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JAINISM, CHRISTIANITY & SCIENCE
urges : “ Therefore as you run, I exhort you; and ... as you press ' in your courge to the prize of your calling in Christ,' I urge you on,—that, treading under foot and rejecting as well the sacrilegious calumnies of heretics as also the idle fables of Jews, you may hold the sole word and teaching of Christ...."-A.N.C. L. vol. xiii. p. 383.
It would seem that there was a secret Key of Knowledge which was very probably unwritten at first, but later on reduced to writing, in part. It was this which was imparted to those fully trusted by the heads of the movement; and it was this which was lost but again reconstructed about the time of the origin of Christianity. In the Gospels themselves there is a mention of this Key of Knowledge :
"Woe unto ye lawyers ! ye have taken away the key of know. ledge : you entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered."-Luke xi. 52.
In the “Fathers” one may also read :
“Ask your father, and he will tell you; your elders, and they will declare to you.'-(Deut. xxxii. 7.) This father, these elders onght to be enquired of. But you have not enquired whose is the time of the kingdom, and whose is the seat of prophecy, though He Himself points out Himself, saying, 'The Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat; all things whatsoever they say unto you, hear them.'(Matt. xxii. 2.) Hear them He said, as entrusted with the key of the kingdom, thich is knowledge, which alone can open the gate of life, through which alone is the entrance to eternal life. But truly, He says, they possess the key, but those wishing to enter they do not suffer to do so."-(Clementine Homilies : A.N.C.L. xvii. p. 61.)
In fact, there is actually a reference in part ii of volume xxii (among the “ Fragments of Melito '') on pages 135—139 to a key, the heading of the section in