The Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325
ANTE-NICENE FATHERS
VOLUME 3.
Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian
I. Apologetic; II. Anti-Marcion; III. Ethical
Edited by
Allan Menzies, D.D.
T&T CLARK
EDINBURGH
__________________________________________________
WM. B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING COMPANY
GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN
LATIN CHRISTIANITY:
ITS FOUNDER, TERTULLIAN
THREE PARTS: I. APOLOGETIC; II. ANTI-MARCION; III. ETHICAL.
——————————
AMERICAN EDITION.
Τὰ ἀρχαῖα ἔθη κρατείτω.
The Nicene Council
Preface.
————————————
We present a volume widely differing, in its contents, from those which have gone before; it contains the works of the great founder of Latin Christianity, the versatile and brilliant Tertullian. Not all his works, indeed, for they could not be contained in one of our books. This book, however, considerably overruns the promised number of pages, and gives three complete parts of Tertullian’s writings, according to the classification of our Editor-in-chief. The Fourth volume will begin with the fourth class of his works, those which exhibit our author’s ascetic ideas and the minor morals of the Primitive Christians, that collection being closed by the four treatises which were written in support of a defined and schismatical Montanism.
The Editor-in-chief has been in active correspondence with representative men of divers theological schools, hoping to secure their co-operation in editorial work. As yet, however, the result has not enabled us to announce more than one additional collaborator: the rapidity with which the successive volumes must be furnished proving an almost insurmountable obstacle in the way of securing as co-workers, divines actively engaged in professional duties and literary tasks. The sympathy and encouragement which have been expressed by all with whom a correspondence has been opened, have been most cheering. To the Rev. Dr. Riddle, of Hartford, well known as one of the most learned of the AmericaHærn Revisers of the New Testament, we are indebted for his consent to edit one of the concluding volumes of the Series, accompanying it with a Bibliographical Review of the entire Literature of the Patrologia of the Ante-Nicene period: supplying therein a compendious view of all the writers upon this period and of the latest critical editions of the Ante-Nicene authors themselves. The editor-in-chief will continue his annotations and the usual prefaces, in Professor Riddle’s volume, but will be relieved, in some degree, of the laborious and minute attention to details which earlier volumes have necessarily exacted.
It is needful to remind the reader that he possesses in this volume what has long been a desideratum among divines. The crabbed Latin of the great Tertullian has been thought to defy translation: and the variety and uncertain dates of his works have rendered classification and arrangement almost an equal difficulty. But here is the work achieved by competent hands, and now, for the first time, reduced to orderly and methodical plan. We have little doubt that the student on comparing our edition with that of the Edinburgh Series, will congratulate himself on the great gain of the arrangement; and we trust the original matter with which it is illustrated may be found not less acceptable.
Tertullian.
————————————
Part First.
Introductory Note.
————————————
[a.d. 145–220.] When our Lord repulsed the woman of Canaan (Matt. xv. 22) with apparent harshness, he applied to her people the epithet dogs, with which the children of Israel had thought it piety to reproach them. When He accepted her faith and caused it to be recorded for our learning, He did something more: He reversed the curse of the Canaanite and showed that the Church was designed “for all people;” Catholic alike for all time and for all sorts and conditions of men.
Thus the North-African Church was loved before it was born: the Good Shepherd was gently leading those “that were with young.” Here was the charter of those Christians to be a Church, who then were Canaanites in the land of their father Ham. It is remarkable indeed that among these pilgrims and strangers to the West the first elements of Latin Christianity come into view. Even at the close of the Second Century the Church in Rome is an inconsiderable, though prominent, member of the great confederation of Christian Churches which has its chief seats in Alexandria and Antioch, and of which the entire Literature is Greek. It is an African presbyter who takes from Latin Christendom the reproach of theological and literary barrenness and begins the great work in which, upon his foundations, Cyprian and Augustine built up, with incomparable genius, that Carthaginian School of Christian thought by which Latin Theology was dominated for centuries. It is important to note (1.) that providentially not one of these illustrious doctors died in Communion with the Roman See, pure though it was and venerable at that time; and (2.) that to the works of Augustine the Reformation in Germany and Continental Europe was largely due; while (3.) the specialties of the Anglican Reformation were, in like proportion, due to the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian. The hinges of great and controlling destinies for Western Europe and our own America are to be found in the period we are now approaching.
The merest school-boy knows much of the history of Carthage, and how the North Africans became Roman citizens. How they became Christians is not so clear. A melancholy destiny has enveloped Carthage from the outset, and its glory and greatness as a Christian See were transient indeed. It blazed out all at once in Tertullian, after about a century of missionary labours had been exerted upon its creation: and having given a Minucius Felix, an Arnobius and a Lactantius to adorn the earliest period of Western Ecclesiastical learning, in addition to its nobler luminaries, it rapidly declined. At the beginning of the Third Century, at a council presided over by Agrippinus, Bishop of Carthage, there were present not less than seventy bishops of the Province. A period of cruel persecutions followed, and the African Church received a baptism of blood.
Tertullian was born a heathen, and seems to have been educated at Rome, where he probably practiced as a jurisconsult. We may, perhaps, adopt most of the ideas of Allix, as conjecturally probable, and assign his birth to a.d. 145. He became a Christian about 185, and a presbyter about 190. The period of his strict orthodoxy very nearly expires with the century. He lived to an extreme old age, and some suppose even till a.d. 240. More probably we must adopt the date preferred by recent writers, a.d. 220.
It seems to be the fashion to treat of Tertullian as a Montanist, and only incidentally to celebrate his services to the Catholic Orthodoxy of Western Christendom. Were I his biographer I should reverse this course, as a mere act of justice, to say nothing of gratitude to a man of splendid intellect, to whom the filial spirit of Cyprian accorded the loving tribute of a disciple, and whose genius stamped itself upon the very words of Latin theology, and prepared the language for the labours of a Jerome. In creating the Vulgate, and so lifting the Western Churches into a position of intellectual equality with the East, the latter as well as St. Augustine himself were debtors to Tertullian in a degree not to be estimated by any other than the Providential Mind that inspired his brilliant career as a Christian.
In speaking of Tatian I laid the base for what I wished to say of Tertullian. Let God only be their judge; let us gratefully recognize the debt we owe to them. Let us read them, as we read the works of King Solomon. We must, indeed, approve of the discipline of the Primitive Age, which allowed of no compromises. The Church was struggling for existence, and could not permit any man to become her master. The more brilliant the intellect, the more dangerous to the poor Church were its perversions of her Testimony. Before the heathen tribunals, and in the market-places, it would not answer to let Christianity appear double-tongued. The orthodoxy of the Church, not less than her children, was undergoing an ordeal of fire. It seems a miracle that her Testimony preserved its unity, and that heresy was branded as such by the instinct of the Faithful. Poor Tertullian was cut off by his own act. The weeping Church might bewail him as David mourned for Absalom, but like David, she could not give the Ark of God into other hands than those of the loyal and the true. I have set the writings of Tertullian in a natural and logical order 1 , so as to aid the student, and to relieve him from the distractions of such an arrangement as one finds in Oehler’s edition. Valuable as it is, the practical use of it is irritating and confusing. The reader of that edition may turn to the slightly differing schemes of Neander and Kaye, for a theoretical order of the works; but here he will find a classification which will aid his inquiries. He will find, first, those works which connect with the Apologists of the former volumes of this series: which illustrate the Church’s position toward the outside world, the Jews as well as the Gentiles. Next come those works which contend with internal differences and heresies. And then, those which reflect the morals and manners of Christians. These are classed with some reference to their degrees of freedom from the Montanistic taint, and are followed, last of all, by the few tracts which belong to the melancholy period of his lapse, and are directed against the Church’s orthodoxy.
Let it be borne in mind, that if this sad close of Tertullian’s career cannot be extenuated, the later history of Latin Christianity forbids us to condemn him, in the tones which proceeded from the Virgin Church with authority, and which the law of her testimony and the instinct of self-preservation forced her to utter. Let us reflect that St. Bernard and after him the Schoolmen, whom we so deservedly honour, separated themselves far more absolutely than ever Tertullian did from the orthodoxy of Primitive Christendom. The schism which withdrew the West from Communion with the original seats of Christendom, and from Nicene Catholicity, was formidable beyond all expression, in comparison with Tertullian’s entanglements with a delusion which the See of Rome itself had momentarily patronized. Since the Council of Trent, not a theologian of the Latins has been free from organic heresies, compared with which the fanaticism of our author was a trifling aberration. Since the late Council of the Vatican, essential Montanism has become organized in the Latin Churches: for what are the new revelations and oracles of the pontiff but the deliria of another claimant to the voice and inspiration of the Paraclete? Poor Tertullian! The sad influences of his decline and folly have been fatally felt in all the subsequent history of the West, but, surely subscribers to the Modern Creed of the Vatican have reason to “speak gently of their father’s fall.” To Döllinger, with the “Old Catholic” remnant only, is left the right to name the Montanists heretics, or to upbraid Tertullian as a lapser from Catholicity. 2
From Dr. Holmes, I append the following Introductory Notice: 3
(I.) Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, as our author is called in the mss. of his works, is thus noticed by Jerome in his Catalogus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum: 4 “Tertullian, a presbyter, the first Latin writer after Victor and Apollonius, was a native of the province of Africa and city of Carthage, the son of a proconsular centurion: he was a man of a sharp and vehement temper, flourished under Severus and Antoninus Caracalla, and wrote numerous works, which (as they are generally known) I think it unnecessary to particularize. I saw at Concordia, in Italy, an old man named Paulus. He said that when young he had met at Rome with an aged amanuensis of the blessed Cyprian, who told him that Cyprian never passed a day without reading some portion of Tertullian’s works, and used frequently to say, Give me my master, meaning Tertullian. After remaining a presbyter of the church until he had attained the middle age of life, Tertullian was, by the envy and contumelious treatment of the Roman clergy, driven to embrace the opinions of Montanus, which he has mentioned in several of his works under the title of the New Prophecy.…He is reported to have lived to a very advanced age, and to have composed many other works which are not extant.” We add Bishop Kaye’s notes on this extract, in an abridged shape: “The correctness of some parts of this account has been questioned. Doubts have been entertained whether Tertullian was a presbyter, although these have solely arisen from Roman Catholic objections to a married priesthood; for it is certain that he was married, there being among his works two treatises addressed to his wife.…Another question has been raised respecting the place where Tertullian officiated as a presbyter—whether at Carthage or at Rome. That he at one time resided at Carthage may be inferred from Jerome’s statement, and is rendered certain by several passages of his own writings. Allix supposes that the notion of his having been a presbyter of the Roman Church owed its rise to what Jerome said of the envy and abuse of the Roman clergy impelling him to espouse the party of Montanus. Optatus, 5 and the author of the work de Hæresibus, which Sirmond edited under the title of Prædestinatus, expressly call him a Carthaginian presbyter. Semler, however, in a dissertation inserted in his edition of Tertullian’s works, 6 contends that he was a presbyter of the Roman Church. Eusebius 7 tells us that he was accurately acquainted with the Roman laws, and on other accounts a distinguished person at Rome. 8 Tertullian displays, moreover, a knowledge of the proceedings of the Roman Church with respect to Marcion and Valentinus, who were once members of it, which could scarcely have been obtained by one who had not himself been numbered amongst its presbyters. 9 Semler admits that, after Tertullian seceded from the church, he left and returned to Carthage. Jerome does not inform us whether Tertullian was born of Christian parents, or was converted to Christianity. There are passages in his writings 10 which seem to imply that he had been a Gentile; yet he may perhaps mean to describe, not his own condition, but that of Gentiles in general, before their conversion. Allix and the majority of commentators understand them literally, as well as some other passages in which he speaks of his own infirmities and sinfulness. His writings show that he flourished at the period specified by Jerome—that is, during the reigns of Severus and Antoninus Caracalla, or between the years a.d. 193 and 216; but they supply no precise information respecting the date of his birth, or any of the principal occurrences of his life. Allix places his birth about 145 or 150; his conversion to Christianity about a.d. 185; his marriage about 186; his admission to the priesthood 11 about 192; his adoption of the opinions of Montanus about 199; and his death about a.d. 220. But these dates, it must be understood, rest entirely on conjecture.” 12
(II.) Tertullian’s work against Marcion, as it happens, is, as to its date, the best authenticated—perhaps the only well authenticated—particular connected with the author’s life. He himself 13 mentions the fifteenth year of the reign of Severus as the time when he was writing the work: “Ad xv. jam Severi imperatoris.” This agrees with Jerome’s Chronicle, where occurs this note: “Anno 2223 Severi xvº Tertullianus…celebratur.” 14 This year is assigned to the year of our Lord 207; 15 but notwithstanding the certainty of this date, it is far from clear that it describes more than the time of the publication of the first book. On the contrary, it is nearly certain that the other books, although connected manifestly enough in the author’s argument and purpose (compare the initial and the final chapters of the several books), were yet issued at separate times. Noesselt 16 shows that between the Book i. and Books ii.–iv. Tertullian issued his De Præscript. Hæret., and previous to Book v. he published his tracts, De Carne Christi and De Resurrectione Carnis. After giving the incontestable date of the xv. of Severus for the first book, he says it is a mistake to suppose that the other books were published with it. He adds: “Although we cannot undertake to determine whether Tertullian issued his Books ii., iii., iv., against Marcion, together or separately, or in what year, we yet venture to affirm that Book v. appeared apart from the rest. For the tract De Resurr. Carnis appears from its second chapter to have been published after the tract De Carne Christi, in which latter work (chap. vii.) he quotes a passage from the fourth book against Marcion. But in his Book v. against Marcion (chap. x.), he refers to his work De Resurr. Carnis; which circumstance makes it evident that Tertullian published his Book v. at a different time from his Book iv. In his Book i. he announces his intention (chap. i.) of some time or other completing his tract De Præscript. Hæret., but in his book De Carne Christi (chap. ii.), he mentions how he had completed it,—a conclusive proof that his Book i. against Marcion preceded the other books.”
(III.) Respecting Marcion himself, the most formidable heretic who had as yet opposed revealed truth, enough will turn up in this treatise, with the notes which we have added in explanation, to satisfy the reader. It will, however, be convenient to give here a few introductory particulars of him. Tertullian 17 mentions Marcion as being, with Valentinus, in communion with the Church at Rome, “under the episcopate of the blessed Eleutherus.” He goes on to charge them with “ever-restless curiosity, with which they infected even the brethren;” and informs us that they were more than once put out of communion—“Marcion, indeed, with the 200 sesterces which he brought into the church.” 18 He goes on to say, that “being at last condemned to the banishment of a perpetual separation, they sowed abroad the poisons of their doctrines. Afterwards, when Marcion, having professed penitence, agreed to the terms offered to him, that he should receive reconciliation on condition that he brought back to the church the rest also, whom he had trained up for perdition, he was prevented by death.” He was a native of Sinope in Pontus, of which city, according to an account preserved by Epiphanius, 19 which, however, is somewhat doubtful, his father was bishop, and of high character both for his orthodoxy and exemplary practice. He came to Rome soon after the death of Hyginus, probably about a.d. 141 or 142; and soon after his arrival he adopted the heresy of Cerdon. 20
(IV.) It is an interesting question as to what edition of the Holy Scriptures Tertullian used in his very copious quotations. It may at once be asserted that he did not cite from the Hebrew, although some writers have claimed for him, among his varied learning, a knowledge of the sacred language. Bp. Kaye observes, page 61, n. 1, that “he sometimes speaks as if he was acquainted with Hebrew,” and refers to the Anti-Marcion iv. 39, the Adv. Praxeam v., and the Adv. Judæos ix. Be this as it may, it is manifest that Tertullian’s Scripture passages never resemble the Hebrew, but in nearly every instance the Septuagint, whenever, as is most frequently the case, that version differs from the original. In the New Testament there is, as might be expected, a tolerably close conformity to the Greek. There is, however, it must be allowed, a sufficiently frequent variation from the letter of both the Greek Testaments to justify Semler’s suspicion that Tertullian always quoted from the old Latin version, 21 whatever that might have been, which was current in the African church in the second and third centuries. The most valuable part of Semler’s Dissertatio de varia et incerta indole Librorum Q. S. F. Tertulliani is his investigation of this very point. In section iv. he endeavours to prove this proposition: “Hic scriptor 22 non in manibus habuit Græcos libros sacros;” and he states his conclusion thus: “Certissimum est nec Tertullianum nec Cyprianum nec ullum scriptorem e Latinis illis ecclesiasticis provocare unquam ad Græcorum librorum auctoritatem si vel maxime obscura aut contraria lectio occurreret;” and again: “Ex his satis certum est, Latinos satis diu secutos fuisse auctoritatem suorum librorum adversus Græcos, nec concessisse nisi serius, cum Augustini et Hieronymi nova auctoritas juvare videretur.” It is not ignorance of Greek which is imputed to Tertullian, for he is said to have well understood that language, and even to have composed in it. He probably followed the Latin, as writers now usually quote the authorized English, as being current and best known among their readers. Independent feeling, also, would have weight with such a temper as Tertullian’s, to say nothing of the suspicion which largely prevailed in the African branch of the Latin church, that the Greek copies of the Scriptures were much corrupted by the heretics, who were chiefly, if not wholly, Greeks or Greek-speaking persons.
(V.) Whatever perverting effect Tertullian’s secession to the sect of Montanus 23 may have had on his judgment in his latest writings, it did not vitiate the work against Marcion. With a few trivial exceptions, this treatise may be read by the strictest Catholic without any feeling of annoyance. His lapse to Montanism is set down conjecturally as having taken place a.d. 199. Jerome, we have seen, attributed the event to his quarrel with the Roman clergy, but this is at least doubtful; nor must it be forgotten that Tertullian’s mind seems to have been peculiarly suited by nature 24 to adopt the mystical notions and ascetic principles of Montanus. It is satisfactory to find that, on the whole, “the authority of Tertullian,” as the learned Dr. Burton says, “upon great points of doctrine is considered to be little, if at all, affected by his becoming a Montanist.” (Lectures on Eccl. Hist. vol. ii. p. 234.) Besides the different works which are expressly mentioned in the notes of this volume, recourse has been had by the translator to Dupin’s Hist. Eccl. Writers (trans.), vol. i. pp. 69–86; Tillemont’s Mèmoires Hist. Eccl. iii. 85–103; Dr. Smith’s Greek and Roman Biography, articles “Marcion” and “Tertullian;” Schaff’s article, in Herzog’s Cyclopædia, on “Tertullian;” Munter’s Primordia Eccl. Africanæ, pp. 118–150; Robertson’s Church Hist. vol. i. pp. 70–77; Dr. P. Schaff’s Hist. of Christian Church (New York, 1859, pp. 511–519), and Archdeacon Evans’ Biography of the Early Church, vol. i. (Lives of “Marcion,” pp. 93–122, and “Tertullian,” pp. 325–363). This last work, though of a popular cast, shows a good deal of research and learning, expressed in the pleasant style of the once popular author of The Rectory of Vale Head. The translator has mentioned these works, because they are all quite accessible to the general reader, and will give him adequate information concerning the subject treated in the present volume.
To this introduction of Dr. Holmes must be added that of Mr. Thelwall, the translator of the Third volume in the Edinburgh Series, as follows:
To arrange chronologically the works (especially if numerous) of an author whose own date is known with tolerable precision, is not always or necessarily easy: witness the controversies as to the succession of St. Paul’s epistles. To do this in the case of an author whose own date is itself a matter of controversy may therefore be reasonably expected to be still less so; and such is the predicament of him who attempts to perform this task for Tertullian. I propose to give a specimen or two of the difficulties with which the task is beset; and then to lay before the reader briefly a summary of the results at which eminent scholars, who have devoted much time and thought to the subject, have arrived. Such a course, I think, will at once afford him means of judging of the absolute impossibility of arriving at definite certainty in the matter; and induce him to excuse me if I prefer furnishing him with materials from which to deduce his own conclusions, rather than venturing on an ex cathedra decision on so doubtful a subject.
I. The book, as Dr. Holmes has reminded us, 25 of the date of which we seem to have the surest evidence, is Adv. Marc. i. This book was in course of writing, as its author himself (c. 15) tells us, “in the fifteenth year of the empire of Severus.” Now this date would be clear if there were no doubt as to which year of our era corresponds to Tertullian’s fifteenth of Severus. Pamelius, however, says Dr. Holmes, makes it a.d. 208; Clinton, (whose authority is more recent and better,) 207.
2. Another book which promises to give some clue to its date is the de Pallio. 26 The writer uses these phrases: “præsentis imperii triplex virtus;” “Deo tot Augustis in unum favente;” which show that there were at the time three persons unitedly bearing the title Augusti—not Cæsares only, but the still higher Augusti;—while the remainder of that context, as well as the opening of c. 1, indicates a time of peace of some considerable duration; a time of plenty; and a time during and previous to which great changes had taken place in the general aspect of the Roman Empire, and some particular traitor had been discovered and frustrated. Such a combination of circumstances might seem to fix the date with some degree of assurance. But unhappily, as Kaye reminds us, 27 commentators cannot agree as to who the three Augusti are. Some say Severus, Caracalla, and Albinus; some say Severus, Caracalla, and Geta. Hence we have a difference of some twelve years or thereabouts in the computations. For Albinus was defeated by Severus in person, and fell by his own hand, in a.d. 197; and Geta, Severus’ second son, brother of Caracalla, was not associated by his father with himself and his other son as Augustus until a.d. 208, though he had received the title of Cæsar ten years before, in the same year in which Caracalla had received that of Augustus. 28 For my own part, I may perhaps be allowed to say that I should incline to agree, like Salmasius, with those who assign the later date. The limits of the present Introduction forbid my entering at large into my reasons for so doing. I am, however, supported in it by the authority of Neander. 29 In one point, though, I should hesitate to agree with Oehler, who appears to follow Salmasius and others herein,—namely, in understanding the expression “et cacto et rubo subdolæ familiaritatis convulso” of Albinus. It seems to me the words might with more propriety be applied to Plautianus; and that in the word “familiaritatis” we may see (after Tertullian’s fashion) a play upon the meaning, with a reference not only to the long-standing but mischievous intimacy which existed between Severus and his countryman (perhaps fellow-townsman) Plautianus, who for his harshness and cruelty is fitly compared to the prickly cactus. He alludes likewise to the alliance which this ambitious prætorian præfect had contrived to contract with the family of the emperor, by the marriage of his daughter Plautilla to Caracalla,—an event which, as it turned out, led to his own death. Thus in the “rubo” there may be a reference to the ambitious and conceited “bramble” of Jotham’s parable, 30 and perhaps, too, to the “thistle” of Jehoash’s. 31 If this be so, the date would be at least approximately fixed, as Plautianus did not marry his daughter to Caracalla till a.d. 203, and was himself put to death in the following year, 204, while Geta, as we have seen, was made Augustus in 208.
3. The date of the Apology, however, is perhaps at once the most contested, and the most strikingly illustrative of the difficulties to which allusion has been made. It is not surprising that its date should have been more disputed than that of other pieces, inasmuch as it is the best known, and (for some reasons) the most interesting and famous, of all our author’s productions. In fact, the dates assigned to it by different authorities vary from Mosheim’s 198 to that suggested by the very learned Allix, who assigns it to 217. 32
4. Once more. In the tract de Monogamia (c. 3) the author says that since the date of St. Paul’s first Epistle to the Corinthians “about 160 years had elapsed.” Here, again, did we only know with certainty the precise date of that epistle, we could ascertain “about” the date of the tract. But (a) the date of the epistle is itself variously given, Burton giving it as early as a.d. 52, Michaelis and Mill as late as 57; and (b) Tertullian only says, “Armis circiter clx. exinde productis;” while the way in which, in the ad Natt., within the short space of three chapters, he states first 33 that 250, and then (in c. 9) that 300, years had not elapsed since the rise of the Christian name, leads us to think that here again 34 he only desires to speak in round numbers, meaning perhaps more than 150, but less than 170.
These specimens must suffice, though it might be easy to add to them. There is, however, another classification of our author’s writings which has been attempted. Finding the haplessness of strict chronological accuracy, commentators have seized on the idea that peradventure there might be found at all events some internal marks by which to determine which of them were written before, which after, the writer’s secession to Montanism. It may be confessed that this attempt has been somewhat more successful than the other. Yet even here there are two formidable obstacles standing in our way. The first and greatest is, that the natural temper of Tertullian was from the first so akin to the spirit of Montanism, that, unless there occur distinct allusions to the “New Prophecy,” or expressions specially connected with Montanistic phraseology, the general tone of any treatise is not a very safe guide. The second is, that the subject-matter of some of the treatises is not such as to afford much scope for the introduction of the peculiarities of a sect which professed to differ in discipline only, not doctrine, from the church at large.
Still the result of this classification seems to show one important feature of agreement between commentators, however they may differ upon details; and that is, that considerably the larger part of our author’s rather voluminous productions 35 must have been subsequent to his lamented secession. I think the best way to give the reader means for forming his own judgment will be, as I have said, to lay before him in parallel columns a tabular view of the disposition of the books by Dr. Neander and Bishop Kaye. These two modern writers, having given particular care to the subject, bringing to bear upon it all the advantages derived from wide reading, eminent abilities, and a diligent study of the works of preceding writers on the same questions, 36 have a special right to be heard upon the matter in hand; and I think, if I may be allowed to say so, that, for calm judgment, and minute acquaintance with his author, I shall not be accused of undue partiality if I express my opinion that, as far as my own observation goes, the palm must be awarded to the Bishop. In this view I am supported by the fact that the accomplished Professor Ramsay, 37 follows Dr. Kaye’s arrangement. I premise that Dr. Neander adopts a threefold division, into:
1. Writings which were occasioned by the relation of the Christians to the heathen, and refer to their vindication of Christianity against the heathen; attacks on heathenism; the sufferings and conduct of Christians under persecution; and the intercourse of Christians with heathens:
2. Writings which relate to Christian and church life, and to ecclesiastical discipline:
3. The dogmatic and dogmatico-controversial treatises.
And under each head he subdivides into:
a. Pre-Montanist writings; b. Post-Montanist writings:
thus leaving no room for what Kaye calls “works respecting which nothing certain can be pronounced.” For the sake of clearness, this order has not been followed in the table. On the other side, it will be seen that Dr. Kaye, while not assuming to speak with more than a reasonable probability, is careful so to arrange the treatises under each head as to show the order, so far as it is discoverable, in which the books under that head were published; i.e., if one book is quoted in another book, the book so quoted, if distinctly referred to as already before the world, is plainly anterior to that in which it is quoted. Thus, then, have:
Neander.
I. Pre-Montanist.
1. De Pœnitentia.
2. De Oratione.
3. De Baptismo.
4. Ad Uxorem i.
5. Ad Uxorem ii.
6. Ad Martyres.
7. De Patientia.
8. De Spectaculis.
9. De Idololatria.
10. 11. Ad Nationes i. ii.
12. Apologeticus.
13. De Testimonio Animæ.
14. De Præscr. Hæreticorum.
15. De Cult. Fem. i.
16. De Cult. Fem. ii.
II. Montanist.
17–21. Adv. Marc. i. ii. iii. iv. v.
22. De Anima.
23. De Carne Christi.
24. De Res. Carn.
25. De Cor. Mil.
26. De Virg. Vel.
27. De Ex. Cast.
28. De Monog.
29. De Jejuniis.
30. De Pudicitia.
31. De Pallio.
32. Scorpiace.
33. Ad Scapulam.
34. Adv. Valentinianos.
35. Adv. Hermogenem.
36. Adv. Praxeam.
37. Adv. Judæos.
38. De Fuga in Persecutione.
Kaye.
I. Pre-Montanist (probably).
1. De Pœnitentia. 38
2. De Oratione.
3. De Baptismo.
4. Ad Uxorem i.
5. Ad Uxorem ii.
6. Ad Martyres.
7. De Patientia.
8. Adv. Judæos.
9. De Præscr. Hæreticorum. 39
II. Montanist (certainly).
10. Adv. Marc. i.
11. Adv. Marc. ii. 40
12. De Anima. 41
13. Adv. Marc. iii.
14. Adv. Marc. iv. 42
15. De Carne Christi. 43
16. De Resurrectione Carnis. 44
17. Adv. Marc. v.
18. Adv. Praxeam.
19. Scorpiace. 45
20. De Corona Militis.
21. De Virginibus Velandis.
22. De Exhortatione Castitatis.
23. De Fuga in Persecutione.
24. De Monogamia. 46
25. De Jejuniis.
26. De Pudicitia.
III. Montanist (probably).
27. Adv. Valentinianos.
28. Ad Scapulam.
29. De Spectaculis. 47
30. De Idololatria.
31. De Cultu Feminarum i.
32. De Cultu Feminarum ii.
IV. Works respecting which nothing certain can be pronounced.
33. The Apology. 48
34. Ad Nationes i.
35. Ad Nationes ii.
36. De Testimonio Animæ.
37. De Pallio.
38. Adv. Hermogenem.
A comparison of these two lists will show that the difference between the two great authorities is, as Kaye remarks, “not great; and with respect to some of the tracts on which we differ, the learned author expresses himself with great diffidence.” 49 The main difference, in fact, is that which affects two tracts upon kindred subjects, the de Spectaculis, and Idololatria, the de Cultu Feminarum (a subject akin to the other two), and the adv. Judæos. With reference to all these, except the last, to which I believe the Archdeacon does not once refer, the Bishop’s opinion appears to have the support of Archdeacon Evans, whose learned and interesting essay, referred to in the note, appears in a volume published in 1837. Dr. Kaye’s Lectures, on which his book is founded, were delivered in 1825. Of the date of his first edition I am not aware. Dr. Neander’s Antignostikus also first appeared in 1825. The preface to his second edition bears date July 1, 1849 50 . As to the adv. Judæos, I confess I agree with Neander in thinking that, at all events from the beginning of c. 9, it is spurious. If it be urged that Jerome expressly quotes it as Tertullian’s, I reply, Jerome so quotes it, I believe, when he is expounding Daniel. Now all that the adv. Jud. has to say about Daniel ends with the end of c. 8. It is therefore quite compatible with the fact thus stated to recognize the earlier half of the book as genuine, and to reject the rest, beginning, as it happens, just after the eighth chapter, as spurious. Perhaps Dr. Neander’s Jewish birth and training peculiarly fit him to be heard on this question. Nor do I think Professor Ramsay (in the article above alluded to) has quite seen the force of Kaye’s own remarks on Neander. 51 What he does say is equally creditable to his candour and his accuracy; namely: “The instances alleged by Dr. Neander, in proof of this position, are undoubtedly very remarkable; but if the concluding chapters of the tract are spurious, no ground seems to be left for asserting that the genuine portion was posterior to the third Book against Marcion, 52 —and none, consequently, for asserting that it was written by a Montanist.” With which remark I must draw these observations on the genuine extant works of Tertullian to a close.
The next point to which a brief reference must be made is the lost works of Tertullian, lists of these are given both by Oehler and by Kaye, viz.:
1. A Book on Aaron’s Robes: mentioned by Jerome, Epist. 128, ad Fabiolam de Veste Sacerdotali (tom. ii. p. 586, Opp. ed. Bened.).
2. A Book on the Superstition of the Age. 53
3. A Book on the Submission of the Soul.
4. A Book on the Flesh and the Soul.
Nos. 2, 3, and 4 are known only by their titles, which are found in the Index to Tertullian’s works given in the Codex Agobardi; but the tracts themselves are not extant in the ms., which appears to have once contained—
5. A Book on Paradise, named in the Index, and referred to in de Anima 55, adv. Marc. iii. 12; and
6. A Book on the Hope of the Faithful: also named in the Index, and referred to adv. Marc. iii. 24; and by Jerome in his account of Papias, 54 and on Ezek. xxxvi.; 55 and by Gennadius of Marseilles. 56
7. Six Books on Ecstasy, with a seventh in reply to Apollonius: 57 see Jerome. 58 See, too, J. A. Fabricius on the words of the unknown author whom the Jesuit Sirmond edited under the name Prædestinatus; who gathers thence that “Soter, pope of the City, 59 and Apollonius, bishop 60 of the Ephesians, wrote a book against the Montanists; in reply to whom Tertullian, a Carthaginian presbyter, wrote.” J. Pamelius thinks these seven books were originally published in Greek.
8. A Book in reply to the Apellesites (i.e. the followers of Apelles 61 ): referred to in de Carne Christi, c. 8.
9. A Book on the Origin 62 of the Soul, in reply to Hermogenes: referred to in de Anima, cc. 1, 3, 22, 24.
10. A Book on Fate: referred to by Fulgentius Planciades, p. 562, Merc.; also referred to as either written, or intended to be written, by Tertullian himself, de Anima, c. 20. Jerome 63 states that there was extant, or had been extant, a book on Fate under the name of Minucius Felix, written indeed by a perspicuous author, but not in the style of Minucius Felix. This, Pamelius judged, should perhaps be rather ascribed to Tertullian.
11. A Book on the Trinity. Jerome 64 says: “Novatian wrote.…a large volume on the Trinity, as if making an epitome of a work of Tertullian’s, which most men not knowing regard it as Cyprian’s.” Novatian’s book stood in Tertullian’s name in the mss. of J. Gangneius, who was the first to edit it; in a Malmesbury ms. which Sig. Gelenius used; and in others.
12. A Book addressed to a Philosophic Friend on the Straits of Matrimony. Both Kaye and Oehler 65 are in doubt whether Jerome’s words, 66 by which some have been led to conclude that Tertullian wrote some book or books on this and kindred subjects, really imply as much, or whether they may not refer merely to those tracts and passages in his extant writings which touch upon such matters. Kaye hesitates to think that the “Book to a Philosophic Friend” is the same as the de Exhortatione Castitatis, because Jerome says Tertullian wrote on the subject of celibacy “in his youth;” but as Cave takes what Jerome elsewhere says of Tertullian’s leaving the Church “about the middle of his age” to mean his spiritual age, the same sense might attach to his words here too, and thus obviate the Bishop’s difficulty.
There are some other works which have been attributed to Tertullian—on Circumcision; on Animals Clean and Unclean; on the truth that God is a Judge—which Oehler likewise rejects, believing that the expressions of Jerome refer only to passages in the Anti-Marcion and other extant works. To Novatian Jerome does ascribe a distinct work on Circumcision, 67 and this may (comp. 11, just above) have given rise to the view that Tertullian had written one also.
There were, moreover, three treatises at least written by Tertullian in Greek. They are:
1. A Book on Public Shows. See de Cor. c. 6.
2. A Book on Baptism. See de Bapt. c. 15.
3. A Book on the Veiling of Virgins. See de V. V. c. 1.
Oehler adds that J. Pamelius, in his epistle dedicatory to Philip II. of Spain, makes mention of a Greek copy of Tertullian in the library of that king. This report, however, since nothing has ever been seen or heard of the said copy from that time, Oehler judges to be erroneous. 68
It remains briefly to notice the confessedly spurious works which the editions of Tertullian generally have appended to them. With these Kaye does not deal. The fragment, adv. omnes Hæreses, Oehler attributes to Victorinus Petavionensis, i.e., Victorinus bishop of Pettaw, on the Drave, in Austrian Styria. It was once thought he ought to be called Pictaviensis, i.e. of Poictiers; but John Launoy 69 has shown this to be an error. Victorinus is said by Jerome to have “understood Greek better than Latin; hence his works are excellent for the sense, but mean as to the style.” 70 Cave believes him to have been a Greek by birth. Cassiodorus 71 states him to have been once a professor of rhetoric. Jerome’s statement agrees with the style of the tract in question; and Jerome distinctly says Victorinus did write adversus omnes Hæreses. Allix leaves the question of its authorship quite uncertain. If Victorinus be the author, the book falls clearly within the Ante-Nicene period; for Victorinus fell a martyr in the Diocletian persecution, probably about a.d. 303.
The next fragment—“Of the Execrable Gods of the Heathens”—is of quite uncertain authorship. Oehler would attribute it “to some declaimer not quite ignorant of Tertullian’s writings,” but certainly not to Tertullian himself.
Lastly we come to the metrical fragments. Concerning these, it is perhaps impossible to assign them to their rightful owners. Oehler has not troubled himself much about them; but he seems to regard the Jonah as worthy of more regard than the rest, for he seems to have intended giving more labour to its editing at some future time. Whether he has ever done so, or given us his German version of Tertullian’s own works, which, “si Deus adjuverit,” he distinctly promises in his preface, I do not know. Perhaps the best thing to be done under the circumstances is to give the judgment of the learned Peter Allix. It may be premised that by the celebrated George Fabricius 72 —who published his great work, Poetarum Veterum Ecclesiasticorum Opera Christiana, etc., in 1564—the Five Books in Reply to Marcion, and the Judgment of the Lord, are ascribed to Tertullian, the Genesis and Sodom to Cyprian. Pamelius likewise seems to have ascribed the Five Books, the Jonah, and the Sodom 73 to Tertullian; and according to Lardner, Bishop Bull likewise attributed the Five Books to him. 74 They have been generally ascribed to the Victorinus above mentioned. Tillemont, among others, thinks they may well enough be his. 75 Rigaltius is content to demonstrate that they are not Tertullian’s, but leaves the real authorship without attempting to decide it. Of the others the same eminent critic says, “They seem to have been written at Carthage, at an age not far removed from Tertullian’s.” 76 Allix, after observing that Pamelius is inconsistent with himself in attributing the Genesis and Sodom at one time to Tertullian, at another to Cyprian, rejects both views equally, and assigns the Genesis with some confidence to Salvian, a presbyter of Marseilles, whose “floruit” Cave gives cir. 440, a contemporary of Gennadius, and a copious author. To this it is, Allix thinks, that Gennadius alludes in his Catalogue of Illustrious Men, c. 77.
The Judgment of the Lord Allix ascribes to one Verecundus, an African bishop, whose date he finds it difficult to decide exactly. He refers to two of the name: one Bishop of Tunis, whom Victor of Tunis in his chronicle mentions as having died in exile at Chalcedon a.d. 552; the other Bishop of Noba, who visited Carthage with many others a.d. 482, at the summons of King Huneric, to answer there for their faith;—and would ascribe the poem to the former, thinking that he finds an allusion to it in the article upon that Verecundus in the de Viris Illustribus of Isidore of Seville. Oehler agrees with him. The Five Books Allix seems to hint may be attributed to some imitator of the Victorinus of Pettaw named above. Oehler attributes them rather to one Victorinus, or Victor, of Marseilles, a rhetorician, who died a.d. 450. He appears in G. Fabricius as Claudius Marius Victorinus, writer of a Commentary on Genesis, and an epistle ad Salomonem Abbata, both in verse, and of some considerable length.
Footnotes
4:1Elucidation I.
5:2The notes of Dr. Holmes were bracketted, and I have been forced to remove this feature, as brackets are tokens in this edition of the contributions of American editors. The perpetual recurrence of brackets in his translations has led me to improve the page by parenthetical marks instead, which answer as well and rarely can be mistaken for the author’s parentheses, while these disfigure the printer’s work much less. I have sometimes substituted italics for brackets, where an inconsiderable word, like and or for, was bracketted by the translator. In every case that I have noted, an intelligent reader will readily perceive such instances; but a critic who may wish to praise, or condemn, should carefully compare the Edinburgh pages with our own. I found them so painful to the eye and so needlessly annoying to the reader, that I have taken the responsibility of making what seems to me a very great typographical improvement.
5:3(I.) Concerning Tertullian; (II.) Concerning his Work against Marcion, its date, etc.; (III.) Concerning Marcion; (IV.) Concerning Tertullian’s Bible; (V.) Influence of his Montanism on his writings.
5:4We quote Bishop Kaye’s translation of Jerome’s article; see his Account of the Writings of Tertullian, pp. 5–8.
5:5Adv. Parmenianum, i.
5:6Chap. ii.
5:7Eccl. Hist., ii. 2.
5:8Valesius, however, supposes the historian’s words τῶν μάλιστα ἐπὶ ῾Ρώμης λαμπρῶν to mean, that Tertullian had obtained distinction among Latin writers.
6:9See De Præscript. Hæretic. xxx.
6:10De Pœnitentia, i. Hoc genus hominum, quod et ipsi retro fuimus, cæci, sine Domini lumine, naturâ tenus norunt; De Fuga in Persecutione, vi. Nobis autem et via nationum patet, in quâ et inventi sumus; Adv. Marcionem, iii. 21. Et nationes, quod sumus nos; Apolog. xviii. Hæc et nos risimus aliquando; de vestris fuimus; also De Spectac. xix.
6:11[Kaye, p. 9. A fair view of this point.]
6:12These notes of Bishop Kaye may be found, in their fuller form, in his work on Tertullian, pp. 8–12.
6:13Book i., chap. xv.
6:14Jerome probably took this date as the central period, when Tertullian “flourished,” because of its being the only clearly authenticated one, and because also (it may be) of the importance and fame of the Treatise against Marcion.
6:15So Clinton, Fasti Romani, i. 204; or 208, Pamelius, Vita Tertull.
6:16In his treatise, De vera ætate ac doctrina script. Tertulliani, sections 28, 45.
7:17De Præscript. Hæret. xxx.
7:18Comp. Adv. Marcionem, iv. 4.
7:19I., Adv. Hæret. xlii. 1.
7:20Dr. Burton’s Lectures on Eccl. Hist. of First Three Centuries, ii. 105–109.
7:21Or versions.
7:22Tertullianus.
7:23Vincentius Lirinensis, in his celebrated Commonitorium, expresses the opinion of Catholic churchmen concerning Tertullian thus: “Tertullian, among the Latins, without controversy, is the chief of all our writers. For who was more learned than he? Who in divinity or humanity more practised? For, by a certain wonderful capacity of mind, he attained to and understood all philosophy, all the sects of philosophers, all their founders and supporters, all their systems, all sorts of histories and studies. And for his wit, was he not so excellent, so grave, so forcible, that he scarce ever undertook the overthrow of any position, but either by quickness of wit he undermined, or by weight of reason he crushed it? Further, who is able to express the praises which his style of speech deserves, which is fraught (I know none like it) with that cogency of reason, that such as it cannot persuade, it compels to assent; whose so many words almost are so many sentences; whose so many senses, so many victories? This know Marcion and Apelles, Praxeas and Hermogenes, Jews, Gentiles, Gnostics, and divers others, whose blasphemous opinions he hath overthrown with his many and great volumes, as it had been thunderbolts. And yet this man after all, this Tertullian, not retaining the Catholic doctrine—that is, the old faith—hath discredited with his later error his worthy writings,” etc.—Chap. xxiv. (Oxford trans. chap. xviii.)
8:24Neander’s introduction to his Antignostikus should be read in connection with this topic. He powerfully delineates the disposition of Tertullian and the character of Montanism, and attributes his secession to that sect not to outward causes, but to “his internal congeniality of mind.” But, inasmuch as a man’s subjective development is very much guided by circumstances, it is not necessary, in agreeing with Neander, to disbelieve some such account as Jerome has given us of Tertullian (Neander’s Antignostikus, etc. Bohn’s trans., vol. ii. pp. 200–207).
8:25Introductory Notice to the Anti-Marcion, pp. xiii., xiv.
9:26In the end of Chapter Second.
9:27Eccl. Hist. illust. from Tertullian’s Writings, p. 36 sqq. (ed. 3, Lond. 1845).
9:28See Kaye, as above.
9:29Antignostikus, p. 424 (Bohn’s tr., ed. 1851).
9:30See Judg. ix. 2 sqq.
9:31See 2 Kings 14.9.
9:32Here, again, our limits forbid a discussion; but the allusion to the Rhone having “scarcely yet lost the stain of blood” which we find in the ad. Natt. i. 17, compared with Apol. 35, seems to favour the idea of those who date the ad. Natt. earlier than the Apology, and consider the latter as a kind of new edition of the former: while it would fix the date of the ad. Natt. as not certainly earlier than 197, in which year (as we have seen) Albinus died. The fatal battle took place on the banks of the Rhone.
10:33In c. 7.
10:34Viz. in the de Monog.
10:35It looks strange to see Tertullian’s works referred to as consisting of “about thirty short treatises” in Murdock’s note on Moshiem. See the ed. of the Eccl. Hist. by Dr. J. Seaton Reid, p. 65, n. 2, Lond. and Bel. 1852.
10:36This last qualification is very specially observable in Dr. Kaye.
10:37In his article on Tertullian in Smith’s Dict. of Biog. and Myth.
11:38Referred to apparently in de Pudic. ad init.–Tr.
11:39The de Præscr. is ref. to in adv. Marc. i.; adv Prax. 2; de Carne Christi, 2; adv. Hermog. 1.
11:40Ref. to in de Res. Carn. 2, 14; Scorp. 5; de Anima, 21. The only mark, as the learned Bishop’s remarks imply, for fixing the date of publication as Montanistic, is the fact that Tertullian alludes, in the opening sentences, to B. i. Hence B. ii. could not, in its present form, have appeared till after B. i. Now B. i. contains evident marks of Montanism: see the last chapter, for instance. But the writer speaks (in the same passage) of B. ii. as being the treatise, the ill fate of which in its unfinished condition he there relates—at least such seems the legitimate sense of his words—now remodelled. Hence, when originally written, it may not have been Montanistic.—Tr.
11:41Ref. to in de Res. Carn. 2, 17, 45; comp. cc. 18, 21.
11:42Ref. to in de Carn. Chr. 7.
11:43Ref. to in de Res. Carn. 2.
11:44See the beginning and end of the de Carne Christi.—Tr. Ref. to in adv. Marc. v. 10.
11:45In c. 4 Tertullian speaks as if he had already refuted all the heretics.
11:46Ref. to in de Jej. c. 1.
11:47Ref. to in de Idolol. 13; in de Cult. Fem. i. 8. In the de Cor. 6 is a reference to the Greek tract de Spectaculis by our author.
11:48Archdeacon Evans, in his Biography of the Early Church (in the Theological Library), suggests that the success which the Apology met with, or at least the fame it brought its author, may have been the occasion of Tertullian’s visit to Rome. He rejects entirely the supposition that Tertullian was a presbyter of the Roman church; nor does he think Eusebius’ words, καὶ τῶν μάλιστα ἐπὶ ῾Ρώμης λαμπρῶν (Eccl. Hist. ii. 2. 47 ad fin., 48 ad init.), sufficiently plain to be relied on. One thing does seem pretty plain, that the rendering of them which Rufinus gives, and Valesius follows, “inter nostros” (sc. Latinos) “Scriptores admodum clarus,” cannot be correct. That we find a famous Roman lawyer Tertullianus, or Tertyllianus, among the writers fragments of whom are preserved in the Pandects, Neander reminds us; but (as he says) it by no means follows, even if it could be proved that the date of the said lawyer corresponded with the supposed date of our Tertullian, that they were identical. Still it is worth bearing in mind, especially as a similarity of language exists, or has been thought to exist, between the jurist and the Christian author. And the juridical language and tone of our author do seem to point to his having—though Mr. Evans regards that as doubtful—been a trained lawyer.—Tr.
12:49Kaye, as above. Pref. to 2d ed. pp. xxi. xxii. incorporated in the 3d ed., which I always quote.
12:50i.e., four years after Kaye’s third.
12:51See Pref. 2d ed. p. xix. n. 9.
12:52It being from that book that the quotations are taken which make up the remainder of the tract, as Semler, worthless as his theories are, has well shown.
12:53“Sæculi” or “of the world,” or perhaps “of heathenism.”
13:54Catal. Scrippt. Eccles. c. 18.
13:55P. 952, tom. iii. Opp. ed. Bened.
13:56De Ecclesiæ dogmatibus, c. 55.
13:57Referred to in Adv. Marc. iv. 22. So Kaye thinks; but perhaps the reference is doubtful. See, however, the passage in Dr. Holmes’ translation in the present series, with his note thereon.
13:58De Scriptt. Eccles. 53, 24, 40.
13:59i.e., Rome.
13:60Antistes.
13:61A Marcionite at one time: he subsequently set up a sect of his own. He is mentioned in the adv. omn. Hær. c. 6.
13:62Censu.
13:63Catal. Scrippt. Eccles. c. 58.
13:64Catal. Scrippt. Eccles. c. 70.
13:65Oehler speaks more decidedly than Kaye.
13:66Epist. ad Eustochium de Custodia Virginitatis, p. 37, tom. iv. Opp. ed. Bened.; adv. Jovin. i. p. 157, tom. iv. Opp. ed. Bened.
13:67In the Catal. Scrippt. Eccles.
14:68“Mendacem” is his word. I know not whether he intends to charge Pamelius with wilful fraud.
14:69Doctor of the Sorbonne, said by Bossuet to have proved himself “a semi-Pelagian and Jansenist!” born in 1603, in Normandy, died in 1678.
14:70Jer. de Vir. Illust. c. 74.
14:71B. 470, d. 560.
14:72He must not be confounded with the still more famous John Albert Fabricius of the next century, referred to in p. xv. above.
14:73Whole of these metrical fragments.
14:74Lardner, Credibility, vol. iii. p. 169, under “Victorinus of Pettaw,” ed. Kippis, Lond. 1838.
14:75See Lardner, as above.
14:76See Migne, who prefixes this judgment of Rig. to the de Judicio Domini.
I.
Apology.
[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall, Late Scholar of Christ’s College, Cantab.]
————————————
The Apology. 77
Chapter I.
Rulers of the Roman Empire, if, seated for the administration of justice on your lofty tribunal, under the gaze of every eye, and occupying there all but the highest position in the state, you may not openly inquire into and sift before the world the real truth in regard to the charges made against the Christians; if in this case alone you are afraid or ashamed to exercise your authority in making public inquiry with the carefulness which becomes justice; if, finally, the extreme severities inflicted on our people in recently private judgments, stand in the way of our being permitted to defend ourselves before you, you cannot surely forbid the Truth to reach your ears by the secret pathway of a noiseless book. 78 She has no appeals to make to you in regard of her condition, for that does not excite her wonder. She knows that she is but a sojourner on the earth, and that among strangers she naturally finds foes; and more than this, that her origin, her dwelling-place, her hope, her recompense, her honours, are above. One thing, meanwhile, she anxiously desires of earthly rulers—not to be condemned unknown. What harm can it do to the laws, supreme in their domain, to give her a hearing? Nay, for that part of it, will not their absolute supremacy be more conspicuous in their condemning her, even after she has made her plea? But if, unheard, sentence is pronounced against her, besides the odium of an unjust deed, you will incur the merited suspicion of doing it with some idea that it is unjust, as not wishing to hear what you may not be able to hear and condemn. We lay this before you as the first ground on which we urge that your hatred to the name of Christian is unjust. And the very reason which seems to excuse this injustice (I mean ignorance) at once aggravates and convicts it. For what is there more unfair than to hate a thing of which you know nothing, even though it deserve to be hated? Hatred is only merited when it is known to be merited. But without that knowledge, whence is its justice to be vindicated? for that is to be proved, not from the mere fact that an aversion exists, but from acquaintance with the subject. When men, then, give way to a dislike simply because they are entirely ignorant of the nature of the thing disliked, why may it not be precisely the very sort of thing they should not dislike? So we maintain that they are both ignorant while they hate us, and hate us unrighteously while they continue in ignorance, the one thing being the result of the other either way of it. The proof of their ignorance, at once condemning and excusing their injustice, is this, that those who once hated Christianity because they knew nothing about it, no sooner come to know it than they all lay down at once their enmity. From being its haters they become its disciples. By simply getting acquainted with it, they begin now to hate what they had formerly been, and to profess what they had formerly hated; and their numbers are as great as are laid to our charge. The outcry is that the State is filled with Christians—that they are in the fields, in the citadels, in the islands: they make lamentation, as for some calamity, that both sexes, every age and condition, even high rank, are passing over to the profession of the Christian faith; and yet for all, their minds are not awakened to the thought of some good they have failed to notice in it. They must not allow any truer suspicions to cross their minds; they have no desire to make closer trial. Here alone the curiosity of human nature slumbers. They like to be ignorant, though to others the knowledge has been bliss. Anacharsis reproved the rude venturing to criticise the cultured; how much more this judging of those who know, by men who are entirely ignorant, might he have denounced! Because they already dislike, they want to know no more. Thus they prejudge that of which they are ignorant to be such, that, if they came to know it, it could no longer be the object of their aversion; since, if inquiry finds nothing worthy of dislike, it is certainly proper to cease from an unjust dislike, while if its bad character comes plainly out, instead of the detestation entertained for it being thus diminished, a stronger reason for perseverance in that detestation is obtained, even under the authority of justice itself. But, says one, a thing is not good merely because multitudes go over to it; for how many have the bent of their nature towards whatever is bad! how many go astray into ways of error! It is undoubted. Yet a thing that is thoroughly evil, not even those whom it carries away venture to defend as good. Nature throws a veil either of fear or shame over all evil. For instance, you find that criminals are eager to conceal themselves, avoid appearing in public, are in trepidation when they are caught, deny their guilt, when they are accused; even when they are put to the rack, they do not easily or always confess; when there is no doubt about their condemnation, they grieve for what they have done. In their self-communings they admit their being impelled by sinful dispositions, but they lay the blame either on fate or on the stars. They are unwilling to acknowledge that the thing is theirs, because they own that it is wicked. But what is there like this in the Christian’s case? The only shame or regret he feels, is at not having been a Christian earlier. If he is pointed out, he glories in it; if he is accused, he offers no defence; interrogated, he makes voluntary confession; condemned he renders thanks. What sort of evil thing is this, which wants all the ordinary peculiarities of evil—fear, shame, subterfuge, penitence, lamenting? What! is that a crime in which the criminal rejoices? to be accused of which is his ardent wish, to be punished for which is his felicity? You cannot call it madness, you who stand convicted of knowing nothing of the matter.
Footnotes
17:77[Great diversity exists among the critics as to the date of this Apology; see Kaye, pp. xvi. 48, 65. Mosheim says, a.d. 198, Kaye a.d. 204.]
17:78Elucidation II.
Chapter II.
If, again, it is certain that we are the most wicked of men, why do you treat us so differently from our fellows, that is, from other criminals, it being only fair that the same crime should get the same treatment? When the charges made against us are made against others, they are permitted to make use both of their own lips and of hired pleaders to show their innocence. They have full opportunity of answer and debate; in fact, it is against the law to condemn anybody undefended and unheard. Christians alone are forbidden to say anything in exculpation of themselves, in defence of the truth, to help the judge to a righteous decision; all that is cared about is having what the public hatred demands—the confession of the name, not examination of the charge: while in your ordinary judicial investigations, on a man’s confession of the crime of murder, or sacrilege, or incest, or treason, to take the points of which we are accused, you are not content to proceed at once to sentence,—you do not take that step till you thoroughly examine the circumstances of the confession—what is the real character of the deed, how often, where, in what way, when he has done it, who were privy to it, and who actually took part with him in it. Nothing like this is done in our case, though the falsehoods disseminated about us ought to have the same sifting, that it might be found how many murdered children each of us had tasted; how many incests each of us had shrouded in darkness; what cooks, what dogs had been witness of our deeds. Oh, how great the glory of the ruler who should bring to light some Christian who had devoured a hundred infants! But, instead of that, we find that even inquiry in regard to our case is forbidden. For the younger Pliny, when he was ruler of a province, having condemned some Christians to death, and driven some from their stedfastness, being still annoyed by their great numbers, at last sought the advice of Trajan, 79 the reigning emperor, as to what he was to do with the rest, explaining to his master that, except an obstinate disinclination to offer sacrifices, he found in the religious services nothing but meetings at early morning for singing hymns to Christ and 80 God, and sealing home their way of life by a united pledge to be faithful to their religion, forbidding murder, adultery, dishonesty, and other crimes. Upon this Trajan wrote back that Christians were by no means to be sought after; but if they were brought before him, they should be punished. O miserable deliverance,—under the necessities of the case, a self-contradiction! It forbids them to be sought after as innocent, and it commands them to be punished as guilty. It is at once merciful and cruel; it passes by, and it punishes. Why dost thou play a game of evasion upon thyself, O Judgment? If thou condemnest, why dost thou not also inquire. If thou does not inquire, why dost thou not also absolve? Military stations are distributed through all the provinces for tracking robbers. Against traitors and public foes every man is a soldier; search is made even for their confederates and accessories. The Christian alone must not be sought, though he may be brought and accused before the judge; as if a search had any other end than that in view! And so you condemn the man for whom nobody wished a search to be made when he is presented to you, and who even now does not deserve punishment, I suppose, because of his guilt, but because, though forbidden to be sought, he was found. And then, too, you do not in that case deal with us in the ordinary way of judicial proceedings against offenders; for, in the case of others denying, you apply the torture to make them confess—Christians alone you torture, to make them deny; whereas, if we were guilty of any crime, we should be sure to deny it, and you with your tortures would force us to confession. Nor indeed should you hold that our crimes require no such investigation merely on the ground that you are convinced by our confession of the name that the deeds were done,—you who are daily wont, though you know well enough what murder is, none the less to extract from the confessed murderer a full account of how the crime was perpetrated. So that with all the greater perversity you act, when, holding our crimes proved by our confession of the name of Christ, you drive us by torture to fall from our confession, that, repudiating the name, we may in like manner repudiate also the crimes with which, from that same confession, you had assumed that we were chargeable. I suppose, though you believe us to be the worst of mankind, you do not wish us to perish. For thus, no doubt, you are in the habit of bidding the murderer deny, and of ordering the man guilty of sacrilege to the rack if he persevere in his acknowledgment! Is that the way of it? But if thus you do not deal with us as criminals, you declare us thereby innocent, when as innocent you are anxious that we do not persevere in a confession which you know will bring on us a condemnation of necessity, not of justice, at your hands. “I am a Christian,” the man cries out. He tells you what he is; you wish to hear from him what he is not. Occupying your place of authority to extort the truth, you do your utmost to get lies from us. “I am,” he says, “that which you ask me if I am. Why do you torture me to sin? I confess, and you put me to the rack. What would you do if I denied? Certainly you give no ready credence to others when they deny. When we deny, you believe at once. Let this perversity of yours lead you to suspect that there is some hidden power in the case under whose influence you act against the forms, against the nature of public justice, even against the very laws themselves. For, unless I am greatly mistaken, the laws enjoin offenders to be searched out, and not to be hidden away. They lay it down that persons who own a crime are to be condemned, not acquitted. The decrees of the senate, the commands of your chiefs, lay this clearly down. The power of which you are servants is a civil, not a tyrannical domination. Among tyrants, indeed, torments used to be inflicted even as punishments: with you they are mitigated to a means of questioning alone. Keep to your law in these as necessary till confession is obtained; and if the torture is anticipated by confession, there will be no occasion for it: sentence should be passed; the criminal should be given over to the penalty which is his due, not released. Accordingly, no one is eager for the acquittal of the guilty; it is not right to desire that, and so no one is ever compelled to deny. Well, you think the Christian a man of every crime, an enemy of the gods, of the emperor, of the laws, of good morals, of all nature; yet you compel him to deny, that you may acquit him, which without him denial you could not do. You play fast and loose with the laws. You wish him to deny his guilt, that you may, even against his will, bring him out blameless and free from all guilt in reference to the past! Whence is this strange perversity on your part? How is it you do not reflect that a spontaneous confession is greatly more worthy of credit than a compelled denial; or consider whether, when compelled to deny, a man’s denial may not be in good faith, and whether acquitted, he may not, then and there, as soon as the trial is over, laugh at your hostility, a Christian as much as ever? Seeing, then, that in everything you deal differently with us than with other criminals, bent upon the one object of taking from us our name (indeed, it is ours no more if we do what Christians never do), it is made perfectly clear that there is no crime of any kind in the case, but merely a name which a certain system, ever working against the truth, pursues with its enmity, doing this chiefly with the object of securing that men may have no desire to know for certain what they know for certain they are entirely ignorant of. Hence, too, it is that they believe about us things of which they have no proof, and they are disinclined to have them looked into, lest the charges, they would rather take on trust, are all proved to have no foundation, that the name so hostile to that rival power—its crimes presumed, not proved—may be condemned simply on its own confession. So we are put to the torture if we confess, and we are punished if we persevere, and if we deny we are acquitted, because all the contention is about a name. Finally, why do you read out of your tablet-lists that such a man is a Christian? Why not also that he is a murderer? And if a Christian is a murderer, why not guilty, too, of incest, or any other vile thing you believe of us? In our case alone you are either ashamed or unwilling to mention the very names of our crimes—If to be called a “Christian” does not imply any crime, the name is surely very hateful, when that of itself is made a crime.
Footnotes
18:79[For chronological dates in our author’s age, see Elucidation III. Tertullian places an interval of 115 years, 6 months, and 15 days between Tiberius and Antoninus Pius. See Answer to the Jews, cap. vii. infra.]
18:80Another reading is “ut Deo,” as God.
Chapter III.
What are we to think of it, that most people so blindly knock their heads against the hatred of the Christian name; that when they bear favourable testimony to any one, they mingle with it abuse of the name he bears? “A good man,” says one, “is Gaius Seius, only that he is a Christian.” So another, “I am astonished that a wise man like Lucius should have suddenly become a Christian.” Nobody thinks it needful to consider whether Gaius is not good and Lucius wise, on this very account that he is a Christian; or a Christian, for the reason that he is wise and good. They praise what they know, they abuse what they are ignorant of, and they inspire their knowledge with their ignorance; though in fairness you should rather judge of what is unknown from what is known, than what is known from what is unknown. Others, in the case of persons whom, before they took the name of Christian, they had known as loose, and vile, and wicked, put on them a brand from the very thing which they praise. In the blindness of their hatred, they fall foul of their own approving judgment! “What a woman she was! how wanton! how gay! What a youth he was! how profligate! how libidinous!—they have become Christians!” So the hated name is given to a reformation of character. Some even barter away their comforts for that hatred, content to bear injury, if they are kept free at home from the object of their bitter enmity. The wife, now chaste, the husband, now no longer jealous, casts out of his house; the son, now obedient, the father, who used to be so patient, disinherits; the servant, now faithful, the master, once so mild, commands away from his presence; it is a high offence for any one to be reformed by the detested name. Goodness is of less value than hatred of Christians. Well now, if there is this dislike of the name, what blame can you attach to names? What accusation can you bring against mere designations, save that something in the word sounds either barbarous, or unlucky, or scurrilous, or unchaste? But Christian, so far as the meaning of the word is concerned, is derived from anointing. Yes, and even when it is wrongly pronounced by you “Chrestianus” (for you do not even know accurately the name you hate), it comes from sweetness and benignity. You hate, therefore, in the guiltless, even a guiltless name. But the special ground of dislike to the sect is, that it bears the name of its Founder. Is there anything new in a religious sect getting for its followers a designation from its master? Are not the philosophers called from the founders of their systems—Platonists, Epicureans, Pythagoreans? Are not the Stoics and Academics so called also from the places in which they assembled and stationed themselves? and are not physicians named from Erasistratus, grammarians from Aristarchus, cooks even from Apicius? And yet the bearing of the name, transmitted from the original institutor with whatever he has instituted, offends no one. No doubt, if it is proved that the sect is a bad one, and so its founder bad as well, that will prove that the name is bad and deserves our aversion, in respect of the character both of the sect and its author. Before, therefore, taking up a dislike to the name, it behoved you to consider the sect in the author, or the author in the sect. But now, without any sifting and knowledge of either, the mere name is made matter of accusation, the mere name is assailed, and a sound alone brings condemnation on a sect and its author both, while of both you are ignorant, because they have such and such a designation, not because they are convicted of anything wrong.
Chapter IV.
And so, having made these remarks as it were by way of preface, that I might show in its true colours the injustice of the public hatred against us, I shall now take my stand on the plea of our blamelessness; and I shall not only refute the things which are objected to us, but I shall also retort them on the objectors, that in this way all may know that Christians are free from the very crimes they are so well aware prevail among themselves, that they may at the same time be put to the blush for their accusations against us,—accusations I shall not say of the worst of men against the best, but now, as they will have it, against those who are only their fellows in sin. We shall reply to the accusation of all the various crimes we are said to be guilty of in secret, such as we find them committing in the light of day, and as being guilty of which we are held to be wicked, senseless, worthy of punishment, deserving of ridicule. But since, when our truth meets you successfully at all points, the authority of the laws as a last resort is set up against it, so that it is either said that their determinations are absolutely conclusive, or the necessity of obedience is, however unwillingly, preferred to the truth, I shall first, in this matter of the laws grapple with you as with their chosen protectors. Now first, when you sternly lay it down in your sentences, “It is not lawful for you to exist,” and with unhesitating rigour you enjoin this to be carried out, you exhibit the violence and unjust domination of mere tyranny, if you deny the thing to be lawful, simply on the ground that you wish it to be unlawful, not because it ought to be. But if you would have it unlawful because it ought not to be lawful, without doubt that should have no permission of law which does harm; and on this ground, in fact, it is already determined that whatever is beneficial is legitimate. Well, if I have found what your law prohibits to be good, as one who has arrived at such a previous opinion, has it not lost its power to debar me from it, though that very thing, if it were evil, it would justly forbid to me? If your law has gone wrong, it is of human origin, I think; it has not fallen from heaven. Is it wonderful that man should err in making a law, or come to his senses in rejecting it? Did not the Lacedæmonians amend the laws of Lycurgus himself, thereby inflicting such pain on their author that he shut himself up, and doomed himself to death by starvation? Are you not yourselves every day, in your efforts to illumine the darkness of antiquity, cutting and hewing with the new axes of imperial rescripts and edicts, that whole ancient and rugged forest of your laws? Has not Severus, that most resolute of rulers, but yesterday repealed the ridiculous Papian laws 81 which compelled people to have children before the Julian laws allow matrimony to be contracted, and that though they have the authority of age upon their side? There were laws, too, in old times, that parties against whom a decision had been given might be cut in pieces by their creditors; however, by common consent that cruelty was afterwards erased from the statutes, and the capital penalty turned into a brand of shame. By adopting the plan of confiscating a debtor’s goods, it was sought rather to pour the blood in blushes over his face than to pour it out. How many laws lie hidden out of sight which still require to be reformed! For it is neither the number of their years nor the dignity of their maker that commends them, but simply that they are just; and therefore, when their injustice is recognized, they are deservedly condemned, even though they condemn. Why speak we of them as unjust? nay, if they punish mere names, we may well call them irrational. But if they punish acts, why in our case do they punish acts solely on the ground of a name, while in others they must have them proved not from the name, but from the wrong done? I am a practiser of incest (so they say); why do they not inquire into it? I am an infant-killer; why do they not apply the torture to get from me the truth? I am guilty of crimes against the gods, against the Cæsars; why am I, who am able to clear myself, not allowed to be heard on my own behalf? No law forbids the sifting of the crimes which it prohibits, for a judge never inflicts a righteous vengeance if he is not well assured that a crime has been committed; nor does a citizen render a true subjection to the law, if he does not know the nature of the thing on which the punishment is inflicted. It is not enough that a law is just, nor that the judge should be convinced of its justice; those from whom obedience is expected should have that conviction too. Nay, a law lies under strong suspicions which does not care to have itself tried and approved: it is a positively wicked law, if, unproved, it tyrannizes over men.
Footnotes
21:81[A reference in which Kaye sees no reason to doubt that the Apology was written during the reign under the emperor. See Kaye’s Tertullian, p. 49.]
Chapter V.
To say a word about the origin of laws of the kind to which we now refer, there was an old decree that no god should be consecrated by the emperor till first approved by the senate. Marcus Æmilius had experience of this in reference to his god Alburnus. And this, too, makes for our case, that among you divinity is allotted at the judgment of human beings. Unless gods give satisfaction to men, there will be no deification for them: the god will have to propitiate the man. Tiberius 82 accordingly, in whose days the Christian name made its entry into the world, having himself received intelligence from Palestine of events which had clearly shown the truth of Christ’s divinity, brought the matter before the senate, with his own decision in favour of Christ. The senate, because it had not given the approval itself, rejected his proposal. Cæsar held to his opinion, threatening wrath against all accusers of the Christians. Consult your histories; you will there find that Nero was the first who assailed with the imperial sword the Christian sect, making progress then especially at Rome. But we glory in having our condemnation hallowed by the hostility of such a wretch. For any one who knows him, can understand that not except as being of singular excellence did anything bring on it Nero’s condemnation. Domitian, too, a man of Nero’s type in cruelty, tried his hand at persecution; but as he had something of the human in him, he soon put an end to what he had begun, even restoring again those whom he had banished. Such as these have always been our persecutors,—men unjust, impious, base, of whom even you yourselves have no good to say, the sufferers under whose sentences you have been wont to restore. But among so many princes from that time to the present day, with anything of divine and human wisdom in them, point out a single persecutor of the Christian name. So far from that, we, on the contrary, bring before you one who was their protector, as you will see by examining the letters of Marcus Aurelius, that most grave of emperors, in which he bears his testimony that that Germanic drought was removed by the rains obtained through the prayers of the Christians who chanced to be fighting under him. And as he did not by public law remove from Christians their legal disabilities, yet in another way he put them openly aside, even adding a sentence of condemnation, and that of greater severity, against their accusers. What sort of laws are these which the impious alone execute against us—and the unjust, the vile, the bloody, the senseless, the insane? which Trajan to some extent made naught by forbidding Christians to be sought after; which neither a Hadrian, though fond of searching into all things strange and new, nor a Vespasian, though the subjugator of the Jews, nor a Pius, nor a Verus, ever enforced? It should surely be judged more natural for bad men to be eradicated by good princes as being their natural enemies, than by those of a spirit kindred with their own.
Footnotes
22:82[Elucidation IV.]
Chapter VI.
I would now have these most religious protectors and vindicators of the laws and institutions of their fathers, tell me, in regard to their own fidelity and the honour, and submission they themselves show to ancestral institutions, if they have departed from nothing—if they have in nothing gone out of the old paths—if they have not put aside whatsoever is most useful and necessary as rules of a virtuous life. What has become of the laws repressing expensive and ostentatious ways of living? which forbade more than a hundred asses to be expended on a supper, and more than one fowl to be set on the table at a time, and that not a fatted one; which expelled a patrician from the senate on the serious ground, as it was counted, of aspiring to be too great, because he had acquired ten pounds of silver; which put down the theatres as quickly as they arose to debauch the manners of the people; which did not permit the insignia of official dignities or of noble birth to be rashly or with impunity usurped? For I see the Centenarian suppers must now bear the name, not from the hundred asses, but from the hundred sestertia 83 expended on them; and that mines of silver are made into dishes (it were little if this applied only to senators, and not to freedmen or even mere whip-spoilers 84 ). I see, too, that neither is a single theatre enough, nor are theatres unsheltered: no doubt it was that immodest pleasure might not be torpid in the wintertime, the Lacedæmonians invented their woollen cloaks for the plays. I see now no difference between the dress of matrons and prostitutes. In regard to women, indeed, those laws of your fathers, which used to be such an encouragement to modesty and sobriety, have also fallen into desuetude, when a woman had yet known no gold upon her save on the finger, which, with the bridal ring, her husband had sacredly pledged to himself; when the abstinence of women from wine was carried so far, that a matron, for opening the compartments of a wine cellar, was starved to death by her friends,—while in the times of Romulus, for merely tasting wine, Mecenius killed his wife, and suffered nothing for the deed. With reference to this also, it was the custom of women to kiss their relatives, that they might be detected by their breath. Where is that happiness of married life, ever so desirable, which distinguished our earlier manners, and as the result of which for about 600 years there was not among us a single divorce? Now, women have every member of the body heavy laden with gold; wine-bibbing is so common among them, that the kiss is never offered with their will; and as for divorce, they long for it as though it were the natural consequence of marriage. The laws, too, your fathers in their wisdom had enacted concerning the very gods themselves, you their most loyal children have rescinded. The consuls, by the authority of the senate, banished Father Bacchus and his mysteries not merely from the city, but from the whole of Italy. The consuls Piso and Gabinius, no Christians surely, forbade Serapis, and Isis, and Arpocrates, with their dogheaded friend, 85 admission into the Capitol—in the act casting them out from the assembly of the gods—overthrow their altars, and expelled them from the country, being anxious to prevent the vices of their base and lascivious religion from spreading. These, you have restored, and conferred highest honours on them. What has come to your religion—of the veneration due by you to your ancestors? In your dress, in your food, in your style of life, in your opinions, and last of all in your very speech, you have renounced your progenitors. You are always praising antiquity, and yet every day you have novelties in your way of living. From your having failed to maintain what you should, you make it clear, that, while you abandon the good ways of your fathers, you retain and guard the things you ought not. Yet the very tradition of your fathers, which you still seem so faithfully to defend, and in which you find your principal matter of accusation against the Christians—I mean zeal in the worship of the gods, the point in which antiquity has mainly erred—although you have rebuilt the altars of Serapis, now a Roman deity, and to Bacchus, now become a god of Italy, you offer up your orgies,—I shall in its proper place show that you despise, neglect, and overthrow, casting entirely aside the authority of the men of old. I go on meantime to reply to that infamous charge of secret crimes, clearing my way to things of open day.
Footnotes
22:83As = 2-1/8 farthings. Sestertium = £7, 16s. 3d.
22:84Slaves still bearing the marks of the scourge.
23:85Anubis.
Chapter VII.
Monsters of wickedness, we are accused of observing a holy rite in which we kill a little child and then eat it; in which, after the feast, we practise incest, the dogs—our pimps, forsooth, overturning the lights and getting us the shamelessness of darkness for our impious lusts. This is what is constantly laid to our charge, and yet you take no pains to elicit the truth of what we have been so long accused. Either bring, then, the matter to the light of day if you believe it, or give it no credit as having never inquired into it. On the ground of your double dealing, we are entitled to lay it down to you that there is no reality in the thing which you dare not expiscate. You impose on the executioner, in the case of Christians, a duty the very opposite of expiscation: he is not to make them confess what they do, but to make them deny what they are. We date the origin of our religion, as we have mentioned before, from the reign of Tiberius. Truth and the hatred of truth come into our world together. As soon as truth appears, it is regarded as an enemy. It has as many foes as there are strangers to it: the Jews, as was to be looked for, from a spirit of rivalry; the soldiers, out of a desire to extort money; our very domestics, by their nature. We are daily beset by foes, we are daily betrayed; we are oftentimes surprised in our meetings and congregations. Whoever happened withal upon an infant wailing, according to the common story? Whoever kept for the judge, just as he had found them, the gory mouths of Cyclops and Sirens? Whoever found any traces of uncleanness in their wives? Where is the man who, when he had discovered such atrocities, concealed them; or, in the act of dragging the culprits before the judge, was bribed into silence? If we always keep our secrets, when were our proceedings made known to the world? Nay, by whom could they be made known? Not, surely, by the guilty parties themselves; even from the very idea of the thing, the fealty of silence being ever due to mysteries. The Samothracian and Eleusinian make no disclosures—how much more will silence be kept in regard to such as are sure, in their unveiling, to call forth punishment from man at once, while wrath divine is kept in store for the future? If, then, Christians are not themselves the publishers of their crime, it follows of course it must be strangers. And whence have they their knowledge, when it is also a universal custom in religious initiations to keep the profane aloof, and to beware of witnesses, unless it be that those who are so wicked have less fear than their neighbors? Every one knows what sort of thing rumour is. It is one of your own sayings, that “among all evils, none flies so fast as rumour.” Why is rumour such an evil thing? Is it because it is fleet? Is it because it carries information? Or is it because it is in the highest degree mendacious?—a thing, not even when it brings some truth to us, without a taint of falsehood, either detracting, or adding, or changing from the simple fact? Nay more, it is the very law of its being to continue only while it lies, and to live but so long as there is no proof; for when the proof is given, it ceases to exist; and, as having done its work of merely spreading a report, it delivers up a fact, and is henceforth held to be a fact, and called a fact. And then no one says, for instance, “They say that it took place at Rome,” or, “There is a rumour that he has obtained a province,” but, “He has got a province,” and, “It took place at Rome.” Rumour, the very designation of uncertainty, has no place when a thing is certain. Does any but a fool put his trust in it? For a wise man never believes the dubious. Everybody knows, however zealously it is spread abroad, on whatever strength of asseveration it rests, that some time or other from some one fountain it has its origin. Thence it must creep into propagating tongues and ears; and a small seminal blemish so darkens all the rest of the story, that no one can determine whether the lips, from which it first came forth, planted the seed of falsehood, as often happens, from a spirit of opposition, or from a suspicious judgment, or from a confirmed, nay, in the case of some, an inborn, delight in lying. It is well that time brings all to light, as your proverbs and sayings testify, by a provision of Nature, which has so appointed things that nothing long is hidden, even though rumour has not disseminated it. It is just then as it should be, that fame for so long a period has been alone aware of the crimes of Christians. This is the witness you bring against us—one that has never been able to prove the accusation it some time or other sent abroad, and at last by mere continuance made into a settled opinion in the world; so that I confidently appeal to Nature herself, ever true, against those who groundlessly hold that such things are to be credited.
Chapter VIII.
See now, we set before you the reward of these enormities. They give promise of eternal life. Hold it meanwhile as your own belief. I ask you, then, whether, so believing, you think it worth attaining with a conscience such as you will have. Come, plunge your knife into the babe, enemy of none, accused of none, child of all; or if that is another’s work, simply take your place beside a human being dying before he has really lived, await the departure of the lately given soul, receive the fresh young blood, saturate your bread with it, freely partake. The while as you recline at table, take note of the places which your mother and your sister occupy; mark them well, so that when the dog-made darkness has fallen on you, you may make no mistake, for you will be guilty of a crime—unless you perpetrate a deed of incest. Initiated and sealed into things like these, you have life everlasting. Tell me, I pray you, is eternity worth it? If it is not, then these things are not to be credited. Even although you had the belief, I deny the will; and even if you had the will, I deny the possibility. Why then can others do it, if you cannot? why cannot you, if others can? I suppose we are of a different nature—are we Cynopæ or Sciapodes? 86 You are a man yourself as well as the Christian: if you cannot do it, you ought not to believe it of others, for a Christian is a man as well as you. But the ignorant, forsooth, are deceived and imposed on. They were quite unaware of anything of the kind being imputed to Christians, or they would certainly have looked into it for themselves, and searched the matter out. Instead of that, it is the custom for persons wishing initiation into sacred rites, I think, to go first of all to the master of them, that he may explain what preparations are to be made. Then, in this case, no doubt he would say, “You must have a child still of tender age, that knows not what it is to die, and can smile under thy knife; bread, too, to collect the gushing blood; in addition to these, candlesticks, and lamps, and dogs—with tid-bits to draw them on to the extinguishing of the lights: above all things, you will require to bring your mother and your sister with you.” But what if mother and sister are unwilling? or if there be neither the one nor the other? What if there are Christians with no Christian relatives? He will not be counted, I suppose, a true follower of Christ, who has not a brother or a son. And what now, if these things are all in store for them without their knowledge? At least afterwards they come to know them; and they bear with them, and pardon them. They fear, it may be said, lest they have to pay for it if they let the secret out: nay, but they will rather in that case have every claim to protection; they will even prefer, one might think, dying by their own hand, to living under the burden of such a dreadful knowledge. Admit that they have this fear; yet why do they still persevere? For it is plain enough that you will have no desire to continue what you would never have been, if you had had previous knowledge of it.
Footnotes
24:86Fabulous monsters.
Chapter IX.
That I may refute more thoroughly these charges, I will show that in part openly, in part secretly, practices prevail among you which have led you perhaps to credit similar things about us. Children were openly sacrificed in Africa to Saturn as lately as the proconsulship of Tiberius, who exposed to public gaze the priests suspended on the sacred trees overshadowing their temple—so many crosses on which the punishment which justice craved overtook their crimes, as the soldiers of our country still can testify who did that very work for that proconsul. And even now that sacred crime still continues to be done in secret. It is not only Christians, you see, who despise you; for all that you do there is neither any crime thoroughly and abidingly eradicated, nor does any of your gods reform his ways. When Saturn did not spare his own children, he was not likely to spare the children of others; whom indeed the very parents themselves were in the habit of offering, gladly responding to the call which was made on them, and keeping the little ones pleased on the occasion, that they might not die in tears. At the same time, there is a vast difference between homicide and parricide. A more advanced age was sacrificed to Mercury in Gaul. I hand over the Tauric fables to their own theatres. Why, even in that most religious city of the pious descendants of Æneas, there is a certain Jupiter whom in their games they lave with human blood. It is the blood of a beast-fighter, you say. Is it less, because of that, the blood of a man? 87 Or is it viler blood because it is from the veins of a wicked man? At any rate it is shed in murder. O Jove, thyself a Christian, and in truth only son of thy father in his cruelty! But in regard to child murder, as it does not matter whether it is committed for a sacred object, or merely at one’s own self-impulse—although there is a great difference, as we have said, between parricide and homicide—I shall turn to the people generally. How many, think you, of those crowding around and gaping for Christian blood,—how many even of your rulers, notable for their justice to you and for their severe measures against us, may I charge in their own consciences with the sin of putting their offspring to death? As to any difference in the kind of murder, it is certainly the more cruel way to kill by drowning, or by exposure to cold and hunger and dogs. A maturer age has always preferred death by the sword. In our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fœtus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed. As to meals of blood and such tragic dishes, read—I am not sure where it is told (it is in Herodotus, I think)—how blood taken from the arms, and tasted by both parties, has been the treaty bond among some nations. I am not sure what it was that was tasted in the time of Catiline. They say, too, that among some Scythian tribes the dead are eaten by their friends. But I am going far from home. At this day, among ourselves, blood consecrated to Bellona, blood drawn from a punctured thigh and then partaken of, seals initiation into the rites of that goddess. Those, too, who at the gladiator shows, for the cure of epilepsy, quaff with greedy thirst the blood of criminals slain in the arena, as it flows fresh from the wound, and then rush off—to whom do they belong? those, also, who make meals on the flesh of wild beasts at the place of combat—who have keen appetites for bear and stag? That bear in the struggle was bedewed with the blood of the man whom it lacerated: that stag rolled itself in the gladiator’s gore. The entrails of the very bears, loaded with as yet undigested human viscera, are in great request. And you have men rifting up man-fed flesh? If you partake of food like this, how do your repasts differ from those you accuse us Christians of? And do those, who, with savage lust, seize on human bodies, do less because they devour the living? Have they less the pollution of human blood on them because they only lick up what is to turn into blood? They make meals, it is plain, not so much of infants, as of grown-up men. Blush for your vile ways before the Christians, who have not even the blood of animals at their meals of simple and natural food; who abstain from things strangled and that die a natural death, for no other reason than that they may not contract pollution, so much as from blood secreted in the viscera. To clench the matter with a single example, you tempt Christians with sausages of blood, just because you are perfectly aware that the thing by which you thus try to get them to transgress they hold unlawful. 88 And how unreasonable it is to believe that those, of whom you are convinced that they regard with horror the idea of tasting the blood of oxen, are eager after blood of men; unless, mayhap, you have tried it, and found it sweeter to the taste! Nay, in fact, there is here a test you should apply to discover Christians, as well as the fire-pan and the censer. They should be proved by their appetite for human blood, as well as by their refusal to offer sacrifice; just as otherwise they should be affirmed to be free of Christianity by their refusal to taste of blood, as by their sacrificing; and there would be no want of blood of men, amply supplied as that would be in the trial and condemnation of prisoners. Then who are more given to the crime of incest than those who have enjoyed the instruction of Jupiter himself? Ctesias tells us that the Persians have illicit intercourse with their mothers. The Macedonians, too, are suspected on this point; for on first hearing the tragedy of Œdipus they made mirth of the incest-doer’s grief, exclaiming, ῾ἥλαυνε εἰς τὴν μητέρα. Even now reflect what opportunity there is for mistakes leading to incestuous comminglings—your promiscuous looseness supplying the materials. You first of all expose your children, that they may be taken up by any compassionate passer-by, to whom they are quite unknown; or you give them away, to be adopted by those who will do better to them the part of parents. Well, some time or other, all memory of the alienated progeny must be lost; and when once a mistake has been made, the transmission of incest thence will still go on—the race and the crime creeping on together. Then, further, wherever you are—at home, abroad, over the seas—your lust is an attendant, whose general indulgence, or even its indulgence in the most limited scale, may easily and unwittingly anywhere beget children, so that in this way a progeny scattered about in the commerce of life may have intercourse with those who are their own kin, and have no notion that there is any incest in the case. A persevering and stedfast chastity has protected us from anything like this: keeping as we do from adulteries and all post-matrimonial unfaithfulness, we are not exposed to incestuous mishaps. Some of us, making matters still more secure, beat away from them entirely the power of sensual sin, by a virgin continence, still boys in this respect when they are old. If you would but take notice that such sins as I have mentioned prevail among you, that would lead you to see that they have no existence among Christians. The same eyes would tell you of both facts. But the two blindnesses are apt to go together; so that those who do not see what is, think they see what is not. I shall show it to be so in everything. But now let me speak of matters which are more clear.
Footnotes
25:87[Another example of what Christianity was doing for man as man.]
25:88[See Elucidation VII., p. 58, infra in connection with usages in cap. xxxix.]
Chapter X.
