Clement of Alexandria: INSTRUCTOR (PAEDAGOGUS) - Part II, Complete

Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.

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Page 28

Chapter XI. [1518] --On Clothes.

Wherefore neither are we to provide for ourselves costly clothing any more than variety of food. The Lord Himself, therefore, dividing His precepts into what relates to the body, the soul, and thirdly, external things, counsels us to provide external things on account of the body; and manages the body by the soul (psuke), and disciplines the soul, saying, "Take no thought for your life (psuke) what ye shall eat; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on; for the life is more than meat, and the body more than raiment." [1519] And He adds a plain example of instruction: "Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap, which have neither storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them." [1520] "Are ye not better than the fowls?" [1521] Thus far as to food. Similarly He enjoins with respect to clothing, which belongs to the third division, that of things external, saying, "Consider the lilies, how they spin not, nor weave. But I say unto you, that not even Solomon was arrayed as one of these."" [1522] And Solomon the king plumed himself exceedingly on his riches.

[1518] Chap. xi. is not a separate chapter in the Greek, but appears as part of chap. x.

[1519] Luke xii. 22, 23.

[1520] Luke xii. 24.

[1521] Luke xii. 24.

[1522] Luke xii. 27.

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