“For Abraham, who for his free faith was called ‘the friend of God,’ was not elated by glory, but modestly said, ‘I am dust and ashes.’[600] And of Job it is thus written: ‘Job was just and blameless, true and pious, abstaining from all evil.’”[601] He it was who overcame the tempter by patience, and at once testified and was testified to by God; who keeps hold of humility, and says, “No one is pure from defilement, not even if his life were but for one day.”[602] “Moses, ‘the servant who was faithful in all his house,’ said to Him who uttered the oracles from the bush, ‘Who am I, that Thou sendest me? I am slow of speech, and of a stammering tongue, to minister the voice of God in human speech. And again: ‘I am smoke from a pot.’” “For God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.”[603]
“David too, of whom the Lord, testifying, says, ‘I found a man after my own heart, David the son of Jesse. With my holy oil I anointed him.’[604] But he also says to God, ‘Pity me, O God, according to Thy mercy; and according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies, blot out my transgression. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgression, and my sin is ever before me.’”[605] Then, alluding to sin which is not subject to the law, in the exercise of the moderation of true knowledge, he adds, “Against Thee only have I sinned, and done evil in Thy sight.”[606] For the Scripture somewhere says, “The Spirit of the Lord is a lamp, searching the recesses of the belly.”[607] And the more of a Gnostic a man becomes by doing right, the nearer is the illuminating Spirit to him. “Thus the Lord draws near to the righteous, and none of the thoughts and reasonings of which we are the authors escape Him—I mean the Lord Jesus,” the scrutinizer by His omnipotent will of our heart, “whose blood was consecrated[608] for us. Let us therefore respect those who are over us, and reverence the elders; let us honour the young, and let us teach the discipline of God.” For blessed is he who shall do and teach the Lord’s commands worthily; and he is of a magnanimous mind, and of a mind contemplative of truth. “Let us direct our wives to what is good; let them exhibit,” says he, “the lovable disposition of chastity; let them show the guileless will of their meekness; let them manifest the gentleness of their tongue by silence; let them give their love not according to their inclinations, but equal love in sanctity to all that fear God. Let our children share in the discipline that is in Christ; let them learn what humility avails before God; what is the power of holy love before God, how lovely and great is the fear of the Lord, saving all that walk in it holily, with a pure heart: for He is the Searcher of the thoughts and sentiments, whose breath is in us, and when He wills He will take it away.”
“Now all those things are confirmed by the faith that is in Christ. ‘Come, ye children,’ says the Lord, ‘hearken to me, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Who is the man that desireth life, that loveth to see good days?’[609] Then He subjoins the gnostic mystery of the numbers seven and eight. ‘Stop thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile. Depart from evil, and do good. Seek peace, and pursue it.’[610] For in these words He alludes to knowledge (gnosis), with abstinence from evil and the doing of what is good, teaching that it is to be perfected by word and deed. ‘The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and His ears are to their prayer. But the face of God is against those that do evil, to root out their memory from the earth. The righteous cried, and the Lord heard, and delivered him out of all his distresses.’[611] ‘Many are the stripes of sinners; but those who hope in the Lord, mercy shall compass about.’”[612] “A multitude of mercy,” he nobly says, “surrounds him that trusts in the Lord.”
For it is written in the Epistle to the Corinthians, “Through Jesus Christ our foolish and darkened mind springs up to the light. By Him the Sovereign Lord wished us to taste the knowledge that is immortal.” And, showing more expressly the peculiar nature of knowledge, he added: “These things, then, being clear to us, looking into the depths of divine knowledge, we ought to do all things in order which the Sovereign Lord commanded us to perform at the appointed seasons. Let the wise man, then, show his wisdom not in words only, but in good deeds. Let the humble not testify to himself, but allow testimony to be borne to him by another. Let not him who is pure in the flesh boast, knowing that it is another who furnishes him with continence. Ye see, brethren, that the more we are subjected to peril, the more knowledge are we counted worthy of.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
ON LOVE, AND THE REPRESSING OF OUR DESIRES.
“The decorous tendency of our philanthropy, therefore,” according to Clement, “seeks the common good;” whether by suffering martyrdom, or by teaching by deed and word,—the latter being twofold, unwritten and written. This is love, to love God and our neighbour. “This conducts to the height which is unutterable. ‘Love covers a multitude of sins.[613] Love beareth all things, suffereth all things.’[614] Love joins us to God, does all things in concord. In love, all the chosen of God were perfected. Apart from love, nothing is well pleasing to God.” “Of its perfection there is no unfolding,” it is said. “Who is fit to be found in it, except those whom God counts worthy?” To the point the Apostle Paul speaks, “If I give my body, and have not love, I am sounding brass, and a tinkling cymbal.”[615] If it is not from a disposition determined by gnostic love that I shall testify, he means; but if through fear and expected reward, moving my lips in order to testify to the Lord that I shall confess the Lord, I am a common man, sounding the Lord’s name, not knowing Him. “For there is the people that loveth with the lips; and there is another which gives the body to be burned.” “And if I give all my goods in alms,” he says, not according to the principle of loving communication, but on account of recompense, either from him who has received the benefit, or the Lord who has promised; “and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains,” and cast away obscuring passions, and be not faithful to the Lord from love, “I am nothing,” as in comparison of him who testifies as a Gnostic, and the crowd, and being reckoned nothing better.
“Now all the generations from Adam to this day are gone. But they who have been perfected in love, through the grace of God, hold the place of the godly, who shall be manifested at the visitation of the kingdom of Christ.” Love permits not to sin; but if it fall into any such case, by reason of the interference of the adversary, in imitation of David, it will sing: “I will confess unto the Lord, and it will please Him above a young bullock that has horns and hoofs. Let the poor see it, and be glad.” For he says, “Sacrifice to God a sacrifice of praise, and pay to the Lord thy vows; and call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.”[616] “For the sacrifice of God is a broken spirit.”[617]
“God,” then, being good, “is love,” it is said.[618] Whose “love worketh no ill to his neighbour,”[619] neither injuring nor revenging ever, but, in a word, doing good to all according to the image of God. “Love is,” then, “the fulfilling of the law;”[619] like as Christ, that is the presence of the Lord who loves us; and our loving teaching of, and discipline according to Christ. By love, then, the commands not to commit adultery, and not to covet one’s neighbour’s wife, are fulfilled, [these sins being] formerly prohibited by fear.
The same work, then, presents a difference, according as it is done by fear, or accomplished by love, and is wrought by faith or by knowledge. Rightly, therefore, their rewards are different. To the Gnostic “are prepared what eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath entered into the heart of man;” but to him who has exercised simple faith He testifies a hundred-fold in return for what he has left,—a promise which has turned out to fall within human comprehension.
Come to this point, I recollect one who called himself a Gnostic. For, expounding the words, “But I say unto you, he that looketh on a woman to lust after, hath committed adultery,”[620] he thought that it was not bare desire that was condemned; but if through the desire the act that results from it proceeding beyond the desire is accomplished in it. For dream employs phantasy and the body. Accordingly, the historians relate the following decision of Bocchoris the just. A youth, falling in love with a courtezan, persuades the girl, for a stipulated reward, to come to him next day. But his desire being unexpectedly satiated, by laying hold of the girl in a dream, by anticipation, when the object of his love came according to stipulation, he prohibited her from coming in. But she, on learning what had taken place, demanded the reward, saying that in this way she had sated the lover’s desire. They came accordingly to the judge. He, ordering the youth to hold out the purse containing the reward in the sun, bade the courtezan take hold of the shadow; facetiously bidding him pay the image of a reward for the image of an embrace.