“You do not worship the gods,” you say; “and you do not offer sacrifices for the emperors.” Well, we do not offer sacrifice for others, for the same reason that we do not for ourselves,—namely, that your gods are not at all the objects of our worship. So we are accused of sacrilege and treason. This is the chief ground of charge against us—nay, it is the sum-total of our offending; and it is worthy then of being inquired into, if neither prejudice nor injustice be the judge, the one of which has no idea of discovering the truth, and the other simply and at once rejects it. We do not worship your gods, because we know that there are no such beings. This, therefore, is what you should do: you should call on us to demonstrate their non-existence, and thereby prove that they have no claim to adoration; for only if your gods were truly so, would there be any obligation to render divine homage to them. And punishment even were due to Christians, if it were made plain that those to whom they refused all worship were indeed divine. But you say, They are gods. We protest and appeal from yourselves to your knowledge; let that judge us; let that condemn us, if it can deny that all these gods of yours were but men. If even it venture to deny that, it will be confuted by its own books of antiquities, from which it has got its information about them, bearing witness to this day, as they plainly do, both of the cities in which they were born, and the countries in which they have left traces of their exploits, as well as where also they are proved to have been buried. Shall I now, therefore, go over them one by one, so numerous and so various, new and old, barbarian, Grecian, Roman, foreign, captive and adopted, private and common, male and female, rural and urban, naval and military? It were useless even to hunt out all their names: so I may content myself with a compend; and this not for your information, but that you may have what you know brought to your recollection, for undoubtedly you act as if you had forgotten all about them. No one of your gods is earlier than Saturn: from him you trace all your deities, even those of higher rank and better known. What, then, can be proved of the first, will apply to those that follow. So far, then, as books give us information, neither the Greek Diodorus or Thallus, neither Cassius Severus or Cornelius Nepos, nor any writer upon sacred antiquities, have ventured to say that Saturn was any but a man: so far as the question depends on facts, I find none more trustworthy than those—that in Italy itself we have the country in which, after many expeditions, and after having partaken of Attic hospitalities, Saturn settled, obtaining cordial welcome from Janus, or, as the Salii will have it, Janis. The mountain on which he dwelt was called Saturnius; the city he founded is called Saturnia to this day; last of all, the whole of Italy, after having borne the name of Oenotria, was called Saturnia from him. He first gave you the art of writing, and a stamped coinage, and thence it is he presides over the public treasury. But if Saturn were a man, he had undoubtedly a human origin; and having a human origin, he was not the offspring of heaven and earth. As his parents were unknown, it was not unnatural that he should be spoken of as the son of those elements from which we might all seem to spring. For who does not speak of heaven and earth as father and mother, in a sort of way of veneration and honour? or from the custom which prevails among us of saying that persons of whom we have no knowledge, or who make a sudden appearance, have fallen from the skies? In this way it came about that Saturn, everywhere a sudden and unlooked-for guest, got everywhere the name of the Heaven-born. For even the common folk call persons whose stock is unknown, sons of earth. I say nothing of how men in these rude times were wont to act, when they were impressed by the look of any stranger happening to appear among them, as though it were divine, since even at this day men of culture make gods of those whom, a day or two before, they acknowledged to be dead men by their public mourning for them. Let these notices of Saturn, brief as they are, suffice. It will thus also be proved that Jupiter is as certainly a man, as from a man he sprung; and that one after another the whole swarm is mortal like the primal stock.
Chapter XI.
And since, as you dare not deny that these deities of yours once were men, you have taken it on you to assert that they were made gods after their decease, let us consider what necessity there was for this. In the first place, you must concede the existence of one higher God—a certain wholesale dealer in divinity, who has made gods of men. For they could neither have assumed a divinity which was not theirs, nor could any but one himself possessing it have conferred it on them. If there was no one to make gods, it is vain to dream of gods being made when thus you have no god-maker. Most certainly, if they could have deified themselves, with a higher state at their command, they never would have been men. If, then, there be one who is able to make gods, I turn back to an examination of any reason there may be for making gods at all; and I find no other reason than this, that the great God has need of their ministrations and aids in performing the offices of Deity. But first it is an unworthy idea that He should need the help of a man, and in fact a dead man, when, if He was to be in want of this assistance from the dead, He might more fittingly have created some one a god at the beginning. Nor do I see any place for his action. For this entire world-mass—whether self-existent and uncreated, as Pythagoras maintains, or brought into being by a creator’s hands, as Plato holds—was manifestly, once for all in its original construction, disposed, and furnished, and ordered, and supplied with a government of perfect wisdom. That cannot be imperfect which has made all perfect. There was nothing waiting on for Saturn and his race to do. Men will make fools of themselves if they refuse to believe that from the very first rain poured down from the sky, and stars gleamed, and light shone, and thunders roared, and Jove himself dreaded the lightnings you put in his hands; that in like manner before Bacchus, and Ceres, and Minerva, nay before the first man, whoever that was, every kind of fruit burst forth plentifully from the bosom of the earth, for nothing provided for the support and sustenance of man could be introduced after his entrance on the stage of being. Accordingly, these necessaries of life are said to have been discovered, not created. But the thing you discover existed before; and that which had a pre-existence must be regarded as belonging not to him who discovered it, but to him who made it, for of course it had a being before it could be found. But if, on account of his being the discoverer of the vine, Bacchus is raised to godship, Lucullus, who first introduced the cherry from Pontus into Italy, has not been fairly dealt with; for as the discoverer of a new fruit, he has not, as though he were its creator, been awarded divine honours. Wherefore, if the universe existed from the beginning, thoroughly furnished with its system working under certain laws for the performance of its functions, there is, in this respect, an entire absence of all reason for electing humanity to divinity; for the positions and powers which you have assigned to your deities have been from the beginning precisely what they would have been, although you had never deified them. But you turn to another reason, telling us that the conferring of deity was a way of rewarding worth. And hence you grant, I conclude, that the god-making God is of transcendent righteousness,—one who will neither rashly, improperly, nor needlessly bestow a reward so great. I would have you then consider whether the merits of your deities are of a kind to have raised them to the heavens, and not rather to have sunk them down into lowest depths of Tartarus,—the place which you regard, with many, as the prison-house of infernal punishments. For into this dread place are wont to be cast all who offend against filial piety, and such as are guilty of incest with sisters, and seducers of wives, and ravishers of virgins, and boy-polluters, and men of furious tempers, and murderers, and thieves, and deceivers; all, in short, who tread in the footsteps of your gods, not one of whom you can prove free from crime or vice, save by denying that they had ever a human existence. But as you cannot deny that, you have those foul blots also as an added reason for not believing that they were made gods afterwards. For if you rule for the very purpose of punishing such deeds; if every virtuous man among you rejects all correspondence, converse, and intimacy with the wicked and base, while, on the other hand, the high God has taken up their mates to a share of His majesty, on what ground is it that you thus condemn those whose fellow-actors you adore? Your goodness is an affront in the heavens. Deify your vilest criminals, if you would please your gods. You honour them by giving divine honours to their fellows. But to say no more about a way of acting so unworthy, there have been men virtuous, and pure, and good. Yet how many of these nobler men you have left in the regions of doom! as Socrates, so renowned for his wisdom, Aristides for his justice, Themistocles for his warlike genius, Alexander for his sublimity of soul, Polycrates for his good fortune, Crœsus for his wealth, Demosthenes for his eloquence. Which of these gods of yours is more remarkable for gravity and wisdom than Cato, more just and warlike than Scipio? which of them more magnanimous than Pompey, more prosperous than Sylla, of greater wealth than Crassus, more eloquent than Tullius? How much better it would have been for the God Supreme to have waited that He might have taken such men as these to be His heavenly associates, prescient as He must have surely been of their worthier character! He was in a hurry, I suppose, and straightway shut heaven’s gates; and now He must surely feel ashamed at these worthies murmuring over their lot in the regions below.
Chapter XII.
But I pass from these remarks, for I know and I am going to show what your gods are not, by showing what they are. In reference, then, to these, I see only names of dead men of ancient times; I hear fabulous stories; I recognize sacred rites founded on mere myths. As to the actual images, I regard them as simply pieces of matter akin to the vessels and utensils in common use among us, or even undergoing in their consecration a hapless change from these useful articles at the hands of reckless art, which in the transforming process treats them with utter contempt, nay, in the very act commits sacrilege; so that it might be no slight solace to us in all our punishments, suffering as we do because of these same gods, that in their making they suffer as we do themselves. You put Christians on crosses and stakes: 89 what image is not formed from the clay in the first instance, set on cross and stake? The body of your god is first consecrated on the gibbet. You tear the sides of Christians with your claws; but in the case of your own gods, axes, and planes, and rasps are put to work more vigorously on every member of the body. We lay our heads upon the block; before the lead, and the glue, and the nails are put in requisition, your deities are headless. We are cast to the wild beasts, while you attach them to Bacchus, and Cybele, and Cælestis. We are burned in the flames; so, too, are they in their original lump. We are condemned to the mines; from these your gods originate. We are banished to islands; in islands it is a common thing for your gods to have their birth or die. If it is in this way a deity is made, it will follow that as many as are punished are deified, and tortures will have to be declared divinities. But plain it is these objects of your worship have no sense of the injuries and disgraces of their consecrating, as they are equally unconscious of the honours paid to them. O impious words! O blasphemous reproaches! Gnash your teeth upon us—foam with maddened rage against us—ye are the persons, no doubt, who censured a certain Seneca speaking of your superstition at much greater length and far more sharply! In a word, if we refuse our homage to statues and frigid images, the very counterpart of their dead originals, with which hawks, and mice, and spiders are so well acquainted, does it not merit praise instead of penalty, that we have rejected what we have come to see is error? We cannot surely be made out to injure those who we are certain are nonentities. What does not exist, is in its nonexistence secure from suffering.
Footnotes
28:89[Inconsistent this with Gibbon’s minimizing theory of the number of the Christian martyrs.] Elucidation VIII.
Chapter XIII.
“But they are gods to us,” you say. And how is it, then, that in utter inconsistency with this, you are convicted of impious, sacrilegious, and irreligious conduct to them, neglecting those you imagine to exist, destroying those who are the objects of your fear, making mock of those whose honour you avenge? See now if I go beyond the truth. First, indeed, seeing you worship, some one god, and some another, of course you give offence to those you do not worship. You cannot continue to give preference to one without slighting another, for selection implies rejection. You despise, therefore, those whom you thus reject; for in your rejection of them, it is plain you have no dread of giving them offence. For, as we have already shown, every god depended on the decision of the senate for his godhead. No god was he whom man in his own counsels did not wish to be so, and thereby condemned. The family deities you call Lares, you exercise a domestic authority over, pledging them, selling them, changing them—making sometimes a cooking-pot of a Saturn, a firepan of a Minerva, as one or other happens to be worn down, or broken in its long sacred use, or as the family head feels the pressure of some more sacred home necessity. In like manner, by public law you disgrace your state gods, putting them in the auction-catalogue, and making them a source of revenue. Men seek to get the Capitol, as they seek to get the herb market, under the voice of the crier, under the auction spear, under the registration of the quæstor. Deity is struck off and farmed out to the highest bidder. But indeed lands burdened with tribute are of less value; men under the assessment of a poll-tax are less noble; for these things are the marks of servitude. In the case of the gods, on the other hand, the sacredness is great in proportion to the tribute which they yield; nay, the more sacred is a god, the larger is the tax he pays. Majesty is made a source of gain. Religion goes about the taverns begging. You demand a price for the privilege of standing on temple ground, for access to the sacred services; there is no gratuitous knowledge of your divinities permitted—you must buy their favours with a price. What honours in any way do you render to them that you do not render to the dead? You have temples in the one case just as in the other; you have altars in the one case as in the other. Their statues have the same dress, the same insignia. As the dead man had his age, his art, his occupation, so it is with the deity. In what respect does the funeral feast differ from the feast of Jupiter? or the bowl of the gods from the ladle of the manes? or the undertaker from the soothsayer, as in fact this latter personage also attends upon the dead? With perfect propriety you give divine honours to your departed emperors, as you worship them in life. The gods will count themselves indebted to you; nay, it will be matter of high rejoicing among them that their masters are made their equals. But when you adore Larentina, a public prostitute—I could have wished that it might at least have been Lais or Phryne—among your Junos, and Cereses, and Dianas; when you instal in your Pantheon Simon Magus, 90 giving him a statue and the title of Holy God; when you make an infamous court page a god of the sacred synod, although your ancient deities are in reality no better, they will still think themselves affronted by you, that the privilege antiquity conferred on them alone, has been allowed to others.
Footnotes
29:90[Confirming the statement of Justin Martyr. See Vol. I., p. 187, note 1, and p. 193, this Series.]
Chapter XIV.
I wish now to review your sacred rites; and I pass no censure on your sacrificing, when you offer the worn-out, the scabbed, the corrupting; when you cut off from the fat and the sound the useless parts, such as the head and the hoofs, which in your house you would have assigned to the slaves or the dogs; when of the tithe of Hercules you do not lay a third upon his altar (I am disposed rather to praise your wisdom in rescuing something from being lost); but turning to your books, from which you get your training in wisdom and the nobler duties of life, what utterly ridiculous things I find!—that for Trojans and Greeks the gods fought among themselves like pairs of gladiators; that Venus was wounded by a man, because she would rescue her son Æneas when he was in peril of his life from the same Diomede; that Mars was almost wasted away by a thirteen months’ imprisonment; that Jupiter was saved by a monster’s aid from suffering the same violence at the hands of the other gods; that he now laments the fate of Sarpedon, now foully makes love to his own sister, recounting (to her) former mistresses, now for a long time past not so dear as she. After this, what poet is not found copying the example of his chief, to be a disgracer of the gods? One gives Apollo to king Admetus to tend his sheep; another hires out the building labours of Neptune to Laomedon. A well-known lyric poet, too—Pindar, I mean—sings of Æsculapius deservedly stricken with lightning for his greed in practising wrongfully his art. A wicked deed it was of Jupiter—if he hurled the bolt—unnatural to his grandson, and exhibiting envious feeling to the Physician. Things like these should not be made public if they are true; and if false, they should not be fabricated among people professing a great respect for religion. Nor indeed do either tragic or comic writers shrink from setting forth the gods as the origin of all family calamities and sins. I do not dwell on the philosophers, contenting myself with a reference to Socrates, who, in contempt of the gods, was in the habit of swearing by an oak, and a goat, and a dog. In fact, for this very thing Socrates was condemned to death, that he overthrew the worship of the gods. Plainly, at one time as well as another, that is, always truth is disliked. However, when rueing their judgment, the Athenians inflicted punishment on his accusers, and set up a golden image of him in a temple, the condemnation was in the very act rescinded, and his witness was restored to its former value. Diogenes, too, makes utter mock of Hercules and the Roman cynic Varro brings forward three hundred Joves, or Jupiters they should be called, all headless.
Chapter XV.
Others of your writers, in their wantonness, even minister to your pleasures by vilifying the gods. Examine those charming farces of your Lentuli and Hostilii, whether in the jokes and tricks it is the buffoons or the deities which afford you merriment; such farces I mean as Anubis the Adulterer, and Luna of the masculine gender, and Diana under the lash, and the reading the will of Jupiter deceased, and the three famishing Herculeses held up to ridicule. Your dramatic literature, too, depicts all the vileness of your gods. The Sun mourns his offspring 91 cast down from heaven, and you are full of glee; Cybele sighs after the scornful swain, 92 and you do not blush; you brook the stage recital of Jupiter’s misdeeds, and the shepherd 93 judging Juno, Venus, and Minerva. Then, again, when the likeness of a god is put on the head of an ignominious and infamous wretch, when one impure and trained up for the art in all effeminacy, represents a Minerva or a Hercules, is not the majesty of your gods insulted, and their deity dishonored? Yet you not merely look on, but applaud. You are, I suppose, more devout in the arena, where after the same fashion your deities dance on human blood, on the pollutions caused by inflicted punishments, as they act their themes and stories, doing their turn for the wretched criminals, except that these, too, often put on divinity and actually play the very gods. We have seen in our day a representation of the mutilation of Attis, that famous god of Pessinus, and a man burnt alive as Hercules. We have made merry amid the ludicrous cruelties of the noonday exhibition, at Mercury examining the bodies of the dead with his hot iron; we have witnessed Jove’s brother, 94 mallet in hand, dragging out the corpses of the gladiators. But who can go into everything of this sort? If by such things as these the honour of deity is assailed, if they go to blot out every trace of its majesty, we must explain them by the contempt in which the gods are held, alike by those who actually do them, and by those for whose enjoyment they are done. This it will be said, however, is all in sport. But if I add—it is what all know and will admit as readily to be the fact—that in the temples adulteries are arranged, that at the altars pimping is practised, that often in the houses of the temple-keepers and priests, under the sacrificial fillets, and the sacred hats, 95 and the purple robes, amid the fumes of incense, deeds of licentiousness are done, I am not sure but your gods have more reason to complain of you than of Christians. It is certainly among the votaries of your religion that the perpetrators of sacrilege are always found, for Christians do not enter your temples even in the day-time. Perhaps they too would be spoilers of them, if they worshipped in them. What then do they worship, since their objects of worship are different from yours? Already indeed it is implied, as the corollary from their rejection of the lie, that they render homage to the truth; nor continue longer in an error which they have given up in the very fact of recognizing it to be an error. Take this in first of all, and when we have offered a preliminary refutation of some false opinions, go on to derive from it our entire religious system.
Footnotes
30:91Phaethon.
30:92Atys or Attis.
30:93Paris.
30:94Pluto.
30:95[“Sacred hats and purple robes and incense fumes” have been associated with the same crimes, alas! in widely different relations.]
Chapter XVI.
For, like some others, you are under the delusion that our god is an ass’s head. 96 Cornelius Tacitus first put this notion into people’s minds. In the fifth book of his histories, beginning the (narrative of the) Jewish war with an account of the origin of the nation; and theorizing at his pleasure about the origin, as well as the name and the religion of the Jews, he states that having been delivered, or rather, in his opinion, expelled from Egypt, in crossing the vast plains of Arabia, where water is so scanty, they were in extremity from thirst; but taking the guidance of the wild asses, which it was thought might be seeking water after feeding, they discovered a fountain, and thereupon in their gratitude they consecrated a head of this species of animal. And as Christianity is nearly allied to Judaism, from this, I suppose, it was taken for granted that we too are devoted to the worship of the same image. But the said Cornelius Tacitus (the very opposite of tacit in telling lies) informs us in the work already mentioned, that when Cneius Pompeius captured Jerusalem, he entered the temple to see the arcana of the Jewish religion, but found no image there. Yet surely if worship was rendered to any visible object, the very place for its exhibition would be the shrine; and that all the more that the worship, however unreasonable, had no need there to fear outside beholders. For entrance to the holy place was permitted to the priests alone, while all vision was forbidden to others by an outspread curtain. You will not, however, deny that all beasts of burden, and not parts of them, but the animals entire, are with their goddess Epona objects of worship with you. It is this, perhaps, which displeases you in us, that while your worship here is universal, we do homage only to the ass. Then, if any of you think we render superstitious adoration to the cross, in that adoration he is sharer with us. If you offer homage to a piece of wood at all, it matters little what it is like when the substance is the same: it is of no consequence the form, if you have the very body of the god. And yet how far does the Athenian Pallas differ from the stock of the cross, or the Pharian Ceres as she is put up uncarved to sale, a mere rough stake and piece of shapeless wood? Every stake fixed in an upright position is a portion of the cross; we render our adoration, if you will have it so, to a god entire and complete. We have shown before that your deities are derived from shapes modelled from the cross. But you also worship victories, for in your trophies the cross is the heart of the trophy. 97 The camp religion of the Romans is all through a worship of the standards, a setting the standards above all gods. Well, as those images decking out the standards are ornaments of crosses. All those hangings of your standards and banners are robes of crosses. I praise your zeal: you would not consecrate crosses unclothed and unadorned. Others, again, certainly with more information and greater verisimilitude, believe that the sun is our god. We shall be counted Persians perhaps, though we do not worship the orb of day painted on a piece of linen cloth, having himself everywhere in his own disk. The idea no doubt has originated from our being known to turn to the east in prayer. 98 But you, many of you, also under pretence sometimes of worshipping the heavenly bodies, move your lips in the direction of the sunrise. In the same way, if we devote Sun-day to rejoicing, from a far different reason than Sun-worship, we have some resemblance to those of you who devote the day of Saturn to ease and luxury, though they too go far away from Jewish ways, of which indeed they are ignorant. But lately a new edition of our god has been given to the world in that great city: it originated with a certain vile man who was wont to hire himself out to cheat the wild beasts, and who exhibited a picture with this inscription: The God of the Christians, born of an ass. 99 He had the ears of an ass, was hoofed in one foot, carried a book, 100 and wore a toga. Both the name and the figure gave us amusement. But our opponents ought straightway to have done homage to this biformed divinity, for they have acknowledged gods dog-headed and lion-headed, with horn of buck and ram, with goat-like loins, with serpent legs, with wings sprouting from back or foot. These things we have discussed ex abundanti, that we might not seem willingly to pass by any rumor against us unrefuted. Having thoroughly cleared ourselves, we turn now to an exhibition of what our religion really is.
Footnotes
30:96[Caricatures of the Crucifixion are extant which show how greedily the heathen had accepted this profane idea.]
31:97[A premonition of the Labarum.]
31:98[As noted by Clement of Alexandria. See p. 535, Vol. II., and note.]
31:99Onocoites. If with Oehler, Onochoietes, the meaning is “asinarius sacerdos” (Oehler).
31:100Referring evidently to the Scriptures; and showing what the Bible was to the early Christians.
Chapter XVII.
The object of our worship is the One God, 101 He who by His commanding word, His arranging wisdom, His mighty power, brought forth from nothing this entire mass of our world, with all its array of elements, bodies, spirits, for the glory of His majesty; whence also the Greeks have bestowed on it the name of Κόσμος. The eye cannot see Him, though He is (spiritually) visible. He is incomprehensible, though in grace He is manifested. He is beyond our utmost thought, though our human faculties conceive of Him. He is therefore equally real and great. But that which, in the ordinary sense, can be seen and handled and conceived, is inferior to the eyes by which it is taken in, and the hands by which it is tainted, and the faculties by which it is discovered; but that which is infinite is known only to itself. This it is which gives some notion of God, while yet beyond all our conceptions—our very incapacity of fully grasping Him affords us the idea of what He really is. He is presented to our minds in His transcendent greatness, as at once known and unknown. And this is the crowning guilt of men, that they will not recognize One, of whom they cannot possibly be ignorant. Would you have the proof from the works of His hands, so numerous and so great, which both contain you and sustain you, which minister at once to your enjoyment, and strike you with awe; or would you rather have it from the testimony of the soul itself? Though under the oppressive bondage of the body, though led astray by depraving customs, though enervated by lusts and passions, though in slavery to false gods; yet, whenever the soul comes to itself, as out of a surfeit, or a sleep, or a sickness, and attains something of its natural soundness, it speaks of God; using no other word, because this is the peculiar name of the true God. “God is great and good”—“Which may God give,” are the words on every lip. It bears witness, too, that God is judge, exclaiming, “God sees,” and, “I commend myself to God,” and, “God will repay me.” O noble testimony of the soul by nature 102 Christian! Then, too, in using such words as these, it looks not to the Capitol, but to the heavens. It knows that there is the throne of the living God, as from Him and from thence itself came down.
Footnotes
31:101[Kaye, p. 168. Remarks on natural religion.]
32:102[Though we are not by nature good, in our present estate; this is elsewhere demonstrated by Tertullian, as see cap. xviii.]
Chapter XVIII.
But, that we might attain an ampler and more authoritative knowledge at once of Himself, and of His counsels and will, God has added a written revelation for the behoof of every one whose heart is set on seeking Him, that seeking he may find, and finding believe, and believing obey. For from the first He sent messengers into the world,—men whose stainless righteousness made them worthy to know the Most High, and to reveal Him,—men abundantly endowed with the Holy Spirit, that they might proclaim that there is one God only who made all things, who formed man from the dust of the ground (for He is the true Prometheus who gave order to the world by arranging the seasons and their course),—these have further set before us the proofs He has given of His majesty in His judgments by floods and fires, the rules appointed by Him for securing His favour, as well as the retribution in store for the ignoring, forsaking and keeping them, as being about at the end of all to adjudge His worshippers to everlasting life, and the wicked to the doom of fire at once without ending and without break, raising up again all the dead from the beginning, reforming and renewing them with the object of awarding either recompense. Once these things were with us, too, the theme of ridicule. We are of your stock and nature: men are made, not born, Christians. The preachers of whom we have spoken are called prophets, from the office which belongs to them of predicting the future. Their words, as well as the miracles which they performed, that men might have faith in their divine authority, we have still in the literary treasures they have left, and which are open to all. Ptolemy, surnamed Philadelphus, the most learned of his race, a man of vast acquaintance with all literature, emulating, I imagine, the book enthusiasm of Pisistratus, among other remains of the past which either their antiquity or something of peculiar interest made famous, at the suggestion of Demetrius Phalereus, who was renowned above all grammarians of his time, and to whom he had committed the management of these things, applied to the Jews for their writings—I mean the writings peculiar to them and in their tongue, which they alone possessed, for from themselves, as a people dear to God for their fathers’ sake, their prophets had ever sprung, and to them they had ever spoken. Now in ancient times the people we call Jews bare the name of Hebrews, and so both their writings and their speech were Hebrew. But that the understanding of their books might not be wanting, this also the Jews supplied to Ptolemy; for they gave him seventy-two interpreters—men whom the philosopher Menedemus, the well-known asserter of a Providence, regarded with respect as sharing in his views. The same account is given by Aristæus. So the king left these works unlocked to all, in the Greek language. 103 To this day, at the temple of Serapis, the libraries of Ptolemy are to be seen, with the identical Hebrew originals in them. The Jews, too, read them publicly. Under a tribute-liberty, they are in the habit of going to hear them every Sabbath. Whoever gives ear will find God in them; whoever takes pains to understand, will be compelled to believe.
Footnotes
32:103[Kaye, p. 291. See Elucidation I. Also Vol. II., p. 334.]
Chapter XIX.
Their high antiquity, first of all, claims authority for these writings. With you, too, it is a kind of religion to demand belief on this very ground. Well, all the substances, all the materials, the origins, classes, contents of your most ancient writings, even most nations and cities illustrious in the records of the past and noted for their antiquity in books of annals,—the very forms of your letters, those revealers and custodiers of events, nay (I think I speak still within the mark), your very gods themselves, your very temples and oracles, and sacred rites, are less ancient than the work of a single prophet, in whom you have the thesaurus of the entire Jewish religion, and therefore too of ours. If you happen to have heard of a certain Moses, I speak first of him: he is as far back as the Argive Inachus; by nearly four hundred years—only seven less—he precedes Danaus, your most ancient name; while he antedates by a millennium the death of Priam. I might affirm, too, that he is five hundred years earlier than Homer, and have supporters of that view. The other prophets also, though of later date, are, even the most recent of them, as far back as the first of your philosophers, and legislators, and historians. It is not so much the difficulty of the subject, as its vastness, that stands in the way of a statement of the grounds on which these statements rest; the matter is not so arduous as it would be tedious. It would require the anxious study of many books, and the fingers busy reckoning. The histories of the most ancient nations, such as the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, the Phœnicians, would need to be ransacked; the men of these various nations who have information to give, would have to be called in as witnesses. Manetho the Egyptian, and Berosus the Chaldean, and Hieromus the Phœnician king of Tyre; their successors too, Ptolemy the Mendesian, and Demetrius Phalereus, and King Juba, and Apion, and Thallus, and their critic the Jew Josephus, the native vindicator of the ancient history of his people, who either authenticates or refutes the others. Also the Greek censors’ lists must be compared, and the dates of events ascertained, that the chronological connections may be opened up, and thus the reckonings of the various annals be made to give forth light. We must go abroad into the histories and literature of all nations. And, in fact, we have already brought the proof in part before you, in giving those hints as to how it is to be effected. But it seems better to delay the full discussion of this, lest in our haste we do not sufficiently carry it out, or lest in its thorough handling we make too lengthened a digression.
Chapter XX.
To make up for our delay in this, we bring under your notice something of even greater importance; we point to the majesty of our Scriptures, if not to their antiquity. If you doubt that they are as ancient as we say, we offer proof that they are divine. And you may convince yourselves of this at once, and without going very far. Your instructors, the world, and the age, and the event, are all before you. All that is taking place around you was fore-announced; all that you now see with your eye was previously heard by the ear. The swallowing up of cities by the earth; the theft of islands by the sea; wars, bringing external and internal convulsions; the collision of kingdoms with kingdoms; famines and pestilences, and local massacres, and widespread desolating mortalities; the exaltation of the lowly, and the humbling of the proud; the decay of righteousness, the growth of sin, the slackening interest in all good ways; the very seasons and elements going out of their ordinary course, monsters and portents taking the place of nature’s forms—it was all foreseen and predicted before it came to pass. While we suffer the calamities, we read of them in the Scriptures; as we examine, they are proved. Well, the truth of a prophecy, I think, is the demonstration of its being from above. Hence there is among us an assured faith in regard to coming events as things already proved to us, for they were predicted along with what we have day by day fulfilled. They are uttered by the same voices, they are written in the same books—the same Spirit inspires them. All time is one to prophecy foretelling the future. Among men, it may be, a distinction of times is made while the fulfilment is going on: from being future we think of it as present, and then from being present we count it as belonging to the past. How are we to blame, I pray you, that we believe in things to come as though they already were, with the grounds we have for our faith in these two steps?
Chapter XXI.
But having asserted that our religion is supported by the writings of the Jews, the oldest which exist, though it is generally known, and we fully admit that it dates from a comparatively recent period—no further back indeed than the reign of Tiberius—a question may perhaps be raised on this ground about its standing, as if it were hiding something of its presumption under shadow of an illustrious religion, one which has at any rate undoubted allowance of the law, or because, apart from the question of age, we neither accord with the Jews in their peculiarities in regard to food, nor in their sacred days, nor even in their well-known bodily sign, nor in the possession of a common name, which surely behoved to be the case if we did homage to the same God as they. Then, too, the common people have now some knowledge of Christ, and think of Him as but a man, one indeed such as the Jews condemned, so that some may naturally enough have taken up the idea that we are worshippers of a mere human being. But we are neither ashamed of Christ—for we rejoice to be counted His disciples, and in His name to suffer—nor do we differ from the Jews concerning God. We must make, therefore, a remark or two as to Christ’s divinity. In former times the Jews enjoyed much of God’s favour, when the fathers of their race were noted for their righteousness and faith. So it was that as a people they flourished greatly, and their kingdom attained to a lofty eminence; and so highly blessed were they, that for their instruction God spake to them in special revelations, pointing out to them beforehand how they should merit His favor and avoid His displeasure. But how deeply they have sinned, puffed up to their fall with a false trust in their noble ancestors, turning from God’s way into a way of sheer impiety, though they themselves should refuse to admit it, their present national ruin would afford sufficient proof. Scattered abroad, a race of wanderers, exiles from their own land and clime, they roam over the whole world without either a human or a heavenly king, not possessing even the stranger’s right to set so much as a simple footstep in their native country. The sacred writers withal, in giving previous warning of these things, all with equal clearness ever declared that, in the last days of the world, God would, out of every nation, and people, and country, choose for Himself more faithful worshippers, upon whom He would bestow His grace, and that indeed in ampler measure, in keeping with the enlarged capacities of a nobler dispensation. Accordingly, He appeared among us, whose coming to renovate and illuminate man’s nature was pre-announced by God—I mean Christ, that Son of God. And so the supreme Head and Master of this grace and discipline, the Enlightener and Trainer of the human race, God’s own Son, was announced among us, born—but not so born as to make Him ashamed of the name of Son or of His paternal origin. It was not His lot to have as His father, by incest with a sister, or by violation of a daughter or another’s wife, a god in the shape of serpent, or ox, or bird, or lover, for his vile ends transmuting himself into the gold of Danaus. They are your divinities upon whom these base deeds of Jupiter were done. But the Son of God has no mother in any sense which involves impurity; she, whom men suppose to be His mother in the ordinary way, had never entered into the marriage bond. 104 But, first, I shall discuss His essential nature, and so the nature of His birth will be understood. We have already asserted that God made the world, and all which it contains, by His Word, and Reason, and Power. It is abundantly plain that your philosophers, too, regard the Logos—that is, the Word and Reason—as the Creator of the universe. For Zeno lays it down that he is the creator, having made all things according to a determinate plan; that his name is Fate, and God, and the soul of Jupiter, and the necessity of all things. Cleanthes ascribes all this to spirit, which he maintains pervades the universe. And we, in like manner, hold that the Word, and Reason, and Power, by which we have said God made all, have spirit as their proper and essential substratum, in which the Word has in being to give forth utterances, and reason abides to dispose and arrange, and power is over all to execute. We have been taught that He proceeds forth from God, and in that procession He is generated; so that He is the Son of God, and is called God from unity of substance with God. For God, too, is a Spirit. Even when the ray is shot from the sun, it is still part of the parent mass; the sun will still be in the ray, because it is a ray of the sun—there is no division of substance, but merely an extension. Thus Christ is Spirit of Spirit, and God of God, as light of light is kindled. 105 The material matrix remains entire and unimpaired, though you derive from it any number of shoots possessed of its qualities; so, too, that which has come forth out of God is at once God and the Son of God, and the two are one. In this way also, as He is Spirit of Spirit and God of God, He is made a second in manner of existence—in position, not in nature; and He did not withdraw from the original source, but went forth. This ray of God, then, as it was always foretold in ancient times, descending into a certain virgin, and made flesh in her womb, is in His birth God and man united. The flesh formed by the Spirit is nourished, grows up to manhood, speaks, teaches, works, and is the Christ. Receive meanwhile this fable, if you choose to call it so—it is like some of your own—while we go on to show how Christ’s claims are proved, and who the parties are with you by whom such fables have been set a going to overthrow the truth, which they resemble. The Jews, too, were well aware that Christ was coming, as those to whom the prophets spake. Nay, even now His advent is expected by them; nor is there any other contention between them and us, than that they believe the advent has not yet occurred. For two comings of Christ having been revealed to us: a first, which has been fulfilled in the lowliness of a human lot; a second, which impends over the world, now near its close, in all the majesty of Deity unveiled; and, by misunderstanding the first, they have concluded that the second—which, as matter of more manifest prediction, they set their hopes on—is the only one. It was the merited punishment of their sin not to understand the Lord’s first advent: for if they had, they would have believed; and if they had believed, they would have obtained salvation. They themselves read how it is written of them that they are deprived of wisdom and understanding—of the use of eyes and ears. 106 As, then, under the force of their pre-judgment, they had convinced themselves from His lowly guise that Christ was no more than man, it followed from that, as a necessary consequence, that they should hold Him a magician from the powers which He displayed,—expelling devils from men by a word, restoring vision to the blind, cleansing the leprous, reinvigorating the paralytic, summoning the dead to life again, making the very elements of nature obey Him, stilling the storms and walking on the sea; proving that He was the Logos of God, that primordial first-begotten Word, accompanied by power and reason, and based on Spirit,—that He who was now doing all things by His word, and He who had done that of old, were one and the same. But the Jews were so exasperated by His teaching, by which their rulers and chiefs were convicted of the truth, chiefly because so many turned aside to Him, that at last they brought Him before Pontius Pilate, at that time Roman governor of Syria; and, by the violence of their outcries against Him, extorted a sentence giving Him up to them to be crucified. He Himself had predicted this; which, however, would have signified little had not the prophets of old done it as well. And yet, nailed upon the cross, He exhibited many notable signs, by which His death was distinguished from all others. At His own free-will, He with a word dismissed from Him His spirit, anticipating the executioner’s work. In the same hour, too, the light of day was withdrawn, when the sun at the very time was in his meridian blaze. Those who were not aware that this had been predicted about Christ, no doubt thought it an eclipse. You yourselves have the account of the world-portent still in your archives. 107 Then, when His body was taken down from the cross and placed in a sepulchre, the Jews in their eager watchfulness surrounded it with a large military guard, lest, as He had predicted His resurrection from the dead on the third day, His disciples might remove by stealth His body, and deceive even the incredulous. But, lo, on the third day there a was a sudden shock of earthquake, and the stone which sealed the sepulchre was rolled away, and the guard fled off in terror: without a single disciple near, the grave was found empty of all but the clothes of the buried One. But nevertheless, the leaders of the Jews, whom it nearly concerned both to spread abroad a lie, and keep back a people tributary and submissive to them from the faith, gave it out that the body of Christ had been stolen by His followers. For the Lord, you see, did not go forth into the public gaze, lest the wicked should be delivered from their error; that faith also, destined to a great reward, might hold its ground in difficulty. But He spent forty days with some of His disciples down in Galilee, a region of Judea, instructing them in the doctrines they were to teach to others. Thereafter, having given them commission to preach the gospel through the world, He was encompassed with a cloud and taken up to heaven,—a fact more certain far than the assertions of your Proculi concerning Romulus. 108 All these things Pilate did to Christ; and now in fact a Christian in his own convictions, he sent word of Him to the reigning Cæsar, who was at the time Tiberius. Yes, and the Cæsars too would have believed on Christ, if either the Cæsars had not been necessary for the world, or if Christians could have been Cæsars. His disciples also, spreading over the world, did as their Divine Master bade them; and after suffering greatly themselves from the persecutions of the Jews, and with no unwilling heart, as having faith undoubting in the truth, at last by Nero’s cruel sword sowed the seed of Christian blood at Rome. 109 Yes, and we shall prove that even your own gods are effective witnesses for Christ. It is a great matter if, to give you faith in Christians, I can bring forward the authority of the very beings on account of whom you refuse them credit. Thus far we have carried out the plan we laid down. We have set forth this origin of our sect and name, with this account of the Founder of Christianity. Let no one henceforth charge us with infamous wickedness; let no one think that it is otherwise than we have represented, for none may give a false account of his religion. For in the very fact that he says he worships another god than he really does, he is guilty of denying the object of his worship, and transferring his worship and homage to another; and, in the transference, he ceases to worship the god he has repudiated. We say, and before all men we say, and torn and bleeding under your tortures, we cry out, “We worship God through Christ.” Count Christ a man, if you please; by Him and in Him God would be known and be adored. If the Jews object, we answer that Moses, who was but a man, taught them their religion; against the Greeks we urge that Orpheus at Pieria, Musæus at Athens, Melampus at Argos, Trophonius in Bœotia, imposed religious rites; turning to yourselves, who exercise sway over the nations, it was the man Numa Pompilius who laid on the Romans a heavy load of costly superstitions. Surely Christ, then, had a right to reveal Deity, which was in fact His own essential possession, not with the object of bringing boors and savages by the dread of multitudinous gods, whose favour must be won into some civilization, as was the case with Numa; but as one who aimed to enlighten men already civilized, and under illusions from their very culture, that they might come to the knowledge of the truth. Search, then, and see if that divinity of Christ be true. If it be of such a nature that the acceptance of it transforms a man, and makes him truly good, there is implied in that the duty of renouncing what is opposed to it as false; especially and on every ground that which, hiding itself under the names and images of dead, the labours to convince men of its divinity by certain signs, and miracles, and oracles.
Footnotes
34:104[That is, by the consummation of her marriage with Joseph.]
34:105[Language common among Christians, and adopted afterwards into the Creed.]
35:106Isa. vi. 10.
35:107Elucidation V.
35:108Proculus was a Roman senator who affirmed that Romulus had appeared to him after his death.
36:109[Chapter l. at close. “The blood of Christians is the seed of the Church.”]
Chapter XXII.
And we affirm indeed the existence of certain spiritual essences; nor is their name unfamiliar. The philosophers acknowledge there are demons; Socrates himself waiting on a demon’s will. Why not? since it is said an evil spirit attached itself specially to him even from his childhood—turning his mind no doubt from what was good. The poets are all acquainted with demons too; even the ignorant common people make frequent use of them in cursing. In fact, they call upon Satan, the demon-chief, in their execrations, as though from some instinctive soul-knowledge of him. Plato also admits the existence of angels. The dealers in magic, no less, come forward as witnesses to the existence of both kinds of spirits. We are instructed, moreover, by our sacred books how from certain angels, who fell of their own free-will, there sprang a more wicked demon-brood, condemned of God along with the authors of their race, and that chief we have referred to. It will for the present be enough, however, that some account is given of their work. Their great business is the ruin of mankind. So, from the very first, spiritual wickedness sought our destruction. They inflict, accordingly, upon our bodies diseases and other grievous calamities, while by violent assaults they hurry the soul into sudden and extraordinary excesses. Their marvellous subtleness and tenuity give them access to both parts of our nature. As spiritual, they can do no harm; for, invisible and intangible, we are not cognizant of their action save by its effects, as when some inexplicable, unseen poison in the breeze blights the apples and the grain while in the flower, or kills them in the bud, or destroys them when they have reached maturity; as though by the tainted atmosphere in some unknown way spreading abroad its pestilential exhalations. So, too, by an influence equally obscure, demons and angels breathe into the soul, and rouse up its corruptions with furious passions and vile excesses; or with cruel lusts accompanied by various errors, of which the worst is that by which these deities are commended to the favour of deceived and deluded human beings, that they may get their proper food of flesh-fumes and blood when that is offered up to idol-images. What is daintier food to the spirit of evil, than turning men’s minds away from the true God by the illusions of a false divination? And here I explain how these illusions are managed. Every spirit is possessed of wings. This is a common property of both angels and demons. So they are everywhere in a single moment; the whole world is as one place to them; all that is done over the whole extent of it, it is as easy for them to know as to report. Their swiftness of motion is taken for divinity, because their nature is unknown. Thus they would have themselves thought sometimes the authors of the things which they announce; and sometimes, no doubt, the bad things are their doing, never the good. The purposes of God, too, they took up of old from the lips of the prophets, even as they spoke them; and they gather them still from their works, when they hear them read aloud. Thus getting, too, from this source some intimations of the future, they set themselves up as rivals of the true God, while they steal His divinations. But the skill with which their responses are shaped to meet events, your Crœsi and Pyrrhi know too well. On the other hand, it was in that way we have explained, the Pythian was able to declare that they were cooking a tortoise 110 with the flesh of a lamb; in a moment he had been to Lydia. From dwelling in the air, and their nearness to the stars, and their commerce with the clouds, they have means of knowing the preparatory processes going on in these upper regions, and thus can give promise of the rains which they already feel. Very kind too, no doubt, they are in regard to the healing of diseases. For, first of all, they make you ill; then, to get a miracle out of it, they command the application of remedies either altogether new, or contrary to those in use, and straightway withdrawing hurtful influence, they are supposed to have wrought a cure. What need, then, to speak of their other artifices, or yet further of the deceptive power which they have as spirits: of these Castor apparitions, 111 of water carried by a sieve, and a ship drawn along by a girdle, and a beard reddened by a touch, all done with the one object of showing that men should believe in the deity of stones, and not seek after the only true God?
Footnotes
37:110Herodotus, I. 47. [See Wilberforce’s Five Empires, p. 67.]
37:111[Castor and Pollux. Imitated in saint worship.]
Chapter XXIII.
Moreover, if sorcerers call forth ghosts, and even make what seem the souls of the dead to appear; if they put boys to death, in order to get a response from the oracle; if, with their juggling illusions, they make a pretence of doing various miracles; if they put dreams into people’s minds by the power of the angels and demons whose aid they have invited, by whose influence, too, goats and tables are made to divine,—how much more likely is this power of evil to be zealous in doing with all its might, of its own inclination, and for its own objects, what it does to serve the ends of others! Or if both angels and demons do just what your gods do, where in that case is the pre-eminence of deity, which we must surely think to be above all in might? Will it not then be more reasonable to hold that these spirits make themselves gods, giving as they do the very proofs which raise your gods to godhead, than that the gods are the equals of angels and demons? You make a distinction of places, I suppose, regarding as gods in their temple those whose divinity you do not recognize elsewhere; counting the madness which leads one man to leap from the sacred houses, to be something different from that which leads another to leap from an adjoining house; looking on one who cuts his arms and secret parts as under a different furor from another who cuts his throat. The result of the frenzy is the same, and the manner of instigation is one. But thus far we have been dealing only in words: we now proceed to a proof of facts, in which we shall show that under different names you have real identity. Let a person be brought before your tribunals, who is plainly under demoniacal possession. The wicked spirit, bidden to speak by a follower of Christ, 112 will as readily make the truthful confession that he is a demon, as elsewhere he has falsely asserted that he is a god. Or, if you will, let there be produced one of the god-possessed, as they are supposed, who, inhaling at the altar, conceive divinity from the fumes, who are delivered of it by retching, who vent it forth in agonies of gasping. Let that same Virgin Cælestis herself the rain-promiser, let Æsculapius discoverer of medicines, ready to prolong the life of Socordius, and Tenatius, and Asclepiodotus, now in the last extremity, if they would not confess, in their fear of lying to a Christian, that they were demons, then and there shed the blood of that most impudent follower of Christ. What clearer than a work like that? what more trustworthy than such a proof? The simplicity of truth is thus set forth; its own worth sustains it; no ground remains for the least suspicion. Do you say that it is done by magic, or some trick of that sort? You will not say anything of the sort, if you have been allowed the use of your ears and eyes. For what argument can you bring against a thing that is exhibited to the eye in its naked reality? If, on the one hand, they are really gods, why do they pretend to be demons? Is it from fear of us? In that case your divinity is put in subjection to Christians; and you surely can never ascribe deity to that which is under authority of man, nay (if it adds aught to the disgrace) of its very enemies. If, on the other hand, they are demons or angels, why, inconsistently with this, do they presume to set themselves forth as acting the part of gods? For as beings who put themselves out as gods would never willingly call themselves demons, if they were gods indeed, that they might not thereby in fact abdicate their dignity; so those whom you know to be no more than demons, would not dare to act as gods, if those whose names they take and use were really divine. For they would not dare to treat with disrespect the higher majesty of beings, whose displeasure they would feel was to be dreaded. So this divinity of yours is no divinity; for if it were, it would not be pretended to by demons, and it would not be denied by gods. But since on both sides there is a concurrent acknowledgment that they are not gods, gather from this that there is but a single race—I mean the race of demons, the real race in both cases. Let your search, then, now be after gods; for those whom you had imagined to be so you find to be spirits of evil. The truth is, as we have thus not only shown from our own gods that neither themselves nor any others have claims to deity, you may see at once who is really God, and whether that is He and He alone whom we Christians own; as also whether you are to believe in Him, and worship Him, after the manner of our Christian faith and discipline. But at once they will say, Who is this Christ with his fables? is he an ordinary man? is he a sorcerer? was his body stolen by his disciples from its tomb? is he now in the realms below? or is he not rather up in the heavens, thence about to come again, making the whole world shake, filling the earth with dread alarms, making all but Christians wail—as the Power of God, and the Spirit of God, as the Word, the Reason, the Wisdom, and the Son of God? Mock as you like, but get the demons if you can to join you in your mocking; let them deny that Christ is coming to judge every human soul which has existed from the world’s beginning, clothing it again with the body it laid aside at death; let them declare it, say, before your tribunal, that this work has been allotted to Minos and Rhadamanthus, as Plato and the poets agree; let them put away from them at least the mark of ignominy and condemnation. They disclaim being unclean spirits, which yet we must hold as indubitably proved by their relish for the blood and fumes and fœtid carcasses of sacrificial animals, and even by the vile language of their ministers. Let them deny that, for their wickedness condemned already, they are kept for that very judgment-day, with all their worshippers and their works. Why, all the authority and power we have over them is from our naming the name of Christ, and recalling to their memory the woes with which God threatens them at the hands of Christ as Judge, and which they expect one day to overtake them. Fearing Christ in God, and God in Christ, they become subject to the servants of God and Christ. So at our touch and breathing, overwhelmed by the thought and realization of those judgment fires, they leave at our command the bodies they have entered, unwilling, and distressed, and before your very eyes put to an open shame. You believe them when they lie; give credit to them, then, when they speak the truth about themselves. No one plays the liar to bring disgrace upon his own head, but for the sake of honour rather. You give a readier confidence to people making confessions against themselves, than denials in their own behalf. It has not been an unusual thing, accordingly, for those testimonies of your deities to convert men to Christianity; for in giving full belief to them, we are led to believe in Christ. Yes, your very gods kindle up faith in our Scriptures, they build up the confidence of our hope. You do homage, as I know, to them also with the blood of Christians. On no account, then, would they lose those who are so useful and dutiful to them, anxious even to hold you fast, lest some day or other as Christians you might put them to the rout,—if under the power of a follower of Christ, who desires to prove to you the Truth, it were at all possible for them to lie.
Footnotes
37:112[This testimony must be noted as something of which Tertullian confidently challenges denial.]
Chapter XXIV.
This whole confession of these beings, in which they declare that they are not gods, and in which they tell you that there is no God but one, the God whom we adore, is quite sufficient to clear us from the crime of treason, chiefly against the Roman religion. For if it is certain the gods have no existence, there is no religion in the case. If there is no religion, because there are no gods, we are assuredly not guilty of any offence against religion. Instead of that, the charge recoils on your own head: worshipping a lie, you are really guilty of the crime you charge on us, not merely by refusing the true religion of the true God, but by going the further length of persecuting it. But now, granting that these objects of your worship are really gods, is it not generally held that there is one higher and more potent, as it were the world’s chief ruler, endowed with absolute power and majesty? For the common way is to apportion deity, giving an imperial and supreme domination to one, while its offices are put into the hands of many, as Plato describes great Jupiter in the heavens, surrounded by an array at once of deities and demons. It behooves us, therefore, to show equal respect to the procurators, prefects, and governors of the divine empire. And yet how great a crime does he commit, who, with the object of gaining higher favour with the Cæsar, transfers his endeavours and his hopes to another, and does not confess that the appellation of God as of Emperor belongs only to the Supreme Head, when it is held a capital offence among us to call, or hear called, by the highest title any other than Cæsar himself! Let one man worship God, another Jupiter; let one lift suppliant hands to the heavens, another to the altar of Fides; let one—if you choose to take this view of it—count in prayer the clouds, and another the ceiling panels; let one consecrate his own life to his God, and another that of a goat. For see that you do not give a further ground for the charge of irreligion, by taking away religious liberty, 113 and forbidding free choice of deity, so that I may no longer worship according to my inclination, but am compelled to worship against it. Not even a human being would care to have unwilling homage rendered him; and so the very Egyptians have been permitted the legal use of their ridiculous superstition, liberty to make gods of birds and beasts, nay, to condemn to death any one who kills a god of their sort. Every province even, and every city, has its god. Syria has Astarte, Arabia has Dusares, the Norici have Belenus, Africa has its Cælestis, Mauritania has its own princes. I have spoken, I think, of Roman provinces, and yet I have not said their gods are Roman; for they are not worshipped at Rome any more than others who are ranked as deities over Italy itself by municipal consecration, such as Delventinus of Casinum, Visidianus of Narnia, Ancharia of Asculum, Nortia of Volsinii, Valentia of Ocriculum, Hostia of Satrium, Father Curis of Falisci, in honour of whom, too, Juno got her surname. In, fact, we alone are prevented having a religion of our own. We give offence to the Romans, we are excluded from the rights and privileges of Romans, because we do not worship the gods of Rome. It is well that there is a God of all, whose we all are, whether we will or no. But with you liberty is given to worship any god but the true God, as though He were not rather the God all should worship, to whom all belong.
Footnotes
39:113[Observe our author’s assertion that in its own nature, worship must be a voluntary act, and note this expression libertatem religionis.]
Chapter XXV.
I think I have offered sufficient proof upon the question of false and true divinity, having shown that the proof rests not merely on debate and argument, but on the witness of the very beings whom you believe are gods, so that the point needs no further handling. However, having been led thus naturally to speak of the Romans, I shall not avoid the controversy which is invited by the groundless assertion of those who maintain that, as a reward of their singular homage to religion, the Romans have been raised to such heights of power as to have become masters of the world; and that so certainly divine are the beings they worship, that those prosper beyond all others, who beyond all others honour them. 114 This, forsooth, is the wages the gods have paid the Romans for their devotion. The progress of the empire is to be ascribed to Sterculus, the Mutunus, and Larentina! For I can hardly think that foreign gods would have been disposed to show more favour to an alien race than to their own, and given their own fatherland, in which they had their birth, grew up to manhood, became illustrious, and at last were buried, over to invaders from another shore! As for Cybele, if she set her affections on the city of Rome as sprung of the Trojan stock saved from the arms of Greece, she herself forsooth being of the same race,—if she foresaw her transference 115 to the avenging people by whom Greece the conqueror of Phrygia was to be subdued, let her look to it (in regard of her native country’s conquest by Greece). Why, too, even in these days the Mater Magna has given a notable proof of her greatness which she has conferred as a boon upon the city; when, after the loss to the State of Marcus Aurelius at Sirmium, on the sixteenth before the Kalends of April, that most sacred high priest of hers was offering, a week after, impure libations of blood drawn from his own arms, and issuing his commands that the ordinary prayers should be made for the safety of the emperor already dead. O tardy messengers! O sleepy despatches! through whose fault Cybele had not an earlier knowledge of the imperial decease, that the Christians might have no occasion to ridicule a goddess so unworthy. Jupiter, again, would surely never have permitted his own Crete to fall at once before the Roman Fasces, forgetful of that Idean cave and the Corybantian cymbals, and the sweet odour of her who nursed him there. Would he not have exalted his own tomb above the entire Capitol, that the land which covered the ashes of Jove might rather be the mistress of the world? Would Juno have desired the destruction of the Punic city, beloved even to the neglect of Samos, and that by a nation of Æneadæ? As to that I know, “Here were her arms, here was her chariot, this kingdom, if the Fates permit, the goddess tends and cherishes to be mistress of the nations.” 116 Jove’s hapless wife and sister had no power to prevail against the Fates! “Jupiter himself is sustained by fate.” And yet the Romans have never done such homage to the Fates, which gave them Carthage against the purpose and the will of Juno, as to the abandoned harlot Larentina. It is undoubted that not a few of your gods have reigned on earth as kings. If, then, they now possess the power of bestowing empire, when they were kings themselves, from whence had they received their kingly honours? Whom did Jupiter and Saturn worship? A Sterculus, I suppose. But did the Romans, along with the native-born inhabitants, afterwards adore also some who were never kings? In that case, however, they were under the reign of others, who did not yet bow down to them, as not yet raised to godhead. It belongs to others, then, to make gift of kingdoms, since there were kings before these gods had their names on the roll of divinities. But how utterly foolish it is to attribute the greatness of the Roman name to religious merits, since it was after Rome became an empire, or call it still a kingdom, that the religion she professes made its chief progress! Is it the case now? Has its religion been the source of the prosperity of Rome? Though Numa set agoing an eagerness after superstitious observances, yet religion among the Romans was not yet a matter of images or temples. It was frugal in its ways, its rites were simple, and there were no capitols struggling to the heavens; but the altars were offhand ones of turf, and the sacred vessels were yet of Samian earthen-ware, and from these the odours rose, and no likeness of God was to be seen. For at that time the skill of the Greeks and Tuscans in image-making had not yet overrun the city with the products of their art. The Romans, therefore, were not distinguished for their devotion to the gods before they attained to greatness; and so their greatness was not the result of their religion. Indeed, how could religion make a people great who have owed their greatness to their irreligion? For, if I am not mistaken, kingdoms and empires are acquired by wars, and are extended by victories. More than that, you cannot have wars and victories without the taking, and often the destruction, of cities. That is a thing in which the gods have their share of calamity. Houses and temples suffer alike; there is indiscriminate slaughter of priests and citizens; the hand of rapine is laid equally upon sacred and on common treasure. Thus the sacrileges of the Romans are as numerous as their trophies. They boast as many triumphs over the gods as over the nations; as many spoils of battle they have still, as there remain images of captive deities. And the poor gods submit to be adored by their enemies, and they ordain illimitable empire to those whose injuries rather than their simulated homage should have had retribution at their hands. But divinities unconscious are with impunity dishonoured, just as in vain they are adored. You certainly never can believe that devotion to religion has evidently advanced to greatness a people who, as we have put it, have either grown by injuring religion, or have injured religion by their growth. Those, too, whose kingdoms have become part of the one great whole of the Roman empire, were not without religion when their kingdoms were taken from them.
Footnotes
39:114[See Augustine’s City of God, III. xvii. p. 95, Ed. Migne.]
39:115Her image was taken from Pessinus to Rome.
40:116[Familiar reference to Virgil, Æneid, I. 15.]
Chapter XXVI.
Examine then, and see if He be not the dispenser of kingdoms, who is Lord at once of the world which is ruled, and of man himself who rules; if He have not ordained the changes of dynasties, with their appointed seasons, who was before all time, and made the world a body of times; if the rise and the fall of states are not the work of Him, under whose sovereignty the human race once existed without states at all. How do you allow yourselves to fall into such error? Why, the Rome of rural simplicity is older than some of her gods; she reigned before her proud, vast Capitol was built. The Babylonians exercised dominion, too, before the days of the Pontiffs; and the Medes before the Quindecemvirs; and the Egyptians before the Salii; and the Assyrians before the Luperci; and the Amazons before the Vestal Virgins. And to add another point: if the religions of Rome give empire, ancient Judea would never have been a kingdom, despising as it did one and all these idol deities; Judea, whose God you Romans once honoured with victims, and its temple with gifts, and its people with treaties; and which would never have been beneath your sceptre but for that last and crowning offence against God, in rejecting and crucifying Christ.
Chapter XXVII.
Enough has been said in these remarks to confute the charge of treason against your religion: for we cannot be held to do harm to that which has no existence. When we are called therefore to sacrifice, we resolutely refuse, relying on the knowledge we possess, by which we are well assured of the real objects to whom these services are offered, under profaning of images and the deification of human names. Some, indeed, think it a piece of insanity that, when it is in our power to offer sacrifice at once, and go away unharmed, holding as ever our convictions, we prefer an obstinate persistence in our confession to our safety. You advise us, forsooth, to take unjust advantage of you; but we know whence such suggestions come, who is at the bottom of it all, and how every effort is made, now by cunning suasion, and now by merciless persecution, to overthrow our constancy. No other than that spirit, half devil and half angel, who, hating us because of his own separation from God, and stirred with envy for the favour God has shown us, turns your minds against us by an occult influence, moulding and instigating them to all that perversity in judgment, and that unrighteous cruelty, which we have mentioned at the beginning of our work, when entering on this discussion. For, though the whole power of demons and kindred spirits is subject to us, yet still, as ill-disposed slaves sometimes conjoin contumacy with fear, and delight to injure those of whom they at the same time stand in awe, so is it here. For fear also inspires hatred. Besides, in their desperate condition, as already under condemnation, it gives them some comfort, while punishment delays, to have the usufruct of their malignant dispositions. And yet, when hands are laid on them, they are subdued at once, and submit to their lot; and those whom at a distance they oppose, in close quarters they supplicate for mercy. So when, like insurrectionary workhouses, or prisons, or mines, or any such penal slaveries, they break forth against us their masters, they know all the while that they are not a match for us, and just on that account, indeed, rush the more recklessly to destruction. We resist them, unwillingly, as though they were equals, and contend against them by persevering in that which they assail; and our triumph over them is never more complete than when we are condemned for resolute adherence to our faith.
Chapter XXVIII.
But as it was easily seen to be unjust to compel freemen against their will to offer sacrifice (for even in other acts of religious service a willing mind is required), it should be counted quite absurd for one man to compel another to do honour to the gods, when he ought ever voluntarily, and in the sense of his own need, to seek their favour, lest in the liberty which is his right he should be ready to say, “I want none of Jupiter’s favours; pray who art thou? Let Janus meet me with angry looks, with whichever of his faces he likes; what have you to do with me?” You have been led, no doubt, by these same evil spirits to compel us to offer sacrifice for the well-being of the emperor; and you are under a necessity of using force, just as we are under an obligation to face the dangers of it. This brings us, then, to the second ground of accusation, that we are guilty of treason against a majesty more august; for you do homage with a greater dread and an intenser reverence to Cæsar, than Olympian Jove himself. And if you knew it, upon sufficient grounds. For is not any living man better than a dead one, whoever he be? But this is not done by you on any other ground than regard to a power whose presence you vividly realize; so that also in this you are convicted of impiety to your gods, inasmuch as you show a greater reverence to a human sovereignty than you do to them. Then, too, among you, people far more readily swear a false oath in the name of all the gods, than in the name of the single genius of Cæsar.
Chapter XXIX.
Let it be made clear, then, first of all, if those to whom sacrifice is offered are really able to protect either emperor or anybody else, and so adjudge us guilty of treason, if angels and demons, spirits of most wicked nature, do any good, if the lost save, if the condemned give liberty, if the dead (I refer to what you know well enough) defend the living. For surely the first thing they would look to would be the protection of their statues, and images, and temples, which rather owe their safety, I think, to the watch kept by Cæsar’s guards. Nay, I think the very materials of which these are made come from Cæsar’s mines, and there is not a temple but depends on Cæsar’s will. Yes, and many gods have felt the displeasure of the Cæsar. It makes for my argument if they are also partakers of his favour, when he bestows on them some gift or privilege. How shall they who are thus in Cæsar’s power, who belong entirely to him, have Cæsar’s protection in their hands, so that you can imagine them able to give to Cæsar what they more readily get from him? This, then, is the ground on which we are charged with treason against the imperial majesty, to wit, that we do not put the emperors under their own possessions; that we do not offer a mere mock service on their behalf, as not believing their safety rests in leaden hands. But you are impious in a high degree who look for it where it is not, who seek it from those who have it not to give, passing by Him who has it entirely in His power. Besides this, you persecute those who know where to seek for it, and who, knowing where to seek for it, are able as well to secure it.
Chapter XXX.
For we offer prayer for the safety of our princes to the eternal, the true, the living God, whose favour, beyond all others, they must themselves desire. They know from whom they have obtained their power; they know, as they are men, from whom they have received life itself; they are convinced that He is God alone, on whose power alone they are entirely dependent, to whom they are second, after whom they occupy the highest places, before and above all the gods. Why not, since they are above all living men, and the living, as living, are superior to the dead? They reflect upon the extent of their power, and so they come to understand the highest; they acknowledge that they have all their might from Him against whom their might is nought. Let the emperor make war on heaven; let him lead heaven captive in his triumph; let him put guards on heaven; let him impose taxes on heaven! He cannot. Just because he is less than heaven, he is great. For he himself is His to whom heaven and every creature appertains. He gets his sceptre where he first got his humanity; his power where he got the breath of life. Thither we lift our eyes, with hands outstretched, because free from sin; with head uncovered, for we have nothing whereof to be ashamed; finally, without a monitor, because it is from the heart we supplicate. Without ceasing, for all our emperors we offer prayer. We pray for life prolonged; for security to the empire; for protection to the imperial house; for brave armies, a faithful senate, a virtuous people, the world at rest, whatever, as man or Cæsar, an emperor would wish. These things I cannot ask from any but the God from whom I know I shall obtain them, both because He alone bestows them and because I have claims upon Him for their gift, as being a servant of His, rendering homage to Him alone, persecuted for His doctrine, offering to Him, at His own requirement, that costly and noble sacrifice of prayer 117 despatched from the chaste body, an unstained soul, a sanctified spirit, not the few grains of incense a farthing buys 118 —tears of an Arabian tree,—not a few drops of wine,—not the blood of some worthless ox to which death is a relief, and, in addition to other offensive things, a polluted conscience, so that one wonders, when your victims are examined by these vile priests, why the examination is not rather of the sacrificers than the sacrifices. With our hands thus stretched out and up to God, rend us with your iron claws, hang us up on crosses, wrap us in flames, take our heads from us with the sword, let loose the wild beasts on us,—the very attitude of a Christian praying is one of preparation for all punishment. 119 Let this, good rulers, be your work: wring from us the soul, beseeching God on the emperor’s behalf. Upon the truth of God, and devotion to His name, put the brand of crime.
Footnotes
42:117Heb. x. 22. [See cap. xlii. infra. p. 49.]
42:118[Once more this reflection on the use of material incense, which is common to early Christians, as in former volumes noted.]
42:119[A reference to kneeling, which see the de Corona cap. 3, infra. Christians are represented as standing at prayer, in the delineations of the Catacombs. But, see Nicene Canon, xx.]
Chapter XXXI.
But we merely, you say, flatter the emperor, and feign these prayers of ours to escape persecution. Thank you for your mistake, for you give us the opportunity of proving our allegations. Do you, then, who think that we care nothing for the welfare of Cæsar, look into God’s revelations, examine our sacred books, which we do not keep in hiding, and which many accidents put into the hands of those who are not of us. Learn from them that a large benevolence is enjoined upon us, even so far as to supplicate God for our enemies, and to beseech blessings on our persecutors. 120 Who, then, are greater enemies and persecutors of Christians, than the very parties with treason against whom we are charged? Nay, even in terms, and most clearly, the Scripture says, “Pray for kings, and rulers, and powers, that all may be peace with you.” 121 For when there is disturbance in the empire, if the commotion is felt by its other members, surely we too, though we are not thought to be given to disorder, are to be found in some place or other which the calamity affects.
Footnotes
42:120Matt. v. 44.
42:1211 Tim. ii. 2.
Chapter XXXII.
There is also another and a greater necessity for our offering prayer in behalf of the emperors, nay, for the complete stability of the empire, and for Roman interests in general. For we know that a mighty shock impending over the whole earth—in fact, the very end of all things threatening dreadful woes—is only retarded by the continued existence of the Roman empire. 122 We have no desire, then, to be overtaken by these dire events; and in praying that their coming may be delayed, we are lending our aid to Rome’s duration. More than this, though we decline to swear by the genii of the Cæsars, we swear by their safety, which is worth far more than all your genii. Are you ignorant that these genii are called “Dæmones,” and thence the diminutive name “Dæmonia” is applied to them? We respect in the emperors the ordinance of God, who has set them over the nations. We know that there is that in them which God has willed; and to what God has willed we desire all safety, and we count an oath by it a great oath. But as for demons, that is, your genii, we have been in the habit of exorcising them, not of swearing by them, and thereby conferring on them divine honour.
Footnotes
43:122[Cap. xxxix. infra. And see Kaye, pp. 20, 348. A subject of which more hereafter.]
Chapter XXXIII.
But why dwell longer on the reverence and sacred respect of Christians to the emperor, whom we cannot but look up to as called by our Lord to his office? So that on valid grounds I might say Cæsar is more ours than yours, for our God has appointed him. Therefore, as having this propriety in him, I do more than you for his welfare, not merely because I ask it of Him who can give it, or because I ask it as one who deserves to get it, but also because, in keeping the majesty of Cæsar within due limits, and putting it under the Most High, and making it less than divine, I commend him the more to the favour of Deity, to whom I make him alone inferior. But I place him in subjection to one I regard as more glorious than himself. Never will I call the emperor God, and that either because it is not in me to be guilty of falsehood; or that I dare not turn him into ridicule; or that not even himself will desire to have that high name applied to him. If he is but a man, it is his interest as man to give God His higher place. Let him think it enough to bear the name of emperor. That, too, is a great name of God’s giving. To call him God, is to rob him of his title. If he is not a man, emperor he cannot be. Even when, amid the honours of a triumph, he sits on that lofty chariot, he is reminded that he is only human. A voice at his back keeps whispering in his ear, “Look behind thee; remember thou art but a man.” And it only adds to his exultation, that he shines with a glory so surpassing as to require an admonitory reference to his condition. 123 It adds to his greatness that he needs such a reminiscence, lest he should think himself divine.
Footnotes
43:123[A familiar story of Alexander is alluded to.]
Chapter XXXIV.
Augustus, the founder of the empire, would not even have the title Lord; for that, too, is a name of Deity. For my part, I am willing to give the emperor this designation, but in the common acceptation of the word, and when I am not forced to call him Lord as in God’s place. But my relation to him is one of freedom; for I have but one true Lord, the God omnipotent and eternal, who is Lord of the emperor as well. How can he, who is truly father of his country, be its lord? The name of piety is more grateful than the name of power; so the heads of families are called fathers rather than lords. Far less should the emperor have the name of God. We can only profess our belief that he is that by the most unworthy, nay, a fatal flattery; it is just as if, having an emperor, you call another by the name, in which case will you not give great and unappeasable offence to him who actually reigns?—an offence he, too, needs to fear on whom you have bestowed the title. Give all reverence to God, if you wish Him to be propitious to the emperor. Give up all worship of, and belief in, any other being as divine. Cease also to give the sacred name to him who has need of God himself. If such adulation is not ashamed of its lie, in addressing a man as divine, let it have some dread at least of the evil omen which it bears. It is the invocation of a curse, to give Cæsar the name of god before his apotheosis.
Chapter XXXV.
This is the reason, then, why Christians are counted public enemies: that they pay no vain, nor false, nor foolish honours to the emperor; that, as men believing in the true religion, they prefer to celebrate their festal days with a good conscience, instead of with the common wantonness. It is, forsooth, a notable homage to bring fires and couches out before the public, to have feasting from street to street, to turn the city into one great tavern, to make mud with wine, to run in troops to acts of violence, to deeds of shamelessness to lust allurements! What! is public joy manifested by public disgrace? Do things unseemly at other times beseem the festal days of princes? Do they who observe the rules of virtue out of reverence for Cæsar, for his sake turn aside from them? Shall piety be a license to immoral deeds, and shall religion be regarded as affording the occasion for all riotous extravagance? Poor we, worthy of all condemnation! For why do we keep the votive days and high rejoicings in honour of the Cæsars with chastity, sobriety, and virtue? Why, on the day of gladness, do we neither cover our door-posts with laurels, nor intrude upon the day with lamps? It is a proper thing, at the call of a public festivity, to dress your house up like some new brothel. 124 However, in the matter of this homage to a lesser majesty, in reference to which we are accused of a lower sacrilege, because we do not celebrate along with you the holidays of the Cæsars in a manner forbidden alike by modesty, decency, and purity,—in truth they have been established rather as affording opportunities for licentiousness than from any worthy motive;—in this matter I am anxious to point out how faithful and true you are, lest perchance here also those who will not have us counted Romans, but enemies of Rome’s chief rulers, be found themselves worse than we wicked Christians! I appeal to the inhabitants of Rome themselves, to the native population of the seven hills: does that Roman vernacular of theirs ever spare a Cæsar? The Tiber and the wild beasts’ schools bear witness. Say now if nature had covered our hearts with a transparent substance through which the light could pass, whose hearts, all graven over, would not betray the scene of another and another Cæsar presiding at the distribution of a largess? And this at the very time they are shouting, “May Jupiter take years from us, and with them lengthen like to you,”—words as foreign to the lips of a Christian as it is out of keeping with his character to desire a change of emperor. But this is the rabble, you say; yet, as the rabble, they still are Romans, and none more frequently than they demand the death of Christians. 125 Of course, then, the other classes, as befits their higher rank, are religiously faithful. No breath of treason is there ever in the senate, in the equestrian order, in the camp, in the palace. Whence, then, came a Cassius, a Niger, an Albinus? Whence they who beset the Cæsar 126 between the two laurel groves? Whence they who practised wrestling, that they might acquire skill to strangle him? Whence they who in full armour broke into the palace, 127 more audacious than all your Tigerii and Parthenii. 128 If I mistake not, they were Romans; that is, they were not Christians. Yet all of them, on the very eve of their traitorous outbreak, offered sacrifices for the safety of the emperor, and swore by his genius, one thing in profession, and another in the heart; and no doubt they were in the habit of calling Christians enemies of the state. Yes, and persons who are now daily brought to light as confederates or approvers of these crimes and treasons, the still remnant gleanings after a vintage of traitors, with what verdant and branching laurels they clad their door-posts, with what lofty and brilliant lamps they smoked their porches, with what most exquisite and gaudy couches they divided the Forum among themselves; not that they might celebrate public rejoicings, but that they might get a foretaste of their own votive seasons in partaking of the festivities of another, and inaugurate the model and image of their hope, changing in their minds the emperor’s name. The same homage is paid, dutifully too, by those who consult astrologers, and soothsayers, and augurs, and magicians, about the life of the Cæsars,—arts which, as made known by the angels who sinned, and forbidden by God, Christians do not even make use of in their own affairs. But who has any occasion to inquire about the life of the emperor, if he have not some wish or thought against it, or some hopes and expectations after it? For consultations of this sort have not the same motive in the case of friends as in the case of sovereigns. The anxiety of a kinsman is something very different from that of a subject.
Footnotes
44:124[Note this reference to a shameless custom of the heathen in Rome and elsewhere.]
44:125[See cap. l. and Note on cap. xl. infra.]
44:126Commodus.
44:127To murder Pertinax.
44:128Tigerius and Parthenius were among the murderers of Commodus.
Chapter XXXVI.
If it is the fact that men bearing the name of Romans are found to be enemies of Rome, why are we, on the ground that we are regarded as enemies, denied the name of Romans? We may be at once Romans and foes of Rome, when men passing for Romans are discovered to be enemies of their country. So the affection, and fealty, and reverence, due to the emperors do not consist in such tokens of homage as these, which even hostility may be zealous in performing, chiefly as a cloak to its purposes; but in those ways which Deity as certainly enjoins on us, as they are held to be necessary in the case of all men as well as emperors. Deeds of true heart-goodness are not due by us to emperors alone. We never do good with respect of persons; for in our own interest we conduct ourselves as those who take no payment either of praise or premium from man, but from God, who both requires and remunerates an impartial benevolence. 129 We are the same to emperors as to our ordinary neighbors. For we are equally forbidden to wish ill, to do ill, to speak ill, to think ill of all men. The thing we must not do to an emperor, we must not do to any one else: what we would not do to anybody, a fortiori, perhaps we should not do to him whom God has been pleased so highly to exalt.
Footnotes
45:129[Cap. ix. p. 25, note 1 supra. Again, Christian democracy, “honouring all men.”]
Chapter XXXVII.
If we are enjoined, then, to love our enemies, as I have remarked above, whom have we to hate? If injured, we are forbidden to retaliate, lest we become as bad ourselves: who can suffer injury at our hands? In regard to this, recall your own experiences. How often you inflict gross cruelties on Christians, partly because it is your own inclination, and partly in obedience to the laws! How often, too, the hostile mob, paying no regard to you, takes the law into its own hand, and assails us with stones and flames! With the very frenzy of the Bacchanals, they do not even spare the Christian dead, but tear them, now sadly changed, no longer entire, from the rest of the tomb, from the asylum we might say of death, cutting them in pieces, rending them asunder. Yet, banded together as we are, ever so ready to sacrifice our lives, what single case of revenge for injury are you able to point to, though, if it were held right among us to repay evil by evil, a single night with a torch or two could achieve an ample vengeance? But away with the idea of a sect divine avenging itself by human fires, or shrinking from the sufferings in which it is tried. If we desired, indeed, to act the part of open enemies, not merely of secret avengers, would there be any lacking in strength, whether of numbers or resources? The Moors, the Marcomanni, the Parthians themselves, or any single people, however great, inhabiting a distinct territory, and confined within its own boundaries, surpasses, forsooth, in numbers, one spread over all the world! We are but of yesterday, and we have filled every place among you—cities, islands, fortresses, towns, market-places, the very camp, tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum,—we have left nothing to you but the temples of your gods. For what wars should we not be fit, not eager, even with unequal forces, we who so willingly yield ourselves to the sword, if in our religion it were not counted better to be slain than to slay? Without arms even, and raising no insurrectionary banner, but simply in enmity to you, we could carry on the contest with you by an ill-willed severance alone. For if such multitudes of men were to break away from you, and betake themselves to some remote corner of the world, why, the very loss of so many citizens, whatever sort they were, would cover the empire with shame; nay, in the very forsaking, vengeance would be inflicted. Why, you would be horror-struck at the solitude in which you would find yourselves, at such an all-prevailing silence, and that stupor as of a dead world. You would have to seek subjects to govern. You would have more enemies than citizens remaining. For now it is the immense number of Christians which makes your enemies so few,—almost all the inhabitants of your various cities being followers of Christ. 130 Yet you choose to call us enemies of the human race, rather than of human error. Nay, who would deliver you from those secret foes, ever busy both destroying your souls and ruining your health? Who would save you, I mean, from the attacks of those spirits of evil, which without reward or hire we exorcise? This alone would be revenge enough for us, that you were henceforth left free to the possession of unclean spirits. But instead of taking into account what is due to us for the important protection we afford you, and though we are not merely no trouble to you, but in fact necessary to your well-being, you prefer to hold us enemies, as indeed we are, yet not of man, but rather of his error.
Footnotes
45:130[Elucidation VI.]
Chapter XXXVIII.
Ought not Christians, therefore, to receive not merely a somewhat milder treatment, but to have a place among the law-tolerated societies, seeing they are not chargeable with any such crimes as are commonly dreaded from societies of the illicit class? For, unless I mistake the matter, the prevention of such associations is based on a prudential regard to public order, that the state may not be divided into parties, which would naturally lead to disturbance in the electoral assemblies, the councils, the curiæ, the special conventions, even in the public shows by the hostile collisions of rival parties; especially when now, in pursuit of gain, men have begun to consider their violence an article to be bought and sold. But as those in whom all ardour in the pursuit of glory and honour is dead, we have no pressing inducement to take part in your public meetings; nor is there aught more entirely foreign to us than affairs of state. We acknowledge one all-embracing commonwealth—the world. We renounce all your spectacles, as strongly as we renounce the matters originating them, which we know were conceived of superstition, when we give up the very things which are the basis of their representations. Among us nothing is ever said, or seen, or heard, which has anything in common with the madness of the circus, the immodesty of the theatre, the atrocities of the arena, the useless exercises of the wrestling-ground. Why do you take offence at us because we differ from you in regard to your pleasures? If we will not partake of your enjoyments, the loss is ours, if there be loss in the case, not yours. We reject what pleases you. You, on the other hand, have no taste for what is our delight. The Epicureans were allowed by you to decide for themselves one true source of pleasure—I mean equanimity; the Christian, on his part, has many such enjoyments—what harm in that?
Chapter XXXIX.
I shall at once go on, then, to exhibit the peculiarities of the Christian society, that, as I have refuted the evil charged against it, I may point out its positive good. 131 We are a body knit together as such by a common religious profession, by unity of discipline, and by the bond of a common hope. We meet together as an assembly and congregation, that, offering up prayer to God as with united force, we may wrestle with Him in our supplications. This violence God delights in. We pray, too, for the emperors, for their ministers and for all in authority, for the welfare of the world, for the prevalence of peace, for the delay of the final consummation. 132 We assemble to read our sacred writings, if any peculiarity of the times makes either forewarning or reminiscence needful. 133 However it be in that respect, with the sacred words we nourish our faith, we animate our hope, we make our confidence more stedfast; and no less by inculcations of God’s precepts we confirm good habits. In the same place also exhortations are made, rebukes and sacred censures are administered. For with a great gravity is the work of judging carried on among us, as befits those who feel assured that they are in the sight of God; and you have the most notable example of judgment to come when any one has sinned so grievously as to require his severance from us in prayer, in the congregation and in all sacred intercourse. The tried men of our elders preside over us, obtaining that honour not by purchase, but by established character. There is no buying and selling of any sort in the things of God. Though we have our treasure-chest, it is not made up of purchase-money, as of a religion that has its price. On the monthly day, 134 if he likes, each puts in a small donation; but only if it be his pleasure, and only if he be able: for there is no compulsion; all is voluntary. These gifts are, as it were, piety’s deposit fund. For they are not taken thence and spent on feasts, and drinking-bouts, and eating-houses, but to support and bury poor people, to supply the wants of boys and girls destitute of means and parents, and of old persons confined now to the house; such, too, as have suffered shipwreck; and if there happen to be any in the mines, or banished to the islands, or shut up in the prisons, for nothing but their fidelity to the cause of God’s Church, they become the nurslings of their confession. But it is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us. See, they say, how they love one 135 another, for themselves are animated by mutual hatred; how they are ready even to die for one another, for they themselves will sooner put to death. And they are wroth with us, too, because we call each other brethren; for no other reason, as I think, than because among themselves names of consanguinity are assumed in mere pretence of affection. But we are your brethren as well, by the law of our common mother nature, though you are hardly men, because brothers so unkind. At the same time, how much more fittingly they are called and counted brothers who have been led to the knowledge of God as their common Father, who have drunk in one spirit of holiness, who from the same womb of a common ignorance have agonized into the same light of truth! But on this very account, perhaps, we are regarded as having less claim to be held true brothers, that no tragedy makes a noise about our brotherhood, or that the family possessions, which generally destroy brotherhood among you, create fraternal bonds among us. One in mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. All things are common among us but our wives. We give up our community where it is practised alone by others, who not only take possession of the wives of their friends, but most tolerantly also accommodate their friends with theirs, following the example, I believe, of those wise men of ancient times, the Greek Socrates and the Roman Cato, who shared with their friends the wives whom they had married, it seems for the sake of progeny both to themselves and to others; whether in this acting against their partners’ wishes, I am not able to say. Why should they have any care over their chastity, when their husbands so readily bestowed it away? O noble example of Attic wisdom, of Roman gravity—the philosopher and the censor playing pimps! What wonder if that great love of Christians towards one another is desecrated by you! For you abuse also our humble feasts, on the ground that they are extravagant as well as infamously wicked. To us, it seems, applies the saying of Diogenes: “The people of Megara feast as though they were going to die on the morrow; they build as though they were never to die!” But one sees more readily the mote in another’s eye than the beam in his own. Why, the very air is soured with the eructations of so many tribes, and curiæ, and decuriæ. The Salii cannot have their feast without going into debt; you must get the accountants to tell you what the tenths of Hercules and the sacrificial banquets cost; the choicest cook is appointed for the Apaturia, the Dionysia, the Attic mysteries; the smoke from the banquet of Serapis will call out the firemen. Yet about the modest supper-room of the Christians alone a great ado is made. Our feast explains itself by its name. The Greeks call it agapè, i.e., affection. Whatever it costs, our outlay in the name of piety is gain, since with the good things of the feast we benefit the needy; not as it is with you, do parasites aspire to the glory of satisfying their licentious propensities, selling themselves for a belly-feast to all disgraceful treatment,—but as it is with God himself, a peculiar respect is shown to the lowly. If the object of our feast be good, in the light of that consider its further regulations. As it is an act of religious service, it permits no vileness or immodesty. The participants, before reclining, taste first of prayer to God. As much is eaten as satisfies the cravings of hunger; as much is drunk as befits the chaste. They say it is enough, as those who remember that even during the night they have to worship God; they talk as those who know that the Lord is one of their auditors. After manual ablution, and the bringing in of lights, each 136 is asked to stand forth and sing, as he can, a hymn to God, either one from the holy Scriptures or one of his own composing,—a proof of the measure of our drinking. As the feast commenced with prayer, so with prayer it is closed. We go from it, not like troops of mischief-doers, nor bands of vagabonds, nor to break out into licentious acts, but to have as much care of our modesty and chastity as if we had been at a school of virtue rather than a banquet. Give the congregation of the Christians its due, and hold it unlawful, if it is like assemblies of the illicit sort: by all means let it be condemned, if any complaint can be validly laid against it, such as lies against secret factions. But who has ever suffered harm from our assemblies? We are in our congregations just what we are when separated from each other; we are as a community what we are individuals; we injure nobody, we trouble nobody. When the upright, when the virtuous meet together, when the pious, when the pure assemble in congregation, you ought not to call that a faction, but a curia—[i.e., the court of God.]
Footnotes
46:131[Elucidation VII.]
46:132[Chap. xxxii. supra p. 43.]
46:133[An argument for Days of Public Thanksgiving, Fasting and the like.]
46:134[On ordinary Sundays, “they laid by in store,” apparently: once a month they offered.]
46:135[A precious testimony, though the caviller asserts that afterwards the heathen used this expression derisively.]
47:136[Or, perhaps—“One is prompted to stand forth and bring to God, as every one can, whether from the Holy Scriptures, or of his own mind”—i.e. according to his taste.]
Chapter XL.
On the contrary, they deserve the name of faction who conspire to bring odium on good men and virtuous, who cry out against innocent blood, offering as the justification of their enmity the baseless plea, that they think the Christians the cause of every public disaster, of every affliction with which the people are visited. If the Tiber rises as high as the city walls, if the Nile does not send its waters up over the fields, if the heavens give no rain, if there is an earthquake, if there is famine or pestilence, straightway the cry 137 is, “Away with the Christians to the lion!” What! shall you give such multitudes to a single beast? Pray, tell me how many calamities befell the world and particular cities before Tiberius reigned—before the coming, that is, of Christ? We read of the islands of Hiera, and Anaphe, and Delos, and Rhodes, and Cos, with many thousands of human beings, having been swallowed up. Plato informs us that a region larger than Asia or Africa was seized by the Atlantic Ocean. An earthquake, too, drank up the Corinthian sea; and the force of the waves cut off a part of Lucania, whence it obtained the name of Sicily. These things surely could not have taken place without the inhabitants suffering by them. But where—I do not say were Christians, those despisers of your gods—but where were your gods themselves in those days, when the flood poured its destroying waters over all the world, or, as Plato thought, merely the level portion of it? For that they are of later date than that calamity, the very cities in which they were born and died, nay, which they founded, bear ample testimony; for the cities could have no existence at this day unless as belonging to postdiluvian times. Palestine had not yet received from Egypt its Jewish swarm (of emigrants), nor had the race from which Christians sprung yet settled down there, when its neighbors Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed by fire from heaven. The country yet smells of that conflagration; and if there are apples there upon the trees, it is only a promise to the eye they give—you but touch them, and they turn to ashes. Nor had Tuscia and Campania to complain of Christians in the days when fire from heaven overwhelmed Vulsinii, and Pompeii was destroyed by fire from its own mountain. No one yet worshipped the true God at Rome, when Hannibal at Cannæ counted the Roman slain by the pecks of Roman rings. Your gods were all objects of adoration, universally acknowledged, when the Senones closely besieged the very Capitol. And it is in keeping with all this, that if adversity has at any time befallen cities, the temples and the walls have equally shared in the disaster, so that it is clear to demonstration the thing was not the doing of the gods, seeing it also overtook themselves. The truth is, the human race has always deserved ill at God’s hand. First of all, as undutiful to Him, because when it knew Him in part, it not only did not seek after Him, but even invented other gods of its own to worship; and further, because, as the result of their willing ignorance of the Teacher of righteousness, the Judge and Avenger of sin, all vices and crimes grew and flourished. But had men sought, they would have come to know the glorious object of their seeking; and knowledge would have produced obedience, and obedience would have found a gracious instead of an angry God. They ought then to see that the very same God is angry with them now as in ancient times, before Christians were so much as spoken of. It was His blessings they enjoyed—created before they made any of their deities: and why can they not take it in, that their evils come from the Being whose goodness they have failed to recognize? They suffer at the hands of Him to whom they have been ungrateful. And, for all that is said, if we compare the calamities of former times, they fall on us more lightly now, since God gave Christians to the world; for from that time virtue put some restraint on the world’s wickedness, and men began to pray for the averting of God’s wrath. In a word, when the summer clouds give no rain, and the season is matter of anxiety, you indeed—full of feasting day by day, and ever eager for the banquet, baths and taverns and brothels always busy—offer up to Jupiter your rain-sacrifices; you enjoin on the people barefoot processions; you seek heaven at the Capitol; you look up to the temple-ceilings for the longed-for clouds—God and heaven not in all your thoughts. We, dried up with fastings, and our passions bound tightly up, holding back as long as possible from all the ordinary enjoyments of life, rolling in sackcloth and ashes, assail heaven with our importunities—touch God’s heart—and when we have extorted divine compassion, why, Jupiter gets all the honour!
