Clement of Alexandria: EXHORTATION TO THE HEATHEN Complete

Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.

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where, in remarkable accordance with inspiration [931] she compares delusion to darkness, and the knowledge of God to the sun and light, and subjecting both to comparison, shows the choice we ought to make. For falsehood is not dissipated by the bare presentation of the truth, but by the practical improvement of the truth it is ejected and put to flight.

Jeremiah the prophet, gifted with consummate wisdom, [932] or rather the Holy Spirit in Jeremiah, exhibits God. "Am I a God at hand," he says, "and not a God afar off? Shall a man do ought in secret, and I not see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth? Saith the Lord." [933]

And again by Isaiah, "Who shall measure heaven with a span, and the whole earth with his hand?" [934] Behold God's greatness, and be filled with amazement. Let us worship Him of whom the prophet says, "Before Thy face the hills shall melt, as wax melteth before the fire!" [935] This, says he, is the God "whose throne is heaven, and His footstool the earth; and if He open heaven, quaking will seize thee." [936]

[931] [Having shown what truth there is to be found in heathen poets, he ascends to the Sibyl, and thus comes to the prophets; showing them how to climb upward in this way, and cleverly inducing them to make the best use of their own prophets and poets, by following them to the sources of their noblest ideas.]

[932] [How sublimely he now introduces the oracles of truth.]

[933] Jer. xxiii. 23.

[934] Isa. xl. 12.

[935] Isa. lxiv. 1, 2.

[936] Isa. lxvi. 1.

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