| << | Contents | >> |
Clement of Alexandria
(Sin after Baptism, cap. xxiv. p. 438.)
Not to broach any opinion of my own, it is enough to remark, that this reference to primitive discipline shows that a defined penitential system in the early Church was aimed at by the Montanists,and inspired their deadly animosity, not merely as a theory, but as a system. Although differing on many points with Dr. Bunsen (he is both Baron and Doctor, and I give him the more honourable title of the two), I feel it due to my contract with the reader of this series to refer him to what he says of the baptismal vow, etc. (Hippol., iii. p. 187), as furnishing a valuable commentary on the text, and on the whole plan of Alexandrian teaching and discipline.
(Jubilee, cap. xxv. p. 438.)
Here the reader may feel that an Elucidation is requisite to any intelligent idea of what Clement means to say. “We wish he would explain his explanation” of Ezekiel. Let me give a brief rendering of the annotations in Migne, as all that can here be furnished. (1) The tabernacle is the body, as St. Paul uses the word (2 Cor. v. 1-4), and St. Peter (2 Ep. i. 13, 14). (2) The seven periods are the Sabbatical weeks of years leading up to the year of Jubilee. (3) The ἀπλανὴς χώρα refers to the old system of astronomy, and its division of the heavens into an octave of spheres, of which the seven inner spheres are those of the seven planets; the fixt stars being in the eighth, which “borders on the intellectual world,”—the abode of spirits, according to Clement.
The Miltonic student will recall the perplexity with which, perhaps, in early years, he first read:—
“They pass the planets seven, and pass the fixt,
And that crystalline sphere whose balance weighs
The trepidation talked, and that first moved.
Paradise Lost, book iii. 481.
The Copernican system was, even in Milton’s time, not generally accepted; but, for one who had personally conversed with Galileo, this seems incorrigibly bad. The true system would have given greater dignity, and in fact a better topography, to his great poem.
(Rebecca, p. 439.)
Le Nourry, as well as Barbeyrac (see Kaye, pp. 109 and 473), regards Clement as ignorant of the Hebrew language. Kaye, though he shows that some of the attempts to demonstrate this are fanciful, inclines to the same opinion; remarking that he borrows his interpretations from Philo. On the passage here under consideration, he observes, that, “having said repeatedly[2942] that Rebekah in Hebrew is equivalent to ὑπομονὴ in Greek, he now makes it equivalent to Θεοῦ δόξα. He elsewhere refers our Saviour’s exclamation, Eli, Eli, etc., to the Greek word ἡλιος, and the name Jesus to ἰᾶσθαι.”
(Plato’s City, cap. xxvi. p. 441.)
This is worth quoting from the Republic (book ix. p. 423, Jowett): “In heaven there is laid up a pattern of such a city; and he who desires may behold this, and, beholding, govern himself accordingly; He will act according to the laws of that city, and of no other.” Sublime old Gentile! Did not the apostle of the Gentiles think of Socrates, when he wrote Heb. xii. 28, and xiii. 14? On this noble passage, of which Clement has evidently thought very seriously, Schleiermacher’s remarks seem to me cold and unsatisfactory. (See his Introductions, translated by Dobson; ed. Cambridge, 1836.)
Search Comments
This page has been visited 0002 times.
| << | Contents | >> |
10 per page