Footnotes
47:137[Christianos ad leonem. From what class, chiefly, see cap. xxxv. supra. Elucidation VIII.]
Chapter XLI.
You, therefore, are the sources of trouble in human affairs; on you lies the blame of public adversities, since you are ever attracting them—you by whom God is despised and images are worshipped. It should surely seem the more natural thing to believe that it is the neglected One who is angry, and not they to whom all homage is paid; or most unjustly they act, if, on account of the Christians, they send trouble on their own devotees, whom they are bound to keep clear of the punishments of Christians. But this, you say, hits your God as well, since He permits His worshippers to suffer on account of those who dishonour Him. But admit first of all His providential arrangings, and you will not make this retort. For He who once for all appointed an eternal judgment at the world’s close, does not precipitate the separation, which is essential to judgment, before the end. Meanwhile He deals with all sorts of men alike, so that all together share His favours and reproofs. His will is, that outcasts and elect should have adversities and prosperities in common, that we should have all the same experience of His goodness and severity. Having learned these things from His own lips, we love His goodness, we fear His wrath, while both by you are treated with contempt; and hence the sufferings of life, so far as it is our lot to be overtaken by them, are in our case gracious admonitions, while in yours they are divine punishments. We indeed are not the least put about: for, first, only one thing in this life greatly concerns us, and that is, to get quickly out of it; and next, if any adversity befalls us, it is laid to the door of your transgressions. Nay, though we are likewise involved in troubles because of our close connection with you, we are rather glad of it, because we recognize in it divine foretellings, which, in fact, go to confirm the confidence and faith of our hope. But if all the evils you endure are inflicted on you by the gods you worship out of spite to us, why do you continue to pay homage to beings so ungrateful, and unjust; who, instead of being angry with you, should rather have been aiding and abetting you by persecuting Christians—keeping you clear of their sufferings?
Chapter XLII.
But we are called to account as harm-doers on another 138 ground, and are accused of being useless in the affairs of life. How in all the world can that be the case with people who are living among you, eating the same food, wearing the same attire, having the same habits, under the same necessities of existence? We are not Indian Brahmins or Gymnosophists, who dwell in woods and exile themselves from ordinary human life. We do not forget the debt of gratitude we owe to God, our Lord and Creator; we reject no creature of His hands, though certainly we exercise restraint upon ourselves, lest of any gift of His we make an immoderate or sinful use. So we sojourn with you in the world, abjuring neither forum, nor shambles, nor bath, nor booth, nor workshop, nor inn, nor weekly market, nor any other places of commerce. We sail with you, and fight with you, 139 and till the ground with you; and in like manner we unite with you in your traffickings—even in the various arts we make public property of our works for your benefit. How it is we seem useless in your ordinary business, living with you and by you as we do, I am not able to understand. But if I do not frequent your religious ceremonies, I am still on the sacred day a man. I do not at the Saturnalia bathe myself at dawn, that I may not lose both day and night; yet I bathe at a decent and healthful hour, which preserves me both in heat and blood. I can be rigid and pallid like you after ablution when I am dead. I do not recline in public at the feast of Bacchus, after the manner of the beast-fighters at their final banquet. Yet of your resources I partake, wherever I may chance to eat. I do not buy a crown for my head. What matters it to you how I use them, if nevertheless the flowers are purchased? I think it more agreeable to have them free and loose, waving all about. Even if they are woven into a crown, we smell the crown with our nostrils: let those look to it who scent the perfume with their hair. We do not go to your spectacles; yet the articles that are sold there, if I need them, I will obtain more readily at their proper places. We certainly buy no frankincense. If the Arabias complain of this, let the Sabæans be well assured that their more precious and costly merchandise is expended as largely in the burying of Christians 140 as in the fumigating of the gods. At any rate, you say, the temple revenues are every day falling off: 141 how few now throw in a contribution! In truth, we are not able to give alms both to your human and your heavenly mendicants; nor do we think that we are required to give any but to those who ask for it. Let Jupiter then hold out his hand and get, for our compassion spends more in the streets than yours does in the temples. But your other taxes will acknowledge a debt of gratitude to Christians; for in the faithfulness which keeps us from fraud upon a brother, we make conscience of paying all their dues: so that, by ascertaining how much is lost by fraud and falsehood in the census declarations—the calculation may easily be made—it would be seen that the ground of complaint in one department of revenue is compensated by the advantage which others derive.
Footnotes
49:138[Elucidation IX. See Kaye, p. 361.]
49:139[The occupation of a soldier was regarded as lawful therefore. But see, afterwards, the De Corona cap. xi.]
49:140[An interesting fact as to the burial-rites of Early Christians. As to incense, see cap. xxx. supra. p. 42.]
49:141An index of the growth of Christianity.
Chapter XLIII.
I will confess, however, without hesitation, that there are some who in a sense may complain of Christians that they are a sterile race: as, for instance, pimps, and panders, and bath-suppliers; assassins, and poisoners, and sorcerers; soothsayers, too, diviners, and astrologers. But it is a noble fruit of Christians, that they have no fruits for such as these. And yet, whatever loss your interests suffer from the religion we profess, the protection you have from us makes amply up for it. What value do you set on persons, I do not here urge who deliver you from demons, I do not urge who for your sakes present prayers before the throne of the true God, for perhaps you have no belief in that—but from whom you can have nothing to fear?
Chapter XLIV.
Yes, and no one considers what the loss is to the common weal,—a loss as great as it is real, no one estimates the injury entailed upon the state, when, men of virtue as we are, we are put to death in such numbers; when so many of the truly good suffer the last penalty. And here we call your own acts to witness, you who are daily presiding at the trials of prisoners, and passing sentence upon crimes. Well, in your long lists of those accused of many and various atrocities, has any assassin, any cutpurse, any man guilty of sacrilege, or seduction, or stealing bathers’ clothes, his name entered as being a Christian too? Or when Christians are brought before you on the mere ground of their name, is there ever found among them an ill-doer of the sort? It is always with your folk the prison is steaming, the mines are sighing, the wild beasts are fed: it is from you the exhibitors of gladiatorial shows always get their herds of criminals to feed up for the occasion. You find no Christian there, except simply as being such; or if one is there as something else, a Christian he is no longer. 142
Footnotes
50:142[An appeal so defiant that its very boldness confirms this tribute to the character of our Christian fathers, p. 42.]
Chapter XLV.
We, then, alone are without crime. Is there ought wonderful in that, if it be a very necessity with us? For a necessity indeed it is. Taught of God himself what goodness is, we have both a perfect knowledge of it as revealed to us by a perfect Master; and faithfully we do His will, as enjoined on us by a Judge we dare not despise. But your ideas of virtue you have got from mere human opinion; on human authority, too, its obligation rests: hence your system of practical morality is deficient, both in the fulness and authority requisite to produce a life of real virtue. Man’s wisdom to point out what is good, is no greater than his authority to exact the keeping of it; the one is as easily deceived as the other is despised. And so, which is the ampler rule, to say, “Thou shalt not kill,” or to teach, “Be not even angry?” Which is more perfect, to forbid adultery, or to restrain from even a single lustful look? Which indicates the higher intelligence, interdicting evil-doing, or evil-speaking? Which is more thorough, not allowing an injury, or not even suffering an injury done to you to be repaid? Though withal you know that these very laws also of yours, which seem to lead to virtue, have been borrowed from the law of God as the ancient model. Of the age of Moses we have already spoken. But what is the real authority of human laws, when it is in man’s power both to evade them, by generally managing to hide himself out of sight in his crimes, and to despise them sometimes, if inclination or necessity leads him to offend? Think of these things, too, in the light of the brevity of any punishment you can inflict—never to last longer than till death. On this ground Epicurus makes light of all suffering and pain, maintaining that if it is small, it is contemptible; and if it is great, it is not long-continued. No doubt about it, we, who receive our awards under the judgment of an all-seeing God, and who look forward to eternal punishment from Him for sin,—we alone make real effort to attain a blameless life, under the influence of our ampler knowledge, the impossibility of concealment, and the greatness of the threatened torment, not merely long-enduring but everlasting, fearing Him, whom he too should fear who the fearing judges,—even God, I mean, and not the proconsul.
Chapter XLVI.
We have sufficiently met, as I think, the accusation of the various crimes on the ground of which these fierce demands are made for Christian blood. We have made a full exhibition of our case; and we have shown you how we are able to prove that our statement is correct, from the trustworthiness, I mean, and antiquity of our sacred writings, and from the confession likewise of the powers of spiritual wickedness themselves. Who will venture to undertake our refutation; not with skill of words, but, as we have managed our demonstration, on the basis of reality? But while the truth we hold is made clear to all, unbelief meanwhile, at the very time it is convinced of the worth of Christianity, which has now become well known for its benefits as well as from the intercourse of life, takes up the notion that it is not really a thing divine, but rather a kind of philosophy. These are the very things, it says, the philosophers counsel and profess—innocence, justice, patience, sobriety, chastity. Why, then, are we not permitted an equal liberty and impunity for our doctrines as they have, with whom, in respect of what we teach, we are compared? or why are not they, as so like us, not pressed to the same offices, for declining which our lives are imperilled? For who compels a philosopher to sacrifice or take an oath, or put out useless lamps at midday? Nay, they openly overthrow your gods, and in their writings they attack your superstitions; and you applaud them for it. Many of them even, with your countenance, bark out against your rulers, and are rewarded with statues and salaries, instead of being given to the wild beasts. And very right it should be so. For they are called philosophers, not Christians. This name of philosopher has no power to put demons to the rout. Why are they not able to do that too? since philosophers count demons inferior to gods. Socrates used to say, “If the demon grant permission.” Yet he, too, though in denying the existence of your divinities he had a glimpse of the truth, at his dying ordered a cock to be sacrificed to Æsculapius, I believe in honour of his father, 143 for Apollo pronounced Socrates the wisest of men. Thoughtless Apollo! testifying to the wisdom of the man who denied the existence of his race. In proportion to the enmity the truth awakens, you give offence by faithfully standing by it; but the man who corrupts and makes a mere pretence of it precisely on this ground gains favour with its persecutors. The truth which philosophers, these mockers and corrupters of it, with hostile ends merely affect to hold, and in doing so deprave, caring for nought but glory, Christians both intensely and intimately long for and maintain in its integrity, as those who have a real concern about their salvation. So that we are like each other neither in our knowledge nor our ways, as you imagine. For what certain information did Thales, the first of natural philosophers, give in reply to the inquiry of Crœsus regarding Deity, the delay for further thought so often proving in vain? There is not a Christian workman but finds out God, and manifests Him, and hence assigns to Him all those attributes which go to constitute a divine being, though Plato affirms that it is far from easy to discover the Maker of the universe; and when He is found, it is difficult to make Him known to all. But if we challenge you to comparison in the virtue of chastity, I turn to a part of the sentence passed by the Athenians against Socrates, who was pronounced a corrupter of youth. The Christian confines himself to the female sex. I have read also how the harlot Phryne kindled in Diogenes the fires of lust, and how a certain Speusippus, of Plato’s school, perished in the adulterous act. The Christian husband has nothing to do with any but his own wife. Democritus, in putting out his eyes, because he could not look on women without lusting after them, and was pained if his passion was not satisfied, owns plainly, by the punishment he inflicts, his incontinence. But a Christian with grace-healed eyes is sightless in this matter; he is mentally blind against the assaults of passion. If I maintain our superior modesty of behaviour, there at once occurs to me Diogenes with filth-covered feet trampling on the proud couches of Plato, under the influence of another pride: the Christian does not even play the proud man to the pauper. If sobriety of spirit be the virtue in debate, why, there are Pythagoras at Thurii, and Zeno at Priene, ambitious of the supreme power: the Christian does not aspire to the ædileship. If equanimity be the contention, you have Lycurgus choosing death by self-starvation, because the Lacons had made some emendation of his laws: the Christian, even when he is condemned, gives thanks. 144 If the comparison be made in regard to trustworthiness, Anaxagoras denied the deposit of his enemies: the Christian is noted for his fidelity even among those who are not of his religion. If the matter of sincerity is to be brought to trial, Aristotle basely thrust his friend Hermias from his place: the Christian does no harm even to his foe. With equal baseness does Aristotle play the sycophant to Alexander, instead of exercising to keep him in the right way, and Plato allows himself to be bought by Dionysius for his belly’s sake. Aristippus in the purple, with all his great show of gravity, gives way to extravagance; and Hippias is put to death laying plots against the state: no Christian ever attempted such a thing in behalf of his brethren, even when persecution was scattering them abroad with every atrocity. But it will be said that some of us, too, depart from the rules of our discipline. In that case, however, we count them no longer Christians; but the philosophers who do such things retain still the name and the honour of wisdom. So, then, where is there any likeness between the Christian and the philosopher? between the disciple of Greece and of heaven? between the man whose object is fame, and whose object is life? between the talker and the doer? between the man who builds up and the man who pulls down? between the friend and the foe of error? between one who corrupts the truth, and one who restores and teaches it? between its chief and its custodier?
Footnotes
51:143[Tertullian’s exposition of this enigmatical fact (see the Phædo) is better than divers other ingenious theories.]
51:144[John xxi. 19. A pious habit which long survived among Christians, when learning that death was at hand: as in Shakespeare’s Henry IV., “Laud be to God, ev’n there my life must end.” See 1 Thess. v. 18.]
Chapter XLVII.
Unless I am utterly mistaken, there is nothing so old as the truth; and the already proved antiquity of the divine writings is so far of use to me, that it leads men more easily to take it in that they are the treasure-source whence all later wisdom has been taken. And were it not necessary to keep my work to a moderate size, I might launch forth also into the proof of this. What poet or sophist has not drunk at the fountain of the prophets? Thence, accordingly, the philosophers watered their arid minds, so that it is the things they have from us which bring us into comparison with them. For this reason, I imagine, philosophy was banished by certain states—I mean by the Thebans, by the Spartans also, and the Argives—its disciples sought to imitate our doctrines; and ambitious, as I have said, of glory and eloquence alone, if they fell upon anything in the collection of sacred Scriptures which displeased them, in their own peculiar style of research, they perverted it to serve their purpose: for they had no adequate faith in their divinity to keep them from changing them, nor had they any sufficient understanding of them, either, as being still at the time under veil—even obscure to the Jews themselves, whose peculiar possession they seemed to be. For so, too, if the truth was distinguished by its simplicity, the more on that account the fastidiousness of man, too proud to believe, set to altering it; so that even what they found certain they made uncertain by their admixtures. Finding a simple revelation of God, they proceeded to dispute about Him, not as He had revealed to them, but turned aside to debate about His properties, His nature, His abode. Some assert Him to be incorporeal; others maintain He has a body,—the Platonists teaching the one doctrine, and the Stoics the other. Some think that He is composed of atoms, others of numbers: such are the different views of Epicurus and Pythagoras. One thinks He is made of fire; so it appeared to Heraclitus. The Platonists, again, hold that He administers the affairs of the world; the Epicureans, on the contrary, that He is idle and inactive, and, so to speak, a nobody in human things. Then the Stoics represent Him as placed outside the world, and whirling round this huge mass from without like a potter; while the Platonists place Him within the world, as a pilot is in the ship he steers. So, in like manner, they differ in their views about the world itself, whether it is created or uncreated, whether it is destined to pass away or to remain for ever. So again it is debated concerning the nature of the soul, which some contend is divine and eternal, while others hold that it is dissoluble. According to each one’s fancy, He has introduced either something new, or refashioned the old. Nor need we wonder if the speculations of philosophers have perverted the older Scriptures. Some of their brood, with their opinions, have even adulterated our new-given Christian revelation, and corrupted it into a system of philosophic doctrines, and from the one path have struck off many and inexplicable by-roads. 145 And I have alluded to this, lest any one becoming acquainted with the variety of parties among us, this might seem to him to put us on a level with the philosophers, and he might condemn the truth from the different ways in which it is defended. But we at once put in a plea in bar against these tainters of our purity, asserting that this is the rule of truth which comes down from Christ by transmission through His companions, to whom we shall prove that those devisers of different doctrines are all posterior. Everything opposed to the truth has been got up from the truth itself, the spirits of error carrying on this system of opposition. By them all corruptions of wholesome discipline have been secretly instigated; by them, too, certain fables have been introduced, that, by their resemblance to the truth, they might impair its credibility, or vindicate their own higher claims to faith; so that people might think Christians unworthy of credit because the poets or philosophers are so, or might regard the poets and philosophers as worthier of confidence from their not being followers of Christ. Accordingly, we get ourselves laughed at for proclaiming that God will one day judge the world. For, like us, the poets and philosophers set up a judgment-seat in the realms below. And if we threaten Gehenna, which is a reservoir of secret fire under the earth for purposes of punishment, we have in the same way derision heaped on us. For so, too, they have their Pyriphlegethon, a river of flame in the regions of the dead. And if we speak of Paradise, 146 the place of heavenly bliss appointed to receive the spirits of the saints, severed from the knowledge of this world by that fiery zone as by a sort of enclosure, the Elysian plains have taken possession of their faith. Whence is it, I pray you have all this, so like us, in the poets and philosophers? The reason simply is, that they have been taken from our religion. But if they are taken from our sacred things, as being of earlier date, then ours are the truer, and have higher claims upon belief, since even their imitations find faith among you. If they maintain their sacred mysteries to have sprung from their own minds, in that case ours will be reflections of what are later than themselves, which by the nature of things is impossible, for never does the shadow precede the body which casts it, or the image the reality. 147
Footnotes
52:145[See Irenæus, vol. i. p. 377 this Series.]
52:146[Elucidation X.]
52:147True, in the sense that a shadow cannot be projected by a body not yet existent.
Chapter XLVIII.
Come now, if some philosopher affirms, as Laberius holds, following an opinion of Pythagoras, that a man may have his origin from a mule, a serpent from a woman, and with skill of speech twists every argument to prove his view, will he not gain acceptance for and work in some the conviction that, on account of this, they should even abstain from eating animal food? May any one have the persuasion that he should so abstain, lest by chance in his beef he eats of some ancestor of his? But if a Christian promises the return of a man from a man, and the very actual Gaius from Gaius, 148 the cry of the people will be to have him stoned; they will not even so much as grant him a hearing. If there is any ground for the moving to and fro of human souls into different bodies, why may they not return into the very substance they have left, seeing this is to be restored, to be that which had been? They are no longer the very things they had been; for they could not be what they were not, without first ceasing to be what they had been. If we were inclined to give all rein upon this point, discussing into what various beasts one and another might probably be changed, we would need at our leisure to take up many points. But this we would do chiefly in our own defence, as setting forth what is greatly worthier of belief, that a man will come back from a man—any given person from any given person, still retaining his humanity; so that the soul, with its qualities unchanged, may be restored to the same condition, thought not to the same outward framework. Assuredly, as the reason why restoration takes place at all is the appointed judgment, every man must needs come forth the very same who had once existed, that he may receive at God’s hands a judgment, whether of good desert or the opposite. And therefore the body too will appear; for the soul is not capable of suffering without the solid substance (that is, the flesh; and for this reason, also) that it is not right that souls should have all the wrath of God to bear: they did not sin without the body, within which all was done by them. But how, you say, can a substance which has been dissolved be made to reappear again? Consider thyself, O man, and thou wilt believe in it! Reflect on what you were before you came into existence. Nothing. For if you had been anything, you would have remembered it. You, then, who were nothing before you existed, reduced to nothing also when you cease to be, why may you not come into being again out of nothing, at the will of the same Creator whose will created you out of nothing at the first? Will it be anything new in your case? You who were not, were made; when you cease to be again, you shall be made. Explain, if you can, your original creation, and then demand to know how you shall be re-created. Indeed, it will be still easier surely to make you what you were once, when the very same creative power made you without difficulty what you never were before. There will be doubts, perhaps, as to the power of God, of Him who hung in its place this huge body of our world, made out of what had never existed, as from a death of emptiness and inanity, animated by the Spirit who quickens all living things, its very self the unmistakable type of the resurrection, that it might be to you a witness—nay, the exact image of the resurrection. Light, every day extinguished, shines out again; and, with like alternation, darkness succeeds light’s outgoing. The defunct stars re-live; the seasons, as soon as they are finished, renew their course; the fruits are brought to maturity, and then are reproduced. The seeds do not spring up with abundant produce, save as they rot and dissolve away;—all things are preserved by perishing, all things are refashioned out of death. Thou, man of nature so exalted, if thou understandest thyself, taught even by the Pythian 149 words, lord of all these things that die and rise,—shalt thou die to perish evermore? Wherever your dissolution shall have taken place, whatever material agent has destroyed you, or swallowed you up, or swept you away, or reduced you to nothingness, it shall again restore you. Even nothingness is His who is Lord of all. You ask, Shall we then be always dying, and rising up from death? If so the Lord of all things had appointed, you would have to submit, though unwillingly, to the law of your creation. But, in fact, He has no other purpose than that of which He has informed us. The Reason which made the universe out of diverse elements, so that all things might be composed of opposite substances in unity—of void and solid, of animate and inanimate, of comprehensible and incomprehensible, of light and darkness, of life itself and death—has also disposed time into order, by fixing and distinguishing its mode, according to which this first portion of it, which we inhabit from the beginning of the world, flows down by a temporal course to a close; but the portion which succeeds, and to which we look forward continues forever. When, therefore, the boundary and limit, that millennial interspace, has been passed, when even the outward fashion of the world itself—which has been spread like a veil over the eternal economy, equally a thing of time—passes away, then the whole human race shall be raised again, to have its dues meted out according as it has merited in the period of good or evil, and thereafter to have these paid out through the immeasurable ages of eternity. Therefore after this there is neither death nor repeated resurrections, but we shall be the same that we are now, and still unchanged—the servants of God, ever with God, clothed upon with the proper substance of eternity; but the profane, and all who are not true worshippers of God, in like manner shall be consigned to the punishment of everlasting fire—that fire which, from its very nature indeed, directly ministers to their incorruptibility. The philosophers are familiar as well as we with the distinction between a common and a secret fire. Thus that which is in common use is far different from that which we see in divine judgments, whether striking as thunderbolts from heaven, or bursting up out of the earth through mountain-tops; for it does not consume what it scorches, but while it burns it repairs. So the mountains continue ever burning; and a person struck by lighting is even now kept safe from any destroying flame. A notable proof this of the fire eternal! a notable example of the endless judgment which still supplies punishment with fuel! The mountains burn, and last. How will it be with the wicked and the enemies of God? 150
Footnotes
53:148[i.e., Caius, used (like John Doe with us) in Roman Law.]
53:149Know thyself. [Juvenal, xi. 27, on which see great wealth of reference in J.E.B. Mayor’s Juvenal (xiii. Satires), and note especially, Bernard, Serm. De Divers xl. 3. In Cant. Cantic. xxxvi. 5–7.]
54:150[Our author’s philosophy may be at fault, but his testimony is not to be mistaken.]
Chapter XLIX.
These are what are called presumptuous speculations in our case alone; in the philosophers and poets they are regarded as sublime speculations and illustrious discoveries. They are men of wisdom, we are fools. They are worthy of all honour, we are folk to have the finger pointed at; nay, besides that, we are even to have punishments inflicted on us. But let things which are the defence of virtue, if you will, have no foundation, and give them duly the name of fancies, yet still they are necessary; let them be absurd if you will, yet they are of use: they make all who believe them better men and women, under the fear of never-ending punishment and the hope of never-ending bliss. It is not, then, wise to brand as false, nor to regard as absurd, things the truth of which it is expedient to presume. On no ground is it right positively to condemn as bad what beyond all doubt is profitable. Thus, in fact, you are guilty of the very presumption of which you accuse us, in condemning what is useful. It is equally out of the question to regard them as nonsensical; at any rate, if they are false and foolish, they hurt nobody. For they are just (in that case) like many other things on which you inflict no penalties—foolish and fabulous things, I mean, which, as quite innocuous, are never charged as crimes or punished. But in a thing of the kind, if this be so indeed, we should be adjudged to ridicule, not to swords, and flames, and crosses, and wild beasts, in which iniquitous cruelty not only the blinded populace exults and insults over us, but in which some of you too glory, not scrupling to gain the popular favour by your injustice. As though all you can do to us did not depend upon our pleasure. It is assuredly a matter of my own inclination, being a Christian. Your condemnation, then, will only reach me in that case, if I wish to be condemned; but when all you can do to me, you can do only at my will, all you can do is dependent on my will, and is not in your power. The joy of the people in our trouble is therefore utterly reasonless. For it is our joy they appropriate to themselves, since we would far rather be condemned than apostatize from God; on the contrary, our haters should be sorry rather than rejoice, as we have obtained the very thing of our own choice.
Chapter L.
In that case, you say, why do you complain of our persecutions? You ought rather to be grateful to us for giving you the sufferings you want. Well, it is quite true that it is our desire to suffer, but it is in the way that the soldier longs for war. No one indeed suffers willingly, since suffering necessarily implies fear and danger. Yet the man who objected to the conflict, both fights with all his strength, and when victorious, he rejoices in the battle, because he reaps from it glory and spoil. It is our battle to be summoned to your tribunals that there, under fear of execution, we may battle for the truth. But the day is won when the object of the struggle is gained. This victory of ours gives us the glory of pleasing God, and the spoil of life eternal. But we are overcome. Yes, when we have obtained our wishes. Therefore we conquer in dying; 151 we go forth victorious at the very time we are subdued. Call us, if you like, Sarmenticii and Semaxii, because, bound to a half-axle stake, we are burned in a circle-heap of fagots. This is the attitude in which we conquer, it is our victory-robe, it is for us a sort of triumphal car. Naturally enough, therefore, we do not please the vanquished; on account of this, indeed, we are counted a desperate, reckless race. But the very desperation and recklessness you object to in us, among yourselves lift high the standard of virtue in the cause of glory and of fame. Mucius of his own will left his right hand on the altar: what sublimity of mind! Empedocles gave his whole body at Catana to the fires of Ætna: what mental resolution! A certain foundress of Carthage gave herself away in second marriage to the funeral pile: what a noble witness of her chastity! Regulus, not wishing that his one life should count for the lives of many enemies, endured these crosses over all his frame: how brave a man—even in captivity a conqueror! Anaxarchus, when he was being beaten to death by a barley-pounder, cried out, “Beat on, beat on at the case of Anaxarchus; no stroke falls on Anaxarchus himself.” O magnanimity of the philosopher, who even in such an end had jokes upon his lips! I omit all reference to those who with their own sword, or with any other milder form of death, have bargained for glory. Nay, see how even torture contests are crowned by you. The Athenian courtezan, having wearied out the executioner, at last bit off her tongue and spat it in the face of the raging tyrant, that she might at the same time spit away her power of speech, nor be longer able to confess her fellow-conspirators, if even overcome, that might be her inclination. Zeno the Eleatic, when he was asked by Dionysius what good philosophy did, on answering that it gave contempt of death, was all unquailing, given over to the tyrant’s scourge, and sealed his opinion even to the death. We all know how the Spartan lash, applied with the utmost cruelty under the very eyes of friends encouraging, confers on those who bear it honor proportionate to the blood which the young men shed. O glory legitimate, because it is human, for whose sake it is counted neither reckless foolhardiness, nor desperate obstinacy, to despise death itself and all sorts of savage treatment; for whose sake you may for your native place, for the empire, for friendship, endure all you are forbidden to do for God! And you cast statues in honour of persons such as these, and you put inscriptions upon images, and cut out epitaphs on tombs, that their names may never perish. In so far you can by your monuments, you yourselves afford a sort of resurrection to the dead. Yet he who expects the true resurrection from God, is insane, if for God he suffers! But go zealously on, good presidents, you will stand higher with the people if you sacrifice the Christians at their wish, kill us, torture us, condemn us, grind us to dust; your injustice is the proof that we are innocent. Therefore God suffers that we thus suffer; for but very lately, in condemning a Christian woman to the leno rather than to the leo you made confession that a taint on our purity is considered among us something more terrible than any punishment and any death. 152 Nor does your cruelty, however exquisite, avail you; it is rather a temptation to us. The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed. 153 Many of your writers exhort to the courageous bearing of pain and death, as Cicero in the Tusculans, as Seneca in his Chances, as Diogenes, Pyrrhus, Callinicus; and yet their words do not find so many disciples as Christians do, teachers not by words, but by their deeds. That very obstinacy you rail against is the preceptress. For who that contemplates it, is not excited to inquire what is at the bottom of it? who, after inquiry, does not embrace our doctrines? and when he has embraced them, desires not to suffer that he may become partaker of the fulness of God’s grace, that he may obtain from God complete forgiveness, by giving in exchange his blood? For that secures the remission of all offences. On this account it is that we return thanks on the very spot for your sentences. As the divine and human are ever opposed to each other, when we are condemned by you, we are acquitted by the Highest.
Footnotes
54:151[Vicimus cum occidimur.]
55:152[Elucidation XI.]
55:153[Elucidation XII.]
Elucidations.
————————————
I.
(Arrangement, p. 4, supra.)
The arrangement I have adopted in editing these Edinburgh Translations of Tertullian is a practical one. It will be found logical and helpful to the student, who is referred to the Prefatory pages of this volume for an Elucidation of the difficulties, with which any arrangement of these treatises is encumbered. For, first, an attempt to place them in chronological order is out of the question; 154 and, second, all efforts to separate precisely the Orthodox from the Montanistic or Montanist works of our author have hitherto defied the acumen of critics. It would be mere empiricism for me to attempt an original classification in the face of questions which even experts have been unable to determine.
If we bear in mind, however, a few guiding facts, we shall see that difficulties are less than might appear, assuming our object to be a practical one. (1.) Only four of these essays were written against Orthodoxy; (2.) five more are reckoned as wholly uncertain, which amounts to saying that they are not positively heretical. (3.) Again, five are colourless, as to Montanism, and hence should be reputed Orthodox. (4.) Of others, written after the influences of Montanism had, more or less, tainted his doctrine, the whole are yet valuable and some are noble defences of the Catholic Faith. (5.) Finally eight or ten of his treatises were written while he was a Catholic, and are precious contributions to the testimony of the Primitive Church.
From these facts, we may readily conclude that the mass of Tertullian’s writings is Orthodox. Some of them are to be read with caution; others, again, must be rejected for their heresy; but yet all are most instructive historically, and as defining even by errors “the faith once delivered to the Saints.” I propose to note those which require caution as we pass them in review. Those written against the Church are classed by themselves, at the end of the list, and all the rest may be read with confidence. A most interesting inquiry arises in connection with the quotations from Scripture to be found in our author. Did a Latin version exist in his day, or does he translate from the Greek of the New Testament and the LXX? A paradoxical writer (Semler) contends that Tertullian “never used a Greek ms.” (see Kaye, p. 106.) But Tertullian’s rugged Latin betrays everywhere his familiarity with Greek idioms and forms of thought. He wrote, also, in Greek, and there is no reason to doubt that he knew the Greek Scriptures primarily, if he knew any Greek whatever. Possibly we owe to Tertullian the primordia of the Old African Latin Versions, some of which seem to have contained the disputed text 1 John v. 7; of which more when we come to the Praxeas. For the present in the absence of definite evidence we must infer that Tertullian usually translated from the LXX, and from the originals of the New Testament. But Mosheim thinks the progress of the Gospel in the West was now facilitated by the existence of Latin Versions. Observe, also, Kaye’s important note, p. 293, and his reference to Lardner, Cred. xxvii. 19.
II.
(Address to Magistrates, cap. i., p. 17.)
The Apology comes first in order, on logical grounds. It is classed with our author’s orthodox works by Neander, and pronounced colourless by Kaye. It is the noblest of his productions in its purpose and spirit, and it falls in with the Primitive System of Apologetics. I have placed next in order to it several treatises, mostly unblemished, which are of the same character; which defend the cause of Christians against Paganism, against Gentile Philosophy, and against Judaism; closing this portion by the two books Ad Nationes, which may be regarded as a recapitulation of the author’s arguments, especially those to be found in the Apology. In these successive works, as compared with those of Justin Martyr, we obtain a fair view of the progressive relations of the Church with the Roman Empire and with divers antagonistic systems in the East and West.
III.
(History of Christians, cap. ii., p. 18.)
The following Chronological outline borrowed from the Benedictines and from Bishop Kaye, will prove serviceable here. 155
Tertullian born (circa) a.d. 150.
Tertullian converted (surmise) 185.
Tertullian married (say) 186.
Tertullian ordained presbyter (circa) 192.
Tertullian lapsed (circa) 200.
Tertullian deceased (extreme surmise) 240.
The Imperial history of his period may be thus arranged:
Birth of Caracalla a.d. 188.
Birth of Geta 189.
Reign of Severus 193.
Defeat of Niger 195.
Caracalla made a Cæsar 196.
Capture of Byzantium 196.
Defeat of Albinus 197.
Geta made a Cæsar 198.
Caracalla called Augustus 198.
Caracalla associated in the Empire 198.
War against the Parthians 198.
Severus returns from the war 203.
Celebration of the Secular Games 204.
Plautianus put to death (circa) 205.
Geta called Augustus 208.
War in Britain 208.
Wall of Severus 210.
Death of Severus 211.
IV.
(Tiberius, capp. v. and xxiv., pp. 22 and 35.)
A fair examination of what has been said on this subject, pro and con, may be found in Kaye’s Tertullian, 156 pp. 102–105. In his abundant candour this author leans to the doubters, but in stating the case he seems to me to fortify the position of Lardner and Mosheim. What the brutal Tiberius may have thought or done with respect to Pilate’s report concerning the holy victim of his judicial injustice is of little importance to the believer. Nevertheless, as matter of history it deserves attention. Great stress is to be placed on the fact that Tertullian was probably a jurisconsult, familiar with the Roman archives, and influenced by them in his own acceptance of Divine Truth. It is not supposable that such a man would have hazarded his bold appeal to the records, in remonstrating with the Senate and in the very faces of the Emperor and his colleagues, had he not known that the evidence was irrefragable.
V.
(The darkness at the Crucifixion, cap. xxi., p. 35.)
Kaye disappoints us (p. 150) in his slight notice of this most interesting subject. Without attempting to discuss the story of Phlegon and other points which afford Gibbon an opportunity for misplaced sneering, such as even a Pilate would have rebuked, while it may be well to recall the exposition of Milman, 157 at the close of Gibbon’s fifteenth chapter, I must express my own preference for another view. This will be found candidly summed up and stated, in the Speaker’s Commentary, in the concise note on St. Matt. xxvii. 45.
VI.
(Numbers of the Faithful, cap. xxxvii., p. 45.)
Kaye, as usual, gives this vexed question a candid survey. 158 Making all allowances, however, I accept the conjecture of some reputable authorities, that there were 2,000,000 of Christians, in the bounds of the Roman Empire at the close of the Second Century. So mightily grew the testimony of Jesus and prevailed. When we reflect that only a century intervened between the times of Tertullian and the conversion of the Roman Emperor, it is not easy to regard our author’s language as merely that of fervid genius and of rhetorical hyperbole. He could not have ventured upon exaggeration without courting scorn as well as defeat. What he affirms is probable in the nature of the case. Were it otherwise, then the conditions, which, in a single century rendered it possible for Constantine to effect the greatest revolution in mind and manners that has ever been known among men, would be a miracle compared with which that of his alleged Vision of the Cross sinks into insignificance. To this subject it will be necessary to recur hereafter.
VII.
(Christian usages, cap. xxxix., p. 46.)
A candid review of the matters discussed in this chapter will be found in Kaye (pp. 146, 209.) The important fact is there clearly stated that “the primitive Christians scrupulously complied with the decree pronounced by the Apostles at Jerusalem in abstaining from things strangled and from blood” (Acts xv. 20). On this subject consult the references given in the Speaker’s Commentary, ad locum. The Greeks, to their honour, still maintain this prohibition, but St. Augustine’s great authority relaxed the Western scruples on this matter, for he regarded it as a decree of temporary obligation, while the Hebrew and Gentile Christians were in peril of misunderstanding and estrangement. 159
On the important question as to the cessation of miracles Kaye takes a somewhat original position. But see his interesting discussion and that of the late Professor Hey, in Kaye’s Tertullian, pp. 80–102, 151–161. I do not think writers on these subjects have sufficiently distinguished between miracles properly so called, and providences vouchsafed in answer to prayer. There was no miracle in the case of the Thundering Legion, assuming the story to be true; and I dare to affirm that marked answers to prayer, by providential interpositions, but wholly distinct from miraculous agencies, have never ceased among those who “ask in the Son’s Name.” Such interpositions are often preternatural only; that is, they economize certain powers which, though natural in themselves, lie outside of the System of Nature with which we happen to be familiar. This distinction has been overlooked.
VIII.
(Multitudes, cap. xl., p. 47.)
Note the words—“multitudes to a single beast.” Can it be possible that Tertullian would use such language to the magistrates, if he knew that such sentences were of rare occurrence? The disposition of our times to minimize the persecutions of our Christian forefathers calls upon us to note such references, all the more important because occurring obiter and mentioned as notorious. Note also, the closing chapter of this Apology, and reference to the outcries of the populace, in Cap. xxxv. 160 See admirable remarks on the benefits derived by the Church from the sufferings of Christian martyrs, with direct reference to Tertullian, Wordsworth, Church Hist. to Council of Nicæa, cap. xxiv., p. 374.
IX.
(Christian manners, cap. xlii., p. 49.)
A study of the manners of Christians, in the Ante-Nicene Age, as sketched by the unsparing hand of Tertullian, will convince any unprejudiced mind of the mighty power of the Holy Ghost, in framing such characters out of heathen originals. When, under Montanistic influences our severely ascetic author complains of the Church’s corruptions, and turns inside-out the whole estate of the faithful, we see all that can be pressed on the other side; but, this very important chapter must be borne in mind, together with the closing sentence of chap. xliv., as evidence that whatever might be said by a rigid disciplinarian, the Church, as compared with our day, was still a living embodiment of Philippians iv. 8.
X.
(Paradise, cap. xlvii., p. 52.)
See Kaye, p. 248. Our author seems not always consistent with himself in his references to the Places of departed spirits. Kaye thinks he identifies Paradise with the Heaven of the Most High, in one place (the De Exhort. Cast., xiii.) where he probably confuses the Apostle’s ideas, in Galatians v. 12, and Ephesians v. 5. Commonly, however, though he is not consistent with himself, this would be his scheme:—
1. The Inferi, or Hades, where the soul of Dives was in one continent and that of Lazarus in another, with a gulf between. Our author places “Abraham’s bosom” in Hades.
2. Paradise. In Hades, but in a superior and more glorious region. This more blessed abode was opened to the souls of the martyrs and other greater saints, at our Lord’s descent into the place of the dead. After the General Resurrection and Judgment, there remain:
1. Gehenna, for the lost, prepared for the devil and his angels.
2. The Heaven of Heavens, the eternal abode of the righteous, in the vision of the Lord and His Eternal Joy.
Tertullian’s variations on this subject will force us to recur to it hereafter; but, here it may be noted that the confusions of Latin Christianity received their character in this particular, from the genius of our author. Augustine caught from him a certain indecision about the terms and places connected with the state of the departed which has continued, to this day, to perplex theologians in the West. Taking advantage of such confusions, the stupendous Roman system of “Purgatory” was fabricated in the middle ages; but the Greeks never accepted it, and it differs fundamentally from what the earlier Latin Fathers, including Tertullian, have given us as speculations.
XI.
(The Leo and the Leno, cap. l., p. 55.)
Here we find the alliterative and epigrammatic genius of Tertullian anticipating a similar poetic charm in Augustine. The Christian maid or matron preferred the Leo to the leno; to be devoured rather than to be debauched. Our author wrests a tribute to the chastity of Christian women from the cruelty of their judges, who recognizing this fact, were accustomed as a refinement of their injustice to give sentence against them, refusing the mercy of a horrible death, by committing them to the ravisher: “damnando Christianam ad lenonem potius quam ad leonem.”
XII.
(The Seed of the Church, cap. l., p. 55.)
Kaye has devoted a number of his pages 161 to the elucidation of this subject, not only showing the constancy of the martyrs, but illustrating the fact that Christians, like St. Paul, were forced to “die daily,” even when they were not subjected to the fiery trial. He who confessed himself a Christian made himself a social outcast. All manner of outrages and wrongs could be committed against him with impunity. Rich men, who had joined themselves to Christ, 162 were forced to accept “the spoiling of their goods.” Brothers denounced brothers, and husbands their wives; “a man’s foes were they of his own household.” But the Church triumphed through suffering, and “out of weakness was made strong.”
Footnotes
56:154Kaye, p. 36. Also, p. 8, supra.
57:155Kaye (following L’Art de verifier les Dates) pp. 11 and 456.
57:156My references are to the Third Edition, London, Rivingtons, 1845.
58:157In his edition of The Decline and Fall, Vol. I., p. 589, American reprint.
58:158pp. 85–88.
58:159Ep. ad Faust. xxxii. 13. and see Conybeare and Howson.
59:160Compare Kaye on Mosheim, p. 107.
60:161pp. 129–140.
60:162Even under Commodus, vol. ii. p. 598, this series.
II.
On Idolatry.
[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]
————————————
Chapter I.—Wide Scope of the Word Idolatry.
The principal crime of the human race, the highest guilt charged upon the world, the whole procuring cause of judgment, is idolatry. 163 For, although each single fault retains its own proper feature, although it is destined to judgment under its own proper name also, yet it is marked off under the general account of idolatry. Set aside names, examine works, the idolater is likewise a murderer. Do you inquire whom he has slain? If it contributes ought to the aggravation of the indictment, no stranger nor personal enemy, but his own self. By what snares? Those of his error. By what weapon? The offence done to God. By how many blows? As many as are his idolatries. He who affirms that the idolater perishes not, 164 will affirm that the idolater has not committed murder. Further, you may recognize in the same crime 165 adultery and fornication; for he who serves false gods is doubtless an adulterer 166 of truth, because all falsehood is adultery. So, too, he is sunk in fornication. For who that is a fellow-worker with unclean spirits, does not stalk in general pollution and fornication? And thus it is that the Holy Scriptures 167 use the designation of fornication in their upbraiding of idolatry. The essence of fraud, I take it, is, that any should seize what is another’s, or refuse to another his due; and, of course, fraud done toward man is a name of greatest crime. Well, but idolatry does fraud to God, by refusing to Him, and conferring on others, His honours; so that to fraud it also conjoins contumely. But if fraud, just as much as fornication and adultery, entails death, then, in these cases, equally with the former, idolatry stands unacquitted of the impeachment of murder. After such crimes, so pernicious, so devouring of salvation, all other crimes also, after some manner, and separately disposed in order, find their own essence represented in idolatry. In it also are the concupiscences of the world. For what solemnity of idolatry is without the circumstance of dress and ornament? In it are lasciviousnesses and drunkennesses; since it is, for the most part, for the sake of food, and stomach, and appetite, that these solemnities are frequented. In it is unrighteousness. For what more unrighteous than it, which knows not the Father of righteousness? In it also is vanity, since its whole system is vain. In it is mendacity, for its whole substance is false. Thus it comes to pass, that in idolatry all crimes are detected, and in all crimes idolatry. Even otherwise, since all faults savour of opposition to God, and there is nothing which savours of opposition to God which is not assigned to demons and unclean spirits, whose property idols are; doubtless, whoever commits a fault is chargeable with idolatry, for he does that which pertains to the proprietors of idols.
Footnotes
61:163[This solemn sentence vindicates the place I have given to the De Idololatria in the order adopted for this volume. After this and the Apology come three treatises confirming its positions, and vindicating the principles of Christians in conflict with Idolatry, the great generic crime of a world lying in wickedness. These three are the De Spectaculis, the De Corona and the Ad Scapulam. The De Spectaculis was written after this treatise, in which indeed it is mentioned (Cap. xiii.), but logically it follows, illustrates and enforces it. Hence my practical plan: which will be concluded by a scheme (conjectural in part) of chronological order in which precision is affirmed by all critics to be impossible, but, by which we may reach approximate accuracy, with great advantage. The De Idololatria is free from Montanism. But see Kaye, p. xvi.]
61:164Lit., “has not perished,” as if the perishing were already complete; as, of course, it is judicially as soon as the guilt is incurred, though not actually.
61:165i.e., in idolatry.
61:166A play on the word: we should say, “an adulterator.”
61:167Oehler refers to Ezek. xxiii.; but many other references might be given—in the Pentateuch and Psalms, for instance.
Chapter II.—Idolatry in Its More Limited Sense. Its Copiousness.
But let the universal names of crimes withdraw to the specialities of their own works; let idolatry remain in that which it is itself. Sufficient to itself is a name so inimical to God, a substance of crime so copious, which reaches forth so many branches, diffuses so many veins, that from this name, for the greatest part, is drawn the material of all the modes in which the expansiveness of idolatry has to be foreguarded against by us, since in manifold wise it subverts the servants of God; and this not only when unperceived, but also when cloaked over. Most men simply regard idolatry as to be interpreted in these senses alone, viz.: if one burn incense, or immolate a victim, or give a sacrificial banquet, or be bound to some sacred functions or priesthoods; just as if one were to regard adultery as to be accounted in kisses, and in embraces, and in actual fleshly contact; or murder as to be reckoned only in the shedding forth of blood, and in the actual taking away of life. But how far wider an extent the Lord assigns to those crimes we are sure: when He defines adultery to consist even in concupiscence, 168 “if one shall have cast an eye lustfully on,” and stirred his soul with immodest commotion; when He judges murder 169 to consist even in a word of curse or of reproach, and in every impulse of anger, and in the neglect of charity toward a brother just as John teaches, 170 that he who hates his brother is a murderer. Else, both the devil’s ingenuity in malice, and God the Lord’s in the Discipline by which He fortifies us against the devil’s depths, 171 would have but limited scope, if we were judged only in such faults as even the heathen nations have decreed punishable. How will our “righteousness abound above that of the Scribes and Pharisees,” as the Lord has prescribed, 172 unless we shall have seen through the abundance of that adversary quality, that is, of unrighteousness? But if the head of unrighteousness is idolatry, the first point is, that we be fore-fortified against the abundance of idolatry, while we recognise it not only in its palpable manifestations.
Footnotes
62:168Matt. v. 28.
62:169Matt. v. 22.
62:1701 John. iii. 15.
62:171Rev. ii. 24.
62:172Matt. v. 20.
Chapter III.—Idolatry: Origin and Meaning of the Name.
Idol in ancient times there was none. Before the artificers of this monstrosity had bubbled into being, 173 temples stood solitary and shrines empty, just as to the present day in some places traces of the ancient practice remain permanently. Yet idolatry used to be practised, not under that name, but in that function; for even at this day it can be practised outside a temple, and without an idol. But when the devil introduced into the world artificers of statues and of images, and of every kind of likenesses, that former rude business of human disaster attained from idols both a name and a development. Thenceforward every art which in any way produces an idol instantly became a fount of idolatry. For it makes no difference whether a moulder cast, or a carver grave, or an embroiderer weave the idol; because neither is it a question of material, whether an idol be formed of gypsum, or of colors, or of stone, or of bronze, 174 or of silver, or of thread. For since even without an idol idolatry is committed, when the idol is there it makes no difference of what kind it be, of what material, or what shape; lest any should think that only to be held an idol which is consecrated in human shape. To establish this point, the interpretation of the word is requisite. Eidos, in Greek, signifies form; eidolon, derived diminutively from that, by an equivalent process in our language, makes formling. 175 Every form or formling, therefore, claims to be called an idol. Hence idolatry is “all attendance and service about every idol.” Hence also, every artificer of an idol is guilty of one and the same crime, 176 unless, the People 177 which consecrated for itself the likeness of a calf, and not of a man, fell short of incurring the guilt of idolatry. 178
Footnotes
62:173“Boiled out,” “bubbled out.”
62:174Or, brass.
62:175i.e., a little form.
62:176Idolatry, namely.
62:177[Capitalized to mark its emphatic sense, i.e., the People of God = the Jews.]
62:178See Ex. xxxii.; and compare 1 Cor. x. 7, where the latter part of Ex. xxxii. 6 is quoted.
Chapter IV.—Idols Not to Be Made, Much Less Worshipped. Idols and Idol-Makers in the Same Category.
God prohibits an idol as much to be made as to be worshipped. In so far as the making what may be worshipped is the prior act, so far is the prohibition to make (if the worship is unlawful) the prior prohibition. For this cause—the eradicating, namely, of the material of idolatry—the divine law proclaims, “Thou shalt make no idol;” 179 and by conjoining, “Nor a similitude of the things which are in the heaven, and which are in the earth, and which are in the sea,” has interdicted the servants of God from acts of that kind all the universe over. Enoch had preceded, predicting that “the demons, and the spirits of the angelic apostates, 180 would turn into idolatry all the elements, all the garniture of the universe, all things contained in the heaven, in the sea, in the earth, that they might be consecrated as God, in opposition to God.” All things, therefore, does human error worship, except the Founder of all Himself. The images of those things are idols; the consecration of the images is idolatry. Whatever guilt idolatry incurs, must necessarily be imputed to every artificer of every idol. In short, the same Enoch fore-condemns in general menace both idol-worshippers and idol-makers together. And again: “I swear to you, sinners, that against the day of perdition of blood 181 repentance is being prepared. Ye who serve stones, and ye who make images of gold, and silver, and wood, and stones and clay, and serve phantoms, and demons, and spirits in fanes, 182 and all errors not according to knowledge, shall find no help from them.” But Isaiah 183 says, “Ye are witnesses whether there is a God except Me.” “And they who mould and carve out at that time were not: all vain! who do that which liketh them, which shall not profit them!” And that whole ensuing discourse sets a ban as well on the artificers as the worshippers: the close of which is, “Learn that their heart is ashes and earth, and that none can free his own soul.” In which sentence David equally includes the makers too. “Such,” says he, “let them become who make them.” 184 And why should I, a man of limited memory, suggest anything further? Why recall anything more from the Scriptures? As if either the voice of the Holy Spirit were not sufficient; or else any further deliberation were needful, whether the Lord cursed and condemned by priority the artificers of those things, of which He curses and condemns the worshippers!
Footnotes
62:179Lev. 26:1, Exod. 20:4, Deut. 5:8. It must of course be borne in mind that Tertullian has defined the meaning of the word idol in the former chapter, and speaks with reference to that definition.
62:180Compare de Oratione, c. 23, and de Virg. Vel. c. 7.
63:181“Sanguinis perditionis:” such is the reading of Oehler and others. If it be correct, probably the phrase “perdition of blood” must be taken as equivalent to “bloody perdition,” after the Hebrew fashion. Compare, for similar instances, 2 Sam. 16:7, Ps. 5:6, Ps. 26:9, Ps. 55:23, Ezek. 22:2, with the marginal readings. But Fr. Junius would read, “Of blood and of perdition”—sanguinis et perditionis. Oehler’s own interpretation of the reading he gives—“blood-shedding”—appears unsatisfactory.
63:182“In fanis.” This is Oehler’s reading on conjecture. Other readings are—infamis, infamibus, insanis, infernis.
63:183Isa. xliv. 8 et seqq.
63:184Ps. cxv. 8. In our version, “They that make them are like unto them.” Tertullian again agrees with the LXX.
Chapter V. 185 —Sundry Objections or Excuses Dealt with.
We will certainly take more pains in answering the excuses of artificers of this kind, who ought never to be admitted into the house of God, if any have a knowledge of that Discipline. 186 To begin with, that speech, wont to be cast in our teeth, “I have nothing else whereby to live,” may be more severely retorted, “You have, then, whereby to live? If by your own laws, what have you to do with God?” 187 Then, as to the argument they have the hardihood to bring even from the Scriptures, “that the apostle has said, ‘As each has been found, so let him persevere.’” 188 We may all, therefore, persevere in sins, as the result of that interpretation! for there is not any one of us who has not been found as a sinner, since no other cause was the source of Christ’s descent than that of setting sinners free. Again, they say the same apostle has left a precept, according to his own example, “That each one work with his own hands for a living.” 189 If this precept is maintained in respect to all hands, I believe even the bath-thieves 190 live by their hands, and robbers themselves gain the means to live by their hands; forgers, again, execute their evil handwritings, not of course with their feet, but hands; actors, however, achieve a livelihood not with hands alone, but with their entire limbs. Let the Church, therefore, stand open to all who are supported by their hands and by their own work; if there is no exception of arts which the Discipline of God receives not. But some one says, in opposition to our proposition of “similitude being interdicted,” “Why, then, did Moses in the desert make a likeness of a serpent out of bronze?” The figures, which used to be laid as a groundwork for some secret future dispensation, not with a view to the repeal of the law, but as a type of their own final cause, stand in a class by themselves. Otherwise, if we should interpret these things as the adversaries of the law do, do we, too, as the Marcionites do, ascribe inconsistency to the Almighty, whom they 191 in this manner destroy as being mutable, while in one place He forbids, in another commands? But if any feigns ignorance of the fact that that effigy of the serpent of bronze, after the manner of one uphung, denoted the shape of the Lord’s cross, 192 which was to free us from serpents—that is, from the devil’s angels—while, through itself, it hanged up the devil slain; or whatever other exposition of that figure has been revealed to worthier men 193 no matter, provided we remember the apostle affirms that all things happened at that time to the People 194 figuratively. 195 It is enough that the same God, as by law He forbade the making of similitude, did, by the extraordinary precept in the case of the serpent, interdict similitude. 196 If you reverence the same God, you have His law, “Thou shalt make no similitude.” 197 If you look back, too, to the precept enjoining the subsequently made similitude, do you, too, imitate Moses: make not any likeness in opposition to the law, unless to you, too, God have bidden it. 198
Footnotes
63:185Cf. chaps. viii. and xii.
63:186i.e., the Discipline of the house of God, the Church. Oehler reads, “eam disciplinam,” and takes the meaning to be that no artificer of this class should be admitted into the Church, if he applies for admittance, with a knowledge of the law of God referred to in the former chapters, yet persisting in his unlawful craft. Fr. Junius would read, “ejus disciplinam.”
63:187i.e., If laws of your own, and not the will and law of God, are the source and means of your life, you owe no thanks and no obedience to God, and therefore need not seek admittance into His house (Oehler).
63:1881 Cor. vii. 20. In Eng. ver., “Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called.”
63:1891 Thess. 4:11, 2 Thess. 3:6.
63:190i.e., thieves who frequented the public baths, which were a favorite resort at Rome.
63:191The Marcionites.
63:192[The argument amounts to this, that symbols were not idols: yet even so, God only could ordain symbols that were innocent. The Nehushtan of King Hezekiah teaches us the “peril of Idolatry” (2 Kings xviii. 4) and that even a divine symbol may be destroyed justly if it be turned to a violation of the Second Commandment.]
64:193[On which see Dr. Smith, Dict. of the Bible, ad vocem “Serpent.”]
64:194i.e., the Jewish people, who are generally meant by the expression “the People” in the singular number in Scripture. We shall endeavour to mark that distinction by writing the word, as here, with a capital.
64:195See 1 Cor. 10:6, 11.
64:196On the principle that the exception proves the rule. As Oehler explains it: “By the fact of the extraordinary precept in that particular case, God gave an indication that likeness-making had before been forbidden and interdicted by Him.”
64:197Ex. xx. 4, etc. [The absurd “brazen serpent” which I have seen in the Church of St. Ambrose, in Milan, is with brazen hardihood affirmed to be the identical serpent which Moses lifted up in the wilderness. But it lacks all symbolic character, as it is not set upon a pole nor in any way fitted to a cross. It greatly resembles a vane set upon a pivot.]
64:198[Elucidation I.]
Chapter VI.—Idolatry Condemned by Baptism. To Make an Idol Is, in Fact, to Worship It.
If no law of God had prohibited idols to be made by us; if no voice of the Holy Spirit uttered general menace no less against the makers than the worshippers of idols; from our sacrament itself we would draw our interpretation that arts of that kind are opposed to the faith. For how have we renounced the devil and his angels, if we make them? What divorce have we declared from them, I say not with whom, but dependent on whom, we live? What discord have we entered into with those to whom we are under obligation for the sake of our maintenance? Can you have denied with the tongue what with the hand you confess? unmake by word what by deed you make? preach one God, you who make so many? preach the true God, you who make false ones? “I make,” says one, “but I worship not;” as if there were some cause for which he dare not worship, besides that for which he ought not also to make,—the offence done to God, namely, in either case. Nay, you who make, that they may be able to be worshipped, do worship; and you worship, not with the spirit of some worthless perfume, but with your own; nor at the expense of a beast’s soul, but of your own. To them you immolate your ingenuity; to them you make your sweat a libation; to them you kindle the torch of your forethought. More are you to them than a priest, since it is by your means they have a priest; your diligence is their divinity. 199 Do you affirm that you worship not what you make? Ah! but they affirm not so, to whom you slay this fatter, more precious and greater victim, your salvation.
Footnotes
64:199i.e., Unless you made them, they would not exist, and therefore [would not be regarded as divinities; therefore] your diligence gives them their divinity.
Chapter VII.—Grief of the Faithful at the Admission of Idol-Makers into the Church; Nay, Even into the Ministry.
A whole day the zeal of faith will direct its pleadings to this quarter: bewailing that a Christian should come from idols into the Church; should come from an adversary workshop into the house of God; should raise to God the Father hands which are the mothers of idols; should pray to God with the hands which, out of doors, are prayed to in opposition to God; should apply to the Lord’s body those hands which confer bodies on demons. Nor is this sufficient. Grant that it be a small matter, if from other hands they receive what they contaminate; but even those very hands deliver to others what they have contaminated. Idol-artificers are chosen even into the ecclesiastical order. Oh wickedness! Once did the Jews lay brands on Christ; these mangle His body daily. Oh hands to be cut off! Now let the saying, “If thy hand make thee do evil, amputate it,” 200 see to it whether it were uttered by way of similitude merely. What hands more to be amputated than those in which scandal is done to the Lord’s body?
Footnotes
64:200Matt. xviii. 8.
Chapter VIII.—Other Arts Made Subservient to Idolatry. Lawful Means of Gaining a Livelihood Abundant.
There are also other species of very many arts which, although they extend not to the making of idols, yet, with the same criminality, furnish the adjuncts without which idols have no power. For it matters not whether you erect or equip: if you have embellished his temple, altar, or niche; if you have pressed out gold-leaf, or have wrought his insignia, or even his house: work of that kind, which confers not shape, but authority, is more important. If the necessity of maintenance 201 is urged so much, the arts have other species withal to afford means of livelihood, without outstepping the path of discipline, that is, without the confiction of an idol. The plasterer knows both how to mend roofs, and lay on stuccoes, and polish a cistern, and trace ogives, and draw in relief on party-walls many other ornaments beside likenesses. The painter, too, the marble mason, the bronze-worker, and every graver whatever, knows expansions 202 of his own art, of course much easier of execution. For how much more easily does he who delineates a statue overlay a sideboard! 203 How much sooner does he who carves a Mars out of a lime-tree, fasten together a chest! No art but is either mother or kinswoman of some neighbour 204 art: nothing is independent of its neighbour. The veins of the arts are many as are the concupiscences of men. “But there is difference in wages and the rewards of handicraft;” therefore there is difference, too, in the labour required. Smaller wages are compensated by more frequent earning. How many are the party-walls which require statues? How many the temples and shrines which are built for idols? But houses, and official residences, and baths, and tenements, how many are they? Shoe- and slipper-gilding is daily work; not so the gilding of Mercury and Serapis. Let that suffice for the gain 205 of handicrafts. Luxury and ostentation have more votaries than all superstition. Ostentation will require dishes and cups more easily than superstition. Luxury deals in wreaths, also, more than ceremony. When, therefore, we urge men generally to such kinds of handicrafts as do not come in contact with an idol indeed and with the things which are appropriate to an idol; since, moreover, the things which are common to idols are often common to men too; of this also we ought to beware that nothing be, with our knowledge, demanded by any person from our idols’ service. For if we shall have made that concession, and shall not have had recourse to the remedies so often used, I think we are not free of the contagion of idolatry, we whose (not unwitting) hands 206 are found busied in the tendence, or in the honour and service, of demons.
Footnotes
65:201See chaps. v. and xii.
65:202See chap. ii., “The expansiveness of idolatry.”
65:203Abacum. The word has various meanings; but this, perhaps, is its most general use: as, for instance, in Horace and Juvenal.
65:204Alterius = ἑτέρον which in the New Testament is = to “neighbour” in Rom. xiii. 8, etc. [Our author must have borne in mind Cicero’s beautiful words—“Etenim omnes artes quæ ad humanitatem pertinent habent quoddam commune vinculum,” etc. Pro Archia, i. tom. x. p. 10. Ed. Paris, 1817.]
65:205Quæstum. Another reading is “questum,” which would require us to translate “plaint.”
65:206“Quorum manus non ignorantium,” i.e., “the hands of whom not unwitting;” which may be rendered as above, because in English, as in the Latin, in adjective “unwitting” belongs to the “whose,” not to the “hands.”
Chapter IX.—Professions of Some Kinds Allied to Idolatry. Of Astrology in Particular.
We observe among the arts 207 also some professions liable to the charge of idolatry. Of astrologers there should be no speaking even; 208 but since one in these days has challenged us, defending on his own behalf perseverance in that profession, I will use a few words. I allege not that he honours idols, whose names he has inscribed on the heaven, 209 to whom he has attributed all God’s power; because men, presuming that we are disposed of by the immutable arbitrament of the stars, think on that account that God is not to be sought after. One proposition I lay down: that those angels, the deserters from God, the lovers of women, 210 were likewise the discoverers of this curious art, on that account also condemned by God. Oh divine sentence, reaching even unto the earth in its vigour, whereto the unwitting render testimony! The astrologers are expelled just like their angels. The city and Italy are interdicted to the astrologers, just as heaven to their angels. 211 There is the same penalty of exclusion for disciples and masters. “But Magi and astrologers came from the east.” 212 We know the mutual alliance of magic and astrology. The interpreters of the stars, then, were the first to announce Christ’s birth the first to present Him “gifts.” By this bond, [must] I imagine, they put Christ under obligation to themselves? What then? Shall therefore the religion of those Magi act as patron now also to astrologers? Astrology now-a-days, forsooth, treats of Christ—is the science of the stars of Christ; not of Saturn, or Mars, and whomsoever else out of the same class of the dead 213 it pays observance to and preaches? But, however, that science has been allowed until the Gospel, in order that after Christ’s birth no one should thence forward interpret any one’s nativity by the heaven. For they therefore offered to the then infant Lord that frankincense and myrrh and gold, to be, as it were, the close of worldly 214 sacrifice and glory, which Christ was about to do away. What, then? The dream—sent, doubtless, of the will of God—suggested to the same Magi, namely, that they should go home, but by another way, not that by which they came. It means this: that they should not walk in their ancient path. 215 Not that Herod should not pursue them, who in fact did not pursue them; unwitting even that they had departed by another way, since he was withal unwitting by what way they came. Just so we ought to understand by it the right Way and Discipline. And so the precept was rather, that thence forward they should walk otherwise. So, too, that other species of magic which operates by miracles, emulous even in opposition to Moses, 216 tried God’s patience until the Gospel. For thenceforward Simon Magus, just turned believer, (since he was still thinking somewhat of his juggling sect; to wit, that among the miracles of his profession he might buy even the gift of the Holy Spirit through imposition of hands) was cursed by the apostles, and ejected from the faith. 217 Both he and that other magician, who was with Sergius Paulus, (since he began opposing himself to the same apostles) was mulcted with loss of eyes. 218 The same fate, I believe, would astrologers, too, have met, if any had fallen in the way of the apostles. But yet, when magic is punished, of which astrology is a species, of course the species is condemned in the genus. After the Gospel, you will nowhere find either sophists, Chaldeans, enchanters, diviners, or magicians, except as clearly punished. “Where is the wise, where the grammarian, where the disputer of this age? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this age?” 219 You know nothing, astrologer, if you know not that you should be a Christian. If you did know it, you ought to have known this also, that you should have nothing more to do with that profession of yours which, of itself, fore-chants the climacterics of others, and might instruct you of its own danger. There is no part nor lot for you in that system of yours. 220 He cannot hope for the kingdom of the heavens, whose finger or wand abuses 221 the heaven.
Footnotes
65:207“Ars” in Latin is very generally used to mean “a scientific art.” [See Titus iii. 14. English margin.]
65:208See Eph. 5:11, 12, and similar passages.
65:209i.e., by naming the stars after them.
65:210Comp. chap. iv., and the references there given. The idea seems founded on an ancient reading found in the Codex Alexandrinus of the LXX. in Gen. vi. 2, “angels of God,” for “sons of God.”
65:211See Tac. Ann. ii. 31, etc. (Oehler.)
65:212See Matt. ii.
65:213Because the names of the heathen divinities, which used to be given to the stars, were in many cases only names of dead men deified.
65:214Or, heathenish.
66:215Or, sect.
66:216See Exod. 7:0, 2 Tim. 3:8.
66:217See Acts viii. 9-24.
66:218See Acts xiii. 6-11.
66:2191 Cor. i. 20.
66:220See Acts viii. 21.
66:221See 1 Cor. vii. 31, “They that use this world as not abusing it.” The astrologer abuses the heavens by putting the heavenly bodies to a sinful use.
Chapter X.—Of Schoolmasters and Their Difficulties.
Moreover, we must inquire likewise touching schoolmasters; nor only of them, but also all other professors of literature. Nay, on the contrary, we must not doubt that they are in affinity with manifold idolatry: first, in that it is necessary for them to preach the gods of the nations, to express their names, genealogies, honourable distinctions, all and singular; and further, to observe the solemnities and festivals of the same, as of them by whose means they compute their revenues. What schoolmaster, without a table of the seven idols, 222 will yet frequent the Quinquatria? The very first payment of every pupil he consecrates both to the honour and to the name of Minerva; so that, even though he be not said “to eat of that which is sacrificed to idols” 223 nominally (not being dedicated to any particular idol), he is shunned as an idolater. What less of defilement does he recur on that ground, 224 than a business brings which, both nominally and virtually, is consecrated publicly to an idol? The Minervalia are as much Minerva’s, as the Saturnalia Saturn’s; Saturn’s, which must necessarily be celebrated even by little slaves at the time of the Saturnalia. New-year’s gifts likewise must be caught at, and the Septimontium kept; and all the presents of Midwinter and the feast of Dear Kinsmanship must be exacted; the schools must be wreathed with flowers; the flamens’ wives and the ædiles sacrifice; the school is honoured on the appointed holy-days. The same thing takes place on an idol’s birthday; every pomp of the devil is frequented. Who will think that these things are befitting to a Christian master, 225 unless it be he who shall think them suitable likewise to one who is not a master? We know it may be said, “If teaching literature is not lawful to God’s servants, neither will learning be likewise;” and, “How could one be trained unto ordinary human intelligence, or unto any sense or action whatever, since literature is the means of training for all life? How do we repudiate secular studies, without which divine studies cannot be pursued?” Let us see, then, the necessity of literary erudition; let us reflect that partly it cannot be admitted, partly cannot be avoided. Learning literature is allowable for believers, rather than teaching; for the principle of learning and of teaching is different. If a believer teach literature, while he is teaching doubtless he commends, while he delivers he affirms, while he recalls he bears testimony to, the praises of idols interspersed therein. He seals the gods themselves with this name; 226 whereas the Law, as we have said, prohibits “the names of gods to be pronounced,” 227 and this name 228 to be conferred on vanity. 229 Hence the devil gets men’s early faith built up from the beginnings of their erudition. Inquire whether he who catechizes about idols commit idolatry. But when a believer learns these things, if he is already capable of understanding what idolatry is, he neither receives nor allows them; much more if he is not yet capable. Or, when he begins to understand, it behoves him first to understand what he has previously learned, that is, touching God and the faith. Therefore he will reject those things, and will not receive them; and will be as safe as one who from one who knows it not, knowingly accepts poison, but does not drink it. To him necessity is attributed as an excuse, because he has no other way to learn. Moreover, the not teaching literature is as much easier than the not learning, as it is easier, too, for the pupil not to attend, than for the master not to frequent, the rest of the defilements incident to the schools from public and scholastic solemnities.
Footnotes
66:222i.e., the seven planets.
66:223See 1 Cor. viii. 10.
66:224i.e., because “he does not nominally eat,” etc.
66:225[Note the Christian Schoolmaster, already distinguished as such, implying the existence and the character of Christian schools. Of which, learn more from the Emperor Julian, afterwards.]
67:226i.e., the name of gods.
67:227Exod. 23:13, Josh. 23:7, Ps. 16:4, Hos. 2:17, Zech. 13:2.
67:228i.e., the name of God.
67:229i.e., on an idol, which, as Isaiah says, is “vanity.”
Chapter XI.—Connection Between Covetousness and Idolatry. Certain Trades, However Gainful, to Be Avoided.
If we think over the rest of faults, tracing them from their generations, let us begin with covetousness, “a root of all evils,” 230 wherewith, indeed, some having been ensnared, “have suffered shipwreck about faith.” 231 Albeit covetousness is by the same apostle called idolatry. 232 In the next place proceeding to mendacity, the minister of covetousness (of false swearing I am silent, since even swearing is not lawful 233 )—is trade adapted for a servant of God? But, covetousness apart, what is the motive for acquiring? When the motive for acquiring ceases, there will be no necessity for trading. Grant now that there be some righteousness in business, secure from the duty of watchfulness against covetousness and mendacity; I take it that that trade which pertains to the very soul and spirit of idols, which pampers every demon, falls under the charge of idolatry. Rather, is not that the principal idolatry? If the selfsame merchandises—frankincense, I mean, and all other foreign productions—used as sacrifice to idols, are of use likewise to men for medicinal ointments, to us Christians also, over and above, for solaces of sepulture, let them see to it. At all events, while the pomps, while the priesthoods, while the sacrifices of idols, are furnished by dangers, by losses, by inconveniences, by cogitations, by runnings to and fro, or trades, what else are you demonstrated to be but an idols’ agent? Let none contend that, in this way, exception may be taken to all trades. All graver faults extend the sphere for diligence in watchfulness proportionably to the magnitude of the danger; in order that we may withdraw not only from the faults, but from the means through which they have being. For although the fault be done by others, it makes no difference if it be by my means. In no case ought I to be necessary to another, while he is doing what to me is unlawful. Hence I ought to understand that care must be taken by me, lest what I am forbidden to do be done by my means. In short, in another cause of no lighter guilt I observe that fore-judgment. In that I am interdicted from fornication, I furnish nothing of help or connivance to others for that purpose; in that I have separated my own flesh itself from stews, I acknowledge that I cannot exercise the trade of pandering, or keep that kind of places for my neighbour’s behoof. So, too, the interdiction of murder shows me that a trainer of gladiators also is excluded from the Church; nor will any one fail to be the means of doing what he subministers to another to do. Behold, here is a more kindred fore-judgment: if a purveyor of the public victims come over to the faith, will you permit him to remain permanently in that trade? or if one who is already a believer shall have undertaken that business, will you think that he is to be retained in the Church? No, I take it; unless any one will dissemble in the case of a frankincense-seller too. In sooth, the agency of blood pertains to some, that of odours to others. If, before idols were in the world, idolatry, hitherto shapeless, used to be transacted by these wares; if, even now, the work of idolatry is perpetrated, for the most part, without the idol, by burnings of odours; the frankincense-seller is a something even more serviceable even toward demons, for idolatry is more easily carried on without the idol, than without the ware of the frankincense-seller. 234 Let us interrogate thoroughly the conscience of the faith itself. With what mouth will a Christian frankincense-seller, if he shall pass through temples, with what mouth will he spit down upon and blow out the smoking altars, for which himself has made provision? With what consistency will he exorcise his own foster-children, 235 to whom he affords his own house as store-room? Indeed, if he shall have ejected a demon, 236 let him not congratulate himself on his faith, for he has not ejected an enemy; he ought to have had his prayer easily granted by one whom he is daily feeding. 237 No art, then, no profession, no trade, which administers either to equipping or forming idols, can be free from the title of idolatry; unless we interpret idolatry to be altogether something else than the service of idol-tendence.
Footnotes
67:2301 Tim. vi. 10.
67:2311 Tim. i. 19.
67:232Col. iii. 5. It has been suggested that for “quamvis” we should read “quum bis;” i.e., “seeing covetousness is twice called,” etc. The two places are Col. 3:5, Eph. 5:5.
67:233Matt. 5:34, Jas. 5:12.
67:234[The aversion of the early Christian Fathers passim to the ceremonial use of incense finds one explanation here.]
68:235i.e., the demons, or idols, to whom incense is burned.
68:236i.e., from one possessed.
68:237i.e., The demon, in gratitude for the incense which the man daily feeds him with, ought to depart out of the possessed at his request.
Chapter XII.—Further Answers to the Plea, How Am I to Live?
In vain do we flatter ourselves as to the necessities of human maintenance, if—after faith sealed 238 —we say, “I have no means to live?” 239 For here I will now answer more fully that abrupt proposition. It is advanced too late. For after the similitude of that most prudent builder, 240 who first computes the costs of the work, together with his own means, lest, when he has begun, he afterwards blush to find himself spent, deliberation should have been made before. But even now you have the Lord’s sayings, as examples taking away from you all excuse. For what is it you say? “I shall be in need.” But the Lord calls the needy “happy.” 241 “I shall have no food.” But “think not,” says He, “about food;” 242 and as an example of clothing we have the lilies. 243 “My work was my subsistence.” Nay, but “all things are to be sold, and divided to the needy.” 244 “But provision must be made for children and posterity.” “None, putting his hand on the plough, and looking back, is fit” for work. 245 “But I was under contract.” “None can serve two lords.” 246 If you wish to be the Lord’s disciple, it is necessary you “take your cross, and follow the Lord:” 247 your cross; that is, your own straits and tortures, or your body only, which is after the manner of a cross. Parents, wives, children, will have to be left behind, for God’s sake. 248 Do you hesitate about arts, and trades, and about professions likewise, for the sake of children and parents? Even there was it demonstrated to us, that both “dear pledges,” 249 and handicrafts, and trades, are to be quite left behind for the Lord’s sake; while James and John, called by the Lord, do leave quite behind both father and ship; 250 while Matthew is roused up from the toll-booth; 251 while even burying a father was too tardy a business for faith. 252 None of them whom the Lord chose to Him said, “I have no means to live.” Faith fears not famine. It knows, likewise, that hunger is no less to be contemned by it for God’s sake, than every kind of death. It has learnt not to respect life; how much more food? [You ask] “How many have fulfilled these conditions?” But what with men is difficult, with God is easy. 253 Let us, however, comfort ourselves about the gentleness and clemency of God in such wise, as not to indulge our “necessities” up to the point of affinities with idolatry, but to avoid even from afar every breath of it, as of a pestilence. [And this] not merely in the cases forementioned, but in the universal series of human superstition; whether appropriated to its gods, or to the defunct, or to kings, as pertaining to the selfsame unclean spirits, sometimes through sacrifices and priesthoods, sometimes through spectacles and the like, sometimes through holy-days.
Footnotes
68:238i.e., in baptism.
68:239See above, chaps. v. and viii. [One is reminded here of the famous pleasantry of Dr. Johnson; see Boswell.]
68:240See Luke xiv. 28-30.
68:241Luke vi. 20.
68:242Matt. 6:25, 31, Luke 12:22.
68:243Matt. 6:28, Luke 12:28.
68:244Matt. 19:21, Luke 18:22.
68:245Luke ix. 62, where the words are, “is fit for the kingdom of God.”
68:246Matt. 6:24, Luke 16:13.
68:247Matt. 16:24, Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23, Luke 14:27.
68:248Luke 14:26, Mark 10:29, 30, Matt. 19:27. Compare these texts with Tertullian’s words, and see the testimony he thus gives to the deity of Christ.
68:249i.e., any dear relations.
68:250Matt. 4:21, 22, Mark 1:19, 20, Luke 5:10, 11.
68:251Matt. 9:9, Mark 2:14, Luke 5:29.
68:252Luke 9:59, 60.
68:253Matt. 19:26, Luke 1:37, Luke 18:27.
Chapter XIII.—Of the Observance of Days Connected with Idolatry.
But why speak of sacrifices and priesthoods? Of spectacles, moreover, and pleasures of that kind, we have already filled a volume of their own. 254 In this place must be handled the subject of holidays and other extraordinary solemnities, which we accord sometimes to our wantonness, sometimes to our timidity, in opposition to the common faith and Discipline. The first point, indeed, on which I shall join issue is this: whether a servant of God ought to share with the very nations themselves in matters of his kind either in dress, or in food, or in any other kind of their gladness. “To rejoice with the rejoicing, and grieve with the grieving,” 255 is said about brethren by the apostle when exhorting to unanimity. But, for these purposes, “There is nought of communion between light and darkness,” 256 between life and death or else we rescind what is written, “The world shall rejoice, but ye shall grieve.” 257 If we rejoice with the world, there is reason to fear that with the world we shall grieve too. But when the world rejoices, let us grieve; and when the world afterward grieves, we shall rejoice. Thus, too, Eleazar 258 in Hades, 259 (attaining refreshment in Abraham’s bosom) and the rich man, (on the other hand, set in the torment of fire) compensate, by an answerable retribution, their alternate vicissitudes of evil and good. There are certain gift-days, which with some adjust the claim of honour, with others the debt of wages. “Now, then,” you say, “I shall receive back what is mine, or pay back what is another’s.” If men have consecrated for themselves this custom from superstition, why do you, estranged as you are from all their vanity, participate in solemnities consecrated to idols; as if for you also there were some prescript about a day, short of the observance of a particular day, to prevent your paying or receiving what you owe a man, or what is owed you by a man? Give me the form after which you wish to be dealt with. For why should you skulk withal, when you contaminate your own conscience by your neighbour’s ignorance? If you are not unknown to be a Christian, you are tempted, and you act as if you were not a Christian against your neighbour’s conscience; if, however, you shall be disguised withal, 260 you are the slave of the temptation. At all events, whether in the latter or the former way, you are guilty of being “ashamed of God.” 261 But “whosoever shall be ashamed of Me in the presence of men, of him will I too be ashamed,” says He, “in the presence of my Father who is in the heavens.” 262
Footnotes
68:254The treatise De Spectaculis [soon to follow, in this volume.]
69:255Rom. xii. 15.
69:256See 2 Cor. vi. 14. In the De Spect. xxvi. Tertullian has the same quotation (Oehler). And there, too, he adds, as here, “between life and death.”
69:257John xvi. 20. It is observable that Tertullian here translates κόσμον by “seculum.”
69:258i.e., Lazarus, Luke xvi. 19-31.
69:259“Apud inferos,” used clearly here by Tertullian of a place of happiness. Augustine says he never finds it so used in Scripture. See Ussher’s “Answer to a Jesuit” on the Article, “He descended into hell.” [See Elucid. X. p. 59, supra.]
69:260i.e., if you are unknown to be a Christian: “dissimulaberis.” This is Oehler’s reading; but Latinius and Fr. Junis would read “Dissimulaveris,” ="if you dissemble the fact” of being a Christian, which perhaps is better.
69:261So Mr. Dodgson renders very well.
69:262Matt. 10:33, Mark 8:38, Luke 9:26, 2 Tim. 2:12.
Chapter XIV.—Of Blasphemy. One of St. Paul’s Sayings.
But, however, the majority (of Christians) have by this time induced the belief in their mind that it is pardonable if at any time they do what the heathen do, for fear “the Name be blasphemed.” Now the blasphemy which must quite be shunned by us in every way is, I take it, this: If any of us lead a heathen into blasphemy with good cause, either by fraud, or by injury, or by contumely, or any other matter of worthy complaint, in which “the Name” is deservedly impugned, so that the Lord, too, be deservedly angry. Else, if of all blasphemy it has been said, “By your means My Name is blasphemed,” 263 we all perish at once; since the whole circus, with no desert of ours, assails “the Name” with wicked suffrages. Let us cease (to be Christians) and it will not be blasphemed! On the contrary, while we are, let it be blasphemed: in the observance, not the overstepping, of discipline; while we are being approved, not while we are being reprobated. Oh blasphemy, bordering on martyrdom, which now attests me to be a Christian, 264 while for that very account it detests me! The cursing of well-maintained Discipline is a blessing of the Name. “If,” says he, “I wished to please men, I should not be Christ’s servant.” 265 But the same apostle elsewhere bids us take care to please all: “As I,” he says, “please all by all means.” 266 No doubt he used to please them by celebrating the Saturnalia and New-year’s day! [Was it so] or was it by moderation and patience? by gravity, by kindness, by integrity? In like manner, when he is saying, “I have become all things to all, that I may gain all,” 267 does he mean “to idolaters an idolater?” “to heathens a heathen?” “to the worldly worldly?” But albeit he does not prohibit us from having our conversation with idolaters and adulterers, and the other criminals, saying, “Otherwise ye would go out from the world,” 268 of course he does not so slacken those reins of conversation that, since it is necessary for us both to live and to mingle with sinners, we may be able to sin with them too. Where there is the intercourse of life, which the apostle concedes, there is sinning, which no one permits. To live with heathens is lawful, to die with them 269 is not. Let us live with all; 270 let us be glad with them, out of community of nature, not of superstition. We are peers in soul, not in discipline; fellow-possessors of the world, not of error. But if we have no right of communion in matters of this kind with strangers, how far more wicked to celebrate them among brethren! Who can maintain or defend this? The Holy Spirit upbraids the Jews with their holy-days. “Your Sabbaths, and new moons, and ceremonies,” says He, “My soul hateth.” 271 By us, to whom Sabbaths are strange, 272 and the new moons and festivals formerly beloved by God, the Saturnalia and New-year’s and Midwinter’s festivals and Matronalia are frequented—presents come and go—New-year’s gifts—games join their noise—banquets join their din! Oh better fidelity of the nations to their own sect, which claims no solemnity of the Christians for itself! Not the Lord’s day, not Pentecost, even it they had known them, would they have shared with us; for they would fear lest they should seem to be Christians. We are not apprehensive lest we seem to be heathens! If any indulgence is to be granted to the flesh, you have it. I will not say your own days, 273 but more too; for to the heathens each festive day occurs but once annually: you have a festive day every eighth day. 274 Call out the individual solemnities of the nations, and set them out into a row, they will not be able to make up a Pentecost. 275
Footnotes
69:263Isa. 52:5, Ezek. 36:20, 23. Cf. 2 Sam. 12:14, Rom. 2:24.
69:264[This play on the words is literally copied from the original—“quæ tunc me testatur Christianum, cum propter ea me detestatur.”]
69:265St. Paul. Gal. i. 10.
69:2661 Cor. 10:32, 33.
69:2671 Cor. ix. 22.
69:2681 Cor. v. 10.
70:269i.e., by sinning (Oehler), for “the wages of sin is death.”
70:270There seems to be a play on the word “convivere” (whence “convivium,” etc.), as in Cic. de Sen. xiii.
70:271Isa. i. 14, etc.
70:272[This is noteworthy. In the earlier days sabbaths (Saturdays) were not unobserved, but, it was a concession pro tempore, to Hebrew Christians.]
70:273i.e., perhaps your own birthdays. [See cap. xvi. infra.] Oehler seems to think it means, “all other Christian festivals beside Sunday.”
70:274[“An Easter Day in every week.”—Keble.]
70:275i.e., a space of fifty days, see Deut. xvi. 10; and comp. Hooker, Ecc. Pol. iv. 13, 7, ed. Keble.
Chapter XV.—Concerning Festivals in Honour of Emperors, Victories, and the Like. Examples of the Three Children and Daniel.
