them for having overcome the wicked one, for he is speaking to Christian young people living in a Christian way, as S. Agnes, S. Lucy, S. Agatha, and many others, or that young man of whom S. Jerome speaks (in the life of Paul the first hermit), who when tempted by a harlot to sin, bit off his tongue, and spat it in her face, and thus by the intensity of the pain overcame the feeling o...
