“We too, being called by His Will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or understanding, or godliness, or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith through which from the beginning Almighty God has justified all men.” (Ch. xxxii.)

Again:—­

“All these the Great Creator and Lord of all has appointed to exist in peace and harmony; while He does good to all, but most abundantly to us who have fled for refuge to His compassion through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

And he ends his Epistle with the following prayer:—­

“May God, who seeth all things, and Who is the Ruler of all Spirits and the Lord of all Flesh—­Who chose our Lord Jesus, and us through Him to be a peculiar people—­grant to every soul that calleth upon His glorious and holy Name, faith, fear, peace, patience, long suffering, self-control, purity and sobriety, to the well pleasing of His Name through our High Priest and Protector Jesus Christ.”  (Ch. lviii.)

But with all this his Christianity seems to have been Ecclesiastical, in the technical sense of the word.  He seems to have had a much clearer and firmer hold than Justin had of the truth that Christ instituted, not merely a philosophy or system of teaching, but a mystical body or visible Church, having its gradations of officers corresponding to the officers of the Jewish Ecclesiastical system, and its orderly arrangements of worship. (Ch. xl-xlii.)

Now this is the Christianity of a man who lived at least sixty or seventy years nearer to the fountain head of Christian truth than did Justin Martyr, whose witness to dogmatical or supernatural Christianity we have shown at some length.

It is also gathered out of a comparatively short book, not one sixth of the length of the writings of Justin, and composed solely for an undogmatic purpose.

His views of Christ and His work are precisely the same as those of Justin.  By all rule of rationalistic analogy they ought to have been less “ecclesiastical,” but in some respects they are more so.

Clement certainly seems to bring out more fully our Lord’s Resurrection (taking into consideration, that is, the scope of his one remaining book and its brevity), and the Resurrection of Christ is the crowning miracle which stamps the whole dispensation as supernatural.

So far, then, as the Supernatural is concerned, it makes no difference whatsoever whether Clement used the Gospel according to St. Matthew or the Gospel according to the Hebrews.  His Gospel, whatever it was, not only filled his heart with an intense and absorbing love of Christ, and a desire that all men should imitate Him, but it filled his mind with that view of the religion of Christ which we call supernatural and evangelical, but which the author of “Supernatural Religion” calls ecclesiastical.