But “let your works shine,” saith He; 276 but now all our shops and gates shine! You will now-a-days find more doors of heathens without lamps and laurel-wreaths than of Christians. What does the case seem to be with regard to that species (of ceremony) also? If it is an idol’s honour, without doubt an idol’s honour is idolatry. If it is for a man’s sake, let us again consider that all idolatry is for man’s sake; 277 let us again consider that all idolatry is a worship done to men, since it is generally agreed even among their worshippers that aforetime the gods themselves of the nations were men; and so it makes no difference whether that superstitious homage be rendered to men of a former age or of this. Idolatry is condemned, not on account of the persons which are set up for worship, but on account of those its observances, which pertain to demons. “The things which are Cæsar’s are to be rendered to Cæsar.” 278 It is enough that He set in apposition thereto, “and to God the things which are God’s.” What things, then, are Cæsar’s? Those, to wit, about which the consultation was then held, whether the poll-tax should be furnished to Cæsar or no. Therefore, too, the Lord demanded that the money should be shown Him, and inquired about the image, whose it was; and when He had heard it was Cæsar’s, said, “Render to Cæsar what are Cæsar’s, and what are God’s to God;” that is, the image of Cæsar, which is on the coin, to Cæsar, and the image of God, which is on man, 279 to God; so as to render to Cæsar indeed money, to God yourself. Otherwise, what will be God’s, if all things are Cæsar’s? “Then,” do you say, “the lamps before my doors, and the laurels on my posts are an honour to God?” They are there of course, not because they are an honour to God, but to him who is honour in God’s stead by ceremonial observances of that kind, so far as is manifest, saving the religious performance, which is in secret appertaining to demons. For we ought to be sure if there are any whose notice it escapes through ignorance of this world’s literature, that there are among the Romans even gods of entrances; Cardea (Hinge-goddess), called after hinges, and Forculus (Door-god) after doors, and Limentinus (Threshold-god) after the threshold, and Janus himself (Gate-god) after the gate: and of course we know that, though names be empty and feigned, yet, when they are drawn down into superstition, demons and every unclean spirit seize them for themselves, through the bond of consecration. Otherwise demons have no name individually, but they there find a name where they find also a token. Among the Greeks likewise we read of Apollo Thyræus, i.e. of the door, and the Antelii, or Anthelii, demons, as presiders over entrances. These things, therefore, the Holy Spirit foreseeing from the beginning, fore-chanted, through the most ancient prophet Enoch, that even entrances would come into superstitious use. For we see too that other entrances 280 are adored in the baths. But if there are beings which are adored in entrances, it is to them that both the lamps and the laurels will pertain. To an idol you will have done whatever you shall have done to an entrance. In this place I call a witness on the authority also of God; because it is not safe to suppress whatever may have been shown to one, of course for the sake of all. I know that a brother was severely chastised, the same night, through a vision, because on the sudden announcement of public rejoicings his servants had wreathed his gates. And yet himself had not wreathed, or commanded them to be wreathed; for he had gone forth from home before, and on his return had reprehended the deed. So strictly are we appraised with God in matters of this kind, even with regard to the discipline of our family. 281 Therefore, as to what relates to the honours due to kings or emperors, we have a prescript sufficient, that it behoves us to be in all obedience, according to the apostle’s precept, 282 “subject to magistrates, and princes, and powers;” 283 but within the limits of discipline, so long as we keep ourselves separate from idolatry. For it is for this reason, too, that that example of the three brethren has forerun us, who, in other respects obedient toward king Nebuchodonosor rejected with all constancy the honour to his image, 284 proving that whatever is extolled beyond the measure of human honour, unto the resemblance of divine sublimity, is idolatry. So too, Daniel, in all other points submissive to Darius, remained in his duty so long as it was free from danger to his religion; 285 for, to avoid undergoing that danger, he feared the royal lions no more than they the royal fires. Let, therefore, them who have no light, light their lamps daily; let them over whom the fires of hell are imminent, affix to their posts, laurels doomed presently to burn: to them the testimonies of darkness and the omens of their penalties are suitable. You are a light of the world, 286 and a tree ever green. 287 If you have renounced temples, make not your own gate a temple. I have said too little. If you have renounced stews, clothe not your own house with the appearance of a new brothel.
Footnotes
70:276Matt. v. 16.
70:277See chap. ix. p. 152, note 4.
70:278Matt. 22:21, Mark 12:17, Luke 20:25.
70:279See Gen. 1:26, 27, Gen. 9:6; and comp. 1 Cor. xi. 7.
71:280The word is the same as that for “the mouth” of a river, etc. Hence Oehler supposes the “entrances” or “mouths” here referred to to be the mouths of fountains, where nymphs were supposed to dwell. Nympha is supposed to be the same word as Lympha. See Hor. Sat. i. 5, 97; and Macleane’s note.
71:281[He seems to refer to some Providential event, perhaps announced in a dream, not necessarily out of the course of common occurrences.]
71:282Rom. xiii. 1, etc.; 1 Pet. ii, 13, 14.
71:283Tit. iii. 1.
71:284Dan. iii.
71:285Dan. vi.
71:286Matt. 5:14, Phil. 2:15.
71:287Ps. 1:1, Ps. 92:12.
Chapter XVI.—Concerning Private Festivals.
Touching the ceremonies, however, of private and social solemnities—as those of the white toga, of espousals, of nuptials, of name-givings—I should think no danger need be guarded against from the breath of the idolatry which is mixed up with them. For the causes are to be considered to which the ceremony is due. Those above-named I take to be clean in themselves, because neither manly garb, nor the marital ring or union, descends from honours done to any idol. In short, I find no dress cursed by God, except a woman’s dress on a man: 288 for “cursed,” saith He, “is every man who clothes himself in woman’s attire.” The toga, however, is a dress of manly name as well as of manly use. 289 God no more prohibits nuptials to be celebrated than a name to be given. “But there are sacrifices appropriated to these occasions.” Let me be invited, and let not the title of the ceremony be “assistance at a sacrifice,” and the discharge of my good offices is at the service of my friends. Would that it were “at their service” indeed, and that we could escape seeing what is unlawful for us to do. But since the evil one has so surrounded the world with idolatry, it will be lawful for us to be present at some ceremonies which see us doing service to a man, not to an idol. Clearly, if invited unto priestly function and sacrifice, I will not go, for that is service peculiar to an idol; but neither will I furnish advice, or expense, or any other good office in a matter of that kind. If it is on account of the sacrifice that I be invited, and stand by, I shall be partaker of idolatry; if any other cause conjoins me to the sacrificer, I shall be merely a spectator of the sacrifice. 290
Footnotes
71:288Tertullian should have added, “and a man’s on a woman.” See Deut. xxii. 5. Moreover, the word “cursed” is not used there, but “abomination” is.
71:289Because it was called toga virilis—“the manly toga.”
71:290[1 Cor. viii. The law of the inspired apostle seems as rigorous here and in 1 Cor. x. 27-29.]
Chapter XVII.—The Cases of Servants and Other Officials. What Offices a Christian Man May Hold.
But what shall believing servants or children 291 do? officials likewise, when attending on their lords, or patrons, or superiors, when sacrificing? Well, if any one shall have handed the wine to a sacrificer, nay, if by any single word necessary or belonging to a sacrifice he shall have aided him, he will be held to be a minister of idolatry. Mindful of this rule, we can render service even “to magistrates and powers,” after the example of the patriarchs and the other forefathers, 292 who obeyed idolatrous kings up to the confine of idolatry. Hence arose, very lately, a dispute whether a servant of God should take the administration of any dignity or power, if he be able, whether by some special grace, or by adroitness, to keep himself intact from every species of idolatry; after the example that both Joseph and Daniel, clean from idolatry, administered both dignity and power in the livery and purple of the prefecture of entire Egypt or Babylonia. And so let us grant that it is possible for any one to succeed in moving, in whatsoever office, under the mere name of the office, neither sacrificing nor lending his authority to sacrifices; not farming out victims; not assigning to others the care of temples; not looking after their tributes; not giving spectacles at his own or the public charge, or presiding over the giving them; making proclamation or edict for no solemnity; not even taking oaths: moreover (what comes under the head of power), neither sitting in judgment on any one’s life or character, for you might bear with his judging about money; neither condemning nor fore-condemning; 293 binding no one, imprisoning or torturing no one—if it is credible that all this is possible.
Footnotes
71:291This is Oehler’s reading; Regaltius and Fr. Junius would read “liberti” = freedmen. I admit that in this instance I prefer their reading; among other reasons it answers better to “patronis” ="patrons.”
72:292Majores. Of course the word may be rendered simply “ancients;” but I have kept the common meaning “forefathers.”
72:293“The judge condemns, the legislator fore-condemns.”—Rigaltius (Oehler.)
Chapter XVIII.—Dress as Connected with Idolatry.
But we must now treat of the garb only and apparatus of office. There is a dress proper to every one, as well for daily use as for office and dignity. That famous purple, therefore, and the gold as an ornament of the neck, were, among the Egyptians and Babylonians, ensigns of dignity, in the same way as bordered, or striped, or palm-embroidered togas, and the golden wreaths of provincial priests, are now; but not on the same terms. For they used only to be conferred, under the name of honour, on such as deserved the familiar friendship of kings (whence, too, such used to be styled the “purpled-men” 294 of kings, just as among us, 295 some, from their white toga, are called “candidates” 296 ); but not on the understanding that that garb should be tied to priesthoods also, or to any idol-ceremonies. For if that were the case, of course men of such holiness and constancy 297 would instantly have refused the defiled dresses; and it would instantly have appeared that Daniel had been no zealous slave to idols, nor worshipped Bel, nor the dragon, which long after did appear. That purple, therefore, was simple, and used not at that time to be a mark of dignity 298 among the barbarians, but of nobility. 299 For as both Joseph, who had been a slave, and Daniel, who through 300 captivity had changed his state, attained the freedom of the states of Babylon and Egypt through the dress of barbaric nobility; 301 so among us believers also, if need so be, the bordered toga will be proper to be conceded to boys, and the stole to girls, 302 as ensigns of birth, not of power; of race, not of office; of rank, not of superstition. But the purple, or the other ensigns of dignities and powers, dedicated from the beginning to idolatry engrafted on the dignity and the powers, carry the spot of their own profanation; since, moreover, bordered and striped togas, and broad-barred ones, are put even on idols themselves; and fasces also, and rods, are borne before them; and deservedly, for demons are the magistrates of this world: they bear the fasces and the purples, the ensigns of one college. What end, then, will you advance if you use the garb indeed, but administer not the functions of it? In things unclean, none can appear clean. If you put on a tunic defiled in itself, it perhaps may not be defiled through you; but you, through it, will be unable to be clean. Now by this time, you who argue about “Joseph” and “Daniel,” know that things old and new, rude and polished, begun and developed, slavish and free, are not always comparable. For they, even by their circumstances, were slaves; but you, the slave of none, 303 in so far as you are the slave of Christ alone, 304 who has freed you likewise from the captivity of the world, will incur the duty of acting after your Lord’s pattern. That Lord walked in humility and obscurity, with no definite home: for “the Son of man,” said He, “hath not where to lay His head;” 305 unadorned in dress, for else He had not said, “Behold, they who are clad in soft raiment are in kings’ houses:” 306 in short, inglorious in countenance and aspect, just as Isaiah withal had fore-announced. 307 If, also, He exercised no right of power even over His own followers, to whom He discharged menial ministry; 308 if, in short, though conscious of His own kingdom, 309 He shrank back from being made a king, 310 He in the fullest manner gave His own an example for turning coldly from all the pride and garb, as well of dignity as of power. For if they were to be used, who would rather have used them than the Son of God? What kind and what number of fasces would escort Him? what kind of purple would bloom from His shoulders? what kind of gold would beam from His head, had He not judged the glory of the world to be alien both to Himself and to His? Therefore what He was unwilling to accept, He has rejected; what He rejected, He has condemned; what He condemned, He has counted as part of the devil’s pomp. For He would not have condemned things, except such as were not His; but things which are not God’s, can be no other’s but the devil’s. If you have forsworn “the devil’s pomp,” 311 know that whatever there you touch is idolatry. Let even this fact help to remind you that all the powers and dignities of this world are not only alien to, but enemies of, God; that through them punishments have been determined against God’s servants; through them, too, penalties prepared for the impious are ignored. But “both your birth and your substance are troublesome to you in resisting idolatry.” 312 For avoiding it, remedies cannot be lacking; since, even if they be lacking, there remains that one by which you will be made a happier magistrate, not in the earth, but in the heavens. 313
Footnotes
72:294Or, “purpurates.”
72:295[Not us Christians, but us Roman citizens.]
72:296Or, “white-men.”
72:297Or, “consistency.”
72:298i.e., Official character.
72:299Or, “free” or “good” “birth.”
72:300Or, “during.”
72:301i.e., the dress was the sign that they had obtained it.
72:302I have departed from Oehler’s reading here, as I have not succeeded in finding that the “stola” was a boy’s garment; and, for grammatical reasons, the reading of Gelenius and Pamelius (which I have taken) seems best.
72:303See 1 Cor. ix. 19.
72:304St. Paul in his epistle glories in the title, “Paul, a slave,” or “bondman,” “of Christ Jesus.”
72:305Luke 9:58, Matt. 8:20.
73:306Matt. 11:8, Luke 7:25.
73:307Isa. liii. 2.
73:308See John xiii. 1-17.
73:309See John xviii. 36.
73:310John vi. 15.
73:311In baptism.
73:312i.e., From your birth and means, you will be expected to fill offices which are in some way connected with idolatry.
73:313i.e., Martyrdom (La Cerda, quoted by Oehler). For the idea of being “a magistrate in the heavens,” [sitting on a throne] compare such passages as Matt. 19:28, Luke 22:28, 30, 1 Cor. 6:2, 3, Rev. 2:26, 27, Rev. 3:21.
Chapter XIX.—Concerning Military Service.
In that last section, decision may seem to have been given likewise concerning military service, which is between dignity and power. 314 But now inquiry is made about this point, whether a believer may turn himself unto military service, and whether the military may be admitted unto the faith, even the rank and file, or each inferior grade, to whom there is no necessity for taking part in sacrifices or capital punishments. There is no agreement between the divine and the human sacrament, 315 the standard of Christ and the standard of the devil, the camp of light and the camp of darkness. One soul cannot be due to two masters—God and Cæsar. And yet Moses carried a rod, 316 and Aaron wore a buckle, 317 and John (Baptist) is girt with leather 318 and Joshua the son of Nun leads a line of march; and the People warred: if it pleases you to sport with the subject. But how will a Christian man war, nay, how will he serve even in peace, without a sword, which the Lord has taken away? 319 For albeit soldiers had come unto John, and had received the formula of their rule; 320 albeit, likewise, a centurion had believed; 321 still the Lord afterward, in disarming Peter, unbe**d every soldier. No dress is lawful among us, if assigned to any unlawful action.
Footnotes
73:314Elucidation II.
73:315“Sacramentum” in Latin is, among other meanings, “a military oath.”
73:316“Virgam.” The vine switch, or rod, in the Roman army was a mark of the centurion’s (i.e., captain’s) rank.
73:317To fasten the ephod; hence the buckle worn by soldiers here referred to would probably be the belt buckle. Buckles were sometimes given as military rewards (White and Riddle).
73:318As soldiers with belts.
73:319Matt. 26:52, 2 Cor. 10:4, John 18:36.
73:320See Luke 3:12, 13.
73:321Matt. viii. 5, etc.; Luke vii. 1, etc.
Chapter XX.—Concerning Idolatry in Words.
But, however, since the conduct according to the divine rule is imperilled, not merely by deeds, but likewise by words, (for, just as it is written, “Behold the man and his deeds;” 322 so, “Out of thy own mouth shalt thou be justified” 323 ), we ought to remember that, even in words, also the inroad of idolatry must be foreguarded against, either from the defect of custom or of timidity. The law prohibits the gods of the nations from being named, 324 not of course that we are not to pronounce their names, the speaking of which common intercourse extorts from us: for this must very frequently be said, “You find him in the temple of Æsculapius;” and, “I live in Isis Street;” and, “He has been made priest of Jupiter;” and much else after this manner, since even on men names of this kind are bestowed. I do not honour Saturnus if I call a man so, by his own name. I honour him no more than I do Marcus, if I call a man Marcus. But it says, “Make not mention of the name of other gods, neither be it heard from thy mouth.” 325 The precept it gives is this, that we do not call them gods. For in the first part of the law, too, “Thou shalt not,” saith He, “use the name of the Lord thy God in a vain thing,” 326 that is, in an idol. 327 Whoever, therefore, honours an idol with the name of God, has fallen into idolatry. But if I speak of them as gods, something must be added to make it appear that I do not call them gods. For even the Scripture names “gods,” but adds “their,” viz. “of the nations:” just as David does when he had named “gods,” where he says, “But the gods of the nations are demons.” 328 But this has been laid by me rather as a foundation for ensuing observations. However, it is a defect of custom to say, “By Hercules, So help me the god of faith;” 329 while to the custom is added the ignorance of some, who are ignorant that it is an oath by Hercules. Further, what will an oath be, in the name of gods whom you have forsworn, but a collusion of faith with idolatry? For who does not honour them in whose name he swears?
Footnotes
73:322Neither Oehler nor any editor seems to have discovered the passage here referred to.
73:323Matt. xii. 37.
73:324Ex. xxiii. 13. [St. Luke, nevertheless, names Castor and Pollux, Acts xxviii. 2., on our author’s principle.]
73:325Ex. xxiii. 13.
74:326Ex. xx. 7.
74:327Because Scripture calls idols “vanities” and “vain things.” See 2 Kings 17:15, Ps. 24:4, Isa. 59:4, Deut. 32:21, etc.
74:328Ps. xcvi. 5. The LXX. in whose version ed. Tisch. it is Ps. xcv. read δαιμόνια, like Tertullian. Our version has “idols.”
74:329Mehercule. Medius Fidius. I have given the rendering of the latter, which seems preferred by Paley (Ov. Fast. vi. 213, note), who considers it = me dius (i.e., Deus) fidius juvet. Smith (Lat. Dict. s.v.) agrees with him, and explains it, me deus fidius servet. White and Riddle (s.v.) take the me (which appears to be short) as a “demonstrative” particle or prefix, and explain, “By the God of truth!” “As true as heaven,” “Most certainly.”
Chapter XXI.—Of Silent Acquiescence in Heathen Formularies.
But it is a mark of timidity, when some other man binds you in the name of his gods, by the making of an oath, or by some other form of attestation, and you, for fear of discovery, 330 remain quiet. For you equally, by remaining quiet, affirm their majesty, by reason of which majesty you will seem to be bound. What matters it, whether you affirm the gods of the nations by calling them gods, or by hearing them so called? Whether you swear by idols, or, when adjured by another, acquiesce? Why should we not recognize the subtleties of Satan, who makes it his aim that, what he cannot effect by our mouth, he may effect by the mouth of his servants, introducing idolatry into us through our ears? At all events, whoever the adjurer is, he binds you to himself either in friendly or unfriendly conjunction. If in unfriendly, you are now challenged unto battle, and know that you must fight. If in friendly, with how far greater security will you transfer your engagement unto the Lord, that you may dissolve the obligation of him through whose means the Evil One was seeking to annex you to the honour of idols, that is, to idolatry! All sufferance of that kind is idolatry. You honour those to whom, when imposed as authorities, you have rendered respect. I know that one (whom the Lord pardon!), when it had been said to him in public during a law-suit, “Jupiter be wroth with you,” answered, “On the contrary, with you.” What else would a heathen have done who believed Jupiter to be a god? For even had he not retorted the malediction by Jupiter (or other such like), yet, by merely returning a curse, he would have confirmed the divinity of Jove, showing himself irritated by a malediction in Jove’s name. For what is there to be indignant at, (if cursed) in the name of one whom you know to be nothing? For if you rave, you immediately affirm his existence, and the profession of your fear will be an act of idolatry. How much more, while you are returning the malediction in the name of Jupiter himself, are you doing honour to Jupiter in the same way as he who provoked you! But a believer ought to laugh in such cases, not to rave; nay, according to the precept, 331 not to return a curse in the name of God even, but dearly to bless in the name of God, that you may both demolish idols and preach God, and fulfil discipline.
Footnotes
74:330i.e., for fear of being discovered to be a Christian (Oehler).
74:331See Matt. 5:44, 1 Pet. 3:9, etc.
Chapter XXII.—Of Accepting Blessing in the Name of Idols.
Equally, one who has been initiated into Christ will not endure to be blessed in the name of the gods of the nations, so as not always to reject the unclean benediction, and to cleanse it out for himself by converting it Godward. To be blessed in the name of the gods of the nations is to be cursed in the name of God. If I have given an alms, or shown any other kindness, and the recipient pray that his gods, or the Genius of the colony, may be propitious to me, my oblation or act will immediately be an honour to idols, in whose name he returns me the favour of blessing. But why should he not know that I have done it for God’s sake; that God may rather be glorified, and demons may not be honoured in that which I have done for the sake of God? If God sees that I have done it for His sake, He equally sees that I have been unwilling to show that I did it for His sake, and have in a manner made His precept 332 a sacrifice to idols. Many say, “No one ought to divulge himself;” but I think neither ought he to deny himself. For whoever dissembles in any cause whatever, by being held as a heathen, does deny; and, of course, all denial is idolatry, just as all idolatry is denial, whether in deeds or in words. 333
Footnotes
74:332i.e., the precept which enjoins me to “do good and lend.”
75:333Elucidation III.
Chapter XXIII.—Written Contracts in the Name of Idols. Tacit Consent.
But there is a certain species of that class, doubly sharpened in deed and word, and mischievous on either side, although it flatter you, as if it were free of danger in each; while it does not seem to be a deed, because it is not laid hold of as a word. In borrowing money from heathens under pledged 334 securities, Christians give a guarantee under oath, and deny themselves to have done so. Of course, the time of the prosecution, and the place of the judgment seat, and the person of the presiding judge, decide that they knew themselves to have so done. 335 Christ prescribes that there is to be no swearing. “I wrote,” says the debtor, “but I said nothing. It is the tongue, not the written letter, which kills.” Here I call Nature and Conscience as my witnesses: Nature, because even if the tongue in dictating remains motionless and quiet, the hand can write nothing which the soul has not dictated; albeit even to the tongue itself the soul may have dictated either something conceived by itself, or else something delivered by another. Now, lest it be said, “Another dictated,” I here appeal to Conscience whether, what another dictated, the soul entertains, 336 and transmits unto the hand, whether with the concomitance or the inaction of the tongue. Enough, that the Lord has said faults are committed in the mind and the conscience. If concupiscence or malice have ascended into a man’s heart, He saith it is held as a deed. 337 You therefore have given a guarantee; which clearly has “ascended into your heart,” which you can neither contend you were ignorant of nor unwilling; for when you gave the guarantee, you knew that you did it; when you knew, of course you were willing: you did it as well in act as in thought; nor can you by the lighter charge exclude the heavier, 338 so as to say that it is clearly rendered false, by giving a guarantee for what you do not actually perform. “Yet I have not denied, because I have not sworn.” But you have sworn, since, even if you had done no such thing, you would still be said to swear, if you have even consented to so doing. Silence of voice is an unavailing plea in a case of writing; and muteness of sound in a case of letters. For Zacharias, when punished with a temporary privation of voice, holds colloquy with his mind, and, passing by his bootless tongue, with the help of his hands dictates from his heart, and without his mouth pronounces the name of his son. 339 Thus, in his pen there speaks a hand clearer than every sound, in his waxen tablet there is heard a letter more vocal that every mouth. 340 Inquire whether a man have spoken who is understood to have spoken. 341 Pray we the Lord that no necessity for that kind of contract may ever encompass us; and if it should so fall out, may He give our brethren the means of helping us, or give us constancy to break off all such necessity, lest those denying letters, the substitutes for our mouth, be brought forward against us in the day of judgment, sealed with the seals, not now of witnesses, but of angels!
Footnotes
75:334Or, “mortgaged.”
75:335This is, perhaps, the most obscure and difficult passage in the entire treatise. I have followed Oehler’s reading, and given what appears to be his sense; but the readings are widely different, and it is doubtful whether any is correct. I can scarcely, however, help thinking that the “se negant” here, and the “tamen non negavi” below, are to be connected with the “puto autem nec negare” at the end of the former chapter; and that the true rendering is rather: “And [by so doing] deny themselves,” i.e., deny their Christian name and faith. “Doubtless a time of persecution,” such as the present time is—or “of prosecution,” which would make very good sense—“and the place of the tribunal, and the person of the presiding judge, require them to know themselves,” i.e., to have no shuffling or disguise. I submit this rendering with diffidence; but it does seem to me to suit the context better, and to harmonize better with the “Yet I have not denied,” i.e., my name and faith, which follows, and with the “denying letters” which are mentioned at the end of the chapter.—Tr.
75:336Mr. Dodgson renders “conceiveth;” and the word is certainly capable of that meaning.
75:337See Matt. v. 28.
75:338Oehler understands “the lighter crime” or “charge” to be “swearing;” the “heavier,” to be “denying the Lord Christ.”
75:339See Luke 1:20, 22, 62, 63.
75:340This is how Mr. Dodgson renders, and the rendering agrees with Oehler’s punctuation. [So obscure however, is Dodgson’s rendering that I have slightly changed the punctuation, to clarify it, and subjoin Oehler’s text.] But perhaps we may read thus: “He speaks in his pen; he is heard in his waxen tablet: the hand is clearer than every sound; the letter is more vocal than every mouth.” [Oehler reads thus: “Cum manibus suis a corde dictat et nomen filii sine ore pronuntiat: loquitur in stilo, auditur in cera manus omni sono clarior, littera omni ore vocalior.” I see no difficulty here.]
75:341Elucidation IV.
Chapter XXIV.—General Conclusion.
Amid these reefs and inlets, amid these shallows and straits of idolatry, Faith, her sails filled by the Spirit of God, navigates; safe if cautious, secure if intently watchful. But to such as are washed overboard is a deep whence is no out-swimming; to such as are run aground is inextricable shipwreck; to such as are engulphed is a whirlpool, where there is no breathing—even in idolatry. All waves thereof whatsoever suffocate; every eddy thereof sucks down unto Hades. Let no one say, “Who will so safely foreguard himself? We shall have to go out of the world!” 342 As if it were not as well worth while to go out, as to stand in the world as an idolater! Nothing can be easier than caution against idolatry, if the fear of it be our leading fear; any “necessity” whatever is too trifling compared to such a peril. The reason why the Holy Spirit did, when the apostles at that time were consulting, relax the bond and yoke for us, 343 was that we might be free to devote ourselves to the shunning of idolatry. This shall be our Law, the more fully to be administered the more ready it is to hand; (a Law) peculiar to Christians, by means whereof we are recognised and examined by heathens. This Law must be set before such as approach unto the Faith, and inculcated on such as are entering it; that, in approaching, they may deliberate; observing it, may persevere; not observing it, may renounce their name. 344 We will see to it, if, after the type of the Ark, there shall be in the Church raven, kite, dog, and serpent. At all events, an idolater is not found in the type of the Ark: no animal has been fashioned to represent an idolater. Let not that be in the Church which was not in the Ark. 345
Footnotes
75:3421 Cor. v. 10.
76:343Acts xv. 1-31.
76:344i.e., cease to be Christians (Rigalt., referred to by Oehler).
76:345[General references to Kaye (3d edition), which will be useful to those consulting that author’s Tertullian, for Elucidations of the De Idololatria, are as follows: Preface, p. xxiii. Then, pp. 56, 141, 206, 231, 300, 360, 343, 360 and 362.]
Elucidations.
————————————
I.
(The Second Commandment, p. 64.)
Tertullian’s teaching agrees with that of Clement of Alexandria 346 and with all the Primitive Fathers. But compare the Trent Catechism, (chapter ii., quest. 17.)—“Nor let any one suppose that this commandment prohibits the arts of painting, modelling or sculpture, for, in the Scriptures we are informed that God himself commanded images of cherubim, and also of the brazen serpent, to be made, etc.” So far, the comparison is important, because while our author limits any inference from this instance as an exception, this Catechism turns it into a rule: and so far, we are only looking at the matter with reference to Art. But, the Catechism, (quest. xxiii. xxiv.), goes on to teach that images of the Saints, etc. ought to be made and honoured “as a holy practice.” It affirms, also, that it is a practice which has been attended with the greatest advantage to the faithful: which admits of a doubt, especially when the honour thus mentioned is everywhere turned into worship, precisely like that offered to the Brazen Serpent, when the People “burned incense to it,” and often much more. But even this is not my point; for that Catechism, with what verity need not be argued, affirms, also, that this doctrine “derives confirmation from the monuments of the Apostolic age, the general Councils of the Church, and the writings of so many most holy and learned Fathers, who are of one accord upon the subject.” Doubtless they are “of one accord,” but all the other way.
II.
(Military service, cap. xix., p. 73.)
This chapter must prepare us for a much more sweeping condemnation of the military profession in the De Spectaculis and the De Corona; but Neander’s judgment seems to me very just. The Corona, itself, is rather Montanistic than Montanist, in the opinion of some critics, among whom Gibbon is not to count for much, for the reasons given by Kaye (p. 52), and others hardly less obvious. Surely, if this ascetic opinion and some similar instances were enough to mark a man as a heretic, what are we to say of the thousand crotchets maintained by good Christians, in our day?
III.
(Passive idolatry, cap. xxii., pp. 74, 75.)
Neander’s opinion as to the freedom of De Idololatria from Montanistic taint, is mildly questioned by Bp. Kaye, chiefly on the ground of the agreement of this chapter with the extravagances of the Scorpiace. He thinks “the utmost pitch” of such extravagance is reached in the positions here taken. But Neander’s judgment seems to me preferable. Lapsers usually give tokens of the bent of their minds, and unconsciously betray their inclinations before they themselves see whither they are tending. Thus they become victims of their own plausible self-deceptions.
IV.
(Tacit consents and reservations, cap. xxiii., p. 75.)
It cannot be doubted that apart from the specific case which Tertullian is here maintaining, his appeal to conscience is maintained by reason, by the Morals of the Fathers and by Holy Scripture. Now compare with this the Morality which has been made dogmatic, among Latins, by the elevation of Liguori to the dignities of a “Saint” and a “Doctor of the Church.” Even Cardinal Newman cannot accept it without reservations, so thoroughly does it commit the soul to fraud and hypocrisy. See Liguori, Opp. Tom. II., pp. 34–44, and Meyrick, Moral Theology of the Church of Rome, London, 1855. Republished, with an Introduction, by the Editor of this Series, Baltimore, 1857. Also Newman, Apologia, p. 295 et seqq.
Footnotes
76:346See vol. II., p. 186, this series.
III.
The Shows, or De Spectaculis. 347
[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]
————————————
Chapter I.
Ye Servants of God, about to draw near to God, that you may make solemn consecration of yourselves to Him, 348 seek well to understand the condition of faith, the reasons of the Truth, the laws of Christian Discipline, which forbid among other sins of the world, the pleasures of the public shows. Ye who have testified and confessed 349 that you have done so already, review the subject, that there may be no sinning whether through real or wilful ignorance. For such is the power of earthly pleasures, that, to retain the opportunity of still partaking of them, it contrives to prolong a willing ignorance, and bribes knowledge into playing a dishonest part. To both things, perhaps, some among you are allured by the views of the heathens who in this matter are wont to press us with arguments, such as these: (1) That the exquisite enjoyments of ear and eye we have in things external are not in the least opposed to religion in the mind and conscience; and (2) That surely no offence is offered to God, in any human enjoyment, by any of our pleasures, which it is not sinful to partake of in its own time and place, with all due honour and reverence secured to Him. But this is precisely what we are ready to prove: That these things are not consistent with true religion and true obedience to the true God. There are some who imagine that Christians, a sort of people ever ready to die, are trained into the abstinence they practise, with no other object than that of making it less difficult to despise life, the fastenings to it being severed as it were. They regard it as an art of quenching all desire for that which, so far as they are concerned, they have emptied of all that is desirable; and so it is thought to be rather a thing of human planning and foresight, than clearly laid down by divine command. It were a grievous thing, forsooth, for Christians, while continuing in the enjoyment of pleasures so great, to die for God! It is not as they say; though, if it were, even Christian obstinacy might well give all submission to a plan so suitable, to a rule so excellent.
Footnotes
79:347[It is the opinion of Dr. Neander that this treatise proceeded from our author before his lapse: but Bp. Kaye (p. xvi.) finds some exaggerated expressions in it, concerning the military life, which savour of Montanism. Probably they do, but had he written the tract as a professed Montanist, they would have been much less ambiguous, in all probability. At all events, a work so colourless that doctors can disagree about even its shading, must be regarded as practically orthodox. Exaggerated expressions are but the characteristics of the author’s genius. We find the like in all writers of strongly marked individuality. Neander dates this treatise circa a.d. 197. That it was written at Carthage is the conviction of Kaye and Dr. Allix; see Kaye, p. 55.]
79:348[He speaks of Catechumens, called elsewhere Novitioli. See Bunsen, Hippol. III. Church and House-book, p. 5.]
79:349[Here he addresses the Fideles or Communicants, as we call them.]
Chapter II.
Then, again, every one is ready with the argument 350 that all things, as we teach, were created by God, and given to man for his use, and that they must be good, as coming all from so good a source; but that among them are found the various constituent elements of the public shows, such as the horse, the lion, bodily strength, and musical voice. It cannot, then, be thought that what exists by God’s own creative will is either foreign or hostile to Him; and if it is not opposed to Him, it cannot be regarded as injurious to His worshippers, as certainly it is not foreign to them. Beyond all doubt, too, the very buildings connected with the places of public amusement, composed as they are of rocks, stones, marbles, pillars, are things of God, who has given these various things for the earth’s embellishment; nay, the very scenes are enacted under God’s own heaven. How skilful a pleader seems human wisdom to herself, especially if she has the fear of losing any of her delights—any of the sweet enjoyments of worldly existence! In fact, you will find not a few whom the imperilling of their pleasures rather than their life holds back from us. For even the weakling has no strong dread of death as a debt he knows is due by him; while the wise man does not look with contempt on pleasure, regarding it as a precious gift—in fact, the one blessedness of life, whether to philosopher or fool. Now nobody denies what nobody is ignorant of—for Nature herself is teacher of it—that God is the Maker of the universe, and that it is good, and that it is man’s by free gift of its Maker. But having no intimate acquaintance with the Highest, knowing Him only by natural revelation, and not as His “friends”—afar off, and not as those who have been brought nigh to Him—men cannot but be in ignorance alike of what He enjoins and what He forbids in regard to the administration of His world. They must be ignorant, too, of the hostile power which works against Him, and perverts to wrong uses the things His hand has formed; for you cannot know either the will or the adversary of a God you do not know. We must not, then, consider merely by whom all things were made, but by whom they have been perverted. We shall find out for what use they were made at first, when we find for what they were not. There is a vast difference between the corrupted state and that of primal purity, just because there is a vast difference between the Creator and the corrupter. Why, all sorts of evils, which as indubitably evils even the heathens prohibit, and against which they guard themselves, come from the works of God. Take, for instance, murder, whether committed by iron, by poison, or by magical enchantments. Iron and herbs and demons are all equally creatures of God. Has the Creator, withal, provided these things for man’s destruction? Nay, He puts His interdict on every sort of man-killing by that one summary precept, “Thou shalt not kill.” Moreover, who but God, the Maker of the world, put in its gold, brass, silver, ivory, wood, and all the other materials used in the manufacture of idols? Yet has He done this that men may set up a worship in opposition to Himself? On the contrary idolatry in His eyes is the crowning sin. What is there offensive to God which is not God’s? But in offending Him, it ceases to be His; and in ceasing to be His, it is in His eyes an offending thing. Man himself, guilty as he is of every iniquity, is not only a work of God—he is His image, and yet both in soul and body he has severed himself from his Maker. For we did not get eyes to minister to lust, and the tongue for speaking evil with, and ears to be the receptacle of evil speech, and the throat to serve the vice of gluttony, and the belly to be gluttony’s ally, and the genitals for unchaste excesses, and hands for deeds of violence, and the feet for an erring life; or was the soul placed in the body that it might become a thought-manufactory of snares, and fraud, and injustice? I think not; for if God, as the righteous ex-actor of innocence, hates everything like malignity—if He hates utterly such plotting of evil, it is clear beyond a doubt, that, of all things that have come from His hand, He has made none to lead to works which He condemns, even though these same works may be carried on by things of His making; for, in fact, it is the one ground of condemnation, that the creature misuses the creation. We, therefore, who in our knowledge of the Lord have obtained some knowledge also of His foe—who, in our discovery of the Creator, have at the same time laid hands upon the great corrupter, ought neither to wonder nor to doubt that, as the prowess of the corrupting and God-opposing angel overthrew in the beginning the virtue of man, the work and image of God, the possessor of the world, so he has entirely changed man’s nature—created, like his own, for perfect sinlessness—into his own state of wicked enmity against his Maker, that in the very thing whose gift to man, but not to him, had grieved him, he might make man guilty in God’s eyes, and set up his own supremacy. 351
Footnotes
79:350[Kaye (p. 366), declares that all the arguments urged in this tract are comprised in two sentences of the Apology, cap. 38.]
80:351[For the demonology of this treatise, compare capp. 10, 12, 13, 23, and see Kaye’s full but condensed statement (pp. 201–204), in his account of the writings, etc.]
Chapter III.
Fortified by this knowledge against heathen views, let us rather turn to the unworthy reasonings of our own people; for the faith of some, either too simple or too scrupulous, demands direct authority from Scripture for giving up the shows, and holds out that the matter is a doubtful one, because such abstinence is not clearly and in words imposed upon God’s servants. Well, we never find it expressed with the same precision, “Thou shalt not enter circus or theatre, thou shalt not look on combat or show;” as it is plainly laid down, “Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not worship an idol; thou shalt not commit adultery or fraud.” 352 But we find that that first word of David bears on this very sort of thing: “Blessed,” he says, “is the man who has not gone into the assembly of the impious, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of scorners.” 353 Though he seems to have predicted beforehand of that just man, that he took no part in the meetings and deliberations of the Jews, taking counsel about the slaying of our Lord, yet divine Scripture has ever far-reaching applications: after the immediate sense has been exhausted, in all directions it fortifies the practice of the religious life, so that here also you have an utterance which is not far from a plain interdicting of the shows. If he called those few Jews an assembly of the wicked, how much more will he so designate so vast a gathering of heathens! Are the heathens less impious, less sinners, less enemies of Christ, than the Jews were then? And see, too, how other things agree. For at the shows they also stand in the way. For they call the spaces between the seats going round the amphitheatre, and the passages which separate the people running down, ways. The place in the curve where the matrons sit is called a chair. Therefore, on the contrary, it holds, unblessed is he who has entered any council of wicked men, and has stood in any way of sinners, and has sat in any chair of scorners. We may understand a thing as spoken generally, even when it requires a certain special interpretation to be given to it. For some things spoken with a special reference contain in them general truth. When God admonishes the Israelites of their duty, or sharply reproves them, He has surely a reference to all men; when He threatens destruction to Egypt and Ethiopia, He surely pre-condemns every sinning nation, whatever. If, reasoning from species to genus, every nation that sins against them is an Egypt and Ethiopia; so also, reasoning from genus to species, with reference to the origin of shows, every show is an assembly of the wicked.
Footnotes
80:352Ex. xx. 14.
81:353Ps. i. 1. [Kaye’s censure of this use of the text, (p. 366) seems to me gratuitous.]
Chapter IV.
Lest any one think that we are dealing in mere argumentative subtleties, I shall turn to that highest authority of our “seal” itself. When entering the water, we make profession of the Christian faith in the words of its rule; we bear public testimony that we have renounced the devil, his pomp, and his angels. Well, is it not in connection with idolatry, above all, that you have the devil with his pomp and his angels? from which, to speak briefly—for I do not wish to dilate—you have every unclean and wicked spirit. If, therefore, it shall be made plain that the entire apparatus of the shows is based upon idolatry, beyond all doubt that will carry with it the conclusion that our renunciatory testimony in the laver of baptism has reference to the shows, which, through their idolatry, have been given over to the devil, and his pomp, and his angels. We shall set forth, then, their several origins, in what nursing-places they have grown to manhood; next the titles of some of them, by what names they are called; then their apparatus, with what superstitions they are observed; (then their places, to what patrons they are dedicated;) then the arts which minister to them, to what authors they are traced. If any of these shall be found to have had no connection with an idol-god, it will be held as free at once from the taint of idolatry, and as not coming within the range of our baptismal abjuration. 354
Footnotes
81:354[Neander argues with great force that in referring to Scripture and not at all to the “new Prophecy,” our author shows his orthodoxy. We may add “ that highest authority” to which he appeals in this chapter.]
Chapter V.
In the matter of their origins, as these are somewhat obscure and but little known to many among us, our investigations must go back to a remote antiquity, and our authorities be none other than books of heathen literature. Various authors are extant who have published works on the subject. The origin of the games as given by them is this. Timæus tells us that immigrants from Asia, under the leadership of Tyrrhenus, who, in a contest about his native kingdom, had succumbed to his brother, settled down in Etruria. Well, among other superstitious observances under the name of religion, they set up in their new home public shows. The Romans, at their own request, obtain from them skilled performers—the proper seasons—the name too, for it is said they are called Ludi, from Lydi. And though Varro derives the name of Ludi from Ludus, that is, from play, as they called the Luperci also Ludii, because they ran about making sport; still that sporting of young men belongs, in his view, to festal days and temples, and objects of religious veneration. However, it is of little consequence the origin of the name, when it is certain that the thing springs from idolatry. The Liberalia, under the general designation of Ludi, clearly declared the glory of Father Bacchus; for to Bacchus these festivities were first consecrated by grateful peasants, in return for the boon he conferred on them, as they say, making known the pleasures of wine. Then the Consualia were called Ludi, and at first were in honour of Neptune, for Neptune has the name of Consus also. Thereafter Romulus dedicated the Equiria to Mars, though they claim the Consualia too for Romulus, on the ground that he consecrated them to Consus, the god, as they will have it, of counsel; of the counsel, forsooth, in which he planned the rape of the Sabine virgins for wives to his soldiers. An excellent counsel truly; and still I suppose reckoned just and righteous by the Romans themselves, I may not say by God. This goes also to taint the origin: you cannot surely hold that to be good which has sprung from sin, from shamelessness, from violence, from hatred, from a fratricidal founder, from a son of Mars. Even now, at the first turning-post in the circus, there is a subterranean altar to this same Consus, with an inscription to this effect: “Consus, great in counsel, Mars, in battle mighty tutelar deities.” The priests of the state sacrifice at it on the nones of July; the priest of Romulus and the Vestals on the twelfth before the Kalends of September. In addition to this, Romulus instituted games in honor of Jupiter Feretrius on the Tarpeian Hill, according to the statement Piso has handed down to us, called both Tarpeian and Capitoline. After him Numa Pompilius instituted games to Mars and Robigo (for they have also invented a goddess of rust); then Tullus Hostilius; then Ancus Martius; and various others in succession did the like. As to the idols in whose honour these games were established, ample information is to be found in the pages of Suetonius Tranquillus. But we need say no more to prove the accusation of idolatrous origin.
Chapter VI.
To the testimony of antiquity is added that of later games instituted in their turn, and betraying their origin from the titles which they bear even at the present day, in which it is imprinted as on their very face, for what idol and for what religious object games, whether of the one kind or the other, were designed. You have festivals bearing the name of the great Mother 355 and Apollo of Ceres too, and Neptune, and Jupiter Latiaris, and Flora, all celebrated for a common end; the others have their religious origin in the birthdays and solemnities of kings, in public successes in municipal holidays. There are also testamentary exhibitions, in which funeral honours are rendered to the memories of private persons; and this according to an institution of ancient times. For from the first the “Ludi” were regarded as of two sons, sacred and funereal, that is in honour of the heathen deities and of the dead. But in the matter of idolatry, it makes no difference with us under what name or title it is practised, while it has to do with the wicked spirits whom we abjure. If it is lawful to offer homage to the dead, it will be just as lawful to offer it to their gods: you have the same origin in both cases; there is the same idolatry; there is on our part the same solemn renunciation of all idolatry.
Footnotes
82:355[Cybele.]
Chapter VII.
The two kinds of public games, then, have one origin; and they have common names, as owning the same parentage. So, too, as they are equally tainted with the sin of idolatry, their foundress, they must needs be like each other in their pomp. But the more ambitious preliminary display of the circus games to which the name procession specially belongs, is in itself the proof to whom the whole thing appertains, in the many images the long line of statues, the chariots of all sorts, the thrones, the crowns, the dresses. What high religious rites besides, what sacrifices precede, come between, and follow. How many guilds, how many priesthoods, how many offices are set astir, is known to the inhabitants of the great city in which the demon convention has its headquarters. If these things are done in humbler style in the provinces, in accordance with their inferior means, still all circus games must be counted as belonging to that from which they are derived; the fountain from which they spring defiles them. The tiny streamlet from its very spring-head, the little twig from its very budding, contains in it the essential nature of its origin. It may be grand or mean, no matter, any circus procession whatever is offensive to God. Though there be few images to grace it, there is idolatry in one; though there be no more than a single sacred car, it is a chariot of Jupiter: anything of idolatry whatever, whether meanly arrayed or modestly rich and gorgeous, taints it in its origin.
Chapter VIII.
To follow out my plan in regard to places: the circus is chiefly consecrated to the Sun, whose temple stands in the middle of it, and whose image shines forth from its temple summit; for they have not thought it proper to pay sacred honours underneath a roof to an object they have itself in open space. Those who assert that the first spectacle was exhibited by Circe, and in honour of the Sun her father, as they will have it, maintain also the name of circus was derived from her. Plainly, then, the enchantress did this in the name of the parties whose priestess she was—I mean the demons and spirits of evil. What an aggregation of idolatries you see, accordingly, in the decoration of the place! Every ornament of the circus is a temple by itself. The eggs are regarded as sacred to the Castors, by men who are not ashamed to profess faith in their production from the egg of a swan, which was no other than Jupiter himself. The Dolphins vomit forth in honour of Neptune. Images of Sessia, so called as the goddess of sowing; of Messia, so called as the goddess of reaping; of Tutulina, so called as the fruit-protecting deity—load the pillars. In front of these you have three altars to these three gods—Great, Mighty, Victorious. They reckon these of Samo-Thrace. The huge Obelisk, as Hermeteles affirms, is set up in public to the Sun; its inscription, like its origin, belongs to Egyptian superstition. Cheerless were the demon-gathering without their Mater Magna; and so she presides there over the Euripus. Consus, as we have mentioned, lies hidden under ground at the Murcian Goals. These two sprang from an idol. For they will have it that Murcia is the goddess of love; and to her, at that spot, they have consecrated a temple. See, Christian, how many impure names have taken possession of the circus! You have nothing to do with a sacred place which is tenanted by such multitudes of diabolic spirits. And speaking of places, this is the suitable occasion for some remarks in anticipation of a point that some will raise. What, then, you say; shall I be in danger of pollution if I go to the circus when the games are not being celebrated? There is no law forbidding the mere places to us. For not only the places for show-gatherings, but even the temples, may be entered without any peril of his religion by the servant of God, if he has only some honest reason for it, unconnected with their proper business and official duties. Why, even the streets and the market-place, and the baths, and the taverns, and our very dwelling-places, are not altogether free from idols. Satan and his angels have filled the whole world. It is not by merely being in the world, however, that we lapse from God, but by touching and tainting ourselves with the world’s sins. I shall break with my Maker, that is, by going to the Capitol or the temple of Serapis to sacrifice or adore, as I shall also do by going as a spectator to the circus and the theatre. The places in themselves do not contaminate, but what is done in them; from this even the places themselves, we maintain, become defiled. The polluted things pollute us. It is on this account that we set before you to whom places of the kind are dedicated, that we may prove the things which are done in them to belong to the idol-patrons to whom the very places are sacred. 356
Footnotes
83:356[Very admirable reflections on this chapter may be found in Kaye, pp. 362–3.]
Chapter IX.
Now as to the kind of performances peculiar to the circus exhibitions. In former days equestrianism was practised in a simple way on horseback, and certainly its ordinary use had nothing sinful in it; but when it was dragged into the games, it passed from the service of God into the employment of demons. Accordingly this kind of circus performances is regarded as sacred to Castor and Pollux, to whom, Stesichorus tells us, horses were given by Mercury. And Neptune, too, is an equestrian deity, by the Greeks called Hippius. In regard to the team, they have consecrated the chariot and four to the sun; the chariot and pair to the moon. But, as the poet has it, “Erichthonius first dared to yoke four horses to the chariot, and to ride upon its wheels with victorious swiftness.” Erichthonius, the son of Vulcan and Minerva, fruit of unworthy passion upon earth, is a demon-monster, nay, the devil himself, and no mere snake. But if Trochilus the Argive is maker of the first chariot, he dedicated that work of his to Juno. If Romulus first exhibited the four-horse chariot at Rome, he too, I think, has a place given him among idols, at least if he and Quirinus are the same. But as chariots had such inventors, the charioteers were naturally dressed, too, in the colours of idolatry; for at first these were only two, namely white and red,—the former sacred to the winter with its glistening snows, the latter sacred to the summer with its ruddy sun: but afterwards, in the progress of luxury as well as of superstition, red was dedicated by some to Mars, and white by others to the Zephyrs, while green was given to Mother Earth, or spring, and azure to the sky and sea, or autumn. But as idolatry of every kind is condemned by God, that form of it surely shares the condemnation which is offered to the elements of nature.
Chapter X.
Let us pass on now to theatrical exhibitions, which we have already shown have a common origin with the circus, and bear like idolatrous designations—even as from the first they have borne the name of “Ludi,” and equally minister to idols. They resemble each other also in their pomp, having the same procession to the scene of their display from temples and altars, and that mournful profusion of incense and blood, with music of pipes and trumpets, all under the direction of the soothsayer and the undertaker, those two foul masters of funeral rites and sacrifices. So as we went on from the origin of the “Ludi” to the circus games, we shall now direct our course thence to those of the theatre, beginning with the place of exhibition. At first the theatre was properly a temple of Venus; and, to speak briefly, it was owing to this that stage performances were allowed to escape censure, and got a footing in the world. For ofttimes the censors, in the interests of morality, put down above all the rising theatres, foreseeing, as they did, that there was great danger of their leading to a general profligacy; so that already, from this accordance of their own people with us, there is a witness to the heathen, and in the anticipatory judgment of human knowledge even a confirmation of our views. Accordingly Pompey the Great, less only than his theatre, when he had erected that citadel of all impurities, fearing some time or other censorian condemnation of his memory, superposed on it a temple of Venus; and summoning by public proclamation the people to its consecration, he called it not a theatre, but a temple, “under which,” said he, “we have placed tiers of seats for viewing the shows.” So he threw a veil over a structure on which condemnation had been often passed, and which is ever to be held in reprobation, by pretending that it was a sacred place; and by means of superstition he blinded the eyes of a virtuous discipline. But Venus and Bacchus are close allies. These two evil spirits are in sworn confederacy with each other, as the patrons of drunkenness and lust. So the theatre of Venus is as well the house of Bacchus: for they properly gave the name of Liberalia also to other theatrical amusements—which besides being consecrated to Bacchus (as were the Dionysia of the Greeks), were instituted by him; and, without doubt, the performances of the theatre have the common patronage of these two deities. That immodesty of gesture and attire which so specially and peculiarly characterizes the stage are consecrated to them—the one deity wanton by her sex, the other by his drapery; while its services of voice, and song, and lute, and pipe, belong to Apollos, and Muses, and Minervas, and Mercuries. You will hate, O Christian, the things whose authors must be the objects of your utter detestation. So we would now make a remark about the arts of the theatre, about the things also whose authors in the names we execrate. We know that the names of the dead are nothing, as are their images; but we know well enough, too, who, when images are set up, under these names carry on their wicked work, and exult in the homage rendered to them, and pretend to be divine—none other than spirits accursed, than devils. We see, therefore, that the arts also are consecrated to the service of the beings who dwell in the names of their founders; and that things cannot be held free from the taint of idolatry whose inventors have got a place among the gods for their discoveries. Nay, as regards the arts, we ought to have gone further back, and barred all further argument by the position that the demons, predetermining in their own interests from the first, among other evils of idolatry, the pollutions of the public shows, with the object of drawing man away from his Lord and binding him to their own service, carried out their purpose by bestowing on him the artistic gifts which the shows require. For none but themselves would have made provision and preparation for the objects they had in view; nor would they have given the arts to the world by any but those in whose names, and images, and histories they set up for their own ends the artifice of consecration.
Chapter XI.
In fulfilment of our plan, let us now go on to consider the combats. Their origin is akin to that of the games (ludi). Hence they are kept as either sacred or funereal, as they have been instituted in honour of the idol-gods of the nations or of the dead. Thus, too, they are called Olympian in honour of Jupiter, known at Rome as the Capitoline; Nemean, in honour of Hercules; Isthmian, in honour of Neptune; the rest mortuarii, as belonging to the dead. What wonder, then, if idolatry pollutes the combat-parade with profane crowns, with sacerdotal chiefs, with attendants belonging to the various colleges, last of all with the blood of its sacrifices? To add a completing word about the “place”—in the common place for the college of the arts sacred to the Muses, and Apollo, and Minerva, and also for that of the arts dedicated to Mars, they with contest and sound of trumpet emulate the circus in the arena, which is a real temple—I mean of the god whose festivals it celebrates. The gymnastic arts also originated with their Castors, and Herculeses, and Mercuries.
Chapter XII.
It remains for us to examine the “spectacle” most noted of all, and in highest favour. It is called a dutiful service (munus), from its being an office, for it bears the name of “officium” as well as “munus.” The ancients thought that in this solemnity they rendered offices to the dead; at a later period, with a cruelty more refined, they somewhat modified its character. For formerly, in the belief that the souls of the departed were appeased by human blood, they were in the habit of buying captives or slaves of wicked disposition, and immolating them in their funeral obsequies. Afterwards they thought good to throw the veil of pleasure over their iniquity. 357 Those, therefore, whom they had provided for the combat, and then trained in arms as best they could, only that they might learn to die, they, on the funeral day, killed at the places of sepulture. They alleviated death by murders. Such is the origin of the “Munus.” But by degrees their refinement came up to their cruelty; for these human wild beasts could not find pleasure exquisite enough, save in the spectacle of men torn to pieces by wild beasts. Offerings to propitiate the dead then were regarded as belonging to the class of funeral sacrifices; and these are idolatry: for idolatry, in fact, is a sort of homage to the departed; the one as well as the other is a service to dead men. Moreover, demons have abode in the images of the dead. To refer also to the matter of names, though this sort of exhibition has passed from honours of the dead to honours of the living, I mean, to quæstorships and magistracies—to priestly offices of different kinds; yet, since idolatry still cleaves to the dignity’s name, whatever is done in its name partakes of its impurity. The same remark will apply to the procession of the “Munus,” as we look at that in the pomp which is connected with these honours themselves; for the purple robes, the fasces, the fillets, the crowns, the proclamations too, and edicts, the sacred feasts of the day before, are not without the pomp of the devil, without invitation of demons. What need, then, of dwelling on the place of horrors, which is too much even for the tongue of the perjurer? For the amphitheatre 358 is consecrated to names more numerous and more dire 359 than is the Capitol itself, temple of all demons as it is. There are as many unclean spirits there as it holds men. To conclude with a single remark about the arts which have a place in it, we know that its two sorts of amusement have for their patrons Mars and Diana.
Footnotes
85:357[The authority of Tertullian, in this matter, is accepted by the critics, as of historic importance.]
85:358[Though this was probably written at Carthage, his reference to the Flavian theatre in this place is plain from the immediate comparison with the Capitol.]
85:359[To the infernal deities and first of all to Pluto. See vol. I. note 6, p. 131, this Series.]
Chapter XIII.
We have, I think, faithfully carried out our plan of showing in how many different ways the sin of idolatry clings to the shows, in respect of their origins, their titles, their equipments, their places of celebration, their arts; and we may hold it as a thing beyond all doubt, that for us who have twice 360 renounced all idols, they are utterly unsuitable. “Not that an idol is anything,” 361 as the apostle says, but that the homage they render is to demons, who are the real occupants of these consecrated images, whether of dead men or (as they think) of gods. On this account, therefore, because they have a common source—for their dead and their deities are one—we abstain from both idolatries. Nor do we dislike the temples less than the monuments: we have nothing to do with either altar, we adore neither image; we do not offer sacrifices to the gods, and we make no funeral oblations to the departed; nay, we do not partake of what is offered either in the one case or the other, for we cannot partake of God’s feast and the feast of devils. 362 If, then, we keep throat and belly free from such defilements, how much more do we withhold our nobler parts, our ears and eyes, from the idolatrous and funereal enjoyments, which are not passed through the body, but are digested in the very spirit and soul, whose purity, much more than that of our bodily organs, God has a right to claim from us.
Footnotes
85:360[Bunsen, Hippol. Vol. III. pp. 20–22.]
85:3611 Cor. viii. 4.
85:3621 Cor. x. 21.
Chapter XIV.
Having sufficiently established the charge of idolatry, which alone ought to be reason enough for our giving up the shows, let us now ex abundanti look at the subject in another way, for the sake of those especially who keep themselves comfortable in the thought that the abstinence we urge is not in so many words enjoined, as if in the condemnation of the lusts of the world there was not involved a sufficient declaration against all these amusements. For as there is a lust of money, or rank, or eating, or impure enjoyment, or glory, so there is also a lust of pleasure. But the show is just a sort of pleasure. I think, then, that under the general designation of lusts, pleasures are included; in like manner, under the general idea of pleasures, you have as a specific class the “shows.” But we have spoken already of how it is with the places of exhibition, that they are not polluting in themselves, but owing to the things that are done in them from which they imbibe impurity, and then spirt it again on others.
Chapter XV.
Having done enough, then, as we have said, in regard to that principal argument, that there is in them all the taint of idolatry—having sufficiently dealt with that, let us now contrast the other characteristics of the show with the things of God. God has enjoined us to deal calmly, gently, quietly, and peacefully with the Holy Spirit, because these things are alone in keeping with the goodness of His nature, with His tenderness and sensitiveness, and not to vex Him with rage, ill-nature, anger, or grief. Well, how shall this be made to accord with the shows? For the show always leads to spiritual agitation, since where there is pleasure, there is keenness of feeling giving pleasure its zest; and where there is keenness of feeling, there is rivalry giving in turn its zest to that. Then, too, where you have rivalry, you have rage, bitterness, wrath and grief, with all bad things which flow from them—the whole entirely out of keeping with the religion of Christ. For even suppose one should enjoy the shows in a moderate way, as befits his rank, age or nature, still he is not undisturbed in mind, without some unuttered movings of the inner man. No one partakes of pleasures such as these without their strong excitements; no one comes under their excitements without their natural lapses. These lapses, again, create passionate desire. If there is no desire, there is no pleasure, and he is chargeable with trifling who goes where nothing is gotten; in my view, even that is foreign to us. Moreover, a man pronounces his own condemnation in the very act of taking his place among those with whom, by his disinclination to be like them, he confesses he has no sympathy. It is not enough that we do no such things ourselves, unless we break all connection also with those who do. “If thou sawest a thief,” says the Scripture, “thou consentedst with him.” 363 Would that we did not even inhabit the same world with these wicked men! But though that wish cannot be realized, yet even now we are separate from them in what is of the world; for the world is God’s, but the worldly is the devil’s.
Footnotes
86:363Ps. xlix. 18. [This chapter bears on modern theatres.]
Chapter XVI.
Since, then, all passionate excitement is forbidden us, we are debarred from every kind of spectacle, and especially from the circus, where such excitement presides as in its proper element. See the people coming to it already under strong emotion, already tumultuous, already passion-blind, already agitated about their bets. The prætor is too slow for them: their eyes are ever rolling as though along with the lots in his urn; then they hang all eager on the signal; there is the united shout of a common madness. Observe how “out of themselves” they are by their foolish speeches. “He has thrown it!” they exclaim; and they announce each one to his neighbour what all have seen. I have clearest evidence of their blindness; they do not see what is really thrown. They think it a “signal cloth,” but it is the likeness of the devil cast headlong from on high. And the result accordingly is, that they fly into rages, and passions, and discords, and all that they who are consecrated to peace ought never to indulge in. Then there are curses and reproaches, with no cause of hatred; there are cries of applause, with nothing to merit them. What are the partakers in all this—not their own masters—to obtain of it for themselves? unless, it may be, that which makes them not their own: they are saddened by another’s sorrow, they are gladdened by another’s joy. Whatever they desire on the one hand, or detest on the other, is entirely foreign to themselves. So love with them is a useless thing, and hatred is unjust. Or is a causeless love perhaps more legitimate than a causeless hatred? God certainly forbids us to hate even with a reason for our hating; for He commands us to love our enemies. God forbids us to curse, though there be some ground for doing so, in commanding that those who curse us we are to bless. But what is more merciless than the circus, where people do not spare even their rulers and fellow-citizens? If any of its madnesses are becoming elsewhere in the saints of God, they will be seemly in the circus too; but if they are nowhere right, so neither are they there.
Chapter XVII.
Are we not, in like manner, enjoined to put away from us all immodesty? On this ground, again, we are excluded from the theatre, which is immodesty’s own peculiar abode, where nothing is in repute but what elsewhere is disreputable. So the best path to the highest favour of its god is the vileness which the Atellan 364 gesticulates, which the buffoon in woman’s clothes exhibits, destroying all natural modesty, so that they blush more readily at home than at the play, which finally is done from his childhood on the person of the pantomime, that he may become an actor. The very harlots, too, victims of the public lust, are brought upon the stage, their misery increased as being there in the presence of their own sex, from whom alone they are wont to hide themselves: they are paraded publicly before every age and every rank—their abode, their gains, their praises, are set forth, and that even in the hearing of those who should not hear such things. I say nothing about other matters, which it were good to hide away in their own darkness and their own gloomy caves, lest they should stain the light of day. Let the Senate, let all ranks, blush for very shame! Why, even these miserable women, who by their own gestures destroy their modesty, dreading the light of day, and the people’s gaze, know something of shame at least once a year. But if we ought to abominate all that is immodest, on what ground is it right to hear what we must not speak? For all licentiousness of speech, nay, every idle word, is condemned by God. Why, in the same way, is it right to look on what it is disgraceful to do? How is it that the things which defile a man in going out of his mouth, are not regarded as doing so when they go in at his eyes and ears—when eyes and ears are the immediate attendants on the spirit—and that can never be pure whose servants-in-waiting are impure? You have the theatre forbidden, then, in the forbidding of immodesty. If, again, we despise the teaching of secular literature as being foolishness in God’s eyes, our duty is plain enough in regard to those spectacles, which from this source derive the tragic or comic play. If tragedies and comedies are the bloody and wanton, the impious and licentious inventors of crimes and lusts, it is not good even that there should be any calling to remembrance the atrocious or the vile. What you reject in deed, you are not to bid welcome to in word.
Footnotes
87:364[The ludi Atellani were so called from Atella, in Campania, where a vast amphitheatre delighted the inhabitants. Juvenal, Sat. vi. 71. The like disgrace our times.]
Chapter XVIII.
But if you argue that the racecourse is mentioned in Scripture, I grant it at once. But you will not refuse to admit that the things which are done there are not for you to look upon: the blows, and kicks, and cuffs, and all the recklessness of hand, and everything like that disfiguration of the human countenance, which is nothing less than the disfiguration of God’s own image. You will never give your approval to those foolish racing and throwing feats, and yet more foolish leapings; you will never find pleasure in injurious or useless exhibitions of strength; certainly you will not regard with approval those efforts after an artificial body which aim at surpassing the Creator’s work; and you will have the very opposite of complacency in the athletes Greece, in the inactivity of peace, feeds up. And the wrestler’s art is a devil’s thing. The devil wrestled with, and crushed to death, the first human beings. Its very attitude has power in it of the serpent kind, firm to hold—tortures to clasp—slippery to glide away. You have no need of crowns; why do you strive to get pleasures from crowns?
Chapter XIX.
We shall now see how the Scriptures condemn the amphitheatre. If we can maintain that it is right to indulge in the cruel, and the impious, and the fierce, let us go there. If we are what we are said to be, let us regale ourselves there with human blood. It is good, no doubt, to have the guilty punished. Who but the criminal himself will deny that? And yet the innocent can find no pleasure in another’s sufferings: he rather mourns that a brother has sinned so heinously as to need a punishment so dreadful. But who is my guarantee that it is always the guilty who are adjudged to the wild beasts, or to some other doom, and that the guiltless never suffer from the revenge of the judge, or the weakness of the defence, or the pressure of the rack? How much better, then, is it for me to remain ignorant of the punishment inflicted on the wicked, lest I am obliged to know also of the good coming to untimely ends—if I may speak of goodness in the case at all! At any rate, gladiators not chargeable with crime are offered in sale for the games, that they may become the victims of the public pleasure. Even in the case of those who are judicially condemned to the amphitheatre, what a monstrous thing it is, that, in undergoing their punishment, they, from some less serious delinquency, advance to the criminality of manslayers! But I mean these remarks for heathen. As to Christians, I shall not insult them by adding another word as to the aversion with which they should regard this sort of exhibition; though no one is more able than myself to set forth fully the whole subject, unless it be one who is still in the habit of going to the shows. I would rather withal be incomplete than set memory a-working. 365
Footnotes
88:365[See Kaye, p. 11. This expression is thought to confirm the probability of Tertullian’s original Gentilism.]
Chapter XX.
How vain, then—nay, how desperate—is the reasoning of persons, who, just because they decline to lose a pleasure, hold out that we cannot point to the specific words or the very place where this abstinence is mentioned, and where the servants of God are directly forbidden to have anything to do with such assemblies! I heard lately a novel defence of himself by a certain play-lover. “The sun,” said he, “nay, God Himself, looks down from heaven on the show, and no pollution is contracted.” Yes, and the sun, too, pours down his rays into the common sewer without being defiled. As for God, would that all crimes were hid from His eye, that we might all escape judgment! But He looks on robberies too; He looks on falsehoods, adulteries, frauds, idolatries, and these same shows; and precisely on that account we will not look on them, lest the All-seeing see us. You are putting on the same level, O man, the criminal and the judge; the criminal who is a criminal because he is seen, and the Judge who is a Judge because He sees. Are we set, then, on playing the madman outside the circus boundaries? Outside the gates of the theatre are we bent on lewdness, outside the course on arrogance, and outside the amphitheatre on cruelty, because outside the porticoes, the tiers and the curtains, too, God has eyes? Never and nowhere is that free from blame which God ever condemns; never and nowhere is it right to do what you may not do at all times and in all places. It is the freedom of the truth from change of opinion and varying judgments which constitutes its perfection, and gives it its claims to full mastery, unchanging reverence, and faithful obedience. That which is really good or really evil cannot be ought else. But in all things the truth of God is immutable.
Chapter XXI.
The heathen, who have not a full revelation of the truth, for they are not taught of God, hold a thing evil and good as it suits self-will and passion, making that which is good in one place evil in another, and that which is evil in one place in another good. So it strangely happens, that the same man who can scarcely in public lift up his tunic, even when necessity of nature presses him, takes it off in the circus, as if bent on exposing himself before everybody; the father who carefully protects and guards his virgin daughter’s ears from every polluting word, takes her to the theatre himself, exposing her to all its vile words and attitudes; he, again, who in the streets lays hands on or covers with reproaches the brawling pugilist, in the arena gives all encouragement to combats of a much more serious kind; and he who looks with horror on the corpse of one who has died under the common law of nature, in the amphitheatre gazes down with most patient eyes on bodies all mangled and torn and smeared with their own blood; nay, the very man who comes to the show, because he thinks murderers ought to suffer for their crime, drives the unwilling gladiator to the murderous deed with rods and scourges; and one who demands the lion for every manslayer of deeper dye, will have the staff for the savage swordsman, and rewards him with the cap of liberty. Yes and he must have the poor victim back again, that he may get a sight of his face—with zest inspecting near at hand the man whom he wished torn in pieces at safe distance from him: so much the more cruel he if that was not his wish.
Chapter XXII.
What wonder is there in it? Such inconsistencies as these are just such as we might expect from men, who confuse and change the nature of good and evil in their inconstancy of feeling and fickleness in judgment. Why, the authors and managers of the spectacles, in that very respect with reference to which they highly laud the charioteers, and actors, and wrestlers, and those most loving gladiators, to whom men prostitute their souls, women too their bodies, slight and trample on them, though for their sakes they are guilty of the deeds they reprobate; nay, they doom them to ignominy and the loss of their rights as citizens, excluding them from the Curia, and the rostra, from senatorial and equestrian rank, and from all other honours as well as certain distinctions. What perversity! They have pleasure in those whom yet they punish; they put all slights on those to whom, at the same time, they award their approbation; they magnify the art and brand the artist. What an outrageous thing it is, to blacken a man on account of the very things which make him meritorious in their eyes! Nay, what a confession that the things are evil, when their authors, even in highest favour, are not without a mark of disgrace upon them!
Chapter XXIII.
Seeing, then, man’s own reflections, even in spite of the sweetness of pleasure, lead him to think that people such as these should be condemned to a hapless lot of infamy, losing all the advantages connected with the possession of the dignities of life, how much more does the divine righteousness inflict punishment on those who give themselves to these arts! Will God have any pleasure in the charioteer who disquiets so many souls, rouses up so many furious passions, and creates so many various moods, either crowned like a priest or wearing the colours of a pimp, decked out by the devil that he may be whirled away in his chariot, as though with the object of taking off Elijah? Will He be pleased with him who applies the razor to himself, and completely changes his features; who, with no respect for his face, is not content with making it as like as possible to Saturn and Isis and Bacchus, but gives it quietly over to contumelious blows, as if in mockery of our Lord? The devil, forsooth, makes it part, too, of his teaching, that the cheek is to be meekly offered to the smiter. In the same way, with their high shoes, he has made the tragic actors taller, because “none can add a cubit to his stature.” 366 His desire is to make Christ a liar. And in regard to the wearing of masks, I ask is that according to the mind of God, who forbids the making of every likeness, and especially then the likeness of man who is His own image? The Author of truth hates all the false; He regards as adultery all that is unreal. Condemning, therefore, as He does hypocrisy in every form, He never will approve any putting on of voice, or sex, or age; He never will approve pretended loves, and wraths, and groans, and tears. Then, too, as in His law it is declared that the man is cursed who attires himself in female garments, 367 what must be His judgment of the pantomime, who is even brought up to play the woman! And will the boxer go unpunished? I suppose he received these cæstus-scars, and the thick skin of his fists, and these growths upon his ears, at his creation! God, too, gave him eyes for no other end than that they might be knocked out in fighting! I say nothing of him who, to save himself, thrusts another in the lion’s way, that he may not be too little of a murderer when he puts to death that very same man on the arena.
Footnotes
89:366Matt. vi. 27.
89:367Deut. xxii.
Chapter XXIV.
In how many other ways shall we yet further show that nothing which is peculiar to the shows has God’s approval, or without that approval is becoming in God’s servants? If we have succeeded in making it plain that they were instituted entirely for the devil’s sake, and have been got up entirely with the devil’s things (for all that is not God’s, or is not pleasing in His eyes, belongs to His wicked rival), this simply means that in them you have that pomp of the devil which in the “seal” of our faith we abjure. We should have no connection with the things which we abjure, whether in deed or word, whether by looking on them or looking forward to them; but do we not abjure and rescind that baptismal pledge, when we cease to bear its testimony? Does it then remain for us to apply to the heathen themselves. Let them tell us, then, whether it is right in Christians to frequent the show. Why, the rejection of these amusements is the chief sign to them that a man has adopted the Christian faith. If any one, then, puts away the faith’s distinctive badge, he is plainly guilty of denying it. What hope can you possibly retain in regard to a man who does that? When you go over to the enemy’s camp, you throw down your arms, desert the standards and the oath of allegiance to your chief: you cast in your lot for life or death with your new friends.
Chapter XXV.
Seated where there is nothing of God, will one be thinking of his Maker? Will there be peace in his soul when there is eager strife there for a charioteer? Wrought up into a frenzied excitement, will he learn to be modest? Nay, in the whole thing he will meet with no greater temptation than that gay attiring of the men and women. The very intermingling of emotions, the very agreements and disagreements with each other in the bestowment of their favours, where you have such close communion, blow up the sparks of passion. And then there is scarce any other object in going to the show, but to see and to be seen. When a tragic actor is declaiming, will one be giving thought to prophetic appeals? Amid the measures of the effeminate player, will he call up to himself a psalm? And when the athletes are hard at struggle, will he be ready to proclaim that there must be no striking again? And with his eye fixed on the bites of bears, and the sponge-nets of the net-fighters, can he be moved by compassion? May God avert from His people any such passionate eagerness after a cruel enjoyment! For how monstrous it is to go from God’s church to the devil’s—from the sky to the stye, 368 as they say; to raise your hands to God, and then to weary them in the applause of an actor; out of the mouth, from which you uttered Amen over the Holy Thing, to give witness in a gladiator’s favour; to cry “forever” to any one else but God and Christ!
Footnotes
90:368[De Cælo in Cænum: (sic) Oehler.]
Chapter XXVI.
Why may not those who go into the temptations of the show become accessible also to evil spirits? We have the case of the woman—the Lord Himself is witness—who went to the theatre, and came back possessed. In the outcasting, 369 accordingly, when the unclean creature was upbraided with having dared to attack a believer, he firmly replied, 370 “And in truth I did it most righteously, for I found her in my domain.” Another case, too, is well known, in which a woman had been hearing a tragedian, and on the very night she saw in her sleep a linen cloth—the actor’s name being mentioned at the same time with strong disapproval—and five days after that woman was no more. How many other undoubted proofs we have had in the case of persons who, by keeping company with the devil in the shows, have fallen from the Lord! For no one can serve two masters. 371 What fellowship has light with darkness, life with death? 372
Footnotes
90:369[The exorcism. For the exorcism in Baptism, see Bunsen, Hippol. iii. 19.]
90:370See Neander’s explanation in Kaye, p. xxiii. But, let us observe the entire simplicity with which our author narrates a sort of incident known to the apostles. Acts xvi. 16.]
90:371Matt. vi. 24.
90:3722 Cor. iv. 14.
Chapter XXVII.
We ought to detest these heathen meetings and assemblies, if on no other account than that there God’s name is blasphemed—that there the cry “To the lions!” is daily raised against us 373 —that from thence persecuting decrees are wont to emanate, and temptations are sent forth. What will you do if you are caught in that heaving tide of impious judgments? Not that there any harm is likely to come to you from men: nobody knows that you are a Christian; but think how it fares with you in heaven. For at the very time the devil is working havoc in the church, do you doubt that the angels are looking down from above, and marking every man, who speaks and who listens to the blaspheming word, who lends his tongue and who lends his ears to the service of Satan against God? Shall you not then shun those tiers where the enemies of Christ assemble, that seat of all that is pestilential, and the very super incumbent atmosphere all impure with wicked cries? Grant that you have there things that are pleasant, things both agreeable and innocent in themselves; even some things that are excellent. Nobody dilutes poison with gall and hellebore: the accursed thing is put into condiments well seasoned and of sweetest taste. So, too, the devil puts into the deadly draught which he prepares, things of God most pleasant and most acceptable. Everything there, then, that is either brave, noble, loud-sounding, melodious, or exquisite in taste, hold it but as the honey drop of a poisoned cake; nor make so much of your taste for its pleasures, as of the danger you run from its attractions.
Footnotes
90:373[Observe—“daily raised.” On this precarious condition of the Christians, in their daily life, see the calm statement of Kaye, pp. 110, 111.
Chapter XXVIII.
With such dainties as these let the devil’s guests be feasted. The places and the times, the inviter too, are theirs. Our banquets, our nuptial joys, are yet to come. We cannot sit down in fellowship with them, as neither can they with us. Things in this matter go by their turns. Now they have gladness and we are troubled. “The world,” says Jesus, “shall rejoice; ye shall be sorrowful.” 374 Let us mourn, then, while the heathen are merry, that in the day of their sorrow we may rejoice; lest, sharing now in their gladness, we share then also in their grief. Thou art too dainty, Christian, if thou wouldst have pleasure in this life as well as in the next; nay, a fool thou art, if thou thinkest this life’s pleasures to be really pleasures. The philosophers, for instance, give the name of pleasure to quietness and repose; in that they have their bliss; in that they find entertainment: they even glory in it. You long for the goal, and the stage, and the dust, and the place of combat! I would have you answer me this question: Can we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with pleasure die? For what is our wish but the apostle’s, to leave the world, and be taken up into the fellowship of our Lord? 375 You have your joys where you have your longings.
Footnotes
90:374John xvi. 20.
90:375Phil. i. 23.
Chapter XXIX.
Even as things are, if your thought is to spend this period of existence in enjoyments, how are you so ungrateful as to reckon insufficient, as not thankfully to recognize the many and exquisite pleasures God has bestowed upon you? For what more delightful than to have God the Father and our Lord at peace with us, than revelation of the truth than confession of our errors, than pardon of the innumerable sins of our past life? What greater pleasure than distaste of pleasure itself, contempt of all that the world can give, true liberty, a pure conscience, a contented life, and freedom from all fear of death? What nobler than to tread under foot the gods of the nations—to exorcise evil spirits 376 —to perform cures—to seek divine revealings—to live to God? These are the pleasures, these the spectacles that befit Christian men—holy, everlasting, free. Count of these as your circus games, fix your eyes on the courses of the world, the gliding seasons, reckon up the periods of time, long for the goal of the final consummation, defend the societies of the churches, be startled at God’s signal, be roused up at the angel’s trump, glory in the palms of martyrdom. If the literature of the stage delight you, we have literature in abundance of our own—plenty of verses, sentences, songs, proverbs; and these not fabulous, but true; not tricks of art, but plain realities. Would you have also fightings and wrestlings? Well, of these there is no lacking, and they are not of slight account. Behold unchastity overcome by chastity, perfidy slain by faithfulness, cruelty stricken by compassion, impudence thrown into the shade by modesty: these are the contests we have among us, and in these we win our crowns. Would you have something of blood too? You have Christ’s.
Footnotes
91:376[See cap. 26, supra. On this claim to such powers still remaining in the church. See Kaye, p. 89.]
Chapter XXX.
But what a spectacle is that fast-approaching advent 377 of our Lord, now owned by all, now highly exalted, now a triumphant One! What that exultation of the angelic hosts! What the glory of the rising saints! What the kingdom of the just thereafter! What the city New Jerusalem! 378 Yes, and there are other sights: that last day of judgment, with its everlasting issues; that day unlooked for by the nations, the theme of their derision, when the world hoary with age, and all its many products, shall be consumed in one great flame! How vast a spectacle then bursts upon the eye! What there excites my admiration? what my derision? Which sight gives me joy? which rouses me to exultation?—as I see so many illustrious monarchs, whose reception into the heavens was publicly announced, groaning now in the lowest darkness with great Jove himself, and those, too, who bore witness of their exultation; governors of provinces, too, who persecuted the Christian name, in fires more fierce than those with which in the days of their pride they raged against the followers of Christ. What world’s wise men besides, the very philosophers, in fact, who taught their followers that God had no concern in ought that is sublunary, and were wont to assure them that either they had no souls, or that they would never return to the bodies which at death they had left, now covered with shame before the poor deluded ones, as one fire consumes them! Poets also, trembling not before the judgment-seat of Rhadamanthus or Minos, but of the unexpected Christ! I shall have a better opportunity then of hearing the tragedians, louder-voiced in their own calamity; of viewing the play-actors, much more “dissolute” in the dissolving flame; of looking upon the charioteer, all glowing in his chariot of fire; of beholding the wrestlers, not in their gymnasia, but tossing in the fiery billows; unless even then I shall not care to attend to such ministers of sin, in my eager wish rather to fix a gaze insatiable on those whose fury vented itself against the Lord. “This,” I shall say, “this is that carpenter’s or hireling’s son, that Sabbath-breaker, that Samaritan and devil-possessed! This is He whom you purchased from Judas! This is He whom you struck with reed and fist, whom you contemptuously spat upon, to whom you gave gall and vinegar to drink! This is He whom His disciples secretly stole away, that it might be said He had risen again, or the gardener abstracted, that his lettuces might come to no harm from the crowds of visitants!” What quæstor or priest in his munificence will bestow on you the favour of seeing and exulting in such things as these? And yet even now we in a measure have them by faith in the picturings of imagination. But what are the things which eye has not seen, ear has not heard, and which have not so much as dimly dawned upon the human heart? Whatever they are, they are nobler, I believe, than circus, and both theatres, 379 and every race-course.
Footnotes
91:377[Kaye, p. 20. He doubtless looked for a speedy appearance of the Lord: and note the apparent expectation of a New Jerusalem, on earth, before the Consummation and Judgment.]
91:378[This New Jerusalem gives Bp. Kaye (p. 55) “decisive proof” of Montanism, especially as compared with the Third Book against Marcion. I cannot see it, here.]
91:379Viz., the theatre and amphitheatre. [This concluding chapter, which Gibbon delights to censure, because its fervid rhetoric so fearfully depicts the punishments of Christ’s enemies, “appears to Dr. Neander to contain a beautiful specimen of lively faith and Christian confidence.” See Kaye, p. xxix.]
IV.
The Chaplet, or De Corona. 380
————————————
Chapter I.
Very lately it happened thus: while the bounty of our most excellent emperors 381 was dispensed in the camp, the soldiers, laurel-crowned, were approaching. One of them, more a soldier of God, more stedfast than the rest of his brethren, who had imagined that they could serve two masters, his head alone uncovered, the useless crown in his hand—already even by that peculiarity known to every one as a Christian—was nobly conspicuous. Accordingly, all began to mark him out, jeering him at a distance, gnashing on him near at hand. The murmur is wafted to the tribune, when the person had just left the ranks. The tribune at once puts the question to him, Why are you so different in your attire? He declared that he had no liberty to wear the crown with the rest. Being urgently asked for his reasons, he answered, I am a Christian. O soldier! boasting thyself in God. Then the case was considered and voted on; the matter was remitted to a higher tribunal; the offender was conducted to the prefects. At once he put away the heavy cloak, his disburdening commenced; he loosed from his foot the military shoe, beginning to stand upon holy ground; 382 he gave up the sword, which was not necessary either for the protection of our Lord; from his hand likewise dropped the laurel crown; and now, purple-clad with the hope of his own blood, shod with the preparation of the gospel, girt with the sharper word of God, completely equipped in the apostles’ armour, and crowned more worthily with the white crown of martyrdom, he awaits in prison the largess of Christ. Thereafter adverse judgments began to be passed upon his conduct—whether on the part of Christians I do not know, for those of the heathen are not different—as if he were headstrong and rash, and too eager to die, because, in being taken to task about a mere matter of dress, he brought trouble on the bearers of the Name, 383 —he, forsooth, alone brave among so many soldier-brethren, he alone a Christian. It is plain that as they have rejected the prophecies of the Holy Spirit, 384 they are also purposing the refusal of martyrdom. So they murmur that a peace so good and long is endangered for them. Nor do I doubt that some are already turning their back on the Scriptures, are making ready their luggage, are equipped for flight from city to city; for that is all of the gospel they care to remember. I know, too, their pastors are lions in peace, deer in the fight. As to the questions asked for extorting confessions from us, we shall teach elsewhere. Now, as they put forth also the objection—But where are we forbidden to be crowned?—I shall take this point up, as more suitable to be treated of here, being the essence, in fact, of the present contention. So that, on the one hand, the inquirers who are ignorant, but anxious, may be instructed; and on the other, those may be refuted who try to vindicate the sin, especially the laurel-crowned Christians themselves, to whom it is merely a question of debate, as if it might be regarded as either no trespass at all, or at least a doubtful one, because it may be made the subject of investigation. That it is neither sinless nor doubtful, I shall now, however, show.
Footnotes
93:380[Kaye, apparently accepting the judgment of Dr. Neander, assigns this treatise to a.d. 204. The bounty here spoken of, then, must be that dispensed in honour of the victories over the Parthians, under Severus.]
93:381“Emperors.” The Emperor Severus associated his two sons with him in the possession of the imperial power; Caracalla in the year 198, Geta in 208.—Tr.
93:382[A touch of our author’s genius, inspired by the Phrygian enthusiasm for martyrdom. The ground on which a martyr treads begins to be holy, even before the sacrifice, and in loosing his shoe the victim consecrates the spot and at the same time pays it homage.]
93:383[The name of Christ: and the Antiochian name of Christians.]
93:384[Gibbon will have it that the De Corona was written while Tertullian was orthodox, but this reference to the Montanist notion of “New Prophecy” seems to justify the decision of critics against Gibbon, who, as Kaye suggests (p. 53) was anxious to make Christianity itself responsible for military insubordination and for offences against Imperial Law.]
Chapter II.
I affirm that not one of the Faithful has ever a crown upon his head, except at a time of trial. That is the case with all, from catechumens to confessors and martyrs, 385 or (as the case may be) deniers. Consider, then, whence the custom about which we are now chiefly inquiring got its authority. But when the question is raised why it is observed, it is meanwhile evident that it is observed. Therefore that can neither be regarded as no offence, or an uncertain one, which is perpetrated against a practice which is capable of defence, on the ground even of its repute, and is sufficiently ratified by the support of general acceptance. It is undoubted, so that we ought to inquire into the reason of the thing; but without prejudice to the practice, not for the purpose of overthrowing it, but rather of building it up, that you may all the more carefully observe it, when you are also satisfied as to its reason. But what sort of procedure is it, for one to be bringing into debate a practice, when he has fallen from it, and to be seeking the explanation of his having ever had it, when he has left it off? Since, although he may wish to seem on this account desirous to investigate it, that he may show that he has not done wrong in giving it up, it is evident that he nevertheless transgressed previously in its presumptuous observance. If he has done no wrong to-day in accepting the crown he offended before in refusing it. This treatise, therefore, will not be for those who not in a proper condition for inquiry, but for those who, with the real desire of getting instruction, bring forward, not a question for debate, but a request for advice. For it is from this desire that a true inquiry always proceeds; and I praise the faith which has believed in the duty of complying with the rule, before it has learned the reason of it. An easy thing it is at once to demand where it is written that we should not be crowned. But is it written that we should be crowned? Indeed, in urgently demanding the warrant of Scripture in a different side from their own, men prejudge that the support of Scripture ought no less to appear on their part. For if it shall be said that it is lawful to be crowned on this ground, that Scripture does not forbid it, it will as validly be retorted that just on this ground is the crown unlawful, because the Scripture does not enjoin it. What shall discipline do? Shall it accept both things, as if neither were forbidden? Or shall it refuse both, as if neither were enjoined? But “the thing which is not forbidden is freely permitted.” I should rather say 386 that what has not been freely allowed is forbidden.
Footnotes
94:385[Kaye (p. 231) notes this as a rare instance of classing Catechumens among “the Faithful.”]
94:386[This is said not absolutely but in contrast with extreme license; but it shows the Supremacy of Scripture. Compare De Monogam, cap. 4.]
Chapter III.
