V.

Clement of Alexandria

In his third book, Clement exposes the Basilidians and others who perverted the rule of our Lord, which permissively, but not as of obligation, called some to the self-regimen of a single life, on condition of their possessing the singular gift requisite to the same. True continence, he argues, implies the command of the tongue, and all manner of concupiscence, such as greed of wealth, or luxury in using it. If, by a divine faculty and gift of grace, it enables us to practice temperance, very well; but more is necessary. As to marriage, he states what seems to him to be the truth. We honour celibate chastity, and esteem them blest to whom this is God’s gift. We<page 403>also admire a single marriage, and the dignity which pertains to one marriage only; admitting, nevertheless, that we ought to compassionate others, and to bear one another’s burdens, lest any one, when he thinks he stands, should himself also fall. The apostle enjoins, with respect to a second marriage, “If thou art tempted by concupiscence, resort to a lawful wedlock.”

Our author then proceeds to a castigation of Carpocrates, and his son Epiphanes, an Alexandrian on his father’s side, who, though he lived but seventeen years, his mother being a Cephallenian, received divine honours at Sama, where a magnificent temple, with altars and shrines, was erected to him; the Cephallenians celebrating his apotheosis, by a new-moon festival, with sacrifices, libations and hymns, and convivialities. This youth acquired, from his father, a knowledge of Plato’s philosophy and of the circle of the sciences. He was the author of the jargon about monads,^[2675] of which see Irenæus; and from him comes the heresy of those subsequently known as Carpocratians. He left a book, De Justitia, in which he contends for what he represents as Plato’s idea of a community of women in sexual relations. Justly does our author reckon him a destroyer alike of law and Gospel, unworthy even of being classed with decent heretics; and he attributes to his followers all those abominations which had been charged upon the Christians. This illustrates the terrible necessity, which then existed, of drawing a flaming line of demarcation between the Church, and the wolves in sheeps’ clothing, who thus dishonoured the name of Christ, by associating such works of the devil with the adoption of a nominal discipleship. It should be mentioned that Mosheim questions the story of Epiphanes. (See his Hist. of the First Three Centuries, vol. i. p. 448.)

II.

(See p. 383, cap. ii. note 1.)

The early disappearance of the Christian agapæ may probably be attributed to the terrible abuse of the word here referred to, by the licentious Carpocratians. The genuine agapæ were of apostolic origin (2 Pet. ii. 13; Jude 12), but were often abused by hypocrites, even under the apostolic eye (1 Corinthians 11:21). In the Gallican Church, a survival or relic of these feasts of charity is seen in the pain béni; and, in the Greek churches. in the ἀντίδωρον or eulogiæ distributed to non-communicants at the close of the Eucharist, from the loaf out of which the bread of oblation is supposed to have been cut.

III.

(See p. 383, note 3.)

Next, he treats of the Marcionites, who rejected marriage on the ground that the material creation is in itself evil. Promising elsewhere to deal with this general false principle, he refutes Marcion, and with him the Greeks who have condemned the generative law of nature, specifying Heraclitus, Empedocles, the Sibyl, Homer, and others; but he defends Plato against Marcion, who represents him as teaching the depravity of matter. He proceeds to what the dramatists have exhibited of human misery. He shows the error of those who represent the Pythagoreans as on that account denying themselves the intimacies of conjugal society; for he says they practiced this restraint, only after having given themselves a family. He explains the prohibition of the bean, by Pythagoras, on the very ground, that it occasioned sterility in women according to Theophrastus. Clement expounds the true meaning of Christ’s words, perverted by those who abstained from marriage not in honour of encraty, but as an insane impeachment of the divine wisdom in the material creation.

IV.

(See p. 385, note 3.)

He refutes the Carpocratians, also, in their slanders against the deacon Nicolas, showing that the Nicolaitans had abused his name and words. Likewise, concerning Matthias, he exposes a similar abuse. He castigates one who seduced a maiden into impurity by an absurd perversion of Scripture, and thoroughly exposes this blasphemous abuse of the apostolic text. He subjoins another refutation of one of those heretics, and allows that some might adopt the opinion of his dupes, if, as the Valentinians would profess, only spiritual communion were concerned.

Seeing, however, that these heretics, and the followers of Prodicus, who wrongfully call themselves gnostics, claimed a practical indulgence in all manner of disgusting profligacies, he convicts them by arguments derived from right reason and from the Scriptures, and by human laws as well. Further, he exposes the folly of those who pretended that the less honourable parts of man are not the work of the Creator, and overwhelms their presumption by abundant argument, exploding, at the same time, their corruptions of the sacred text of the Scriptures.

V.

(See p. 388, note 3.)

To relieve himself of a more particular struggle with each individual heresy, he proceeds to reduce them under two heads: (1) Those who teach a reckless mode of life (ἀδιαφόρως ζῆν), and (2) those who impiously affect continence. To the first, he opposes the plain propriety and duty of a decorous way of living continently; showing, that as it cannot be denied that there are certain abominable and filthy lusts, which, as such, must be shunned, therefore there is no such thing as living “indifferently” with respect to them. He who lives to the flesh, moreover, is condemned; nor can the likeness and image of God be regained, or eternal life be ensured, save by a strict observance of divine precepts. Further, our author shows that true Christian liberty consists, not, as they vociferate, in self-indulgence, but, on the contrary, is founded in an entire freedom from perturbations of mind and passion, and from all filthy lusts.

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Contents

Elucidations.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.