What we are before God….

What we are before God we are and nothing more.

Attr. St. Anthony of Padua, according to a recent FB meme. It’s not on Wikiquote for him, and an Internet search for the phrase turns up several attributions to St. Francis (unsourced, of course). I found a page that attributes this version to Robert Murray M’Cheyne: “A man is what he is on his knees before God, and nothing more,” though of course it might not be original to him.

When I search for we are what we are before God and nothing more anthony of padua on Google, I get one hit from Pinterest on the first page and one from Facebook on the second, suggesting to me that the attribution to St. Anthony is pretty recent. The suggestion is all the greater since a Google Books search finds nothing at all.

Color me skeptical.