And how long shall we draw the saw to and fro through this line, when we have an ancient practice, which by anticipation has made for us the state, i.e., of the question? If no passage of Scripture has prescribed it, assuredly custom, which without doubt flowed from tradition, has confirmed it. For how can anything come into use, if it has not first been handed down? Even in pleading tradition, written authority, you say, must be demanded. Let us inquire, therefore, whether tradition, unless it be written, should not be admitted. Certainly we shall say that it ought not to be admitted, if no cases of other practices which, without any written instrument, we maintain on the ground of tradition alone, and the countenance thereafter of custom, affords us any precedent. To deal with this matter briefly, I shall begin with baptism. 387 When we are going to enter the water, but a little before, in the presence of the congregation and under the hand of the president, we solemnly profess that we disown the devil, and his pomp, and his angels. Hereupon we are thrice immersed, making a somewhat ampler pledge than the Lord has appointed in the Gospel. Then when we are taken up (as new-born children), 388 we taste first of all a mixture of milk and honey, and from that day we refrain from the daily bath for a whole week. We take also, in congregations before daybreak, and from the hand of none but the presidents, the sacrament of the Eucharist, which the Lord both commanded to be eaten at meal-times, and enjoined to be taken by all alike. 389 As often as the anniversary comes round, we make offerings for the dead as birthday honours. We count fasting or kneeling in worship on the Lord’s day to be unlawful. We rejoice in the same privilege also from Easter to Whitsunday. We feel pained should any wine or bread, even though our own, be cast upon the ground. At every forward step and movement, at every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and shoes, when we bathe, when we sit at table, when we light the lamps, on couch, on seat, in all the ordinary actions of daily life, we trace upon the forehead the sign. 390
Footnotes
94:387[Elucidation I., and see Bunsen’s Church and House Book, pp. 19–24.]
94:388[There is here an allusion to the Roman form of recognizing a lawful child. The father, taking up the new-born infant, gave him adoption into the family, and recognised him as a legitimate son and heir.]
94:389[Men and women, rich and poor.]
95:390i.e., of the Cross.
Chapter IV.
If, for these and other such rules, you insist upon having positive Scripture injunction, you will find none. Tradition will be held forth to you as the originator of them, custom as their strengthener, and faith as their observer. That reason will support tradition, and custom, and faith, you will either yourself perceive, or learn from some one who has. Meanwhile you will believe that there is some reason to which submission is due. I add still one case more, as it will be proper to show you how it was among the ancients also. Among the Jews, so usual is it for their women to have the head veiled, that they may thereby be recognised. I ask in this instance for the law. I put the apostle aside. If Rebecca at once drew down her veil, when in the distance she saw her betrothed, this modesty of a mere private individual could not have made a law, or it will have made it only for those who have the reason which she had. Let virgins alone be veiled, and this when they are coming to be married, and not till they have recognised their destined husband. If Susanna also, who was subjected to unveiling on her trial, 391 furnishes an argument for the veiling of women, I can say here also, the veil was a voluntary thing. She had come accused, ashamed of the disgrace she had brought on herself, properly concealing her beauty, even because now she feared to please. But I should not suppose that, when it was her aim to please, she took walks with a veil on in her husband’s avenue. Grant, now, that she was always veiled. In this particular case, too, or, in fact, in that of any other, I demand the dress-law. If I nowhere find a law, it follows that tradition has given the fashion in question to custom, to find subsequently (its authorization in) the apostle’s sanction, from the true interpretation of reason. This instances, therefore, will make it sufficiently plain that you can vindicate the keeping of even unwritten tradition established by custom; the proper witness for tradition when demonstrated by long-continued observance. 392 But even in civil matters custom is accepted as law, when positive legal enactment is wanting; and it is the same thing whether it depends on writing or on reason, since reason is, in fact, the basis of law. But, (you say), if reason is the ground of law, all will now henceforth have to be counted law, whoever brings it forward, which shall have reason as its ground. 393 Or do you think that every believer is entitled to originate and establish a law, if only it be such as is agreeable to God, as is helpful to discipline, as promotes salvation, when the Lord says, “But why do you not even of your own selves judge what is right?” 394 And not merely in regard to a judicial sentence, but in regard to every decision in matters we are called on to consider, the apostle also says, “If of anything you are ignorant, God shall reveal it unto you;” 395 he himself, too, being accustomed to afford counsel though he had not the command of the Lord, and to dictate of himself 396 as possessing the Spirit of God who guides into all truth. Therefore his advice has, by the warrant of divine reason, become equivalent to nothing less than a divine command. Earnestly now inquire of this teacher, 397 keeping intact your regard for tradition, from whomsoever it originally sprang; nor have regard to the author, but to the authority, and especially that of custom itself, which on this very account we should revere, that we may not want an interpreter; so that if reason too is God’s gift, you may then learn, not whether custom has to be followed by you, but why.
Footnotes
95:391Vulgate, Dan. xiii. 32. [See Apocrypha, Susanna 32.]
95:392[Observe it must (1.) be based on Apostolic grounds; (2.) must not be a novelty, but derived from a time “to which the memory of men runneth not contrary.”]
95:393[I slightly amend the translation to bring out the force of an objection to which our author gives a Montanistic reply.]
95:394Luke xii. 27.
95:395Phil. iii. 15.
95:396[See luminous remarks in Kaye, pp. 371–373.]
95:397[This teacher, i.e., right reason, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost. He is here foisting in a plea for the “New Prophecy,” apparently, and this is one of the most decided instances in the treatise.]
Chapter V.
The argument for Christian practices becomes all the stronger, when also nature, which is the first rule of all, supports them. Well, she is the first who lays it down that a crown does not become the head. But I think ours is the God of nature, who fashioned man; and, that he might desire, (appreciate, become partaker of) the pleasures afforded by His creatures, endowed him with certain senses, (acting) through members, which, so to speak, are their peculiar instruments. The sense of hearing he has planted in the ears; that of sight, lighted up in the eyes; that of taste, shut up in the mouth; that of smell, wafted into the nose; that of touch, fixed in the tips of the fingers. By means of these organs of the outer man doing duty to the inner man, the enjoyments of the divine gifts are conveyed by the senses to the soul. 398 What, then, in flowers affords you enjoyment? For it is the flowers of the field which are the peculiar, at least the chief, material of crowns. Either smell, you say, or colour, or both together. What will be the senses of colour and smell? Those of seeing and smelling, I suppose. What members have had these senses allotted to them? The eyes and the nose, if I am not mistaken. With sight and smell, then, make use of flowers, for these are the senses by which they are meant to be enjoyed; use them by means of the eyes and nose, which are the members to which these senses belong. You have got the thing from God, the mode of it from the world; but an extraordinary mode does not prevent the use of the thing in the common way. Let flowers, then, both when fastened into each other and tied together in thread and rush, be what they are when free, when loose—things to be looked at and smelt. You count it a crown, let us say, when you have a bunch of them bound together in a series, that you may carry many at one time that you may enjoy them all at once. Well, lay them in your bosom if they are so singularly pure, and strew them on your couch if they are so exquisitely soft, and consign them to your cup if they are so perfectly harmless. Have the pleasure of them in as many ways as they appeal to your senses. But what taste for a flower, what sense for anything belonging to a crown but its band, have you in the head, which is able neither to distinguish colour, nor to inhale sweet perfumes, nor to appreciate softness? It is as much against nature to long after a flower with the head, as it is to crave food with the ear, or sound with the nostril. But everything which is against nature deserves to be branded as monstrous among all men; but with us it is to be condemned also as sacrilege against God, the Lord and Creator of nature.
Footnotes
95:398Kaye [p. 187,] has some valuable remarks on this testimony to the senses in Christian Philosophy, and compares Cicero, I. Tusc. cap. xx. or xlvi.]
Chapter VI.
Demanding then a law of God, you have that common one prevailing all over the world, engraven on the natural tables to which the apostle too is wont to appeal, as when in respect of the woman’s veil he says, “Does not even Nature teach you?” 399 —as when to the Romans, affirming that the heathen do by nature those things which the law requires, 400 he suggests both natural law and a law-revealing nature. Yes, and also in the first chapter of the epistle he authenticates nature, when he asserts that males and females changed among themselves the natural use of the creature into that which is unnatural, 401 by way of penal retribution for their error. We first of all indeed know God Himself by the teaching of Nature, calling Him God of gods, taking for granted that He is good, and invoking Him as Judge. Is it a question with you whether for the enjoyment of His creatures, Nature should be our guide, that we may not be carried away in the direction in which the rival of God has corrupted, along with man himself, the entire creation which had been made over to our race for certain uses, whence the apostle says that it too unwillingly became subject to vanity, completely bereft of its original character, first by vain, then by base, unrighteous, and ungodly uses? It is thus, accordingly, in the pleasures of the shows, that the creature is dishonoured by those who by nature indeed perceive that all the materials of which shows are got up belong to God, but lack the knowledge to perceive as well that they have all been changed by the devil. But with this topic we have, for the sake of our own play-lovers, sufficiently dealt, and that, too, in a work in Greek. 402
Footnotes
96:3991 Cor. xi. 14.
96:400Rom. ii. 14.
96:401Rom. i. 26.
96:402[Plays were regarded as pomps renounced in Baptism.]
Chapter VII.
Let these dealers in crowns then recognize in the meantime the authority of Nature, on the ground of a common sense as human beings, and the certifications of their peculiar religion, as, according to the last chapter, worshippers of the God of nature; and, as it were, thus over and above what is required, let them consider those other reasons too which forbid us wearing crowns, especially on the head, and indeed crowns of every sort. For we are obliged to turn from the rule of Nature, which we share with mankind in general, that we may maintain the whole peculiarity of our Christian discipline, in relation also to other kinds of crowns which seem to have been provided for different uses, as being composed of different substances, lest, because they do not consist of flowers, the use of which nature has indicated (as it does in the case of this military laurel one itself), they may be thought not to come under the prohibition of our sect, since they have escaped any objections of nature. I see, then, that we must go into the matter both with more research, and more fully, from its beginnings on through its successive stages of growth to its more erratic developments. For this we need to turn to heathen literature, for things belonging to the heathen must be proved from their own documents. The little of this I have acquired, will, I believe, be enough. If there really was a Pandora, whom Hesiod mentions as the first of women, hers was the first head the graces crowned, for she received gifts from all the gods whence she got her name Pandora. But Moses, a prophet, not a poet-shepherd, shows us the first woman Eve having her loins more naturally girt about with leaves than her temples with flowers. Pandora, then, is a myth. And so we have to blush for the origin of the crown, even on the ground of the falsehood connected with it; and, as will soon appear, on the ground no less of its realities. For it is an undoubted fact that certain persons either originated the thing, or shed lustre on it. Pherecydes relates that Saturn was the first who wore a crown; Diodorus, that Jupiter, after conquering the Titans, was honoured with this gift by the rest of the gods. To Priapus also the same author assigns fillets; and to Ariadne a garland of gold and of Indian gems, the gift of Vulcan, afterwards of Bacchus, and subsequently turned into a constellation. Callimachus has put a vine crown upon Juno. So too at Argos, her statue, vine-wreathed, with a lion’s skin placed beneath her feet, exhibits the stepmother exulting over the spoils of her two step-sons. Hercules displays upon his head sometimes poplar, sometimes wild-olive, sometimes parsley. You have the tragedy of Cerberus; you have Pindar; and besides Callimachus, who mentions that Apollo, too when he had killed the Delphic serpent, as a suppliant, put on a laurel garland; for among the ancients suppliants were wont to be crowned. Harpocration argues that Bacchus the same as Osiris among the Egyptians, was designedly crowned with ivy, because it is the nature of ivy to protect the brain against drowsiness. But that in another way also Bacchus was the originator of the laurel crown (the crown) in which he celebrated his triumph over the Indians, even the rabble acknowledge, when they call the days dedicated to him the “great crown.” If you open, again, the writings of the Egyptian Leo, you learn that Isis was the first who discovered and wore ears of corn upon her head—a thing more suited to the belly. Those who want additional information will find an ample exposition of the subject in Claudius Saturninus, a writer of distinguished talent who treats this question also, for he has a book on crowns, so explaining their beginnings as well as causes, and kinds, and rites, that you find all that is charming in the flower, all that is beautiful in the leafy branch, and every sod or vine-shoot has been dedicated to some head or other; making it abundantly clear how foreign to us we should judge the custom of the crowned head, introduced as it was by, and thereafter constantly managed for the honour of, those whom the world has believed to be gods. If the devil, a liar from the beginning, is even in this matter working for his false system of godhead (idolatry), he had himself also without doubt provided for his god-lie being carried out. What sort of thing, then, must that be counted among the people of the true God, which was brought in by the nations in honour of the devil’s candidates, and was set apart from the beginning to no other than these; and which even then received its consecration to idolatry by idols and in idols yet alive? Not as if an idol were anything, but since the things which others offer up to idols belong to demons. But if the things which others offer to them belong to demons how much more what idols offered to themselves, when they were in life! The demons themselves, doubtless, had made provision for themselves by means of those whom they had possessed, while in a state of desire and craving, before provision had been actually made.
Chapter VIII.
Hold fast in the meantime this persuasion, while I examine a question which comes in our way. For I already hear it is said, that many other things as well as crowns have been invented by those whom the world believes to be gods, and that they are notwithstanding to be met with both in our present usages and in those of early saints, and in the service of God, and in Christ Himself, who did His work as man by no other than these ordinary instrumentalities of human life. Well, let it be so; nor shall I inquire any further back into the origin of this things. Let Mercury have been the first who taught the knowledge of letters; I will own that they are requisite both for the business and commerce of life, and for performing our devotion to God. Nay, if he also first strung the chord to give forth melody, I will not deny, when listening to David, that this invention has been in use with the saints, and has ministered to God. Let Æsculapius have been the first who sought and discovered cures: Esaias 403 mentions that he ordered Hezekiah medicine when he was sick. Paul, too, knows that a little wine does the stomach good. 404 Let Minerva have been the first who built a ship: I shall see Jonah and the apostles sailing. Nay, there is more than this: for even Christ, we shall find, has ordinary raiment; Paul, too, has his cloak. 405 If at once, of every article of furniture and each household vessel, you name some god of the world as the originator, well, I must recognise Christ, both as He reclines on a couch, and when He presents a basin for the feet of His disciples, and when He pours water into it from a ewer, and when He is girt about with a linen towel 406 —a garment specially sacred to Osiris. It is thus in general I reply upon the point, admitting indeed that we use along with others these articles, but challenging that this be judged in the light of the distinction between things agreeable and things opposed to reason, because the promiscuous employment of them is deceptive, concealing the corruption of the creature, by which it has been made subject to vanity. For we affirm that those things only are proper to be used, whether by ourselves or by those who lived before us, and alone befit the service of God and Christ Himself, which to meet the necessities of human life supply what is simply; useful and affords real assistance and honourable comfort, so that they may be well believed to have come from God’s own inspiration, who first of all no doubt provided for and taught and ministered to the enjoyment, I should suppose, of His own man. As for the things which are out of this class, they are not fit to be used among us, especially those which on that account indeed are not to be found either with the world, or in the ways of Christ.
Footnotes
97:403Isa. xxxviii. 21.
97:4041 Tim. v. 23.
98:4052 Tim. iv. 13. [This is a useful comment as showing what this φαιλόνη was. Our author translates it by pænula. Of which more when we reach the De Pallio.]
98:406John xiii. 1-5.
Chapter IX.
In short, what patriarch, what prophet, what Levite, or priest, or ruler, or at a later period what apostle, or preacher of the gospel, or bishop, do you ever find the wearer of a crown? 407 I think not even the temple of God itself was crowned; as neither was the ark of the testament, nor the tabernacle of witness, nor the altar, nor the candlestick crowned though certainly, both on that first solemnity of the dedication, and in that second rejoicing for the restoration, crowning would have been most suitable if it were worthy of God. But if these things were figures of us (for we are temples of God, and altars, and lights, and sacred vessels), this too they in figure set forth, that the people of God ought not to be crowned. The reality must always correspond with the image. If, perhaps, you object that Christ Himself was crowned, to that you will get the brief reply: Be you too crowned, as He was; you have full permission. Yet even that crown of insolent ungodliness was not of any decree of the Jewish people. It was a device of the Roman soldiers, taken from the practice of the world,—a practice which the people of God never allowed either on the occasion of public rejoicing or to gratify innate luxury: so they returned from the Babylonish captivity with timbrels, and flutes, and psalteries, more suitably than with crowns; and after eating and drinking, uncrowned, they rose up to play. Neither would the account of the rejoicing nor the exposure of the luxury have been silent touching the honour or dishonour of the crown. Thus too Isaiah, as he says, “With timbrels, and psalteries, and flutes they drink wine,” 408 would have added “with crowns,” if this practice had ever had place in the things of God.
Footnotes
98:407[But see Eusebius, Hist. B. v., cap. 24, whose story is examined by Lardner, Cred., vol. iv., p. 448.]
98:408Isa. v. 12.
Chapter X.
So, when you allege that the ornaments of the heathen deities are found no less with God, with the object of claiming among these for general use the head-crown, you already lay it down for yourself, that we must not have among us, as a thing whose use we are to share with others, what is not to be found in the service of God. Well, what is so unworthy of God indeed as that which is worthy of an idol? But what is so worthy of an idol as that which is also worthy of a dead man? For it is the privilege of the dead also to be thus crowned, as they too straightway become idols, both by their dress and the service of deification, which (deification) is with us a second idolatry. Wanting, then, the sense, it will be theirs to use the thing for which the sense is wanting, just as if in full possession of the sense they wished to abuse it. When there ceases to be any reality in the use, there is no distinction between using and abusing. Who can abuse a thing, when the precipient nature with which he wishes to carry out his purpose is not his to use it? The apostle, moreover, forbids us to abuse, while he would more naturally have taught us not to use, unless on the ground that, where there is no sense for things, there is no wrong use of them. But the whole affair is meaningless, and is, in fact, a dead work so far as concerns the idols; though, without doubt, a living one as respects the demons 409 to whom the religious rite belongs. “The idols of the heathen,” says David, “are silver and gold.” “They have eyes, and see not; a nose, and smell not; hands, and they will not handle.” 410 By means of these organs, indeed, we are to enjoy flowers; but if he declares that those who make idols will be like them, they already are so who use anything after the style of idol adornings. “To the pure all things are pure: so, likewise, all things to the impure are impure;” 411 but nothing is more impure than idols. The substances are themselves as creatures of God without impurity, and in this their native state are free to the use of all; but the ministries to which in their use they are devoted, makes all the difference; for I, too, kill a cock for myself, just as Socrates did for Æsculapius; and if the smell of some place or other offends me, I burn the Arabian product myself, but not with the same ceremony, nor in the same dress, nor with the same pomp, with which it is done to idols. 412 If the creature is defiled by a mere word, as the apostle teaches, “But if any one say, This is offered in sacrifice to idols, you must not touch it,” 413 much more when it is polluted by the dress, and rites, and pomp of what is offered to the gods. Thus the crown also is made out to be an offering to idols; 414 for with this ceremony, and dress, and pomp, it is presented in sacrifice to idols, its originators, to whom its use is specially given over, and chiefly on this account, that what has no place among the things of God may not be admitted into use with us as with others. Wherefore the apostle exclaims, “Flee idolatry:” 415 certainly idolatry whole and entire he means. Reflect on what a thicket it is, and how many thorns lie hid in it. Nothing must be given to an idol, and so nothing must be taken from one. If it is inconsistent with faith to recline in an idol temple, what is it to appear in an idol dress? What communion have Christ and Belial? Therefore flee from it; for he enjoins us to keep at a distance from idolatry—to have no close dealings with it of any kind. Even an earthly serpent sucks in men at some distance with its breath. Going still further, John says, “My little children, keep yourselves from idols,” 416 —not now from idolatry, as if from the service of it, but from idols—that is, from any resemblance to them: for it is an unworthy thing that you, the image of the living God, should become the likeness of an idol and a dead man. Thus far we assert, that this attire belongs to idols, both from the history of its origin, and from its use by false religion; on this ground, besides, that while it is not mentioned as connected with the worship of God, it is more and more given over to those in whose antiquities, as well as festivals and services, it is found. In a word, the very doors, the very victims and altars, the very servants and priests, are crowned. You have, in Claudius, the crowns of all the various colleges of priests. We have added also that distinction between things altogether different from each other—things, namely, agreeable, and things contrary to reason—in answer to those who, because there happens to be the use of some things in common, maintain the right of participation in all things. With reference to this part of the subject, therefore, it now remains that the special grounds for wearing crowns should be examined, that while we show these to be foreign, nay, even opposed to our Christian discipline, we may demonstrate that none of them have any plea of reason to support it, on the basis of which this article of dress might be vindicated as one in whose use we can participate, as even some others may whose instances are cast up to us.
Footnotes
98:409[Compare De Idololatria, cap. xv., p. 70, supra.]
99:410Ps. cxv. 4-8.
99:411Tit. i. 15.
99:412[He seems to know no use for incense except for burials and for fumigation.]
99:4131 Cor. x. 28.
99:414[Kaye (p. 362) defends our author against Barbeyrac’s animadversions, by the maxim, “put yourself in his place” i.e. among the abominations of Paganism.]
99:4151 Cor. x. 14.
99:4161 John v. 21.
Chapter XI.
To begin with the real ground of the military crown, I think we must first inquire whether warfare is proper at all for Christians. What sense is there in discussing the merely accidental, when that on which it rests is to be condemned? Do we believe it lawful for a human oath 417 to be superadded to one divine, for a man to come under promise to another master after Christ, and to abjure father, mother, and all nearest kinsfolk, whom even the law has commanded us to honour and love next to God Himself, to whom the gospel, too, holding them only of less account than Christ, has in like manner rendered honour? Shall it be held lawful to make an occupation of the sword, when the Lord proclaims that he who uses the sword shall perish by the sword? And shall the son of peace take part in the battle when it does not become him even to sue at law? And shall he apply the chain, and the prison, and the torture, and the punishment, who is not the avenger even of his own wrongs? Shall he, forsooth, either keep watch-service for others more than for Christ, or shall he do it on the Lord’s day, when he does not even do it for Christ Himself? And shall he keep guard before the temples which he has renounced? And shall he take a meal where the apostle has forbidden him? 418 And shall he diligently protect by night those whom in the day-time he has put to flight by his exorcisms, leaning and resting on the spear the while with which Christ’s side was pierced? Shall he carry a flag, 419 too, hostile to Christ? And shall he ask a watchword from the emperor who has already received one from God? Shall he be disturbed in death by the trumpet of the trumpeter, who expects to be aroused by the angel’s trump? And shall the Christian be burned according to camp rule, when he was not permitted to burn incense to an idol, when to him Christ remitted the punishment of fire? Then how many other offences there are involved in the performances of camp offices, which we must hold to involve a transgression of God’s law, you may see by a slight survey. The very carrying of the name over from the camp of light to the camp of darkness is a violation of it. Of course, if faith comes later, and finds any preoccupied with military service, their case is different, as in the instance of those whom John used to receive for baptism, and of those most faithful centurions, I mean the centurion whom Christ approves, and the centurion whom Peter instructs; yet, at the same time, when a man has become a believer, and faith has been sealed, there must be either an immediate abandonment of it, which has been the course with many; or all sorts of quibbling will have to be resorted to in order to avoid offending God, and that is not allowed even outside of military service; 420 or, last of all, for God the fate must be endured which a citizen-faith has been no less ready to accept. Neither does military service hold out escape from punishment of sins, or exemption from martyrdom. Nowhere does the Christian change his character. There is one gospel, and the same Jesus, who will one day deny every one who denies, and acknowledge every one who acknowledges God,—who will save, too, the life which has been lost for His sake; but, on the other hand, destroy that which for gain has been saved to His dishonour. With Him the faithful citizen is a soldier, just as the faithful soldier is a citizen. 421 A state of faith admits no plea of necessity; they are under no necessity to sin, whose one necessity is, that they do not sin. For if one is pressed to the offering of sacrifice and the sheer denial of Christ by the necessity of torture or of punishment, yet discipline does not connive even at that necessity; because there is a higher necessity to dread denying and to undergo martyrdom, than to escape from suffering, and to render the homage required. In fact, an excuse of this sort overturns the entire essence of our sacrament, removing even the obstacle to voluntary sins; for it will be possible also to maintain that inclination is a necessity, as involving in it, forsooth, a sort of compulsion. I have, in fact, disposed of this very allegation of necessity with reference to the pleas by which crowns connected with official position are vindicated, in support of which it is in common use, since for this very reason offices must be either refused, that we may not fall into acts of sin, or martyrdoms endured that we may get quit of offices. Touching this primary aspect of the question, as to the unlawfulness even of a military life itself, I shall not add more, that the secondary question may be restored to its place. Indeed, if, putting my strength to the question, I banish from us the military life, I should now to no purpose issue a challenge on the matter of the military crown. Suppose, then, that the military service is lawful, as far as the plea for the crown is concerned. 422
Footnotes
99:417[He plays on this word Sacramentum. Is the military sacrament to be added to the Lord’s?]
100:4181 Cor. viii. 10.
100:419[Vexillum. Such words as these prepared for the Labarum.]
100:420“Outside of the military service.” By substituting ex militia for the corresponding words extra militiam, as has been proposed by Rigaltius, the sentence acquires a meaning such that desertion from the army is suggested as one of the methods by which a soldier who has become a Christian may continue faithful to Jesus. But the words extra militiam are a genuine part of the text. There is no good ground, therefore, for the statement of Gibbon: “Tertullian (de Corona Militis, c. xi.) suggests to them the expedient of deserting; a counsel which, if it had been generally known, was not very proper to conciliate the favour of the emperors toward the Christian sect.”—Tr.
100:421“The faithful,” etc.; i.e., the kind of occupation which any one has cannot be pleaded by him as a reason for not doing all that Christ has enjoined upon His people.—Tr.
100:422[He was not yet quite a Montanist.]
Chapter XII.
But I first say a word also about the crown itself. This laurel one is sacred to Apollo or Bacchus—to the former as the god of archery, to the latter as the god of triumphs. In like manner Claudius teaches; when he tells us that soldiers are wont too to be wreathed in myrtle. For the myrtle belongs to Venus, the mother of the Æneadæ, the mistress also of the god of war, who, through Ilia and the Romuli is Roman. But I do not believe that Venus is Roman as well as Mars, because of the vexation the concubine gave her. 423 When military service again is crowned with olive, the idolatry has respect to Minerva, who is equally the goddess of arms—but got a crown of the tree referred to, because of the peace she made with Neptune. In these respects, the superstition of the military garland will be everywhere defiled and all-defiling. And it is further defiled, I should think, also in the grounds of it. Lo the yearly public pronouncing of vows, what does that bear on its face to be? It takes place first in the part of the camp where the general’s tent is, and then in the temples. In addition to the places, observe the words also: “We vow that you, O Jupiter, will then have an ox with gold-decorated horns.” What does the utterance mean? Without a doubt the denial (of Christ). Albeit the Christian says nothing in these places with the mouth, he makes his response by having the crown on his head. The laurel is likewise commanded (to be used) at the distribution of the largess. So you see idolatry is not without its gain, selling, as it does, Christ for pieces of gold, as Judas did for pieces of silver. Will it be “Ye cannot serve God and mammon” 424 to devote your energies to mammon, and to depart from God? Will it be “Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things which are God’s,” 425 not only not to render the human being to God, but even to take the denarius from Cæsar? Is the laurel of the triumph made of leaves, or of corpses? Is it adorned with ribbons, or with tombs? Is it bedewed with ointments, or with the tears of wives and mothers? It may be of some Christians too; 426 for Christ is also among the barbarians. 427 Has not he who has carried (a crown for) this cause on his head, fought even against himself? Another son of service belongs to the royal guards. And indeed crowns are called (Castrenses), as belonging to the camp; Munificæ likewise, from the Cæsarean functions they perform. But even then you are still the soldier and the servant of another; and if of two masters, of God and Cæsar: but assuredly then not of Cæsar, when you owe yourself to God, as having higher claims, I should think, even in matters in which both have an interest.
Footnotes
100:423i.e., Ilia.
101:424Matt. vi. 24.
101:425Matt. xxii. 21.
101:426[Such considerations may account for our author’s abandonment of what he says in the Apology; which compare in capp. xlii. and xxxix.]
101:427[Et apud barbaros enim Christus. See Kaye’s argument, p. 87.]
Chapter XIII.
For state reasons, the various orders of the citizens also are crowned with laurel crowns; but the magistrates besides with golden ones, as at Athens, and at Rome. Even to those are preferred the Etruscan. This appellation is given to the crowns which, distinguished by their gems and oak leaves of gold, they put on, with mantles having an embroidery of palm branches, to conduct the chariots containing the images of the gods to the circus. There are also provincial crowns of gold, needing now the larger heads of images instead of those of men. But your orders, and your magistracies, and your very place of meeting, the church, are Christ’s. You belong to Him, for you have been enrolled in the books of life. 428 There the blood of the Lord serves for your purple robe, and your broad stripe is His own cross; there the axe is already laid to the trunk of the tree; 429 there is the branch out of the root of Jesse. 430 Never mind the state horses with their crown. Your Lord, when, according to the Scripture, He would enter Jerusalem in triumph, had not even an ass of His own. These (put their trust) in chariots, and these in horses; but we will seek our help in the name of the Lord our God. 431 From so much as a dwelling in that Babylon of John’s Revelation 432 we are called away; much more then from its pomp. The rabble, too, are crowned, at one time because of some great rejoicing for the success of the emperors; at another, on account of some custom belonging to municipal festivals. For luxury strives to make her own every occasion of public gladness. But as for you, you are a foreigner in this world, a citizen of Jerusalem, the city above. Our citizenship, the apostle says, is in heaven. 433 You have your own registers, your own calendar; you have nothing to do with the joys of the world; nay, you are called to the very opposite, for “the world shall rejoice, but ye shall mourn.” 434 And I think the Lord affirms, that those who mourn are happy, not those who are crowned. Marriage, too, decks the bridegroom with its crown; and therefore we will not have heathen brides, lest they seduce us even to the idolatry with which among them marriage is initiated. You have the law from the patriarchs indeed; you have the apostle enjoining people to marry in the Lord. 435 You have a crowning also on the making of a freeman; but you have been already ransomed by Christ, and that at a great price. How shall the world manumit the servant of another? Though it seems to be liberty, yet it will come to be found bondage. In the world everything is nominal, and nothing real. For even then, as ransomed by Christ, you were under no bondage to man; and now, though man has given you liberty, you are the servant of Christ. If you think freedom of the world to be real, so that you even seal it with a crown, you have returned to the slavery of man, imagining it to be freedom; you have lost the freedom of Christ, fancying it is slavery. Will there be any dispute as to the cause of crown-wearing, which contests in the games in their turn supply, and which, both as sacred to the gods and in honour of the dead, their own reason at once condemns? It only remains, that the Olympian Jupiter, and the Nemean Hercules, and the wretched little Archemorus, and the hapless Antinous, should be crowned in a Christian, that he himself may become a spectacle disgusting to behold. We have recounted, as I think, all the various causes of the wearing of the crown, and there is not one which has any place with us: all are foreign to us, unholy, unlawful, having been abjured already once for all in the solemn declaration of the sacrament. For they were of the pomp of the devil and his angels, offices of the world, 436 honours, festivals, popularity huntings, false vows, exhibitions of human servility, empty praises, base glories, and in them all idolatry, even in respect of the origin of the crowns alone, with which they are all wreathed. Claudius will tell us in his preface, indeed, that in the poems of Homer the heaven also is crowned with constellations, and that no doubt by God, no doubt for man; therefore man himself, too, should be crowned by God. But the world crowns brothels, and baths, and bakehouses, and prisons, and schools, and the very amphitheatres, and the chambers where the clothes are stripped from dead gladiators, and the very biers of the dead. How sacred and holy, how venerable and pure is this article of dress, determine not from the heaven of poetry alone, but from the traffickings of the whole world. But indeed a Christian will not even dishonour his own gate with laurel crowns, if so be he knows how many gods the devil has attached to doors; Janus so-called from gate, Limentinus from threshold, Forcus and Carna from leaves and hinges; among the Greeks, too, the Thyræan Apollo, and the evil spirits, the Antelii.
Footnotes
101:428Phil. iv. 3.
101:429Matt. iii. 10.
101:430Isa. xi. 1.
101:431Ps. xx. 7.
101:432Rev. xviii. 4. [He understands this of Rome.]
101:433Phil. iii. 20.
101:434John xvi. 20.
101:4351 Cor. vii. 39.
102:436[A suggestive interpretation of the baptismal vow, of which see Bunsen, Hippol., Vol. III., p. 20.]
Chapter XIV.
Much less may the Christian put the service of idolatry on his own head—nay, I might have said, upon Christ, since Christ is the Head of the Christian man—(for his head) is as free as even Christ is, under no obligation to wear a covering, not to say a band. But even the head which is bound to have the veil, I mean woman’s, as already taken possession of by this very thing, is not open also to a band. She has the burden of her own humility to bear. If she ought not to appear with her head uncovered on account of the angels, 437 much more with a crown on it will she offend those (elders) who perhaps are then wearing crowns above. 438 For what is a crown on the head of a woman, but beauty made seductive, but mark of utter wantonness,—a notable casting away of modesty, a setting temptation on fire? Therefore a woman, taking counsel from the apostles’ foresight, 439 will not too elaborately adorn herself, that she may not either be crowned with any exquisite arrangement of her hair. What sort of garland, however, I pray you, did He who is the Head of the man and the glory of the woman, Christ Jesus, the Husband of the church, submit to in behalf of both sexes? Of thorns, I think, and thistles,—a figure of the sins which the soil of the flesh brought forth for us, but which the power of the cross removed, blunting, in its endurance by the head of our Lord, death’s every sting. Yes, and besides the figure, there is contumely with ready lip, and dishonour, and infamy, and the ferocity involved in the cruel things which then disfigured and lacerated the temples of the Lord, that you may now be crowned with laurel, and myrtle, and olive, and any famous branch, and which is of more use, with hundred-leaved roses too, culled from the garden of Midas, and with both kinds of lily, and with violets of all sorts, perhaps also with gems and gold, so as even to rival that crown of Christ which He afterwards obtained. For it was after the gall He tasted the honeycomb 440 and He was not greeted as King of Glory in heavenly places till He had been condemned to the cross as King of the Jews, having first been made by the Father for a time a little less than the angels, and so crowned with glory and honour. If for these things, you owe your own head to Him, repay it if you can, such as He presented His for yours; or be not crowned with flowers at all, if you cannot be with thorns, because you may not be with flowers.
Footnotes
102:4371 Cor. xi. 10. [Does he here play on the use of the word angels in the Revelation? He seems to make it = elders.]
102:438Rev. iv. 4.
102:4391 Tim. 2:9, 1 Pet. 3:3.
102:440[A very striking collocation of Matt. 27:34, Luke 24:42.]
Chapter XV.
Keep for God His own property untainted; He will crown it if He choose. Nay, then, He does even choose. He calls us to it. To him who conquers He says, “I will give a crown of life.” 441 Be you, too, faithful unto death, and fight you, too, the good fight, whose crown the apostle 442 feels so justly confident has been laid up for him. The angel 443 also, as he goes forth on a white horse, conquering and to conquer, receives a crown of victory; and another 444 is adorned with an encircling rainbow (as it were in its fair colours)—a celestial meadow. In like manner, the elders sit crowned around, crowned too with a crown of gold, and the Son of Man Himself flashes out above the clouds. If such are the appearances in the vision of the seer, of what sort will be the realities in the actual manifestation? Look at those crowns. Inhale those odours. Why condemn you to a little chaplet, or a twisted headband, the brow which has been destined for a diadem? For Christ Jesus has made us even kings to God and His Father. What have you in common with the flower which is to die? You have a flower in the Branch of Jesse, upon which the grace of the Divine Spirit in all its fulness rested—a flower undefiled, unfading, everlasting, by choosing which the good soldier, too, has got promotion in the heavenly ranks. Blush, ye fellow-soldiers of his, henceforth not to be condemned even by him, but by some soldier of Mithras, who, at his initiation in the gloomy cavern, in the camp, it may well be said, of darkness, when at the sword’s point a crown is presented to him, as though in mimicry of martyrdom, and thereupon put upon his head, is admonished to resist and cast it off, and, if you like, transfer it to his shoulder, saying that Mithras is his crown. And thenceforth he is never crowned; and he has that for a mark to show who he is, if anywhere he be subjected to trial in respect of his religion; and he is at once believed to be a soldier of Mithras if he throws the crown away—if he say that in his god he has his crown. Let us take note of the devices of the devil, who is wont to ape some of God’s things with no other design than, by the faithfulness of his servants, to put us to shame, and to condemn us.
Footnotes
102:441Rev. 2:10, Jas. 1:22.
103:4422 Tim. iv. 8.
103:443Rev. vi. 2.
103:444Rev. x. 1.
Elucidations.
————————————
I.
(Usages, p. 94.)
Here a reference to Bunsen’s Hippolytus, vol. III., so often referred to in the former volume, will be useful. A slight metaphrase will bring out the sense, perhaps, of this most interesting portrait of early Christian usages.
In baptism, we use trine immersion, in honour of the trinal Name, after renouncing the devil and his angels and the pomps and vanities of his kingdom. 445 But this trinal rite is a ceremonial amplification of what is actually commanded. It was heretofore tolerated in some places that communicants should take each one his portion, with his own hand, but now we suffer none to receive this sacrament except at the hand of the minister. By our Lord’s own precept and example, it may be received at the hour of ordinary meals, and alike by all the faithful whether men or women, yet we usually do this in our gatherings before daybreak. Offerings are made in honour of our departed friends, on the anniversaries of their deaths, which we esteem their true birthdays, as they are born to a better life. We kneel at other times, but on the Lord’s day, and from the Paschal Feast to Pentecost we stand in prayer, nor do we count it lawful to fast on Sundays. We are concerned if even a particle of the wine or bread, made ours, in the Lord’s Supper, falls to the ground, by our carelessness. In all the ordinary occasions of life we furrow our foreheads with the sign of the Cross, in which we glory none the less because it is regarded as our shame by the heathen in presence of whom it is a profession of our faith.
He owns there is no Scripture for any of these usages, in which there was an amplifying of the precepts of Christ. Let us note there was yet no superstitious usage even of this sign of the Cross. It was an act by which, in suffering “shame for Jesus’ name,” they fortified themselves against betraying the Master. It took the place, be it remembered, of innumerable heathen practices, and was a protest against them. It meant—“God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross.” I express no personal opinion as to this observance, but give the explanation which the early Christians would have given. Tertullian touched with Montanism, but not yet withdrawn from Catholic Communion, pleads the common cause of believers.
II.
(Traditions, cap. iv., p. 95.)
The traditions here argued for respect things in their nature indifferent. And as our author asserts the long continuance of such usages to be their chief justification, it is evident that he supposed them common from the Sub-apostolic age. There is nothing here to justify amplifications and traditions which, subsequently, came in like a flood to change principles of the Faith once delivered to the Saints. Even in his little plea for Montanistic revelations of some possible novelties, he pre-supposes that reason must be subject to Scripture and Apostolic Law. In a word, his own principle of “Prescription” must be honoured even in things indifferent; if novel they are not Catholic.
Footnotes
103:445See Kaye, pp. 408–415.
V.
To Scapula. 446
[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]
————————————
Chapter I.
We are not in any great perturbation or alarm about the persecutions we suffer from the ignorance of men; for we have attached ourselves to this sect, fully accepting the terms of its covenant, so that, as men whose very lives are not their own, we engage in these conflicts, our desire being to obtain God’s promised rewards, and our dread lest the woes with which He threatens an unchristian life should overtake us. Hence we shrink not from the grapple with your utmost rage, coming even forth of our own accord to the contest; and condemnation gives us more pleasure than acquittal. We have sent, therefore, this tract to you in no alarm about ourselves, but in much concern for you and for all our enemies, to say nothing of our friends. For our religion commands us to love even our enemies, and to pray for those who persecute us, aiming at a perfection all its own, and seeking in its disciples something of a higher type than the commonplace goodness of the world. For all love those who love them; it is peculiar to Christians alone to love those that hate them. Therefore mourning over your ignorance, and compassionating human error, and looking on to that future of which every day shows threatening signs, necessity is laid on us to come forth in this way also, that we may set before you the truths you will not listen to openly.
Footnotes
105:446[See Elucidation I. Written late in our author’s life, this tract contains no trace of Montanism, and shows that his heart was with the common cause of all Christians. Who can give up such an Ephraim without recalling the words of inspired love for the erring?— Jer. 31:20, Hos. 11:8.]
Chapter II.
We are worshippers of one God, of whose existence and character Nature teaches all men; at whose lightnings and thunders you tremble, whose benefits minister to your happiness. You think that others, too, are gods, whom we know to be devils. However, it is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions: one man’s religion neither harms nor helps another man. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion—to which free-will and not force should lead us—the sacrificial victims even being required of a willing mind. You will render no real service to your gods by compelling us to sacrifice. For they can have no desire of offerings from the unwilling, unless they are animated by a spirit of contention, which is a thing altogether undivine. Accordingly the true God bestows His blessings alike on wicked men and on His own elect; upon which account He has appointed an eternal judgment, when both thankful and unthankful will have to stand before His bar. Yet you have never detected us—sacrilegious wretches though you reckon us to be—in any theft, far less in any sacrilege. But the robbers of your temples, all of them swear by your gods, and worship them; they are not Christians, and yet it is they who are found guilty of sacrilegious deeds. We have not time to unfold in how many other ways your gods are mocked and despised by their own votaries. So, too, treason is falsely laid to our charge, though no one has ever been able to find followers of Albinus, or Niger, or Cassius, among Christians; while the very men who had sworn by the genii of the emperors, who had offered and vowed sacrifices for their safety, who had often pronounced condemnation on Christ’s disciples, are till this day found traitors to the imperial throne. A Christian is enemy to none, least of all to the Emperor of Rome, whom he knows to be appointed by his God, and so cannot but love and honour; and whose well-being moreover, he must needs desire, with that of the empire over which he reigns so long as the world shall stand—for so long as that shall Rome continue. 447 To the emperor, therefore, we render such reverential homage as is lawful for us and good for him; regarding him as the human being next to God who from God has received all his power, and is less than God alone. And this will be according to his own desires. For thus—as less only than the true God—he is greater than all besides. Thus he is greater than the very gods themselves, even they, too, being subject to him. We therefore sacrifice for the emperor’s safety, but to our God and his, and after the manner God has enjoined, in simple prayer. For God, Creator of the universe, has no need of odours or of blood. These things are the food of devils. 448 But we not only reject those wicked spirits: we overcome them; we daily hold them up to contempt; we exorcise them from their victims, as multitudes can testify. So all the more we pray for the imperial well-being, as those who seek it at the hands of Him who is able to bestow it. And one would think it must be abundantly clear to you that the religious system under whose rules we act is one inculcating a divine patience; since, though our numbers are so great—constituting all but the majority in every city—we conduct ourselves so quietly and modestly; I might perhaps say, known rather as individuals than as organized communities, and remarkable only for the reformation of our former vices. For far be it from us to take it ill that we have laid on us the very things we wish, or in any way plot the vengeance at our own hands, which we expect to come from God.
Footnotes
105:447[Kaye points out our author’s inconsistencies on this matter. If Caractacus ever made the speech ascribed to him (Bede, or Gibbon, cap. lxxi.) it would confirm the opinion of those who make him a convert to Christ: “Quando cadet Roma, cadet et mundus.” Elucidation II.]
106:448[On this sort of Demonology see Kaye, pp. 203–207, with his useful references. See De Spectaculis, p. 80, supra.]
Chapter III.
However, as we have already remarked, it cannot but distress us that no state shall bear unpunished the guilt of shedding Christian blood; as you see, indeed, in what took place during the presidency of Hilarian, for when there had been some agitation about places of sepulture for our dead, and the cry arose, “No areæ—no burial-grounds for the Christians,” it came that their own areæ, 449 their threshing-floors, were a-wanting, for they gathered in no harvests. As to the rains of the bygone year, it is abundantly plain of what they were intended to remind men—of the deluge, no doubt, which in ancient times overtook human unbelief and wickedness; and as to the fires which lately hung all night over the walls of Carthage, they who saw them know what they threatened; and what the preceding thunders pealed, they who were hardened by them can tell. All these things are signs of God’s impending wrath, which we must needs publish and proclaim in every possible way; and in the meanwhile we must pray it may be only local. Sure are they to experience it one day in its universal and final form, who interpret otherwise these samples of it. That sun, too, in the metropolis of Utica, 450 with light all but extinguished, was a portent which could not have occurred from an ordinary eclipse, situated as the lord of day was in his height and house. You have the astrologers, consult them about it. We can point you also to the deaths of some provincial rulers, who in their last hours had painful memories of their sin in persecuting the followers of Christ. 451 Vigellius Saturninus, who first here used the sword against us, lost his eyesight. Claudius Lucius Herminianus in Cappadocia, enraged that his wife had become a Christian, had treated the Christians with great cruelty: well, left alone in his palace, suffering under a contagious malady, he boiled out in living worms, and was heard exclaiming, “Let nobody know of it, lest the Christians rejoice, and Christian wives take encouragement.” Afterwards he came to see his error in having tempted so many from their stedfastness by the tortures he inflicted, and died almost a Christian himself. In that doom which overtook Byzantium, 452 Cæcilius Capella could not help crying out, “Christians, rejoice!” Yes, and the persecutors who seem to themselves to have acted with impunity shall not escape the day of judgment. For you we sincerely wish it may prove to have been a warning only, that, immediately after you had condemned Mavilus of Adrumetum to the wild beasts, you were overtaken by those troubles, and that even now for the same reason you are called to a blood-reckoning. But do not forget the future.
Footnotes
106:449[An obvious play on the ambiguity of this word.]
106:450[Notes of the time when this was written. See Kaye, p. 57.]
106:451[Christians remembered Herod (Acts xii. 23) very naturally; but we may reserve remarks on such instances till we come to Lactantius. But see Kaye (p. 102) who speaks unfavourably of them.]
106:452[Notes of the time when this was written. See Kaye, p. 57.]
Chapter IV.
We who are without fear ourselves are not seeking to frighten you, but we would save all men if possible by warning them not to fight with God. 453 You may perform the duties of your charge, and yet remember the claims of humanity; if on no other ground than that you are liable to punishment yourself, (you ought to do so). For is not your commission simply to condemn those who confess their guilt, and to give over to the torture those who deny? You see, then, how you trespass yourselves against your instructions to wring from the confessing a denial. It is, in fact, an acknowledgment of our innocence that you refuse to condemn us at once when we confess. In doing your utmost to extirpate us, if that is your object, it is innocence you assail. But how many rulers, men more resolute and more cruel than you are, have contrived to get quit of such causes altogether,—as Cincius Severus, who himself suggested the remedy at Thysdris, pointing out how the Christians should answer that they might secure an acquittal; as Vespronius Candidus, who dismissed from his bar a Christian, on the ground that to satisfy his fellow-citizens would break the peace of the community; as Asper, who, in the case of a man who gave up his faith under slight infliction of the torture, did not compel the offering of sacrifice, having owned before, among the advocates and assessors of court, that he was annoyed at having had to meddle with such a case. Pudens, too, at once dismissed a Christian who was brought before him, perceiving from the indictment that it was a case of vexatious accusation; tearing the document in pieces, he refused so much as to hear him without the presence of his accuser, as not being consistent with the imperial commands. All this might be officially brought under your notice, and by the very advocates, who are themselves also under obligations to us, although in court they give their voice as it suits them. The clerk of one of them who was liable to be thrown upon the ground by an evil spirit, was set free from his affliction; as was also the relative of another, and the little boy of a third. How many men of rank (to say nothing of common people) have been delivered from devils, and healed of diseases! Even Severus himself, the father of Antonine, was graciously mindful of the Christians; for he sought out the Christian Proculus, surnamed Torpacion, the steward of Euhodias, and in gratitude for his having once cured him by anointing, he kept him in his palace till the day of his death. 454 Antonine, too, brought up as he was on Christian milk, was intimately acquainted with this man. Both women and men of highest rank, whom Severus knew well to be Christians, were not merely permitted by him to remain uninjured; but he even bore distinguished testimony in their favour, and gave them publicly back to us from the hands of a raging populace. Marcus Aurelius also, in his expedition to Germany, by the prayers his Christian soldiers offered to God, got rain in that well-known thirst. 455 When, indeed, have not droughts been put away by our kneelings and our fastings? At times like these, moreover, the people crying to “the God of gods, the alone Omnipotent,” under the name of Jupiter, have borne witness to our God. Then we never deny the deposit placed in our hands; we never pollute the marriage bed; we deal faithfully with our wards; we give aid to the needy; we render to none evil for evil. As for those who falsely pretend to belong to us, and whom we, too, repudiate, let them answer for themselves. In a word, who has complaint to make against us on other grounds? To what else does the Christian devote himself, save the affairs of his own community, which during all the long period of its existence no one has ever proved guilty of the incest or the cruelty charged against it? It is for freedom from crime so singular, for a probity so great, for righteousness, for purity, for faithfulness, for truth, for the living God, that we are consigned to the flames; for this is a punishment you are not wont to inflict either on the sacrilegious, or on undoubted public enemies, or on the treason-tainted, of whom you have so many. Nay, even now our people are enduring persecution from the governors of Legio and Mauritania; but it is only with the sword, as from the first it was ordained that we should suffer. But the greater our conflicts, the greater our rewards.
Footnotes
106:453[Our author uses the Greek (μὴ θεομαχεῖν) but not textually of Acts v. 39.]
107:454[Another note of time. a.d. 211. See Kaye, as before.]
107:455[Compare Vol. I., p. 187, this Series.]
Chapter V.
Your cruelty is our glory. Only see you to it, that in having such things as these to endure, we do not feel ourselves constrained to rush forth to the combat, if only to prove that we have no dread of them, but on the contrary, even invite their infliction. When Arrius Antoninus was driving things hard in Asia, the whole Christians of the province, in one united band, presented themselves before his judgment-seat; on which, ordering a few to be led forth to execution, he said to the rest, “O miserable men, if you wish to die, you have precipices or halters.” If we should take it into our heads to do the same thing here, what will you make of so many thousands, of such a multitude of men and women, persons of every sex and every age and every rank, when they present themselves before you? How many fires, how many swords will be required? What will be the anguish of Carthage itself, which you will have to decimate, 456 as each one recognises there his relatives and companions, as he sees there it may be men of your own order, and noble ladies, and all the leading persons of the city, and either kinsmen or friends of those of your own circle? Spare thyself, if not us poor Christians! Spare Carthage, if not thyself! Spare the province, which the indication of your purpose has subjected to the threats and extortions at once of the soldiers and of private enemies.
We have no master but God. He is before you, and cannot be hidden from you, but to Him you can do no injury. But those whom you regard as masters are only men, and one day they themselves must die. Yet still this community will be undying, for be assured that just in the time of its seeming overthrow it is built up into greater power. For all who witness the noble patience of its martyrs, as struck with misgivings, are inflamed with desire to examine into the matter in question; 457 and as soon as they come to know the truth, they straightway enrol themselves its disciples.
Footnotes
107:456[Compare De Fuga, cap. xii. It is incredible that our author could exaggerate in speaking to the chief magistrate of Carthage.]
108:457[Mosheim’s strange oversight, in neglecting to include such considerations, in accounting for the growth of the church, is justly censured by Kaye, p. 124.]
Elucidations.
————————————
I.
(Scapula, cap. i., p. 105.)
Scapula was Proconsul of Carthage, and though its date is conjectural (a.d. 217), this work gives valuable indices of its time and circumstances. It was composed after the death of Severus, to whom there is an allusion in chapter iv., after the destruction of Byzantium (a.d. 196), to which there is a reference in chapter iii.; and Dr. Allix suggests, after the dark day of Utica (a.d. 210) which he supposes to be referred to in the same chapter. Cincius Severus, who is mentioned in chapter iv., was put to death by Severus, a.d. 198.
II.
(Caractacus, cap. ii., note 2, p. 105.)
Mr. Lewin (St. Paul, ii. 397), building on the fascinating theory of Archdeacon Williams, thinks St. Paul’s Claudia (Qu. Gladys?) may very well have been the daughter of Caradoc, with whose noble character we are made acquainted by Tacitus. (Annals xii. 36.) And Archdeacon Williams gives us very strong reason to believe he was a Christian. He may very well have lived to behold the Coliseum completed. What more natural then, in view of the cruelty against Christians there exercised, for the expressions with which he is credited? In this case his words contain an eloquent ambiguity, which Christians would appreciate, and which may have been in our author’s mind when he says—“quousque sæculum stabit.” To those who looked for the Second Advent, daily, this did not mean what the heathen might suppose.
Bede’s version of the speech (See Du Cange, II., 407., ) is this: “Quandiu stabit Colyseus—stabit et Roma: Quando cadet Colysevs—cadet et Roma: Quando cadet Roma—cadet et mundus.”
VI.
Ad Nationes. 458
Book I.
[Translated by Dr. Holmes.]
————————————
Chapter I. 459 —The Hatred Felt by the Heathen Against the Christians is Unjust, Because Based on Culpable Ignorance.
One proof of that ignorance of yours, which condemns 460 whilst it excuses 461 your injustice, is at once apparent in the fact, that all who once shared in your ignorance and hatred (of the Christian religion), as soon as they have come to know it, leave off their hatred when they cease to be ignorant; nay more, they actually themselves become what they had hated, and take to hating what they had once been. Day after day, indeed, you groan over the increasing number of the Christians. Your constant cry is, that the state is beset (by us); that Christians are in your fields, in your camps, in your islands. You grieve over it as a calamity, that each sex, every age—in short, every rank—is passing over from you to us; yet you do not even after this set your minds upon reflecting whether there be not here some latent good. You do not allow yourselves in suspicions which may prove too true, 462 nor do you like ventures which may be too near the mark. 463 This is the only instance in which human curiosity grows torpid. You love to be ignorant of what other men rejoice to have discovered; you would rather not know it, because you now cherish your hatred as if you were aware that, (with the knowledge,) your hatred would certainly come to an end. Still, 464 if there shall be no just ground for hatred, it will surely be found to be the best course to cease from the past injustice. Should, however, a cause have really existed there will be no diminution of the hatred, which will indeed accumulate so much the more in the consciousness of its justice; unless it be, forsooth, 465 that you are ashamed to cast off your faults, 466 or sorry to free yourselves from blame. 467 I know very well with what answer you usually meet the argument from our rapid increase. 468 That indeed must not, you say, be hastily accounted a good thing which converts a great number of persons, and gains them over to its side. I am aware how the mind is apt to take to evil courses. How many there are which forsake virtuous living! How many seek refuge in the opposite! Many, no doubt; 469 nay, very many, as the last days approach. 470 But such a comparison as this fails in fairness of application; for all are agreed in thinking thus of the evil-doer, so that not even the guilty themselves, who take the wrong side, and turn away from the pursuit of good to perverse ways, are bold enough to defend evil as good. 471 Base things excite their fear, impious ones their shame. In short, they are eager for concealment, they shrink from publicity, they tremble when caught; when accused, they deny; even when tortured, they do not readily or invariably confess (their crime); at all events, 472 they grieve when they are condemned. They reproach themselves for their past life; their change from innocence to an evil disposition they even attribute to fate. They cannot say that it is not a wrong thing, therefore they will not admit it to be their own act. As for the Christians, however, in what does their case resemble this? No one is ashamed; no one is sorry, except for his former (sins). 473 If he is pointed at (for his religion), he glories in it; if dragged to trial, he does not resist; if accused, he makes no defence. When questioned, he confesses; when condemned, he rejoices. What sort of evil is this, in which the nature of evil comes to a standstill? 474
Footnotes
109:458[As a recapitulation I insert this here to close this class of argument for the reasons following.] This treatise resembles The Apology, both in its general purport as a vindication of Christianity against heathen prejudice, and in many of its expressions and statements. So great is the resemblance that this shorter work has been thought by some to have been a first draft of the longer and perfect one. Tertullian, however, here addresses his expostulations to the general public, while in The Apology it is the rulers and magistrates of the empire whom he seeks to influence. [Dr. Allix conjectures the date of this treatise to be about a.d. 217. See Kaye, p. 50.]
109:459Compare The Apology, c. i.
109:460Revincit. “Condemnat” is Tertullian’s word in The Apology, i.
109:461Defendit. “Excusat” in Apol.
109:462Non licet rectius suspicari.
109:463Non lubet propius experiri.
109:464At quin.
109:465Nisi si.
109:466Emendari pudet.
109:467Excusari piget.
109:468Redundantiæ nostræ.
109:469Bona fide.
109:470Pro extremitatibus temporum.
109:471Or perhaps, “to maintain evil in preference to good.”
109:472Certe.
109:473Pristinorum. In the corresponding passage (Apol. i.) the phrase is, “nisi plane retro non fuisse,” i.e., “except that he was not a Christian long ago.”
110:474Cessat.
Chapter II. 475 —The Heathen Perverted Judgment in the Trial of Christians. They Would Be More Consistent If They Dispensed with All Form of Trial. Tertullian Urges This with Much Indignation.
In this case you actually 476 conduct trials contrary to the usual form of judicial process against criminals; for when culprits are brought up for trial, should they deny the charge, you press them for a confession by tortures. When Christians, however, confess without compulsion, you apply the torture to induce them to deny. What great perverseness is this, when you stand out against confession, and change the use of the torture, compelling the man who frankly acknowledges the charge 477 to evade it, and him who is unwilling, to deny it? You, who preside for the purpose of extorting truth, demand falsehood from us alone that we may declare ourselves not to be what we are. I suppose you do not want us to be bad men, and therefore you earnestly wish to exclude us from that character. To be sure, 478 you put others on the rack and the gibbet, to get them to deny what they have the reputation of being. Now, when they deny (the charge against them), you do not believe them but on our denial, you instantly believe us. If you feel sure that we are the most injurious of men, why, even in processes against us, are we dealt with by you differently from other offenders? I do not mean that you make no account of 479 either an accusation or a denial (for your practice is not hastily to condemn men without an indictment and a defence); but, to take an instance in the trial of a murderer, the case is not at once ended, or the inquiry satisfied, on a man’s confessing himself the murderer. However complete his confession, 480 you do not readily believe him; but over and above this, you inquire into accessory circumstances—how often had he committed murder; with what weapons, in what place, with what plunder, accomplices, and abettors after the fact 481 (was the crime perpetrated)—to the end that nothing whatever respecting the criminal might escape detection, and that every means should be at hand for arriving at a true verdict. In our case, on the contrary, 482 whom you believe to be guilty of more atrocious and numerous crimes, you frame your indictments 483 in briefer and lighter terms. I suppose you do not care to load with accusations men whom you earnestly wish to get rid of, or else you do not think it necessary to inquire into matters which are known to you already. It is, however, all the more perverse that you compel us to deny charges about which you have the clearest evidence. But, indeed, 484 how much more consistent were it with your hatred of us to dispense with all forms of judicial process, and to strive with all your might not to urge us to say “No,” and so have to acquit the objects of your hatred; but to confess all and singular the crimes laid to our charge, that your resentments might be the better glutted with an accumulation of our punishments, when it becomes known how many of those feasts each one of us may have celebrated, and how many incests we may have committed under cover of the night! What am I saying? Since your researches for rooting out our society must needs be made on a wide scale, you ought to extend your inquiry against our friends and companions. Let our infanticides and the dressers (of our horrible repasts) be brought out,—ay, and the very dogs which minister to our (incestuous) nuptials; 485 then the business (of our trial) would be without a fault. Even to the crowds which throng the spectacles a zest would be given; for with how much greater eagerness would they resort to the theatre, when one had to fight in the lists who had devoured a hundred babies! For since such horrid and monstrous crimes are reported of us, they ought, of course, to be brought to light, lest they should seem to be incredible, and the public detestation of us should begin to cool. For most persons are slow to believe such things, 486 feeling a horrible disgust at supposing that our nature could have an appetite for the food of wild beasts, when it has precluded these from all concubinage with the race of man.
Footnotes
110:475Comp. c. ii. of The Apology.
110:476Ipsi.
110:477Gratis reum.
110:478Sane.
110:479Neque spatium commodetis.
110:480Quanquam confessis.
110:481Receptoribus, “concealers” of the crime.
110:482Porro.
110:483Elogia.
110:484Immo.
110:485We have for once departed from Oehler’s text, and preferred Rigault’s: “Perducerentur infantarii et coci, ipsi canes pronubi, emendata esset res.” The sense is evident from The Apology, c. vii.: “It is said that we are guilty of most horrible crimes; that in the celebration of our sacrament we put a child to death, which we afterward devour, and at the end of our banquet revel in incest; that we employ dogs as ministers of our impure delights, to overthrow the candles, and thus to provide darkness, and remove all shame which might interfere with these impious lusts” (Chevalier’s translation). These calumnies were very common, and are noticed by Justin Martyr, Minucius Felix, Eusebius, Athenagoras, and Origen, who attributes their origin to the Jews. Oehler reads infantariæ, after the Agobardine codex and editio princeps, and quotes Martial (Epigr. iv. 88), where the word occurs in the sense of an inordinate love of children.
110:486Nam et plerique fidem talium temperant.
Chapter III. 487 —The Great Offence in the Christians Lies in Their Very Name. The Name Vindicated.
Since, therefore, you who are in other cases most scrupulous and persevering in investigating charges of far less serious import, relinquish your care in cases like ours, which are so horrible, and of such surpassing sin that impiety is too mild a word for them, by declining to hear confession, which should always be an important process for those who conduct judicial proceedings; and failing to make a full inquiry, which should be gone into by such as sue for a condemnation, it becomes evident that the crime laid to our charge consists not of any sinful conduct, but lies wholly in our name. If, indeed, 488 any real crimes were clearly adducible against us, their very names would condemn us, if found applicable, 489 so that distinct sentences would be pronounced against us in this wise: Let that murderer, or that incestuous criminal, or whatever it be that we are charged with, be led to execution, be crucified, or be thrown to the beasts. Your sentences, however, 490 import only that one has confessed himself a Christian. No name of a crime stands against us, but only the crime of a name. Now this in very deed is neither more nor less than 491 the entire odium which is felt against us. The name is the cause: some mysterious force intensified by your ignorance assails it, so that you do not wish to know for certain that which for certain you are sure you know nothing of; and therefore, further, you do not believe things which are not submitted to proof, and, lest they should be easily refuted, 492 you refuse to make inquiry, so that the odious name is punished under the presumption of (real) crimes. In order, therefore, that the issue may be withdrawn from the offensive name, we are compelled to deny it; then upon our denial we are acquitted, with an entire absolution 493 for the past: we are no longer murderers, no longer incestuous, because we have lost that name. 494 But since this point is dealt with in a place of its own, 495 do you tell us plainly why you are pursuing this name even to extirpation? What crime, what offence, what fault is there in a name? For you are barred by the rule 496 which puts it out of your power to allege crimes (of any man), which no legal action moots, no indictment specifies, no sentence enumerates. In any case which is submitted to the judge, 497 inquired into against the defendant, responded to by him or denied, and cited from the bench, I acknowledge a legal charge. Concerning, then, the merit of a name, whatever offence names may be charged with, whatever impeachment words may be amenable to, I for my part 498 think, that not even a complaint is due to a word or a name, unless indeed it has a barbarous sound, or smacks of ill-luck, or is immodest, or is indecorous for the speaker, or unpleasant to the hearer. These crimes in (mere) words and names are just like barbarous words and phrases, which have their fault, and their solecism, and their absurdity of figure. The name Christian, however, so far as its meaning goes, bears the sense of anointing. Even when by a faulty pronunciation you call us “Chrestians” (for you are not certain about even the sound of this noted name), you in fact lisp out the sense of pleasantness and goodness. 499 You are therefore vilifying 500 in harmless men even the harmless name we bear, which is not inconvenient for the tongue, nor harsh to the ear, nor injurious to a single being, nor rude for our country, being a good Greek word, as many others also are, and pleasant in sound and sense. Surely, surely, 501 names are not things which deserve punishment by the sword, or the cross, or the beasts.
Footnotes
111:487Comp. The Apology, cc. i. and ii.
111:488Adeo si.
111:489Si accommodarent.
111:490Porro.
111:491Hæc ratio est.
111:492Reprobentur.
111:493Impunitate.
111:494i.e., the name “Christians.”
111:495By the “suo loco,” Tertullian refers to The Apology.
111:496Præscribitur vobis.
111:497Præsidi.
111:498Ego.
111:499Χρηστός means both “pleasant” and “good;” and the heathen founded this word with the sacred name Χριστός.
111:500Detinetis.
111:501Et utique.
Chapter IV. 502 —The Truth Hated in the Christians; So in Measure Was It, of Old, in Socrates. The Virtues of the Christians.
But the sect, you say, is punished in the name of its founder. Now in the first place it is, no doubt, a fair and usual custom that a sect should be marked out by the name of its founder, since philosophers are called Pythagoreans and Platonists after their masters; in the same way physicians are called after Erasistratus, and grammarians after Aristarchus. If, therefore, a sect has a bad character because its founder was bad, it is punished 503 as the traditional bearer 504 of a bad name. But this would be indulging in a rash assumption. The first step was to find out what the founder was, that his sect might be understood, instead of hindering 505 inquiry into the founder’s character from the sect. But in our case, 506 by being necessarily ignorant of the sect, through your ignorance of its founder, or else by not taking a fair survey of the founder, because you make no inquiry into his sect, you fasten merely on the name, just as if you vilified in it both sect and founder, whom you know nothing of whatever. And yet you openly allow your philosophers the right of attaching themselves to any school, and bearing its founder’s name as their own; and nobody stirs up any hatred against them, although both in public and in private they bark out 507 their bitterest eloquence against your customs, rites, ceremonies, and manner of life, with so much contempt for the laws, and so little respect for persons, that they even flaunt their licentious words 508 against the emperors themselves with impunity. And yet it is the truth, which is so troublesome to the world, that these philosophers affect, but which Christians possess: they therefore who have it in possession afford the greater displeasure, because he who affects a thing plays with it; he who possesses it maintains it. For example, 509 Socrates was condemned on that side (of his wisdom) in which he came nearest in his search to the truth, by destroying your gods. Although the name of Christian was not at that time in the world, yet truth was always suffering condemnation. Now you will not deny that he was a wise man, to whom your own Pythian (god) had borne witness. Socrates, he said, was the wisest of men. Truth overbore Apollo, and made him pronounce even against himself since he acknowledged that he was no god, when he affirmed that that was the wisest man who was denying the gods. However, 510 on your principle he was the less wise because he denied the gods, although, in truth, he was all the wiser by reason of this denial. It is just in the same way that you are in the habit of saying of us: “Lucius Titius is a good man, only he is a Christian;” while another says; “I wonder that so worthy 511 a man as Caius Seius has become a Christian.” 512 According to 513 the blindness of their folly men praise what they know, (and) blame what they are ignorant of; and that which they know, they vitiate by that which they do not know. It occurs to none (to consider) whether a man is not good and wise because he is a Christian, or therefore a Christian because he is wise and good, although it is more usual in human conduct to determine obscurities by what is manifest, than to prejudice what is manifest by what is obscure. Some persons wonder that those whom they had known to be unsteady, worthless, or wicked before they bore this 514 name, have been suddenly converted to virtuous courses; and yet they better know how to wonder (at the change) than to attain to it; others are so obstinate in their strife as to do battle with their own best interests, which they have it in their power to secure by intercourse 515 with that hated name. I know more than one 516 husband, formerly anxious about their wives’ conduct, and unable to bear even mice to creep into their bed-room without a groan of suspicion, who have, upon discovering the cause of their new assiduity, and their unwonted attention to the duties of home, 517 offered the entire loan of their wives to others, 518 disclaimed all jealousy, (and) preferred to be the husbands of she-wolves than of Christian women: they could commit themselves to a perverse abuse of nature, but they could not permit their wives to be reformed for the better! A father disinherited his son, with whom he had ceased to find fault. A master sent his slave to bridewell, 519 whom he had even found to be indispensable to him. As soon as they discovered them to be Christians, they wished they were criminals again; for our discipline carries its own evidence in itself, nor are we betrayed by anything else than our own goodness, just as bad men also become conspicuous 520 by their own evil. Else how is it that we alone are, contrary to the lessons of nature, branded as very evil because of our good? For what mark do we exhibit except the prime wisdom, 521 which teaches us not to worship the frivolous works of the human hand; the temperance, by which we abstain from other men’s goods; the chastity, which we pollute not even with a look; the compassion, which prompts us to help the needy; the truth itself, which makes us give offence; and liberty, for which we have even learned to die? Whoever wishes to understand who the Christians are, must needs employ these marks for their discovery.
Footnotes
111:502See The Apology, c. iii.
111:503Plectitur.
111:504Tradux.
112:505Retinere.
112:506At nunc.
112:507Elatrent.
112:508Libertatem suam, “their liberty of speech.”
112:509Denique.
112:510Porro.
112:511Gravem, “earnest.”
112:512Comp. The Apology, c. iii.
112:513Pro.
112:514i.e., the Christian.
112:515De commercio.
112:516Unum atque alium. The sense being plural, we have so given it all through.
112:517Captivitatis (as if theirs was a self-inflicted captivity at home).
112:518Omnem uxorem patientiam obtulisse (comp. Apology, middle of c. xxxix.).
112:519In ergastulum.
112:520Radiant.
112:521He means the religion of Christ, which he in b. ii. c. ii. contrasts with “the mere wisdom” of the philosophers.
Chapter V. 522 —The Inconsistent Life of Any False Christian No More Condemns True Disciples of Christ, Than a Passing Cloud Obscures a Summer Sky.
As to your saying of us that we are a most shameful set, and utterly steeped in luxury, avarice, and depravity, we will not deny that this is true of some. It is, however, a sufficient testimonial for our name, that this cannot be said of all, not even of the greater part of us. It must happen even in the healthiest and purest body, that a mole should grow, or a wart arise on it, or freckles disfigure it. Not even the sky itself is clear with so perfect 523 a serenity as not to be flecked with some filmy cloud. 524 A slight spot on the face, because it is obvious in so conspicuous a part, only serves to show purity of the entire complexion. The goodness of the larger portion is well attested by the slender flaw. But although you prove that some of our people are evil, you do not hereby prove that they are Christians. Search and see whether there is any sect to which (a partial shortcoming) is imputed as a general stain. 525 You are accustomed in conversation yourselves to say, in disparagement of us, “Why is so-and-so deceitful, when the Christians are so self-denying? why merciless, when they are so merciful?” You thus bear your testimony to the fact that this is not the character of Christians, when you ask, in the way of a retort, 526 how men who are reputed to be Christians can be of such and such a disposition. There is a good deal of difference between an imputation and a name, 527 between an opinion and the truth. For names were appointed for the express purpose of setting their proper limits between mere designation and actual condition. 528 How many indeed are said to be philosophers, who for all that do not fulfil the law of philosophy? All bear the name in respect of their profession; but they hold the designation without the excellence of the profession, and they disgrace the real thing under the shallow pretence of its name. Men are not straightway of such and such a character, because they are said to be so; but when they are not, it is vain to say so of them: they only deceive people who attach reality to a name, when it is its consistency with fact which decides the condition implied in the name. 529 And yet persons of this doubtful stamp do not assemble with us, neither do they belong to our communion: by their delinquency they become yours once more 530 since we should be unwilling to mix even with them whom your violence and cruelty compelled to recant. Yet we should, of course, be more ready to have included amongst us those who have unwillingly forsaken our discipline than wilful apostates. However, you have no right to call them Christians, to whom the Christians themselves deny that name, and who have not learned to deny themselves.
Footnotes
113:522Compare The Apology, cc. ii. xliv. xlvi.
113:523Colata, “filtered” [or “strained”—Shaks.]
113:524Ut non alicujus nubiculæ flocculo resignetur. This picturesque language defies translation.
113:525Malitiæ.
113:526Dum retorquetis.
113:527Inter crimen et nomen.
113:528Inter dici et esse.
113:529Status nominis.
113:530Denuo.
Chapter VI. 531 —The Innocence of the Christians Not Compromised by the Iniquitous Laws Which Were Made Against Them.
Whenever these statements and answers of ours, which truth suggests of its own accord, press and restrain your conscience, which is the witness of its own ignorance, you betake yourselves in hot haste to that poor altar of refuge, 532 the authority of the laws, because these, of course, would never punish the offensive 533 sect, if their deserts had not been fully considered by those who made the laws. Then what is it which has prevented a like consideration on the part of those who put the laws in force, when, in the case of all other crimes which are similarly forbidden and punished by the laws, the penalty is not inflicted 534 until it is sought by regular process? 535 Take, 536 for instance, the case of a murderer or an adulterer. An examination is ordered touching the particulars 537 of the crime, even though it is patent to all what its nature 538 is. Whatever wrong has been done by the Christian ought to be brought to light. No law forbids inquiry to be made; on the contrary, inquiry is made in the interest of the laws. 539 For how are you to keep the law by precautions against that which the law forbids, if you neutralize the carefulness of the precaution by your failing to perceive 540 what it is you have to keep? No law must keep to itself 541 the knowledge of its own righteousness, 542 but (it owes it) to those from whom it claims obedience. The law, however, becomes an object of suspicion when it declines to approve itself. Naturally enough, 543 then, are the laws against the Christians supposed to be just and deserving of respect and observance, just as long as men remain ignorant of their aim and purport; but when this is perceived, their extreme injustice is discovered, and they are deservedly rejected with abhorrence, 544 along with (their instruments of torture)—the swords, the crosses, and the lions. An unjust law secures no respect. In my opinion, however, there is a suspicion among you that some of these laws are unjust, since not a day passes without your modifying their severity and iniquity by fresh deliberations and decisions.
Footnotes
113:531Compare The Apology, c. iv.
113:532Ad arulam quandam.
113:533Istam.
113:534Cessat, “loiters.”
113:535Requiratur.
113:536Lege.
113:537Ordo.
113:538Genus.
113:539Literally, “holding the inquiry makes for the laws.”
113:540Per defectionem agnoscendi.
113:541Sibi debet.
113:542Justitiæ suæ.
113:543Merito.
114:544Despuuntur.
Chapter VII. 545 —The Christians Defamed. A Sarcastic Description of Fame; Its Deception and Atrocious Slanders of the Christians Lengthily Described.
Whence comes it to pass, you will say to us, that such a character could have been attributed to you, as to have justified the lawmakers perhaps by its imputation? Let me ask on my side, what voucher they had then, or you now, for the truth of the imputation? (You answer,) Fame. Well, now, is not this—
“Fama malum, quo non aliud velocius ullum?” 546
Now, why a plague, 547 if it be always true? It never ceases from lying; nor even at the moment when it reports the truth is it so free from the wish to lie, as not to interweave the false with the true, by processes of addition, diminution, or confusion of various facts. Indeed, 548 such is its condition, that it can only continue to exist while it lies. For it lives only just so long as it fails to prove anything. As soon as it proves itself true, it falls; and, as if its office of reporting news were at an end, it quits its post: thenceforward the thing is held to be a fact, and it passes under that name. No one, then, says, to take an instance, “The report is that this happened at Rome,” or, “The rumour goes that he has got a province;” but, “He has got a province,” and, “This happened at Rome.” Nobody mentions a rumour except at an uncertainty, because nobody can be sure of a rumour, but only of certain knowledge; and none but a fool believes a rumour, because no wise man puts faith in an uncertainty. In however wide a circuit 549 a report has been circulated, it must needs have originated some time or other from one mouth; afterwards it creeps on somehow to ears and tongues which pass it on 550 and so obscures the humble error in which it began, that no one considers whether the mouth which first set it a-going disseminated a falsehood,—a circumstance which often happens either from a temper of rivalry, or a suspicious turn, or even the pleasure of feigning news. It is, however, well that time reveals all things, as your own sayings and proverbs testify; yea, as nature herself attests, which has so ordered it that nothing lies hid, not even that which fame has not reported. See, now, what a witness 551 you have suborned against us: it has not been able up to this time to prove the report it set in motion, although it has had so long a time to recommend it to our acceptance. This name of ours took its rise in the reign of Augustus; under Tiberius it was taught with all clearness and publicity; 552 under Nero it was ruthlessly condemned, 553 and you may weigh its worth and character even from the person of its persecutor. If that prince was a pious man, then the Christians are impious; if he was just, if he was pure, then the Christians are unjust and impure; if he was not a public enemy, we are enemies of our country: what sort of men we are, our persecutor himself shows, since he of course punished what produced hostility to himself. 554 Now, although every other institution which existed under Nero has been destroyed, yet this of ours has firmly remained—righteous, it would seem, as being unlike the author (of its persecution). Two hundred and fifty years, then, have not yet passed since our life began. During the interval there have been so many criminals; so many crosses have obtained immortality; 555 so many infants have been slain; so many loaves steeped in blood; so many extinctions of candles; 556 so many dissolute marriages. And up to the present time it is mere report which fights against the Christians. No doubt it has a strong support in the wickedness of the human mind, and utters its falsehoods with more success among cruel and savage men. For the more inclined you are to maliciousness, the more ready are you to believe evil; in short, men more easily believe the evil that is false, than the good which is true. Now, if injustice has left any place within you for the exercise of prudence in investigating the truth of reports, justice of course demanded that you should examine by whom the report could have been spread among the multitude, and thus circulated through the world. For it could not have been by the Christians themselves, I suppose, since by the very constitution and law of all mysteries the obligation of silence is imposed. How much more would this be the case in such (mysteries as are ascribed to us), which, if divulged, could not fail to bring down instant punishment from the prompt resentment of men! Since, therefore, the Christians are not their own betrayers, it follows that it must be strangers. Now I ask, how could strangers obtain knowledge of us, when even true and lawful mysteries exclude every stranger from witnessing them, unless illicit ones are less exclusive? Well, then, it is more in keeping with the character of strangers both to be ignorant (of the true state of a case), and to invent (a false account). Our domestic servants (perhaps) listened, and peeped through crevices and holes, and stealthily got information of our ways. What, then, shall we say when our servants betray them to you? 557 It is better, (to be sure,) 558 for us all not to be betrayed by any; but still, if our practices be so atrocious, how much more proper is it when a righteous indignation bursts asunder even all ties of domestic fidelity? How was it possible for it to endure what horrified the mind and affrighted the eye? This is also a wonderful thing, both that he who was so overcome with impatient excitement as to turn informer, 559 did not likewise desire to prove (what he reported), and that he who heard the informer’s story did not care to see for himself, since no doubt the reward 560 is equal both for the informer who proves what he reports, and for the hearer who convinces himself of the credibility 561 of what he hears. But then you say that (this is precisely what has taken place): first came the rumour, then the exhibition of the proof; first the hearsay, then the inspection; and after this, fame received its commission. Now this, I must say, 562 surpasses all admiration, that that was once for all detected and divulged which is being for ever repeated, unless, forsooth, we have by this time ceased from the reiteration of such things 563 (as are alleged of us). But we are called still by the same (offensive) name, and we are supposed to be still engaged in the same practices, and we multiply from day to day; the more 564 we are, to the more become we objects of hatred. Hatred increases as the material for it increases. Now, seeing that the multitude of offenders is ever advancing, how is it that the crowd of informers does not keep equal pace therewith? To the best of my belief, even our manner of life 565 has become better known; you know the very days of our assemblies; therefore we are both besieged, and attacked, and kept prisoners actually in our secret congregations. Yet who ever came upon a half-consumed corpse (amongst us)? Who has detected the traces of a bite in our blood-steeped loaf? Who has discovered, by a sudden light invading our darkness, any marks of impurity, I will not say of incest, (in our feasts)? If we save ourselves by a bribe 566 from being dragged out before the public gaze with such a character, how is it that we are still oppressed? We have it indeed in our own power not to be thus apprehended at all; for who either sells or buys information about a crime, if the crime itself has no existence? But why need I disparagingly refer to 567 strange spies and informers, when you allege against us such charges as we certainly do not ourselves divulge with very much noise—either as soon as you hear of them, if we previously show them to you, or after you have yourselves discovered them, if they are for the time concealed from you? For no doubt, 568 when any desire initiation in the mysteries, their custom is first to go to the master or father of the sacred rites. Then he will say (to the applicant), You must bring an infant, as a guarantee for our rites, to be sacrificed, as well as some bread to be broken and dipped in his blood; you also want candles, and dogs tied together to upset them, and bits of meat to rouse the dogs. Moreover, a mother too, or a sister, is necessary for you. What, however, is to be said if you have neither? I suppose in that case you could not be a genuine Christian. Now, do let me ask you, Will such things, when reported by strangers, bear to be spread about (as charges against us)? It is impossible for such persons to understand proceedings in which they take no part. 569 The first step of the process is perpetrated with artifice; our feasts and our marriages are invented and detailed 570 by ignorant persons, who had never before heard about Christian mysteries. And though they afterwards cannot help acquiring some knowledge of them, it is even then as having to be administered by others whom they bring on the scene. 571 Besides, how absurd is it that the profane know mysteries which the priest knows not! They keep them all to themselves, then, 572 and take them for granted; and so these tragedies, (worse than those) of Thyestes or Œdipus, do not at all come forth to light, nor find their way 573 to the public. Even more voracious bites take nothing away from the credit 574 of such as are initiated, whether servants or masters. If, however, none of these allegations can be proved to be true, how incalculable must be esteemed the grandeur (of that religion) which is manifestly not overbalanced even by the burden of these vast atrocities! O ye heathen; who have and deserve our pity, 575 behold, we set before you the promise which our sacred system offers. It guarantees eternal life to such as follow and observe it; on the other hand, it threatens with the eternal punishment of an unending fire those who are profane and hostile; while to both classes alike is preached a resurrection from the dead. We are not now concerned 576 about the doctrine of these (verities), which are discussed in their proper place. 577 Meanwhile, however, believe them, even as we do ourselves, for I want to know whether you are ready to reach them, as we do, through such crimes. Come, whosoever you are, plunge your sword into an infant; or if that is another’s office, then simply gaze at the breathing creature 578 dying before it has lived; at any rate, catch its fresh 579 blood in which to steep your bread; then feed yourself without stint; and whilst this is going on, recline. Carefully distinguish the places where your mother or your sister may have made their bed; mark them well, in order that, when the shades of night have fallen upon them, putting of course to the test the care of every one of you, you may not make the awkward mistake of alighting on somebody else: 580 you would have to make an atonement, if you failed of the incest. When you have effected all this, eternal life will be in store for you. I want you to tell me whether you think eternal life worth such a price. No, indeed, 581 you do not believe it: even if you did believe it, I maintain that you would be unwilling to give (the fee); or if willing, would be unable. But why should others be able if you are unable? Why should you be able if others are unable? What would you wish impunity (and) eternity to stand you in? 582 Do you suppose that these (blessings) can be bought by us at any price? Have Christians teeth of a different sort from others? Have they more ample jaws? 583 Are they of different nerve for incestuous lust? I trow not. It is enough for us to differ from you in condition 584 by truth alone.
Footnotes
114:545Comp. The Apology, cc. vii, viii.
114:546Æneid. iv. 174.
“Fame, than which never plague that runs
Its way more swiftly wins.”—Conington.
114:547“A plague” = malum.
114:548Quid? quod “Yea more.”
114:549Ambitione.
114:550Traduces.
114:551Prodigiam. The word is “indicem” in The Apology.
114:552Disciplina ejus illuxit.
114:553Damnatio invaluit.
114:554Æmula sibi.
114:555Divinitatem consecutæ.
114:556See above, c. ii. note.
115:557i.e., What is the value of such evidence?
115:558We have inserted this phrase as the sentence is strongly ironical.
115:559Deferre, an infinitive of purpose, of which construction of our author Oehler gives examples.
115:560Fructus.
115:561Si etiam sibi credat.
115:562Quidem.
115:563Talia factitare.
115:564We read “quo,” and not “quod,” because.
115:565Conversatio.
115:566This refers to a calumny which the heathen frequently spread about the Christians.
115:567Detrectem or simply “treat of,” “refer to,” like the simple verb “tractare.”
115:568The irony of all this passage is evident.
115:569Diversum opus.
115:570Subjiciuntur “are stealthily narrated.”
116:571Inducunt.
116:572It is difficult to see what this “tacent igitur” means without referring to the similar passage in The Apology (end of c. viii.), which supplies a link wanted in the context. “At all events,” says he, “they know this afterward, and yet submit to it, and allow it. They fear to be punished, while, if they proclaimed the truth, they would deserve universal approbation.” Tertullian here states what the enemies of the Christians used to allege against them. After discovering the alleged atrocities of their secret assemblies, they kept their knowledge forsooth to themselves, being afraid of the consequences of a disclosure, etc.
116:573We have for convenience treated “protrahunt” (q.d. “nor do they report them”) as a neuter verb.
116:574Even worse than Thyestean atrocities would be believed of them.
116:575Miseræ atque miserandæ.
116:576Viderimus.
116:577See below, in c. xix.
116:578Animam.
116:579Rudem, “hardly formed.”
116:580Extraneam.
116:581Immo idcirco.
116:582Quanto constare.
116:583“An alii ordines dentium Christianorum, et alii specus faucium?” (literally, “Have Christians other sets of teeth, and other caverns of jaws?”) This seems to refer to voracious animals like the shark, whose terrible teeth, lying in several rows, and greediness to swallow anything, however incongruous, that comes in its way, are well-known facts in natural history.
116:584Positione.
Chapter VIII. 585 —The Calumny Against the Christians Illustrated in the Discovery of Psammetichus. Refutation of the Story.
