'From Faith arises Self-restraint; from Self-restraint, Simplicity; from Simplicity, Guilelessness; from Guilelessness, Chastity; from Chastity, Intelligence; and from Intelligence, Love.' The pedigree is silly enough; but the positions of Faith and Love are evidently fixed.1

The writer of the Epistle to Diognetus has (ch. viii.): 'He has manifested Himself through Faith, to which alone it is given to behold God.' Theophilus (i. 8) uses Faith as equivalent to Trust, and argues that without Faith almost all action would be impossible. In the Clementine Recognitions (ii. 69), Peter is made to say, 'It is not safe to commit these things to bare Faith without Reason, since truth cannot be without reason. He who has received truths fortified by reason, can never lose them; whereas he who receives them without proofs, by simple assent, can neither keep them safely, nor be sure that they are true. The more anxious any man is in demanding a reason, the more secure will he be in keeping his Faith.' This language reminds us of the Cambridge Platonists, especially of Benjamin Whichcote, who says, 'When the doctrine of the Gospel becomes the reason of our mind, it will be the principle of our life.'

More interesting and important is the doctrine of Faith in Clement of Alexandria, whom I have already quoted.2 'Faith,' he says (Strom. ii. 2), 'which the Greeks disparage as futile and barbarous, is a voluntary anticipation, the assent of piety-the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, as the inspired Apostle says. Others have defined Faith to be an uniting assent to an unseen object. If then it be choice, the desire is in this case intellectual, since it desires something. And since choice is the beginning of action, Faith is the beginning of action, being the foundation of rational choice, when a

1 Cf. a similar list in Hermas, ix. 15.

The second book of the Stromateis contains a full and very instructive discussion of Faith.

man sets before himself, through Faith, the demonstration which he anticipates. Voluntarily to follow what is useful is the beginning of understanding it. Unswerving choice, therefore, gives a great impetus towards knowledge. The exercise of Faith at once becomes knowledge, built on a sure foundation.'

The followers of Basilides, he proceeds, regard Faith as a natural endowment, defining it as 'finding ideas by intellectual comprehension without demonstration.' 'The Valentinians assign Faith to us simple folk, but claim that knowledge arises in themselves (who are saved by nature) through the advantage of a germ of higher excellence, saying that it is as far above faith as the spiritual is above the animal.' To this Clement objects, as making Faith an innate faculty and not a matter of rational choice. We cannot justly be punished for lacking a power which is given or withheld by external necessity; and if this is the true account, he who has not Faith cannot hope to acquire it.

First principles are incapable of demonstration. The First Cause of the Universe can be apprehended by Faith alone. For knowledge is a state of mind resulting from demonstration; but Faith is a grace which from what is not demonstrable leads us to what is universal and simple. We can learn nothing without a preconceived idea of what we are aiming at; Faith is such a preconception. This is what the prophet meant when he said, 'Unless ye believe, ye will not understand,' and what Heraclitus meant when he said,[ If you do not hope, you will not find what is beyond your hopes.]

The Basilidians (ch. vi.) define Faith to be the assent of the soul to any of those things that are not present to the senses. This assent is not supposition, but assent to something certain. Faith is the voluntary supposition and anticipation of comprehension.

Faith must not be disparaged as simple and vulgar. 'If

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it grow, and there is no place where it is not, then I affirm that Faith, whether founded in love or (as its disparagers assert) in fear, is something divine. Love, by its alliance with Faith, makes men believers; and Faith, which is the foundation of Love, in its turn introduces the doing of good. Faith is the first movement towards salvation; after which fear and hope and repentance, in company with temperance and patience, lead us on to love and knowledge." Knowledge (ch. xi.) is founded on Faith. But Faith is also founded on knowledge, which may be defined as reason, producing Faith in what is disputed [by arguing] from what is admitted.' There are two kinds of Faith, one resting on science, the other on opinion. (Therefore, it would seem, Faith is the condition of attaining knowledge, and knowledge, so far from superseding Faith, gives it back transmuted into a higher form.) Obedience to the commandments, which implies Faith or trust in God (ŏ ÉσTI KITEÚELV rŷ beŵ),1 is a mode of learning: and 'Faith is a power of God, being the strength of truth.' (That is to say, Faith is essentially progressive and dynamic; it has its proper activity in a certain energy of thought, will, and action, which issues in an assurance of the truth, based on knowledge and experience.)

