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Clement of Alexandria
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Introductory Note to Clement of Alexandria
[3702] For a good article on St. Alphonsus de’Liguori, see the Encyc. Britannica.
Chapter I.—The Object of Philosophical and Theological Inquiry—The Discovery of Truth.
[3703] [This book is a mere fragment, an imperfect exposition of logic, and not properly part of the Stromata. Kaye, 22.]
[3704] Matt. vii. 7.; Luke xi. 9. [Elucidation I.]
Chapter III.—Demonstration Defined.
[3705] It is necessary to read λόγον here, though not in the text, on account of ἐκπορίζοντα which follows; and as εὔλογον εἷναι λόγον occurs afterwards, it seems better to retain δὔλογον than to substitute λόγον for it.
[3706] [We begin, that is, with axioms: and he ingeniously identifies faith with axiomatic truth. Hence the faith not esoteric.]
Chapter IV.—To Prevent Ambiguity, We Must Begin with Clear Definition.
[3707] Ἐπιθυμητικοῦ, which accords with what Plato says in the Timæus, p. 1078. Lowth, however, reads φυτικοῦ.
Chapter V.—Application of Demonstration to Sceptical Suspense of Judgment.
[3708] [The young student must be on his guard as to the philosophical scepticism here treated, which is not the habit of unbelief commonly so called.]
Chapter VII.—On the Causes of Doubt or Assent.
[3709] [The Alexandrians must have recognised this as an ad hominem remark. But see Eccles. xii. 12.]
Chapter IX.—On the Different Kinds of Cause.
[3710] [The book reaches no conclusion, and is evidently a fragment, merely. See Elucidation II.; also Kaye, p. 224.]
[3711] Vol. i. p. 415, and Elucidation I. p. 460, this series.
I.—From the Latin Translation of Cassiodorus.
[3712] [M. Aurelius Cassiodorus (whose name is also Senator) was an author and public man of the sixth century, and a very voluminous writer. He would shine with a greater lustre were he not so nearly lost in the brighter light of Boëthius, his illustrious contemporary. After the death of his patron, Theodoric, he continued for a time in the public service, and in high positions, but, at seventy years of age, began another career, and for twenty years devoted himself to letters and the practice of piety in a monastery which he established in the Neopolitan kingdom, near his native Squillace. Died about a.d. 560.]
I.—Comments On the First Epistle of Peter.
[3713] Comments, i.e., Adumbrationes. Cassiodorus says that he had in his translation corrected what he considered erroneous in the original. So Fell states: and he is also inclined to believe that these fragments are from Clement’s lost work, the Ὑποτυπώσεις, of which he believes The Adumbrationes of Cassiodorus to be a translation.
[3714] “Utramque” is the reading, which is plainly corrupt. We have conjectured “animam.” The rest of the sentence is so ungrammatical and impracticable as it stands, that it is only by taking considerable liberties with it that it is translateable at all.
[3715] The text here has like a drag-net or (sicut sagena vel), which we have omitted, being utterly incapable of divining any conceivable resemblance or analogy which a drag-net can afford for the re-union of the soul and body. “Sagena” is either a blunder for something else which we cannot conjecture, or the sentence is here, as elsewhere, mutilated. But it is possible that it may have been the union of the blessed to each other, and their conjunction with one another according to their affinities, which was the point handled in the original sentences, of which we have only these obscure and confusing remains. [A very good conjecture, on the strength of which the text might have been let as it stood.]
[3717] “Cœli,” plainly a mistake for “cœlo” or “cœlis.” There is apparently a hiatus here. “The angelic abode, guarded in heaven,” most probably is the explanation of “an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, reserved in heaven.”
[3720] Ibid.
[3722] Ibid.
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