[SECTION III.]—CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA—ABOUT THE YEAR 180.
Contemporary with Irenæus, and probably less than twenty years his junior, was Clement, the celebrated Christian philosopher of Alexandria. I am not aware that any Roman Catholic writer has appealed to the testimony of Clement in favour of the invocation of saints, nor have I found a single passage which the defenders of that practice would be likely to quote; and yet there are many passages which no one, anxious to trace the Catholic faith, would willingly neglect. The tendency of Clement's mind to blend with the simplicity of the Gospel of Christ the philosophy in which he so fully abounded, renders him far less valuable as a Christian teacher; but his evidence as to the matter of fact, is even rendered more cogent and pointed by this tendency of his mind. I would willingly have transferred to these pages whole passages of Clement, but the very nature of my address forbids it. Some sentences bearing on the subject immediately before us, we must not omit.
Clement has left on record many of his meditations upon the efficacy, the duty, and the blessed comfort of prayer. When he speaks of God, and of the Christian in prayer, (for prayer he defines to be "communion or intercourse with God,") his language becomes often exquisitely beautiful, and sometimes sublime. It is impossible by a few detached passages to convey an adequate estimate of the original; and yet a few sentences may show that Clement is a man whose testimony should not be slighted.
"Therefore, keeping the whole of our life as a feast every where, and on every part persuaded that God is present, we praise him as we till our lands; we sing hymns as we are sailing. The Christian is persuaded that God hears every thing; not the voice only, but the thoughts.... Suppose any one should say, that the voice does not reach God, revolving as it does in the air below; yet the thoughts of the saints cut not only through the air, but the whole world. And the divine power like the light is beforehand in seeing through the soul.... He" (the Christian whom he speaks of throughout as the man of divine knowledge) "prays for things essentially good.
"Wherefore it best becomes those to pray who have an adequate knowledge of God, and possess virtue in accordance with Him—who know what are real goods, and what we should petition for, and when, and how in each case. But it is the extreme of ignorance to ask from those who are not gods as though they were gods.... Whence since there is one only good God, both we ourselves and the angels supplicate from Him alone, that some good things might be given to us, and others might remain with us. In this way he (the Christian) is always in a state of purity fit for prayer. He prays with angels, as being himself equal with angels; and as one who is never beyond the holy protecting guard. And if he pray alone he has the whole choir of angels with him." [Stromata, lib. vii. § 7. p. 851, &c.; Section xii. p. 879.]
Clement has alluded to instances alleged by the Greeks of the effects of prayer, and he adds, "Our whole Scripture is full of instances of God hearing and granting every request according to the prayers of the just." [Lib. vi. § iii. p. 753.]
Having in the same section referred to the opinion of some Greeks as to the power of demons over the affairs of mortals, he adds, "But they think it matters nothing whether we speak of these as gods or as angels, calling the spirits of such 'demons,' and teaching that they should be worshipped by men, as having, by divine providence, on account of the purity of their lives, received authority to be conversant about earthly places, in order that they may minister to mortals." [Lib. vi. § iii. p. 755.]
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 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 Pædagogus 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.