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

Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.

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It is also written, 'With the innocent man thou wilt be innocent, and with the chosen choice, and with the perverse thou shall pervert.' [3043] It is incumbent on us to cleave to the saints, because they that cleave to them shall be sanctified." [3044]

Thence Theognis writes:--

"For from the good you will learn good things;

But if you mix with the bad, you will destroy any mind you may have."

And when, again, it is said in the ode, "For He hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath He cast into the sea;" [3045] the many-limbed and brutal affection, lust, with the rider mounted, who gives the reins to pleasures, "He has cast into the sea," throwing them away into the disorders of the world. Thus also Plato, in his book On the Soul, says that the charioteer and the horse that ran off--the irrational part, which is divided in two, into anger and concupiscence--fall down; and so the myth intimates that it was through the licentiousness of the steeds that Phaethon was thrown out. Also in the case of Joseph: the brothers having envied this young man, who by his knowledge was possessed of uncommon foresight, stripped off the coat of many colours, and took and threw him into a pit (the pit was empty, it had no water), rejecting the good man's varied knowledge, springing from his love of instruction; or, in the exercise of the bare faith, which is according to the law, they threw him into the pit empty of water, selling him into Egypt, which was destitute of the divine word. And the pit was destitute of knowledge; into which being thrown and stript of his knowledge, he that had become unconsciously wise, stript of knowledge, seemed like his brethren. Otherwise interpreted, the coat of many colours is lust, which takes its way into a yawning pit. "And if one open up or hew out a pit," it is said, "and do not cover it, and there fall in there a calf or ass, the owner of the pit shall pay the price in money, and give it to his neighbour; and the dead body shall be his. [3046] Here add that prophecy: "The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel hath not understood Me." [3047]

[3043] Ps. xviii. 25, 26.

[3044] [Epistle of Barnabas, vol. i, p. 143, 144. S.]

[3045] Ex. xv. 1.

[3046] Ex. xxi. 33, 36.

[3047] Isa. i. 3.

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