Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily XVII/Chapter 18

Chapter XVIII.&#8212;The Nature of Revelation.

&#8220;Thus to me also was the Son revealed by the Father.&#160; Wherefore I know what is the meaning of revelation, having learned it in my own case.&#160; For at the very time when the Lord said, &#8216;Who do they say that I am?&#8217; and when I heard one saying one thing of Him, and another another, it came into my heart to say (and I know not, therefore, how I said it), &#8216;Thou art the Son of the living God.&#8217; &#160; But He, pronouncing me blessed, pointed out to me that it was the Father who had revealed it to me; and from this time I learned that revelation is knowledge gained without instruction, and without apparition and dreams.&#160; And this is indeed the case.&#160; For in the soul which has been placed in us by God, there is all the truth; but it is covered and revealed by the hand of God, who works so far as each one through his knowledge deserves. &#160; But the declaration of anything by means of apparitions and dreams from without is a proof, not that it comes from revelation, but from wrath.&#160; Finally, then, it is written in the law, that God, being angry, said to Aaron and Miriam, &#8216;If a prophet arise from amongst you, I shall make myself known to him through visions and dreams, but not so as to my servant Moses; because I shall speak to him in an outward appearance, and not through dreams, just as one will speak to his own friend.&#8217;&#160; You see how the statements of wrath are made through visions and dreams, but the statements to a friend are made face to face, in outward appearance, and not through riddles and visions and dreams, as to an enemy.