Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily III/Chapter 69

Chapter LXIX.&#8212;&#8220;Not Forsaking the Assembling of Yourselves Together.&#8221;

&#8220;But if you love your brethren, take nothing from them, but share with them such things as ye have.&#160; Feed the hungry; give drink to the thirsty; clothe the naked; visit the sick; so far as you can, help those in prison; receive strangers gladly into your own abodes; hate no one.&#160; And how you must be pious, your own mind will teach you, judging rightly.&#160; But before all else, if indeed I need say it to you, come together frequently, if it were every hour, especially on the appointed days of meeting.&#160; For if you do this, you are within a wall of safety.&#160; For disorderliness is the beginning of perdition.&#160; Let no one therefore forsake the assembly on the ground of envy towards a brother.&#160; For if any one of you forsake the assembly, he shall be regarded as of those who scatter the Church of Christ, and shall be cast out with adulterers.&#160; For as an adulterer, under the influence of the spirit that is in him, he separates himself on some pretext, and gives place to the wicked one against himself,&#8212;a sheep for the stealing, as one found outside the fold.