Melito of Sardis

• Ca. 170 he addressed an apology for the Christians to the emperor Marcus Aurelius. He states that the Empire and the Christian religion are foster sisters.
• Homily on the Passion.
• Two books On the Pascha.
• A treatise On Christian Life and the Prophets, of probably anti-Montanistic character.
• On the Church, On the Lord’s Day, On the Faith, On Creation, On the Obedience of Faith, on the Senses, On the Soul and Body, On Hospitality, On Baptism, On Truth, On Faith and Christ’s Birth, On Prophecy, The Key, On the Devil, On the Apocalypse of John, On God the Incarnate, On the Incarnation of Christ, and 6 books of Extracts from the Law and the Prophets concerning our Savior and our entire Faith.
• In his Discourse in the Presence of Antoninus Caesar he said: God has made you perfect as seemed good to him. He has given you a free mind. He has set many objects before you so that you can distinguish their nature and choose the good things for yourself…He has set the whole wide world before you, which remains at rest and continues to thrive without changing. For fear that you might assume the earth continues because of its own nature, He makes it quake when He pleases. He has set the clouds before you, which, by His command, rain water from above and satisfy the earth.

Consequently, you should know that the One who puts these things into motion is superior to them all.

• Melito, bishop of Sardis in Lydia, is one of the great lights of Asia in the 2nd century. He is a prolific writer on a wide variety of subjects.
• There is a Syriac manuscript in the British Museum containing an apology under Melito’s name, which however was not composed by him
• Another Latin manuscript of the 5th century was wrongly attributed to him. Its title is De Transitu Beatae Mariae Virginis.
• He is the first writer we know of to refer to the Hebrew Bible as the Old Testament; his theology features Christ as the fulfillment of Old Testament precursors.
• The conception of the divinity and pre-existence of Christ dominates Melito’s entire theology.
• The pre-existence of Christ is described in the form of hymnological praises, as in the following passage: This is the Firstborn of God who was begotten before the morning star, who made the light to rise, who made the day bright, who parted the darkness, who fixed the first mark of creation, who hung the earth in its place, who dried up the abyss, who spread out the firmament, who brought order to the world.
• Melito believed that the function of Christ was to rescue man from sin, death, and the devil.
• The doctrine of original sin was clearly expressed by him: “Upon every soul sin sets its mark and all alike she devoted to death. These must die. So all flesh fell

into the power of sin, everybody into the power of death.”