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

Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.

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For the Lord says, "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear," [3418] declaring that hearing and understanding belong not to all. To the point David writes: "Dark water is in the clouds of the skies. At the gleam before Him the clouds passed, hail and coals of fire;" [3419] showing that the holy words are hidden. He intimates that transparent and resplendent to the Gnostics, like the innocuous hail, they are sent down from God; but that they are dark to the multitude, like extinguished coals out of the fire, which, unless kindled and set on fire, will not give forth fire or light. "The Lord, therefore," it is said, "gives me the tongue of instruction, so as to know in season when it is requisite to speak a word;" [3420] not in the way of testimony alone, but also in the way of question and answer. "And the instruction of the Lord opens my mouth." [3421] It is the prerogative of the Gnostic, then, to know how to make use of speech, and when, and how, and to whom. And already the apostle, by saying, "After the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ," [3422] makes the asseveration that the Hellenic teaching is elementary, and that of Christ perfect, as we have already intimated before.

"Now the wild olive is inserted into the fatness of the olive," [3423] and is indeed of the same species as the cultivated olives. For the graft uses as soil the tree in which it is engrafted. Now all the plants sprouted forth simultaneously in consequence of the divine order. Wherefore also, though the wild olive be wild, it crowns the Olympic victors. And the elm teaches the vine to be fruitful, by leading it up to a height. Now we see that wild trees attract more nutriment, because they cannot ripen. The wild trees, therefore, have less power of secretion than those that are cultivated. And the cause of their wildness is the want of the power of secretion. The engrafted olive accordingly receives more nutriment from its growing in the wild one; and it gets accustomed, as it were, to secrete the nutriment, becoming thus assimilated [3424] to the fatness of the cultivated tree.

[3418] Matt. xi. 15.

[3419] Ps. xviii. 11, 12.

[3420] Isa. l. 4.

[3421] Isa. l. 5.

[3422] Col. ii. 8.

[3423] Rom. xii. 17.

[3424] i.e., the graft is assimilated; so the Latin translator. But in the text we have sunexomoioumene, dative, agreeing with fatness, which seems to be a mistake.

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