Clement

“ In this attempt Clement was aided by the Superior, who also bitterly lamented his loss, without, however, suspecting the part that Father Ambrose had played.
On this particular evening Clement had posted himself near the house, and seeing an opportunity, set himself closely to watch a certain window which he made sure was that of the fair Bella.
How vain, indeed, are human calculations! While the forlorn Clement, robbed of his pleasures, was relentlessly watching one chamber, the object of his desires was bathed in salacious enjoyment between her two vigorous lovers in another. ”

“ So the man departed, and those two being left alone, Master Clement said: "Well, I deemed that nothing else would come of it: and I fear that thy gossip will be ill-content with me; for great is the peril." "Yea," said Ralph, "and great the reward." Clement smiled and sighed, and said: "Well, lad, even so hath a many thought before thee, wise men as well as fools." ”

“ Clement was called a “genius” by those who knew him, and was consequently in danger of being spoiled early. The risk is great enough anywhere, but greatest in a new country, where there is an almost universal want of fixed standards of excellence.
He was by nature an artist; a shaper with the pencil or the chisel, a planner, a contriver capable of turning his hand to almost any work of eye and hand. It would not have been strange if he thought he could do everything, having gifts which were capable of various application,—and being an American citizen. ”

“ No pope has been the subject of more diverse judgments than Clement XIV. Zealous defenders credit him with all virtues, and bless him as the instrument divinely ordained to restore the peace of the Church; virulent detractors charge him with ingratitude, cowardice and double-dealing. The truth is at neither extreme. Clement’s was a deeply religious and poetical nature, animated by a lofty and refined spirit. ”

“ But I myself also, O Clement, know the griefs and anxieties, and dangers and reproaches, that are appointed you from the uninstructed multitudes; and these you will be able to bear nobly, looking to the great reward of patience bestowed on you by God. But also consider this fairly with me: When has Christ need of your aid? Now, when the wicked one has sworn war against His bride; or in the time to come, when He shall reign victorious, having no need of further help? Is it not evident to any one who has even the least understanding, that it is now? ”

“ Good Heaven, what a man is this Sir Clement! So designing, though so easy; so deliberately artful, though so flighty! Greatly, however, is he mistaken, all confident as he seems; for the girl, obscure, poor, dependent as she is, far from wishing the honour of his alliance, would not only now, but always have rejected it.
As to Lord Orville,-but I will not trust my pen to mention him,-tell me, my dear sir, what you think of him?-tell me if he is not the noblest of men?-and if you can either wonder at, or blame my admiration? ”

“ As they were departing the next morn Ralph asked of Clement if he yet looked for onset from the waylayers. Said Clement: "It is most like, lord; for we be a rich prey, and it is but seldom that such a company rideth this road. And albeit that the wild men know not to a day when we shall pass through their country, yet they know the time within a four and twenty hours or so. For we may not hide our journey from all men's hearing; and when the ear heareth, the tongue waggeth. But art thou yet anxious concerning this matter, son?" ”

“ Having therefore separated me, Clement, and Niceta and Aquila, he said to those twelve: "I wish you the day after to-morrow to proceed to the Gentiles, and to follow in the footsteps of Simon, that you may inform me of all his proceedings. You will also inquire diligently the sentiments of every one, and announce to them that I shall come to them without delay; and, in short, in all places instruct the Gentiles to expect my coming." ”

“ It may sound incongruous when speaking of a Father of the Church, and much more of a reputed mystical Father like Clement, but we think no one can deny that he often supplements a serious argument by a little stroke of pleasantry. As many of his sentences stand, a look or a smile would lighten them up and make them sparkle into humor. Paper and ink cannot carry the tone of the voice or the glance of the eye, and Clement's voice has been silent and his eye dimmed for many a century ”

“ Clement then said to himself that the great enemy of man had retired but to spring with more effect, and had allowed him a few days of true purity and joy only to put him off his guard against the soft blandishments he was pouring over the soul that had survived the buffeting of his black wings. ”

“ To this Peter answered: "I am exceedingly delighted, O Clement, that I commit my words to so safe a heart; for to be mindful of the things that are spoken is an indication of having in readiness the faith of works. But he from whom the wicked demon steals away the words of salvation, and snatches them away from his memory, cannot be saved, even though he wish it; for he loses the way by which life is reached. ”

“ O beloved Clement, the way to get it is this: if any one be persuaded that enemies, ill-using for a time those whom they hate, become the cause to them of deliverances from eternal punishment; and forthwith he will ardently love them as benefactors. ”

“ Then Peter, laughing, said: "And do you not think, Clement, that very necessity must make you my servant? For who else can spread my sheets, and arrange my beautiful coverlets? Who will be at hand to keep my rings, and prepare my robes, which I must be constantly changing? Who shall superintend my cooks, and provide various and choice meats to be prepared by most recondite and various art; and all those things which are procured at enormous expense, and are brought together for men of delicate up-bringing, yea rather, for their appetite, as for some enormous beast? ”

“ Look at Clement, like a piece of iron when his mind is made up; look at Wilmet; look at Angel; look at Lance. Why, his power of resistance had changed the whole tone of us choir boys before he was thirteen. In fact, I believe it is that strength of character that keeps you harmonious. You don't worry about straws, or clash, or pother, but know when and to whom to give way with a good grace.'
'We did,' sighed Robina. 'We could not help it then. Ah! here comes Clement. ”

“ Clement in that place, but after several years, at the request of the Prior at Thabor, he dwelt for a time with the Brothers of that House, and in the same year many died in the pestilence, amongst whom he also fell asleep in the Lord, and was buried with the other Brothers in that place on the eastern side of the cloister. This was his motto for the novices: “He that doth not accustom himself to exercises of humility at the beginning of his conversion, and doth not break down his own will, shall seldom become a good Religious.” ”

