Miserable thou art, wheresoever thou be, or whithersoever thou turnest, unless thou turn thyself unto God.

Why art thou troubled when things succeed not as thou wouldest or desirest? For who is he that hath all things according to his mind? neither I nor thou, nor any man upon earth.

There is none in this world, even though he be king or bishop, without some tribulation or perplexity.

Who is then in the best case [or condition]? even he who is able to suffer something for God.

-- Thomas a'Kempis, in The Imitation of Christ (Fifteenth Century)

* * * * *

For as you excel all men in intelligence, you know that those whose life is directed towards God as its rule, so that each one among us may be blameless and irreproachable before Him, will not entertain even the thought of the slightest sin. For if we believed that we should live only the present life, then we might be suspected of sinning, through being enslaved to flesh and blood, or overmastered by gain or carnal desire.

-- Athenagoras, in A Plea for the Christians (Second Century)

* * * * * 

As for those who are persuaded that nothing will escape the scrutiny of God, but that even

the body which has ministered to the irrational impulses of the soul, and to its desires, will be punished along with it, it is not likely that they will commit even the smallest sin.

-- Athenagoras, in A Plea for the Christians (Second Century)

* * * * * 

And when the people transgressed the law which had been given to them by God, God being good and pitiful, unwilling to destroy them, in addition to His giving them the law, afterwards sent forth also prophets to them from among their brethren, to teach and remind them of the contents of the law, and to turn them to repentance, that they might sin no more.

-- Theophilus to Autolycus (Second Century)

* * * * * 

Still, alas! the old Man doth live in me, he is not wholly crucified, is not perfectly dead. Still doth he mightily strive against the Spirit, and stirreth up inward wars, and suffereth not the kingdom of my soul to be in peace. For the love of God thou oughtest cheerfully to undergo all things, that is to say, all labor,

grief, temptation, vexation, anxiety, necessity, infirmity, injury, detraction, reproof, humiliation,
shame, correction, and contempt [of every kind and degree].

-- Thomas a'Kempis, in The Imitation of Christ (Fifteenth Century)

* * * * *

There is need of thy grace [O Lord], and of great degrees thereof, that nature may be overcome, which is ever prone to evil from her youth.

For through Adam the first man, nature being fallen and corrupted by sin the penalty of this stain hath descended upon all mankind, in such sort, that "nature" itself, which by thee was created good and upright, is now taken for the sin and infirmity of corrupted nature; because the inclination thereof left unto itself draweth to evil and to inferior things.

-- Thomas a'Kempis, in The Imitation of Christ (Fifteenth Century)

* * * * *

Ah! fool, why dost thou think to live long, when thou canst not promise to thyself one day? How many have been deceived and suddenly snatched away! How often dost thou hear these reports: Such a man is slain, another man is drowned, a third breaks his neck with a fall from some high place, this man died eating, and that man playing!

One perished by fire, another by the sword, another of the plague, another was slain by thieves. Thus death is the end of all, and man's life suddenly passeth away like a shadow.

-- Thomas a'Kempis, in The Imitation of Christ (Fifteenth Century)