{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/002/0020244.htm","path":"chr/ecf/002/0020244.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/002/0020244.htm","text":"It is now time, as we have despatched in order the other points, to go to the prophetic Scriptures; for the oracles present us with the appliances necessary for the attainment of piety, p. 194 and so establish the truth. The divine Scriptures and institutions of wisdom form the short road to salvation. Devoid of embellishment, of outward beauty of diction, of wordiness and seductiveness, they raise up humanity strangled by wickedness, teaching men to despise the casualties of life; and with one and the same voice remedying many evils, they at once dissuade us from pernicious deceit, and clearly exhort us to the attainment of the salvation set before us. Let the Sibyl 930 prophetess, then, be the first to sing to us the song of salvation:\u2014\n \u201cSo He is all sure and unerring:\nCome, follow no longer darkness and gloom;\nSee, the sun\u2019s sweet-glancing light shines gloriously.\nKnow, and lay up wisdom in your hearts:\nThere is one God, who sends rains, and winds, and earthquakes,\nThunderbolts, famines, plagues, and dismal sorrows,\nAnd snows and ice. But why detail particulars?\nHe reigns over heaven, He rules earth,\nHe truly is;\u201d\u2014\nwhere, in remarkable accordance with inspiration 931 she compares delusion to darkness, and the knowledge of God to the sun and light, and subjecting both to comparison, shows the choice we ought to make. For falsehood is not dissipated by the bare presentation of the truth, but by the practical improvement of the truth it is ejected and put to flight.\nJeremiah the prophet, gifted with consummate wisdom, 932 or rather the Holy Spirit in Jeremiah, exhibits God. \u201cAm I a God at hand,\u201d he says, \u201cand not a God afar off? Shall a man do ought in secret, and I not see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth? Saith the Lord.\u201d 933\nAnd again by Isaiah, \u201cWho shall measure heaven with a span, and the whole earth with his hand?\u201d 934 Behold God\u2019s greatness, and be filled with amazement. Let us worship Him of whom the prophet says, \u201cBefore Thy face the hills shall melt, as wax melteth before the fire!\u201d 935 This, says he, is the God \u201cwhose throne is heaven, and His footstool the earth; and if He open heaven, quaking will seize thee.\u201d 936 Will you hear, too, what this prophet says of idols? \u201cAnd they shall be made a spectacle of in the face of the sun, and their carcases shall be meat for the fowls of heaven and the wild beasts of the earth; and they shall putrefy before the sun and the moon, which they have loved and served; and their city shall be burned down.\u201d 937 He says, too, that the elements and the world shall be destroyed. \u201cThe earth,\u201d he says, \u201cshall grow old, and the heaven shall pass away; but the word of the Lord endureth for ever.\u201d What, then, when again God wishes to show Himself by Moses: \u201cBehold ye, behold ye, that I Am, and there is no other God beside Me. I will kill, and I will make to live; I will strike, and I will heal; and there is none who shall deliver out of My hands.\u201d 938 But do you wish to hear another seer? You have the whole prophetic choir, the associates of Moses. What the Holy Spirit says by Hosea, I will not shrink from quoting: \u201cLo, I am He that appointeth the thunder, and createth spirit; and His hands have established the host of heaven.\u201d 939 And once more by Isaiah. And this utterance I will repeat: \u201cI am,\u201d he says, \u201cI am the Lord; I who speak righteousness, announce truth. Gather yourselves together, and come. Take counsel together, ye that are saved from the nations. They have not known, they who set up the block of wood, their carved work, and pray to gods who will not save them.\u201d 940 Then proceeding: \u201cI am God, and there is not beside Me a just God, and a Saviour: there is none except Me. Turn to Me, and ye will be saved, ye that are from the end of the earth. I am God, and there is no other; by Myself I swear.