“ There is no question of the legality of the pope’s act; whether he was morally culpable, however, continues to be a matter of bitter controversy. On the one hand, the suppression is denounced as a base surrender to the forces of tyranny and irreligion, an act of treason to conscience, which reaped its just punishment of remorse; on the other hand, it is as ardently maintained that Clement acted in full accord with his conscience, and that the order merited its fate by its own mischievous activities which made it an offence to religion and authority alike. ”

“ Clement, who had followed Tatian to the East, tracks Pantænus to Egypt, and comes with his Attic scholarship to be his pupil in the school of Christ. After Justin and Irenæus, he is to be reckoned the founder of Christian literature; and it is noteworthy how sublimely he begins to treat Paganism as a creed outworn, to be dismissed with contempt, rather than seriously wrestled with any longer.
His merciless exposure of the entire system of “lords many and gods many,” seems to us, indeed, unnecessarily offensive. ”

“ He at last found him in Egypt, passing a life of seclusion and solitude, devoted to prayer, meditation, and the study of holy books. Up to that time Clement had studied under various masters, but having now formed an intimate friendship with Pantenus, he discovered in him such great talents, such a rich treasury of divine wisdom, that he thought he should need no other guide to lead him to the summit of Christian philosophy. ”

“ In the little Church of San Clemente he is still "at home" to his lovers; an intimately religious artist, full of cheerfulness, of joy. Upon the airy galleries of his great altar-piece, the angels dance against the sky above the Mother and the Child; Saint Clement, patron of the church, being attendant in pontifical white, with Dominic, Catherine, the Magdalen, and good, big-faced Saint Florian in complete armour, benign and strong. He knows many a saint not in the Roman breviary. ”

“ Since, as I have been taught by the Lord and Teacher Jesus Christ, whose apostle I am, the day of my death is approaching, I lay hands upon this Clement as your bishop; and to him I entrust my chair of discourse, even to him who has journeyed with me from the beginning to the end, and thus has heard all my homilies—who, in a word, having had a share in all my trials, has been found stedfast in the faith; whom I have found, above all others, pious, philanthropic, pure, learned, chaste, good, upright, large-hearted, and striving generously to bear the ingratitude of some of the catechumens. ”

“ Then I Clement was affected, I know not how, in my heart, recollecting many things in him that seemed familiar to me; for some one says well, that that which is sprung from any one, although it may be long absent, yet a spark of relationship is never extinguished. ”

“ So he leapt on his horse and rode up the slope into the garth and lighted down by Clement; who fell to chiding him for tarrying, and said: "There is peril in loitering outside this garth alone; for those Sons of the Rope often lurk hard by for what they may easily pick up, and they be brisk and nimble lads." "What ailed thee?" said Ralph. "I stayed to look at a flower which called Upmeads to my mind."
"Yea lad, yea," quoth Clement, "and art thou so soft as that? But come thou into the House; it is as I deemed it might be; besides the House-warden and his wife there is no soul therein. ”

“ The real difficulty attaches not to the Second Person, but to the First. The Father in Clement’s mind becomes the Absolute of the philosophers, that is to say, not the Father at all, but the Monad, a mere point devoid of all attributes. He believed in a personal Son of God who was the Reason and Wisdom of God ”

“ Western writers do, it is true, seem to speak of a "second epistle" of Clement, but they refer not to our II. Clement, but to the pseudepigraphic epistle of Clement to James.
II. Clement is a letter only in form, and scarcely in that, for the writer distinctly states (cf. Cap. XIX) that he is reading aloud, and implies that he is doing so in a meeting for religious worship: it is thus clear that it is really more a sermon than a letter. The main object of the writer is to inculcate a high Christology, a pure life, and a belief in the resurrection of the flesh. ”

“ Who is the rich man that shall be saved? (τίς ὁ σωζόμενος πλούσιος) is the title of a practical treatise, in which Clement shows, in opposition to those who interpreted our Lord's words to the young ruler as requiring the renunciation of worldly goods, that the disposition of the soul is the great essential. Of other numerous works of Clement, of which only a few stray fragments have been preserved, the chief are the eight books of The Hypotyposes, which consisted of expositions of all the books of Scripture. ”

“ Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem, speaks of Clement, in turn, as his master: “for we acknowledge as fathers those blessed saints who are gone before us, and to whom we shall go after a little time the truly blest Pantænus, I mean, and the holy Clemens, my teacher, who was to me so greatly useful and helpful.” St. Cyril of Alexandria calls him “a man admirably learned and skilful, and one that searched to the depths all the learning of the Greeks, with an exactness rarely attained before.” ”

“ “To Sir Clement, my Lord,” said I, “attribute nothing. He is the last man in the world who would have any influence over my conduct.” ”

“ From my boyhood I Clement was a lover of truth, and a seeker of the things that are profitable for the soul, and spending my time in raising and refuting theories; but being unable to find anything perfect, through distress of mind I fell sick. And while I was confined to bed Appion came to Rome, and being my father’s friend, he lodged with me ”

“ Clement only laughed at the petty reduction. "Oh yes! I see you save a few pounds."—"Few! more than twenty, Clement, in the year!"—"Well! and what is that? A mere trifle towards two hundred."—"Yet something towards it."—"Yes; but nothing to what my ticket may bring me."—"May bring. Of my money I am assured."—"Well, well, [Pg 167] my good fellow! follow your own plan; I shall follow mine. We both aim at the same point, and we shall see who attains it."—"But, my dear Clement—"—"Now, Paul, don't begin preaching. I am as old and as fit as you to govern myself. ”