Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
He says: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" — and therefore God above yourself. And when the one conversing with him asked, "Who is my neighbor?", he did not, in the manner of the Jews, define beforehand a kinsman by blood, nor a fellow-citizen, nor a proselyte, nor one likewise circumcised, nor one who observed one and the same law; but instead, by his account, he brings a certain man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and shows him struck through by robbers and left half-dead on the road, passed by by a priest, overlooked by a Levite, but pitied by the Samaritan — the one held in reproach and set apart — who did not pass by as those others did by chance, but came furnished with the very things the endangered man needed: wine, oil, bandages, a beast to carry him, payment for the innkeeper, part given at once, part promised besides. "Which of these," he said, "proved to be neighbor to the one who suffered these terrible things?" And when the man answered, "The one who showed mercy to him," he said, "Go, then, and do likewise" — showing that from love good deeds spring forth.
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