Melito of Sardis, writing around AD 190 in On Pascha, wrote:
82) You were not
Israel.
You did not see God.
You did not perceive
the Lord, Israel,
you did not recognize the first-born of God,
begotten before the morning star,
who adorned the
light,
who lit up the day,
who divided the
darkness,
who fixed the first
boundary,
who hung the earth,
who tamed the abyss,
who stretched out the
firmament,
who furnished the
world,
who arranged the
stars in the heavens,
who lit up the great
lights,
who made the angels
in heaven,
who there established
thrones,
who formed humanity
on the earth. (Melito of Sardis, On Pascha
[Popular Patristics Series 20; trans. Alistair Stewart-Sykes; Crestwood, N.Y.:
St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001], 60, emphasis added)
