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Translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.
Clement of Alexandria in Print
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 59
But the variety of disposition arises from inordinate affection to material things. And for this reason, as they appear to me, to have called night Euphrone; since then the soul, released from the perceptions of sense, turns in on itself, and has a truer hold of intelligence (phronesis). [2888] Wherefore the mysteries are for the most part celebrated by night, indicating the withdrawal of the soul from the body, which takes place by night. "Let us not then sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep, sleep in the night; and they that are drunken, are drunken in the night. But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as an helmet the hope of salvation." [2889] And as to what, again, they say of sleep, the very same things are to be understood of death. For each exhibits the departure of the soul, the one more, the other less; as we may also get this in Heraclitus: "Man touches night in himself, when dead and his light quenched; and alive, when he sleeps he touches the dead; and awake, when he shuts his eyes, he touches the sleeper." [2890] "For blessed are those that have seen the Lord," [2891] according to the apostle; "for it is high time to awake out of sleep. For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armour of light." [2892] By day and light he designates figuratively the Son, and by the armour of light metaphorically the promises.
[2888] Euphrone is plainly "kindly, cheerful."
[2889] 1 Thess. v. 6-8.
[2890] As it stands in the text the passage is unintelligable, and has been variously amended successfully.
[2891] Clement seems to have read Kurion for kairon in Rom. xiii. 11.
[2892] Rom. xiii. 11, 12.
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