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Pseudo-Clementine Literature · The Clementine Homilies. Books I. To V. Have Been Translated · Chapter XIII

Condemnation of the Ignorant

Page 886 of 1,440

"But if judgment follows upon disobedience to instruction, much more shall God destroy those who will not undertake His worship. For he who will not learn, lest that should make him subject to judgment, is already judged as knowing, for he knew what he will not hear; so that imagination avails nothing as an apology in presence of the heart-knowing God. Wherefore avoid that cunning thought suggested by the serpent to your minds. But if any one end this life in real ignorance, this charge will lie against him, that, having lived so long, he did not know who was the bestower of the food supplied to him: and as a senseless, and ungrateful, and very unworthy servant, he is rejected from the kingdom of God.

Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 8, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson and A. Cleveland Coxe (1885–96). Public domain. Text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.