Section 23
1 Milman, vol. i. pp. 28, 29, condensed. He fails, however, to observe the immense importance of the facts he chronicles.
2 I have felt that Pantaenus and his school require a few words in my elucidations.
5 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., vi. 6.
6 Hieron., Lib. De Viris Illustribus, c. 38; Ph., Bibl., iii.
7 [The reader is already acquainted ( ) with permissive canons, by which bishops might commend to their brethren, books fit to be read, which they sent, authenticated, not only by hand and seal, but by a clerical messenger whose duty it was (in the language of Bingham) "to go on the bishop's embassies, with his letters or messages to foreign churches; for in those days, by reason of the persecutions, a bishop did not so much as send a letter to a foreign church, but by the hands of one of his clergy. Whence Cyprian calls them literaeclericae." Antiquities, book iii. cap. ii. 3.]
8 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., vi. 13; Phot. Bibl., iii.
10 [I am glad that our learned translator makes nothing of the statement of Photius, that one of the works of Clement (now lost) contained many things unworthy of his orthodoxy and piety; but it may be well to say here, that Photius himself suggests that heretics had corrupted some of his writings, and that his genuine works testify against these very corruptions. Dupin thinks that if Clement ever wrote such things they much have crept into his works from fragments of his earlier writings, while he was a mere Platonist, at most an inquirer into Christianity. But his great repute in the Catholic Church after his decease, is sufficient to place his character far above all suspicions of his having ever swerved from the "faith of the Church."]
1 The Greek is u9perta/thn, lit. highest. Potter appeals to the use of u9e/rteroj in Sophocles, Electr. 455, in the sense of stronger, as giving a clue to the meaning here. The scholiast in Klotz takes the words to mean that the hand is held over them.
2 Isa. ii. 3.
8 Probably a quotation from a hymn.
9 Ps. cx. 3. Septuagint has, "before the morning star."
12 [Isa. xlii. 10. Note that in all the Psalms where this expression is used, there is a foretaste of the New Covenant and of the manifestation of the Word.]
18 This may be translated, "of God the Christ."
21 What this is, is not known; but it is likely that the word is a corruption of i\era\n dru=n, the sacred oak.
23 The text has a0nie/rou, the imperative of a0niero/w, which in classical Greek means "to hallow;" but the verb here must be derived from the adjective a0ni/eroj, and be taken in the sense "deprive of their holiness," "no longer count holy." Eusebius reads a0nie/rouj: "unholy interpreters."
24 The cernos some take to be a vessel containing poppy, etc., carried in sacrificial processions. The scholiast says that it is a fan. [I have marked this as a quotation. See below: Eleusinian rites.]
26 The scholiast takes the r9i/mboj to mean a piece of wood attached to a cord, and swung round so as to cause a whistling noise.
27 [See supra, p. 175, where I have affixed quotation-marks, and adopted the word "tokens" (instead of "signs") to harmonize these two places]
28 This sentence is read variously in various editions.
29 [A scathing retort upon those who called Christians atheists, and accused them of shameful rites.]
34 Illiad, v. 385.
36 Illiad, iii. 243. Lord Derby's translation is used in extracts from the Illiad.
37 The mss.. read "small," but the true reading is doubtless "tall."
40 Meursius proposed to read, "at Agra."
41 The beams of Sol or the Sun is an emendation of Potter's. The mss. read "the Elean Augeas."
43 So Liddell and Scott. Commentators are generally agreed that the epithet is an obscene one, though what its precise meaning is they can only conjecture.
44 An obscene epithet, derived from xoi=roj, a sow, and qli/bw, to press.
45 Hesiod, Works and Days, 1. i. 250.
49 If we read xarie/steron, this is the only sense that can be put on the words. But if we read xaristh/rion, we may translate "a memorial of gratified lust."
50 Odyss., xx. 351.
52 [The Trent Creed makes the saints and their images objects of worship. It is evident that Clement never imagined the existence of an image among Christians. See p. 188, infra.]
53 [The Trent Creed makes the saints and their images objects of worship. It is evident that Clement never imagined the existence of an image among Christians. See p. 188, infra.]
54 Pantarkes is said to have been the name of a boy loved by Phidias: but as the word signifies "all-assisting," "all-powerful," it might also be made to apply to Zeus.
