Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
But if one of you will flee luxury to the end, nursing yourself in frugality, you will more easily train yourself to endure involuntary hardships, since by continually making voluntary afflictions into exercises for persecution, whenever you come to necessary toils and fears and griefs, you will not be untrained in enduring them. It is for this reason, indeed, that we have no fatherland on earth, so that we may despise earthly possessions. And frugality, being a settled habit that lacks nothing in the expenditures that are fitting for the things that are needful, and to the extent that is needful, is the richest of all things; for expenditures have their proper ends. Now, as to how a wife ought to live together with her husband, and about her own handiwork and household management and the use of servants, and further about the season of marriage and all that befits women, we shall set that forth in our discourse on marriage; but what is fitting for pedagogy, these things alone must now be set before us here, in the manner of a sketch, as we mark out the life of Christians. And indeed most things have already been said and taught by the Instructor, but what still remains we shall now set forth as a foundation; for examples are no small weight toward salvation. Consider, says the tragedy: Odysseus's wife Telemachus did not slay; since she never wedded a second husband over the first, but kept the marriage bed unbroken in that household. In reproaching shameless adultery, this showed a fine image of chastity and love of one's husband. And the Lacedaemonians, in compelling the Helots (Helots being a name for household servants) to get drunk, displayed to their own sons the deeds of drunkenness, themselves being sober, by way of instruction and correction; and by guarding against that disgraceful behavior of theirs, so that they themselves might not fall into similar condemnations, they were trained by the shamefulness of the drunken, being benefited toward their own freedom from fault. For of men, some were saved by being taught, others self-taught; either they emulated or they sought after virtue. That man is best of all who himself perceives everything for himself; this is Abraham, who sought after God; and noble too is the one who obeys another speaking well; these are the disciples who were persuaded by the Word. For this reason the one was called friend, and the others apostles, of one and the same God, the one busying himself in inquiry, the others proclaiming, and both are noble; and of these two, the hearers benefit likewise, the one being helped through the seeking, the other being saved through the finding. But whoever neither himself perceives, nor lays to heart what he hears from another, he in turn is a useless man. [another people is the gentile people, useless]; this is the people that does not follow Christ. But the loving Instructor, benefiting us in many ways nonetheless, in some things exhorted, in other things also reproached, and in yet another way, by the sins of others, showed us their shame, and made manifest the punishment following upon it, at once guiding the soul and admonishing, contriving a loving turning-away from wickedness by pointing to those who had already suffered; through which images, most plainly, he stopped some who were badly disposed, and prevented others who dared the same things, and grounded others in endurance, and stopped others from wickedness, and healed still others by the sight of like cases, turning them toward the better. For who, following someone along a road, when the one before him has fallen into a pit, would not take care to turn aside from the same danger, having guarded against the same course of error? And who, again, being in training, upon learning the road of love of glory, and seeing the prize that the contestant before him has won, does not himself also rush toward the crown, imitating his elder? Many such are the images of the divine wisdom; but I shall recall one example and set it forth briefly. The suffering of the Sodomites was a judgment for those who did wrong, but an instruction for those who hear of it. The Sodomites, having run aground into wantonness through much luxury, committing adultery without fear, and madly infatuated over boys, the all-seeing Word looked upon them, whom it is not possible to escape while doing unholy deeds, nor did the wakeful guardian of humanity remain still at their wantonness; but turning us away from imitating them, training us toward his own chastity, having laid punishments upon the sinners, so that the going unpunished of licentiousness might not receive an added flow of impunity, he commanded Sodom to be burned up, pouring out a little of that wise fire upon their licentiousness, so that their unchecked lust might not throw open wide gateways for those being carried toward soft living. Thus the just punishment of the Sodomites became an image of the well-reasoned salvation for mankind; for those who have not sinned in the same ways as those who were punished would never undergo the same penalty as the sinners, having been kept from suffering by not sinning. "For I want you to know," says Jude, "that the Lord, having once saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe; and the angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day." And little by little, in the most instructive manner, he sets forth the images of those under judgment: "Woe to them, because they walked in the way of Cain, and abandoned themselves to the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the rebellion of Korah." For fear preserves from insolence those who are not able to bear the authority of adoption as sons. This, indeed, is why there are punishments and threats, so that, fearing the penalties, we may abstain from sinning. I could recount to you the punishments of love of ornament and the penalties of love of glory, not only of self-indulgence, and set beside them also the ill-conceived blasphemies concerning wealth, in which the Word, through instilling fear, restrains us from wrongdoing. But sparing the length of the treatise, I bring forward for you the commandments of the Instructor that follow, so that you may indeed keep watch against the threats.
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