\u201d 941 But against the worshippers of idols he is exasperated, saying, \u201cTo whom will ye liken the Lord, or to what likeness will ye compare Him? Has not the artificer made the image, or the goldsmith melted the gold and plated it with gold?\u201d 942 \u2014and so on. Be not therefore idolaters, but even now beware of the threatenings; \u201cfor the graven images and the works of men\u2019s hands shall wail, or rather they that trust in them,\u201d 943 for matter is devoid of sensation. Once more he says, \u201cThe Lord will shake the cities that are inhabited, and grasp the world in His hand like a nest.\u201d 944 Why repeat to you the mysteries of wisdom, and sayings from the writings of the son of the Hebrews, the master of wisdom? \u201cThe Lord created me the beginning of His ways, in order to His works.\u201d 945 And, \u201cThe Lord giveth wisdom, and from His face proceed knowledge and understanding.\u201d 946 \u201cHow long wilt thou lie in bed, O sluggard; and when wilt thou be aroused from sleep?\u201d 947 \u201cbut if thou show thyself no p. 195 sluggard, as a fountain thy harvest shall come,\u201d 948 the \u201cWord of the Father, the benign light, the Lord that bringeth light, faith to all, and salvation.\u201d 949 For \u201cthe Lord who created the earth by His power,\u201d as Jeremiah says, \u201chas raised up the world by His wisdom;\u201d 950 for wisdom, which is His word, raises us up to the truth, who have fallen prostrate before idols, and is itself the first resurrection from our fall. Whence Moses, the man of God, dissuading from all idolatry, beautifully exclaims, \u201cHear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord; and thou shall worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shall thou serve.\u201d 951 \u201cNow therefore be wise, O men,\u201d according to that blessed psalmist David; \u201clay hold on instruction, lest the Lord be angry, and ye perish from the way of righteousness, when His wrath has quickly kindled. Blessed are all they who put their trust in Him.\u201d 952 But already the Lord, in His surpassing pity, has inspired the song of salvation, sounding like a battle march, \u201cSons of men, how long will ye be slow of heart? Why do you love vanity, and seek after a lie?\u201d 953 What, then, is the vanity, and what the lie? The holy apostle of the Lord, reprehending the Greeks, will show thee: \u201cBecause that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and changed the glory of God into the likeness of corruptible man, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.\u201d 954 And verily this is the God who \u201cin the beginning made the heaven and the earth.\u201d 955 But you do not know God, and worship the heaven, and how shall you escape the guilt of impiety? Hear again the prophet speaking: \u201cThe sun, shall suffer eclipse, and the heaven be darkened; but the Almighty shall shine for ever: while the powers of the heavens shall be shaken, and the heavens stretched out and drawn together shall be rolled as a parchment-skin (for these are the prophetic expressions), and the earth shall flee away from before the face of the Lord.\u201d 956\n[Note her remarkable accord with inspiration, clearly distinguishing between such and the oracles of God. But see, supra, p. 132 and p. 145.]\n194:931\n[Having shown what truth there is to be found in heathen poets, he ascends to the Sibyl, and thus comes to the prophets; showing them how to climb upward in this way, and cleverly inducing them to make the best use of their own prophets and poets, by following them to the sources of their noblest ideas.]\n194:932\n[How sublimely he now introduces the oracles of truth.]\n194:933 194:934 194:935 194:936 194:937\nJer. viii. 2, xxx. 20, iv. 6.\n194:938 194:939 194:940\nIsa. 45:19, 20.\n194:941 194:942\nIsa. 40:18, 19.\n194:943\nIsa. 10:10, 11.\n194:944 194:945 194:946 194:947 195:948 195:949 195:950 195:951 195:952 195:953 195:954 195:955 195:956\nThis is made up of several passages, as Isa. xiii. 10, Ezek. xxxii. 7, Joel 2:10, 31, iii. 15.","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol II: CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: Chapter VIII.\u2014The True Doctrine is to Be Sought in the Prophets.","type":"page"}