Editores, Lectori S.

To the Reader, greeting.

(Oxford edition, 1715.)

Since it has always been among my wishes to be of service according to my strength first to the Christian Church, and next to the republic of letters, it seemed to me that I could not spend those hours which were free both from the office of Regius Professor of Sacred Theology and from the remaining cares and duties that rest upon me in any other pursuit either more pleasantly or more usefully than in emending, explaining, and publishing the extant works of Clement of Alexandria, a most ancient and most learned Father.

My first care, therefore, was to present the author himself as complete and free from blemish as could be done. To this end I not only turned through all the printed editions, in which, if we except those of Victorius and Sylburg, there is almost nothing accurate; but I also diligently read through whatever manuscript copies I was able to find, and having read them through, collated them with the printed editions. Furthermore, the library of New College at Oxford supplied the Exhortation to the Greeks in manuscript, together with the two latter books of the Instructor and several fragments of the same. Of the three books of the Instructor, the library of Bodley furnished one codex, and the Library of our most august King another agreeing with this one in almost all respects. For restoring to their original soundness those notable passages of our Clement which Eusebius inserted into his work On the Preparation for the Gospel, no slight assistance was brought by his printed books and by the manuscript copy which is preserved among us in the College of St. John the Baptist. A remedy for the scarcity of ancient copies was not seldom brought by the books of ancient writers, especially of Plato and of Philo the Jew, from the latter of whom Clement transferred into his Stromata not only brief sentences, but even whole pages, with some things omitted and others altered or reduced into an epitome, according as best suited his design, and that sometimes with the author's name concealed. No handwritten copy of the Stromata has it hitherto been permitted me to survey with my own eyes. Yet the most illustrious Bernard de Montfaucon relieved me both of this misfortune and of this burden, who, out of the most ardent zeal with which he ever burns for advancing polite letters, transmitted to me variant readings accurately transcribed not only from the Ottobonian codex, which comprises certain longer fragments of them, but also from the Paris codex, which comprises the entire work of the Stromata; which readings, since they were brought somewhat too late and did not reach my hands before the first four books, together with the beginning of the fifth, had passed from the press, I took care to exhibit together at the end of the work.

In distinguishing the words of Sacred Scripture and also of other ancient books from the words of our Clement—which no one hitherto has performed with sufficient accuracy—no small labour indeed, yet one above all necessary for him who would undertake to explain this author, had to be expended. To frame a new Latin version, however, or to emend the old one, was a matter of still greater labour. For the translation of Hervetus, which is for the most part in men's hands and is the inseparable companion of the later editions of Clement, although often changed for the better heretofore by learned men, is nevertheless in many places still so foreign to the author's mind, in others defective and imperfect, and in very many ambiguous and obscure, that often in Clement himself you miss nothing more than Clement, and not seldom the Latin looks for light from the Greek rather than the Greek from the Latin; and he who finally should undertake to correct it as the case demands would plainly seem to be cleansing the stable of Augeas. Accordingly, we have made the Exhortation to the Greeks Latin anew from the Greek, and would perhaps have proceeded also to the books of the Instructor and the Stromata, had not other studies, which it was by no means permitted us to interrupt any longer, driven us at length to think thereafter rather of adapting Hervetus to the Greek text; who, as he now appears, even if little elegant and ornate, yet in most places, as is hoped, will be accounted a not altogether unfaithful interpreter of Clement.

To the Greek and Latin text we have adjoined the Notes of Sylburg, Heinsius, and other learned men, which the books heretofore published, by exhibiting them at the end of the whole work too far removed both from one another and even from the author himself, impose unwelcome delays upon studious readers. With these we have intermingled others excerpted by ourselves from all sides out of the philological writers of this and the immediately preceding century. In the margin of his codex, which at his death he bequeathed to me when I had reached the fourth book of the Stromata, Grabe of blessed memory had annotated several things. Next to none, however, must be mentioned by me W. Lowth, most worthy prebendary of the cathedral church of Winchester, who not only of his own accord offered me almost continuous notes on Clement, but also reduced the Exhortation to the Greeks and the eight books of the Stromata into chapters, so far as could be done, according to the diverse nature of the subject matter of which they consist. Now these will be found below, distinguished by the proper names of their authors and each disposed in its own place. Besides these, I asked other friends and learned men to contribute their shares, intending to hold the greatest gratitude in my power towards all who had contributed anything to illustrating or emending our author. Whether the things which we have drawn forth from our own slender store will be able in some measure to serve these uses, the fair-minded reader will easily judge. Moreover, there follow after these the materials concerning Clement and his writings collected by the most illustrious John

Albertus Fabricius, together with a most copious Index of the authors whom Clement cited; to which we have added a second, to point out the sentences of Holy Scripture adduced by him. Hervet's Commentary follows, so that nothing of what the other editions of Clement present may be missed in this one of ours. Two Indices close the train, the former of matters, the latter of words; these we owe for the most part to Sylburg. Lastly, since I saw that the Sylburgian edition and the two Parisian ones were chiefly in the hands of the learned, I have taken care that the pages of the latter be marked throughout in the margin of the Greek text, and those of the former in the margin of the Latin.

These are chiefly the things, friendly Reader, of which I wished you to be advised concerning this edition of ours of Clement of Alexandria. But if it should come out somewhat later than you had expected, or if, now made public, it should answer your wishes less well, I beg you to impute it, at least in some part, to the weakness of my eyes; which, having first attacked me while I was engaged on the Paedagogus, at length grew so strong while the fifth book of the Stromata was sweating under the press, that a hard but wholly inescapable necessity compelled me thereafter to trust others' eyes far more than my own. But if these labours of ours have brought you any pleasure or any profit, do not disdain to make this return: commend us by your prayers to God, Best and Greatest. Farewell.

Given at London, on the XIII day before the Kalends of September, A.D. MDCCXV.