Epistles of Ignatius

Josiah, beloved of God, when he could barely speak clearly, convicts those possessed by a wicked spirit as being false in their speech and deceivers of the people. He also reveals the deceit of the demons and openly exposes those that are not gods. Indeed, while still a child, he kills their priests, overturns their altars, defiles the places where sacrifices were offered with dead bodies, demolishes the temples, cuts down the groves, breaks the pillars into pieces, and opens the tombs of the ungodly, so that not a relic of the wicked might remain. He showed such zeal for godliness and proved himself a punisher of the ungodly, even while he spoke with the faltering speech of a child. David, too, who was both a prophet and a king, and the root of our Savior according to the flesh, was anointed by Samuel to be king while still a youth. For he himself says in a certain place, “I was small among my brothers, and the youngest in the house of my father.”