Chapter XXXV.—Immense is This Reward.  How Shall We Obtain It?

How blessed and wonderful, beloved, are the gifts of God!  Life in immortality, splendour in righteousness, truth in perfect confidence, 4177 faith in assurance, self-control in holiness!  And all these fall under the cognizance of our understandings [now]; what then shall those things be which are prepared for such as wait for Him?  The Creator and Father of all worlds, 4178 the Most Holy, 4179 alone knows their amount and their beauty.  Let us therefore earnestly strive to be found in the number of those that wait for Him, in order that we may share in His promised gifts.  But how, beloved, shall this be done?  If our understanding be fixed by faith towards God; if we earnestly seek the things 4180 which are pleasing and acceptable to Him; if we do the things which are in harmony with His blameless will; and if we follow the way of truth, casting away from us all unrighteousness and iniquity, 4181 along with all covetousness, 4182 strife, evil practices, deceit, whispering, and evil-speaking, all hatred of God, pride and haughtiness, vain glory and ambition. 4183   For they that do such things are hateful to God; and not only they that do them, but also those that take pleasure in them that do them. 4184   For the Scripture saith, “But to the sinner God said, Wherefore dost thou declare my statutes, and take my covenant into thy mouth, seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee?  When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst with 4185 him, and didst make thy portion with adulterers.  Thy mouth has abounded with wickedness, and p. 240 thy tongue contrived 4186 deceit.  Thou sittest, and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest 4187 thine own mother’s son.  These things thou hast done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest, wicked one, that I should be like to thyself.  But I will reprove thee, and set thyself before thee.  Consider now these things, ye that forget God, lest He tear you in pieces, like a lion, and there be none to deliver. 4188   The sacrifice of praise will glorify me, and a way is there by which I will show him the salvation of God.” 4189

Footnotes

Some translate, “in liberty.”

Or, “of the ages.”

I. ὁ δημιοῦργος τῶν αἰώνων καὶ ποτὴρ πανάγιος (the Creator Eternal and Father All-Holy.)

I. τὰ ἀγαθά (good things) added.

I. πονηρίαν (wickedness).

I. omits πλεονεξία (covetousness).

The reading is doubtful:  some have ἀφιλοξενίαν, “want of a hospitable spirit.”

Rom. i. 32.

Literally, “didst run with.”

Literally, “did weave.”

Or, “layest a snare for.”

I. omit “σὺ δὲ ἐμίσησας...ὁ ῥυόμενος Ps. l. 17-22, and connects by ἐν τῶ τέλει (in the end).

Ps. l. 16-23.  The render will observe how the Septuagint followed by Clement differs from the Hebrew.