CHAPTER XI

CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA

AT this time, also, flourished Clement at Alexandria, of the same name with him who anciently presided over the church of Rome, and who was a disciple of the apostles. This Clement was devoted to the study of same Scriptures with Pantænus, and in his Institutions expressly mentions the latter by name as his teacher. He also appears to me to designate this same one in the first book of his Stromata, when he points out the most distinguished of the apostolie succession, which he had received from tradition, in the following words: “These books,” says he, “were not fabricated as a work of ostentation, but they are treasured up by me as a kind of commentaries for my old age, and an antidote to forgetfulness, as a natural image and sketch of those efficaeious and inspired doctrines which I was honoured to receive from those blessed and truly excellent men. Of these, the one was Ionicus in Greece, but the other in Magna Græcia; the one of them being a Syrian, the other a native of Egypt. Others, however, there were, living in the east; and of these, one was from Assyria, another of Palestine, a Hebrew by descent. The last that I met with was the first in excellence. Him I found concealed in Egypt; and, meeting him there, I ceased to extend my search beyond him, as one who had no superior in abilities. These, indeed, preserved the true tradition of the salutary doctrine, which, as given by Peter and James, John and Paul, had descended from father to son. Though there are few like their fathers, they have, by the favour of God, also come down to us to plant that ancient and apostolic seed likewise in our minds.”