56 Illiad, i. 221; meta\ dai/monaj allouj.
58 [Is not this a rebuke to many of the figures and pictures which vulgarize abodes of wealth in America?]
59 Sibyl. Justin Martyr, Cohort. ad Graecos, p. 81. See p. 280, vol. i of this series.
60 Ex. xx. 4. [Clement even regards the art of painters and sculptors as unlawful for Christians.]
67 [This great truth comes forcibly from an Attic scholar. Let me refer to a very fine passage in another Christian scholar, William Cowper (Task, book ii.): "All truth is from the sempiternal source," etc.]
68 The Sibyl.
73 Ion., 442.
74 [Note her remarkable accord with inspiration, clearly distinguishing between such and the oracles of God. But see, supra, p. 132 and p. 145.]
75 [Having shown what truth there is to be found in heathen poets, he ascends to the Sibyl, and thus comes to the prophets; showing them how to climb upward in this way, and cleverly inducing them to make the best use of their own prophets and poets, by following them to the sources of their noblest ideas.]
76 [How sublimely he now introduces the oracles of truth.]
81 Jer. viii. 2. xxx. 20, iv. 6.
100 This is made up of several passages, as Isa. xiii. 10, Ezek. xxxii. 7, Joel ii. 10, 31, iii. 15.
114 2 Tim. iii. 16, 17. [Here note the testimony of Clement to the universal diffusion and study of the Scriptures.]
117 Ps. xxxiv. 8, where Clem. has read risto/j for xrhsto/j.
119 [Here seems to be a running allusion to the privileges of the Christian Church in its unity, and to the "Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, " which were so charming a feature of Christian worship. Bunsen, Hippolytus, etc., vol. ii. p. 157.]
124 Isa. liv. 17, where Sept.reads, "ye shall be righteous."
132 [Immersion was surely the form of primitive baptism, but these words, if not a reference to that sacrament, must recall Isa. lii. 15.]
133 [This fine passage will be recalled by what Clement afterward, in the Stromata, says of prayer. Book vii. vol. ii. p. 432. Edin.]
135 Odyss., xiii. 203.
136 A translation in accordance with the Latin version would run thus: "While a certain previous conception of divine power is nevertheless discovered within us." But adopting that in the text the argument is: there is unquestionably a providence implying the exertion of divine power. That power is not exercised by idols or heathen gods. The only other alternative is, that it is exercised by the one self-exitent God.
137 Ps. xxiv. 1; 1 Cor. x. 26,28.
138 [1 Pet. ii. 17. This appeal in behalf of the sanctity of man as man, shows the workings of the apostolic precept.]
139 The expression "conquered by brass or iron" is borrowed from Homer (Il., viii. 534). Brass, or copper, and iron were the metals of which arms were made.
141 Ps. lviii. 4,5. [It was supposed that adders deafened themselves by laying one ear on the earth, and closing the other with the tail.]
142 "They" seems to refer to sanctity and the word.
143 Ps. lviii. 4,5. [It was supposed that adders deafened themselves by laying one ear on the earth, and closing the other with the tail.]
146 [The impact of the Gospel on the slavery and helotism of the Pagans.]
148 [See above, p. 201, and below, the command "thou shalt love thy neighbor."]
149 Ex. xx. 13-16; Deut. vi. 5.
152 [Good will to men made emphatic. Slavery already modified, free-schools established, and homes created. As soon as persecution ceased, we find the Christian hospital. Forster ascribes the first foundation of this kind to Ephraim Syrus. A friend refers me to his Mohammedanism Unveiled, vol. i. p. 283.]
153 [The Catholic instinct is here; and an all-embracing benevolence is its characteristic, not worldly empire.]
155 [He seems to be thinking of 1 Tim. vi. 6, and 1 Tim. iv. 8.]
159 [Eph. v. 14, is probably from a hymn of the Church, which is here referred to as His, as it is adopted into Scripture.]
162 [A quotation from another hymn, in all probability.]
164 Heb. viii. 10-12; Jer. xxxi. 33,34.
165 Il., vi. 236. [The exchange of Glaucus.]
172 [Here are references to baptism and the Eucharist, and to the Trisagion, "Therefore with angels and archangels," which was universally diffused in the Christian Church. Bunsen, Hippol., iii. 63.]
174 ["Who is this that cometh from Edom," seems to be in mind. Isa. lxiii. 1.]
