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But St. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch as Christianity's first century ended, fairly begged for martyrdom. "Do nothing to stop me," he asked all the churches as soldiers took him off to Rome to die in the arena. "God's wheat am I and I shall be ground by the teeth of the beasts, that I may become the pure bread of Christ." If the beasts were not hungry, he vowed, he would "coax them to consume me." For his writings on the role of bishops and the continuity of the Old Testament and the new scriptures, Ignatius lives as a father of the church.
(312:5)
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