Salutation / Introduction

Fragments from a Letter to the Roman Church.

I.

For this has been your custom from the beginning, to do good to all the brethren in various ways, and to send resources to many churches which are in every city, thus refreshing the poverty of the needy, and granting subsidies to the brethren who are in the mines.  Through the resources which ye have sent from the beginning, ye Romans, keep up the custom of the Romans handed down by the fathers, which your blessed Bishop Soter has not only preserved, but added to, sending a splendid gift to the saints, and exhorting with blessed words those brethren who go up to Rome, as an affectionate father his children.

II.

From the Same Epistle.

We passed this holy Lord’s day, in which we read your letter, from the constant reading of which we shall be able to draw admonition, even as from the reading of the former one you sent us written through Clement.

III.

From the Same.

Therefore you also have by such admonition joined in close union the churches that were planted by Peter and Paul, that of the Romans and that of the Corinthians:  for both of them went to our Corinth, and taught us in the same way as they taught you when they went to Italy; and having taught you, they suffered martyrdom at the same time.

IV.

From the Same.

For I wrote letters when the brethren requested me to write.  And these letters the apostles of the devil have filled with tares, taking away some things and adding others, for whom a woe is in store.  It is not wonderful, then, if some have attempted to adulterate the Lord’s writings, when they have formed designs against those which are not such.