We next come to a passage found in the Stromata of Clement of Alexandria, who compares it with a sentence [pg 133] from the Theaetetus of Plato: “He who wondereth shall reign, and he who reigneth shall rest.”[183]
This, like the preceding quotation, has a Gnostic hue; but it is impossible to determine its sense in the absence of the context. Nor does the passage in the Theaetetus throw any light upon it. The whole of the passage in St. Clement is this: “The beginning of (or search after) truth is admiration,” says Plato. “And Matthias, in saying to us in his Traditions, Wonder at what is before you, proves that admiration is the first step leading upwards to knowledge. Therefore also it is written in the Gospel of the Hebrews, He who shall wonder shall reign, and he who reigns shall rest.”
What were these Traditions of Matthias? In another place St. Clement of Alexandria mentions them, and quotes a passage from them, an instruction of St. Matthias: “If he who is neighbour to one of the elect sins, the elect sins with him; for if he (the elect) had conducted himself as the Word requires, then his neighbour would have looked to his ways, and not have sinned.”[184] And, again, he says that the followers of Carpocrates appealed to the authority of St. Matthias—probably, therefore, to this book, his Traditions—as an excuse for giving rein to their lusts.
These Traditions of St. Matthias evidently contained another version of the same passage, or perhaps a portion of the same discourse attributed to our Lord, which ran somehow thus: “Wonder at, what is before your eyes [pg 134] (i.e. the mighty works that I do); for he that wondereth shall reign, and he that reigneth shall rest.”
It is not impossible that this may be a genuine reminiscence of part of our Lord's teaching.
Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, says that Jesus exercised the trade of a carpenter, and that he made carts, yokes, and like articles.[185]
Where did he learn this? Not from St. Matthew's Gospel; probably from the lost Gospel which he quotes.
St. Jerome quotes as a saying of our Lord, “Be ye proved money-changers.”[186] He has no hesitation in calling it a saying of the Saviour. It occurs again in the Clementine Homilies[187] and in the Recognitions.[188] It is cited much more fully by St. Clement of Alexandria in his Stromata: “Be ye proved money-changers; retain that which is good metal, reject that which is bad.”[189] Neither St. Jerome, St. Clement of Alexandria, nor the author of the Clementines, give their authority for the statement they make, that this is a saying of the Lord; but we may, I think, fairly conclude that St. Jerome drew it from the Hebrew Gospel he knew so well, having translated it into Greek and Latin, and which he looked upon as an unexceptionable authority.
Whence the passage came may be guessed by the use made of it by those who quote it. It probably followed our Lord's saying, “I am not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfil it.” “Nevertheless, be ye proved exchangers; retain that which is good metal, reject that which is bad.”
Another passage is not given to us verbatim by St. Jerome; he merely alludes to it in one of his Commentaries, saying that Jesus had declared him guilty of a grievous crime who saddened the spirit of his brother.[190] It probably occurred in the portion of the Gospel of the Hebrews corresponding with the 18th chapter of St. Matthew, and may be restored somewhat as follows: “Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh, and the soul of his brother be made sore. Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee,” &c.