Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IX/The Epistles of Clement/The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians/Chapter 46
Chapter XLVI.—Let Us Cleave to the Righteous: Your Strife is Pernicious.
Such examples, therefore, brethren, it is right that we should follow;[1] since it is written, “Cleave to the holy, for those that cleave to them shall [themselves] be made holy.”[2] And again, in another place, [the Scripture] saith, “With a harmless man thou shalt prove[3] thyself harmless, and with an elect man thou shalt be elect, and with a perverse man thou shalt show[4] thyself perverse.”[5] Let us cleave, therefore, to the innocent and righteous, since these are the elect of God. Why are there strifes, and tumults, and divisions, and schisms, and wars[6] among you? Have we not [all] one God and one Christ? Is there not one Spirit of grace poured out upon us? And have we not one calling in Christ?[7] Why do we divide and tear in pieces the members of Christ, and raise up strife against our own body, and have reached such a height of madness as to forget that “we are members one of another?”[8] Remember the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, how[9] He said, “Woe to that man [by whom[10] offences come]! It were better for him that he had never been born, than that he should cast a stumbling-block before one of my elect. Yea, it were better for him that a millstone should be hung about [his neck], and he should be sunk in the depths of the sea, than that he should cast a stumbling-block before one of my little ones.”[11] Your schism has subverted [the faith of] many, has discouraged many, has given rise to doubt in many, and has caused grief to us all. And still your sedition continueth.
Footnotes edit
- ↑ Literally, “to such examples it is right that we should cleave.”
- ↑ Not found in Scripture.
- ↑ Literally, “be.”
- ↑ Or, “thou wilt overthrow.”
- ↑ Ps. xviii. 25, 26.
- ↑ Or, “war.” Comp. James iv. 1.
- ↑ Comp. Eph. iv. 4–6.
- ↑ Rom. xii. 5.
- ↑ This clause is wanting in the text.
- ↑ This clause is wanting in the text.
- ↑ Comp. Matt. xviii. 6, xxvi. 24; Mark ix. 42; Luke xvii. 2.