Clement of Alexandria: STROMATA (MISCELLANIES), Part IV, Complete

Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.

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Now also Valentinus, the Coryphaeus of those who herald community, in his book on The Intercourse of Friends, writes in these words: "Many of the things that are written, though in common books, are found written in the church of God. For those sayings which proceed from the heart are vain. For the law written in the heart is the People [3291] of the Beloved--loved and loving Him." For whether it be the Jewish writings or those of the philosophers that he calls "the Common Books," he makes the truth common. And Isidore, [3292] at once son and disciple to Basilides, in the first book of the Expositions of the Prophet Parchor, writes also in these words: "The Attics say that certain things were intimated to Socrates, in consequence of a daemon attending on him. And Aristotle says that all men are provided with daemons, that attend on them during the time they are in the body,--having taken this piece of prophetic instruction and transferred it to his own books, without acknowledging whence he had abstracted this statement." And again, in the second book of his work, he thus writes: "And let no one think that what we say is peculiar to the elect, was said before by any philosophers. For it is not a discovery of theirs. For having appropriated it from our prophets, they attributed it to him who is wise according to them." Again, in the same: "For to me it appears that those who profess to philosophize, do so that they may learn what is the winged oak, [3293] and the variegated robe on it, all of which Pherecydes has employed as theological allegories, having taken them from the prophecy of Cham."

[3291] Grabe reads logos for laos, "Word of the Beloved," etc.

[3292] [See Epiphan, Opp., ii. 391, ed. Oehler, Berlin, 1859: also Mosheim, First Three Centuries, vol. i. p. 434.]

[3293] Grabe suggests, instead of drus here, druops, a kind of woodpecker, mentioned by Aristophanes.

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