Church History

¹ All the eight Stromata of Clement are preserved among us, and have been given by him the following title: “Titus Flavius Clement's Stromata of Gnostic Notes on the True Philosophy.”

2. The books entitled Hypotyposes are of the same number. In them he mentions Pantænus by name as his teacher, and gives his opinions and traditions.

3. Besides these there is his Hortatory Discourse addressed to the Greeks; three books of a work entitled the Instructor; another with the title What Rich Man is Saved? the work on the Passover; discussions on Fasting and on Evil Speaking; the Hortatory Discourse on Patience, or To Those Recently Baptized; and the one bearing the title Ecclesiastical Canon, or Against the Judaizers, which he dedicated to Alexander, the bishop mentioned above.

4. In the Stromata, he has not only treated extensively of the Divine Scripture, but he also quotes from the Greek writers whenever anything that they have said seems to him profitable.

5. He elucidates the opinions of many, both Greeks and barbarians. He also refutes the false doctrines of the heresiarchs, and besides this, reviews a large portion of history, giving us specimens of very various learning; with all the rest he mingles the views of philosophers. It is likely that on this account he gave his work the appropriate title of Stromata.

6. He makes use also in these works of testimonies from the disputed Scriptures, the so-called Wisdom of Solomon, and of Jesus, the son of Sirach, and the Epistle to the Hebrews, and those of Barnabas, and Clement and Jude.

7. He mentions also Tatian's Discourse to the Greeks, and speaks of Cassianus as the author of a chronological work. He refers to the Jewish authors Philo, Aristobulus, Josephus, Demetrius, and Eupolemus, as showing, all of them, in their works, that Moses and the Jewish race existed before the earliest origin of the Greeks.

8. These books abound also in much other learning. In the first of them the author speaks of himself as next after the successors of the apostles.

9. In them he promises also to write a commentary on Genesis. In his book on the Passover he acknowledges that he had been urged by his friends to commit to writing, for posterity, the traditions which he had heard from the ancient presbyters; and in the same work he mentions Melito and Irenæus, and certain others, and gives extracts from their writings.