Excerpt from The Second Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians The homily certainly belongs to the second century, but there are no sure indications of its date. However it seems probable that it belonged to the first half of that century, as the following considerations suggest (1) Had it been later, the author would scarcely have used an apocryphal Gospel as if it had the authority of one Of the four evangelists. (2) Although he quotes Gospel language as Scripture, he draws a distinction between the books and the Apostles (see which would scarcely have been drawn in the latter part of the second century. (3) His attack on Gnosticism is not directed against the particular tenets of later Gnostics, such as Valentinus and Marcion. Lightfoot (st. Clement of Rome, Appendix, p. 312) suggests that he would not have spoken of the heavenly Church (xiv.) in language so like that of Valentinus about the aeon Ecclesia, nor would he have emphasized so unreserv edly the antithesis between the Church and the synagogue, had he known the writings of the two heretics mentioned above. This would suit with a date about a.d. 140. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.