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Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.
Clement of Alexandria in Print
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128 Pages
Page 115
Wherefore it alone conducts to the true wisdom, which is the divine power which deals with the knowledge of entities as entities, which grasps what is perfect, and is freed from all passion; not without the Saviour, who withdraws, by the divine word, the gloom of ignorance arising from evil training, which had overspread the eye of the soul, and bestows the best of gifts,--
"That we might well know or God or man." [2132]
It is He who truly shows how we are to know ourselves. It is He who reveals the Father of the universe to whom He wills, and as far as human nature can comprehend. "For no man knoweth the Son but the Father, nor the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal Him." [2133] Rightly, then, the apostle says that it was by revelation that he knew the mystery: "As I wrote afore in few words, according as ye are able to understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ." [2134] "According as ye are able," he said, since he knew that some had received milk only, and had not yet received meat, nor even milk simply. The sense of the law is to be taken in three ways, [2135] --either as exhibiting a symbol, or laying down a precept for right conduct, or as uttering a prophecy. But I well know that it belongs to men [of full age] to distinguish and declare these things. For the whole Scripture is not in its meaning a single Myconos, as the proverbial expression has it; but those who hunt after the connection of the divine teaching, must approach it with the utmost perfection of the logical faculty.
[2132] "That thou may'st well know whether he be a god or a man."--Homer.
[2133] Matt. xi. 27.
[2134] Eph. iii. 3, 4.
[2135] The text has tetrachos, which is either a mistake for trichos, or belongs to a clause which is wanting. The author asserts the triple sense of Scripture,--the mystic, the moral, and the prophetic. [And thus lays the egg which his pupil Origen was to hatch, and to nurse into a brood of mysticism.]
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