Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IX/The Epistles of Clement/The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians/Chapter 46

Chapter XLVI.&#8212;Let Us Cleave to the Righteous:&#160; Your Strife is Pernicious.

Such examples, therefore, brethren, it is right that we should follow; since it is written, &#8220;Cleave to the holy, for those that cleave to them shall [themselves] be made holy.&#8221; &#160; And again, in another place, [the Scripture] saith, &#8220;With a harmless man thou shalt prove thyself harmless, and with an elect man thou shalt be elect, and with a perverse man thou shalt show thyself perverse.&#8221; &#160; Let us cleave, therefore, to the innocent and righteous, since these are the elect of God.&#160; Why are there strifes, and tumults, and divisions, and schisms, and wars among you?&#160; Have we not [all] one God and one Christ?&#160; Is there not one Spirit of grace poured out upon us?&#160; And have we not one calling in Christ? &#160; Why do we divide and tear in pieces the members of Christ, and raise up strife against our own body, and have reached such a height of madness as to forget that &#8220;we are members one of another?&#8221; &#160; Remember the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, how He said, &#8220;Woe to that man [by whom offences come]!&#160; It were better for him that he had never been born, than that he should cast a stumbling-block before one of my elect.&#160; Yea, it were better for him that a millstone should be hung about [his neck], and he should be sunk in the depths of the sea, than that he should cast a stumbling-block before one of my little ones.&#8221; &#160; Your schism has subverted [the faith of] many, has discouraged many, has given rise to doubt in many, and has caused grief to us all.&#160; And still your sedition continueth.