1 Clement 35:1-16
1How blessed and wonderful, beloved, are the gifts of God!
2Life in immortality, splendour in righteousness, truth in perfect confidence, faith in assurance, self-control in holiness!
3And all these fall under the cognizance of our understandings [now]; what then shall those things be which are prepared for such as wait for Him?
4The Creator and Father of all worlds, the Most Holy, alone knows their amount and their beauty.
5Let us therefore earnestly strive to be found in the number of those that wait for Him, in order that we may share in His promised gifts.
6But how, beloved, shall this be done?
7If our understanding be fixed by faith rewards God; if we earnestly seek the things which are pleasing and acceptable to Him; if we do the things which are in harmony with His blameless will; and if we follow the way of truth, casting away from us all unrighteousness and iniquity, along with all covetousness, strife, evil practices, deceit, whispering, and evil-speaking, all hatred of God, pride and haughtiness, vainglory and ambition.
8For they that do such things are hateful to God; and not only they that do them, but also those that take pleasure in them that do them.
9For the Scripture saith, "But to the sinner God said, Wherefore dost thou declare my statutes, and take my covenant into thy mouth, seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee?
10When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst with him, and didst make thy portion with adulterers.
11Thy mouth has abounded with wickedness, and thy tongue contrived deceit.
12Thou sittest, and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother's son.
13These things thou hast done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest, wicked one, that I should be like to thyself.
14But I will reprove thee, and set thyself before thee.
15Consider now these things, ye that forget God, lest He tear you in pieces, like a lion, and there be none to deliver.
16The sacrifice of praise will glorify Me, and a way is there by which I will show him the salvation of God."