Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VII/The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles/The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles/Chapter V

by Anonymous

 

Chapter V.^[1]—The Way of Death.

1. And the way of death^[2] is this: First of all it is evil and full of curse:^[3] murders,^[4] adulteries, lusts, fornications, thefts, idolatries, magic arts, witchcrafts, rapines, false witnessings, hypocrisies, double-heartedness, deceit, haughtiness, depravity, self-will, greediness, filthy talking, jealousy, over-confidence, loftiness, boastfulness; 2. persecutors of the good,^[5] hating truth, loving a lie, not knowing a reward for righteousness, not cleaving^[6] to good nor to righteous judgment, watching not for that which is good, but for that which is evil; from whom meekness and endurance are far, loving vanities, pursuing requital, not pitying a poor man, not labouring for the afflicted, not knowing Him that made them, murderers of children, destroyers of the handiwork of God, turning away from him that is in want, afflicting him that is distressed, advocates of the rich, lawless judges of the poor, utter sinners.^[7] Be delivered, children, from all these.^[8]  

Footnotes

1. This chapter finds nearly exact parallels in Barnabas, xx., and Apostolic Constitutions, vii. 18, but with curious variations.  
2. Barnabas has “darkness,” but afterwards “way of eternal death.”  
3. Not in Apostolic Constitutions, and no exact parallel in Barnabas.  
4. Of the twenty-two sins named in this verse, Barnabas gives fourteen, in differing order, and in the singular; Apostolic Constitutions gives all but one (υψος, “loftiness” “haughtiness”), in the same order, and with the same change from plural to singular.  
5. This verse appears almost word for word in Barnabas, with two additional clauses.  
6. The Apostolic Constitutions give a parallel from this point; verbally exact from the phrase, “not for that which is good.”  
7. The word πανθαμαρτητοι occurs only here, and in the parallel passage in Barnabas (rendered in this edition “who are in every respect transgressors,” vol. i. p. 149), and in Apostolic Constitutions (rendered “full of sin”). A similar term occurs in the recently recovered portion of 2 Clement, xviii., where Bishop Lightfoot renders, as above, “an utter sinner.”  
8. Found verbatim in Apostolic Constitutions, not in Barnabas: with the latter there is no further parallel, except a few phrases in chap. xvi. 2, 3 (which see).