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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." The books
entitled Hypotyposes are of the same number. In them he mentions
Pant'nus by name as his teacher, and gives his opinions and
traditions. 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.
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.
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.
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. 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. 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.
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 Iren'us, and certain others, and gives extracts from
their writings.
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