Re: The Early Christians: Self-Portraits and Portrayals

Either we marry for the sole purpose of bringing up children, or else we 
renounce marriage altogether and remain continent.

Recently one of our people handed a petition to Felix, the Prefect of 
Alexandria, requesting him to allow his surgeon to remove his sex glands, 
for the physician there stated they were not allowed to do this without
the 
prefect’s permission. When Felix refused to sign such a permission under 
any circumstances, this young man remained single and was satisfied with 
that, a conscious attitude of mind which he and his fellow believers 
shared.
		
Justin, First Apology 29.

> Those who lived in innocence, following God’s command, were called 
> “children” in the earliest times as Papias tells in the first book of
his 
> Sayings of the Lord Explained. 
> 
> Clement of Alexandria in The Tutor; Maximus Confessor, Comments 
> on Dionysius the Areopagite’s Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 2.
>