Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily III/Chapter 17

Chapter XVII.&#8212;Whether Adam Had the Spirit.

&#8220;But I shall begin the statement now.&#160; God having made all things, if any one will not allow to a man, fashioned by His hands, to have possessed His great and Holy Spirit of foreknowledge, how does not he greatly err who attributes it to another born of a spurious stock! &#160; And I do not think that he will obtain pardon, though he be misled by spurious scripture to think dreadful things against the Father of all.&#160; For he who insults the image and the things belonging to the eternal King, has the sin reckoned as committed against Him in whose likeness the image was made.&#160; But then, says he, the Divine Spirit left him when he sinned.&#160; In that case the Spirit sinned along with him; and how can he escape peril who says this?&#160; But perhaps he received the Spirit after he sinned.&#160; Then it is given to the unrighteous; and where is justice?&#160; But it was afforded to the just and the unjust.&#160; This were most unrighteous of all.&#160; Thus every falsehood, though it be aided by ten thousand reasonings, must receive its refutation, though after a long time.