Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily XVIII/Chapter 20

by Anonymous

Chapter XX.—Some Parts of the Old Testament Written to Try Us.

“But one might with good reason maintain that it was with reference to those who thought Him to be such that the statement was made, ‘No one knoweth the Father but the Son, as no one knoweth even the Son, but the Father.’  And reasonably.  For if they had known, they would not have sinned, by trusting to the books written against God, really for the purpose of trying.  But somewhere also He says, wishing to exhibit the cause of their error more distinctly to them, ‘On this account ye do err, not knowing the true things of the Scriptures, on which account ye are ignorant also of the power of God.’^[1]  Wherefore every man who wishes to be saved must become, as the Teacher said, a judge of the books written to try us.  For thus He spake:  ‘Become experienced bankers.’  Now the need of bankers arises from the circumstance that the spurious is mixed up with the genuine.”

Footnotes

1. Mark xii. 24.