Is it possible to suppose that this teacher in Christ’s school had any idea of a Christian praying to saints or angels?  In the last passage, the language in which he quotes the errors of heathen superstition to refute them, so nearly approaches the language of the Church of Rome when speaking of the powers of saints and angels to assist the suppliant, that if Clement had entertained {127} any thought whatever of a Christian praying for aid and intercession to saint or angel, he must have mentioned it, especially after the previous passage on the absurdity and gross ignorance of praying for any good at the hands of any other than the one true God.

In common with his contemporaries, Clement considered the angels to be, as we mortals are, in a state requiring all the protection and help to be obtained by prayer; he believed that the angels pray with us, and carry our prayers to God:  but the thought of addressing them by invocation does not appear to have occurred to his mind.  At the close of his Paedagogus he has left on record a form of prayer to God alone very peculiar and interesting.  He closes it by an ascription of glory to the blessed Trinity.  But there is no allusion to saint, or angel, or virgin mother.

* * * * *

SECTION IV.—­TERTULLIAN.

Tertullian, of Carthage, was a contemporary of Clement of Alexandria, and so nearly of the same age, that doubts have existed, which of the two should take priority in point of time.  There is a very wide difference in the character and tone of their works, as there was in the frame and constitution of their minds.  The lenient and liberal views of the erudite and accomplished master of the school of Alexandria, stand out in prominent and broad contrast with the harsh and austere doctrines of Tertullian.

Tertullian fell into errors of a very serious kind by joining himself to the heretic Montanus; still on his {128} mind is discoverable the working of that spirit which animated the early converts of Christianity; and his whole soul seems to have been filled with a desire to promote the practical influence of the Gospel.

Jerome, the oracle on such subjects, from whom the Roman Catholic Church is unwilling to allow any appeal, expressly tells us that Cyprian[47], who called Tertullian the Master, never passed a single day without studying his works; and that after Tertullian had remained a presbyter of the Church to middle age, he was driven, by the envy and revilings of the members of the Roman Church, to fall from its unity, and espouse Montanism.  Bellarmin calls him a heretic, and says he is the first heretic who denied that the saints went at once and forthwith to glory. [Hieron. edit. 1684. tom. i. p. 183.]