Chapter XVIII--The Distinction Between Clean and Unclean Animals in the Law Symbolical of the Distinction Between the Church, and Jews, and Heretics.
After showing a little peep-hole to those who love to contemplate the Church from the law of sacrifices respecting clean and unclean animals (inasmuch as thus the common Jews and the heretics are distinguished mystically from the divine Church), let us bring the discourse to a close.
For such of the sacrifices as part the hoof, and ruminate, the Scripture represents as clean and acceptable to God; since the just obtain access to the Father and to the Son by faith. For this is the stability of those who part the hoof, those who study the oracles of God night and day, and ruminate them in the soul's receptacle for instructions; which gnostic exercise the Law expresses under the figure of the rumination of the clean animal. But such as have neither the one nor the other of those qualities it separates as unclean.
Now those that ruminate, but do not part the hoof, indicate the majority of the Jews, who have indeed the oracles of God, but have not faith, and the step which, resting on the truth, conveys to the Father by the Son. Whence also this kind of cattle are apt to slip, not having a division in the foot, and not resting on the twofold support of faith. For "no man," it is said, "knoweth the Father, but he to whom the Son shall reveal Him." [3694]
And again, those also are likewise unclean that part the hoof, but do not ruminate. [3695] For these point out the heretics, who indeed go upon the name of the Father and the Son, but are incapable of triturating and grinding down the clear declaration of the oracles, and who, besides, perform the works of righteousness coarsely and not with precision, if they perform them at all. To such the Lord says, "Why will ye call me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?" [3696]
And those that neither part the hoof nor chew the cud are entirely unclean.
"But ye Megareans," says Theognis, "are neither third, nor fourth,
Nor twelfth, neither in reckoning nor in number,"
"but as chaff which the wind drives away from the face of the earth," [3697] and as a drop from a vessel." [3698]
These points, then, having been formerly thoroughly treated, and the department of ethics having been sketched summarily in a fragmentary way, as we promised; and having here and there interspersed the dogmas which are the germs [3699] of true knowledge, so that the discovery of the sacred traditions may not be easy to any one of the uninitiated, let us proceed to what we promised.
Now the Miscellanies are not like parts laid out, planted in regular order for the delight of the eye, but rather like an umbrageous and shaggy hill, planted with laurel, and ivy, and apples, and olives, and figs; the planting being purposely a mixture of fruit-bearing and fruitless trees, since the composition aims at concealment, on account of those that have the daring to pilfer and steal the ripe fruits; from which, however, the husbandmen, transplanting shoots and plants, will adorn a beautiful park and a delightful grove.
The Miscellanies, then, study neither arrangement nor diction; since there are even cases in which the Greeks on purpose wish that ornate diction should be absent, and imperceptibly cast in the seed of dogmas, not according to the truth, rendering such as may read laborious and quick at discovery. For many and various are the baits for the various kinds of fishes.
And now, after this seventh Miscellany of ours, we shall give the account of what follows in order from another commencement. [3700]
[3694] Luke x. 22.
[3695] [The swine, e.g., has the parted hoof, but does not ruminate; hence he is the hypocrite,--an outward sign with no inward quality to correspond, the foulest of the unclean.]
[3696] Luke vi. 46.
[3697] Ps. i. 4.
[3698] Isa. xl. 15.
[3699] [Clement regards dogma as framing practical morals. The comment is found in the history of nations, nominally Christian.]
[3700] [The residue is lost, for the eighth book has little conection with the Gnostic as hitherto developed.]
Elucidations
I.
(Deception, cap. ix. [130]p. 538.)