We are indeed said to be the “third race” of men. What, a dog-faced race? 586 Or broadly shadow-footed? 587 Or some subterranean 588 Antipodes? If you attach any meaning to these names, pray tell us what are the first and the second race, that so we may know something of this “third.” Psammetichus thought that he had hit upon the ingenious discovery of the primeval man. He is said to have removed certain new-born infants from all human intercourse, and to have entrusted them to a nurse, whom he had previously deprived of her tongue, in order that, being completely exiled from all sound of the human voice, they might form their speech without hearing it; and thus, deriving it from themselves alone, might indicate what that first nation was whose speech was dictated by nature. Their first utterance was Bekkos, a word which means “bread” in the language of Phrygia: the Phrygians, therefore, are supposed to be the first of the human race. 589 But it will not be out of place if we make one observation, with a view to show how your faith abandons itself more to vanities than to verities. Can it be, then, at all credible that the nurse retained her life, after the loss of so important a member, the very organ of the breath of life, 590 —cut out, too, from the very root, with her throat 591 mutilated, which cannot be wounded even on the outside without danger, and the putrid gore flowing back to the chest, and deprived for so long a time of her food? Come, even suppose that by the remedies of a Philomela she retained her life, in the way supposed by wisest persons, who account for the dumbness not by cutting out the tongue, but from the blush of shame; if on such a supposition she lived, she would still be able to blurt out some dull sound. And a shrill inarticulate noise from opening the mouth only, without any modulation of the lips, might be forced from the mere throat, though there were no tongue to help. This, it is probable, the infants readily imitated, and the more so because it was the only sound; only they did it a little more neatly, as they had tongues; 592 and then they attached to it a definite signification. Granted, then, that the Phrygians were the earliest race, it does not follow that the Christians are the third. For how many other nations come regularly after the Phrygians? Take care, however, lest those whom you call the third race should obtain the first rank, since there is no nation indeed which is not Christian. Whatever nation, therefore, was the first, is nevertheless Christian now. 593 It is ridiculous folly which makes you say we are the latest race, and then specifically call us the third. But it is in respect of our religion, 594 not of our nation, that we are supposed to be the third; the series being the Romans, the Jews, and the Christians after them. Where, then, are the Greeks? or if they are reckoned amongst the Romans in regard to their superstition (since it was from Greece that Rome borrowed even her gods), where at least are the Egyptians, since these have, so far as I know, a mysterious religion peculiar to themselves? Now, if they who belong to the third race are so monstrous, what must they be supposed to be who preceded them in the first and the second place?
Footnotes
116:585Compare The Apology, c. viii.
116:586Cynopæ. This class would furnish the unnatural “teeth,” and “jaws,” just referred to.
116:587Sciapodes with broad feet producing a large shade; suited for the “incestuous lust” above mentioned.
116:588Literally, “which come up from under ground.”
116:589Tertullian got this story from Herodotus, ii. 2.
117:590Ipsius animæ organo.
117:591Faucibus.
117:592Utpote linguatuli.
117:593This is one of the passages which incidentally show how widely spread was Christianity.
117:594De Superstitione.
Chapter IX. 595 —The Christians are Not the Cause of Public Calamities: There Were Such Troubles Before Christianity.
But why should I be astonished at your vain imputations? Under the same natural form, malice and folly have always been associated in one body and growth, and have ever opposed us under the one instigator of error. 596 Indeed, I feel no astonishment; and therefore, as it is necessary for my subject, I will enumerate some instances, that you may feel the astonishment by the enumeration of the folly into which you fall, when you insist on our being the causes of every public calamity or injury. If the Tiber has overflowed its banks, if the Nile has remained in its bed, if the sky has been still, or the earth been in commotion, if death 597 has made its devastations, or famine its afflictions, your cry immediately is, “This is the fault 598 of the Christians!” As if they who fear the true God could have to fear a light thing, or at least anything else (than an earthquake or famine, or such visitations). 599 I suppose it is as despisers of your gods that we call down on us these strokes of theirs. As we have remarked already, 600 three hundred years have not yet passed in our existence; but what vast scourges before that time fell on all the world, on its various cities and provinces! what terrible wars, both foreign and domestic! what pestilences, famines, conflagrations, yawnings, and quakings of the earth has history recorded! 601 Where were the Christians, then, when the Roman state furnished so many chronicles of its disasters? Where were the Christians when the islands Hiera, Anaphe, and Delos, and Rhodes, and Cea were desolated with multitudes of men? or, again, when the land mentioned by Plato as larger than Asia or Africa was sunk in the Atlantic Sea? or when fire from heaven overwhelmed Volsinii, and flames from their own mountain consumed Pompeii? when the sea of Corinth was engulphed by an earthquake? when the whole world was destroyed by the deluge? Where then were (I will not say the Christians, who despise your gods, but) your gods themselves, who are proved to be of later origin than that great ruin by the very places and cities in which they were born, sojourned, and were buried, and even those which they founded? For else they would not have remained to the present day, unless they had been more recent than that catastrophe. If you do not care to peruse and reflect upon these testimonies of history, the record of which affects you differently from us, 602 in order especially that you may not have to tax your gods with extreme injustice, since they injure even their worshippers on account of their despisers, do you not then prove yourselves to be also in the wrong, when you hold them to be gods, who make no distinction between the deserts of yourselves and profane persons? If, however, as it is now and then very vainly said, you incur the chastisement of your gods because you are too slack in our extirpation, you then have settled the question 603 of their weakness and insignificance; for they would not be angry with you for loitering over our punishment, if they could do anything themselves,—although you admit the same thing indeed in another way, whenever by inflicting punishment on us you seem to be avenging them. If one interest is maintained by another party, that which defends is the greater of the two. What a shame, then, must it be for gods to be defended by a human being!
Footnotes
117:595Comp. The Apology, cc. xl. xli. [And Augustine, Civ. Dei. iii.]
117:596By the “manceps erroris” he means the devil.
117:597Libitina.
117:598Christianorum meritum, which with “sit” may also, “Let the Christians have their due.” In The Apology the cry is, “Christianos ad leonem.”
117:599We insert this after Oehler. Tertullian’s words are, “Quasi modicum habeant aut aliud metuere qui Deum verum.”
117:600See above, c. vii.
117:601Sæculum digessit.
117:602Aliter vobis renuntiata.
118:603Absolutum est.
Chapter X. 604 —The Christians are Not the Only Contemners of the Gods. Contempt of Them Often Displayed by Heathen Official Persons. Homer Made the Gods Contemptible.
Pour out now all your venom; fling against this name of ours all your shafts of calumny: I shall stay no longer to refute them; but they shall by and by be blunted, when we come to explain our entire discipline. 605 I shall content myself now indeed with plucking these shafts out of our own body, and hurling them back on yourselves. The same wounds which you have inflicted on us by your charges I shall show to be imprinted on yourselves, that you may fall by your own swords and javelins. 606 Now, first, when you direct against us the general charge of divorcing ourselves from the institutions of our forefathers, consider again and again whether you are not yourselves open to that accusation in common with us. For when I look through your life and customs, lo, what do I discover but the old order of things corrupted, nay, destroyed by you? Of the laws I have already said, that you are daily supplanting them with novel decrees and statutes. As to everything else in your manner of life, how great are the changes you have made from your ancestors—in your style, your dress, your equipage, your very food, and even in your speech; for the old-fashioned you banish, as if it were offensive to you! Everywhere, in your public pursuits and private duties, antiquity is repealed; all the authority of your forefathers your own authority has superseded. To be sure, 607 you are for ever praising old customs; but this is only to your greater discredit, for you nevertheless persistently reject them. How great must your perverseness have been, to have bestowed approbation on your ancestors’ institutions, which were too inefficient to be lasting, all the while that you were rejecting the very objects of your approbation! But even that very heir-loom 608 of your forefathers, which you seem to guard and defend with greatest fidelity, in which you actually 609 find your strongest grounds for impeaching us as violators of the law, and from which your hatred of the Christian name derives all its life—I mean the worship of the gods—I shall prove to be undergoing ruin and contempt from yourselves no less than 610 (from us),—unless it be that there is no reason for our being regarded as despisers of the gods like yourselves, on the ground that nobody despises what he knows has absolutely no existence. What certainly exists can be despised. That which is nothing, suffers nothing. From those, therefore, to whom it is an existing thing, 611 must necessarily proceed the suffering which affects it. All the heavier, then, is the accusation which burdens you who believe that there are gods and (at the same time) despise them, who worship and also reject them, who honour and also assail them. One may also gather the same conclusion from this consideration, above all: since you worship various gods, some one and some another, you of course despise those which you do not worship. A preference for the one is not possible without slighting the other, and no choice can be made without a rejection. He who selects some one out of many, has already slighted the other which he does not select. But it is impossible that so many and so great gods can be worshipped by all. Then you must have exercised your contempt (in this matter) even at the beginning, since indeed you were not then afraid of so ordering things, that all the gods could not become objects of worship to all. For those very wise and prudent ancestors of yours, whose institutions you know not how to repeal, especially in respect of your gods, are themselves found to have been impious. I am much mistaken, if they did not sometimes decree that no general should dedicate a temple, which he may have vowed in battle, before the senate gave its sanction; as in the case of Marcus Æmilius, who had made a vow to the god Alburnus. Now is it not confessedly the greatest impiety, nay, the greatest insult, to place the honour of the Deity at the will and pleasure of human judgment, so that there cannot be a god except the senate permit him? Many times have the censors destroyed 612 (a god) without consulting the people. Father Bacchus, with all his ritual, was certainly by the consuls, on the senate’s authority, cast not only out of the city, but out of all Italy; whilst Varro informs us that Serapis also, and Isis, and Arpocrates, and Anubis, were excluded from the Capitol, and that their altars which the senate had thrown down were only restored by the popular violence. The Consul Gabinius, however, on the first day of the ensuing January, although he gave a tardy consent to some sacrifices, in deference to the crowd which assembled, because he had failed to decide about Serapis and Isis, yet held the judgment of the senate to be more potent than the clamour of the multitude, and forbade the altars to be built. Here, then, you have amongst your own forefathers, if not the name, at all events the procedure, 613 of the Christians, which despises the gods. If, however, you were even innocent of the charge of treason against them in the honour you pay them, I still find that you have made a consistent advance in superstition as well as impiety. For how much more irreligious are you found to be! There are your household gods, the Lares and the Penates, which you possess 614 by a family consecration: 615 you even tread them profanely under foot, you and your domestics, by hawking and pawning them for your wants or your whims. Such insolent sacrilege might be excusable, if it were not practised against your humbler deities; as it is, the case is only the more insolent. There is, however, some consolation for your private household gods under these affronts, that you treat your public deities with still greater indignity and insolence. First of all, you advertise them for auction, submit them to public sale, knock them down to the highest bidder, when you every five years bring them to the hammer among your revenues. For this purpose you frequent the temple of Serapis or the Capitol, hold your sales there, 616 conclude your contracts, 617 as if they were markets, with the well-known 618 voice of the crier, (and) the self-same levy 619 of the quæstor. Now lands become cheaper when burdened with tribute, and men by the capitation tax diminish in value (these are the well-known marks of slavery). But the gods, the more tribute they pay, become more holy; or rather, 620 the more holy they are, the more tribute do they pay. Their majesty is converted into an article of traffic; men drive a business with their religion; the sanctity of the gods is beggared with sales and contracts. You make merchandise of the ground of your temples, of the approach to your altars, of your offerings, 621 of your sacrifices. 622 You sell the whole divinity (of your gods). You will not permit their gratuitous worship. The auctioneers necessitate more repairs 623 than the priests.
It was not enough that you had insolently made a profit of your gods, if we would test the amount of your contempt; and you are not content to have withheld honour from them, you must also depreciate the little you do render to them by some indignity or other. What, indeed, do you do by way of honouring your gods, which you do not equally offer to your dead? You build temples for the gods, you erect temples also to the dead; you build altars for the gods, you build them also for the dead; you inscribe the same superscription over both; you sketch out the same lineaments for their statues—as best suits their genius, or profession, or age; you make an old man of Saturn, a beardless youth of Apollo; you form a virgin from Diana; in Mars you consecrate a soldier, a blacksmith in Vulcan. No wonder, therefore, if you slay the same victims and burn the same odours for your dead as you do for your gods. What excuse can be found for that insolence which classes the dead of whatever sort 624 as equal with the gods? Even to your princes there are assigned the services of priests and sacred ceremonies, and chariots, 625 and cars, and the honours of the solisternia and the lectisternia, holidays and games. Rightly enough, 626 since heaven is open to them; still it is none the less contumelious to the gods: in the first place, because it could not possibly be decent that other beings should be numbered with them, even if it has been given to them to become divine after their birth; in the second place, because the witness who beheld the man caught up into heaven 627 would not forswear himself so freely and palpably before the people, if it were not for the contempt felt about the objects sworn to both by himself and those 628 who allow the perjury. For these feel of themselves, that what is sworn to is nothing; and more than that, they go so far as to fee the witness, because he had the courage to publicly despise the avengers of perjury. Now, as to that, who among you is pure of the charge of perjury? By this time, indeed, there is an end to all danger in swearing by the gods, since the oath by Cæsar carries with it more influential scruples, which very circumstance indeed tends to the degradation of your gods; for those who perjure themselves when swearing by Cæsar are more readily punished than those who violate an oath to a Jupiter. But, of the two kindred feelings of contempt and derision, contempt is the more honourable, having a certain glory in its arrogance; for it sometimes proceeds from confidence, or the security of consciousness, or a natural loftiness of mind. Derision, however, is a more wanton feeling, and so far it points more directly 629 to a carping insolence. Now only consider what great deriders of your gods you show yourselves to be! I say nothing of your indulgence of this feeling during your sacrificial acts, how you offer for your victims the poorest and most emaciated creatures; or else of the sound and healthy animals only the portions which are useless for food, such as the heads and hoofs, or the plucked feathers and hair, and whatever at home you would have thrown away. I pass over whatever may seem to the taste 630 of the vulgar and profane to have constituted the religion 631 of your forefathers; but then the most learned and serious classes (for seriousness and wisdom to some extent 632 profess 633 to be derived from learning) are always, in fact, the most irreverent towards your gods; and if their learning ever halts, it is only to make up for the remissness by a more shameful invention of follies and falsehoods about their gods. I will begin with that enthusiastic fondness which you show for him from whom every depraved writer gets his dreams, to whom you ascribe as much honour as you derogate from your gods, by magnifying him who has made such sport of them. I mean Homer by this description. He it is, in my opinion, who has treated the majesty of the Divine Being on the low level of human condition, imbuing the gods with the falls 634 and the passions of men; who has pitted them against each other with varying success, like pairs of gladiators: he wounds Venus with an arrow from a human hand; he keeps Mars a prisoner in chains for thirteen months, with the prospect of perishing; 635 he parades 636 Jupiter as suffering a like indignity from a crowd of celestial (rebels;) or he draws from him tears for Sarpedon; or he represents him wantoning with Juno in the most disgraceful way, advocating his incestuous passion for her by a description and enumeration of his various amours. Since then, which of the poets has not, on the authority of their great prince, calumniated the gods, by either betraying truth or feigning falsehood? Have the dramatists also, whether in tragedy or comedy, refrained from making the gods the authors 637 of the calamities and retributions (of their plays)? I say nothing of your philosophers, whom a certain inspiration of truth itself elevates against the gods, and secures from all fear in their proud severity and stern discipline. Take, for example, 638 Socrates. In contempt of your gods, he swears by an oak, and a dog, and a goat. Now, although he was condemned to die for this very reason, the Athenians afterwards repented of that condemnation, and even put to death his accusers. By this conduct of theirs the testimony of Socrates is replaced at its full value, and I am enabled to meet you with this retort, that in his case you have approbation bestowed on that which is now-a-days reprobated in us. But besides this instance there is Diogenes, who, I know not to what extent, made sport of Hercules; whilst Varro, that Diogenes of the Roman cut, 639 introduces to our view some three hundred Joves, or, as they ought to be called, Jupiters, 640 (and all) without heads. Your other wanton wits 641 likewise minister to your pleasures by disgracing the gods. Examine carefully the sacrilegious 642 beauties of your Lentuli and Hostii; now, is it the players or your gods who become the objects of your mirth in their tricks and jokes? Then, again, with what pleasure do you take up the literature of the stage, which describes all the foul conduct of the gods! Their majesty is defiled in your presence in some unchaste body. The mask of some deity, at your will, 643 covers some infamous paltry head. The Sun mourns for the death of his son by a lightning-flash amid your rude rejoicing. Cybele sighs for a shepherd who disdains her, without raising a blush on your cheek; and you quietly endure songs which celebrate 644 the gallantries of Jove. You are, of course, possessed of a more religious spirit in the show of your gladiators, when your gods dance, with equal zest, over the spilling of human blood, (and) over those filthy penalties which are at once their proof and plot for executing your criminals, or else (when) your criminals are punished personating the gods themselves. 645 We have often witnessed in a mutilated criminal your god of Pessinum, Attis; a wretch burnt alive has personated Hercules. We have laughed at the sport of your mid-day game of the gods, when Father Pluto, Jove’s own brother, drags away, hammer in hand, the remains of the gladiators; when Mercury, with his winged cap and heated wand, tests with his cautery whether the bodies were really lifeless, or only feigning death. Who now can investigate every particular of this sort although so destructive of the honour of the Divine Being, and so humiliating to His majesty? They all, indeed, have their origin 646 in a contempt (of the gods), on the part both of those who practise 647 these personations, as well as of those 648 who are susceptible of being so represented. 649 I hardly know, therefore, whether your gods have more reason to complain of yourselves or of us. After despising them on the one hand, you flatter them on the other; if you fail in any duty towards them, you appease them with a fee; 650 in short, you allow yourselves to act towards them in any way you please. We, however, live in a consistent and entire aversion to them.
Footnotes
118:604Comp. The Apology, cc. xii. xiii. xiv. xv.
118:605See The Apology (passim), especially cc. xvi.–xxiv., xxx.–xxxvi., and xxxix.
118:606Admentationibus.
118:607Plane.
118:608Traditum.
118:609Vel.
118:610Perinde a vobis.
118:611Quibus est.
119:612Adsolaverunt, “thrown to the ground;” “floored.”
119:613Sectam. [Rather—“A Christian secession.”]
119:614Perhibetis.
119:615Domestica consecratione, i.e., “for family worship.”
119:616Addicitur.
119:617Conducitur.
119:618Eadem.
119:619Exactione, “as excise duty for the treasury.”
119:620Immo.
119:621“In money,” stipibus.
119:622“ Victims. ”
119:623Plus refigitur.
119:624Utut mortuos.
119:625Tensæ.
119:626Plane.
119:627Rigaltius has the name Proculus in his text; but Tertullian refers not merely to that case but to a usual functionary, necessary in all cases of deification.
120:628Oehler reads “ei” (of course for “ii”); Rigalt. reads “ii.”
120:629Denotatior ad.
120:630Gulæ, “Depraved taste.”
120:631Prope religionem convenire, “to have approximated to.”
120:632Quatenus.
120:633Credunt, one would expect “creduntur” (“are supposed”), which is actually read by Gothofredus.
120:634Or, “circumstances” (casibus).
120:635Fortasse periturum.
120:636Traducit, perhaps “degrades.”
120:637Ut dei præfarentur. Oehler explains the verb “præfari” to mean “auctorem esse et tanquam caput.”
120:638Denique.
120:639Stili.
120:640Tertullian gives the comic plural “Juppiteres.”
120:641Ingenia.
120:642Because appropriating to themselves the admiration which was due to the gods.
120:643Cujuslibet dei.
121:644Sustinetis modulari.
121:645It is best to add the original of this almost unintelligible passage: “Plane religiosiores estis in gladiatorum cavea, ubi super sanguinem humanum, supra inquinamenta pœnarum proinde saltant dei vestri argumenta et historias nocentibus erogandis, aut in ipsis deis nocentes puniuntur.” Some little light may be derived from the parallel passage of the Apology (c. xv.), which is expressed somewhat less obscurely. Instead of the words in italics, Tertullian there substitutes these: “Argumenta et historias noxiis ministrantes, nisi quod et ipsos deos vestros sæpe noxii induunt”—“whilst furnishing the proofs and the plots for (executing) criminals, only that the said criminals often act the part of your gods themselves.” Oehler refers, in illustration of the last clause, to the instance of the notorious robber Laureolus, who personated Prometheus; others, again, personated Laureolus himself: some criminals had to play the part of Orpheus; others of Mutius Scævola. It will be observed that these executions were with infamous perverseness set off with scenic show, wherein the criminal enacted some violent death in yielding up his own life. The indignant irony of the whole passage, led off by the “plane religiosiores estis,” is evident.
121:646Censentur.
121:647Factitant.
121:648i.e., the gods themselves.
121:649Redimitis.
121:650Redimitis.
Chapter XI. 651 —The Absurd Cavil of the Ass’s Head Disposed of.
In this matter we are (said to be) guilty not merely of forsaking the religion of the community, but of introducing a monstrous superstition; for some among you have dreamed that our god is an ass’s head,—an absurdity which Cornelius Tacitus first suggested. In the fourth book of his histories, 652 where he is treating of the Jewish war, he begins his description with the origin of that nation, and gives his own views respecting both the origin and the name of their religion. He relates that the Jews, in their migration in the desert, when suffering for want of water, escaped by following for guides some wild asses, which they supposed to be going in quest of water after pasture, and that on this account the image of one of these animals was worshipped by the Jews. From this, I suppose, it was presumed that we, too, from our close connection with the Jewish religion, have ours consecrated under the same emblematic form. The same Cornelius Tacitus, however,—who, to say the truth, is most loquacious in falsehood—forgetting his later statement, relates how Pompey the Great, after conquering the Jews and capturing Jerusalem, entered the temple, but found nothing in the shape of an image, though he examined the place carefully. Where, then, should their God have been found? Nowhere else, of course, than in so memorable a temple which was carefully shut to all but the priests, and into which there could be no fear of a stranger entering. But what apology must I here offer for what I am going to say, when I have no other object at the moment than to make a passing remark or two in a general way which shall be equally applicable to yourselves? 653 Suppose that our God, then, be an asinine person, will you at all events deny that you possess the same characteristics with ourselves in that matter? (Not their heads only, but) entire asses, are, to be sure, objects of adoration to you, along with their tutelar Epona; and all herds, and cattle, and beasts you consecrate, and their stables into the bargain! This, perhaps, is your grievance against us, that, when surrounded by cattle-worshippers of every kind we are simply devoted to asses!
Footnotes
121:651Comp. The Apology, c. xvi.
121:652In The Apology (c. xvi.) the reference is to “the fifth book.” This is correct. Book v. c. 3, is meant.
121:653In vobis, for “in vos” ex pari transferendorum.
Chapter XII. 654 —The Charge of Worshipping a Cross. The Heathens Themselves Made Much of Crosses in Sacred Things; Nay, Their Very Idols Were Formed on a Crucial Frame.
As for him who affirms that we are “the priesthood of a cross,” 655 we shall claim him 656 as our co-religionist. 657 A cross is, in its material, a sign of wood; amongst yourselves also the object of worship is a wooden figure. Only, whilst with you the figure is a human one, with us the wood is its own figure. Never mind 658 for the present what is the shape, provided the material is the same: the form, too, is of no importance, 659 if so be it be the actual body of a god. If, however, there arises a question of difference on this point what, (let me ask,) is the difference between the Athenian Pallas, or the Pharian Ceres, and wood formed into a cross, 660 when each is represented by a rough stock, without form, and by the merest rudiment of a statue 661 of unformed wood? Every piece of timber 662 which is fixed in the ground in an erect position is a part of a cross, and indeed the greater portion of its mass. But an entire cross is attributed to us, with its transverse beam, 663 of course, and its projecting seat. Now you have the less to excuse you, for you dedicate to religion only a mutilated imperfect piece of wood, while others consecrate to the sacred purpose a complete structure. The truth, however, after all is, that your religion is all cross, as I shall show. You are indeed unaware that your gods in their origin have proceeded from this hated cross. 664 Now, every image, whether carved out of wood or stone, or molten in metal, or produced out of any other richer material, must needs have had plastic hands engaged in its formation. Well, then, this modeller, 665 before he did anything else, 666 hit upon the form of a wooden cross, because even our own body assumes as its natural position the latent and concealed outline of a cross. Since the head rises upwards, and the back takes a straight direction, and the shoulders project laterally, if you simply place a man with his arms and hands outstretched, you will make the general outline of a cross. Starting, then, from this rudimental form and prop, 667 as it were, he applies a covering of clay, and so gradually completes the limbs, and forms the body, and covers the cross within with the shape which he meant to impress upon the clay; then from this design, with the help of compasses and leaden moulds, he has got all ready for his image which is to be brought out into marble, or clay, or whatever the material be of which he has determined to make his god. (This, then, is the process:) after the cross-shaped frame, the clay; after the clay, the god. In a well-understood routine, the cross passes into a god through the clayey medium. The cross then you consecrate, and from it the consecrated (deity) begins to derive his origin. 668 By way of example, let us take the case of a tree which grows up into a system of branches and foliage, and is a reproduction of its own kind, whether it springs from the kernel of an olive, or the stone of a peach, or a grain of pepper which has been duly tempered under ground. Now, if you transplant it, or take a cutting off its branches for another plant, to what will you attribute what is produced by the propagation? Will it not be to the grain, or the stone, or the kernel? Because, as the third stage is attributable to the second, and the second in like manner to the first, so the third will have to be referred to the first, through the second as the mean. We need not stay any longer in the discussion of this point, since by a natural law every kind of produce throughout nature refers back its growth to its original source; and just as the product is comprised in its primal cause, so does that cause agree in character with the thing produced. Since, then, in the production of your gods, you worship the cross which originates them, here will be the original kernel and grain, from which are propagated the wooden materials of your idolatrous images. Examples are not far to seek. Your victories you celebrate with religious ceremony 669 as deities; and they are the more august in proportion to the joy they bring you. The frames on which you hang up your trophies must be crosses: these are, as it were, the very core of your pageants. 670 Thus, in your victories, the religion of your camp makes even crosses objects of worship; your standards it adores, your standards are the sanction of its oaths; your standards it prefers before Jupiter himself. But all that parade 671 of images, and that display of pure gold, are (as so many) necklaces of the crosses. In like manner also, in the banners and ensigns, which your soldiers guard with no less sacred care, you have the streamers (and) vestments of your crosses. You are ashamed, I suppose, to worship unadorned and simple crosses.
Footnotes
121:654Comp. The Apology, c. xvi.
122:655Crucis antistites.
122:656Erit.
122:657Consacraneus.
122:658Viderint.
122:659Viderit.
122:660Stipite crucis.
122:661Solo staticulo. The use of wood in the construction of an idol is mentioned afterward.
122:662Omne robur.
122:663Antemna. See our Anti-Marcion, p. 156. Ed. Edinburgh.
122:664De isto patibulo.
122:665Plasta.
122:666In primo.
122:667Statumini.
122:668Comp. The Apology, c. xii.: “Every image of a god has been first constructed on a cross and stake, and plastered with cement. The body of your god is first dedicated upon a gibbet.”
122:669Veneramini.
122:670Tropæum, for “tropæorum.” We have given the sense rather than the words of this awkward sentence.
122:671Suggestus.
Chapter XIII. 672 —The Charge of Worshipping the Sun Met by a Retort.
Others, with greater regard to good manners, it must be confessed, suppose that the sun is the god of the Christians, because it is a well-known fact that we pray towards the east, or because we make Sunday a day of festivity. What then? Do you do less than this? Do not many among you, with an affectation of sometimes worshipping the heavenly bodies likewise, move your lips in the direction of the sunrise? It is you, at all events, who have even admitted the sun into the calendar of the week; and you have selected its day, 673 in preference to the preceding day 674 as the most suitable in the week 675 for either an entire abstinence from the bath, or for its postponement until the evening, or for taking rest and for banqueting. By resorting to these customs, you deliberately deviate from your own religious rites to those of strangers. For the Jewish feasts on the Sabbath and “the Purification,” 676 and Jewish also are the ceremonies of the lamps, 677 and the fasts of unleavened bread, and the “littoral prayers,” 678 all which institutions and practices are of course foreign from your gods. Wherefore, that I may return from this digression, you who reproach us with the sun and Sunday should consider your proximity to us. We are not far off from your Saturn and your days of rest.
Footnotes
123:672Comp. The Apology, c. xvi.
123:673Sunday.
123:674Saturday.
123:675Ex diebus.
123:676On the “Cœna pura,” see our Anti-Marcion, p. 386, note 4.
123:677See Lev. xxiv. 2; also 2 Chron. xiii. 11. Witsius (Ægyptiaca, ii. 16, 17) compares the Jewish with the Egyptian “ritus lucernarum.”
123:678Tertullian, in his tract de Jejun. xvi., speaks of the Jews praying (after the loss of their temple, and in their dispersion) in the open air, “per omne litus.”
Chapter XIV. 679 —The Vile Calumny About Onocoetes Retorted on the Heathen by Tertullian.
Report has introduced a new calumny respecting our God. Not so long ago, a most abandoned wretch in that city of yours, 680 a man who had deserted indeed his own religion—a Jew, in fact, who had only lost his skin, flayed of course by wild beasts, 681 against which he enters the lists for hire day after day with a sound body, and so in a condition to lose his skin 682 —carried about in public a caricature of us with this label: Onocoetes. 683 This (figure) had ass’s ears, and was dressed in a toga with a book, having a hoof on one of his feet. And the crowd believed this infamous Jew. For what other set of men is the seed-plot 684 of all the calumny against us? Throughout the city, therefore, Onocoetes is all the talk. As, however, it is less then “a nine days’ wonder,” 685 and so destitute of all authority from time, and weak enough from the character of its author, I shall gratify myself by using it simply in the way of a retort. Let us then see whether you are not here also found in our company. Now it matters not what their form may be, when our concern is about deformed images. You have amongst you gods with a dog’s head, and a lion’s head, with the horns of a cow, and a ram, and a goat, goat-shaped or serpent-shaped, and winged in foot, head, and back. Why therefore brand our one God so conspicuously? Many an Onocoetes is found amongst yourselves.
Footnotes
123:679Comp. The Apology, c. xvi.
123:680In ista civitate, Rome.
123:681This is explained in the passage of The Apology (xvi.): “He had for money exposed himself with criminals to fight with wild beasts.”
123:682Decutiendus, from a jocular word, “decutire.”
123:683This curious word is compounded of ὅνος, an ass, and κοιᾶσθαι, which Hesychius explains by ἰερᾶσθαι, to act as a priest. The word therefore means, “asinarius sacerdos,” “an ass of a priest.” Calumnious enough; but suited to the vile occasion, and illustrative of the ribald opposition which Christianity had to encounter.
123:684We take Rigaltius’ reading, “seminarium.”
123:685Tanquam hesternum.
Chapter XV. 686 —The Charge of Infanticide Retorted on the Heathen.
Since we are on a par in respect of the gods, it follows that there is no difference between us on the point of sacrifice, or even of worship, 687 if I may be allowed to make good our comparison from another sort of evidence. We begin our religious service, or initiate our mysteries, with slaying an infant. As for you, since your own transactions in human blood and infanticide have faded from your memory, you shall be duly reminded of them in the proper place; we now postpone most of the instances, that we may not seem to be everywhere 688 handling the selfsame topics. Meanwhile, as I have said, the comparison between us does not fail in another point of view. For if we are infanticides in one sense, you also can hardly be deemed such in any other sense; because, although you are forbidden by the laws to slay new-born infants, it so happens that no laws are evaded with more impunity or greater safety, with the deliberate knowledge of the public, and the suffrages 689 of this entire age. 690 Yet there is no great difference between us, only you do not kill your infants in the way of a sacred rite, nor (as a service) to God. But then you make away with them in a more cruel manner, because you expose them to the cold and hunger, and to wild beasts, or else you get rid of them by the slower death of drowning. If, however, there does occur any dissimilarity between us in this matter, 691 you must not overlook the fact that it is your own dear children 692 whose life you quench; and this will supplement, nay, abundantly aggravate, on your side of the question, whatever is defective in us on other grounds. Well, but we are said to sup off our impious sacrifice! Whilst we postpone to a more suitable place 693 whatever resemblance even to this practice is discoverable amongst yourselves, we are not far removed from you in voracity. If in the one case there is unchastity, and in ours cruelty, we are still on the same footing (if I may so far admit our guilt 694 ) in nature, where cruelty is always found in concord with unchastity. But, after all, what do you less than we; or rather, what do you not do in excess of us? I wonder whether it be a small matter to you 695 to pant for human entrails, because you devour full-grown men alive? Is it, forsooth, only a trifle to lick up human blood, when you draw out 696 the blood which was destined to live? Is it a light thing in your view to feed on an infant, when you consume one wholly before it is come to the birth? 697
Footnotes
123:686Comp. The Apology, c. ix.
123:687Sacri.
123:688He refers in this passage to his Apology, especially c. ix.
123:689Tabellis.
123:690Unius ætatis. This Oehler explains by “per unam jam totam hanc ætatem.”
124:691Genere.
124:692Pignora, scil. amoris.
124:693See Apology, c. ix.
124:694Si forte.
124:695Parum scilicet?
124:696Elicitis.
124:697Infantem totum præcocum.
Chapter XVI. 698 —Other Charges Repelled by the Same Method. The Story of the Noble Roman Youth and His Parents.
I am now come to the hour for extinguishing the lamps, and for using the dogs, and practising the deeds of darkness. And on this point I am afraid I must succumb to you; for what similar accusation shall I have to bring against you? But you should at once commend the cleverness with which we make our incest look modest, in that we have devised a spurious night, 699 to avoid polluting the real light and darkness, and have even thought it right to dispense with earthly lights, and to play tricks also with our conscience. For whatever we do ourselves, we suspect in others when we choose (to be suspicious). As for your incestuous deeds, on the contrary, 700 men enjoy them at full liberty, in the face of day, or in the natural night, or before high Heaven; and in proportion to their successful issue is your own ignorance of the result, since you publicly indulge in your incestuous intercourse in the full cognizance of broad day-light. (No ignorance, however, conceals our conduct from our eyes,) for in the very darkness we are able to recognise our own misdeeds. The Persians, you know very well, 701 according to Ctesias, live quite promiscuously with their mothers, in full knowledge of the fact, and without any horror; whilst of the Macedonians it is well known that they constantly do the same thing, and with perfect approbation: for once, when the blinded 702 Œdipus came upon their stage, they greeted him with laughter and derisive cheers. The actor, taking off his mask in great alarm, said, “Gentlemen, have I displeased you?” “Certainly not,” replied the Macedonians, “you have played your part well enough; but either the author was very silly, if he invented (this mutilation as an atonement for the incest), or else Œdipus was a great fool for his pains if he really so punished himself;” and then they shouted out one to the other, ῝Ηλσυνε εἰς τὴν μητέρα. But how insignificant, (say you,) is the stain which one or two nations can make on the whole world! As for us, we of course have infected the very sun, polluted the entire ocean! Quote, then, one nation which is free from the passions which allure the whole race of men to incest! If there is a single nation which knows nothing of concubinage through the necessity of age and sex—to say nothing of lust and licentiousness—that nation will be a stranger to incest. If any nature can be found so peculiarly removed from the human state as to be liable neither to ignorance, nor error, nor misfortune, that alone may be adduced with any consistency as an answer to the Christians. Reflect, therefore, on the licentiousness which floats about amongst men’s passions 703 as if they were the winds, and consider whether there be any communities which the full and strong tides of passion fail to waft to the commission of this great sin. In the first place, when you expose your infants to the mercy of others, or leave them for adoption to better parents than yourselves, do you forget what an opportunity for incest is furnished, how wide a scope is opened for its accidental commission? Undoubtedly, such of you as are more serious from a principle of self-restraint and careful reflection, abstain from lusts which could produce results of such a kind, in whatever place you may happen to be, at home or abroad, so that no indiscriminate diffusion of seed, or licentious reception thereof, will produce children to you unawares, such as their very parents, or else other children, might encounter in inadvertent incest, for no restraint from age is regarded in (the importunities of) lust. All acts of adultery, all cases of fornication, all the licentiousness of public brothels, whether committed at home or perpetrated out of doors, 704 serve to produce confusions of blood and complications of natural relationship, 705 and thence to conduce to incest; from which consummation your players and buffoons draw the materials of their exhibitions. It was from such a source, too, that so flagrant a tragedy recently burst upon the public as that which the prefect Fuscianus had judicially to decide. A boy of noble birth, who, by the unintentional neglect of his attendants, 706 had strolled too far from home, was decoyed by some passers-by, and carried off. The paltry Greek 707 who had the care of him, or somebody else, 708 in true Greek fashion, had gone into the house and captured him. Having been taken away into Asia, he is brought, when arrived at full age, back to Rome, and exposed for sale. His own father buys him unawares, and treats him as a Greek. 709 Afterwards, as was his wont, the youth is sent by his master into the fields, chained as a slave. 710 Thither the tutor and the nurse had already been banished for punishment. The whole case is represented to them; they relate each other’s misfortunes: they, on the one hand, how they had lost their ward when he was a boy; he, on the other hand, that he had been lost from his boyhood. But they agreed in the main, that he was a native of Rome of a noble family; perhaps he further gave sure proofs of his identity. Accordingly, as God willed it for the purpose of fastening a stain upon that age, a presentiment about the time excites him, the periods exactly suit his age, even his eyes help to recall 711 his features, some peculiar marks on his body are enumerated. His master and mistress, who are now no other than his own father and mother, anxiously urge a protracted inquiry. The slave-dealer is examined, the unhappy truth is all discovered. When their wickedness becomes manifest, the parents find a remedy for their despair by hanging themselves; to their son, who survives the miserable calamity, their property is awarded by the prefect, not as an inheritance, but as the wages of infamy and incest. That one case was a sufficient example for public exposure 712 of the sins of this sort which are secretly perpetrated among you. Nothing happens among men in solitary isolation. But, as it seems to me, it is only in a solitary case that such a charge can be drawn out against us, even in the mysteries of our religion. You ply us evermore with this charge; 713 yet there are like delinquencies to be traced amongst you, even in your ordinary course of life. 714
Footnotes
124:698Comp. The Apology, c. ix.
124:699Adulteram noctem.
124:700Ceterum.
124:701Plane.
124:702Trucidatus oculos.
124:703Errores.
125:704Sive stativo vel ambulatorio titulo.
125:705Compagines generis.
125:706Comitum.
125:707Græculus.
125:708“Aliquis” is here understood.
125:709Utitur Græco, i.e., cinædo, “for purposes of lust.”
125:710Or, “is sent into the country, and put into prison.”
125:711Aliquid recordantur.
125:712Publicæ eruptionis.
125:713Intentatis.
125:714Vestris non sacramentis, with a hyphen, “your non-mysteries.”
Chapter XVII. 715 —The Christian Refusal to Swear by the Genius of Cæsar. Flippancy and Irreverence Retorted on the Heathen.
As to your charges of obstinacy and presumption, whatever you allege against us, even in these respects, there are not wanting points in which you will bear a comparison with us. Our first step in this contumacious conduct concerns that which is ranked by you immediately after 716 the worship due to God, that is, the worship due to the majesty of the Cæsars, in respect of which we are charged with being irreligious towards them, since we neither propitiate their images nor swear by their genius. We are called enemies of the people. Well, be it so; yet at the same time (it must not be forgotten, that) the emperors find enemies amongst you heathen, and are constantly getting surnames to signalize their triumphs—one becoming Parthicus, 717 and another Medicus and Germanicus. 718 On this head 719 the Roman people must see to it who they are amongst whom 720 there still remain nations which are unsubdued and foreign to their rule. But, at all events, you are of us, 721 and yet you conspire against us. (In reply, we need only state) a well-known fact, 722 that we acknowledge the fealty of Romans to the emperors. No conspiracy has ever broken out from our body: no Cæsar’s blood has ever fixed a stain upon us, in the senate or even in the palace; no assumption of the purple has ever in any of the provinces been affected by us. The Syrias still exhale the odours of their corpses; still do the Gauls 723 fail to wash away (their blood) in the waters of their Rhone. Your allegations of our insanity 724 I omit, because they do not compromise the Roman name. But I will grapple with 725 the charge of sacrilegious vanity, and remind you of 726 the irreverence of your own lower classes, and the scandalous lampoons 727 of which the statues are so cognizant, and the sneers which are sometimes uttered at the public games, 728 and the curses with which the circus resounds. If not in arms, you are in tongue at all events always rebellious. But I suppose it is quite another affair to refuse to swear by the genius of Cæsar? For it is fairly open to doubt as to who are perjurers on this point, when you do not swear honestly 729 even by your gods. Well, we do not call the emperor God; for on this point sannam facimus, 730 as the saying is. But the truth is, that you who call Cæsar God both mock him, by calling him what he is not, and curse him, because he does not want to be what you call him. For he prefers living to being made a god. 731
Footnotes
125:715Comp. The Apology, c. xxxv.
125:716Secunda.
125:717Severus, in a.d. 198.
125:718These titles were borne by Caracalla.
125:719Or, “topic”—hoc loco.
125:720i.e., whether among the Christians or the heathen.
125:721A cavil of the heathen.
125:722Sane.
125:723Galliæ.
125:724Vesaniæ.
126:725Conveniam.
126:726Recognoscam.
126:727Festivos libellos.
126:728A concilio.
126:729Ex fide.
126:730Literally, “we make faces.”
126:731Comp. The Apology, c. xxxiii., p. 37, supra, and Minucius Felix, Octavius, c. xxiii. [Vol. IV. this Series.]
Chapter XVIII. 732 —Christians Charged with an Obstinate Contempt of Death. Instances of the Same are Found Amongst the Heathen.
The rest of your charge of obstinacy against us you sum up in this indictment, that we boldly refuse neither your swords, nor your crosses, nor your wild beasts, nor fire, nor tortures, such is our obduracy and contempt of death. But (you are inconsistent in your charges); for in former times amongst your own ancestors all these terrors have come in men’s intrepidity 733 not only to be despised, but even to be held in great praise. How many swords there were, and what brave men were willing to suffer by them, it were irksome to enumerate. 734 (If we take the torture) of the cross, of which so many instances have occurred, exquisite in cruelty, your own Regulus readily initiated the suffering which up to his day was without a precedent; 735 a queen of Egypt used wild beasts of her own (to accomplish her death); 736 the Carthaginian woman, who in the last extremity of her country was more courageous than her husband Asdrubal, 737 only followed the example, set long before by Dido herself, of going through fire to her death. Then, again, a woman of Athens defied the tyrant, exhausted his tortures, and at last, lest her person and sex might succumb through weakness, she bit off her tongue and spat out of her mouth the only possible instrument of a confession which was now out of her power. 738 But in your own instance you account such deeds glorious, in ours obstinate. Annihilate now the glory of your ancestors, in order that you may thereby annihilate us also. Be content from henceforth to repeal the praises of your forefathers, in order that you may not have to accord commendation to us for the same (sufferings). Perhaps (you will say) the character of a more robust age may have rendered the spirits of antiquity more enduring. Now, however, (we enjoy) the blessing of quietness and peace; so that the minds and dispositions of men (should be) more tolerant even towards strangers. Well, you rejoin, be it so: you may compare yourselves with the ancients; we must needs pursue with hatred all that we find in you offensive to ourselves, because it does not obtain currency 739 among us. Answer me, then, on each particular case by itself. I am not seeking for examples on a uniform scale. 740 Since, forsooth, the sword through their contempt of death produced stories of heroism amongst your ancestors, it is not, of course, 741 from love of life that you go to the trainers sword in hand and offer yourselves as gladiators, 742 (nor) through fear of death do you enrol your names in the army. 743 Since an ordinary 744 woman makes her death famous by wild beasts, it cannot but be of your own pure accord that you encounter wild beasts day after day in the midst of peaceful times. Although no longer any Regulus among you has raised a cross as the instrument of his own crucifixion, yet a contempt of the fire has even now displayed itself, 745 since one of yourselves very lately has offered for a wager 746 to go to any place which may be fixed upon and put on the burning shirt. 747 If a woman once defiantly danced beneath the scourge, the same feat has been very recently performed again by one of your own (circus-) hunters 748 as he traversed the appointed course, not to mention the famous sufferings of the Spartans. 749
Footnotes
126:732Comp., The Apology, c. 50 [p. 54, infra.]
126:733A virtute didicerunt.
126:734With the “piget prosequi” to govern the preceding oblique clause, it is unnecessary to suppose (with Oehler) the omission here of some verb like “erogavit.”
126:735Novitatem…dedicavit.
126:736Tertullian refers to Cleopatra’s death also in his tract ad Mart. c. iv. [See this Vol. infra.]
126:737This case is again referred to in this treatise (p. 138), and in ad Mart c. iv. [See this Volume, infra.]
126:738Eradicatæ confessionis. [See p. 55, supra.]
126:739Non invenitur.
126:740Eadem voce.
126:741Utique. The ironical tone of Tertullian’s answer is evident.
126:742Gladio ad lanistas auctoratis.
126:743We follow Oehler in giving the clause this negative turn; he renders it: “Tretet nicht aus Furcht vor dem Tode ins Kriegsheer ein.”
126:744Alicui.
126:745Jam evasit.
126:746Auctoravit.
126:747Vestiendum incendiale tunica.
126:748Inter venatorios: “venatores circi” (Oehler).
127:749“Doubtless the stripes which the Spartans endured with such firmness, aggravated by the presence of their nearest relatives, who encouraged them, conferred honour upon their family.”—Apology, c. 50. [See p. 55, supra.]
Chapter XIX. 750 —If Christians and the Heathen Thus Resemble Each Other, There is Great Difference in the Grounds and Nature of Their Apparently Similar Conduct.
Here end, I suppose, your tremendous charges of obstinacy against the Christians. Now, since we are amenable to them in common with yourselves, it only remains that we compare the grounds which the respective parties have for being personally derided. All our obstinacy, however, is with you a foregone conclusion, 751 based on our strong convictions; for we take for granted 752 a resurrection of the dead. Hope in this resurrection amounts to 753 a contempt of death. Ridicule, therefore, as much as you like the excessive stupidity of such minds as die that they may live; but then, in order that you may be able to laugh more merrily, and deride us with greater boldness, you must take your sponge, or perhaps your tongue, and wipe away those records of yours every now and then cropping out, 754 which assert in not dissimilar terms that souls will return to bodies. But how much more worthy of acceptance is our belief which maintains that they will return to the same bodies! And how much more ridiculous is your inherited conceit, 755 that the human spirit is to reappear in a dog, or a mule, or a peacock! Again, we affirm that a judgment has been ordained by God according to the merits of every man. This you ascribe to Minos and Rhadamanthus, while at the same time you reject Aristides, who was a juster judge than either. By the award of the judgment, we say that the wicked will have to spend an eternity in endless fire, the pious and innocent in a region of bliss. In your view likewise an unalterable condition is ascribed to the respective destinations of Pyriphlegethon 756 and Elysium. Now they are not merely your composers of myth and poetry who write songs of this strain; but your philosophers also speak with all confidence of the return of souls to their former state, 757 and of the twofold award 758 of a final judgment.
Footnotes
127:750Compare The Apology, cc. xlvii. xlviii. xlix. [This Vol., supra.]
127:751Præstruitur.
127:752Præsumimus.
127:753Est.
127:754Interim.
127:755Traditum.
127:756The heathen hell, Tartarus or Orcus.
127:757Reciprocatione.
127:758Distributione.
Chapter XX.—Truth and Reality Pertain to Christians Alone. The Heathen Counselled to Examine and Embrace It.
How long therefore, O most unjust heathen, will you refuse to acknowledge us, and (what is more) to execrate your own (worthies), since between us no distinction has place, because we are one and the same? Since you do not (of course) hate what you yourselves are, give us rather your right hands in fellowship, unite your salutations, 759 mingle your embraces, sanguinary with the sanguinary, incestuous with the incestuous, conspirators with conspirators, obstinate and vain with those of the selfsame qualities. In company with each other, we have been traitors to the majesty of the gods; and together do we provoke their indignation. You too have your “third race;” 760 not indeed third in the way of religious rite, 761 but a third race in sex, and, made up as it is of male and female in one, it is more fitted to men and women (for offices of lust). 762 Well, then, do we offend you by the very fact of our approximation and agreement? Being on a par is apt to furnish unconsciously the materials for rivalry. Thus “a potter envies a potter, and a smith a smith.” 763 But we must now discontinue this imaginary confession. 764 Our conscience has returned to the truth, and to the consistency of truth. For all those points which you allege 765 (against us) will be really found in ourselves alone; and we alone can rebut them, against whom they are adduced, by getting you to listen 766 to the other side of the question, whence that full knowledge is learnt which both inspires counsel and directs the judgment. Now it is in fact your own maxim, that no one should determine a cause without hearing both sides of it; and it is only in our own case that you neglect (the equitable principle). You indulge to the full 767 that fault of human nature, that those things which you do not disallow in yourselves you condemn in others, or you boldly charge 768 against others those things the guilt of which 769 you retain a lasting consciousness of 770 in yourselves. The course of life in which you will choose to occupy yourselves is different from ours: whilst chaste in the eyes of others, you are unchaste towards your own selves; whilst vigorous against vice out of doors, you succumb to it at home. This is the injustice (which we have to suffer), that, knowing truth, we are condemned by those who know it not; free from guilt, we are judged by those who are implicated in it. Remove the mote, or rather the beam, out of your own eye, that you may be able to extract the mote from the eyes of others. Amend your own lives first, that you may be able to punish the Christians. Only so far as you shall have effected your own reformation, will you refuse to inflict punishment on them—nay, so far will you have become Christians yourselves; and as you shall have become Christians, so far will you have compassed your own amendment of life. Learn what that is which you accuse in us, and you will accuse no longer; search out what that is which you do not accuse in yourselves, and you will become self-accusers. From these very few and humble remarks, so far as we have been able to open out the subject to you, you will plainly get some insight into (your own) error, and some discovery of our truth. Condemn that truth if you have the heart, 771 but only after you have examined it; and approve the error still, if you are so minded, 772 only first explore it. But if your prescribed rule is to love error and hate truth, why, (let me ask,) do you not probe to a full discovery the objects both of your love and your hatred?
Footnotes
127:759Compingite oscula.
127:760Eunuchs (Rigalt.).
127:761As the Christians were held to be; coming after (1) the heathen, (2) the Jews. See above, c. viii., and Scorpiace, c. x.
127:762Eunuchs (Rigalt.).
127:763An oft-quoted proverb in ancient writers. It occurs in Hesiod (Opp. et Dies) 25.
127:764Literally, “cease henceforth, O, simulated confession.”
127:765Omnia ista.
127:766This seems to be the force of the “agnitione,” which Oehler renders “auditione.”
127:767Satisfacitis.
127:768Jactetis.
127:769Quorum reatum.
127:770Memineritis.
128:771Si potestis.
128:772Si putatis.
Book II. 773
Chapter I.—The Heathen Gods from Heathen Authorities. Varro Has Written a Work on the Subject. His Threefold Classification. The Changeable Character of that Which Ought to Be Fixed and Certain.
Our defence requires that we should at this point discuss with you the character of your gods, O ye heathen, fit objects of our pity, 774 appealing even to your own conscience to determine whether they be truly gods, as you would have it supposed, or falsely, as you are unwilling to have proved. 775 Now this is the material part of human error, owing to the wiles of its author, that it is never free from the ignorance of error, 776 whence your guilt is all the greater. Your eyes are open, yet they see not; your ears are unstopped, yet they hear not; though your heart beats, it is yet dull, nor does your mind understand 777 that of which it is cognizant. 778 If indeed the enormous perverseness (of your worship) could 779 be broken up 780 by a single demurrer, we should have our objection ready to hand in the declaration 781 that, as we know all those gods of yours to have been instituted by men, all belief in the true Deity is by this very circumstance brought to nought; 782 because, of course, nothing which some time or other had a beginning can rightly seem to be divine. But the fact is, 783 there are many things by which tenderness of conscience is hardened into the callousness of wilful error. Truth is beleaguered with the vast force (of the enemy), and yet how secure she is in her own inherent strength! And naturally enough 784 when from her very adversaries she gains to her side whomsoever she will, as her friends and protectors, and prostrates the entire host of her assailants. It is therefore against these things that our contest lies—against the institutions of our ancestors, against the authority of tradition, 785 the laws of our governors, and the reasonings of the wise; against antiquity, custom, submission; 786 against precedents, prodigies, miracles,—all which things have had their part in consolidating that spurious 787 system of your gods. Wishing, then, to follow step by step your own commentaries which you have drawn out of your theology of every sort (because the authority of learned men goes further with you in matters of this kind than the testimony of facts), I have taken and abridged the works of Varro; 788 for he in his treatise Concerning Divine Things, collected out of ancient digests, has shown himself a serviceable guide 789 for us. Now, if I inquire of him who were the subtle inventors 790 of the gods, he points to either the philosophers, the peoples, or the poets. For he has made a threefold distinction in classifying the gods: one being the physical class, of which the philosophers treat; another the mythic class, which is the constant burden of 791 the poets; the third, the gentile class, which the nations have adopted each one for itself. When, therefore, the philosophers have ingeniously composed their physical (theology) out of their own conjectures, when the poets have drawn their mythical from fables, and the (several) nations have forged their gentile (polytheism) according to their own will, where in the world must truth be placed? In the conjectures? Well, but these are only a doubtful conception. In the fables? But they are at best an absurd story. In the popular accounts? 792 This sort of opinion, 793 however, is only promiscuous 794 and municipal. Now all things with the philosophers are uncertain, because of their variation with the poets all is worthless, because immoral; with the nations all is irregular and confused, because dependent on their mere choice. The nature of God, however, if it be the true one with which you are concerned, is of so definite a character as not to be derived from uncertain speculations, 795 nor contaminated with worthless fables, nor determined by promiscuous conceits. It ought indeed to be regarded, as it really is, as certain, entire, universal, because it is in truth the property of all. Now, what god shall I believe? One that has been gauged by vague suspicion? One that history 796 has divulged? One that a community has invented? It would be a far worthier thing if I believed no god, than one which is open to doubt, or full of shame, or the object of arbitrary selection. 797
Footnotes
129:773In this part of his work the author reviews the heathen mythology, and exposes the absurdity of the polytheistic worship in the various classes of the gods, according to the distribution of Varro.
129:774Miserandæ.
129:775Literally, “unwilling to know.”
129:776i.e., it does not know that it is error.
129:777Nescit.
129:778Agnoscit.
129:779Liceret.
129:780Discuti, or, in the logical sense, “be tested.”
129:781Nunciatio (legally, this is “an information lodged against a wrong.”)
129:782Excidere, “falls through.”
129:783Sed enim.
129:784Quidni?
129:785Receptorum.
129:786Necessitatem, answering to the “leges dominantium.”
129:787Adulterinam.
129:788St. Augustine, in his de Civit. Dei, makes similar use of Varro’s work on the heathen gods, Liber Divinarum.
129:789Scopum, perhaps “mark.”
129:790Insinuatores.
129:791Volutetur.
130:792Adoptionibus.
130:793Adoptatio.
130:794Passiva, “a jumble.”
130:795Argumentationibus.
130:796Historia. This word seems to refer to the class of mythical divinity above mentioned. It therefore means “fable” or “absurd story” (see above).
130:797Adoptivum.
Chapter II.—Philosophers Had Not Succeeded in Discovering God. The Uncertainty and Confusion of Their Speculations.
But the authority of the physical philosophers is maintained among you 798 as the special property 799 of wisdom. You mean of course, that pure and simple wisdom of the philosophers which attests its own weakness mainly by that variety of opinion which proceeds from an ignorance of the truth. Now what wise man is so devoid of truth, as not to know that God is the Father and Lord of wisdom itself and truth? Besides, there is that divine oracle uttered by Solomon: “The fear of the Lord,” says he, “is the beginning of wisdom.” 800 But 801 fear has its origin in knowledge; for how will a man fear that of which he knows nothing? Therefore he who shall have the fear of God, even if he be ignorant of all things else, if he has attained to the knowledge and truth of God, 802 will possess full and perfect wisdom. This, however, is what philosophy has not clearly realized. For although, in their inquisitive disposition to search into all kinds of learning, the philosophers may seem to have investigated the sacred Scriptures themselves for their antiquity, and to have derived thence some of their opinions; yet because they have interpolated these deductions they prove that they have either despised them wholly or have not fully believed them, for in other cases also the simplicity of truth is shaken 803 by the over-scrupulousness of an irregular belief, 804 and that they therefore changed them, as their desire of glory grew, into products of their own mind. The consequence of this is, that even that which they had discovered degenerated into uncertainty, and there arose from one or two drops of truth a perfect flood of argumentation. For after they had simply 805 found God, they did not expound Him as they found Him, but rather disputed about His quality, and His nature, and even about His abode. The Platonists, indeed, (held) Him to care about worldly things, both as the disposer and judge thereof. The Epicureans regarded Him as apathetic 806 and inert, and (so to say) a non-entity. 807 The Stoics believed Him to be outside of the world; the Platonists, within the world. The God whom they had so imperfectly admitted, they could neither know nor fear; and therefore they could not be wise, since they wandered away indeed from the beginning of wisdom,” that is, “the fear of God.” Proofs are not wanting that among the philosophers there was not only an ignorance, but actual doubt, about the divinity. Diogenes, when asked what was taking place in heaven, answered by saying, “I have never been up there.” Again, whether there were any gods, he replied, “I do not know; only there ought to be gods.” 808 When Crœsus inquired of Thales of Miletus what he thought of the gods, the latter having taken some time 809 to consider, answered by the word “Nothing.” Even Socrates denied with an air of certainty 810 those gods of yours. 811 Yet he with a like certainty requested that a cock should be sacrificed to Æsculapius. And therefore when philosophy, in its practice of defining about God, is detected in such uncertainty and inconsistency, what “fear” could it possibly have had of Him whom it was not competent 812 clearly to determine? We have been taught to believe of the world that it is god. 813 For such the physical class of theologizers conclude it to be, since they have handed down such views about the gods that Dionysius the Stoic divides them into three kinds. The first, he supposes, includes those gods which are most obvious, as the Sun, Moon, and Stars; the next, those which are not apparent, as Neptune; the remaining one, those which are said to have passed from the human state to the divine, as Hercules and Amphiaraus. In like manner, Arcesilaus makes a threefold form of the divinity—the Olympian, the Astral, the Titanian—sprung from Cœlus and Terra; from which through Saturn and Ops came Neptune, Jupiter, and Orcus, and their entire progeny. Xenocrates, of the Academy, makes a twofold division—the Olympian and the Titanian, which descend from Cœlus and Terra. Most of the Egyptians believe that there are four gods—the Sun and the Moon, the Heaven and the Earth. Along with all the supernal fire Democritus conjectures that the gods arose. Zeno, too, will have it that their nature resembles it. Whence Varro also makes fire to be the soul of the world, that in the world fire governs all things, just as the soul does in ourselves. But all this is most absurd. For he says, Whilst it is in us, we have existence; but as soon as it has left us, we die. Therefore, when fire quits the world in lightning, the world comes to its end.
Footnotes
130:798Patrocinatur.
130:799Mancipium.
130:800Prov. 9:10, Ps. 11:10.
130:801Porro.
130:802Deum omnium notititam et veritatem adsecutus, i.e., “following the God of all as knowledge and truth.”
130:803Nutat.
130:804Passivæ fidei.
130:805Solummodo.
130:806Otiosum.
130:807“A nobody.”
130:808Nisi ut sint expedire.
130:809Aliquot commeatus.
130:810Quasi certus.
130:811Istos deos.
131:812Non tenebat.
131:813De mundo deo didicimus.
Chapter III.—The Physical Philosophers Maintained the Divinity of the Elements; The Absurdity of the Tenet Exposed.
From these developments of opinion, we see that your 814 physical class of philosophers are driven to the necessity of contending that the elements are gods, since it alleges that other gods are sprung from them; for it is only from gods that gods could be born. Now, although we shall have to examine these other gods more fully in the proper place, in the mythic section of the poets, yet, inasmuch as we must meanwhile treat of them in their connection with the present class, 815 we shall probably even from their present class, 816 when once we turn to the gods themselves, succeed in showing that they can by no means appear to be gods who are said to be sprung from the elements; so that we have at once a presumption 817 that the elements are not gods, since they which are born of the elements are not gods. In like manner, whilst we show that the elements are not gods, we shall, according to the law of natural relationship, 818 get a presumptive argument that they cannot rightly be maintained to be gods whose parents (in this case the elements) are not gods. It is a settled point 819 that a god is born of a god, and that what lacks divinity 820 is born of what is not divine. Now, so far as 821 the world of which your philosophers treat 822 (for I apply this term to the universe in the most comprehensive sense 823 ) contains the elements, ministering to them as its component parts (for whatever its own condition may be, the same of course will be that of its elements and constituent portions), it must needs have been formed either by some being, according to the enlightened view 824 of Plato, or else by none, according to the harsh opinion 825 of Epicurus; and since it was formed, by having a beginning, it must also have an end. That, therefore, which at one time before its beginning had no existence, and will by and by after its end cease to have an existence, cannot of course, by any possibility, seem to be a god, wanting as it does that essential character of divinity, eternity, which is reckoned to be 826 without beginning, and without end. If, however, it 827 is in no wise formed, and therefore ought to be accounted divine—since, as divine, it is subject neither to a beginning nor an end of itself—how is it that some assign generation to the elements, which they hold to be gods, when the Stoics deny that anything can be born of a god? Likewise, how is it that they wish those beings, whom they suppose to be born of the elements, to be regarded as gods, when they deny that a god can be born? Now, what must hold good of the universe 828 will have to be predicated of the elements, I mean of heaven, and of earth, and of the stars, and of fire, which Varro has vainly proposed that you should believe 829 to be gods, and the parents of gods, contrary to that generation and nativity which he had declared to be impossible in a god. Now this same Varro had shown that the earth and the stars were animated. 830 But if this be the case, they must needs be also mortal, according to the condition 831 of animated nature; for although the soul is evidently immortal, this attribute is limited to it alone: it is not extended to that with which it is associated, that is, the body. Nobody, however, will deny that the elements have body, since we both touch them and are touched by them, and we see certain bodies fall down from them. If, therefore, they are animated, laying aside the principle 832 of a soul, as befits their condition as bodies, they are mortal—of course not immortal. And yet whence is it that the elements appear to Varro to be animated? Because, forsooth, the elements have motion. And then, in order to anticipate what may be objected on the other side, that many things else have motion—as wheels, as carriages, as several other machines—he volunteers the statement that he believes only such things to be animated as move of themselves, without any apparent mover or impeller from without, like the apparent mover of the wheel, or propeller of the carriage, or director of the machine. If, then, they are not animated, they have no motion of themselves. Now, when he thus alleges a power which is not apparent, he points to what it was his duty to seek after, even the creator and controller of the motion; for it does not at once follow that, because we do not see a thing, we believe that it does not exist. Rather, it is necessary the more profoundly to investigate what one does not see, in order the better to understand the character of that which is apparent. Besides if (you admit) only the existence of those things which appear and are supposed to exist simply because they appear, how is it that you also admit them to be gods which do not appear? If, moreover, those things seem to have existence which have none, why may they not have existence also which do not seem to have it? Such, for instance, as the Mover 833 of the heavenly beings. Granted, then, that things are animated because they move of themselves, and that they move of themselves when they are not moved by another: still it does not follow that they must straightway be gods, because they are animated, nor even because they move of themselves; else what is to prevent all animals whatever being accounted gods, moving as they do of themselves? This, to be sure, is allowed to the Egyptians, but their superstitious vanity has another basis. 834
Footnotes
131:814Istud.
131:815Ad præsentem speciem, the physical class.
131:816Or, classification.
131:817Ut jam hinc præjudicatum sit.
131:818Ad illam agnatorum speciem.
131:819Scitum.
131:820Non-deum.
131:821“Quod,” with a subj. mood.
131:822Mundus iste.
131:823Summaliter.
131:824Humanitas.
131:825Duritia.
131:826Censetur.
131:827i.e., “iste mundus.”
131:828Mundi, i.e., the universe; see above.
131:829The best reading is “vobis credi;” this is one of Tertullian’s “final infinitives.”
132:830Compare Augustine, de Civit. Dei, vii. 6, 23, 24, 28.
132:831Formam.
132:832Ratione.
132:833Motatorem.
132:834Alia sane vanitate.
Chapter IV.—Wrong Derivation of the Word Θεός. The Name Indicative of the True Deity. God Without Shape and Immaterial. Anecdote of Thales.
Some affirm that the gods (i.e. θεοί) were so called because the verbs θέειν and σείσθαι signify to run and to be moved. 835 This term, then, is not indicative of any majesty, for it is derived from running and motion, not from any dominion 836 of godhead. But inasmuch as the Supreme God whom we worship is also designated Θεός, without however the appearance of any course or motion in Him, because He is not visible to any one, it is clear that that word must have had some other derivation, and that the property of divinity, innate in Himself, must have been discovered. Dismissing, then, that ingenious interpretation, it is more likely that the gods were not called θεοί from running and motion, but that the term was borrowed from the designation of the true God; so that you gave the name θεοί to the gods, whom you had in like manner forged for yourselves. Now, that this is the case, a plain proof is afforded in the fact that you actually give the common appellation θεοί to all those gods of yours, in whom there is no attribute of course or motion indicated. When, therefore, you call them both θεοί and immoveable with equal readiness, there is a deviation as well from the meaning of the word as from the idea 837 of godhead, which is set aside 838 if measured by the notion of course and motion. But if that sacred name be peculiarly significant of deity, and be simply true and not of a forced interpretation 839 in the case of the true God, but transferred in a borrowed sense 840 to those other objects which you choose to call gods, then you ought to show to us 841 that there is also a community of character between them, so that their common designation may rightly depend on their union of essence. But the true God, on the sole ground that He is not an object of sense, is incapable of being compared with those false deities which are cognizable to sight and sense (to sense indeed is sufficient); for this amounts to a clear statement of the difference between an obscure proof and a manifest one. Now, since the elements are obvious to all, (and) since God, on the contrary, is visible to none, how will it be in your power from that part which you have not seen to pass to a decision on the objects which you see? Since, therefore, you have not to combine them in your perception or your reason, why do you combine them in name with the purpose of combining them also in power? For see how even Zeno separates the matter of the world from God: he says that the latter has percolated through the former, like honey through the comb. God, therefore, and Matter are two words (and) two things. Proportioned to the difference of the words is the diversity of the things; the condition also of matter follows its designation. Now if matter is not God, because its very appellation teaches us so, how can those things which are inherent in matter—that is, the elements—be regarded as gods, since the component members cannot possibly be heterogeneous from the body? But what concern have I with physiological conceits? It were better for one’s mind to ascend above the state of the world, not to stoop down to uncertain speculations. Plato’s form for the world was round. Its square, angular shape, such as others had conceived it to be, he rounded off, I suppose, with compasses, from his labouring to have it believed to be simply without a beginning. 842 Epicurus, however, who had said, “What is above us is nothing to us,” wished notwithstanding to have a peep at the sky, and found the sun to be a foot in diameter. Thus far you must confess 843 men were niggardly in even celestial objects. In process of time their ambitious conceptions advanced, and so the sun too enlarged its disk. 844 Accordingly, the Peripatetics marked it out as a larger world. 845 Now, pray tell me, what wisdom is there in this hankering after conjectural speculations? What proof is afforded to us, notwithstanding the strong confidence of its assertions, by the useless affectation of a scrupulous curiosity, 846 which is tricked out with an artful show of language? It therefore served Thales of Miletus quite right, when, star-gazing as he walked with all the eyes he had, he had the mortification of falling 847 into a well, and was unmercifully twitted by an Egyptian, who said to him, “Is it because you found nothing on earth to look at, that you think you ought to confine your gaze to the sky?” His fall, therefore, is a figurative picture of the philosophers; of those, I mean, 848 who persist in applying 849 their studies to a vain purpose, since they indulge a stupid curiosity on natural objects, which they ought rather (intelligently to direct) to their Creator and Governor.
Footnotes
132:835This seems to mean: “because θέειν has also the sense of σείεσθαι (motion as well as progression).”
132:836“Dominatione” is Oehler’s reading, but he approves of “denominatione” (Rigault’s reading); this would signify “designation of godhead.”
132:837Opinione.
132:838Rescinditur.
132:839Interpretatorium.
132:840Reprehensum.
132:841Docete.
133:842Sine capite.
133:843Scilicet.
133:844Aciem.
133:845Majorem orbem. Another reading has “majorem orbe,” q.d. “as larger than the world.”
133:846Morositatis.
133:847Cecidit turpiter.
133:848Scilicet.
133:849Habituros.
Chapter V.—The Physical Theory Continued. Further Reasons Advanced Against the Divinity of the Elements.
Why, then, do we not resort to that far more reasonable 850 opinion, which has clear proof of being derived from men’s common sense and unsophisticated deduction? 851 Even Varro bears it in mind, when he says that the elements are supposed to be divine, because nothing whatever is capable, without their concurrence, 852 of being produced, nourished, or applied to the sustenance 853 of man’s life and of the earth, since not even our bodies and souls could have sufficed in themselves without the modification 854 of the elements. By this it is that the world is made generally habitable,—a result which is harmoniously secured 855 by the distribution into zones, 856 except where human residence has been rendered impracticable by intensity of cold or heat. On this account, men have accounted as gods—the sun, because it imparts from itself the light of day, ripens the fruit with its warmth, and measures the year with its stated periods; the moon, which is at once the solace of the night and the controller of the months by its governance; the stars also, certain indications as they are of those seasons which are to be observed in the tillage of our fields; lastly, the very heaven also under which, and the earth over which, as well as the intermediate space within which, all things conspire together for the good of man. Nor is it from their beneficent influences only that a faith in their divinity has been deemed compatible with the elements, but from their opposite qualities also, such as usually happen from what one might call 857 their wrath and anger—as thunder, and hail, and drought, and pestilential winds, floods also, and openings of the ground, and earthquakes: these are all fairly enough 858 accounted gods, whether their nature becomes the object of reverence as being favourable, or of fear because terrible—the sovereign dispenser, 859 in fact, 860 both of help and of hurt. But in the practical conduct of social life, this is the way in which men act and feel: they do not show gratitude or find fault with the very things from which the succour or the injury proceeds, so much as with them by whose strength and power the operation of the things is effected. For even in your amusements you do not award the crown as a prize to the flute or the harp, but to the musician who manages the said flute or harp by the power of his delightful skill. 861 In like manner, when one is in ill-health, you do not bestow your acknowledgments on the flannel wraps, 862 or the medicines, or the poultices, but on the doctors by whose care and prudence the remedies become effectual. So again, in untoward events, they who are wounded with the sword do not charge the injury on the sword or the spear, but on the enemy or the robber; whilst those whom a falling house covers do not blame the tiles or the stones, but the oldness of the building; as again shipwrecked sailors impute their calamity not to the rocks and waves, but to the tempest. And rightly too; for it is certain that everything which happens must be ascribed not to the instrument with which, but to the agent by whom, it takes place; inasmuch as he is the prime cause of the occurrence, 863 who appoints both the event itself and that by whose instrumentality it comes to pass (as there are in all things these three particular elements—the fact itself, its instrument, and its cause), because he himself who wills the occurrence of a thing comes into notice 864 prior to the thing which he wills, or the instrument by which it occurs. On all other occasions therefore, your conduct is right enough, because you consider the author; but in physical phenomena your rule is opposed to that natural principle which prompts you to a wise judgment in all other cases, removing out of sight as you do the supreme position of the author, and considering rather the things that happen, than him by whom they happen. Thus it comes to pass that you suppose the power and the dominion to belong to the elements, which are but the slaves and functionaries. Now do we not, in thus tracing out an artificer and master within, expose the artful structure of their slavery 865 out of the appointed functions of those elements to which you ascribe (the attributes) of power? 866 But gods are not slaves; therefore whatever things are servile in character are not gods. Otherwise 867 they should prove to us that, according to the ordinary course of things, liberty is promoted by irregular licence, 868 despotism by liberty, and that by despotism divine power is meant. For if all the (heavenly bodies) overhead forget not 869 to fulfil their courses in certain orbits, in regular seasons, at proper distances, and at equal intervals—appointed in the way of a law for the revolutions of time, and for directing the guidance thereof—can it fail to result 870 from the very observance of their conditions and the fidelity of their operations, that you will be convinced both by the recurrence of their orbital courses and the accuracy of their mutations, when you bear in mind how ceaseless is their recurrence, that a governing power presides over them, to which the entire management of the world 871 is obedient, reaching even to the utility and injury of the human race? For you cannot pretend that these (phenomena) act and care for themselves alone, without contributing anything to the advantage of mankind, when you maintain that the elements are divine for no other reason than that you experience from them either benefit or injury to yourself. For if they benefit themselves only, you are under no obligation to them.
Footnotes
133:850Humaniorem.
133:851Conjectura.
133:852Suffragio.
133:853Sationem.
133:854Temperamento.
133:855Fœderata.
133:856Circulorum conditionibus.
133:857Tanquam.
133:858Jure.
133:859Domina.
133:860Scilicet.
134:861Vi suavitatis.
134:862Lanis.
134:863Caput facti.
134:864Invenitur.
134:865Servitutis artem. “Artem” Oehler explains by “artificiose institutum.”
134:866We subjoin Oehler’s text of this obscure sentence: “Non in ista investigatione alicujus artificis intus et domini servitutis artem ostendimus elementorum certis ex operis” (for “operibis,” not unusual in Tertullian) “eorum quas facis potestatis?”
134:867Aut.
134:868De licentia passivitatis libertas approbetur.
134:869Meminerunt.
134:870Num non.
134:871Universa negotiatio mundialis.
Chapter VI.—The Changes of the Heavenly Bodies, Proof that They are Not Divine. Transition from the Physical to the Mythic Class of Gods.
Come now, do you allow that the Divine Being not only has nothing servile in His course, but exists in unimpaired integrity, and ought not to be diminished, or suspended, or destroyed? Well, then, all His blessedness 872 would disappear, if He were ever subject to change. Look, however, at the stellar bodies; they both undergo change, and give clear evidence of the fact. The moon tells us how great has been its loss, as it recovers its full form; 873 its greater losses you are already accustomed to measure in a mirror of water; 874 so that I need not any longer believe in any wise what magians have asserted. The sun, too, is frequently put to the trial of an eclipse. Explain as best you may the modes of these celestial casualties, it is impossible 875 for God either to become less or to cease to exist. Vain, therefore, are 876 those supports of human learning, which, by their artful method of weaving conjectures, belie both wisdom and truth. Besides, 877 it so happens, indeed, according to your natural way of thinking, that he who has spoken the best is supposed to have spoken most truly, instead of him who has spoken the truth being held to have spoken the best. Now the man who shall carefully look into things, will surely allow it to be a greater probability that those 878 elements which we have been discussing are under some rule and direction, than that they have a motion of their own, and that being under government they cannot be gods. If, however, one is in error in this matter, it is better to err simply than speculatively, like your physical philosophers. But, at the same time, 879 if you consider the character of the mythic school, (and compare it with the physical,) the error which we have already seen frail men 880 making in the latter is really the more respectable one, since it ascribes a divine nature to those things which it supposes to be superhuman in their sensibility, whether in respect of their position, their power, their magnitude, or their divinity. For that which you suppose to be higher than man, you believe to be very near to God.
Footnotes
134:872Felicitas.
134:873These are the moon’s monthly changes.
134:874Tertullian refers to the Magian method of watching eclipses, the ἐνοπτρομαντεία.
134:875Instead of “non valet,” there is the reading “non volet,” “God would not consent,” etc.
135:876Viderint igitur “Let them look to themselves,” “never mind them.”
135:877Alias.
135:878Ista.
135:879Sedenim.
135:880Mortalitas.
Chapter VII.—The Gods of the Mythic Class. The Poets a Very Poor Authority in Such Matters. Homer and the Mythic Poets. Why Irreligious.
But to pass to the mythic class of gods, which we attributed to the poets, 881 I hardly know whether I must only seek to put them on a par with our own human mediocrity, or whether they must be affirmed to be gods, with proofs of divinity, like the African Mopsus and the Bœotian Amphiaraus. I must now indeed but slightly touch on this class, of which a fuller view will be taken in the proper place. 882 Meanwhile, that these were only human beings, is clear from the fact that you do not consistently call them gods, but heroes. Why then discuss the point? Although divine honours had to be ascribed to dead men, it was not to them as such, of course. Look at your own practice, when with similar excess of presumption you sully heaven with the sepulchres of your kings: is it not such as are illustrious for justice, virtue, piety, and every excellence of this sort, that you honour with the blessedness of deification, contented even to incur contempt if you forswear yourselves 883 for such characters? And, on the other hand, do you not deprive the impious and disgraceful of even the old prizes of human glory, tear up 884 their decrees and titles, pull down their statues, and deface 885 their images on the current coin? Will He, however, who beholds all things, who approves, nay, rewards the good, prostitute before all men 886 the attribute of His own inexhaustible grace and mercy? And shall men be allowed an especial mount of care and righteousness, that they may be wise 887 in selecting and multiplying 888 their deities? Shall attendants on kings and princes be more pure than those who wait on the Supreme God? 889 You turn your back in horror, indeed, on outcasts and exiles, on the poor and weak, on the obscurely born and the low-lived; 890 but yet you honour, even by legal sanctions, 891 unchaste men, adulterers, robbers, and parricides. Must we regard it as a subject of ridicule or indignation, that such characters are believed to be gods who are not fit to be men? Then, again, in this mythic class of yours which the poets celebrate, how uncertain is your conduct as to purity of conscience and the maintenance thereof! For whenever we hold up to execration the wretched, disgraceful and atrocious (examples) of your gods, you defend them as mere fables, on the pretence of poetic licence; whenever we volunteer a silent contempt 892 of this said 893 poetic licence, then you are not only troubled with no horror of it, but you go so far as 894 to show it respect, and to hold it as one of the indispensable (fine) arts; nay, 895 you carry out the studies of your higher classes 896 by its means, as the very foundation 897 of your literature. Plato was of opinion that poets ought to be banished, as calumniators of the gods; (he would even have) Homer himself expelled from his republic, although, as you are aware, 898 he was the crowned head of them all. But while you admit and retain them thus, why should you not believe them when they disclose such things respecting your gods? And if you do believe your poets, how is it that you worship such gods (as they describe)? If you worship them simply because you do not believe the poets, why do you bestow praise on such lying authors, without any fear of giving offence to those whose calumniators you honour? A regard for truth 899 is not, of course, to be expected of poets. But when you say that they only make men into gods after their death, do you not admit that before death the said gods were merely human? Now what is there strange in the fact, that they who were once men are subject to the dishonour 900 of human casualties, or crimes, or fables? Do you not, in fact, put faith in your poets, when it is in accordance with their rhapsodies 901 that you have arranged in some instances your very rituals? How is it that the priestess of Ceres is ravished, if it is not because Ceres suffered a similar outrage? Why are the children of others sacrificed to Saturn, 902 if it is not because he spared not his own? Why is a male mutilated in honour of the Idæan goddess Cybele, unless it be that the (unhappy) youth who was too disdainful of her advances was castrated, owing to her vexation at his daring to cross her love? 903 Why was not Hercules “a dainty dish” to the good ladies of Lanuvium, if it was not for the primeval offence which women gave to him? The poets, no doubt, are liars. Yet it is not because of their telling us that 904 your gods did such things when they were human beings, nor because they predicated divine scandals 905 of a divine state, since it seemed to you more credible that gods should exist, though not of such a character, than that there should be such characters, although not gods.
Footnotes
135:881See above, c. i. [Note 19, p. 129.]
135:882See The Apology, especially cc. xxii. and xxiii.
135:883Pejerantes.
135:884Lancinatis.
135:885Repercutitus.
135:886Vulgo.
135:887Sapere. The infinitive of purpose is frequent in our author.
135:888Distribuendis.
135:889An allusion to Antinous, who is also referred to in The Apology, xiii. [“Court-page.” See, p. 29, Supra.]
135:890Inhoneste institutos.
135:891By the “legibus” Tertullian refers to the divine honours ordered to be paid, by decrees of the Senate, to deceased emperors. Comp. Suetonius, Octav. 88; and Pliny, Paneg. 11 (Oehler).
135:892Ultro siletur.
135:893Ejusmodi.
135:894Insuper.
135:895Denique.
135:896Ingenuitatis.
135:897Initiatricem.
135:898Sane.
136:899Fides.
136:900Polluuntur.
136:901Relationibus.
136:902Comp. The Apology, ix. [See, p. 25, Supra.]
136:903Comp. Minucius Felix, Octav. xxi.; Arnobius, adv. Nat. v. 6, 7; Augustine, Civ. Dei, vi. 7.
136:904This is the force of the subjunctive verb.
136:905By divine scandals, he means such as exceed in their atrocity even human scandals.
Chapter VIII.—The Gods of the Different Nations. Varro’s Gentile Class. Their Inferiority. A Good Deal of This Perverse Theology Taken from Scripture. Serapis a Perversion of Joseph.
There remains the gentile class of gods amongst the several nations: 906 these were adopted out of mere caprice, not from the knowledge of the truth; and our information about them comes from the private notions of different races. God, I imagine, is everywhere known, everywhere present, powerful everywhere—an object whom all ought to worship, all ought to serve. Since, then, it happens that even they, whom all the world worships in common, fail in the evidence of their true divinity, how much more must this befall those whom their very votaries 907 have not succeeded in discovering! For what useful authority could possibly precede a theology of so defective a character as to be wholly unknown to fame? How many have either seen or heard of the Syrian Atargatis, the African Cœlestis, the Moorish Varsutina, the Arabian Obodas and Dusaris, or the Norican Belenus, or those whom Varro mentions—Deluentinus of Casinum, Visidianus of Narnia, Numiternus of Atina, or Ancharia of Asculum? And who have any clear notions 908 of Nortia of Vulsinii? 909 There is no difference in the worth of even their names, apart from the human surnames which distinguish them. I laugh often enough at the little coteries of gods 910 in each municipality, which have their honours confined within their own city walls. To what lengths this licence of adopting gods has been pushed, the superstitious practices of the Egyptians show us; for they worship even their native 911 animals, such as cats, crocodiles, and their snake. It is therefore a small matter that they have also deified a man—him, I mean, whom not Egypt only, or Greece, but the whole world worships, and the Africans swear by; about whose state also all that helps our conjectures and imparts to our knowledge the semblance of truth is stated in our own (sacred) literature. For that Serapis of yours was originally one of our own saints called Joseph. 912 The youngest of his brethren, but superior to them in intellect, he was from envy sold into Egypt, and became a slave in the family of Pharaoh king of the country. 913 Importuned by the unchaste queen, when he refused to comply with her desire, she turned upon him and reported him to the king, by whom he is put into prison. There he displays the power of his divine inspiration, by interpreting aright the dreams of some (fellow-prisoners). Meanwhile the king, too, has some terrible dreams. Joseph being brought before him, according to his summons, was able to expound them. Having narrated the proofs of true interpretation which he had given in the prison, he opens out his dream to the king: those seven fat-fleshed and well-favoured kine signified as many years of plenty; in like manner, the seven lean-fleshed animals predicted the scarcity of the seven following years. He accordingly recommends precautions to be taken against the future famine from the previous plenty. The king believed him. The issue of all that happened showed how wise he was, how invariably holy, and now how necessary. So Pharaoh set him over all Egypt, that he might secure the provision of corn for it, and thenceforth administer its government. They called him Serapis, from the turban 914 which adorned his head. The peck-like 915 shape of this turban marks the memory of his corn-provisioning; whilst evidence is given that the care of the supplies was all on his head, 916 by the very ears of corn which embellish the border of the head-dress. For the same reason, also, they made the sacred figure of a dog, 917 which they regard (as a sentry) in Hades, and put it under his right hand, because the care of the Egyptians was concentrated 918 under his hand. And they put at his side Pharia, 919 whose name shows her to have been the king’s daughter. For in addition to all the rest of his kind gifts and rewards, Pharaoh had given him his own daughter in marriage. Since, however, they had begun to worship both wild animals and human beings, they combined both figures under one form Anubis, in which there may rather be seen clear proofs of its own character and condition enshrined 920 by a nation at war with itself, refractory 921 to its kings, despised among foreigners, with even the appetite of a slave and the filthy nature of a dog.
Footnotes
136:906See above, c. i. [p. 129.]
136:907Municipes. “Their local worshippers or subjects.”
136:908Perceperint.
136:909Literally, “Have men heard of any Nortia belonging to the Vulsinensians?”
136:910Deos decuriones, in allusion to the small provincial senates which in the later times spread over the Roman colonies and municipia.
136:911Privatas.
136:912Compare Suidas, s. v. Σαράπις; Rufinus, Hist. Eccl. ii. 23. As Serapis was Joseph in disguise, so was Joseph a type of Christ, according to the ancient Christians, who were fond of subordinating heathen myths to Christian theology.
136:913Tertullian is not the only writer who has made mistakes in citing from memory Scripture narratives. Comp. Arnobius.
137:914Suggestu.
137:915Modialis.
137:916Super caput esse, i.e., was entrusted to him.
137:917Canem dicaverunt.
137:918Compressa.
137:919Isis; comp. The Apology, xvi. [See p. 31, supra.]
137:920Consecrasse.
137:921Recontrans.
Chapter IX.—The Power of Rome. Romanized Aspect of All the Heathen Mythology. Varro’s Threefold Distribution Criticised. Roman Heroes (Æneas Included,) Unfavourably Reviewed.
