Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IX/The Epistles of Clement/The Second Epistle of Clement/Chapter 20

Chapter XX.&#8212;Godliness, Not Gain, the True Riches.

But let it not even trouble your mind, that we see the unrighteous possessed of riches and the servants of God straitened.&#160; Let us, therefore, brothers and sisters, believe; in a trial of the living God we strive and are exercised in the present life, that we may obtain the crown in that which is to come.&#160; No one of the righteous received fruit speedily, but waiteth for it.&#160; For if God tendered the reward of the righteous in a trice, straightway were it commerce that we practised, and not godliness.&#160; For it were as if we were righteous by following after not godliness but gain; and for this reason the divine judgment baffled the spirit that is unrighteous and heavily weighed the fetter.

To the only God, invisible, Father of truth, who sent forth to us the Saviour and Author of immortality, through whom He also manifested to us the truth and the heavenly life, to Him be glory for ever and ever.&#160; Amen.