“ Be not led astray by heterodox opinions and useless fables,-labour to be strengthened in the doctrines of the Lord and of the Apostles, in order that you prosper in all things, in body and spirit, in faith and charity-together with your respectable Bishop, the united college of Priests, and the holy Deacons. Be submissive to the Bishop and to one another, as Jesus Christ, according to the flesh, was to his Father, and the Apostles to Christ, and to the Father and the Holy Spirit,—that your union be in body and spirit.” --Ep. ad Magnesios: Inter PP. Apost. T. ii. p. 19, 21. Ed. Amstelaedami, 1724.
“ I conjure you to use only Christian food, and to refrain from foreign weed, which is heresy.—Guard yourselves from such, which you will do, if you be not puffed up, but remain inseparably united to Jesus Christ, and your Bishop,) and the ordinances of the Apostles. He who is within the altar is clean ; but he who is without, that is, without the Bishop, and the Priests, and the Deacons, is not clean." Ep. ad Trallianos, p. 23. The same love of unity, and the greatest horror of schism he often repeats : “He who corrupts the faith of God, for which Christ suffered, the same being defiled, shall go into uuquenchable fire, as shall he who heareth him.” Ep.ad Ephes.p.15. “As children of light and truth, avoid the division of unity, and the bad doctrines of heretics." Where the shepherd is, do you, like sheep, follow." Ep. ad Philad. p. 31.
S. CLEMENT,[1] L. C. “Why are there contentions and
- ↑ St. Clement, the disciple and coadjutor of the Apostles, as he is styled by St. Paul to the Philippians (iv. 3.) was the third bishop of Rome; if not the immediate successor of St. Peter. The only work, which remains, that is certainly genuine, is an epistle to the Corinthians, written in Greek, in which he exhorts them to preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. It was always ranked next to the apostolic writings, and read after them in many Churches. St. Clement died, or suffered martyrdom, at the close of the first century; and his testimony ought to have preceded that of St. Ignatius, yet the latter had been sitting full twenty years on the chair of Antioch, when St. Clement was placed on that of Rome.
