He introduced a taste for philosophy among the Christians; and, though Athenagoras rather deserves that honour, he was called the founder of the catechetical school which gave birth to the series of learned Christian writers that flourished in Alexandria for the next century.  To have been a learned man and a Christian, and to have encouraged learning among the catechists in his schools may seem deserving of no great praise.  Was the religion of Jesus to spread ignorance and darkness over the world?  But we must remember that a new religion cannot be introduced without some danger that learning and science may get forbidden, together with the ancient superstitions which had been taught in the same schools; we shall hereafter see that in the quarrels between pagans and Christians, and again between the several sects of Christians, learning was often reproached with being unfavourable to true religion; and then it will be granted that it was no small merit to have founded a school in which learning and Christianity went hand in hand for nearly two centuries.  Pantaenus has left no writings of his own, and is best known through his pupil or fellow-student, Clemens.  He is said to have brought with him to Alexandria, from the Jewish Christians that he met with on his travels, a copy of St. Matthew’s Gospel in the original Hebrew, a work now unfortunately lost, which, if we possessed it, would settle for us the disputed point, whether or no it contained all that now bears that Apostle’s name in the Greek translation.

The learned, industrious, and pious Clemens, who, to distinguish him from Clemens of Rome, is usually called Clemens Alexandrinus, succeeded Pantaenus in the catechetical school, and was at the same time a voluminous writer.  He was in his philosophy a platonist, though sometimes called of the Eclectic school.  He has left an Address to the Gentiles, a treatise on Christian behaviour called Pedagogus, and eight books of Stromata, or collections, which he wrote to describe the perfect Christian or Gnostic, to furnish the believer with a model for his imitation, and to save him from being led astray by the sects of Gnostics “falsely so called.”  By his advice, and by the imitation of Christ, the Christian is to step forward from faith, through love, to knowledge; from being a slave, he is to become a faithful servant and then a son; he is to become at last a god walking in the flesh.

Clemens was not wholly free from the mysticism which was the chief mark of the Gnostic sect.  He thought much of the sacred power of numbers.  Abraham had three hundred and eighteen servants when he rescued Lot, which, when written in Greek numerals thus, IHT formed the sacred sign for the name of Jesus.  Ten was a perfect number, and is that of the commandments given to Moses.  Seven was a glorious number, and there are seven Pleiades, seven planets, seven days in the week; and the two fishes and five barley loaves, with which the multitude were miraculously fed, together make the number of years of plenty in Egypt under Joseph.  Clemens also quotes several lines in praise of the seventh day, which he says were from Homer, Hesiod, and Callimachus; but here there is reason to believe that he was deceived by the pious fraud of some zealous Jew or Christian, as no such lines are now to be found in the pagan poets.