Now love is conceived in many ways, in the form of meekness, of mildness, of patience, of liberality, of freedom from envy, of absence of hatred, of forgetfulness of injuries. In all it is incapable of being divided or distinguished: its nature is to communicate. Again, it is said, "If you see the beast of your relatives, or friends, or, in general, of anybody you know, wandering in the wilderness, take it back and restore it; [2355] and if the owner be far away, keep it among your own till he return, and restore it." It teaches a natural communication, that what is found is to be regarded as a deposit, and that we are not to bear malice to an enemy. "The command of the Lord being a fountain of life" truly, "causeth to turn away from the snare of death." [2356] And what? Does it not command us "to love strangers not only as friends and relatives, but as ourselves, both in body and soul?" [2357] Nay more, it honoured the nations, and bears no grudge [2358] against those who have done ill. Accordingly it is expressly said, "Thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian, for thou wast a sojourner in Egypt;" [2359] designating by the term Egyptian either one of that race, or any one in the world. And enemies, although drawn up before the walls attempting to take the city, are not to be regarded as enemies till they are by the voice of the herald summoned to peace.
Further, it forbids intercourse with a female captive so as to dishonour her. "But allow her," it says, "thirty days to mourn according to her wish, and changing her clothes, associate with her as your lawful wife." [2361] For it regards it not right that this should take place either in wantonness or for hire like harlots, but only for the birth of children. Do you see humanity combined with continence? The master who has fallen in love with his captive maid it does not allow to gratify his pleasure, but puts a check on his lust by specifying an interval of time; and further, it cuts off the captive's hair, in order to shame disgraceful love: for if it is reason that induces him to marry, he will cleave to her even after she has become disfigured. Then if one, after his lust, does not care to consort any longer with the captive, it ordains that it shall not be lawful to sell her, or to have her any longer as a servant, but desires her to be freed and released from service, lest on the introduction of another wife she bear any of the intolerable miseries caused through jealousy.
What more? The Lord enjoins to ease and raise up the beasts of enemies when labouring beneath their burdens; remotely teaching us not to indulge in joy at our neighbour's ills, or exult over our enemies; in order to teach those who are trained in these things to pray for their enemies. For He does not allow us either to grieve at our neighbour's good, or to reap joy at our neighbour's ill. And if you find any enemy's beast straying, you are to pass over the incentives of difference, and take it back and restore it. For oblivion of injuries is followed by goodness, and the latter by dissolution of enmity. From this we are fitted for agreement, and this conducts to felicity. And should you suppose one habitually hostile, and discover him to be unreasonably mistaken either through lust or anger, turn him to goodness. Does the law then which conducts to Christ appear humane and mild? And does not the same God, good, while characterized by righteousness from the beginning to the end, employ each kind suitably in order to salvation? "Be merciful," says the Lord, "that you may receive mercy; forgive, that you may be forgiven. As ye do, so shall it be done to you; as ye give, so shall it be given to you; as ye judge, so shall ye be judged; as ye show kindness, so shall kindness be shown to you: with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." [2362] Furthermore, [the law] prohibits those, who are in servitude for their subsistence, to be branded with disgrace; and to those, who have been reduced to slavery through money borrowed, it gives a complete release in the seventh year. Further, it prohibits suppliants from being given up to punishment. True above all, then, is that oracle. "As gold and silver are tried in the furnace, so the Lord chooseth men's hearts. The merciful man is long-suffering; and in every one who shows solicitude there is wisdom. For on a wise man solicitude will fall; and exercising thought, he will seek life; and he who seeketh God shall find knowledge with righteousness. And they who have sought Him rightly have found peace." [2363] And Pythagoras seems to me, to have derived his mildness towards irrational creatures from the law. For instance, he interdicted the immediate use of the young in the flocks of sheep, and goats, and herds of cattle, on the instant of their birth; not even on the pretext of sacrifice allowing it, both on account of the young ones and of the mothers; training man to gentleness by what is beneath him, by means of the irrational creatures. "Resign accordingly," he says, "the young one to its dam for even the first seven days." For if nothing takes place without a cause, and milk comes in a shower to animals in parturition for the sustenance of the progeny, he that tears that, which has been brought forth, away from the supply of the milk, dishonours nature. Let the Greeks, then, feel ashamed, and whoever else inveighs against the law; since it shows mildness in the case of the irrational creatures, while they expose the offspring of men; though long ago and prophetically, the law, in the above-mentioned commandment, threw a check in the way of their cruelty. For if it prohibits the progeny of the irrational creatures to be separated from the dam before sucking, much more in the case of men does it provide beforehand a cure for cruelty and savageness of disposition; so that even if they despise nature, they may not despise teaching. For they are permitted to satiate themselves with kids and lambs, and perhaps there might be some excuse for separating the progeny from its dam. But what cause is there for the exposure of a child? For the man who did not desire to beget children had no right to marry at first; certainly not to have become, through licentious indulgence, the murderer of his children. Again, the humane law forbids slaying the offspring and the dam together on the same day. Thence also the Romans, in the case of a pregnant woman being condemned to death, do not allow her to undergo punishment till she is delivered. The law too, expressly prohibits the slaying of such animals as are pregnant till they have brought forth, remotely restraining the proneness of man to do wrong to man. Thus also it has extended its clemency to the irrational creatures; that from the exercise of humanity in the case of creatures of different species, we might practice among those of the same species a large abundance of it. Those, too, that kick the bellies of certain animals before parturition, in order to feast on flesh mixed with milk, make the womb created for the birth of the foetus its grave, though the law expressly commands, "But neither shalt thou seethe a lamb in its mother's milk." [2364] For the nourishment of the living animal, it is meant, may not become sauce for that which has been deprived of life; and that, which is the cause of life, may not co-operate in the consumption of the body. And the same law commands "not to muzzle the ox which treadeth out the corn: for the labourer must be reckoned worthy of his food."
