Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SECOND PERIOD. THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS. A. D. 80 TO A. D. 120. CHAPTER III. Clement Of Rome, Ignatius, Akd Polycarp. Clement. A.D.97.—No grander character appears in Christian history, than Clement of Rome. Whether we look at his First Epistle to the Corinthians, generally considered to be genuine, or at the numerous other writings attributed to him, and the recorded traditions concerning his life and teachings, we find, in either case, one of the highest and noblest types of Christian character. His first Epistle, written about A. D. 97, will compare favorably with the Epistles of Paul. The great and absorbing question connected with this, the first authentic Christian writing outside the gospels, and subsequent to the New Testament Epistles, is, whether any of the gospels are recognized in it, and which? There are some passages claimed as parallel, but there is no mention of any gospel by name. Of the supposed parallel passages, some have a similarity of language, while the idea is different; in others,the same or a similar meaning is conveyed in different language. When these are eliminated, it will be found, that while there are, in Clement, twenty passages parallel to similar ones in the N. T. Epistles, there are but five parallel to any in the canonical gospels. But these do not by any means indicate that these gospels were then in existence. The passages all relate to the sayings of Christ, which were preserved by tradition, as well as in older gospels. Four of the parallelisms are in Matthew, and no doubt were in the Oracles, or other collections of sayings, to which Clement had access. The other is in Luke, 6th chapter, vv. 36 to 38. That also is a saying of Christ, which in Clement differs considerably from Luke, although Clement professes to give ...