"The truth is the first of the mercies that Jesus offers to the sinner."

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 "La verità è la prima delle misericordie che Gesù offre al peccatore."

      Robert Cardinal Sarah, "Messaggio di Natale," Roma, 6 gennaio 2024, festa dell’Epifania del Signore, as reproduced on Diakonos.be:  regards sur l'Eglise catholique by Sandro Magister.  In English.

John Henry Newman on the truth at an extreme

"I had got but a little way in my work, when my trouble returned upon me.  The ghost had come a second time.  In the Arian History I found the very same phenomenon, in a far bolder shape, which I had found in the Monophysite.  I had not observed it in 1832.  Wonderful that this should come upon me!  I had not sought it out; I was reading and writing in my own line of study, far from the controversies of the day, on what is called a 'metaphysical' subject; but I saw clearly, that in the history of Arianism, the pure Arians were the Protestants, the semi-Arians were the Anglicans, and that Rome now was what it was then.  The truth lay, not with the Via Media, but with what was called 'the extreme party.'  As I am not writing a work of controversy, I need not enlarge upon the argument; I have said something on the subject in a volume, from which I have already quoted."

     John Henry [Cardinal] Newman, Apologia pro vita sua, chap. 3, "History of my religious opinions from 1839 to 1841," ed. David J. DeLaura, Norton critical edition (1968), 114-115.

"I have sinned—I sin continually—but Christ has died, and for ever lives, as my Redeemer, Priest, Advocate, and King."

     John Newton, letter to Mr. Robert Jones dated 17 March 1757, as reproduced on p. 20 (17-22) of Twenty-five letters, hitherto unpublished, of the Rev. John Newton, rector of Olney and St Mary, Woolnoth, London.  From the years 1757 to 1759 (Edinburgh:  J. Johnstone, 1840).  Crossway, the publisher of the series _____ on the Christian life, attributed it ("I sin continually.  But Christ has died, and forever lives, as my redeemer, priest, advocate, and king") to Luther as quoted by Carl Trueman, though it actually appears in a different book in that same series, the one on Newton by Tony Reinke.

"be willing that Self shall suffer for the Truth, and not the Truth for Self . . . and so own the Cross, and despise the Shame"

      James Parnell, "A few words to all my dear Friends in and about the county of Essex," in A collection of the several writings given forth from the Spirit of the Lord through that meek, patient, and suffering servant of God, James Parnel, who, though a young man, bore a faithful testimony for God and dyed a prisoner under the hands of a persecuting generation in Colchester Castle in the year 1656 (1675), 293 (291-294).

Such "men . . . you must not only not receive, but if it is possible not even meet"

Index of Medieval Art (Vat. gr. 1613, p. 258)

"he truly suffered even as he also truly raised himself [(ἀληθῶς ἀνέστησεν ἑαυτόν)], not as some unbelievers say, that his Passion was merely in semblance [(τὸ δοκεῖν αὐτὸν πεπονθέναι)]. . .
     ". . . I guard you in advance against beasts in the form of men [(τῶν ἀνθρωπομόρφων)], whom you must not only not receive, but if it is possible not even meet, but only pray for them, if perchance they may repent, difficult though that may be. . . .  For if it is merely in semblance [(τὸ δοκεῖν | τῷ δοκειν)] that these things were done by our Lord I am also a prisoner in semblance [(τὸ δοκεῖν)].  And why have I given myself up to death, to fire, to the sword, to wild beasts?  Because near the sword is near to God, with the wild beasts is with God [(ἐγγὺς μαχαίρας ἐγγὺς θεοῦ, μεταξὺ θηρίων μεταξὺ θεοῦ)]; in the name of Jesus Christ alone am I enduring all things, that I may suffer with him, and the perfect man himself gives me strength. . . .
     ". . . I have not thought right to put into writing their unbelieving names; but would that I might not even remember them, until they repent concerning the Passion, which is our resurrection. . . .
     "They abstain from Eucharist and prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ who suffered for our sins, which the Father raised up by his goodness. . . .  It is right to refrain from such men and not even to speak about them in private or in public. . . ."

     St. Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Smyrnaeans II, IV, and V, trans. Lake, LCL (1912), 252-257.  Cf. "John and Polycarp on heretics".

Gregory of Nyssa on the imago Dei

Anim Shrest

"'Have a care to yourself, for this is the sure safeguard of <your> good things.  Know how much you have been honored by the Maker above the rest of the creation.  Heaven did not become the image of God, nor the moon, nor the sun, nor the beautiful stars—nor a single other one of the things that appear in the created order.  Only you came into existence as a copy of the Nature that transcends every intellect, a likeness of the incorruptible Beauty, an impress of the true Deity—a model of that true Light in the contemplation of which you become what it is, imitating that which shines within you by the ray that shines forth in response from your purity.  None of the things that exist is so great as to be compared to your greatness.  The whole heaven is contained in the span of God’s hand; earth and sea are encompassed by his hand.  But at the same time this One, being such as he is and so great as he is, grasping the whole creation in the palm of his hand, becomes limited for your sake and dwells in you and is not confined as he penetrates your nature.  For he is the One who says, 'I will dwell within them and will walk about among them' (2 Cor 6:16).  If you see these things, you will not set your eye on anything earthly. . . .  For how shall you marvel at the heavens, O human, when you see that you yourself are more lasting than the heavens?'"  Etc.

     St. Gregory of Nyssa, Homily 2 on the Song of songs, trans. Richard A. Norris, Jr. (Gregory of Nyssa:  homilies on the Song of songs, Writings from the Greco-Roman world 13 (Atlanta, GA:  SBL Press, 2012)), 76-77 =GNO 6.1.68.  I was put onto this by Gabrielle Thomas, "The Status of vulnerability in a theology of the Christian life:  Gregory of Nyssa on the 'wound of love’ in conversation with Sarah Coakley," Modern theology 38, no. 4 (2022): 791 (777–795).

"lost | In wonder, love, and praise"

      Joseph Addison, "When all thy mercies, O my God," stanza 1, the poem with which he concludes an essay on gratitude; The spectator 6, no. 453 (Saturday, August 9, 1712):  223.  See the Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology under "When all thy mercies, O my God" ("The hymn [by Addison] was very popular in the 18th century, and has remained so. John Wesley* used it in his first hymnbook, the Collection of Psalms and Hymns published at Charlestown in 1737, though unhappily altering the two lines printed above to 'Why my cold heart, art thou not lost / In wonder, love and praise?'") and Charles Wesley's "Love divine, all loves excelling".  Later Gerard Manley Hopkins used the phrase "lost in wonder" at the end of the first stanza of his translation of Aquinas' "Adoro te devote."