presupposition of the view that He was already operative in the prophets by His spirit. The Old Testament, allegorically and typically interpreted, is therefore the source and proof of Christian doctrine. Of a particular election of Israel the author knows nothing. Christians as such, whether descended from Gentiles or from Jews, are the chosen people of God; Abraham by reason of his faith is their father; and it is only by faith in the Almighty God that men of all ages have been justified before God.--In the so-called =Second “Epistle”= the completed form of the second half proves what the less complete form rendered probable, that it is no Epistle but a sermon, and indeed the oldest specimen of a sermon, that we here possess. The author, who delivered it somewhere about A.D. 144-150, wrote it out first for his own use, and then for the church. As it has in its theological views many points of contact with the _Shepherd of Hermas_ (§ 30, 4), Harnack thinks it probable that a younger Clement of Rome mentioned by Hermas may be the author; while Hilgenfeld is inclined to regard it as a youthful work of Clement of Alexandria (§ 31, 4). It contains a forcible exhortation to thorough repentance and conversion in accordance with the command of Christ, with a reference to the judgment and the future glory. This shows in a remarkable way what rapid progress had been made from the religio-moral mode of thought of cultured paganism toward moralizing legalism, and the smoothing down of Christianity thereby introduced into the Gentile-Christian Catholic Church, during the half century between the composition of the Epistle of Clement and this Clementine discourse. For in the latter already the gospel is represented as a new law, a higher divine doctrine of virtue and reward, in which alms, fasts, and prayer appear as specially meritorious works. The righteousness that avails with God is still indeed derived from faith, but this faith is reduced to a belief in the future recompense of eternal life. Christ as Son of God is conceived of by the author as a pneumatical heavenly being, created before the world, who, sent by God into the world for man’s redemption, took upon Him human σάρξ. But besides Him, he also knows a second pneumatical hypostasis created before the world, “before sun and moon,” the ἐκκλησία ζῶσα, which, as the heavenly body of Christ, is at the same time the presupposition for the making of the world restored by His work of salvation. For the creation of this divine pair of æons, that is, of Christ as the ἄνθρωπος ἐπουράνιος and of the church as His heavenly σύζυγος, the author refers to the account of the creation in Gen. i.