And it prohibits an ox and ass to be yoked in the plough together; [2366] pointing perhaps to the want of agreement in the case of the animals; and at the same time teaching not to wrong any one belonging to another race, and bring him under the yoke, when there is no other cause to allege than difference of race, which is no cause at all, being neither wickedness nor the effect of wickedness. To me the allegory also seems to signify that the husbandry of the Word is not to be assigned equally to the clean and the unclean, the believer and the unbeliever; for the ox is clean, but the ass has been reckoned among the unclean animals. But the benignant Word, abounding in humanity, teaches that neither is it right to cut down cultivated trees, or to cut down the grain before the harvest, for mischiefs sake; nor that cultivated fruit is to be destroyed at all--either the fruit of the soil or that of the soul: for it does not permit the enemy's country to be laid waste.
Further, husbandmen derived advantage from the law in such things. For it orders newly planted trees to be nourished three years in succession, and the superfluous growths to be cut off, to prevent them being loaded and pressed down; and to prevent their strength being exhausted from want, by the nutriment being frittered away, enjoins tilling and digging round them, so that [the tree] may not, by sending out suckers, hinder its growth. And it does not allow imperfect fruit to be plucked from immature trees, but after three years, in the fourth year; dedicating the first-fruits to God after the tree has attained maturity.
This type of husbandry may serve as a mode of instruction, teaching that we must cut the growths of sins, and the useless weeds of the mind that spring up round the vital fruit, till the shoot of faith is perfected and becomes strong. [2367] For in the fourth year, since there is need of time to him that is being solidly catechized, the four virtues are consecrated to God, the third alone being already joined to the fourth, [2368] the person of the Lord. And a sacrifice of praise is above holocausts: "for He," it is said, "giveth strength to get power." [2369] And if your affairs are in the sunshine of prosperity, get and keep strength, and acquire power in knowledge. For by these instances it is shown that both good things and gifts are supplied by God; and that we, becoming ministers of the divine grace, ought to sow the benefits of God, and make those who approach us noble and good; so that, as far as possible, the temperate man may make others continent, he that is manly may make them noble, he that is wise may make them intelligent, and the just may make them just.
[2335] [See p. 192, supra, and the note.]
[2336] Prov. xv. 8.
[2337] Isa. i. 11, etc.
[2338] Isa. lviii. 6.
[2339] Prov. xi. 1.
[2340] Prov. x. 31.
[2341] Prov. xvi. 21, misquoted, or the text is corrupt; "The wise in heart shall be called prudent," A.V.
[2342] For the use of knowledge in this connection, Philo, Sextus Empiricus, and Zeno are quoted.
[2343] Deut. xxii. 5.
[2344] "These words are more like Philo Judæus, i. 740, than those of Moses, Deut. xx. 5-7."--Potter.
[2345] Prov. x. 7, xi. 7.
[2346] Prov. viii. 17.
[2347] Prov. ix. 10.
[2348] Prov. xix. 23.
[2349] [See Epistle of Barnabas, vol. p. i. 149, S.]
[2350] Deut. xxiv. 10, 11.
[2351] Lev. xix. 9, xxiii. 22; Deut. xxiv. 19.
[2352] Lev. xix. 10; Deut. xxiv. 20, 21.
[2353] Ex. xxxiii. 10, 11; Lev. xxv. 2-7.
[2354] Prov. xx. 28, xi. 26, xiv. 21.
[2355] Quoted from Philo, with slight alterations, giving the sense of Ex. xxiii. 4, Deut. xxii. 12, 3.
[2356] Prov. xiv. 27.
[2357] Lev. xix. 33, 34; Deut. x. 19, xxiii. 7.
[2358] mnesiponerei (equivalent to mnesikakei in the passage of Philo from which Clement is quoting) has been substituted by Sylb. for misoponerei.
[2359] Deut. xxiii. 7.
[2360] Deut. xx. 10.
[2361] Deut. xxi. 10-13.
[2362] Matt. v. vi. vii.; Luke vi.
[2363] Prov. xix. 11, xiv. 23, xvii. 12.
[2364] Deut. xiv. 21;
[2365] Deut. xxv. 4; 1 Tim. v. 18.
[2366] Deut. xxii. 10.
[2367] [See Hermas, Visions, [52]note 2, p. 15, this volume.]
[2368] So Clement seems to designate the human nature of Christ,--as being a quartum quid in addition to the three persons of the Godhead. [A strange note: borrowed from ed. Migne. The incarnation of the second person is a quartum quid, of course; but not, in our author's view, "an addition to the three persons of the Godhead."]
[2369] Deut. viii. 18.