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'Fear is the beginning of love (ch. xii.). Fear develops into Faith, and Faith into love.' (This is a remarkable echo of the well-known ' Primus in orbe deos fecit timor' of Statius and Petronius.) But I do not fear my Father as I fear a wild beast; I fear and love Him at once. Blessed, therefore, is he who has Faith, being compounded of love and fear.'

In the fifth book of the Stromateis he returns to the subject of Faith. What follows is an abridgment of his argument. It is incorrect to say that Faith has reference to the Son, and knowledge to the Spirit. We cannot so

1 So Clement of Rome makes the faith of Abraham consist in obedience (ch. 10).

separate either the Persons of the Trinity, or Faith and Knowledge.

"Faith is the ear of the soul.' It admits of growth, as is shown by Rom. i. 11, 17; Luke, xvii. 5. We must not, with Basilides, regard it as a natural endowment, dispensing with the rational assent of the self-determining soul,' for then we should not have needed a Saviour. But we do need revelation, and Faith accepts it. Nevertheless, Faith always goes hand in hand with inquiry.

In the seventh book he speaks of Faith as a short cut to perfection, by which the unlearned and ignorant may outdistance him who is learned in the philosophy of the Greeks. Faith is a compendious knowledge of essentials, while knowledge is a sure and firm demonstration of the things received through Faith, carrying us on to unshaken conviction and scientific certainty. There is a first kind of saving change from heathenism to Faith, a second from Faith to knowledge; and knowledge, as it passes on into love, begins at once to establish a mutual friendship between the knower and the known. Perhaps he who has reached this stage is equal to the angels' (ioáyyeλos, Luke xx. 36.) Faith is preceded by admiration (ch. xi. § 60), which is thus the beginning of Faith, as Plato says it is the beginning of philosophy. Compare the words attributed to Christ: He who wonders shall reign, and he who reigns shall rest,' and Wordsworth's, We live by admiration, hope, and love.'

I have dwelt on Clement's doctrine of Faith at what may seem disproportionate length, because I believe that he is the one of the Christian Fathers who deals with the relations of Faith and knowledge in the most enlightened and illuminating way. We at any rate feel that we can understand and sympathise with his point of view, because the problems with which he had to deal were in many ways very similar to our problems. Clement had to steer between the unqualified intellectualism of the Greek Gnostics, and the

obscurantism of the simpliciores, with their watchword of 'Faith only' (in rioris). When Clement speaks of Faith, he has often in view the Faith of these simple Christians. And his main object is to show what are the true relations of this simple belief to the Gnosis of which cultivated Christians were so proud. Faith, he maintains all through, is the foundation, Gnosis the superstructure. There is no generic difference between them. The true Gnostic is merely the man of Faith come to maturity, a Christian who has drawn out of his faith all that it virtually contained from the first. Faith is an immanent, implicit good (évdiáberos), which Gnosis renders explicit. It is the condition of all knowledge of God; there is no royal road for the philosopher, through the intellect alone, to divine knowledge. All alike must begin with Faith, which demands a θεοσεβείας συγκατάθεσις, & personal assent to an attitude of adoration, an act of piety. But since it is the nature of Faith to develop into knowledge, the door cannot be shut upon inquiry. The way is open for a Christian philosophy. So Clement refutes the obscurantism of Tertullian, who wishes to break altogether with Greek philosophy and science.

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But Faith is not only the condition of knowledge. It is the condition of the moral life of the Christian, even at the highest stage. All the virtues are daughters of Faith.' Faith and knowledge, as concurrent activities of the soul, are the principles of its growth, and also of its consistency and stability. 'Faith and knowledge prepare the soul which chooses to live by them, making it self-consistent and stable.'

Clement goes still further, making Faith the foundation of knowledge in general. I will not trouble you with his theory of knowledge, which has no great philosophical value, being a mixture of Platonism and Stoicism; but by putting Faith in the place of the Stoic #póλns, and knowledge in the place of their karáλnfis, he has hit upon a