More and more, the casuistry exposed by Pascal in the Provincial Letters [3701] becomes an important subject for the investigation of Americans. Nobody who has any pretensions to scholarship can afford to be ignorant of these letters; for they belong to literature, and not merely to theology. But they belong in a sense to the past; not that "the Society of Jesus" has ceased to maintain all that Pascal has exposed, and to practice even worse, but that the Latin churches have, since the days of Pascal, been formally subjected to a system of casuistry, in some respects superficially reformed, but in all other respects radically bad, and corrosive to society. In Pascal's day this casuistry could only be charged upon individuals, and upon societies and communities: the Roman Church everywhere adopted it, but was not formally committed to it. But in the system of Liguori this corrupt morality has been made authoritative and dogmatic; so that in all the Latin churches it becomes the base of the confessional. For moral purposes, it is the Bible of the millions who resort to their confessors and "directors." These remarks, however, are here introduced merely with reference to the morals of Clement with regard to truth.
I have briefly indicated, in the footnotes, the points which are to be noted in forming an opinion of our author's conceptions of this vital principle. They seem to me conformed to the Gospel; to the teachings of Him who allows no hair-splittings, but says, "Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay." But, as the text stood in the Edinburgh translation, it did injustice to Clement in one passage, which I have modified. It reads, "He (the Gnostic) both thinks and speaks the truth, unless, at any time, medicinally, as a physician for the safety of the sick, he may lie, or tell an untruth." To this, Clement adds significantly, "according to the Sophists." That is to say, our author tolerates the Christian who has not got beyond the Sophists with respect to benevolent deceptions. As killing is not always murder, so some, even among stern moralists, have maintained that deception by word of mouth is not always lying. This is the extent to which Clement tolerates sophistry, and he goes on to demand the practice of truth in Gospel terms. Now, thank God, the English word "lie" is always infamous; and there is nothing like it, in this respect, in other languages. The Sophists themselves did not so understand the Greek word (pseudos), when they apply it to the benevolent deception of a physician, or to the untruths used benevolently with the insane. Nothing infamous attaches to the French word mensonge when used for what are deemed "innocent deceptions." With this whole system of sophistry I have no patience at all; but, in justice to the Sophists, let us not make them worse than they were. They did not understand that such deceptions were lies. Hence, for "lie," I have used the word deceive, correcting a needless rendering of the text, and one to which Clement should not be made to extend even a contemptuous toleration.
In this respect, the holy Jeremy Taylor and Dr. Johnson go further than Clement, and seem to allow that benevolent deceptions may be innocent. Sanderson sustains a sterner morality, and is more generally accepted. Liguori's system is verbally as strong as the Gospel itself: lying is a mortal sin, and never justifiable. But, when he comes to the definition of a lie, it is made so feeble, that the worst liar that ever lived need never resort to it. He may practice all manner of subterfuge, and even perjury, without telling a lie. As, e.g., if he points up his sleeve, while he swears that he did not see the criminal there, he tells no lie: it is the business of the judge and jury to watch his fingers, etc.
II.
(True Gnostic, cap. x. p. 540, note 1.)
This unfortunate word Gnostic hides the force of Clement's teaching, throughout this work. Here he virtually expounds it, and we see that it refers even more to the heart than to the head. It carries with it the conduct of life by knowledge; i.e., by "the true Light which lighteneth every man that cometh into the world." (See [131]p. 607, footnote.)
III.
(The Scriptures, cap. xvi. [132]p. 550, note 3.)
The Primitive Fathers never dream of anything as dogma which cannot be proved by the Scriptures, save only that the apostolic traditions, clearly proved to be such, must be referred to in proving what is Holy Scripture. It is not possible to graft on this principle the slightest argument for any tradition not indisputably apostolic, so far as the de fide is concerned. Quod semper is the touchstone, in their conceptions, of all orthodoxy. No matter who may teach this or that, now or in any post-apostolic age, their test is Holy Scripture, and the inquiry, Was it always so taught and understood?
[3701] A good translation of the letters was published in New York, in 1864, by Hurd & Houghton.
[3702] For a good article on St. Alphonsus de'Liguori, see the Encyc. Britannica.
The Stromata, or Miscellanies.