Clement of Alexandria: INSTRUCTOR (PAEDAGOGUS) Complete

Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.

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Page 101

So he adds these most monitory words. "Who has woes, who has clamour, who has contentions, who has disgusting babblings, who has unavailing remorse?" [1373] You see, in all his raggedness, the lover of wine, who despises the Word Himself, and has abandoned and given himself to drunkenness. You see what threatening Scripture has pronounced against him. And to its threatening it adds again: "Whose are red eyes? Those, is it not, who tarry long at their wine, and hunt out the places where drinking goes on?" Here he shows the lover of drink to be already dead to the Word, by the mention of the bloodshot eyes,--a mark which appears on corpses, announcing to him death in the Lord. For forgetfulness of the things which tend to true life turns the scale towards destruction. With reason therefore, the Instructor, in His solicitude for our salvation, forbids us, "Drink not wine to drunkenness." Wherefore? you will ask. Because, says He, "thy mouth will then speak perverse things, and thou liest down as in the heart of the sea, and as the steersman of a ship in the midst of huge billows." Hence, too, poetry comes to our help, and says:--

"Let wine which has strength equal to fire come to men.

Then will it agitate them, as the north or south wind agitates the Libyan waves."

And further:--

"Wine wandering in speech shows all secrets.

Soul-deceiving wine is the ruin of those who drink it."

And so on.

[1373] Prov. xxiii. 29, 30.

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