Page:Suppressed Gospels and Epistles.djvu/120

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Behold I will pour out the word of my spirit upon you, I will make known my speech unto you.

19 Because I called and ye would not hear, I stretched out my hand and ye regarded not.

20 But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof. I will also laugh at your calamity, and mock when your fear cometh.

21 When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish cometh upon you.

22 Then shall ye call upon me but I will not hear you: the wicked shall seek me but they shall not find me. For that they hated knowledge, and did not seek the fear of the Lord.

23 They would not hearken unto my counsel: they despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own ways; and be filled with their own wickedness.

CHAP. XXIV.

1 Recommends them to God. Desires speedily to hear that this Epistle has had a good effect upon them. 4 Conclusion.

NOW God, the inspector of all things, the Father of Spirits, and the Lord of all flesh, who hath chosen our Lord Jesus Christ, and us by him, to be his peculiar people;

2 Grant to every soul of man that calleth upon his glorious and holy name, faith, fear, peace, long-suffering, patience, temperance, holiness and sobriety, unto all well-pleasing in his sight; through our High-Priest and Protector Jesus Christ, by whom be glory and majesty, and power, and honour unto him now and for ever more, Amen.

3 ¶ The messengers whom we have sent unto you, Claudius, Ephebus, and Valerios Bito, with Fortunatus, send back to us again with all speed, in peace and with joy, that they may the sooner acquaint us with your peace and concord, so much prayed for and desired by us: and that we may rejoice in your good order.

4 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you, and with all that are any where called by God through him: To whom be honour and glory, and might and majesty, and eternal dominion, by Christ Jesus, from everlasting to everlasting, Amen.


References to CLEMENT'S FIRST EPISTLE to the CORINTHIANS.

[Clement was a disciple of Peter, and afterwards Bishop of Rome. Clemens Alexandrinus calls him an apostle. Jerome says he was an apostolic man, and Rufinus that he was almost an apostle. Eusebius calls this the wonderful Epistle of St. Clement, and says that it was publicly read in the assemblies of the primitive church. It is included in one of the ancient collections of the Canon Scripture. Its genuineness has been much questioned, particularly by Photius, patriarch of Constantinople in the ninth century, who objects that Clement speaks of worlds beyond the ocean: that he has not written worthily of the divinity of Christ; and that to prove the possibility of a future resurrection, he introduces the fabulous story of the phœnix's revival from its own ashes. To the latter objection, Archbishop Wake replies that the generality of the ancient Fathers have made use of the same instance in proof of the same point; and asks, if St. Clement really believed that there was such a bird, and that it did revive out of the cinders of the body after burning, where was the great harm either in giving credit to such a wonder, or, believing it, to make such a use as he here does of it?—The present is the Archbishop's translation from the ancient Greek copy of the Epistle, which is at the end of the celebrated Alexandrine MS. of the Septuagint and New Testament, presented by Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, to King Charles the First, now in the British Museum. The Archbishop, in prefacing his translation, esteems it a great blessing that this "Epistle" was at last so happily found out, for the increase and confirmation both of our faith and our charity.]