Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
"The first shall be last, and the last first." This saying is rich in implication and admits of much elucidation, but it does not, at least at present, demand investigation on our part; for it bears not only upon the wealthy in possessions, but simply upon all men who have once for all given themselves over to faith. So let this matter rest for now. As for the point before us, I think it has been shown to be nothing less than the promise required, namely that the Savior has by no means shut out the rich, on the score of their wealth and the compass of their property, nor dug a trench between them and salvation, provided they are able and willing to bow beneath the commandments of God, and to prize their own life above things temporal, and to look toward the Lord with a steady gaze, as men who have fixed their eyes upon the nod of a good pilot, watching what he wishes, what he commands, what he signals, what token he gives to his own sailors, and toward what harbor, and from where, he promises to bring them in. For what wrong does a man do, if by attending to his judgment and being sparing before he came to faith he amassed a sufficient livelihood? Or is not this rather still more free of blame, if he was straightway, by the God who apportions fortune, settled into the household of such people, and into a family abounding and prevailing in wealth and dominant in riches? For if, on account of his involuntary birth into wealth, he is banished from life, then he is wronged rather by the God who begot him, having been deemed worthy of a fleeting enjoyment while being deprived of eternal life; and why should wealth ever have sprung up out of the earth at all, if it is a purveyor and procurer of death? But if a man is able to bend his authority over his possessions inward, and to think in moderation and be temperate, and to seek God alone and breathe God and live as a fellow-citizen with God -- this man stands before the commandments as a poor man, free, unconquered, unafflicted, unwounded by riches; but if not, sooner shall a camel go through a needle's eye than such a rich man pass into the kingdom of God. Let the camel, then, also signify something loftier, arriving before the rich man by a narrow and afflicted road -- a mystery of the Savior which one may learn in the exposition concerning first principles and theology.
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