Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Some Account of the Writings and Opinions of Clement of Alexandria
However deeply we may regret the loss of this work, on account of the information which we might have derived from it respecting the early history of Christianity, it appears, if the account given of it by Photius is correct, to have been in other respects of little value. He describes it as containing some truth amidst much that was impious and fabulous; that in it matter was represented as eternal, and forms as introduced according to certain fixed decrees that the Son was degraded into a creature that the doctrine of transmigration was asserted, and a succession of worlds before Adam; that an obscene and impious account of the origin of Eve was given, at variance with the Scriptural narrative that the angels were stated to have cohabited with women; that the Word was affirmed to have assumed ?esh not in reality, but in appearance that the existence of two Words of the Father was asserted, of whom the inferior appeared to men, or, to speak more accurately, not even the inferior for the words of Clement are, The Son is called the Word, bearing the same name as the paternal Word but it is not he who was made ?esh, nor yet the paternal Word; but a certain power of God, being as it were an emanation from his Word, which, being made mind, pervaded the hearts of men. These notions Clement endeavoured to confirm by quotations from Scripture. Photius, however, suggests a doubt whether Clement was really the author of these absurdities, from which he admits that Clement's other writings are free. He describes the work as consisting of interpretations of Genesis, Exodus, the Psalms, the Epistles of St. Paul, the Catholic Epistles, and Ecclesiasticus.
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