Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 6

Our Savior, the Holy One, has ordained poverty and wealth — and everything like them — for both the spiritual realm and the sensory realm. He said, "Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness" (Matthew 5:10), and by that word He clearly teaches us to seek martyrdom in every circumstance. Whoever is poor because of righteousness testifies that the righteousness he loved is good; and even if he hungers or thirsts because of righteousness, he testifies that righteousness is the very best thing. Likewise, the one who weeps and mourns because of righteousness bears witness that the best law is good. So, just as He calls the persecuted blessed, He also calls blessed those who hunger and thirst because of righteousness. Blessed is the one who embraces the genuine longing that not even hunger can interrupt. And if they hunger for righteousness itself, they are blessed; blessed, too, are the poor, whether poor in spirit or poor in substance, clearly for the sake of righteousness. For He does not simply bless the poor, but those who have chosen to become poor because of righteousness — those who have despised the honors of this world in order to acquire the good. In the same way He blesses those who have become beautiful in character and in body through purity, the noble and renowned, who have been called to adoption as sons because of righteousness and have received authority to become children of God, and to tread on serpents and scorpions and to exercise dominion over demons and the army of the adversary. In general, the Lord's discipline leads the soul away from the body willingly, since it even separates itself from itself through transformation. For "the one who finds his soul will lose it, and the one who loses it will find it," provided we place our whole concern upon God's incorruptibility. The will of God is knowledge of God, and that knowledge is communion with incorruptibility. The one who knows himself according to the word of repentance will lose his sinful soul — the soul that has been torn away from sin — and, having lost it, he will find it again through obedience, reviving it by faith and putting sin to death. This, then, is what it means to find one's soul: to know oneself. The Stoics say that conversion to divine things comes from a change, the soul changing into wisdom; Plato says it is a turning of the soul toward better things, a conversion from a kind of night into day. At once the philosophers, too, grant a reasonable exit to the earnest person, if anything should prevent him from acting in this way, so that he is no longer left without hope of action. But the judge who has been forced to act seems to me to deny both the beloved and the unloved. Here no comparison remains — what would anyone choose rather: a human threat, or the love of God? And somehow the avoidance of evil deeds, the diminishing and extinction of vices, is found, as their activity is purified through inactivity; and this is exactly what the Lord says: "Sell your possessions and give to the poor, and come, follow me" (Matthew 19:21) — that is, follow the things spoken by the Lord.