Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IX/The Epistles of Clement/The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians/Chapter 46

by Various

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

1. Literally, “to such examples it is right that we should cleave.”
2. Not found in Scripture.
3. Literally, “be.”
4. Or, “thou wilt overthrow.”
5. Ps. xviii. 25, 26.
6. Or, “war.”  Comp. James iv. 1.
7. Comp. Eph. iv. 4–6.
8. Rom. xii. 5.
9. This clause is wanting in the text.
10. This clause is wanting in the text.
11. Comp. Matt. xviii. 6, xxvi. 24; Mark ix. 42; Luke xvii. 2.