96 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES, &C. 



effaced in the first converts from it to Christianity. 

 On the contrary, the Jewish behevers long continued 

 a separate branch of the infant church, and sought 

 to unite the doctrine of Christ with the worship of 

 their fathers. We have grounds for supposina; the 

 Gentile Church at Rome, to have been an assembly 

 distinct from these, even in the Acts of the Apostles ; 

 St. Paul on his ariival there opened his mission in- 

 deed, with an appeal to the chief Jews, but, on be- 

 ing rejected by them, immediately turned elsewhere, 

 " and received all that came in unto him." 



It was while Clemens held this office, although 

 the precise date cannot now be ascertained, that he 

 wrote his Epistle to the Corinthians — a work 

 breathing the purest spirit of that apostolic age. 

 Eusebius assures us, that it was long read in the 

 Churches, and held in reverence only inferior to that 

 of the Holy Scriptures. The church of Corinth had 

 sent to require the advice, and mediation of Cle- 

 mens, on account of an unhappy schism that had 

 broken out among them : this letter is one of gentle 

 and mild persuasion, with no assumption of extra- 

 ordinary power, none of that lording it over God's 

 heretage, that has characterized his successors in 

 the Roman sec. There is so close a resemblance, 

 both in words and matter, between this epistle and 

 that to the Hebrews, that Eusebius concludes the 

 last to have been at least translated by Clemens : 

 howewer this may be, the authority of the same 

 learned histoiian is conclusive, against all the other 

 writings which have been attributed to this father. 



To be continvcd. 



FiflNTFD BY G. P. IIEARDER, PLYMOUTH. 



