Tertullian

Marcion of Sinope was a second century church leader who was later censured for differentiating the Old Testament God from the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in the New Testament. He dismissed the Old Testament God of wrath in favor of an edited New Testament deity of love and mercy. After he finished with his editing, Marcion had the God he wanted. Tertullian, who first coined the word “Trinity” to describe our eternal three-in-one God, lampooned Marcion with the words, “A better god has been discovered, one who is neither offended nor angry nor inflicts punishment, who has no fire warming up in hell, and no utter darkness where there is shuddering and gnashing of teeth, he is merely kind. Of course, he forbids you to sin—but only in writing.”
Tertullian (ca. 150-220) was born in North Africa, raised in a pagan home, and converted to Christ sometime in his early adult years. He practiced law until he devoted the later portion of his life to Christian writing. In the early third century, he wrote a treatise On Prayer that addressed catechumens (Christians in training). His prayer manual is divided into two sections: a commentary on the Lord’s Prayer (sections 1-9) followed by practical counsel about prayer (sections 10-29). It is telling that many early church fathers, Origen, Cyprian, and Tertullian among them, utilized the Lord’s Prayer as a primary teaching tool for prayer. Tertullian concluded his instruction on prayer with the words, “Prayer absolves sin, repels temptations, quenches persecutions, encourages the fainthearted, brings home wayfarers, calms the storm, confounds robbers, sustains the poor, rules the rich, lifts the fallen, supports the unstable, upholds them that stand. The angels, too, pray, all of them. The whole creation prays…Even the Lord himself prayed: to him be honor and power forever and ever. Amen.” His final words recall the twenty-four elders in Revelation who worship before the throne of God and pray: