. . . Paul having addressed the Hebrews in their native language, some say that the Evangelist Luke, and others that this very Clement, translated the document ; an opinion which is supported by the fact, that the Epistle of Clement and that to the Hebrews are marked by the same peculiarities of style, and in both compositions the sentiments are not unlike' (Hist. Eccles. iii. 38, ed. Valessii, thy, p. TO).
As to the date of this epistle, it has been fixed by Grabe, Galland, Wotton, and Hefele, about the year 68 ; but Cotelerius, Tillemont, and Lardner think that it was written at the close of the Do mitian Persecution in 96 or 97. A passage in ch. xli., in which Clement speaks in the present tense respecting the sacrifices of the Mosaic law, has been supposed to favour the earlier date ; but Jo sephus adopts the same phraseology in his Anti quities, which were not finished till twenty years after the destruction of Jerusalem.
The first writer that notices the second Epistle of Clement is Eusebius, who does not absolutely pronounce it spurious, but says that it was less known than the former, and not quoted by ancient writers (Hitt. Eccles. iii. 38). Photius states de cidedly that it was rejected as spurious. It is only a fragment, and its style is rather homiletic than epistolary. The Gospels are quoted several times
in it, more expressly than in the first Epistle, and there is one passage from an apocryphal writing called the Gospel according to the Egyptians (Lard ner's Credibility, etc., part ii. ch. 3 ; Work., ii. 55). In 1752, John James Wetstein published, at the end of his edition of the Greek Testament, two epistles in Syriac (accompanied by a Latin transla tion), attributed to Clement, which were discovered at the end of a manuscript of the Syriac N. T. Immediately on their publication Dr. Lardner examined the evidence for their genuineness, and gave the result of his inquiries in a Dissertation (Works, vol. x. pp. 186-212), to which we refer the reader, only remarking that the whole strain of these compositions, and the allusions to pre vailing practices, sufficiently indicate that they were written long after Clement's time.
The following works have also been attributed to Clement, but, as they are unquestionably sup posititious, we shall merely give their titles. 1. The Apostolic Constitution; in eight books. 2. The Apostolic Canons. 3. The Recognitions of Cle ment. 4. The Clementina. They are all printed in the Patres Apostolici of Cotelerius, vol. i. (Mosheim's Commentaries, translated by Vidal. vol. i. pp. 270-274).