Such are the more obvious or more remarkable points which we had to mention in connection with Varro’s threefold distribution of the gods, in order that a sufficient answer might seem to be given touching the physical, the poetic, and the gentile classes. Since, however, it is no longer to the philosophers, nor the poets, nor the nations that we owe the substitution of all (heathen worship for the true religion) although they transmitted the superstition, but to the dominant Romans, who received the tradition and gave it wide authority, another phase of the widespread error of man must now be encountered by us; nay, another forest must be felled by our axe, which has obscured the childhood of the degenerate worship 922 with germs of superstitions gathered from all quarters. Well, but even the gods of the Romans have received from (the same) Varro a threefold classification into the certain, the uncertain, and the select. What absurdity! What need had they of uncertain gods, when they possessed certain ones? Unless, forsooth, they wished to commit themselves to 923 such folly as the Athenians did; for at Athens there was an altar with this inscription: “To the unknown gods.” 924 Does, then, a man worship that which he knows nothing of? Then, again, as they had certain gods, they ought to have been contented with them, without requiring select ones. In this want they are even found to be irreligious! For if gods are selected as onions are, 925 then such as are not chosen are declared to be worthless. Now we on our part allow that the Romans had two sets of gods, common and proper; in other words, those which they had in common with other nations, and those which they themselves devised. And were not these called the public and the foreign 926 gods? Their altars tell us so; there is (a specimen) of the foreign gods at the fane of Carna, of the public gods in the Palatium. Now, since their common gods are comprehended in both the physical and the mythic classes, we have already said enough concerning them. I should like to speak of their particular kinds of deity. We ought then to admire the Romans for that third set of the gods of their enemies, 927 because no other nation ever discovered for itself so large a mass of superstition. Their other deities we arrange in two classes: those which have become gods from human beings, and those which have had their origin in some other way. Now, since there is advanced the same colourable pretext for the deification of the dead, that their lives were meritorious, we are compelled to urge the same reply against them, that no one of them was worth so much pains. Their fond 928 father Æneas, in whom they believed, was never glorious, and was felled with a stone 929 —a vulgar weapon, to pelt a dog withal, inflicting a wound no less ignoble! But this Æneas turns out 930 a traitor to his country; yes, quite as much as Antenor. And if they will not believe this to be true of him, he at any rate deserted his companions when his country was in flames, and must be held inferior to that woman of Carthage, 931 who, when her husband Hasdrubal supplicated the enemy with the mild pusillanimity of our Æneas, refused to accompany him, but hurrying her children along with her, disdained to take her beautiful self and father’s noble heart 932 into exile, but plunged into the flames of the burning Carthage, as if rushing into the embraces of her (dear but) ruined country. Is he “pious Æneas” for (rescuing) his young only son and decrepit old father, but deserting Priam and Astyanax? But the Romans ought rather to detest him; for in defence of their princes and their royal 933 house, they surrender 934 even children and wives, and every dearest pledge. 935 They deify the son of Venus, and this with the full knowledge and consent of her husband Vulcan, and without opposition from even Juno. Now, if sons have seats in heaven owing to their piety to their parents, why are not those noble youths 936 of Argos rather accounted gods, because they, to save their mother from guilt in the performance of some sacred rites, with a devotion more than human, yoked themselves to her car and dragged her to the temple? Why not make a goddess, for her exceeding piety, of that daughter 937 who from her own breasts nourished her father who was famishing in prison? What other glorious achievement can be related of Æneas, but that he was nowhere seen in the fight on the field of Laurentum? Following his bent, perhaps he fled a second time as a fugitive from the battle. 938 In like manner, Romulus posthumously becomes a god. Was it because he founded the city? Then why not others also, who have built cities, counting even 939 women? To be sure, Romulus slew his brother in the bargain, and trickishly ravished some foreign virgins. Therefore of course he becomes a god, and therefore a Quirinus (“god of the spear”), because then their fathers had to use the spear 940 on his account. What did Sterculus do to merit deification? If he worked hard to enrich the fields stercoribus, 941 (with manure,) Augias had more dung than he to bestow on them. If Faunus, the son of Picus, used to do violence to law and right, because struck with madness, it was more fit that he should be doctored than deified. 942 If the daughter of Faunus so excelled in chastity, that she would hold no conversation with men, it was perhaps from rudeness, or a consciousness of deformity, or shame for her father’s insanity. How much worthier of divine honour than this “good goddess” 943 was Penelope, who, although dwelling among so many suitors of the vilest character, preserved with delicate tact the purity which they assailed! There is Sanctus, too, 944 who for his hospitality had a temple consecrated to him by king Plotius; and even Ulysses had it in his power to have bestowed one more god upon you in the person of the most refined Alcinous.
Footnotes
137:922Vitii pueritatem.
137:923Recipere (with a dative).
137:924Ignotis Deis. Comp. Acts xvii. 23.
137:925Ut bulbi. This is the passage which Augustine quotes (de Civit. Dei, vii. 1) as “too facetious.”
137:926Adventicii, “coming from abroad.”
137:927Touching these gods of the vanquished nations, compare The Apology, xxv.; below, c. xvii.; Minucius Felix, Octav. xxv.
138:928Diligentem.
138:929See Homer, Il. v. 300.
138:930Invenitur.
138:931Referred to also above, i. 18.
138:932The obscure “formam et patrem” is by Oehler rendered “pulchritudinem et generis nobilitatem.”
138:933The word is “eorum” (possessive of “principum”), not “suæ.”
138:934Dejerant adversus.
138:935What Tertullian himself thinks on this point, see his de Corona, xi.
138:936Cleobis and Biton; see Herodotus i. 31.
138:937See Valerius Maximus, v. 4, 1.
138:938We need not stay to point out the unfairness of this statement, in contrast with the exploits of Æneas against Turnus, as detailed in the last books of the Æneid.
138:939Usque in.
138:940We have thus rendered “quiritatem est,” to preserve as far as one could the pun on the deified hero of the Quirites.
138:941We insert the Latin, to show the pun on Sterculus; see The Apology, c. xxv. [See p. 40, supra.]
138:942Curaria quam consecrari.
138:943Bona Dea, i.e., the daughter of Faunus just mentioned.
138:944See Livy, viii. 20, xxxii. 1; Ovid, Fasti, vi. 213, etc. Compare also Augustine, de Civ. Dei, xviii. 19. [Tom, vii. p. 576.]
Chapter X.—A Disgraceful Feature of the Roman Mythology. It Honours Such Infamous Characters as Larentina.
I hasten to even more abominable cases. Your writers have not been ashamed to publish that of Larentina. She was a hired prostitute, whether as the nurse of Romulus, and therefore called Lupa, because she was a prostitute, or as the mistress of Hercules, now deceased, that is to say, now deified. They 945 relate that his temple-warder 946 happened to be playing at dice in the temple alone; and in order to represent a partner for himself in the game, in the absence of an actual one, he began to play with one hand for Hercules and the other for himself. (The condition was,) that if he won the stakes from Hercules, he should with them procure a supper and a prostitute; if Hercules, however, proved the winner, I mean his other hand, then he should provide the same for Hercules. The hand of Hercules won. That achievement might well have been added to his twelve labours! The temple-warden buys a supper for the hero, and hires Larentina to play the whore. The fire which dissolved the body of even a Hercules 947 enjoyed the supper, and the altar consumed everything. Larentina sleeps alone in the temple; and she a woman from the brothel, boasts that in her dreams she had submitted herself to the pleasure of Hercules; 948 and she might possibly have experienced this, as it passed through her mind, in her sleep. In the morning, on going out of the temple very early, she is solicited by a young man—“a third Hercules,” so to speak. 949 He invites her home. She complies, remembering that Hercules had told her that it would be for her advantage. He then, to be sure, obtains permission that they should be united in lawful wedlock (for none was allowed to have intercourse with the concubine of a god without being punished for it); the husband makes her his heir. By and by, just before her death, she bequeathed to the Roman people the rather large estate which she had obtained through Hercules. After this she sought deification for her daughters too, whom indeed the divine Larentina ought to have appointed her heirs also. The gods of the Romans received an accession in her dignity. For she alone of all the wives of Hercules was dear to him, because she alone was rich; and she was even far more fortunate than Ceres, who contributed to the pleasure of the (king of the) dead. 950 After so many examples and eminent names among you, who might not have been declared divine? Who, in fact, ever raised a question as to his divinity against Antinous? 951 Was even Ganymede more grateful and dear than he to (the supreme god) who loved him? According to you, heaven is open to the dead. You prepare 952 a way from Hades to the stars. Prostitutes mount it in all directions, so that you must not suppose that you are conferring a great distinction upon your kings.
Footnotes
138:945Compare Augustine, de Civ. Dei, vi. 7. [Tom. vii. p. 184.]
138:946Æditum ejus.
139:947That is, when he mounted the pyre.
139:948Herculi functam. “Fungi alicui” means to satisfy, or yield to.
139:949The well-known Greek saying, ῎Αλλος οὗτος ῾Ηρακλῆς.
139:950Pluto; Proserpine, the daughter of Ceres, is meant. Oehler once preferred to read, “Hebe, quæ mortuo placuit,” i.e., “than Hebe, who gratified Hercules after death.”
139:951Tertullian often refers indignantly to this atrocious case.
139:952Subigitis.
Chapter XI.—The Romans Provided Gods for Birth, Nay, Even Before Birth, to Death. Much Indelicacy in This System.
And you are not content to assert the divinity of such as were once known to you, whom you heard and handled, and whose portraits have been painted, and actions recounted, and memory retained amongst you; but men insist upon consecrating with a heavenly life 953 I know not what incorporeal, inanimate shadows, and the mere names of things—dividing man’s entire existence amongst separate powers even from his conception in the womb: so that there is a god Consevius, 954 to preside over concubital generation; and Fluviona, 955 to preserve the (growth of the) infant in the womb; after these come Vitumnus and Sentinus, 956 through whom the babe begins to have life and its earliest sensation; then Diespiter, 957 by whose office the child accomplishes its birth. But when women begin their parturition, Candelifera also comes in aid, since childbearing requires the light of the candle; and other goddesses there are 958 who get their names from the parts they bear in the stages of travail. There were two Carmentas likewise, according to the general view: to one of them, called Postverta, belonged the function of assisting the birth of the introverted child; while the other, Prosa, 959 executed the like office for the rightly born. The god Farinus was so called from (his inspiring) the first utterance; while others believed in Locutius from his gift of speech. Cunina 960 is present as the protector of the child’s deep slumber, and supplies to it refreshing rest. To lift them (when fallen) 961 there is Levana, and along with her Rumina. 962 It is a wonderful oversight that no gods were appointed for cleaning up the filth of children. Then, to preside over their first pap and earliest drink you have Potina and Edula; 963 to teach the child to stand erect is the work of Statina, 964 whilst Adeona helps him to come to dear Mamma, and Abeona to toddle off again; then there is Domiduca, 965 (to bring home the bride;) and the goddess Mens, to influence the mind to either good or evil. 966 They have likewise Volumnus and Voleta, 967 to control the will; Paventina, (the goddess) of fear; Venilia, of hope; 968 Volupia, of pleasure; 969 Præstitia, of beauty. 970 Then, again, they give his name to Peragenor, 971 from his teaching men to go through their work; to Consus, from his suggesting to them counsel. Juventa is their guide on assuming the manly gown, and “bearded Fortune” when they come to full manhood. 972 If I must touch on their nuptial duties, there is Afferenda whose appointed function is to see to the offering of the dower; but fie on you! you have your Mutunus 973 and Tutunus and Pertunda 974 and Subigus and the goddess Prema and likewise Perfica. 975 O spare yourselves, ye impudent gods! No one is present at the secret struggles of married life. Those very few persons who have a wish that way, go away and blush for very shame in the midst of their joy.
Footnotes
139:953Efflagitant cœlo et sanciunt, (i.e., “they insist on deifying.”)
139:954Comp. Augustine, de Civ. Dei, vi. 9.
139:955A name of Juno, in reference to her office to mothers, “quia eam sanguinis fluorem in conceptu retinere putabant.” Comp. August. de Civ. Dei, iii. 2.
139:956Comp. August. de Civ. Dei, vii. 2, 3.
139:957Comp. August. de Civ. Dei, iv. 11.
139:958Such as Lucina, Partula, Nona, Decima, Alemona.
139:959Or, Prorsa.
139:960“Quæ infantes in cunis (in their cradle) tuetur.” Comp. August. de Civ. Dei, iv. 11.
139:961Educatrix; Augustine says: “Ipse levet de terra et vocetur dea Levana” (de Civ. Dei, iv. 11).
139:962From the old word ruma, a teat.
139:963Comp. August. de Civ. Dei, iv. 9, 11, 36.
139:964See also Tertullian’s de Anima, xxxix.; and Augustine’s de Civ. Dei, iv. 21, where the god has the masculine name of Statilinus.
139:965See Augustine, de Civ. Dei, vi. 9 and vii. 3.
139:966Ibid. iv. 21, vii. 3.
139:967Ibid. iv. 21.
139:968Ibid. iv. 11, vii. 22.
139:969Ibid. iv. 11. [N.B.—Augustine’s borrowing from our author.]
139:970Arnobius, adv. Nationes, iv. 3.
139:971Augustine, de Civ. Dei. [iv. 11 and 16] mentions Agenoria.
140:972On Fortuna Barbata, see Augustine, de Civ. Dei, iv. 11, where he also names Consus and Juventa.
140:973Tertullian, in Apol. xxv. sarcastically says, “Sterculus, and Mutunus, and Larentina, have raised the empire to its present height.”
140:974Arnobius, adv. Nationes, iv. 7, 11; August. de Civ. Dei, vi. 9.
140:975For these three gods, see Augustine, de Civ. Dei, vi. 9; and Arnobius, adv. Nationes, iv. 7.
Chapter XII. 976 —The Original Deities Were Human—With Some Very Questionable Characteristics. Saturn or Time Was Human. Inconsistencies of Opinion About Him.
Now, how much further need I go in recounting your gods—because I want to descant on the character of such as you have adopted? It is quite uncertain whether I shall laugh at your absurdity, or upbraid you for your blindness. For how many, and indeed what, gods shall I bring forward? Shall it be the greater ones, or the lesser? The old ones, or the novel? The male, or the female? The unmarried, or such as are joined in wedlock? The clever, or the unskilful? The rustic or the town ones? The national or the foreign? For the truth is, 977 there are so many families, so many nations, which require a catalogue 978 (of gods), that they cannot possibly be examined, or distinguished, or described. But the more diffuse the subject is, the more restriction must we impose on it. As, therefore, in this review we keep before us but one object—that of proving that all these gods were once human beings (not, indeed, to instruct you in the fact, 979 for your conduct shows that you have forgotten it)—let us adopt our compendious summary from the most natural method 980 of conducting the examination, even by considering the origin of their race. For the origin characterizes all that comes after it. Now this origin of your gods dates, 981 I suppose, from Saturn. And when Varro mentions Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, as the most ancient of the gods, it ought not to have escaped our notice, that every father is more ancient than his sons, and that Saturn therefore must precede Jupiter, even as Cœlus does Saturn, for Saturn was sprung from Cœlus and Terra. I pass by, however, the origin of Cœlus and Terra. They led in some unaccountable way 982 single lives, and had no children. Of course they required a long time for vigorous growth to attain to such a stature. 983 By and by, as soon as the voice of Cœlus began to break, 984 and the breasts of Terra to become firm, 985 they contract marriage with one another. I suppose either Heaven 986 came down to his spouse, or Earth went up to meet her lord. Be that as it may, Earth conceived seed of Heaven, and when her year was fulfilled brought forth Saturn in a wonderful manner. Which of his parents did he resemble? Well, then, even after parentage began, 987 it is certain 988 that they had no child previous to Saturn, and only one daughter afterwards—Ops; thenceforth they ceased to procreate. The truth is, Saturn castrated Cœlus as he was sleeping. We read this name Cœlus as of the masculine gender. And for the matter of that, how could he be a father unless he were a male? But with what instrument was the castration effected? He had a scythe. What, so early as that? For Vulcan was not yet an artificer in iron. The widowed Terra, however, although still quite young, was in no hurry 989 to marry another. Indeed, there was no second Cœlus for her. What but Ocean offers her an embrace? But he savours of brackishness, and she has been accustomed to fresh water. 990 And so Saturn is the sole male child of Cœlus and Terra. When grown to puberty, he marries his own sister. No laws as yet prohibited incest, nor punished parricide. Then, when male children were born to him, he would devour them; better himself (should take them) than the wolves, (for to these would they become a prey) if he exposed them. He was, no doubt, afraid that one of them might learn the lesson of his father’s scythe. When Jupiter was born in course of time, he was removed out of the way: 991 (the father) swallowed a stone instead of the son, as was pretended. This artifice secured his safety for a time; but at length the son, whom he had not devoured, and who had grown up in secret, fell upon him, and deprived him of his kingdom. Such, then, is the patriarch of the gods whom Heaven 992 and Earth produced for you, with the poets officiating as midwives. Now some persons with a refined 993 imagination are of opinion that, by this allegorical fable of Saturn, there is a physiological representation of Time: (they think) that it is because all things are destroyed by Time, that Cœlus and Terra were themselves parents without having any of their own, and that the (fatal) scythe was used, and that (Saturn) devoured his own offspring, because he, 994 in fact, absorbs within himself all things which have issued from him. They call in also the witness of his name; for they say that he is called Κρόνος in Greek, meaning the same thing as χρόνος. 995 His Latin name also they derive from seed-sowing; 996 for they suppose him to have been the actual procreator—that the seed, in fact, was dropt down from heaven to earth by his means. They unite him with Ops, because seeds produce the affluent treasure (Opem) of actual life, and because they develope with labour (Opus). Now I wish that you would explain this metaphorical 997 statement. It was either Saturn or Time. If it was Time, how could it be Saturn? If he, how could it be Time? For you cannot possibly reckon both these corporeal subjects 998 as co-existing in one person. What, however, was there to prevent your worshipping Time under its proper quality? Why not make a human person, or even a mythic man, an object of your adoration, but each in its proper nature not in the character of Time? What is the meaning of that conceit of your mental ingenuity, if it be not to colour the foulest matters with the feigned appearance of reasonable proofs? 999 Neither, on the one hand, do you mean Saturn to be Time, because you say he is a human being; nor, on the other hand, whilst portraying him as Time, do you on that account mean that he was ever human. No doubt, in the accounts of remote antiquity your god Saturn is plainly described as living on earth in human guise. Anything whatever may obviously be pictured as incorporeal which never had an existence; there is simply no room for such fiction, where there is reality. Since, therefore, there is clear evidence that Saturn once existed, it is in vain that you change his character. He whom you will not deny to have once been man, is not at your disposal to be treated anyhow, nor can it be maintained that he is either divine or Time. In every page of your literature the origin 1000 of Saturn is conspicuous. We read of him in Cassius Severus and in the Corneliuses, Nepos and Tacitus, 1001 and, amongst the Greeks also, in Diodorus, and all other compilers of ancient annals. 1002 No more faithful records of him are to be traced than in Italy itself. For, after (traversing) many countries, and (enjoying) the hospitality of Athens, he settled in Italy, or, as it was called, Œnotria, having met with a kind welcome from Janus, or Janes, 1003 as the Salii call him. The hill on which he settled had the name Saturnius, whilst the city which he founded 1004 still bears the name Saturnia; in short, the whole of Italy once had the same designation. Such is the testimony derived from that country which is now the mistress of the world: whatever doubt prevails about the origin of Saturn, his actions tell us plainly that he was a human being. Since, therefore, Saturn was human, he came undoubtedly from a human stock; and more, because he was a man, he, of course, came not of Cœlus and Terra. Some people, however, found it easy enough to call him, whose parents were unknown, the son of those gods from whom all may in a sense seem to be derived. For who is there that does not speak under a feeling of reverence of the heaven and the earth as his own father and mother? Or, in accordance with a custom amongst men, which induces them to say of any who are unknown or suddenly apparent, that “they came from the sky?” Hence it happened that, because a stranger appeared suddenly everywhere, it became the custom to call him a heaven-born man, 1005 —just as we also commonly call earth-born all those whose descent is unknown. I say nothing of the fact that such was the state of antiquity, when men’s eyes and minds were so habitually rude, that they were excited by the appearance of every newcomer as if it were that of a god: much more would this be the case with a king, and that the primeval one. I will linger some time longer over the case of Saturn, because by fully discussing his primordial history I shall beforehand furnish a compendious answer for all other cases; and I do not wish to omit the more convincing testimony of your sacred literature, the credit of which ought to be the greater in proportion to its antiquity. Now earlier than all literature was the Sibyl; that Sibyl, I mean, who was the true prophetess of truth, from whom you borrow their title for the priests of your demons. She in senarian verse expounds the descent of Saturn and his exploits in words to this effect: “In the tenth generation of men, after the flood had overwhelmed the former race, reigned Saturn, and Titan, and Japetus, the bravest of the sons of Terra and Cœlus.” Whatever credit, therefore, is attached to your older writers and literature, and much more to those who were the simplest as belonging to that age, 1006 it becomes sufficiently certain that Saturn and his family 1007 were human beings. We have in our possession, then, a brief principle which amounts to a prescriptive rule about their origin serving for all other cases, to prevent our going wrong in individual instances. The particular character 1008 of a posterity is shown by the original founders of the race—mortal beings (come) from mortals, earthly ones from earthly; step after step comes in due relation 1009 —marriage, conception, birth—country, settlements, kingdoms, all give the clearest proofs. 1010 They, therefore who cannot deny the birth of men, must also admit their death; they who allow their mortality must not suppose them to be gods.
Footnotes
140:976Agrees with The Apology, c. x.
140:977Bona fide.
140:978Censum.
140:979There is here an omitted clause, supplied in The Apology, “but rather to recall it to your memory.”
140:980Ab ipsa ratione.
140:981Signatur.
140:982Undeunde.
140:983Tantam proceritatem.
140:984Insolescere, i.e., at the commencement of puberty.
140:985Lapilliscere, i.e., to indicate maturity.
140:986The nominative “cœlum” is used.
140:987It is not very clear what is the force of “sed et pepererit,” as read by Oehler; we have given the clause an impersonal turn.
140:988“Certe” is sometime “certo” in our author.
140:989Distulit.
140:990That is, to rain and cloud.
140:991Abalienato.
141:992The word is “cœlum” here.
141:993Eleganter.
141:994i.e., as representing Time.
141:995So Augustine, de Civ. Dei, iv. 10; Arnobius, adv. Nationes, iii. 29; Cicero, de Nat. Deor. ii. 25.
141:996As if from “sero,” satum.
141:997Translatio.
141:998Utrumque corporale.
141:999Mentitis argumentationibus.
141:1000Census.
141:1001See his Histories, v. 2, 4.
141:1002Antiquitatem canos, “hoary antiquity.”
141:1003Jano sive Jane.
141:1004Depalaverat, “marked out with stakes.”
141:1005Cœlitem.
142:1006Magis proximis quoniam illius ætatis.
142:1007Prosapia.
142:1008Qualitas. [n.b. Our author’s use of Præscriptio.]
142:1009Comparantur.
142:1010Monumenta liquent.
Chapter XIII. 1011 —The Gods Human at First. Who Had the Authority to Make Them Divine? Jupiter Not Only Human, But Immoral.
Manifest cases, indeed, like these have a force peculiarly their own. Men like Varro and his fellow-dreamers admit into the ranks of the divinity those whom they cannot assert to have been in their primitive condition anything but men; (and this they do) by affirming that they became gods after their death. Here, then, I take my stand. If your gods were elected 1012 to this dignity and deity, 1013 just as you recruit the ranks of your senate, you cannot help conceding, in your wisdom, that there must be some one supreme sovereign who has the power of selecting, and is a kind of Cæsar; and nobody is able to confer 1014 on others a thing over which he has not absolute control. Besides, if they were able to make gods of themselves after their death, pray tell me why they chose to be in an inferior condition at first? Or, again, if there is no one who made them gods, how can they be said to have been made such, if they could only have been made by some one else? There is therefore no ground afforded you for denying that there is a certain wholesale distributor 1015 of divinity. Let us accordingly examine the reasons for despatching mortal beings to heaven. I suppose you will produce a pair of them. Whoever, then, is the awarder (of the divine honours), exercises his function, either that he may have some supports, or defences, or it may be even ornaments to his own dignity; or from the pressing claims of the meritorious, that he may reward all the deserving. No other cause is it permitted us to conjecture. Now there is no one who, when bestowing a gift on another, does not act with a view to his own interest or the other’s. This conduct, however, cannot be worthy of the Divine Being, inasmuch as His power is so great that He can make gods outright; whilst His bringing man into such request, on the pretence that he requires the aid and support of certain, even dead persons, is a strange conceit, since He was able from the very first to create for Himself immortal beings. He who has compared human things with divine will require no further arguments on these points. And yet the latter opinion ought to be discussed, that God conferred divine honours in consideration of meritorious claims. Well, then, if the award was made on such grounds, if heaven was opened to men of the primitive age because of their deserts, we must reflect that after that time no one was worthy of such honour; except it be, that there is now no longer such a place for any one to attain to. Let us grant that anciently men may have deserved heaven by reason of their great merits. Then let us consider whether there really was such merit. Let the man who alleges that it did exist declare his own view of merit. Since the actions of men done in the very infancy of time 1016 are a valid claim for their deification, you consistently admitted to the honour the brother and sister who were stained with the sin of incest—Ops and Saturn. Your Jupiter too, stolen in his infancy, was unworthy of both the home and the nutriment accorded to human beings; and, as he deserved for so bad a child, he had to live in Crete. 1017 Afterwards, when full-grown, he dethrones his own father, who, whatever his parental character may have been, was most prosperous in his reign, king as he was of the golden age. Under him, a stranger to toil and want, peace maintained its joyous and gentle sway; under him—
“Nulli subigebant arva coloni;” 1018
“No swains would bring the fields beneath their sway;” 1019
and without the importunity of any one the earth would bear all crops spontaneously. 1020 But he hated a father who had been guilty of incest, and had once mutilated his 1021 grandfather. And yet, behold, he himself marries his own sister; so that I should suppose the old adage was made for him: Τοῦ πατρὸς τὸ παιδίον—“Father’s own child.” There was “not a pin to choose” between the father’s piety and the son’s. If the laws had been just even at that early time, 1022 Jupiter ought to have been “sewed up in both sacks.” 1023 After this corroboration of his lust with incestuous gratification, why should he hesitate to indulge himself lavishly in the lighter excesses of adultery and debauchery? Ever since 1024 poetry sported thus with his character, in some such way as is usual when a runaway slave 1025 is posted up in public, we have been in the habit of gossiping without restraint 1026 of his tricks 1027 in our chat with passers-by; 1028 sometimes sketching him out in the form of the very money which was the fee of his debauchery—as when (he personated) a bull, or rather paid the money’s worth of one, 1029 and showered (gold) into the maiden’s chamber, or rather forced his way in with a bribe; 1030 sometimes (figuring him) in the very likenesses of the parts which were acted 1031 —as the eagle which ravished (the beautiful youth), 1032 and the swan which sang (the enchanting song). 1033 Well now, are not such fables as these made up of the most disgusting intrigues and the worst of scandals? or would not the morals and tempers of men be likely to become wanton from such examples? In what manner demons, the offspring of evil angels who have been long engaged in their mission, have laboured to turn men 1034 aside from the faith to unbelief and to such fables, we must not in this place speak of to any extent. As indeed the general body 1035 (of your gods), which took their cue 1036 from their kings, and princes, and instructors, 1037 was not of the self-same nature, it was in some other way 1038 that similarity of character was exacted by their authority. But how much the worst of them was he who (ought to have been, but) was not, the best of them? By a title peculiar to him, you are indeed in the habit of calling Jupiter “the Best,” 1039 whilst in Virgil he is “Æquus Jupiter.” 1040 All therefore were like him—incestuous towards their own kith and kin, unchaste to strangers, impious, unjust! Now he whom mythic story left untainted with no conspicuous infamy, was not worthy to be made a god.
Footnotes
142:1011Comp. The Apology, c. xi. [p. 27. Supra.]
142:1012Allecti.
142:1013This is not so terse as Tertullian’s “nomen et numen.”
142:1014Præstare.
142:1015Mancipem.
142:1016In cunabulis temporalitatis.
142:1017The ill-fame of the Cretans is noted by St. Paul, Tit. i. 12.
143:1018Virgil, Georg. i. 125.
143:1019Sewell.
143:1020Ipsa.
143:1021Jupiter’s, of course.
143:1022The law which prescribed the penalty of the paracide, that he be sewed up in a sack with an ape, a serpent, and a cock, and be thrown into the sea.
143:1023In duos culleos dividi.
143:1024De quo.
143:1025De fugitivo.
143:1026Abusui nundinare.
143:1027The “operam ejus”=ingenia et artificia (Oehler).
143:1028Percontationi alienæ.
143:1029In the case of Europa.
143:1030In the case of Danäe.
143:1031Similitudines actuum ipsas.
143:1032In the case of Ganymede.
143:1033In the case of Leda.
143:1034Quos.
143:1035Plebs.
143:1036Morata.
143:1037Proseminatoribus.
143:1038Alibi.
143:1039Optimum.
143:1040There would seem to be a jest here; “æquus” is not only just but equal, i.e., “on a par with” others—in evil, of course, as well as good.
Chapter XIV.—Gods, Those Which Were Confessedly Elevated to the Divine Condition, What Pre-Eminent Right Had They to Such Honour? Hercules an Inferior Character.
But since they will have it that those who have been admitted from the human state to the honours of deification should be kept separate from others, and that the distinction which Dionysius the Stoic drew should be made between the native and the factitious 1041 gods, I will add a few words concerning this last class also. I will take Hercules himself for raising the gist of a reply 1042 (to the question) whether he deserved heaven and divine honours? For, as men choose to have it, these honours are awarded to him for his merits. If it was for his valour in destroying wild beasts with intrepidity, what was there in that so very memorable? Do not criminals condemned to the games, though they are even consigned to the contest of the vile arena, despatch several of these animals at one time, and that with more earnest zeal? If it was for his world-wide travels, how often has the same thing been accomplished by the rich at their pleasant leisure, or by philosophers in their slave-like poverty? 1043 Is it forgotten that the cynic Asclepiades on a single sorry cow, 1044 riding on her back, and sometimes nourished at her udder, surveyed 1045 the whole world with a personal inspection? Even if Hercules visited the infernal regions, who does not know that the way to Hades is open to all? If you have deified him on account of his much carnage and many battles, a much greater number of victories was gained by the illustrious Pompey, the conqueror of the pirates who had not spared Ostia itself in their ravages; and (as to carnage), how many thousands, let me ask, were cooped up in one corner of the citadel 1046 of Carthage, and slain by Scipio? Wherefore Scipio has a better claim to be considered a fit candidate for deification 1047 than Hercules. You must be still more careful to add to the claims of (our) Hercules his debaucheries with concubines and wives, and the swathes 1048 of Omphale, and his base desertion of the Argonauts because he had lost his beautiful boy. 1049 To this mark of baseness add for his glorification likewise his attacks of madness, adore the arrows which slew his sons and wife. This was the man who, after deeming himself worthy of a funeral pile in the anguish of his remorse for his parricides, 1050 deserved rather to die the unhonoured death which awaited him, arrayed in the poisoned robe which his wife sent him on account of his lascivious attachment (to another). You, however, raised him from the pyre to the sky, with the same facility with which (you have distinguished in like manner) another hero 1051 also, who was destroyed by the violence of a fire from the gods. He having devised some few experiments, was said to have restored the dead to life by his cures. He was the son of Apollo, half human, although the grandson of Jupiter, and great-grandson of Saturn (or rather of spurious origin, because his parentage was uncertain, as Socrates of Argon has related; he was exposed also, and found in a worse tutelage than even Jove’s, suckled even at the dugs of a dog); nobody can deny that he deserved the end which befell him when he perished by a stroke of lightning. In this transaction, however, your most excellent Jupiter is once more found in the wrong—impious to his grandson, envious of his artistic skill. Pindar, indeed, has not concealed his true desert; according to him, he was punished for his avarice and love of gain, influenced by which he would bring the living to their death, rather than the dead to life, by the perverted use of his medical art which he put up for sale. 1052 It is said that his mother was killed by the same stroke, and it was only right that she, who had bestowed so dangerous a beast on the world, 1053 should escape to heaven by the same ladder. And yet the Athenians will not be at a loss how to sacrifice to gods of such a fashion, for they pay divine honours to Æsculapius and his mother amongst their dead (worthies). As if, too, they had not ready to hand 1054 their own Theseus to worship, so highly deserving a god’s distinction! Well, why not? Did he not on a foreign shore abandon the preserver of his life, 1055 with the same indifference, nay heartlessness, 1056 with which he became the cause of his father’s death?
Footnotes
143:1041Inter nativos et factos. See above, c. ii., p. 131.
143:1042Summa responsionis.
143:1043Famulatoria mendicitas.
143:1044Vaccula.
143:1045Subegisse oculis, “reduced to his own eyesight.”
144:1046Byrsæ.
144:1047Magis obtinendus divinitati deputatur.
144:1048Fascias.
144:1049Hylas.
144:1050Rather murders of children and other kindred.
144:1051Æsculapius.
144:1052Tertullian does not correctly quote Pindar (Pyth. iii. 54–59), who notices the skilful hero’s love of reward, but certainly ascribes to him the merit of curing rather than killing: Αλλὰ κέρδει καὶ σοφία δέδεται ἔτραπεν καὶ κᾀκεῖνον ἁγάνορι μισθῷ χρυσὸς ἐν χερσὶν φανεὶς ἂνδῤ ἐκ θανάτου κομίσαι ἢδη ἀλωκότα· χερσὶ δ᾽ ἄρα Κρονίων ῥίψαις δἰ ἄμφοῖν ἀμπνοὰν στέρνων καθέλεν ὠκέως, αἴθων δὲ κεραυνὸς ἐνέσκιμψεν μόρον—“Even wisdom has been bound by love of gain, and gold shining in the hand by a magnificent reward induced even him to restore from death a man already seized by it; and then the son of Saturn, hurling with his hands a bolt through both, speedily took away the breath of their breasts, and the flashing bolt inflicted death” (Dawson Turner).
144:1053Tertullian does not follow the legend which is usually received. He wishes to see no good in the object of his hatred, and so takes the worst view, and certainly improves upon it. The “bestia” is out of reason. [He doubtless followed some copy now lost.]
144:1054Quasi non et ipsi.
144:1055Ariadne.
144:1056Amentia.
Chapter XV.—The Constellations and the Genii Very Indifferent Gods. The Roman Monopoly of Gods Unsatisfactory. Other Nations Require Deities Quite as Much.
It would be tedious to take a survey of all those, too, whom you have buried amongst the constellations, and audaciously minister to as gods. 1057 I suppose your Castors, and Perseus, and Erigona, 1058 have just the same claims for the honours of the sky as Jupiter’s own big boy 1059 had. But why should we wonder? You have transferred to heaven even dogs, and scorpions, and crabs. I postpone all remarks 1060 concerning those whom you worship in your oracles. That this worship exists, is attested by him who pronounces the oracle. 1061 Why; you will have your gods to be spectators even of sadness, 1062 as is Viduus, who makes a widow of the soul, by parting it from the body, and whom you have condemned, by not permitting him to be enclosed within your city-walls; there is Cæculus also, to deprive the eyes of their perception; and Orbana, to bereave seed of its vital power; moreover, there is the goddess of death herself. To pass hastily by all others, 1063 you account as gods the sites of places or of the city; such are Father Janus (there being, moreover, the archer-goddess 1064 Jana 1065 ), and Septimontius of the seven hills.
Men sacrifice 1066 to the same Genii, whilst they have altars or temples in the same places; but to others besides, when they dwell in a strange place, or live in rented houses. 1067 I say nothing about Ascensus, who gets his name for his climbing propensity, and Clivicola, from her sloping (haunts); I pass silently by the deities called Forculus from doors, and Cardea from hinges, and Limentinus the god of thresholds, and whatever others are worshipped by your neighbours as tutelar deities of their street doors. 1068 There is nothing strange in this, since men have their respective gods in their brothels, their kitchens, and even in their prison. Heaven, therefore, is crowded with innumerable gods of its own, both these and others belonging to the Romans, which have distributed amongst them the functions of one’s whole life, in such a way that there is no want of the other 1069 gods. Although, it is true, 1070 the gods which we have enumerated are reckoned as Roman peculiarly, and as not easily recognised abroad; yet how do all those functions and circumstances, over which men have willed their gods to preside, come about, 1071 in every part of the human race, and in every nation, where their guarantees 1072 are not only without an official recognition, but even any recognition at all?
Footnotes
144:1057Deis ministratis.
144:1058The constellation Virgo.
144:1059Jovis exoletus, Ganymede, or Aquarius.
144:1060He makes a similar postponement above, in c. vii., to The Apology, cc. xxii. xxiii.
144:1061Divini.
144:1062Et tristitiæ arbitros.
144:1063Transvolem.
144:1064Diva arquis.
144:1065Perhaps another form of Diana.
144:1066Faciunt = ῥίζουσι.
145:1067This seems to be the meaning of an almost unintelligible sentence, which we subjoin: “Geniis eisdem illi faciunt qui in isdem locis aras vel ædes habent; præterea aliis qui in alieno loco aut mercedibus habitant.” Oehler, who makes this text, supposes that in each clause the name of some god has dropped out.
145:1068Numinum janitorum.
145:1069Ceteris.
145:1070Immo cum.
145:1071Proveniunt.
145:1072Prædes.
Chapter XVI.—Inventors of Useful Arts Unworthy of Deification. They Would Be the First to Acknowledge a Creator. The Arts Changeable from Time to Time, and Some Become Obsolete.
Well, but 1073 certain men have discovered fruits and sundry necessaries of life, (and hence are worthy of deification). 1074 Now let me ask, when you call these persons “discoverers,” do you not confess that what they discovered was already in existence? Why then do you not prefer to honour the Author, from whom the gifts really come, instead of converting the Author into mere discoverers? Previously he who made the discover, the inventor himself no doubt expressed his gratitude to the Author; no doubt, too, he felt that He was God, to whom really belonged the religious service, 1075 as the Creator (of the gift), by whom also both he who discovered and that which was discovered were alike created. The green fig of Africa nobody at Rome had heard of when Cato introduced it to the Senate, in order that he might show how near was that province of the enemy 1076 whose subjugation he was constantly urging. The cherry was first made common in Italy by Cn. Pompey, who imported it from Pontus. I might possibly have thought the earliest introducers of apples amongst the Romans deserving of the public honour 1077 of deification. This, however, would be as foolish a ground for making gods as even the invention of the useful arts. And yet if the skilful men 1078 of our own time be compared with these, how much more suitable would deification be to the later generation than to the former! For, tell me, have not all the extant inventions superseded antiquity, 1079 whilst daily experience goes on adding to the new stock? Those, therefore, whom you regard as divine because of their arts, you are really injuring by your very arts, and challenging (their divinity) by means of rival attainments, which cannot be surpassed. 1080
Footnotes
145:1073Sedenim.
145:1074We insert this clause at Oehler’s suggestion.
145:1075Ministerium.
145:1076The incident, which was closely connected with the third Punic war, is described pleasantly by Pliny, Hist. Nat. xv. 20.
145:1077Præconium.
145:1078Artifices.
145:1079“Antiquitas” is here opposed to “novitas,” and therefore means “the arts of old times.”
145:1080In æmulis. “In,” in our author, often marks the instrument.
Chapter XVII. 1081 —Conclusion, the Romans Owe Not Their Imperial Power to Their Gods. The Great God Alone Dispenses Kingdoms, He is the God of the Christians.
In conclusion, without denying all those whom antiquity willed and posterity has believed to be gods, to be the guardians of your religion, there yet remains for our consideration that very large assumption of the Roman superstitions which we have to meet in opposition to you, O heathen, viz. that the Romans have become the lords and masters of the whole world, because by their religious offices they have merited this dominion to such an extent that they are within a very little of excelling even their own gods in power. One cannot wonder that Sterculus, and Mutunus, and Larentina, have severally 1082 advanced this empire to its height! The Roman people has been by its gods alone ordained to such dominion. For I could not imagine that any foreign gods would have preferred doing more for a strange nation than for their own people, and so by such conduct become the deserters and neglecters, nay, the betrayers of the native land wherein they were born and bred, and ennobled and buried. Thus not even Jupiter could suffer his own Crete to be subdued by the Roman fasces, forgetting that cave of Ida, and the brazen cymbals of the Corybantes, and the most pleasant odour of the goat which nursed him on that dear spot. Would he not have made that tomb of his superior to the whole Capitol, so that that land should most widely rule which covered the ashes of Jupiter? Would Juno, too, be willing that the Punic city, for the love of which she even neglected Samos, should be destroyed, and that, too, by the fires of the sons of Æneas? Although I am well aware that
“Hic illius arma,
Hic currus fuit, hoc regnum des gentibus esse,
Si qua fata sinant, jam tunc tenditque fovetque.” 1083
“Here were her arms, her chariot here,
Here goddess-like, to fix one day
The seat of universal sway,
Might fate be wrung to yield assent,
E’en then her schemes, her cares were bent.” 1084
Still the unhappy (queen of gods) had no power against the fates! And yet the Romans did not accord as much honour to the fates, although they gave them Carthage, as they did to Larentina. But surely those gods of yours have not the power of conferring empire. For when Jupiter reigned in Crete, and Saturn in Italy, and Isis in Egypt, it was even as men that they reigned, to whom also were assigned many to assist them. 1085 Thus he who serves also makes masters, and the bond-slave 1086 of Admetus 1087 aggrandizes with empire the citizens of Rome, although he destroyed his own liberal votary Crœsus by deceiving him with ambiguous oracles. 1088 Being a god, why was he afraid boldly to foretell to him the truth that he must lose his kingdom. Surely those who were aggrandized with the power of wielding empire might always have been able to keep an eye, as it were, 1089 on their own cities. If they were strong enough to confer empire on the Romans, why did not Minerva defend Athens from Xerxes? Or why did not Apollo rescue Delphi out of the hand of Pyrrhus? They who lost their own cities preserve the city of Rome, since (forsooth) the religiousness 1090 of Rome has merited the protection! But is it not rather the fact that this excessive devotion 1091 has been devised since the empire has attained its glory by the increase of its power? No doubt sacred rites were introduced by Numa, but then your proceedings were not marred by a religion of idols and temples. Piety was simple, 1092 and worship humble; altars were artlessly reared, 1093 and the vessels (thereof) plain, and the incense from them scant, and the god himself nowhere. Men therefore were not religious before they achieved greatness, (nor great) because they were religious. But how can the Romans possibly seem to have acquired their empire by an excessive religiousness and very profound respect for the gods, when that empire was rather increased after the gods had been slighted? 1094 Now, if I am not mistaken, every kingdom or empire is acquired and enlarged by wars, whilst they and their gods also are injured by conquerors. For the same ruin affects both city-walls and temples; similar is the carnage both of civilians and of priests; identical the plunder of profane things and of sacred. To the Romans belong as many sacrileges as trophies; and then as many triumphs over gods as over nations. Still remaining are their captive idols amongst them; and certainly, if they can only see their conquerors, they do not give them their love. Since, however, they have no perception, they are injured with impunity; and since they are injured with impunity, they are worshipped to no purpose. The nation, therefore, which has grown to its powerful height by victory after victory, cannot seem to have developed owing to the merits of its religion—whether they have injured the religion by augmenting their power, or augmented their power by injuring the religion. All nations have possessed empire, each in its proper time, as the Assyrians, the Medes, the Persians, the Egyptians; empire is even now also in the possession of some, and yet they that have lost their power used not to behave 1095 without attention to religious services and the worship of the gods, even after these had become unpropitious to them, 1096 until at last almost universal dominion has accrued to the Romans. It is the fortune of the times that has thus constantly shaken kingdoms with revolution. 1097 Inquire who has ordained these changes in the times. It is the same (great Being) who dispenses kingdoms, 1098 and has now put the supremacy of them into the hands of the Romans, very much as if 1099 the tribute of many nations were after its exaction amassed in one (vast) coffer. What He has determined concerning it, they know who are the nearest to Him. 1100
Footnotes
145:1081Compare The Apology, xxv. xxvi., pp. 39, 40.
145:1082The verb is in the singular number.
146:1083Æneid, i. 16–20.
146:1084Conington.
146:1085Operati plerique.
146:1086Dediticius.
146:1087Apollo; comp. The Apology, c. xiv., p. 30.
146:1088See Herodot. i. 50.
146:1089Veluti tueri.
146:1090Religiositas.
146:1091Superstitio.
146:1092Frugi.
146:1093Temeraria.
146:1094Læsis.
146:1095Morabantur. We have taken this word as if from “mores” (character). Tertullian often uses the participle “moratus” in this sense.
146:1096Et depropitiorum.
146:1097Volutavit.
146:1098Compare The Apology, c. xxvi.
147:1099We have treated this “tanquam” and its clause as something more than a mere simile. It is, in fact, an integral element of the supremacy which the entire sentence describes as conferred on the Romans by the Almighty.
147:1100That is, the Christians, who are well aware of God’s purposes as declared in prophecy. St. Paul tells the Thessalonians what the order of the great events subsequent to the Roman power was to be: the destruction of that power was to be followed by the development and reign of Antichrist; and then the end of the world would come.
Appendix.
A Fragment Concerning the Execrable Gods of the Heathen.
————————————
So great blindness has fallen on the Roman race, that they call their enemy Lord, and preach the filcher of blessings as being their very giver, and to him they give thanks. They call those (deities), then, by human names, not by their own, for their own names they know not. That they are dæmons 1101 they understand: but they read histories of the old kings, and then, though they see that their character 1102 was mortal, they honour them with a deific name.
As for him whom they call Jupiter, and think to be the highest god, when he was born the years (that had elapsed) from the foundation of the world 1103 to him 1104 were some three thousand. He is born in Greece, from Saturnus and Ops; and, for fear he should be killed by his father (or else, if it is lawful to say so, should be begotten 1105 anew), is by the advice of his mother carried down into Crete, and reared in a cave of Ida; is concealed from his father’s search) by (the aid of) Cretans—born men! 1106 —rattling their arms; sucks a she-goat’s dugs; flays her; clothes himself in her hide; and (thus) uses his own nurse’s hide, after killing her, to be sure, with his own hand! but he sewed thereon three golden tassels worth the price of an hundred oxen each, as their author Homer 1107 relates, if it is fair to believe it. This Jupiter, in adult age, waged war several years with his father; overcame him; made a parricidal raid on his home; violated his virgin sisters; 1108 selected one of them in marriage; drave 1109 his father by dint of arms. The remaining scenes, moreover, of that act have been recorded. Of other folks’ wives, or else of violated virgins, he begat him sons; defiled freeborn boys; oppressed peoples lawlessly with despotic and kingly sway. The father, whom they erringly suppose to have been the original god, was ignorant that this (son of his) was lying concealed in Crete; the son, again, whom they believe the mightier god, knows not that the father whom himself had banished is lurking in Italy. If he was in heaven, when would he not see what was doing in Italy? For the Italian land is “not in a corner.” 1110 And yet, had he been a god, nothing ought to have escaped him. But that he whom the Italians call Saturnus did lurk there, is clearly evidenced on the face of it, from the fact that from his lurking 1111 the Hesperian 1112 tongue is to this day called Latin, 1113 as likewise their author Virgil relates. 1114 (Jupiter,) then, is said to have been born on earth, while (Saturnus his father) fears lest he be driven by him from his kingdom, and seeks to kill him as being his own rival, and knows not that he has been stealthily carried off, and is in hiding; and afterwards the son-god pursues his father, immortal seeks to slay immortal (is it credible? 1115 ), and is disappointed by an interval of sea, and is ignorant of (his quarry’s) flight; and while all this is going on between two gods on earth, heaven is deserted. No one dispensed the rains, no one thundered, no one governed all this mass of world. 1116 For they cannot even say that their action and wars took place in heaven; for all this was going on on Mount Olympus in Greece. Well, but heaven is not called Olympus, for heaven is heaven.
These, then, are the actions of theirs, which we will treat of first—nativity, lurking, ignorance, parricide, adulteries, obscenities—things committed not by a god, but by most impure and truculent human beings; beings who, had they been living in these days, would have lain under the impeachment of all laws—laws which are far more just and strict than their actions. “He drave his father by dint of arms.” The Falcidian and Sempronian law would bind the parricide in a sack with beasts. “He violated his sisters.” The Papinian law would punish the outrage with all penalties, limb by limb. “He invaded others’ wedlock.” The Julian law would visit its adulterous violator capitally. “He defiled freeborn boys.” The Cornelian law would condemn the crime of transgressing the sexual bond with novel severities, sacrilegiously guilty as it is of a novel union. 1117 This being is shown to have had no divinity either, for he was a human being; his father’s flight escaped him. To this human being, of such a character, to so wicked a king, so obscene and so cruel, God’s honour has been assigned by men. Now, to be sure, if on earth he were born and grew up through the advancing stages of life’s periods, and in it committed all these evils, and yet is no more in it, what is thought 1118 (of him) but that he is dead? Or else does foolish error think wings were born him in his old age, whence to fly heavenward? Why, even this may possibly find credit among men bereft of sense, 1119 if indeed they believe, (as they do,) that he turned into a swan, to beget the Castors; 1120 an eagle, to contaminate Ganymede; a bull, to violate Europa; gold, to violate Danaë; a horse, to beget Pirithoüs; a goat, to beget Egyppa 1121 from a she-goat; a Satyr, to embrace Antiope. Beholding these adulteries, to which sinners are prone, they therefore easily believe that sanctions of misdeed and of every filthiness are borrowed from their feigned god. Do they perceive how void of amendment are the rest of his career’s acts which can find credit, which are indeed true, and which, they say, he did without self transformation? Of Semele, he begets Liber; 1122 of Latona, Apollo and Diana; of Maia, Mercury; of Alcmena, Hercules. But the rest of his corruptions, which they themselves confess, I am unwilling to record, lest turpitude, once buried, be again called to men’s ears. But of these few (offsprings of his) I have made mention; off-springs whom in their error they believe to be themselves, too, gods—born, to wit, of an incestuous father; adulterous births, supposititious births. And the living, 1123 eternal God, of sempiternal divinity, prescient of futurity, immeasurable, 1124 they have dissipated (into nothing, by associating Him) with crimes so unspeakable.
Footnotes
149:1101Dæmons. Gr. δαίμων, which some hold to = δαήμων, “knowing,” “skilful,” in which case it would come to be used of any superhuman intelligence; others, again, derive from δαίω, “to divide, distribute,” in which case it would mean a distributor of destinies; which latter derivation and meaning Liddell and Scott incline to.
149:1102Actum: or “career.”
149:1103Mundi.
149:1104i.e., till his time.
149:1105Pareretur. As the word seems to be used here with reference to his father, this, although not by any means a usual meaning, would seem to be the sense. [As in the equivalent Greek.]
149:1106A Cretibus, hominibus natis. The force seems to be in the absurdity of supposing that, 1st, there should be human beings (hominibus) born, (as Jupiter is said to have been “born,”) already existing at the time of the “birth” of “the highest god;” 2ndly, that these should have had the power to do him so essential service as to conceal him from the search of his own father, likewise a mighty deity, by the simple expedient of rattling their arms.
149:1107See Hom. Il. ii. 446–9; but Homer says there were 100 such tassels.
149:1108Oehler’s “virginis” must mean “virgines.”
149:1109So Scott: “He drave my cows last Fastern’s night.”—Lay of Last Minstrel.
149:1110See Acts xxvi. 26.
149:1111Latitatio.
149:1112i.e., Western: here=Italian, as being west of Greece.
149:1113Latina.
149:1114See Virg. Æn. viii. 319–323: see also Ov. Fast. i. 234–238.
149:1115Oehler does not mark this as a question. If we follow him, we may render, “this can find belief.” Above, it seemed necessary to introduce the parenthetical words to make some sense. The Latin is throughout very clumsy and incoherent.
150:1116Orbis.
150:1117Lex Cornelia transgressi fœderis ammissum novis exemplis novi coitus sacrilegum damnaret. After consulting Dr. Holmes, I have rendered, but not without hesitation, as above. “Fœdus” seems to have been technically used, especially in later Latin, of the marriage compact; but what “lex Cornelia” is meant I have sought vainly to discover, and whether “lex Cornelia transgressi fœderis” ought not to go together I am not sure. For “ammissum” (=admissum) Migne’s ed. reads “amissum,” a very different word. For “sacrilegus” with a genitive, see de Res. Carn, c. xlii. med.
150:1118Quid putatur (Oehler) putatus (Migne).
150:1119Or, “feeling”—“sensu.”
150:1120The Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux.
150:1121Perhaps Ægipana (marginal reading of the ms. as given in Oehler and Migne).
150:1122i.e., Bacchus.
150:1123Oehler reads “vide etem;” but Migne’s “viventem” seems better: indeed, Oehler’s is probably a misprint. The punctuation of this treatise in Oehler is very faulty throughout, and has been disregarded.
150:1124“Immensum,” rendered “incomprehensible” in the “Athanasian Creed.
Elucidation.
————————————
This Fragment is noted as spurious, by Oehler who attributes it to somebody only moderately acquainted with Tertullian’s style and teaching. 1125 I do not find it mentioned by Dupin, nor by Routh. This translation is by Thelwall.
Footnotes
150:1125See page 14, supra.
VII.
An Answer to the Jews. 1126
[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]
————————————
Chapter I.—Occasion of Writing. Relative Position of Jews and Gentiles Illustrated.
It happened very recently a dispute was held between a Christian and a Jewish proselyte. Alternately with contentious cable they each spun out the day until evening. By the opposing din, moreover, of some partisans of the individuals, truth began to be overcast by a sort of cloud. It was therefore our pleasure that that which, owing to the confused noise of disputation, could be less fully elucidated point by point, should be more carefully looked into, and that the pen should determine, for reading purposes, the questions handled.
For the occasion, indeed, of claiming Divine grace even for the Gentiles derived a pre-eminent fitness from this fact, that the man who set up to vindicate God’s Law as his own was of the Gentiles, and not a Jew “of the stock of the Israelites.” 1127 For this fact—that Gentiles are admissible to God’s Law—is enough to prevent Israel from priding himself on the notion that “the Gentiles are accounted as a little drop of a bucket,” or else as “dust out of a threshing-floor:” 1128 although we have God Himself as an adequate engager and faithful promiser, in that He promised to Abraham that “in his seed should be blest all nations of the earth;” 1129 and that 1130 out of the womb of Rebecca “two peoples and two nations were about to proceed,” 1131 —of course those of the Jews, that is, of Israel; and of the Gentiles, that is ours. Each, then, was called a people and a nation; lest, from the nuncupative appellation, any should dare to claim for himself the privilege of grace. For God ordained “two peoples and two nations” as about to proceed out of the womb of one woman: nor did grace 1132 make distinction in the nuncupative appellation, but in the order of birth; to the effect that, which ever was to be prior in proceeding from the womb, should be subjected to “the less,” that is, the posterior. For thus unto Rebecca did God speak: “Two nations are in thy womb, and two peoples shall be divided from thy bowels; and people shall overcome people, and the greater shall serve the less.” 1133 Accordingly, since the people or nation of the Jews is anterior in time, and “greater” through the grace of primary favour in the Law, whereas ours is understood to be “less” in the age of times, as having in the last era of the world 1134 attained the knowledge of divine mercy: beyond doubt, through the edict of the divine utterance, the prior and “greater” people—that is, the Jewish—must necessarily serve the “less;” and the “less” people—that is, the Christian—overcome the “greater.” For, withal, according to the memorial records of the divine Scriptures, the people of the Jews—that is, the more ancient—quite forsook God, and did degrading service to idols, and, abandoning the Divinity, was surrendered to images; while “the people” said to Aaron, “Make us gods to go before us.” 1135 And when the gold out of the necklaces of the women and the rings of the men had been wholly smelted by fire, and there had come forth a calf-like head, to this figment Israel with one consent (abandoning God) gave honour, saying, “These are the gods who brought us from the land of Egypt.” 1136 For thus, in the later times in which kings were governing them, did they again, in conjunction with Jeroboam, worship golden kine, and groves, and enslave themselves to Baal. 1137 Whence is proved that they have ever been depicted, out of the volume of the divine Scriptures, as guilty of the crime of idolatry; whereas our “less”—that is, posterior—people, quitting the idols which formerly it used slavishly to serve, has been converted to the same God from whom Israel, as we have above related, had departed. 1138 For thus has the “less”—that is, posterior—people overcome the “greater people,” while it attains the grace of divine favour, from which Israel has been divorced.
Footnotes
151:1126[This treatise was written while our author was a Catholic. This seems to me the best supported of the theories concerning it. Let us accept Pamelius, for once and date it a.d. 198. Dr. Allix following Baronius, will have it as late as a.d. 208. Neander thinks the work, after the quotation from Isaiah in the beginning of chapter ninth, is not our author’s, but was finished by another hand, clumsily annexing what is said on the same chapter of Isaiah in the Third Book against Marcion. It is only slightly varied. Bp. Kaye admits the very striking facts instanced by Neander, in support of this theory, but demolishes, with a word any argument drawn from thence that the genuine work was written after the author’s lapse. This treatise is sufficiently annotated by Thelwall, and covers ground elsewhere gone over in this Series. My own notes are therefore very few.]
151:1127Comp. Phil. iii. 5.
151:1128See Isa. xl. 15: “dust of the balance,” Eng. Ver.; ῥοπὴ ζυγοῦ LXX. For the expression “dust out of a threshing-floor,” however, see Ps. 1:4, Dan. 2:35.
151:1129See Gen. xxii. 18; and comp. Gal. iii. 16, and the reference in both places.
151:1130This promise may be said to have been given “to Abraham,” because (of course) he was still living at the time; as we see by comparing Gen. 21:5, Gen. 25:7, 26, Heb. 11:9.
151:1131Or, “nor did He make, by grace, a distinction.”
151:1132Or, “nor did He make, by grace, a distinction.”
151:1133See Gen. xxv. 21-23, especially in the LXX.; and comp. Rom. ix. 10-13.
151:1134Sæculi.
151:1135Exod. 32:1, 23, Acts 7:39, 40.
152:1136Ex. xxxii. 4: comp. Acts 7:38, 1 Cor. 10:7, Ps. 6:19.
152:1137Comp. 1 Kings 12:25, 2 Kings 17:7 (in LXX. 3 and 4 Kings). The Eng. ver. speaks of “calves;” the LXX. call them “heifers.”
152:1138Comp. 1 Thess. 1:9, 10.
Chapter II.—The Law Anterior to Moses.
Stand we, therefore, foot to foot, and determine we the sum and substance of the actual question within definite lists.
For why should God, the founder of the universe, the Governor of the whole world, 1139 the Fashioner of humanity, the Sower 1140 of universal nations be believed to have given a law through Moses to one people, and not be said to have assigned it to all nations? For unless He had given it to all by no means would He have habitually permitted even proselytes out of the nations to have access to it. But—as is congruous with the goodness of God, and with His equity, as the Fashioner of mankind—He gave to all nations the selfsame law, which at definite and stated times He enjoined should be observed, when He willed, and through whom He willed, and as He willed. For in the beginning of the world He gave to Adam himself and Eve a law, that they were not to eat of the fruit of the tree planted in the midst of paradise; but that, if they did contrariwise, by death they were to die. 1141 Which law had continued enough for them, had it been kept. For in this law given to Adam we recognise in embryo 1142 all the precepts which afterwards sprouted forth when given through Moses; that is, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God from thy whole heart and out of thy whole soul; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself; 1143 Thou shalt not kill; Thou shalt not commit adultery; Thou shalt not steal; False witness thou shalt not utter; Honour thy father and mother; and, That which is another’s, shalt thou not covet. For the primordial law was given to Adam and Eve in paradise, as the womb of all the precepts of God. In short, if they had loved the Lord their God, they would not have contravened His precept; if they had habitually loved their neighbour—that is, themselves 1144 —they would not have believed the persuasion of the serpent, and thus would not have committed murder upon themselves, 1145 by falling 1146 from immortality, by contravening God’s precept; from theft also they would have abstained, if they had not stealthily tasted of the fruit of the tree, nor had been anxious to skulk beneath a tree to escape the view of the Lord their God; nor would they have been made partners with the falsehood-asseverating devil, by believing him that they would be “like God;” and thus they would not have offended God either, as their Father, who had fashioned them from clay of the earth, as out of the womb of a mother; if they had not coveted another’s, they would not have tasted of the unlawful fruit.
Therefore, in this general and primordial law of God, the observance of which, in the case of the tree’s fruit, He had sanctioned, we recognise enclosed all the precepts specially of the posterior Law, which germinated when disclosed at their proper times. For the subsequent superinduction of a law is the work of the same Being who had before premised a precept; since it is His province withal subsequently to train, who had before resolved to form, righteous creatures. For what wonder if He extends a discipline who institutes it? if He advances who begins? In short, before the Law of Moses, 1147 written in stone-tables, I contend that there was a law unwritten, which was habitually understood naturally, and by the fathers was habitually kept. For whence was Noah “found righteous,” 1148 if in his case the righteousness of a natural law had not preceded? Whence was Abraham accounted “a friend of God,” 1149 if not on the ground of equity and righteousness, (in the observance) of a natural law? Whence was Melchizedek named “priest of the most high God,” 1150 if, before the priesthood of the Levitical law, there were not levites who were wont to offer sacrifices to God? For thus, after the above-mentioned patriarchs, was the Law given to Moses, at that (well-known) time after their exode from Egypt, after the interval and spaces of four hundred years. In fact, it was after Abraham’s “four hundred and thirty years” 1151 that the Law was given. Whence we understand that God’s law was anterior even to Moses, and was not first (given) in Horeb, nor in Sinai and in the desert, but was more ancient; (existing) first in paradise, subsequently reformed for the patriarchs, and so again for the Jews, at definite periods: so that we are not to give heed to Moses’ Law as to the primitive law, but as to a subsequent, which at a definite period God has set forth to the Gentiles too and, after repeatedly promising so to do through the prophets, has reformed for the better; and has premonished that it should come to pass that, just as “the law was given through Moses” 1152 at a definite time, so it should be believed to have been temporarily observed and kept. And let us not annul this power which God has, which reforms the law’s precepts answerably to the circumstances of the times, with a view to man’s salvation. In fine, let him who contends that the Sabbath is still to be observed as a balm of salvation, and circumcision on the eighth day because of the threat of death, teach us that, for the time past, righteous men kept the Sabbath, or practised circumcision, and were thus rendered “friends of God.” For if circumcision purges a man since God made Adam uncircumcised, why did He not circumcise him, even after his sinning, if circumcision purges? At all events, in settling him in paradise, He appointed one uncircumcised as colonist of paradise. Therefore, since God originated Adam uncircumcised, and inobservant of the Sabbath, consequently his offspring also, Abel, offering Him sacrifices, uncircumcised and inobservant of the Sabbath, was by Him commended; while He accepted 1153 what he was offering in simplicity of heart, and reprobated the sacrifice of his brother Cain, who was not rightly dividing what he was offering. 1154 Noah also, uncircumcised—yes, and inobservant of the Sabbath—God freed from the deluge. 1155 For Enoch, too, most righteous man, uncircumcised and inobservant of the Sabbath, He translated from this world; 1156 who did not first taste 1157 death, in order that, being a candidate for eternal life, 1158 he might by this time show us that we also may, without the burden of the law of Moses, please God. Melchizedek also, “the priest of the most high God,” uncircumcised and inobservant of the Sabbath, was chosen to the priesthood of God. 1159 Lot, withal, the brother 1160 of Abraham, proves that it was for the merits of righteousness, without observance of the law, that he was freed from the conflagration of the Sodomites. 1161
Footnotes
152:1139Mundi.
152:1140Comp. Jer. xxxi. 27 (in LXX. it is xxxviii. 27); Hos. 2:23, Zech. 10:9, Matt. 13:31.
152:1141See Gen. 2:16, 17, Gen. 3:2, 3.
152:1142Condita.
152:1143Deut. 6:4, 5, Lev. 19:18; comp. Matt. 22:34, Mark 12:28, Luke 10:25; and for the rest, Exod. 20:12, Deut. 5:16, Rom. 13:9.
152:1144Semetipsos. ? Each other.
152:1145Semetipsos. ? Each other.
152:1146Excidendo; or, perhaps, “by self-excision,” or “mutual excision.”
152:1147Or, “the Law written for Moses in stone-tables.”
152:1148Gen. 6:9, Gen. 7:1; comp. Heb. xi. 7.
152:1149See Isa. 41:8, Jas. 2:23.
152:1150Gen. 14:18, Ps. 110:4, Heb. 5:10, Heb. 7:1, 10, 15, 17.
153:1151Comp. Gen. xv. 13 with Ex. xii. 40-42 and Acts vii. 6.
153:1152John i. 17.
153:1153Or, “credited him with.”
153:1154Gen. iv. 1-7, especially in the LXX.; comp. Heb. xi. 4.
153:1155Gen. 6:18, Gen. 7:23, 2 Pet. 2:5.
153:1156See Gen. 5:22, 24, Heb. 11:5.
153:1157Or, perhaps, “has not yet tasted.”
153:1158Æternitatis candidatus. Comp. ad Ux. l. i. c. vii., and note 3 there.
153:1159See above.
153:1160i.e., nephew. See Gen. 11:31, Gen. 12:5.
153:1161See Gen. xix. 1-29; and comp. 2 Pet. ii. 6-9.
Chapter III.—Of Circumcision and the Supercession of the Old Law.
But Abraham, (you say,) was circumcised. Yes, but he pleased God before his circumcision; 1162 nor yet did he observe the Sabbath. For he had “accepted” 1163 circumcision; but such as was to be for “a sign” of that time, not for a prerogative title to salvation. In fact, subsequent patriarchs were uncircumcised, like Melchizedek, who, uncircumcised, offered to Abraham himself, already circumcised, on his return from battle, bread and wine. 1164 “But again,” (you say) “the son of Moses would upon one occasion have been choked by an angel, if Zipporah, 1165 had not circumcised the foreskin of the infant with a pebble; whence, “there is the greatest peril if any fail to circumcise the foreskin of his flesh.” Nay, but if circumcision altogether brought salvation, even Moses himself, in the case of his own son, would not have omitted to circumcise him on the eighth day; whereas it is agreed that Zipporah did it on the journey, at the compulsion of the angel. Consider we, accordingly, that one single infant’s compulsory circumcision cannot have prescribed to every people, and founded, as it were, a law for keeping this precept. For God, foreseeing that He was about to give this circumcision to the people of Israel for “a sign,” not for salvation, urges the circumcision of the son of Moses, their future leader, for this reason; that, since He had begun, through him, to give the People the precept of circumcision, the people should not despise it, from seeing this example (of neglect) already exhibited conspicuously in their leader’s son. For circumcision had to be given; but as “a sign,” whence Israel in the last time would have to be distinguished, when, in accordance with their deserts, they should be prohibited from entering the holy city, as we see through the words of the prophets, saying, “Your land is desert; your cities utterly burnt with fire; your country, in your sight, strangers shall eat up; and, deserted and subverted by strange peoples, the daughter of Zion shall be derelict, like a shed in a vineyard, and like a watchhouse in a cucumber-field, and as it were a city which is being stormed.” 1166 Why so? Because the subsequent discourse of the prophet reproaches them, saying, “Sons have I begotten and upraised, but they have reprobated me;” 1167 and again, “And if ye shall have outstretched hands, I will avert my face from you; and if ye shall have multiplied prayers, I will not hear you: for your hands are full of blood;” 1168 and again, “Woe! sinful nation; a people full of sins; wicked sons; ye have quite forsaken God, and have provoked unto indignation the Holy One of Israel.” 1169 This, therefore, was God’s foresight,—that of giving circumcision to Israel, for a sign whence they might be distinguished when the time should arrive wherein their above-mentioned deserts should prohibit their admission into Jerusalem: which circumstance, because it was to be, used to be announced; and, because we see it accomplished, is recognised by us. For, as the carnal circumcision, which was temporary, was in wrought for “a sign” in a contumacious people, so the spiritual has been given for salvation to an obedient people; while the prophet Jeremiah says, “Make a renewal for you, and sow not in thorns; be circumcised to God, and circumcise the foreskin of your heart:” 1170 and in another place he says, “Behold, days shall come, saith the Lord, and I will draw up, for the house of Judah and for the house of Jacob, 1171 a new testament; not such as I once gave their fathers in the day wherein I led them out from the land of Egypt.” 1172 Whence we understand that the coming cessation of the former circumcision then given, and the coming procession of a new law (not such as He had already given to the fathers), are announced: just as Isaiah foretold, saying that in the last days the mount of the Lord and the house of God were to be manifest above the tops of the mounts: “And it shall be exalted,” he says, “above the hills; and there shall come over it all nations; and many shall walk, and say, Come, ascend we unto the mount of the Lord, and unto the house of the God of Jacob,” 1173 —not of Esau, the former son, but of Jacob, the second; that is, of our “people,” whose “mount” is Christ, “præcised without concisors’ hands, 1174 filling every land,” shown in the book of Daniel. 1175 In short, the coming procession of a new law out of this “house of the God of Jacob” Isaiah in the ensuing words announces, saying, “For from Zion shall go out a law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem, and shall judge among the nations,”—that is, among us, who have been called out of the nations,—“and they shall join to beat their glaives into ploughs, and their lances into sickles; and nations shall not take up glaive against nation, and they shall no more learn to fight.” 1176 Who else, therefore, are understood but we, who, fully taught by the new law, observe these practices,—the old law being obliterated, the coming of whose abolition the action itself 1177 demonstrates? For the wont of the old law was to avenge itself by the vengeance of the glaive, and to pluck out “eye for eye,” and to inflict retaliatory revenge for injury. 1178 But the new law’s wont was to point to clemency, and to convert to tranquillity the pristine ferocity of “glaives” and “lances,” and to remodel the pristine execution of “war” upon the rivals and foes of the law into the pacific actions of “ploughing” and “tilling” the land. 1179 Therefore as we have shown above that the coming cessation of the old law and of the carnal circumcision was declared, so, too, the observance of the new law and the spiritual circumcision has shone out into the voluntary obediences 1180 of peace. For “a people,” he says, “whom I knew not hath served me; in obedience of the ear it hath obeyed me.” 1181 Prophets made the announcement. But what is the “people” which was ignorant of God, but ours, who in days bygone knew not God? and who, in the hearing of the ear, gave heed to Him, but we, who, forsaking idols, have been converted to God? For Israel—who had been known to God, and who had by Him been “upraised” 1182 in Egypt, and was transported through the Red Sea, and who in the desert, fed forty years with manna, was wrought to the semblance of eternity, and not contaminated with human passions, 1183 or fed on this world’s 1184 meats, but fed on “angel’s loaves” 1185 —the manna—and sufficiently bound to God by His benefits—forgot his Lord and God, saying to Aaron: “Make us gods, to go before us: for that Moses, who ejected us from the land of Egypt, hath quite forsaken us; and what hath befallen him we know not.” And accordingly we, who “were not the people of God” in days bygone, have been made His people, 1186 by accepting the new law above mentioned, and the new circumcision before foretold.
Footnotes
153:1162See Gen. 12:0, Gen. 17:0, Rom. 4:0.
153:1163Acceperat. So Tertullian renders, as it appears to me, the ἔλαβε of St. Paul in Rom. iv. 11. q. v.
153:1164There is, if the text be genuine, some confusion here. Melchizedek does not appear to have been, in any sense, “subsequent” to Abraham, for he probably was senior to him; and, moreover, Abraham does not appear to have been “already circumcised” carnally when Melchizedek met him. Comp. Gen. 14:0, Gen. 17:0.
153:1165Tertullian writes Seffora; the LXX. in loco, Σεπφώρα Ex. iv. 24-26, where the Eng. ver. says, “the Lord met him,” etc.; the LXX ἄγγελος Κυρίου.
154:1166Isa. 1:7, 8. See c. xiii. sub fin.
154:1167Again an error; for these words precede the others. These are found in Isa. i. 2.
154:1168Isa. i. 15.
154:1169Isa. i. 4.
154:1170Jer. 4:3, 4. In Eng. ver., “break up your fallow ground;” but comp. de Pu. c. vi. ad init.
154:1171So Tertullian. In Jer. ibid. “Israel and…Judah.”
154:1172Jer. 31:31, 32 (in LXX. ibid. xxxviii. 31, 32); comp. Heb. viii. 8-13.
154:1173Isa. 2:2, 3.
154:1174Perhaps an allusion to Phil. 3:1, 2.
154:1175See Dan. 2:34, 35, 44, 45. See c. xiv. below.
154:1176Isa. 2:3, 4.
154:1177i.e., of beating swords into ploughs, etc.
154:1178Comp. Exod. 21:24, 25, Lev. 24:17, Deut. 19:11, Matt. 5:38.
154:1179Especially spiritually. Comp. 1 Cor. 3:6, 1 Cor. 9:9, 10, and similar passages.
154:1180Obsequia. See de Pa. c. iv. note 1.
154:1181See Ps. 18:43, 44 (xvii. 44, 45 in LXX.), where the Eng. ver. has the future; the LXX., like Tertullian, the past. Comp. 2 Sam. 22:44, 45, Rom. 10:14.
155:1182Comp. Isa. i. 2 as above, and Acts xiii. 17.
155:1183Sæculi.
155:1184Or, perhaps, “not affected, as a body, with human sufferings;” in allusion to such passages as Deut. 8:4, Deut. 29:5, Neh. 9:21.
155:1185Ps. 78:25, John 6:31.
155:1186See Hos. 1:10, 1 Pet. 2:10.
Chapter IV.—Of the Observance of the Sabbath.
It follows, accordingly, that, in so far as the abolition of carnal circumcision and of the old law is demonstrated as having been consummated at its specific times, so also the observance of the Sabbath is demonstrated to have been temporary.
For the Jews say, that from the beginning God sanctified the seventh day, by resting on it from all His works which He made; and that thence it was, likewise, that Moses said to the People: “Remember the day of the sabbaths, to sanctify it: every servile work ye shall not do therein, except what pertaineth unto life.” 1187 Whence we (Christians) understand that we still more ought to observe a sabbath from all “servile work” 1188 always, and not only every seventh day, but through all time. And through this arises the question for us, what sabbath God willed us to keep? For the Scriptures point to a sabbath eternal and a sabbath temporal. For Isaiah the prophet says, “Your sabbaths my soul hateth;” 1189 and in another place he says, “My sabbaths ye have profaned.” 1190 Whence we discern that the temporal sabbath is human, and the eternal sabbath is accounted divine; concerning which He predicts through Isaiah: “And there shall be,” He says, “month after month, and day after day, and sabbath after sabbath; and all flesh shall come to adore in Jerusalem, saith the Lord;” 1191 which we understand to have been fulfilled in the times of Christ, when “all flesh”—that is, every nation—“came to adore in Jerusalem” God the Father, through Jesus Christ His Son, as was predicted through the prophet: “Behold, proselytes through me shall go unto Thee.” 1192 Thus, therefore, before this temporal sabbath, there was withal an eternal sabbath foreshown and foretold; just as before the carnal circumcision there was withal a spiritual circumcision foreshown. In short, let them teach us, as we have already premised, that Adam observed the sabbath; or that Abel, when offering to God a holy victim, pleased Him by a religious reverence for the sabbath; or that Enoch, when translated, had been a keeper of the sabbath; or that Noah the ark-builder observed, on account of the deluge, an immense sabbath; or that Abraham, in observance of the sabbath, offered Isaac his son; or that Melchizedek in his priesthood received the law of the sabbath.
But the Jews are sure to say, that ever since this precept was given through Moses, the observance has been binding. Manifest accordingly it is, that the precept was not eternal nor spiritual, but temporary, 1193 which would one day cease. In short, so true is it that it is not in the exemption from work of the sabbath—that is, of the seventh day—that the celebration of this solemnity is to consist, that Joshua the son of Nun, at the time that he was reducing the city Jericho by war, stated that he had received from God a precept to order the People that priests should carry the ark of the testament of God seven days, making the circuit of the city; and thus, when the seventh day’s circuit had been performed, the walls of the city would spontaneously fall. 1194 Which was so done; and when the space of the seventh day was finished, just as was predicted, down fell the walls of the city. Whence it is manifestly shown, that in the number of the seven days there intervened a sabbath-day. For seven days, whencesoever they may have commenced, must necessarily include within them a sabbath-day; on which day not only must the priests have worked, but the city must have been made a prey by the edge of the sword by all the people of Israel. Nor is it doubtful that they “wrought servile work,” when, in obedience to God’s precept, they drave the preys of war. For in the times of the Maccabees, too, they did bravely in fighting on the sabbaths, and routed their foreign foes, and recalled the law of their fathers to the primitive style of life by fighting on the sabbaths. 1195 Nor should I think it was any other law which they thus vindicated, than the one in which they remembered the existence of the prescript touching “the day of the sabbaths.” 1196
Whence it is manifest that the force of such precepts was temporary, and respected the necessity of present circumstances; and that it was not with a view to its observance in perpetuity that God formerly gave them such a law.
Footnotes
155:1187Comp. Gal. 5:1, Gal. 4:8, 9.
155:1188See Exod. 20:8, Exod. 12:16 (especially in the LXX.).
155:1189Isa. i. 13.
155:1190This is not said by Isaiah; it is found in substance in Ezek. xxii. 8.
155:1191Isa. lxvi. 23 in LXX.
155:1192I am not acquainted with any such passage. Oehler refers to Isa. xlix. in his margin, but gives no verse, and omits to notice this passage of the present treatise in his index.
155:1193Or, “temporal.”
155:1194Josh. vi. 1-20.
156:1195See 1 Macc. ii. 41, etc.
156:1196See Exod. 20:8, Deut. 5:12, 15: in LXX.
Chapter V.—Of Sacrifices.
So, again, we show that sacrifices of earthly oblations and of spiritual sacrifices 1197 were predicted; and, moreover, that from the beginning the earthly were foreshown, in the person of Cain, to be those of the “elder son,” that is, of Israel; and the opposite sacrifices demonstrated to be those of the “younger son,” Abel, that is, of our people. For the elder, Cain, offered gifts to God from the fruit of the earth; but the younger son, Abel, from the fruit of his ewes. “God had respect unto Abel, and unto his gifts; but unto Cain and unto his gifts He had not respect. And God said unto Cain, Why is thy countenance fallen? hast thou not—if thou offerest indeed aright, but dost not divide aright—sinned? Hold thy peace. For unto thee shalt thy conversion be and he shall lord it over thee. And then Cain said unto Abel his brother, Let us go into the field: and he went away with him thither, and he slew him. And then God said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: am I my brother’s keeper? To whom God said, The voice of the blood of thy brother crieth forth unto me from the earth. Wherefore cursed is the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive the blood of thy brother. Groaning and trembling shalt thou be upon the earth, and every one who shall have found thee shall slay thee.” 1198 From this proceeding we gather that the twofold sacrifices of “the peoples” were even from the very beginning foreshown. In short, when the sacerdotal law was being drawn up, through Moses, in Leviticus, we find it prescribed to the people of Israel that sacrifices should in no other place be offered to God than in the land of promise; which the Lord God was about to give to “the people” Israel and to their brethren, in order that, on Israel’s introduction thither, there should there be celebrated sacrifices and holocausts, as well for sins as for souls; and nowhere else but in the holy land. 1199 Why, accordingly, does the Spirit afterwards predict, through the prophets, that it should come to pass that in every place and in every land there should be offered sacrifices to God? as He says through the angel Malachi, one of the twelve prophets: “I will not receive sacrifice from your hands; for from the rising sun unto the setting my Name hath been made famous among all the nations, saith the Lord Almighty: and in every place they offer clean sacrifices to my Name.” 1200 Again, in the Psalms, David says: “Bring to God, ye countries of the nations”—undoubtedly because “unto every land” the preaching of the apostles had to “go out” 1201 —“bring to God fame and honour; bring to God the sacrifices of His name: take up 1202 victims and enter into His courts.” 1203 For that it is not by earthly sacrifices, but by spiritual, that offering is to be made to God, we thus read, as it is written, An heart contribulate and humbled is a victim for God;” 1204 and elsewhere, “Sacrifice to God a sacrifice of praise, and render to the Highest thy vows.” 1205 Thus, accordingly, the spiritual “sacrifices of praise” are pointed to, and “an heart contribulate” is demonstrated an acceptable sacrifice to God. And thus, as carnal sacrifices are understood to be reprobated—of which Isaiah withal speaks, saying, “To what end is the multitude of your sacrifices to me? saith the Lord” 1206 —so spiritual sacrifices are predicted 1207 as accepted, as the prophets announce. For, “even if ye shall have brought me,” He says, “the finest wheat flour, it is a vain supplicatory gift: a thing execrable to me;” and again He says, “Your holocausts and sacrifices, and the fat of goats, and blood of bulls, I will not, not even if ye come to be seen by me: for who hath required these things from your hands?” 1208 for “from the rising sun unto the setting, my Name hath been made famous among all the nations, saith the Lord.” 1209 But of the spiritual sacrifices He adds, saying, “And in every place they offer clean sacrifices to my Name, saith the Lord.” 1210
Footnotes
156:1197This tautology is due to the author, not to the translator: “sacrificia…spiritalium sacrificiorum.”
156:1198See Gen. iv. 2-14. But it is to be observed that the version given in our author differs widely in some particulars from the Heb. and the LXX.
156:1199See Lev. 17:1, Deut. 12:1.
156:1200See Mal. 1:10, 11, in LXX.
156:1201Comp. Matt. 28:19, 20, Mark 16:15, 16, Luke 24:45, with Ps. xix. 4 (xviii. 5 in LXX.), as explained in Rom. x. 18.
156:1202Tollite = Gr. ἄρατε. Perhaps ="away with.”
156:1203See Ps. 96:7, Ps. 29:1, 2.
156:1204See Ps. li. 17 (in LXX. l. 19).
156:1205Psa. 50.14.
156:1206Isa. i. 11.
156:1207Or, “foretold.”
156:1208Comp. Isa. i. 11-14, especially in the LXX.
157:1209See Mal. i. as above.
157:1210See Mal. i. as above.
Chapter VI.—Of the Abolition and the Abolisher of the Old Law.
Therefore, since it is manifest that a sabbath temporal was shown, and a sabbath eternal foretold; a circumcision carnal foretold, and a circumcision spiritual pre-indicated; a law temporal and a law eternal formally declared; sacrifices carnal and sacrifices spiritual foreshown; it follows that, after all these precepts had been given carnally, in time preceding, to the people Israel, there was to supervene a time whereat the precepts of the ancient Law and of the old ceremonies would cease, and the promise 1211 of the new law, and the recognition of spiritual sacrifices, and the promise of the New Testament, supervene; 1212 while the light from on high would beam upon us who were sitting in darkness, and were being detained in the shadow of death. 1213 And so there is incumbent on us a necessity 1214 binding us, since we have premised that a new law was predicted by the prophets, and that not such as had been already given to their fathers at the time when He led them forth from the land of Egypt, 1215 to show and prove, on the one hand, that that old Law has ceased, and on the other, that the promised new law is now in operation.
And, indeed, first we must inquire whether there be expected a giver of the new law, and an heir of the new testament, and a priest of the new sacrifices, and a purger of the new circumcision, and an observer of the eternal sabbath, to suppress the old law, and institute the new testament, and offer the new sacrifices, and repress the ancient ceremonies, and suppress 1216 the old circumcision together with its own sabbath, 1217 and announce the new kingdom which is not corruptible. Inquire, I say, we must, whether this giver of the new law, observer of the spiritual sabbath, priest of the eternal sacrifices, eternal ruler of the eternal kingdom, be come or no: that, if he is already come, service may have to be rendered him; if he is not yet come, he may have to be awaited, until by his advent it be manifest that the old Law’s precepts are suppressed, and that the beginnings of the new law ought to arise. And, primarily, we must lay it down that the ancient Law and the prophets could not have ceased, unless He were come who was constantly announced, through the same Law and through the same prophets, as to come.
Footnotes
157:1211Or, “sending forth”—promissio.
157:1212The tautology is again due to the author.
157:1213Comp. Luke 1:78, 79, Isa. 9:1, 2, with Matt. iv. 12-16.
157:1214Comp. 1 Cor. ix. 16.
157:1215See ch. iii. above.
157:1216Here again the repetition is the author’s.
157:1217Cum suo sibi sabbato. Unless the meaning be—which the context seems to forbid—“together with a sabbath of His own:” the Latinity is plainly incorrect.
Chapter VII.—The Question Whether Christ Be Come Taken Up.
Therefore upon this issue plant we foot to foot, whether the Christ who was constantly announced as to come be already come, or whether His coming be yet a subject of hope. For proof of which question itself, the times likewise must be examined by us when the prophets announced that the Christ would come; that, if we succeed in recognising that He has come within the limits of those times, we may without doubt believe Him to be the very one whose future coming was ever the theme of prophetic song, upon whom we—the nations, to wit—were ever announced as destined to believe; and that, when it shall have been agreed that He is come, we may undoubtedly likewise believe that the new law has by Him been given, and not disavow the new testament in Him and through Him drawn up for us. For that Christ was to come we know that even the Jews do not attempt to disprove, inasmuch as it is to His advent that they are directing their hope. Nor need we inquire at more length concerning that matter, since in days bygone all the prophets have prophesied of it; as Isaiah: “Thus saith the Lord God to my Christ (the) Lord, 1218 whose right hand I have holden, that the nations may hear Him: the powers of kings will I burst asunder; I will open before Him the gates, and the cities shall not be closed to Him.” Which very thing we see fulfilled. For whose right hand does God the Father hold but Christ’s, His Son?—whom all nations have heard, that is, whom all nations have believed,—whose preachers, withal, the apostles, are pointed to in the Psalms of David: “Into the universal earth,” says he, “is gone out their sound, and unto the ends of the earth their words.” 1219 For upon whom else have the universal nations believed, but upon the Christ who is already come? For whom have the nations believed,—Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and they who inhabit Mesopotamia, Armenia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, and they who dwell in Pontus, and Asia, and Pamphylia, tarriers in Egypt, and inhabiters of the region of Africa which is beyond Cyrene, Romans and sojourners, yes, and in Jerusalem Jews, 1220 and all other nations; as, for instance, by this time, the varied races of the Gætulians, and manifold confines of the Moors, all the limits of the Spains, and the diverse nations of the Gauls, and the haunts of the Britons—inaccessible to the Romans, but subjugated to Christ, and of the Sarmatians, and Dacians, and Germans, and Scythians, and of many remote nations, and of provinces and islands many, to us unknown, and which we can scarce enumerate? In all which places the name of the Christ who is already come reigns, as of Him before whom the gates of all cities have been opened, and to whom none are closed, before whom iron bars have been crumbled, and brazen gates 1221 opened. Although there be withal a spiritual sense to be affixed to these expressions,—that the hearts of individuals, blockaded in various ways by the devil, are unbarred by the faith of Christ,—still they have been evidently fulfilled, inasmuch as in all these places dwells the “people” of the Name of Christ. For who could have reigned over all nations but Christ, God’s Son, who was ever announced as destined to reign over all to eternity? For if Solomon “reigned,” why, it was within the confines of Judea merely: “from Beersheba unto Dan” the boundaries of his kingdom are marked. 1222 If, moreover, Darius “reigned” over the Babylonians and Parthians, he had not power over all nations; if Pharaoh, or whoever succeeded him in his hereditary kingdom, over the Egyptians, in that country merely did he possess his kingdom’s dominion; if Nebuchadnezzar with his petty kings, “from India unto Ethiopia” he had his kingdom’s boundaries; 1223 if Alexander the Macedonian he did not hold more than universal Asia, and other regions, after he had quite conquered them; if the Germans, to this day they are not suffered to cross their own limits; the Britons are shut within the circuit of their own ocean; the nations of the Moors, and the barbarism of the Gætulians, are blockaded by the Romans, lest they exceed the confines of their own regions. What shall I say of the Romans themselves, 1224 who fortify their own empire with garrisons of their own legions, nor can extend the might of their kingdom beyond these nations? But Christ’s Name is extending everywhere, believed everywhere, worshipped by all the above-enumerated nations, reigning everywhere, adored everywhere, conferred equally everywhere upon all. No king, with Him, finds greater favour, no barbarian lesser joy; no dignities or pedigrees enjoy distinctions of merit; to all He is equal, to all King, to all Judge, to all “God and Lord.” 1225 Nor would you hesitate to believe what we asseverate, since you see it taking place.
