{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/002/0020354.htm","path":"chr/ecf/002/0020354.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/002/0020354.htm","text":"The most of men have a disposition unstable and heedless, like the nature of storms. \u201cWant of faith has done many good things, and faith evil things.\u201d And Epicharmus says, \u201cDon\u2019t forget to exercise incredulity; for it is the sinews of the soul.\u201d Now, to disbelieve truth brings death, as to believe, life; and again, to believe the lie and to disbelieve the truth hurries to destruction. The same is the case with self-restraint and licentiousness. To restrain one\u2019s self from doing good is the work of vice; but to keep from wrong is the beginning of salvation. So the Sabbath, by abstinence from evils, seems to indicate self-restraint. And what, I ask, is it in which man differs from beasts, and the angels of God, on the other hand, are wiser than he? \u201cThou madest him a little lower than the angels.\u201d 2682 For some do not interpret this Scripture of the Lord, although He also bore flesh, but of the perfect man and the gnostic, inferior in comparison with the angels in time, and by reason of the vesture [of the body]. I call then wisdom nothing but science, since life differs not from life. For to live is common to the mortal nature, that is to man, with that to which has been vouchsafed immortality; as also the faculty of contemplation and of self-restraint, one of the two being more excellent. On this ground Pythagoras seems to me to have said that God alone is wise, since also the apostle writes in the Epistle to the Romans, \u201cFor the obedience of the faith among all nations, being made known to the only wise God through Jesus Christ;\u201d 2683 and that he himself was a philosopher, on account of his friendship with God. Accordingly it is said, \u201cGod talked with Moses as a friend with a friend.\u201d 2684 That, then, which is true being clear to God, forthwith generates truth. And the gnostic loves the truth. \u201cGo,\u201d it is said, \u201cto the ant, thou sluggard, and be the disciple of the bee;\u201d thus speaks Solomon. 2685 For if there is one function belonging to the peculiar nature of each creature, alike of the ox, and horse, and dog, what shall we say is the peculiar function of man? He is like, it appears to me, the Centaur, a Thessalian figment, compounded of a rational and irrational part, of soul and body. Well, the body tills the ground, and hastes to it; but the soul is raised to God: trained in the true philosophy, it speeds to its kindred above, turning away from the lusts of the body, and besides these, from toil and fear, although we have shown that patience and fear belong to the good man. For if \u201cby the law is the knowledge of sin,\u201d 2686 as those allege who disparage the law, and \u201ctill the law sin was in the world;\u201d 2687 yet \u201cwithout the law sin was dead,\u201d 2688 we oppose them. For when you take away the cause of fear, sin, you have taken away fear; and much more, punishment, when you have taken away that which gives rise to lust. \u201cFor the law is not made for the just p. 411 man,\u201d 2689 says the Scripture. Well, then, says Heraclitus, \u201cThey would not have known the name of Justice if these things had not been.\u201d And Socrates says, \u201cthat the law was not made for the sake of the good.\u201d But the cavillers did not know even this, as the apostle says, \u201cthat he who loveth his brother worketh not evil;\u201d for this, \u201cThou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal; and if there be any other commandment, it is comprehended in the word, Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself.\u201d 2690 So also is it said, \u201cThou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.\u201d 2691 And \u201cif he that loveth his neighbour worketh no evil,\u201d and if \u201cevery commandment is comprehended in this, the loving our neighbour,\u201d the commandments, by menacing with fear, work love, not hatred. Wherefore the law is productive of the emotion of fear. \u201cSo that the law is holy,\u201d and in truth \u201cspiritual,\u201d 2692 according to the apostle. We must, then, as is fit, in investigating the nature of the body and the essence of the soul, apprehend the end of each, and not regard death as an evil. \u201cFor when ye were the servants of sin,\u201d says the apostle, \u201cye were free from righteousness. What fruit had ye then in those things in which ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death: but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.\u201d 2693 The assertion, then, may be hazarded, that it has been shown that death is the fellowship of the soul in a state of sin with the body; and life the separation from sin. And many are the stakes and ditches of lust which impede us, and the pits of wrath and anger which must be overleaped, and all the machinations we must avoid of those who plot against us,\u2014who would no longer see the knowledge of God \u201cthrough a glass.\u201d\n \u201cThe half of virtue the far-seeing Zeus takes\nFrom man, when he reduces him to a state of slavery.\u201d\nAs slaves the Scripture views those \u201cunder sin\u201d and \u201csold to sin,\u201d the lovers of pleasure and of the body; and beasts rather than men, \u201cthose who have become like to cattle, horses, neighing after their neighbours\u2019 wives.\u201d 2694 The licentious is \u201cthe lustful ass,\u201d the covetous is the \u201csavage wolf,\u201d and the deceiver is \u201ca serpent.\u201d The severance, therefore, of the soul from the body, made a life-long study, produces in the philosopher gnostic alacrity, so that he is easily able to bear natural death, which is the dissolution of the chains which bind the soul to the body. \u201cFor the world is crucified to me, and I to the world,\u201d the [apostle] says; \u201cand now I live, though in the flesh, as having my conversation in heaven.\u201d 2695\nRom. 16:26, 27.\n410:2684 410:2685 410:2686 410:2687 410:2688 411:2689 411:2690 411:2691 411:2692 411:2693 411:2694\nJer. v. 8, etc.\n411:2695","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol II: CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: Chapter III.\u2014The True Excellence of Man.","type":"page"}