Vol 01 - TO THE READER.

TO THE READER
1. THE authors of the following collection were contemporaries of the holy apostles: one of them bred under our Lord himself, and the others well instructed by those great men, whom he commissioned to go forth and teach all nations. We cannot therefore doubt but what they deliver to us is the pure doctrine of the gospel; what CHRIST and his apostles taught, and what these holy men had themselves received from their own mouths.
2. Nor had they only the advantage of living in the apostolical times, of hearing the holy apostles and conversing with them, but were themselves of a very eminent character in the church; men raised to the highest honor and authority; chosen by the apostles to preside in their several sees; and those some of the most eminent then in the world: such men therefore, we may be well assured, must have been carefully instructed in the mystery of the gospel, and have had a most comprehensive and perfect knowledge of the faith as it is in JESUS.
3. Had they been men of no note, no authority in the church, yet the very age wherein they lived would have rendered their discourses justly venerable to us. But now, having to do with men not only instructed in common by the apostles, with the other Christians of those days, but particularly bred up and instituted by them; having here the writings of men who had attained to so perfect a knowledge of the mystery of godliness, as to be judged worthy by the apostles themselves to be overseers of the great churches of Rome, Antioch, and Smyrna; we cannot, with any reason, doubt of what they deliver to us as the gospel of CHRIST: but ought to receive it, though not with equal veneration, yet with only little less regard than we do the sacred writings of them who were their masters and instructors.
4. Yet farther, they were not only such eminent men, and bred up. under such mighty advantages, and so thoroughly instructed in the knowledge of the gospel, but they were also persons of consummate piety; adorned with all those Christian virtues which they so affectionately recommend to us. But, especially, they were zealous watchmen over their churches; careful to instruct them in the true faith of CHRIST, and to preserve them from the contagion of those heresies, which even then began to corrupt it. Hence we read in Eusebius, with what a holy zeal Ignatius first, and then his fellow disciple, St. Polycarp, set themselves against those who taught other doctrines than what the apostles had delivered unto them: what wise directions they gave for the discovery of false teachers, and how earnestly they exhorted all the churches to keep firm to their respective bishops and presbyters, and to the apostolical doctrine derived from them.
5. To this general piety of their lives, and care for the purity of religion, we may add, their courage and constancy in the maintaining of it. And two of them, after having spent their lives in a careful administration of the great charge to which they were called, were at last made perfect through martyrdom, which they underwent with a calmness and resolution worthy both the religion they professed, and the eminent characters they had obtained in the church.
6. Such reason have we to look on the writings of these holy men, as containing the pure, uncorrupted doctrine of CHRIST. But to advance higher yet, They were not only thus qualified by these ordinary means to deliver the gospel to us, but were likewise endued with the extraordinary assistance of the Holy Spirit.
7. To be satisfied of this, we need only consider, 1. That the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost, which the Scriptures themselves tell us were conferred on other believers, as well as on the apostles, continued still in the church after their departure, as is expressly testified by Justin Martyr. And that we may be assured he spoke nothing but what was undeniable, we find him urging it against Trypho the Jew, as an unanswerable argument for the Christians against the Jews, from whom those gifts had been long departed.
8. The same St. Clement declares, in his epistle to the Corinthians; where he reproves those who prided themselves in them. And St. Ignatius riot only supposes (in his salutation to the; church of Smyrna,) that such gifts might be in others, but, in his letter to the Philadelphians, plainly intimates, that he himself was endued with a large portion of them.
9. Which being so, we cannot doubt, 2ndly, but that the apostles were careful to set those over the several churches who were most eminent for these gifts; and that GOD was also pleased to grant to such persons a more than ordinary portion of his Spirit, for the better discharge of those eminent offices, to which they were called.
10. One of the qualifications which the apostles required, even in those who were to be ordained deacons we know was, That they should be remain full of the Holy Ghost." And accordingly it is recorded of St. Stephen, that he was full of faith and power, and did signs and wonders among the people; nor could the Jews stand against the wisdom and Spirit by which he spoke. How much more careful must they have been not to admit any into the highest authority, but who were yet more eminently endued with the same gifts.
11. The plain inference is, Not only that they were not mistaken in their interpretations of the gospel of CHRIST, but that in all the necessary parts of it they were so assisted by the Holy Ghost, as to be scarce capable of mistaking. Consequently we are to look on their writings, though not of equal authority with the Holy Scriptures, (because neither were the authors of them called in so extraordinary a way to the writing them, nor endued with so large a portion of the blessed Spirit,) yet as worthy of a much greater respect than any composures which have been made since; however men have afterwards written with more art, and a greater stock of human learning than is to be found not only in the following pieces, but even in the New Testament itself.
12. Indeed the manner in which they are written, the true primitive simplicity which appears in all the parts of them, is no just objection to them, but rather a strong recommendation to all considering men. They knew the excellency of their doctrine, and the importance of the revelations which it made of the future state; and therefore they contented themselves to declare these things in a plain and simple manner; and yet with such efficacy and power as surpassed all the rhetorick in the world. IT is no small commendation which the Holy Ghost, by St. Paul, has left us of the writer of this epistle,
Php_4:3, where the apostle not only mentions him as his fellow-laborer in the work of the gospel, but as one whose name was written in the book of life. He was made bishop of Rome by the express direction of one or both the apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul: the occasion of his writing this letter seems to have been, first, The division of the church at Corinth, on account of their teachers; and, secondly, Their mistakes concerning the resurrection. St. Paul had not long before put a stop to the one, and set them right as to the other. But the evil beginning to break out afresh, St. Clement, in the epistle before us, first, takes no notice of the rise of those new seditions, and exhorts them to unity, and then, by many arguments establishes the certainty of the future resurrection. It is most probably judged to have been written about seventy years after CHRIST, shortly after the end of Nero's persecution, and a little before the Jewish war broke, gut, which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem.