CLEMENT of Alexandria: Washing of the Character

"AT PRAYER"
Picture courtesy of
 The Order of the GOOD SHEPHERD+

 "Our characters are NOT the  same

as before our washing... "

As then those who have shaken off sleep forthwith become all awake within; or rather, as those who try to remove a film that is over the eyes, do not supply to them from without the light which they do not possess, but removing the obstacle from the eyes, leave the pupil free; 

thus also we who are baptized, 
.

having wiped off the sins 
.

which obscure the light of the Divine Spirit,
.

have the eye of the Spirit free, 

unimpeded, and full of light, 

by which alone 

we contemplate the Divine, 

the HOLY SPIRIT 

flowing down to us from above. 

Knowledge, then, is the illumination we receive, which makes ignorance disappear, and endows us
with clear vision. 

Further, the abandonment of what is bad is the adopting of what is better. For what ignorance has bound ill, is by knowledge loosed well; 

those bonds are with all speed slackened by human faith and divine grace, our transgressions being taken away by one Poeonian medicine, the baptism of the Word. 

We are washed from all our sins, and are no longer entangled in evil. This is the one grace of illumination, that

our characters are not the same 

as before our washing. 

And since knowledge springs up with illumination, shedding its beams around the mind, the moment we hear, we who were untaught become disciples. 

Does this, I ask, take place on the advent of this instruction? You cannot tell the time. 

For instruction
.

leads to faith,
.

and faith with baptism 

is trained 

by the Holy Spirit. 

~~~  The Instructor, Book 1,  Clement of Alexandria, chapter 6, pages 216-217 , Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 2. [ American Edition of the Ante-Nicene Fathers  ( reprint; originally published in the US by  Christian Literature Publishing Company, 1885 ), 2nd printing, 1995, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, MA. ] 

Clement of Alexandria, ( AD 153-193 or 217 ? ) head of catechetical school in church at Alexandria. His most famous pupil was Origen. Clement was an ordained presbyter and considered a most learned "one in the books" of the Hebrews and Greeks. Introduction, pg. 165-166.