Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IX/The Epistles of Clement/The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians/Chapter 53

Chapter LIII.&#8212;The Love of Moses Towards His People.

Ye understand, beloved, ye understand well the sacred Scriptures, and ye have looked very earnestly into the oracles of God.&#160; Call then these things to your remembrance.&#160; When Moses went up into the mount, and abode there, with fasting and humiliation, forty days and forty nights, the Lord said unto him, &#8220;Moses, Moses, get thee down quickly from hence; for thy people whom thou didst bring out of the land of Egypt have committed iniquity.&#160; They have speedily departed from the way in which I commanded them to walk, and have made to themselves molten images.&#8221; &#160; And the Lord said unto him, &#8220;I have spoken to thee once and again, saying, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiff-necked people:&#160; let me destroy them, and blot out their name from under heaven; and I will make thee a great and wonderful nation, and one much more numerous than this.&#8221; &#160; But Moses said, &#8220;Far be it from Thee, Lord:&#160; pardon the sin of this people; else blot me also out of the book of the living.&#8221; &#160; O marvellous love!&#160; O insuperable perfection!&#160; The servant speaks freely to his Lord, and asks forgiveness for the people, or begs that he himself might perish along with them.