Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
But you, learn the "way beyond comparison" which Paul points out unto salvation: "love seeks not its own," but is poured out upon the brother; about him it is fluttered, about him it is soberly mad. "Love covers a multitude of sins; perfect love casts out fear; it is not boastful, it is not puffed up. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices together with the truth; it bears all things. It believes all things, it hopes all things, it endures all things. Love never falls away, but prophecies are brought to nothing. Tongues cease, healings are left behind on earth. But these three remain, faith, hope, love; and the greatest of these is love." And rightly so; for faith departs when we are persuaded by the sight of our own eyes, having seen God, and hope vanishes once the things hoped for have been delivered, but love comes together into fullness and grows all the more once the perfect things have been handed over. If a man casts this into his soul, he is able, even if he has been born amid sins, even if he has done many of the things forbidden, by increasing love and receiving a pure repentance, to make good again the things in which he stumbled. Let not even this be left to you unto despair and derangement of mind, even should you learn who the rich man is that
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