The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians

For the sacrifice of God is a broken spirit.

For you have understanding, you have a good[*](The example of Moses) understanding of the sacred Scriptures, beloved, and you have studied the oracles of God. Therefore we write these things to remind you.

For when Moses went up into the mountain, and passed forty days and forty nights in fasting and humiliation, God said to him:—Go down hence quickly, for thy people, whom thou didst bring out of the land of Egypt, have committed iniquity; they have quickly gone aside out of the way which thou didst command them; they have made themselves molten images.

And the Lord said to him:—I have spoken to thee once and twice, saying, I have seen this people, and behold it is stiffnecked; suffer

And Moses said, Not so. Lord; pardon the sin of this people, or blot me also out of the book of the living.

O great love! O unsurpassable perfection! The servant is bold with the Lord, he asks forgiveness for the people, or begs that he himself may be blotted out together with them.

Who then among you is noble, who is compassionate,[*](Application to the Corinthians) who is filled with love?

Let him cry:—If sedition and strife and divisions have arisen on my account, I will depart, I will go away whithersoever you will, and I will obey the commands of the people; only let the flock of Christ have peace with the presbyters set over it.

He who does this will win for himself great glory in Christ, and every place will receive him, for the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness of it.

This has been in the past, and will be in the future, the conduct of those who live without regrets as citizens in the city of God.

Let us also bring forward examples from[*](Other examples of loving self-sacrifice) the heathen. Many kings and rulers, when a time of pestilence has set in, have followed the counsel of oracles, and given themselves up to death, that they might rescue their subjects through their own blood.

We know that many among ourselves have given themselves to bondage that they might ransom others. Many have delivered themselves to slavery, and provided food for others with the price they received for themselves.

Many women have received power through the grace of God and have performed many deeds of manly valour.

The blessed Judith, when her city was besieged, asked the elders to suffer her to go out into the camp of the strangers.

So she gave herself up to danger, and went forth for love of her country and her people in their siege, and the Lord delivered over Holofernes by the hand of a woman.

Not less did Esther also, who was perfect in faith, deliver herself to danger, that she . might rescue the nation of Israel from the destruction that awaited it; for with fasting and humiliation she besought the all-seeing Master of the Ages, and he saw the meekness of her soul, and rescued the people for whose sake she had faced peril.