175 Clement here draws a distinction, frequently made by early Christian writers, between the image and the likeness of God. Man never loses the image of God; but as the likeness consists in moral resemblance, he may lose it, and he recovers it only when he becomes righteous, holy, and wise.
177 [Let me quote from an excellent author: "We ought to give the Fathers credit for knowing what arguments were best calculated to affect the minds of those whom they were addressing. It was unnecessary for them to establish, by a long train of reasoning, the probability that a revelation may be made from heaven to man, or to prove the credibility of miracles... The majority, both of the learned and unlearned, were fixed in the belief that the Deity exercised an immediate control over the human race, and consequently felt no predisposition to reject that which purported to be a communication of His will... . Accustomed as they were, however, to regard the various systems proposed by philosophers as matters of curious speculation, designed to exercise the understanding, not to influence the conduct, the chief difficulty of the advocate of Christianity was to prevent them from treating it with the same levity, and to induce them to view it in its true light as a revelation declaring truths of the highest practical importance."
This remark of Bishop Kaye is a hint of vast importance in our study of the early Apologists. It is taken from that author's Account of the Writings of Clement of Alexandria (London, 1835), to which I would refer the student, as the best introduction to these works that I know of. It is full of valuable comment and exposition I make only sparing reference to it, however, in these pages, as otherwise I should hardly know what to omit, or to include.]
2 [See Exhortation to the Heathen, cap. xi. p. 203, supra.]
3 The paedagogus. [This word seems to be used by Clement, with frequent alusion, at least, to its original idea, of one who leads the child to his instructor; which is the true idea, I suppose, in Gal. iii. 24.]
4 Num. vi. 9.
10 Bishop Kaye (Some Account of the Writings and Opinions of Clement of Alexandria, p. 48) translates, "receiving from man that which made man (that on account of which man was made)." But it seems more likely that Clement refers to the ideal man in the divine mind, whom he indentifies elsewhere with the Logos, the a!nqrwpoj a0paqh/j, of whom man was the image. The reader will notice that Clement speaks of man as existing in the divine mind before his creation, and creation is represented by God's seeing what He had previously within Him merely as a hidden power.
19 [The dignity ascribed to Christian childhood in this chapter is something noteworthy. The Gospel glorifying children, sanctifies marriage, and creates the home.]
21 Matt. xxi. 16; Ps. viii. 2.
23 Matt. xi. 16,17. [In the Peshitoi-Syraic version, where are probably found the very words our Saviour thus quotes from children in Nazareth, this saying is seen to be metrical and alliterative.]
28 Lev. xv. 29, xii. 8; Luke ii. 24.
32 Zech. ix. 9; Gen. xlix. 11.
35 Theodoret explains this to mean that, as the animal referred to has only one horn, so those brought up in the practice of piety worship only one God. [It might mean lovers of those promises which are introduced by these words in the marvellous twenty-second Psalm.]
49 In allusion apparently to John viii. 35,36.
54 viz., the result of His will.
61 Migne's text has a0poka/luyij. The emendation a0po/lhyij is preferable.
63 Gal. iii. 23-25. [Here the schoolmaster should be the child-guide; for the law leads us to the Master, says Clement, and we are no longer under the disciplinary guide, but "under the Word, the master of our free choice." The schoolmaster then is the Word, and the law merely led us to his school.]
68 [Clement here considers all believers as babes, in the sense he explains; but the tenderness towards children of the allusions running through this chapter are not the less striking.]
70 1 Cor. xiii. 11. [A text much misused by the heretical gnostics whom Clement confutes.]
71 viz., simple or innocent as a child, and foolish as a child.
86 Jer. ix. 23; 1 Cor. i. 31; 2 Cor. x. 17.
88 The emendation a0polh/rhsij is adopted instead of the reading in the text.
90 1 Pet. ii. 1-3 Clement here reads Xristo/jChrist, for xrhsto/j, gracious, in Text. Rec.
91 [Clement here argues from what was scientific in his day, introducing a curious, but to us not very pertinent, episode.]
99 [i.e., Not from the a0fro\j, of the sea, but of the blood.]
118 Or, "against the evil one."
134 Ps. cxviii. 18.
143 For a0lhqei/aj, there are the readings a0paqei/aj and a0timi/aj.