Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily II/Chapter 8

by Anonymous

Chapter VIII.—Test of Truth.

“And it is by no means that which is true, but that which is pleasing, which persuades every one who seeks to learn from himself.  Since, therefore, one thing is pleasing to one, and another to another, one thing prevails over one as truth, and another thing over another.  But the truth is that which is approved by the Prophet, not that which is pleasant to each individual.  For that which is one would be many, if the pleasing were the true; which is impossible.  Wherefore also the Grecian philologers—rather than philosophers^[1]—going about matters by conjectures, have dogmatized much and diversely, thinking that the apt sequence of hypotheses is truth, not knowing that when they have assigned to themselves false beginnings, their conclusion has corresponded with the beginning.

Footnotes

1. φιλόλογοι, οὐ φιλόσοφοι, “lovers of words, not lovers of wisdom.”