The initial step for us all to come to knowledge of God is contemplation of nature.

He [Jesus] fought and conquered. On the one hand, he was man who struggled for his fathers and through his obedience cancelled their disobedience. On the other hand, he bound the strong one and freed the weak and bestowed salvation on his handiwork by abolishing sin. For he is our compassionate and merciful Lord who loves mankind ... Had not man conquered man's adversary, the enemy would not have been conquered justly. Again, had it not been God who bestowed salvation we would not possess it securely.

Others of them employ outward marks ... They style themselves Gnostics. They also possess images, some of them painted and others formed from different kinds of material. They maintain that a likeness of Christ was made by Pilate at that time when Jesus lived among them. They crown these images, and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world, such as Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, and the rest. They have also other modes of honoring these images just like the Gentiles.

He who retains unchangeable in his heart the rule of the truth which he received by means of baptism will doubtless recognise the names, the expressions, and the parables taken from the Scriptures [by the gnostics], but will by no means acknowledge the blasphemous use which these men make of them.

The business of the Christian is nothing else but to be ever preparing for death.

Since it is impossible, without God, to come to knowledge of God, he teaches men through his Word to know God.

But following the only true and stedfast Teacher, the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.