Footnotes
157:1218The reference is to Isa. xlv. 1. A glance at the LXX. will at once explain the difference between the reading of our author and the genuine reading. One letter—an “ι”—makes all the difference. For Κύρῳ has been read Κυρίῳ. In the Eng. ver. we read “His Anointed.”
157:1219Ps. 19:4, Rom. 10:18.
158:1220See Acts 2:9, 10, 5.
158:1221See Isa. 45:1, 2 (especially in Lowth’s version and the LXX.).
158:1222See 1 Kings iv. 25. (In the LXX. it is 3 Kings iv. 25; but the verse is omitted in Tischendorf’s text, ed. Lips. 1860, though given in his footnotes there.) The statement in the text differs slightly from Oehler’s reading; where I suspect there is a transposition of a syllable, and that for “in finibus Judæ tantum, a Bersabeæ,” we ought to read “in finibus Judææ tantum, a Bersabe.” See de Jej. c. ix.
158:1223See Esth. 1:1, Esth. 8:9.
158:1224[Dr. Allix thinks these statements define the Empire after Severus, and hence accepts the date we have mentioned, for this treatise.]
158:1225Comp. John xx. 28.
Chapter VIII.—Of the Times of Christ’s Birth and Passion, and of Jerusalem’s Destruction.
Accordingly the times must be inquired into of the predicted and future nativity of the Christ, and of His passion, and of the extermination of the city of Jerusalem, that is, its devastation. For Daniel says, that “both the holy city and the holy place are exterminated together with the coming Leader, and that the pinnacle is destroyed unto ruin.” 1226 And so the times of the coming Christ, the Leader, 1227 must be inquired into, which we shall trace in Daniel; and, after computing them, shall prove Him to be come, even on the ground of the times prescribed, and of competent signs and operations of His. Which matters we prove, again, on the ground of the consequences which were ever announced as to follow His advent; in order that we may believe all to have been as well fulfilled as foreseen.
In such wise, therefore, did Daniel predict concerning Him, as to show both when and in what time He was to set the nations free; and how, after the passion of the Christ, that city had to be exterminated. For he says thus: “In the first year under Darius, son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, who reigned over the kingdom of the Chaldees, I Daniel understood in the books the number of the years.…And while I was yet speaking in my prayer, behold, the man Gabriel, whom I saw in the vision in the beginning, flying; and he touched me, as it were, at the hour of the evening sacrifice, and made me understand, and spake with me, and said, Daniel I am now come out to imbue thee with understanding; in the beginning of thy supplication went out a word. And I am come to announce to thee, because thou art a man of desires; 1228 and ponder thou on the word, and understand in the vision. Seventy hebdomads have been abridged 1229 upon thy commonalty, and upon the holy city, until delinquency be made inveterate, and sins sealed, and righteousness obtained by entreaty, and righteousness eternal introduced; and in order that vision and prophet may be sealed, and an holy one of holy ones anointed. And thou shalt know, and thoroughly see, and understand, from the going forth of a word for restoring and rebuilding Jerusalem unto the Christ, the Leader, hebdomads (seven and an half, and 1230 ) lxii and an half: and it shall convert, and shall be built into height and entrenchment, and the times shall be renewed: and after these lxii hebdomads shall the anointing be exterminated, and shall not be; and the city and the holy place shall he exterminate together with the Leader, who is making His advent; and they shall be cut short as in a deluge, until (the) end of a war, which shall be cut short unto ruin. And he shall confirm a testament in many. In one hebdomad and the half of the hebdomad shall be taken away my sacrifice and libation, and in the holy place the execration of devastation, (and 1231 ) until the end of (the) time consummation shall be given with regard to this devastation.” 1232
Observe we, therefore, the limit,—how, in truth, he predicts that there are to be lxx hebdomads, within which if they receive Him, “it shall be built into height and entrenchment, and the times shall be renewed.” But God, foreseeing what was to be—that they will not merely not receive Him, but will both persecute and deliver Him to death—both recapitulated, and said, that in lx and ii and an half of an hebdomad He is born, and an holy one of holy ones is anointed; but that when vii hebdomads 1233 and an half were fulfilling, He had to suffer, and the holy city had to be exterminated after one and an half hebdomad—whereby namely, the seven and an half hebdomads have been completed. For he says thus: “And the city and the holy place to be exterminated together with the leader who is to come; and they shall be cut short as in a deluge; and he shall destroy the pinnacle unto ruin.” 1234 Whence, therefore, do we show that the Christ came within the lxii and an half hebdomads? We shall count, moreover, from the first year of Darius, as at this particular time is shown to Daniel this particular vision; for he says, “And understand and conjecture that at the completion of thy word 1235 I make thee these answers.” Whence we are bound to compute from the first year of Darius, when Daniel saw this vision.
Let us see, therefore, how the years are filled up until the advent of the Christ:—
For Darius reigned…xviiii 1236 years (19).
Artaxerxes reigned…xl and i years (41).
Then King Ochus (who is also called Cyrus) reigned…xxiiii years (24).
Argus…one year.
Another Darius, who is also named Melas…xxi years (21).
Alexander the Macedonian…xii years (12)
Then, after Alexander, who had reigned over both Medes and Persians, whom he had reconquered, and had established his kingdom firmly in Alexandria, when withal he called that (city) by his own name; 1237 after him reigned, (there, in Alexandria,)
Soter…xxxv years (35).
To whom succeeds Philadelphus, reigning…xxx and viii years (38).
To him succeeds Euergetes…xxv years (25).
Then Philopator…xvii years (17).
After him Epiphanes…xxiiii years (24).
Then another Euergetes…xxviiii years (29).
Then another Soter,…xxxviii years (38).
Ptolemy…xxxvii years (37).
Cleopatra,…xx years v months (20 5–12).
Yet again Cleopatra reigned jointly with Augustus…xiii years (13).
After Cleopatra, Augustus reigned other…xliii years (43).
For all the years of the empire of Augustus were…lvi years (56).
Let us see, moreover, how in the forty-first year of the empire of Augustus, when he has been reigning for xx and viii years after the death of Cleopatra, the Christ is born. (And the same Augustus survived, after Christ is born, xv years; and the remaining times of years to the day of the birth of Christ will bring us to the xl first year, which is the xx and viiith of Augustus after the death of Cleopatra.) There are, (then,) made up cccxxx and vii years, v months: (whence are filled up lxii hebdomads and an half: which make up ccccxxxvii years, vi months:) on the day of the birth of Christ. And (then) “righteousness eternal” was manifested, and “an Holy One of holy ones was anointed”—that is, Christ—and “sealed was vision and prophet,” and “sins” were remitted, which, through faith in the name of Christ, are washed away 1238 for all who believe on Him. But what does he mean by saying that “vision and prophecy are sealed?” That all prophets ever announced of Him that He was to come and had to suffer. Therefore, since the prophecy was fulfilled through His advent, for that reason he said that “vision and prophecy were sealed;” inasmuch as He is the signet of all prophets, fulfilling all things which in days bygone they had announced of Him. 1239 For after the advent of Christ and His passion there is no longer “vision or prophet” to announce Him as to come. In short, if this is not so, let the Jews exhibit, subsequently to Christ, any volumes of prophets, visible miracles wrought by any angels, (such as those) which in bygone days the patriarchs saw until the advent of Christ, who is now come; since which event “sealed is vision and prophecy,” that is, confirmed. And justly does the evangelist 1240 write, “The law and the prophets (were) until John” the Baptist. For, on Christ’s being baptized, that is, on His sanctifying the waters in His own baptism, 1241 all the plenitude of bygone spiritual grace-gifts ceased in Christ, sealing as He did all vision and prophecies, which by His advent He fulfilled. Whence most firmly does he assert that His advent “seals visions and prophecy.”
Accordingly, showing, (as we have done,) both the number of the years, and the time of the lx two and an half fulfilled hebdomads, on completion of which, (we have shown) that Christ is come, that is, has been born, let us see what (mean) other “vii and an half hebdomads,” which have been subdivided in the abscision of 1242 the former hebdomads; (let us see, namely,) in what event they have been fulfilled:—
For, after Augustus who survived after the birth of Christ, are made up…xv years (15).
To whom succeeded Tiberius Cæsar, and held the empire…xx years, vii months, xxviii days (20 etc.).
(In the fiftieth year of his empire Christ suffered, being about xxx years of age when he suffered.)
Again Caius Cæsar, also called Caligula,…iii years, viii months, xiii days (3 etc.).
Nero Cæsar,…xi years, ix months, xiii days (11 etc.).
Galba…vii months, vi days. (7 etc.).
Otho…iii days.
Vitellius,…viii mos., xxvii days (8 mos.).
Vespasian, in the first year of his empire, subdues the Jews in war; and there are made lii years, vi months. For he reigned xi years. And thus, in the day of their storming, the Jews fulfilled the lxx hebdomads predicted in Daniel.
Therefore, when these times also were completed, and the Jews subdued, there afterwards ceased in that place “libations and sacrifices,” which thenceforward have not been able to be in that place celebrated; for “the unction,” too, 1243 was “exterminated” in that place after the passion of Christ. For it had been predicted that the unction should be exterminated in that place; as in the Psalms it is prophesied, “They exterminated my hands and feet.” 1244 And the suffering of this “extermination” was perfected within the times of the lxx hebdomads, under Tiberius Cæsar, in the consulate of Rubellius Geminus and Fufius Geminus, in the month of March, at the times of the passover, on the eighth day before the calends of April, 1245 on the first day of unleavened bread, on which they slew the lamb at even, just as had been enjoined by Moses. 1246 Accordingly, all the synagogue of Israel did slay Him, saying to Pilate, when he was desirous to dismiss Him, “His blood be upon us, and upon our children;” 1247 and, “If thou dismiss him, thou art not a friend of Cæsar;” 1248 in order that all things might be fulfilled which had been written of Him. 1249
Footnotes
158:1226See Dan. ix. 26 (especially in the LXX.).
158:1227Comp. Isa. lv. 4.
159:1228Vir desideriorum; Gr. ἀνὴρ ἐπιθυμιῶν; Eng. ver. “a man greatly beloved.” Elsewhere Tertullian has another rendering—“miserabilis.” See de Jej. cc. vii, ix.
159:1229Or, “abbreviated;” breviatæ sunt; Gr. συνετμήθνσαν. For this rendering, and the interpretations which in ancient and modern days have been founded on it, see G. S. Faber’s Dissert. on the prophecy of the seventy weeks, pp. 5, 6, 109–112. (London, 1811.) The whole work will repay perusal.
159:1230These words are given, by Oehler and Rig., on the authority of Pamelius. The mss. and early editions are without them.
159:1231Also supplied by Pamelius.
159:1232See Dan. 9:0, Dan. 24:0. It seemed best to render with the strictest literality, without regard to anything else; as an idea will thus then be given of the condition of the text, which, as it stands, differs widely, as will be seen, from the Hebrew and also from the LXX., as it stands in the ed. Tisch. Lips. 1860, to which I always adapt my references.
159:1233Hebdomades is preferred to Oehler’s -as, a reading which he follows apparently on slender authority.
159:1234There is no trace of these last words in Tischendorf’s LXX. here; and only in his footnotes is the “pinnacle” mentioned.
159:1235Or, “speech.” The reference seems to be to Dan. 9.23, but there is no such statement in Daniel.
159:1236So Oehler; and I print all these numbers uniformly—as in the former part of the present chapter—exactly in accordance with the Latin forms, for the sake of showing how easily, in such calculations, errors may creep in.
159:1237Comp. Ps. xlix. 11 (in LXX. Ps. xlviii. 12).
160:1238Diluuntur. So Oehler has amended for the reading of the mss. and edd., “tribuuntur.”
160:1239Comp. Pusey on Daniel, pp. 178, 179, notes 6, 7, 8, and the passages therein referred to. And for the whole question of the seventy weeks, and of the LXX. version of Daniel, comp. the same book, Lect. iv. and Note E (2d thousand, 1864). See also pp. 376–381 of the same book; and Faber (as above), pp. 293–297.
160:1240Or rather, our Lord Himself. See Matt. 11:13, Luke 16:16.
160:1241Comp. the very obscure passage in de Pu. c. vi., towards the end, on which this expression appears to cast some light.
160:1242Or, “in abscision from.”
160:1243And, without “unction”—i.e. without a priesthood, the head whereof, or high priest, was always anointed—no “sacrifices” were lawful.
160:1244See Ps. xxii. 16 (xxi. 17 in LXX.)
160:1245i.e., March 25.
160:1246Comp. Exod. 12:6, Mark 14:12, Luke 22:7.
160:1247See Matt. 27:24, 25, with John xix. 12 and Acts iii. 13.
160:1248John xix. 12.
160:1249Comp. Luke xxiv. 44, etc.
Chapter IX.—Of the Prophecies of the Birth and Achievements of Christ.
Begin we, therefore, to prove that the Birth of Christ was announced by prophets; as Isaiah (e.g.,) foretells, “Hear ye, house of David; no petty contest have ye with men, since God is proposing a struggle. Therefore God Himself will give you a sign; Behold, the virgin 1250 shall conceive, and bear a son, and ye shall call his name Emmanuel” 1251 (which is, interpreted, “God with us” 1252 ): “butter and honey shall he eat;” 1253 : “since, ere the child learn to call father or mother, he shall receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria, in opposition to the king of the Assyrians.” 1254
Accordingly the Jews say: Let us challenge that prediction of Isaiah, and let us institute a comparison whether, in the case of the Christ who is already come, there be applicable to Him, firstly, the name which Isaiah foretold, and (secondly) the signs of it 1255 which he announced of Him.
Well, then, Isaiah foretells that it behoves Him to be called Emmanuel; and that subsequently He is to take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria, in opposition to the king of the Assyrians. “Now,” say they, “that (Christ) of yours, who is come, neither was called by that name, nor engaged in warfare.” But we, on the contrary, have thought they ought to be admonished to recall to mind the context of this passage as well. For subjoined is withal the interpretation of Emmanuel—“God with us” 1256 —in order that you may regard not the sound only of the name, but the sense too. For the Hebrew sound, which is Emmanuel, has an interpretation, which is, God with us. Inquire, then, whether this speech, “God with us” (which is Emmanuel), be commonly applied to Christ ever since Christ’s light has dawned, and I think you will not deny it. For they who out of Judaism believe in Christ, ever since their believing on Him, do, whenever they shall wish to say 1257 Emmanuel, signify that God is with us: and thus it is agreed that He who was ever predicted as Emmanuel is already come, because that which Emmanuel signifies is come—that is, “God with us.” Equally are they led by the sound of the name when they so understand “the power of Damascus,” and “the spoils of Samaria,” and “the kingdom of the Assyrians,” as if they portended Christ as a warrior; not observing that Scripture premises, “since, ere the child learn to call father or mother, he shall receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria, in opposition to the king of the Assyrians.” For the first step is to look at the demonstration of His age, to see whether the age there indicated can possibly exhibit the Christ as already a man, not to say a general. Forsooth, by His babyish cry the infant would summon men to arms, and would give the signal of war not with clarion, but with rattle, and point out the foe, not from His charger’s back or from a rampart, but from the back or neck of His suckler and nurse, and thus subdue Damascus and Samaria in place of the breast. (It is another matter if, among you, infants rush out into battle,—oiled first, I suppose, to dry in the sun, and then armed with satchels and rationed on butter,—who are to know how to lance sooner than how to lacerate the bosom!) 1258 Certainly, if nature nowhere allows this,—(namely,) to serve as a soldier before developing into manhood, to take “the power of Damascus” before knowing your father,—it follows that the pronouncement is visibly figurative. “But again,” say they, “nature suffers not a ‘virgin’ to be a parent; and yet the prophet must be believed.” And deservedly so; for he bespoke credit for a thing incredible, by saying that it was to be a sign. “Therefore,” he says, “shall a sign be given you. Behold, a virgin shall conceive in womb, and bear a son.” But a sign from God, unless it had consisted in some portentous novelty, would not have appeared a sign. In a word, if, when you are anxious to cast any down from (a belief in) this divine prediction, or to convert whoever are simple, you have the audacity to lie, as if the Scripture contained (the announcement), that not “a virgin,” but “a young female,” was to conceive and bring forth; you are refuted even by this fact, that a daily occurrence—the pregnancy and parturition of a young female, namely—cannot possibly seem anything of a sign. And the setting before us, then, of a virgin-mother is deservedly believed to be a sign; but not equally so a warrior-infant. For there would not in this case again be involved the question of a sign; but, the sign of a novel birth having been awarded, the next step after the sign is, that there is enunciated a different ensuing ordering 1259 of the infant, who is to eat “honey and butter.” Nor is this, of course, for a sign. It is natural to infancy. But that he is to receive 1260 “the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria in opposition to the king of the Assyrians,” this is a wondrous sign. Keep to the limit of (the infant’s) age, and inquire into the sense of the prediction; nay, rather, repay to truth what you are unwilling to credit her with, and the prophecy becomes intelligible by the relation of its fulfilment. Let those Eastern magi be believed, dowering with gold and incense the infancy of Christ as a king; 1261 and the infant has received “the power of Damascus” without battle and arms. For, besides the fact that it is known to all that the “power”—for that is the “strength”—of the East is wont to abound in gold and odours, certain it is that the divine Scriptures regard “gold” as constituting the “power” also of all other nations; as it says 1262 through Zechariah: “And Judah keepeth guard at Jerusalem, and shall amass all the vigour of the surrounding peoples, gold and silver.” 1263 For of this gift of “gold” David likewise says, “And to Him shall be given of the gold of Arabia;” 1264 and again, “The kings of the Arabs and Saba shall bring Him gifts.” 1265 For the East, on the one hand, generally held the magi (to be) kings; and Damascus, on the other hand, used formerly to be reckoned to Arabia before it was transferred into Syrophœnicia on the division of the Syrias: the “power” whereof Christ then “received” in receiving its ensigns,—gold, to wit, and odours. “The spoils,” moreover, “of Samaria” (He received in receiving) the magi themselves, who, on recognising Him, and honouring Him with gifts, and adoring Him on bended knee as Lord and King, on the evidence of the guiding and indicating star, became “the spoils of Samaria,” that is, of idolatry—by believing, namely, on Christ. For (Scripture) denoted idolatry by the name of “Samaria,” Samaria being ignominious on the score of idolatry; for she had at that time revolted from God under King Jeroboam. For this, again, is no novelty to the Divine Scriptures, figuratively to use a transference of name grounded on parallelism of crimes. For it 1266 calls your rulers “rulers of Sodom,” and your people the “people of Gomorrha,” 1267 when those cities had already long been extinct. 1268 And elsewhere it says, through a prophet, to the people of Israel, “Thy father (was) an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite;” 1269 of whose race they were not begotten, but (were called their sons) by reason of their consimilarity in impiety, whom of old (God) had called His own sons through Isaiah the prophet: “I have generated and exalted sons.” 1270 So, too, Egypt is sometimes understood to mean the whole world 1271 in that prophet, on the count of superstition and malediction. 1272 So, again, Babylon, in our own John, is a figure of the city Rome, as being equally great and proud of her sway, and triumphant over the saints. 1273 On this wise, accordingly, (Scripture) 1274 entitled the magi also with the appellation of “Samaritans,”—“despoiled” (of that) which they had had in common with the Samaritans, as we have said—idolatry in opposition to the Lord. (It 1275 adds), “in opposition,” moreover, “to the king of the Assyrians,”—in opposition to the devil, who to this hour thinks himself to be reigning, if he detrudes the saints from the religion of God.
Moreover, this our interpretation will be supported while (we find that) elsewhere as well the Scriptures designate Christ a warrior, as we gather from the names of certain weapons, and words of that kind. But by a comparison of the remaining senses the Jews shall be convicted. “Gird thee,” says David, “the sword upon the thigh.” 1276 But what do you read above concerning the Christ? “Blooming in beauty above the sons of men; grace is outpoured in thy lips.” 1277 But very absurd it is if he was complimenting on the bloom of his beauty and the grace of his lips, one whom he was girding for war with a sword; of whom he proceeds subjunctively to say, “Outstretch and prosper, advance and reign!” And he has added, “because of thy lenity and justice.” 1278 Who will ply the sword without practising the contraries to lenity and justice; that is, guile, and asperity, and injustice, proper (of course) to the business of battles? See we, then, whether that which has another action be not another sword,—that is, the Divine word of God, doubly sharpened 1279 with the two Testaments of the ancient law and the new law; sharpened by the equity of its own wisdom; rendering to each one according to his own action. 1280 Lawful , then, it was for the Christ of God to be precinct, in the Psalms, without warlike achievements, with the figurative sword of the word of God; to which sword is congruous the predicated “bloom,” together with the “grace of the lips;” with which sword He was then “girt upon the thigh,” in the eye of David, when He was announced as about to come to earth in obedience to God the Father’s decree. “The greatness of thy right hand,” he says, “shall conduct thee” 1281 —the virtue to wit, of the spiritual grace from which the recognition of Christ is deduced. “Thine arrows,” he says, “are sharp,” 1282 —God’s everywhere-flying precepts (arrows) threatening the exposure 1283 of every heart, and carrying compunction and transfixion to each conscience: “peoples shall fall beneath thee,” 1284 —of course, in adoration. Thus mighty in war and weapon-bearing is Christ; thus will He “receive the spoils,” not of “Samaria” alone, but of all nations as well. Acknowledge that His “spoils” are figurative whose weapons you have learnt to be allegorical. And thus, so far, the Christ who is come was not a warrior, because He was not predicted as such by Isaiah.
“But if the Christ,” say they, “who is believed to be coming is not called Jesus, why is he who is come called Jesus Christ?” Well, each name will meet in the Christ of God, in whom is found likewise the appellation 1285 Jesus. Learn the habitual character of your error. In the course of the appointing of a successor to Moses, Oshea 1286 the son of Nun 1287 is certainly transferred from his pristine name, and begins to be called Jesus. 1288 Certainly, you say. This we first assert to have been a figure of the future. For, because Jesus Christ was to introduce the second people (which is composed of us nations, lingering deserted in the world 1289 aforetime) into the land of promise, “flowing with milk and honey” 1290 (that is, into the possession of eternal life, than which nought is sweeter); and this had to come about, not through Moses (that is, not through the Law’s discipline), but through Joshua (that is, through the new law’s grace), after our circumcision with “a knife of rock” 1291 (that is, with Christ’s precepts, for Christ is in many ways and figures predicted as a rock 1292 ); therefore the man who was being prepared to act as images of this sacrament was inaugurated under the figure of the Lord’s name, even so as to be named Jesus. 1293 For He who ever spake to Moses was the Son of God Himself; who, too, was always seen. 1294 For God the Father none ever saw, and lived. 1295 And accordingly it is agreed that the Son of God Himself spake to Moses, and said to the people, “Behold, I send mine angel before thy”—that is, the people’s—“face, to guard thee on the march, and to introduce thee into the land which I have prepared thee: attend to him, and be not disobedient to him; for he hath not escaped 1296 thy notice, since my name is upon him.” 1297 For Joshua was to introduce the people into the land of promise, not Moses. Now He called him an “angel,” on account of the magnitude of the mighty deeds which he was to achieve (which mighty deeds Joshua the son of Nun did, and you yourselves read), and on account of his office of prophet announcing (to wit) the divine will; just as withal the Spirit, speaking in the person of the Father, calls the forerunner of Christ, John, a future “angel,” through the prophet: “Behold, I send mine angel before Thy”—that is, Christ’s—“face, who shall prepare Thy way before Thee.” 1298 Nor is it a novel practice to the Holy Spirit to call those “angels” whom God has appointed as ministers of His power. For the same John is called not merely an “angel” of Christ, but withal a “lamp” shining before Christ: for David predicts, “I have prepared the lamp for my Christ;” 1299 and him Christ Himself, coming “to fulfil the prophets,” 1300 called so to the Jews. “He was,” He says, “the burning and shining lamp;” 1301 as being he who not merely “prepared His ways in the desert,” 1302 but withal, by pointing out “the Lamb of God,” 1303 illumined the minds of men by his heralding, so that they understood Him to be that Lamb whom Moses was wont to announce as destined to suffer. Thus, too, (was the son of Nun called) Joshua, on account of the future mystery 1304 of his name: for that name (He who spake with Moses) confirmed as His own which Himself had conferred on him, because He had bidden him thenceforth be called, not “angel” nor “Oshea,” but “Joshua.” Thus, therefore, each name is appropriate to the Christ of God—that He should be called Jesus as well (as Christ).
And that the virgin of whom it behoved Christ to be born (as we have above mentioned) must derive her lineage of the seed of David, the prophet in subsequent passages evidently asserts. “And there shall be born,” he says, “a rod from the root of Jesse”—which rod is Mary—“and a flower shall ascend from his root: and there shall rest upon him the Spirit of God, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of discernment and piety, the spirit of counsel and truth; the spirit of God’s fear shall fill Him.” 1305 For to none of men was the universal aggregation of spiritual credentials appropriate, except to Christ; paralleled as He is to a “flower” by reason of glory, by reason of grace; but accounted “of the root of Jesse,” whence His origin is to be deduced,—to wit, through Mary. 1306 For He was from the native soil of Bethlehem, and from the house of David; as, among the Romans, Mary is described in the census, of whom is born Christ. 1307
I demand, again—granting that He who was ever predicted by prophets as destined to come out of Jesse’s race, was withal to exhibit all humility, patience, and tranquillity—whether He be come? Equally so (in this case as in the former), the man who is shown to bear that character will be the very Christ who is come. For of Him the prophet says, “A man set in a plague, and knowing how to bear infirmity;” who “was led as a sheep for a victim; and, as a lamb before him who sheareth him, opened not His mouth.” 1308 If He “neither did contend nor shout, nor was His voice heard abroad,” who “crushed not the bruised reed”—Israel’s faith, who “quenched not the burning flax” 1309 —that is, the momentary glow of the Gentiles—but made it shine more by the rising of His own light,—He can be none other than He who was predicted. The action, therefore, of the Christ who is come must be examined by being placed side by side with the rule of the Scriptures. For, if I mistake not, we find Him distinguished by a twofold operation,—that of preaching and that of power. Now, let each count be disposed of summarily. Accordingly, let us work out the order we have set down, teaching that Christ was announced as a preacher; as, through Isaiah: “Cry out,” he says, “in vigour, and spare not; lift up, as with a trumpet, thy voice, and announce to my commonalty their crimes, and to the house of Jacob their sins. Me from day to day they seek, and to learn my ways they covet, as a people which hath done righteousness, and hath not forsaken the judgment of God,” and so forth: 1310 that, moreover, He was to do acts of power from the Father: “Behold, our God will deal retributive judgment; Himself will come and save us: then shall the infirm be healed, and the eyes of the blind shall see, and the ears of the deaf shall hear, and the mutes’ tongues shall be loosed, and the lame shall leap as an hart,” 1311 and so on; which works not even you deny that Christ did, inasmuch as you were wont to say that, “on account of the works ye stoned Him not, but because He did them on the Sabbaths.” 1312
Footnotes
161:1250“A virgin,” Eng. ver.; ἡ παρθένος, LXX.; “the virgin,” Lowth.
161:1251See Isa. 7:13, 14.
161:1252See Matt. i. 23.
161:1253See Isa vii. 15.
161:1254See Isa. viii. 4. (All these passages should be read in the LXX.)
161:1255i.e., of the predicted name. [Here compare Against Marcion, Book III. (vol. vii. Edin. series) Cap. xii. p. 142. See my note (1) on Chapter First; and also Kaye, p. xix.]
161:1256In Isa. 8:8, 10, compared with vii. 14 in the Eng. ver. and the LXX., and also Lowth, introductory remarks on ch. viii.
161:1257Or, “to call him.”
161:1258See adv. Marc. l. iii. c. xiii., which, with the preceding chapter, should be compared throughout with the chapter before us.
161:1259Comp. Judg. xiii. 12; Eng. ver. “How shall we order the child?”
162:1260Or, “accept.”
162:1261See Matt. ii. 1-12.
162:1262Of course he ought to have said, “they say.”
162:1263Zech. xiv. 14, omitting the last clause.
162:1264Ps. lxxii. 15 (lxxi. 15 in LXX.): “Sheba” in Eng. ver.; “Arabia” in the “Great Bible” of 1539; and so the LXX.
162:1265Ps. lxxii. 10, in LXX, and “Great Bible;” “Sheba and Seba,” Eng. ver.
162:1266Strictly, Tertullian ought to have said “they call,” having above said “Divine scriptures;” as above on the preceding page.
162:1267Isa. i. 10.
162:1268See Gen. xix. 23-29.
162:1269Ezek. 16:3, 45.
162:1270Isa. i. 2, as before.
162:1271Orbis.
162:1272Oehler refers to Isa. xix. 1. See, too, Isa. 30:0, Isa. 31:0.
162:1273See Rev. xvii., etc.
162:1274Or we may supply here [“Isaiah”].
162:1275Or, “he.”
162:1276Ps. xlv. 3, clause 1 (in LXX. Ps. xliv. 4).
162:1277See Ps. xlv. 2 (xliv. 3 in LXX.).
162:1278Ps. xlv. 4 (xliv. 5 in LXX.).
162:1279Comp. Heb. 4:12, Rev. 1:16, Rev. 2:12, Rev. 19:15, 21; also Eph. vi. 17.
162:1280Comp. Ps. lxii. 12 (lxi. 13 in LXX.); Rom. ii. 6.
163:1281See Ps. xlv. 5 (xliv. in LXX.).
163:1282Ps. xlv. 5 (xliv. 6 in LXX.).
163:1283Traductionem (comp. Heb. iv. 13).
163:1284Ps. xlv. 5.
163:1285I can find no authority for “appellatus” as a substantive, but such forms are familiar with Tertullian. Or perhaps we may render: “in that He is found to have been likewise called Jesus.”
163:1286Auses; Αὐσή in LXX.
163:1287Nave; Ναυή in LXX.
163:1288Jehoshua, Joshua, Jeshua, Jesus, are all forms of the same name. But the change from Oshea or Hoshea to Jehoshua appears to have been made when he was sent to spy the land. See Num. xiii. 16 (17 in LXX., who call it a surnaming).
163:1289If Oehler’s “in sæculo desertæ” is to be retained, this appears to be the construction. But this passage, like others above noted, is but a reproduction of parts of the third book in answer to Marcion; and there the reading is “in sæculi desertis”="in the desert places of the world,” or “of heathendom.”
163:1290See Ex. iii. 8, and the references there.
163:1291See Josh. v. 2-9, especially in LXX. Comp. the margin in the Eng. ver. in ver. 2, “flint knives,” and Wordsworth in loc., who refers to Ex. iv. 25, for which see ch. iii. above.
163:1292See especially 1 Cor. x. 4.
163:1293Or, “Joshua.”
163:1294Comp. Num. xii. 5-8.
163:1295Comp. Exod. 33:20, John 1:18, John 14:9, Col. 1:15, Heb. 1:3.
163:1296Oehler and others read “celavit”; but the correction of Fr. Junius and Rig., “celabit,” is certainly more agreeable to the LXX. and the Eng. ver.
163:1297Exod. 23:20, 21.
163:1298Mal. iii. 1: comp. Matt. 11:10, Mark 1:2, Luke 7:27.
163:1299See Ps. cxxxii. 17 (cxxi. 17 in LXX.).
163:1300Matt. v. 17, briefly; a very favourite reference with Tertullian.
163:1301John v. 35, ὁ λύχνος ὁ καιόμενος καὶ φαίνων.
163:1302Comp. reference 8, p. 232; and Isa. 40:3, John 1:23.
163:1303See John 1:29, 36.
164:1304Sacramentum.
164:1305See Isa. 11:1, 2, especially in LXX.
164:1306See Luke i. 27.
164:1307See Luke ii. 1-7.
164:1308See Isa. 53:3, 7, in LXX.; and comp. Ps. xxxviii. 17 (xxxvii. 18 in LXX.) in the “Great Bible” of 1539.
164:1309See Isa. 42:2, 3, and Matt. 12:19, 20.
164:1310See Isa. 58:1, 2, especially in LXX.
164:1311See Isa. 35:4, 5, 6.
164:1312See John 5:17, 18, John 10:31.
Chapter X.—Concerning the Passion of Christ, and Its Old Testament Predictions and Adumbrations.
Concerning the last step, plainly, of His passion you raise a doubt; affirming that the passion of the cross was not predicted with reference to Christ, and urging, besides, that it is not credible that God should have exposed His own Son to that kind of death; because Himself said, “Cursed is every one who shall have hung on a tree.” 1313 But the reason of the case antecedently explains the sense of this malediction; for He says in Deuteronomy: “If, moreover, (a man) shall have been (involved) in some sin incurring the judgment of death, and shall die, and ye shall suspend him on a tree, his body shall not remain on the tree, but with burial ye shall bury him on the very day; because cursed by God is every one who shall have been suspended on a tree; and ye shall not defile the land which the Lord thy God shall give thee for (thy) lot.” 1314 Therefore He did not maledictively adjudge Christ to this passion, but drew a distinction, that whoever, in any sin, had incurred the judgment of death, and died suspended on a tree, he should be “cursed by God,” because his own sins were the cause of his suspension on the tree. On the other hand, Christ, who spoke not guile from His mouth, 1315 and who exhibited all righteousness and humility, not only (as we have above recorded it predicted of Him) was not exposed to that kind of death for his own deserts, but (was so exposed) in order that what was predicted by the prophets as destined to come upon Him through your means 1316 might be fulfilled; just as, in the Psalms, the Spirit Himself of Christ was already singing, saying, “They were repaying me evil for good;” 1317 and, “What I had not seized I was then paying in full;” 1318 “They exterminated my hands and feet;” 1319 and, “They put into my drink gall, and in my thirst they slaked me with vinegar;” 1320 “Upon my vesture they did cast (the) lot;” 1321 just as the other (outrages) which you were to commit on Him were foretold,—all which He, actually and thoroughly suffering, suffered not for any evil action of His own, but “that the Scriptures from the mouth of the prophets might be fulfilled.” 1322
And, of course, it had been meet that the mystery 1323 of the passion itself should be figuratively set forth in predictions; and the more incredible (that mystery), the more likely to be “a stumbling-stone,” 1324 if it had been nakedly predicted; and the more magnificent, the more to be adumbrated, that the difficulty of its intelligence might seek (help from) the grace of God.
Accordingly, to begin with, Isaac, when led by his father as a victim, and himself bearing his own “wood,” 1325 was even at that early period pointing to Christ’s death; conceded, as He was, as a victim by the Father; carrying, as He did, the “wood” of His own passion. 1326
Joseph, again, himself was made a figure of Christ 1327 in this point alone (to name no more, not to delay my own course), that he suffered persecution at the hands of his brethren, and was sold into Egypt, on account of the favour of God; 1328 just as Christ was sold by Israel—(and therefore,) “according to the flesh,” by His “brethren” 1329 —when He is betrayed by Judas. 1330 For Joseph is withal blest by his father 1331 after this form: “His glory (is that) of a bull; his horns, the horns of an unicorn; on them shall he toss nations alike unto the very extremity of the earth.” Of course no one-horned rhinoceros was there pointed to, nor any two-horned minotaur. But Christ was therein signified: “bull,” by reason of each of His two characters,—to some fierce, as Judge; to others gentle, as Saviour; whose “horns” were to be the extremities of the cross. For even in a ship’s yard—which is part of a cross—this is the name by which the extremities are called; while the central pole of the mast is a “unicorn.” By this power, in fact, of the cross, and in this manner horned, He does now, on the one hand, “toss” universal nations through faith, wafting them away from earth to heaven; and will one day, on the other, “toss” them through judgment, casting them down from heaven to earth.
He, again, will be the “bull” elsewhere too in the same scripture. 1332 When Jacob pronounced a blessing on Simeon and Levi, he prophesies of the scribes and Pharisees; for from them 1333 is derived their 1334 origin. For (his blessing) interprets spiritually thus: “Simeon and Levi perfected iniquity out of their sect,” 1335 —whereby, to wit, they persecuted Christ: “into their counsel come not my soul! and upon their station rest not my heart! because in their indignation they slew men”—that is, prophets—“and in their concupiscence they hamstrung a bull!” 1336 —that is, Christ, whom—after the slaughter of prophets—they slew, and exhausted their savagery by transfixing His sinews with nails. Else it is idle if, after the murder already committed by them, he upbraids others, and not them, with butchery. 1337
But, to come now to Moses, why, I wonder, did he merely at the time when Joshua was battling against Amalek, pray sitting with hands expanded, when, in circumstances so critical, he ought rather, surely, to have commended his prayer by knees bended, and hands beating his breast, and a face prostrate on the ground; except it was that there, where the name of the Lord Jesus was the theme of speech—destined as He was to enter the lists one day singly against the devil—the figure of the cross was also necessary, (that figure) through which Jesus was to win the victory? 1338 Why, again, did the same Moses, after the prohibition of any “likeness of anything,” 1339 set forth a brazen serpent, placed on a “tree,” in a hanging posture, for a spectacle of healing to Israel, at the time when, after their idolatry, 1340 they were suffering extermination by serpents, except that in this case he was exhibiting the Lord’s cross on which the “serpent” the devil was “made a show of,” 1341 and, for every one hurt by such snakes—that is, his angels 1342 —on turning intently from the peccancy of sins to the sacraments of Christ’s cross, salvation was outwrought? For he who then gazed upon that (cross) was freed from the bite of the serpents. 1343
Come, now, if you have read in the utterance of the prophet in the Psalms, “God hath reigned from the tree,” 1344 I wait to hear what you understand thereby; for fear you may perhaps think some carpenter-king 1345 is signified, and not Christ, who has reigned from that time onward when he overcame the death which ensued from His passion of “the tree.”
Similarly, again, Isaiah says: “For a child is born to us, and to us is given a son.” 1346 What novelty is that, unless he is speaking of the “Son” of God?—and one is born to us the beginning of whose government has been made “on His shoulder.” What king in the world wears the ensign of his power on his shoulder, and does not bear either diadem on his head, or else sceptre in his hand, or else some mark of distinctive vesture? But the novel “King of ages,” Christ Jesus, alone reared “on His shoulder” His own novel glory, and power, and sublimity,—the cross, to wit; that, according to the former prophecy, the Lord thenceforth “might reign from the tree.” For of this tree likewise it is that God hints, through Jeremiah, that you would say, “Come, let us put wood 1347 into his bread, and let us wear him away out of the land of the living; and his name shall no more be remembered.” 1348 Of course on His body that “wood” was put; 1349 for so Christ has revealed, calling His body “bread,” 1350 whose body the prophet in bygone days announced under the term “bread.” If you shall still seek for predictions of the Lord’s cross, the twenty-first Psalm will at length be able to satisfy you, containing as it does the whole passion of Christ; singing, as He does, even at so early a date, His own glory. 1351 “They dug,” He says, “my hands and feet” 1352 —which is the peculiar atrocity of the cross; and again when He implores the aid of the Father, “Save me,” He says, “out of the mouth of the lion”—of course, of death—“and from the horn of the unicorns my humility,” 1353 —from the ends, to wit, of the cross, as we have above shown; which cross neither David himself suffered, nor any of the kings of the Jews: that you may not think the passion of some other particular man is here prophesied than His who alone was so signally crucified by the People.
Now, if the hardness of your heart shall persist in rejecting and deriding all these interpretations, we will prove that it may suffice that the death of the Christ had been prophesied, in order that, from the fact that the nature of the death had not been specified, it may be understood to have been affected by means of the cross 1354 and that the passion of the cross is not to be ascribed to any but Him whose death was constantly being predicted. For I desire to show, in one utterance of Isaiah, His death, and passion, and sepulture. “By the crimes,” he says, “of my people was He led unto death; and I will give the evil for His sepulture, and the rich for His death, because He did not wickedness, nor was guile found in his mouth; and God willed to redeem His soul from death,” 1355 and so forth. He says again, moreover: “His sepulture hath been taken away from the midst.” 1356 For neither was He buried except He were dead, nor was His sepulture removed from the midst except through His resurrection. Finally, he subjoins: “Therefore He shall have many for an heritage, and of many shall He divide spoils:” 1357 who else (shall so do) but He who “was born,” as we have above shown?—“in return for the fact that His soul was delivered unto death?” For, the cause of the favour accorded Him being shown,—in return, to wit, for the injury of a death which had to be recompensed,—it is likewise shown that He, destined to attain these rewards because of death, was to attain them after death—of course after resurrection. For that which happened at His passion, that mid-day grew dark, the prophet Amos announces, saying, “And it shall be,” he says, “in that day, saith the Lord, the sun shall set at mid-day, and the day of light shall grow dark over the land: and I will convert your festive days into grief, and all your canticles into lamentation; and I will lay upon your loins sackcloth, and upon every head baldness; and I will make the grief like that for a beloved (son), and them that are with him like a day of mourning.” 1358 For that you would do thus at the beginning of the first month of your new (years) even Moses prophesied, when he was foretelling that all the community of the sons of Israel was 1359 to immolate at eventide a lamb, and were to eat 1360 this solemn sacrifice of this day (that is, of the passover of unleavened bread) with bitterness;” and added that “it was the passover of the Lord,” 1361 that is, the passion of Christ. Which prediction was thus also fulfilled, that “on the first day of unleavened bread” 1362 you slew Christ; 1363 and (that the prophecies might be fulfilled) the day hasted to make an “eventide,”—that is, to cause darkness, which was made at mid-day; and thus “your festive days God converted into grief, and your canticles into lamentation.” For after the passion of Christ there overtook you even captivity and dispersion, predicted before through the Holy Spirit.
Footnotes
164:1313Comp. Deut. xxi. 23 with Gal. iii. 13, with Prof. Lightfoot on the latter passage.
164:1314Deut. 21:22, 23 (especially in the LXX.).
165:1315See 1 Pet. ii. 22 with Isa. liii. 9.
165:1316Oehler’s pointing is disregarded.
165:1317Psa. 35.12.
165:1318Ps. lxix. 4 (lxviii. 5 in LXX.).
165:1319Ps. xxii. 16 (xxi. 17 in LXX.).
165:1320Ps. lxix. 21 (lxviii. 5 in LXX.).
165:1321Ps. xxii. 18 (xxi. 19 in LXX.).
165:1322See Matt. 26:56, Matt. 27:34, 35, John 19:23, 24, 28, 32.
165:1323Sacramentum.
165:1324See Rom. 9:32, 33, with Isa. 28:16, 1 Cor. 1:23, Gal. 5:11.
165:1325Lignum = ξύλον; constantly used for “tree.”
165:1326Comp. Gen. xxii. 1-10 with John xix. 17.
165:1327“Christum figuratus” is Oehler’s reading, after the two mss. and the Pamelian ed. of 1579; the rest read “figurans” or “figuravit.”
165:1328Manifested e.g., in his two dreams. See Gen. xxxvii.
165:1329Comp. Rom. ix. 5.
165:1330Or, “Judah.”
165:1331This is an error. It is not “his father,” Jacob, but Moses, who thus blesses him. See Deut. xxxiii. 17. The same error occurs in adv. Marc. 1. iii. c. xxiii.
165:1332Not strictly “the same;” for here the reference is to Gen. xlix. 5-7.
165:1333i.e., Simeon and Levi.
165:1334i.e., the scribes and Pharisees.
165:1335Perfecerunt iniquitatem ex sua secta. There seems to be a play on the word “secta” in connection with the outrage committed by Simeon and Levi, as recorded in Gen. xxxiv. 25-31; and for συνετέλεσαν ἀδικίαν ἐξαιρέσεως αὐτῶν (which is the reading of the LXX., ed. Tisch. 3, Lips. 1860), Tertullian’s Latin seems to have read, συνετέλεσαν ἀδικίαν ἐξ αἱρέσεως αὐτῶν.
165:1336See Gen. xlix. 5-7 in LXX.; and comp. the margin of Eng. ver. on ver. 7, and Wordsworth in loc., who incorrectly renders ταῦρον an “ox” here.
165:1337What the sense of this is it is not easy to see. It appears to have puzzled Pam. and Rig. so effectually that they both, conjecturally and without authority, adopted the reading found in adv. Marc. l. iii. c. xviii. (from which book, as usual, the present passage is borrowed), only altering illis to ipsis.
166:1338See Ex. xvii. 8-16; and comp. Col. 2:14, 15.
166:1339Ex. xx. 4.
166:1340Their sin was “speaking against God and against Moses” (Num. xxi. 4-9).
166:1341Comp. Col. 2:14, 15, as before; also Gen. iii. 1, etc.; 2 Cor. 11:3, Rev. 12:9.
166:1342Comp. 2 Cor. 11:14, 15, Matt. 25:41, Rev. 12:9.
166:1343Comp. de Idol. c. v.; adv. Marc. l. iii. c. xviii.
166:1344A ligno. Oehler refers us to Ps. xcvi. 10 (xcv. 10 in LXX.); but the special words “a ligno” are wanting there, though the text is often quoted by the Fathers.
166:1345Lignarium aliquem regem. It is remarkable, in connection herewith, that our Lord is not only called by the Jews “the carpenter’s son” (Matt. 13:55, Luke 4:22), but “the carpenter” (Mark vi. 3).
166:1346See Isa. ix. 6.
166:1347Lignum.
166:1348See Jer. xi. 19 (in LXX.).
166:1349i.e., when they laid on Him the crossbeam to carry. See John xix. 17.
166:1350See John vi. passim, and the various accounts of the institution of the Holy Supper.
166:1351It is Ps. xxii. in our Bibles, xxi. in LXX.
166:1352Psa. 22.16 (17 in LXX.).
166:1353Ps. xxii. 21 (xxi. 22 in LXX., who render it as Tertullian does).
166:1354i.e., perhaps, because of the extreme ignominy attaching to that death, which prevented its being expressly named.
166:1355Isa. 53:8, 9, 10, (in LXX.).
166:1356Isa. lvii. 2 (in LXX.).
166:1357Isa. liii. 12 (in LXX.). Comp., too, Bp. Lowth. Oehler’s pointing again appears to be faulty.
167:1358See Amos 8:9, 10 (especially in the LXX.).
167:1359Oehler’s “esset” appears to be a mistake for “esse.”
167:1360The change from singular to plural is due to the Latin, not to the translator.
167:1361See Ex. xii. 1-11.
167:1362See Matt. 26:17, Mark 14:12, Luke 22:7, John 18:28.
167:1363Comp. 1 Cor. v. 7.
Chapter XI.—Further Proofs, from Ezekiel. Summary of the Prophetic Argument Thus Far.
For, again, it is for these deserts of yours that Ezekiel announces your ruin as about to come: and not only in this age 1364 —a ruin which has already befallen—but in the “day of retribution,” 1365 which will be subsequent. From which ruin none will be freed but he who shall have been frontally sealed 1366 with the passion of the Christ whom you have rejected. For thus it is written: “And the Lord said unto me, Son of man, thou hast seen what the elders of Israel do, each one of them in darkness, each in a hidden bed-chamber: because they have said, The Lord seeth us not; the Lord hath derelinquished the earth. And He said unto me, Turn thee again, and thou shalt see greater enormities which these do. And He introduced me unto the thresholds of the gate of the house of the Lord which looketh unto the north; and, behold, there, women sitting and bewailing Thammuz. And the Lord said unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen? Is the house of Judah moderate, to do the enormities which they have done? And yet thou art about to see greater affections of theirs. And He introduced me into the inner shrine of the house of the Lord; and, behold, on the thresholds of the house of the Lord, between the midst of the porch and between the midst of the altar, 1367 as it were twenty and five men have turned their backs unto the temple of the Lord, and their faces over against the east; these were adoring the sun. And He said unto me, Seest thou, son of man? Are such deeds trifles to the house of Judah, that they should do the enormities which these have done? because they have filled up (the measure of) their impieties, and, behold, are themselves, as it were, grimacing; I will deal with mine indignation, 1368 mine eye shall not spare, neither will I pity; they shall cry out unto mine ears with a loud voice, and I will not hear them, nay, I will not pity. And He cried into mine ears with a loud voice, saying, The vengeance of this city is at hand; and each one had vessels of extermination in his hand. And, behold, six men were coming toward the way of the high gate which was looking toward the north, and each one’s double-axe of dispersion was in his hand: and one man in the midst of them, clothed with a garment reaching to the feet, 1369 and a girdle of sapphire about his loins: and they entered, and took their stand close to the brazen altar. And the glory of the God of Israel, which was over the house, in the open court of it, 1370 ascended from the cherubim: and the Lord called the man who was clothed with the garment reaching to the feet, who had upon his loins the girdle; and said unto him, Pass through the midst of Jerusalem, and write the sign Tau 1371 on the foreheads of the men who groan and grieve over all the enormities which are done in their midst. And while these things were doing, He said unto an hearer, 1372 Go ye after him into the city, and cut short; and spare not with your eyes, and pity not elder or youth or virgin; and little ones and women slay ye all, that they may be thoroughly wiped away; but all upon whom is the sign Tau approach ye not; and begin with my saints.” 1373 Now the mystery of this “sign” was in various ways predicted; (a “sign”) in which the foundation of life was forelaid for mankind; (a “sign”) in which the Jews were not to believe: just as Moses beforetime kept on announcing in Exodus, 1374 saying, “Ye shall be ejected from the land into which ye shall enter; and in those nations ye shall not be able to rest: and there shall be instability of the print 1375 of thy foot: and God shall give thee a wearying heart, and a pining soul, and failing eyes, that they see not: and thy life shall hang on the tree 1376 before thine eyes; and thou shalt not trust thy life.”
And so, since prophecy has been fulfilled through His advent—that is, through the nativity, which we have above commemorated, and the passion, which we have evidently explained—that is the reason withal why Daniel said, “Vision and prophet were sealed;” because Christ is the “signet” of all prophets, fulfilling all that had in days bygone been announced concerning Him: for, since His advent and personal passion, there is no longer “vision” or “prophet;” whence most emphatically he says that His advent “seals vision and prophecy.” And thus, by showing “the number of the years, and the time of the lxii and an half fulfilled hebdomads,” we have proved that at that specified time Christ came, that is, was born; and, (by showing the time) of the “seven and an half hebdomads,” which are subdivided so as to be cut off from the former hebdomads, within which times we have shown Christ to have suffered, and by the consequent conclusion of the “lxx hebdomads,” and the extermination of the city, (we have proved) that “sacrifice and unction” thenceforth cease.
Sufficient it is thus far, on these points, to have meantime traced the course of the ordained path of Christ, by which He is proved to be such as He used to be announced, even on the ground of that agreement of Scriptures, which has enabled us to speak out, in opposition to the Jews, on the ground 1377 of the prejudgment of the major part. For let them not question or deny the writings we produce; that the fact also that things which were foretold as destined to happen after Christ are being recognised as fulfilled may make it impossible for them to deny (these writings) to be on a par with divine Scriptures. Else, unless He were come after whom the things which were wont to be announced had to be accomplished, would such as have been completed be proved? 1378
Footnotes
167:1364Sæculo.
167:1365Comp. Isa. lxi. 2.
167:1366Or possibly, simply, “sealed”—obsignatus.
167:1367Inter mediam elam et inter medium altaris: i.e., probably ="between the porch and the altar,” as the Eng. ver. has.
167:1368So Oehler points, and Tischendorf in his edition of the LXX. points not very differently. I incline to read: “Because they have filled up the measure of their impieties, and, behold (are) themselves, as it were, grimacing, I will,” etc.
167:1369Comp. Rev. i. 13.
167:1370“Quæ fuit super eam” (i.e. super domum) “in subdivali domûs” is Oehler’s reading; but it differs from the LXX.
168:1371The ms. which Oehler usually follows omits “Tau;” so do the LXX.
168:1372Et in his dixit ad audientem. But the LXX. reading agrees almost verbatim with the Eng. ver.
168:1373Ezek. 8.12-9.6 (especially in the LXX.). Comp. adv. Marc. l. iii. c. xxii. But our author differs considerably even from the LXX.
168:1374Or rather in Deuteronomy. See Deut. 28.65 sqq.
168:1375Or, “sole.”
168:1376In ligno. There are no such words in the LXX. If the words be retained, “thy life” will mean Christ, who is called “our Life” in Col. iii. 4. See also John 1:4, John 14:6, John 11:25. And so, again, “Thou shalt not trust (or believe) thy life” would mean, “Thou shalt not believe Christ.”
168:1377Or, “in accordance with.”
168:1378i.e., Would they have happened? and, by happening, have been their own proof?
Chapter XII.—Further Proofs from the Calling of the Gentiles.
Look at the universal nations thenceforth emerging from the vortex of human error to the Lord God the Creator and His Christ; and if you dare to deny that this was prophesied, forthwith occurs to you the promise of the Father in the Psalms, which says, “My Son art Thou; to-day have I begotten Thee. Ask of Me, and I will give Thee Gentiles as Thine heritage, and as Thy possession the bounds of the earth.” 1379 For you will not be able to affirm that “son” to be David rather than Christ; or the “bounds of the earth” to have been promised rather to David, who reigned within the single (country of) Judea, than to Christ, who has already taken captive the whole orb with the faith of His gospel; as He says through Isaiah: “Behold, I have given Thee for a covenant 1380 of my family, for a light of Gentiles, that Thou mayst open the eyes of the blind”—of course, such as err—“to outloose from bonds the bound”—that is, to free them from sins—“and from the house of prison”—that is, of death—“such as sit in darkness” 1381 —of ignorance, to wit. And if these blessings accrue through Christ, they will not have been prophesied of another than Him through whom we consider them to have been accomplished. 1382
Footnotes
168:1379Ps. 2:7, 8.
168:1380Dispositionem; Gr. διαθήκην.
168:1381Isa. 42:6, 7, Isa. 61:1, Luke 4:14.
168:1382Comp. Luke ii. 25-33.
Chapter XIII.—Argument from the Destruction of Jerusalem and Desolation of Judea.
Therefore, since the sons of Israel affirm that we err in receiving the Christ, who is already come, let us put in a demurrer against them out of the Scriptures themselves, to the effect that the Christ who was the theme of prediction is come; albeit by the times of Daniel’s prediction we have proved that the Christ is come already who was the theme of announcement. Now it behoved Him to be born in Bethlehem of Judah. For thus it is written in the prophet: “And thou, Bethlehem, are not the least in the leaders of Judah: for out of thee shall issue a Leader who shall feed my People Israel.” 1383 But if hitherto he has not been born, what “leader” was it who was thus announced as to proceed from the tribe of Judah, out of Bethlehem? For it behoves him to proceed from the tribe of Judah and from Bethlehem. But we perceive that now none of the race of Israel has remained in Bethlehem; and (so it has been) ever since the interdict was issued forbidding any one of the Jews to linger in the confines of the very district, in order that this prophetic utterance also should be perfectly fulfilled: “Your land is desert, your cities burnt up by fire,”—that is, (he is foretelling) what will have happened to them in time of war “your region strangers shall eat up in your sight, and it shall be desert and subverted by alien peoples.” 1384 And in another place it is thus said through the prophet: “The King with His glory ye shall see,”—that is, Christ, doing deeds of power in the glory of God the Father; 1385 “and your eyes shall see the land from afar,” 1386 —which is what you do, being prohibited, in reward of your deserts, since the storming of Jerusalem, to enter into your land; it is permitted you merely to see it with your eyes from afar: “your soul,” he says, “shall meditate terror,” 1387 —namely, at the time when they suffered the ruin of themselves. 1388 How, therefore, will a “leader” be born from Judea, and how far will he “proceed from Bethlehem,” as the divine volumes of the prophets do plainly announce; since none at all is left there to this day of (the house of) Israel, of whose stock Christ could be born?
Now, if (according to the Jews) He is hitherto not come, when He begins to come whence will He be anointed? 1389 For the Law enjoined that, in captivity, it was not lawful for the unction of the royal chrism to be compounded. 1390 But, if there is no longer “unction” there 1391 as Daniel prophesied (for he says, “Unction shall be exterminated”), it follows that they 1392 no longer have it, because neither have they a temple where was the “horn” 1393 from which kings were wont to be anointed. If, then, there is no unction, whence shall be anointed the “leader” who shall be born in Bethlehem? or how shall he proceed “from Bethlehem,” seeing that of the seed of Israel none at all exists in Bethlehem.
A second time, in fact, let us show that Christ is already come, (as foretold) through the prophets, and has suffered, and is already received back in the heavens, and thence is to come accordingly as the predictions prophesied. For, after His advent, we read, according to Daniel, that the city itself had to be exterminated; and we recognise that so it has befallen. For the Scripture says thus, that “the city and the holy place are simultaneously exterminated together with the leader,” 1394 —undoubtedly (that Leader) who was to proceed “from Bethlehem,” and from the tribe of “Judah.” Whence, again, it is manifest that “the city must simultaneously be exterminated” at the time when its “Leader” had to suffer in it, (as foretold) through the Scriptures of the prophets, who say: “I have outstretched my hands the whole day unto a People contumacious and gainsaying Me, who walketh in a way not good, but after their own sins.” 1395 And in the Psalms, David says: “They exterminated my hands and feet: they counted all my bones; they themselves, moreover, contemplated and saw me, and in my thirst slaked me with vinegar.” 1396 These things David did not suffer, so as to seem justly to have spoken of himself; but the Christ who was crucified. Moreover, the “hands and feet,” are not “exterminated,” 1397 except His who is suspended on a “tree.” Whence, again, David said that “the Lord would reign from the tree:” 1398 for elsewhere, too, the prophet predicts the fruit of this “tree,” saying “The earth hath given her blessings,” 1399 —of course that virgin-earth, not yet irrigated with rains, nor fertilized by showers, out of which man was of yore first formed, out of which now Christ through the flesh has been born of a virgin; “and the tree,” 1400 he says, “hath brought his fruit,” 1401 —not that “tree” in paradise which yielded death to the protoplasts, but the “tree” of the passion of Christ, whence life, hanging, was by you not believed! 1402 For this “tree” in a mystery, 1403 it was of yore wherewith Moses sweetened the bitter water; whence the People, which was perishing of thirst in the desert, drank and revived; 1404 just as we do, who, drawn out from the calamities of the heathendom 1405 in which we were tarrying perishing with thirst (that is, deprived of the divine word), drinking, “by the faith which is on Him,” 1406 the baptismal water of the “tree” of the passion of Christ, have revived,—a faith from which Israel has fallen away, (as foretold) through Jeremiah, who says, “Send, and ask exceedingly whether such things have been done, whether nations will change their gods (and these are not gods!). But My People hath changed their glory: whence no profit shall accrue to them: the heaven turned pale thereat” (and when did it turn pale? undoubtedly when Christ suffered), “and shuddered,” he says, “most exceedingly;” 1407 and “the sun grew dark at mid-day:” 1408 (and when did it “shudder exceedingly” except at the passion of Christ, when the earth also trembled to her centre, and the veil of the temple was rent, and the tombs were burst asunder? 1409 “because these two evils hath My People done; Me,” He says, “they have quite forsaken, the fount of water of life, 1410 and they have digged for themselves worn-out tanks, which will not be able to contain water.” Undoubtedly, by not receiving Christ, the “fount of water of life,” they have begun to have “worn-out tanks,” that is, synagogues for the use of the “dispersions of the Gentiles,” 1411 in which the Holy Spirit no longer lingers, as for the time past He was wont to tarry in the temple before the advent of Christ, who is the true temple of God. For, that they should withal suffer this thirst of the Divine Spirit, the prophet Isaiah had said, saying: “Behold, they who serve Me shall eat, but ye shall be hungry; they who serve Me shall drink, but ye shall thirst, and from general tribulation of spirit shall howl: for ye shall transmit your name for a satiety to Mine elect, but you the Lord shall slay; but for them who serve Me shall be named a new name, which shall be blessed in the lands.” 1412
Again, the mystery of this “tree” 1413 we read as being celebrated even in the Books of the Reigns. For when the sons of the prophets were cutting “wood” 1414 with axes on the bank of the river Jordan, the iron flew off and sank in the stream; and so, on Elisha 1415 the prophet’s coming up, the sons of the prophets beg of him to extract from the stream the iron which had sunk. And accordingly Elisha, having taken “wood,” and cast it into that place where the iron had been submerged, forthwith it rose and swam on the surface, 1416 and the “wood” sank, which the sons of the prophets recovered. 1417 Whence they understood that Elijah’s spirit was presently conferred upon him. 1418 What is more manifest than the mystery 1419 of this “wood,”—that the obduracy of this world 1420 had been sunk in the profundity of error, and is freed in baptism by the “wood” of Christ, that is, of His passion; in order that what had formerly perished through the “tree” in Adam, should be restored through the “tree” in Christ? 1421 while we, of course, who have succeeded to, and occupy, the room of the prophets, at the present day sustain in the world 1422 that treatment which the prophets always suffered on account of divine religion: for some they stoned, some they banished; more, however, they delivered to mortal slaughter, 1423 —a fact which they cannot deny. 1424
This “wood,” again, Isaac the son of Abraham personally carried for his own sacrifice, when God had enjoined that he should be made a victim to Himself. But, because these had been mysteries 1425 which were being kept for perfect fulfilment in the times of Christ, Isaac, on the one hand, with his “wood,” was reserved, the ram being offered which was caught by the horns in the bramble; 1426 Christ, on the other hand, in His times, carried His “wood” on His own shoulders, adhering to the horns of the cross, with a thorny crown encircling His head. For Him it behoved to be made a sacrifice on behalf of all Gentiles, who “was led as a sheep for a victim, and, like a lamb voiceless before his shearer, so opened not His mouth” (for He, when Pilate interrogated Him, spake nothing 1427 ); for “in humility His judgment was taken away: His nativity, moreover, who shall declare?” Because no one at all of human beings was conscious of the nativity of Christ at His conception, when as the Virgin Mary was found pregnant by the word of God; and because “His life was to be taken from the land.” 1428 Why, accordingly, after His resurrection from the dead, which was effected on the third day, did the heavens receive Him back? It was in accordance with a prophecy of Hosea, uttered on this wise: “Before daybreak shall they arise unto Me, saying, Let us go and return unto the Lord our God, because Himself will draw us out and free us. After a space of two days, on the third day” 1429 —which is His glorious resurrection—He received back into the heavens (whence withal the Spirit Himself had come to the Virgin 1430 ) Him whose nativity and passion alike the Jews have failed to acknowledge. Therefore, since the Jews still contend that the Christ is not yet come, whom we have in so many ways approved 1431 to be come, let the Jews recognise their own fate,—a fate which they were constantly foretold as destined to incur after the advent of the Christ, on account of the impiety with which they despised and slew Him. For first, from the day when, according to the saying of Isaiah, “a man cast forth his abominations of gold and silver, which they made to adore with vain and hurtful (rites),” 1432 —that is, ever since we Gentiles, with our breast doubly enlightened through Christ’s truth, cast forth (let the Jews see it) our idols,—what follows has likewise been fulfilled. For “the Lord of Sabaoth hath taken away, among the Jews from Jerusalem,” among the other things named, “the wise architect” too, 1433 who builds the church, God’s temple, and the holy city, and the house of the Lord. For thenceforth God’s grace desisted (from working) among them. And “the clouds were commanded not to rain a shower upon the vineyard of Sorek,” 1434 —the clouds being celestial benefits, which were commanded not to be forthcoming to the house of Israel; for it “had borne thorns”—whereof that house of Israel had wrought a crown for Christ—and not “righteousness, but a clamour,”—the clamour whereby it had extorted His surrender to the cross. 1435 And thus, the former gifts of grace being withdrawn, “the law and the prophets were until John,” 1436 and the fishpool of Bethsaida 1437 until the advent of Christ: thereafter it ceased curatively to remove from Israel infirmities of health; since, as the result of their perseverance in their frenzy, the name of the Lord was through them blasphemed, as it is written: “On your account the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles:” 1438 for it is from them that the infamy (attached to that name) began, and (was propagated during) the interval from Tiberius to Vespasian. And because they had committed these crimes, and had failed to understand that Christ “was to be found” 1439 in “the time of their visitation,” 1440 their land has been made “desert, and their cities utterly burnt with fire, while strangers devour their region in their sight: the daughter of Sion is derelict, as a watch-tower in a vineyard, or as a shed in a cucumber garden,”—ever since the time, to wit, when “Israel knew not” the Lord, and “the People understood Him not;” but rather “quite forsook, and provoked unto indignation, the Holy One of Israel.” 1441 So, again, we find a conditional threat of the sword: “If ye shall have been unwilling, and shall not have been obedient, the glaive shall eat you up.” 1442 Whence we prove that the sword was Christ, by not hearing whom they perished; who, again, in the Psalm, demands of the Father their dispersion, saying, “Disperse them in Thy power;” 1443 who, withal, again through Isaiah prays for their utter burning. “On My account,” He says, “have these things happened to you; in anxiety shall ye sleep.” 1444
Since, therefore, the Jews were predicted as destined to suffer these calamities on Christ’s account, and we find that they have suffered them, and see them sent into dispersion and abiding in it, manifest it is that it is on Christ’s account that these things have befallen the Jews, the sense of the Scriptures harmonizing with the issue of events and of the order of the times. Or else, if Christ is not yet come, on whose account they were predicted as destined thus to suffer, when He shall have come it follows that they will thus suffer. And where will then be a daughter of Sion to be derelict, who now has no existence? where the cities to be exust, which are already exust and in heaps? where the dispersion of a race which is now in exile? Restore to Judea the condition which Christ is to find; and (then, if you will), contend that some other (Christ) is coming.
Footnotes
169:1383Mic. 5:2, Matt. 2:3. Tertullian’s Latin agrees rather with the Greek of St. Matthew than with the LXX.
169:1384See Isa. i. 7.
169:1385Comp. John 5:43, John 10:37, 38.
169:1386Isa. xxxiii. 17.
169:1387Isa. xxxiii. 18.
169:1388Comp. the “failing eyes” in the passage from Deuteronomy given in c. xi., if “eyes” is to be taken as the subject here. If not, we have another instance of the slipshod writing in which this treatise abounds.
169:1389As His name “Christ” or “Messiah” implies.
169:1390Comp. Ex. xxx. 22-33.
169:1391i.e., in Jerusalem or Judea.
169:1392The Jews.
169:1393Comp. 1 Kings 1.39, where the Eng. ver. has “an horn;” the LXX. τὸ κέρας, “the horn;” which at that time, of course, was in David’s tabernacle (2 Sam. 6.17,) for “temple” there was yet none.
169:1394Dan. ix. 26.
169:1395See Isa. 65:2, Rom. 10:21.
169:1396Ps. 22:16, 17, Ps. 69:21 (lxviii. 22 in LXX.).
169:1397i.e., displaced, dislocated.
169:1398See c. x. above.
169:1399See Ps. 67:6, Ps. 85:12 (lxxxiv. 13 in LXX.).
170:1400“Lignum,” as before.
170:1401See Joel ii. 22.
170:1402See c. xi. above, and the note there.
170:1403Sacramento.
170:1404See Ex. xv. 22-26.
170:1405Sæculi.
170:1406See Acts xxvi. 18, ad fin.
170:1407See Jer. ii. 10-12.
170:1408See Amos viii. 9, as before, in c.x.
170:1409See Matt. 27:45, 50, Mark 15:33, 37, 38, Luke 23:44, 45.
170:1410ὑδατος ζωῆς in the LXX. here (ed. Tischendorf, who quotes the Cod. Alex. as reading, however, ὑδατος ζῶντος). Comp. Rev. 22:1, 17, Rev. 21:6, John 7:37. (The reference, it will be seen, is still to Jer. ii. 10-13; but the writer has mixed up words of Amos therewith.)
170:1411Comp. The τὴν διασπορὰν τῶν ῾Ελλήνων of John vii. 35; and see 1 Pet. i. 1.
170:1412See Isa. lxv. 13-16 in LXX.
170:1413Hujus ligni sacramentum.
170:1414Lignum.
170:1415Helisæo. Comp. Luke iv. 27.
170:1416The careless construction of leaving the nominative “Elisha” with no verb to follow it is due to the original, not to the translator.
170:1417See 2 Kings vi. 1-7 (4 Kings vi. 1–7 in LXX). It is not said, however, that the wood sank.
170:1418This conclusion they had drawn before, and are not said to have drawn, consequently, upon this occasion. See 2 Kings 2.16.
170:1419Sacramento.
170:1420“Sæculi,” or perhaps here “heathendom.”
170:1421For a similar argument, see Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo? l. i. c. iii. sub fin.
170:1422Sæculo.
170:1423Mortis necem.
170:1424Comp. Acts 7:51, 52, Heb. 11:32.
170:1425Sacramenta.
171:1426See Gen. xxii. 1-14.
171:1427See Matt. 27:11, Mark 15:1, John 19:8.
171:1428See Isa. 53:7, 8.
171:1429Oehler refers to Hos. vi. 1; add 2 (ad init.).
171:1430See Luke i. 35.
171:1431For this sense of the word “approve,” comp. Acts ii. 22, Greek and English, and Phil. i. 10, Greek and English.
171:1432See Isa. ii. 20.
171:1433See Isa. 3:1, 3; and comp. 1 Cor. 3:10, Eph. 2:20, 21, 1 Pet. 2:4, and many similar passages.
171:1434Comp. Isa. v. 2 in LXX. and Lowth.
171:1435Comp. Isa. 5:6, 7, with Matt. 27:20, Mark 15:8, Luke 23:13, John 19:12.
171:1436Matt. 11:13, Luke 16:16.
171:1437See John v. 1-9; and comp. de Bapt. c. v., and the note there.
171:1438See Isa. 52:5, Ezek. 36:20, 23, Rom. 2:24. (The passage in Isaiah in the LXX. agrees with Rom. ii. 24.)
171:1439See Isa. 55:6, 7.
171:1440See Luke xix. 41-44.
171:1441See Isa. 1:7, 8, 4.
171:1442Isa. i. 20.
171:1443See Ps. lix. 11 (lviii. 12 in LXX.)
171:1444See Isa. l. 11 in LXX.
Chapter XIV.—Conclusion. Clue to the Error of the Jews.
Learn now (over and above the immediate question) the clue to your error. We affirm, two characters of the Christ demonstrated by the prophets, and as many advents of His forenoted: one, in humility (of course the first), when He has to be led “as a sheep for a victim; and, as a lamb voiceless before the shearer, so He opened not His mouth,” not even in His aspect comely. For “we have announced,” says the prophet, “concerning Him, (He is) as a little child, as a root in a thirsty land; and there was not in Him attractiveness or glory. And we saw Him, and He had not attractiveness or grace; but His mien was unhonoured, deficient in comparison of the sons of men,” 1445 “a man set in the plague, 1446 and knowing how to bear infirmity:” to wit as having been set by the Father “for a stone of offence,” 1447 and “made a little lower” by Him “than angels,” 1448 He pronounces Himself “a worm, and not a man, an ignominy of man, and the refuse of the People.” 1449 Which evidences of ignobility suit the First Advent, just as those of sublimity do the Second; when He shall be made no longer “a stone of offence nor a rock of scandal,” but “the highest corner-stone,” 1450 after reprobation (on earth) taken up (into heaven) and raised sublime for the purpose of consummation, 1451 and that “rock”—so we must admit—which is read of in Daniel as forecut from a mount, which shall crush and crumble the image of secular kingdoms. 1452 Of which second advent of the same (Christ) Daniel has said: “And, behold, as it were a Son of man, coming with the clouds of the heaven, came unto the Ancient of days, and was present in His sight; and they who were standing by led (Him) unto Him. And there was given Him royal power; and all nations of the earth, according to their race, and all glory, shall serve Him: and His power is eternal, which shall not be taken away, and His kingdom one which shall not be corrupted.” 1453 Then, assuredly, is He to have an honourable mien, and a grace not “deficient more than the sons of men;” for (He will then be) “blooming in beauty in comparison with the sons of men.” 1454 “Grace,” says the Psalmist, “hath been outpoured in Thy lips: wherefore God hath blessed Thee unto eternity. Gird Thee Thy sword around Thy thigh, most potent in Thy bloom and beauty!” 1455 while the Father withal afterwards, after making Him somewhat lower than angels, “crowned Him with glory and honour and subjected all things beneath His feet.” 1456 And then shall they “learn to know Him whom they pierced, and shall beat their breasts tribe by tribe;” 1457 of course because in days bygone they did not know Him when conditioned in the humility of human estate. Jeremiah says: “He is a human being, and who will learn to know Him?” 1458 because, “His nativity,” says Isaiah, “who shall declare?” So, too, in Zechariah, in His own person, nay, in the very mystery 1459 of His name withal, the most true Priest of the Father, His own 1460 Christ, is delineated in a twofold garb with reference to the two advents. 1461 First, He was clad in “sordid attire,” that is, in the indignity of passible and mortal flesh, when the devil, withal, was opposing himself to Him—the instigator, to wit, of Judas the traitor 1462 —who even after His baptism had tempted Him. In the next place, He was stripped of His former sordid raiment, and adorned with a garment down to the foot, and with a turban and a clean mitre, that is, (with the garb) of the second advent; since He is demonstrated as having attained “glory and honour.” Nor will you be able to say that the man (there depicted) is “the son of Jozadak,” 1463 who was never at all clad in a sordid garment, but was always adorned with the sacerdotal garment, nor ever deprived of the sacerdotal function. But the “Jesus” 1464 there alluded to is Christ, the Priest of God the most high Father; who at His first advent came in humility, in human form, and passible, even up to the period of His passion; being Himself likewise made, through all (stages of suffering) a victim for us all; who after His resurrection was “clad with a garment down to the foot,” 1465 and named the Priest of God the Father unto eternity. 1466 So, again, I will make an interpretation of the two goats which were habitually offered on the fast-day. 1467 Do not they, too, point to each successive stage in the character of the Christ who is already come? A pair, on the one hand, and consimilar (they were), because of the identity of the Lord’s general appearance, inasmuch as He is not to come in some other form, seeing that He has to be recognised by those by whom He was once hurt. But the one of them, begirt with scarlet, amid cursing and universal spitting, and tearing, and piercing, was cast away by the People outside the city into perdition, marked with manifest tokens of Christ’s passion; who, after being begirt with scarlet garment, and subjected to universal spitting, and afflicted with all contumelies, was crucified outside the city. 1468 The other, however, offered for sins, and given as food to the priests merely of the temple, 1469 gave signal evidences of the second appearance; in so far as, after the expiation of all sins, the priests of the spiritual temple, that is, of the church, were to enjoy 1470 a spiritual public distribution (as it were) of the Lord’s grace, while all others are fasting from salvation.
Therefore, since the vaticinations of the first advent obscured it with manifold figures, and debased it with every dishonour, while the second (was foretold as) manifest and wholly worthy of God, it has resulted therefrom, that, by fixing their gaze on that one alone which they could easily understand and believe (that is, the second, which is in honour and glory), they have been (not undeservedly) deceived as to the more obscure—at all events, the more unworthy—that is, the first. And thus to the present moment they affirm that their Christ is not come, because He is not come in majesty; while they are ignorant of 1471 the fact that He was first to come in humility.
Enough it is, meantime, to have thus far followed the stream downward of the order of Christ’s course, whereby He is proved such as He was habitually announced: in order that, as a result of this harmony of the Divine Scriptures, we may understand; and that the events which used to be predicted as destined to take place after Christ may be believed to have been accomplished as the result of a divine arrangement. For unless He come after whom they had to be accomplished, by no means would the events, the future occurrence whereof was predictively assigned to His advent, have come to pass. Therefore, if you see universal nations thenceforth emerging from the profundity of human error to God the Creator and His Christ (which you dare not assert to have not been prophesied, because, albeit you were so to assert, there would forthwith—as we have already premised 1472 —occur to you the promise of the Father saying, “My Son art Thou; I this day have begotten Thee; ask of Me, and I will give Thee Gentiles as Thine heritage, and as Thy possession the boundaries of the earth.” Nor will you be able to vindicate, as the subject of that prediction, rather the son of David, Solomon, than Christ, God’s Son; nor “the boundaries of the earth,” as promised rather to David’s son, who reigned within the single land of Judea, than to Christ the Son of God, who has already illumined the whole world 1473 with the rays of His gospel. In short, again, a throne “unto the age” 1474 is more suitable to Christ, God’s Son, than to Solomon,—a temporal king, to wit, who reigned over Israel alone. For at the present day nations are invoking Christ which used not to know Him; and peoples at the present day are fleeing in a body to the Christ of whom in days bygone they were ignorant 1475 ), you cannot contend that is future which you see taking place. 1476 Either deny that these events were prophesied, while they are seen before your eyes; or else have been fulfilled, while you hear them read: or, on the other hand, if you fail to deny each position, they will have their fulfilment in Him with respect to whom they were prophesied.
Footnotes
172:1445See Isa. liii. 2 in LXX.
172:1446See Ps. xxxviii. 17 in the “Great Bible” (xxxvii. 18 in LXX.). Also Isa. liii. 3 in LXX.
172:1447See Isa. viii. 14 (where, however, the LXX. rendering is widely different) with Rom. 9:32, 33, Ps. 18:22 (cxvii. 22 in LXX.); 1 Pet. ii. 4.
172:1448See Ps. viii. 5 (viii. 6 in LXX.) with Heb. ii. 5-9.
172:1449See Ps. xxii. 6 (xxi. 7 in LXX., the Alex. ms. of which here agrees well with Tertullian).
172:1450See reference 3 above, with Isa. xxviii. 16.
172:1451Comp. Eph. i. 10.
172:1452Or, “worldly kingdoms.” See Dan. 2:34, 35, 44, 45.
172:1453See Dan. 7:13, 14.
172:1454See c. ix. med.
172:1455See c. ix. med.
172:1456See Ps. 8:5, 6 (6, 7 in LXX.); Heb. ii. 6-9.
172:1457See Zech. 12:10, 12 (where the LXX., as we have it, differs widely from our Eng. ver. in ver. 10); Rev. i. 7.
172:1458See Jer. xvii. 9 in LXX.
172:1459Sacramento.
172:1460The reading which Oehler follows, and which seems to have the best authority, is “verissimus sacerdos Patris, Christus Ipsius,” as in the text. But Rig., whose judgment is generally very sound, prefers, with some others, to read, “verus summus sacerdos Patris Christus Jesus;” which agrees better with the previous allusion to “the mystery of His name withal:” comp. c. ix. above, towards the end.
172:1461See Zech. iii. “The mystery of His name” refers to the meaning of “Jeshua,” for which see c. ix. above.
172:1462Comp. John 6.70 (especially in Greek, where the word διάβολος is used in each case).
173:1463Or “Josedech,” as Tertullian here writes, and as we find in Hag. 1:1, 12, Hag. 2:2, 4, Zech. 6:11, and in the LXX.
173:1464Or, “Jeshua.”
173:1465See Rev. i. 13.
173:1466See Ps. 110:4, Heb. 5:5.
173:1467See Lev. xvi.
173:1468Comp. Heb. xiii. 10-13. It is to be noted, however, that all this spitting, etc., formed no part of the divinely ordained ceremony.
173:1469This appears to be an error. See Lev. vi. 30.
173:1470Unless Oehler’s “fruerentur” is an error for “fruentur” ="will enjoy.”
173:1471Or, “ignore.”
173:1472See cc. xi. xii. above.
173:1473Orbem.
173:1474Or, “unto eternity.” Comp. 2 Sam. 7:13, 1 Chr. 17:12, Ps. 89:3, 4, 29, 35 (in LXX. Ps. 88:4, 5, 30, 36, 37, 38).
173:1475See Isa. lv. 5 (especially in the LXX).
173:1476Oehler’s pointing is discarded. The whole passage, from “which you dare not assert” down to “ignorant,” appears to be parenthetical; and I have therefore marked it as such.
VIII.
The Soul’s Testimony. 1477
[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]
————————————
Chapter I.
If, with the object of convicting the rivals and persecutors of Christian truth, from their own authorities, of the crime of at once being untrue to themselves and doing injustice to us, one is bent on gathering testimonies in its favour from the writings of the philosophers, or the poets, or other masters of this world’s learning and wisdom, he has need of a most inquisitive spirit, and a still greater memory to carry out the research. Indeed, some of our people, who still continued their inquisitive labours in ancient literature, and still occupied memory with it, have published works we have in our hands of this very sort; works in which they relate and attest the nature and origin of their traditions, and the grounds on which opinions rest, and from which it may be seen at once that we have embraced nothing new or monstrous—nothing for which we cannot claim the support of ordinary and well-known writings, whether in ejecting error from our creed, or admitting truth into it. But the unbelieving hardness of the human heart leads them to slight even their own teachers, otherwise approved and in high renown, whenever they touch upon arguments which are used in defence of Christianity. Then the poets are fools, when they describe the gods with human passions and stories; then the philosophers are without reason, when they knock at the gates of truth. He will thus far be reckoned a wise and sagacious man who has gone the length of uttering sentiments that are almost Christian; while if, in a mere affectation of judgment and wisdom, he sets himself to reject their ceremonies, or to convicting the world of its sin, he is sure to be branded as a Christian. We will have nothing, then, to do with the literature and the teaching, perverted in its best results, which is believed in its errors rather than its truth. We shall lay no stress on it, if some of their authors have declared that there is one God, and one God only. Nay, let it be granted that there is nothing in heathen writers which a Christian approves, that it may be put out of his power to utter a single word of reproach. For all are not familiar with their teachings; and those who are, have no assurance in regard to their truth. Far less do men assent to our writings, to which no one comes for guidance unless he is already a Christian. I call in a new testimony, yea, one which is better known than all literature, more discussed than all doctrine, more public than all publications, greater than the whole man—I mean all which is man’s. Stand forth, O soul, whether thou art a divine and eternal substance, as most philosophers believe if it be so, thou wilt be the less likely to lie,—or whether thou art the very opposite of divine, because indeed a mortal thing, as Epicurus alone thinks—in that case there will be the less temptation for thee to speak falsely in this case: whether thou art received from heaven, or sprung from earth; whether thou art formed of numbers, or of atoms; whether thine existence begins with that of the body, or thou art put into it at a later stage; from whatever source, and in whatever way, thou makest man a rational being, in the highest degree capable of thought and knowledge,—stand forth and give thy witness. But I call thee not as when, fashioned in schools, trained in libraries, fed in Attic academies and porticoes, thou belchest wisdom. I address thee simple, rude, uncultured and untaught, such as they have thee who have thee only; that very thing of the road, the street, the work-shop, wholly. I want thine inexperience, since in thy small experience no one feels any confidence. I demand of thee the things thou bringest with thee into man, which thou knowest either from thyself, or from thine author, whoever he may be. Thou art not, as I well know, Christian; for a man becomes a Christian, he is not born one. Yet Christians earnestly press thee for a testimony; they press thee, though an alien, to bear witness against thy friends, that they may be put to shame before thee, for hating and mocking us on account of things which convict thee as an accessory.
Footnotes
175:1477[The tract De Testimonio Animæ is cast into an apologetic form and very properly comes into place here. It was written in Orthodoxy and forms a valuable preface to the De Anima, of which we cannot say that it is quite free from errors. As it refers to the Apology, we cannot place it before that work, and perhaps we shall not greatly err if we consider it a sequel to the Apology. If it proves to others the source of as much enjoyment as it affords to me, it will be treasured by them as one of the most precious testimonies to the Gospel, introducing Man to himself.]
Chapter II.
We give offence by proclaiming that there is one God, to whom the name of God alone belongs, from whom all things come, and who is Lord of the whole universe. 1478 Bear thy testimony, if thou knowest this to be the truth; for openly and with a perfect liberty, such as we do not possess, we hear thee both in private and in public exclaim, “Which may God grant,” and, “If God so will.” By expressions such as these thou declarest that there is one who is distinctively God, and thou confessest that all power belongs to him to whose will, as Sovereign, thou dost look. At the same time, too, thou deniest any others to be truly gods, in calling them by their own names of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Minerva; for thou affirmest Him to be God alone to whom thou givest no other name than God; and though thou sometimes callest these others gods, thou plainly usest the designation as one which does not really belong to them, but is, so to speak, a borrowed one. Nor is the nature of the God we declare unknown to thee: “God is good, God does good,” thou art wont to say; plainly suggesting further, “But man is evil.” In asserting an antithetic proposition, thou, in a sort of indirect and figurative way, reproachest man with his wickedness in departing from a God so good. So, again, as among us, as belonging to the God of benignity and goodness, “Blessing” is a most sacred act in our religion and our life, thou too sayest as readily as a Christian needs, “God bless thee;” and when thou turnest the blessing of God into a curse, in like manner thy very words confess with us that His power over us is absolute and entire. There are some who, though they do not deny the existence of God, hold withal that He is neither Searcher, nor Ruler, nor Judge; treating with especial disdain those of us who go over to Christ out of fear of a coming judgment, as they think, honouring God in freeing Him from the cares of keeping watch, and the trouble of taking note,—not even regarding Him as capable of anger. For if God, they say, gets angry, then He is susceptible of corruption and passion; but that of which passion and corruption can be affirmed may also perish, which God cannot do. But these very persons elsewhere, confessing that the soul is divine, and bestowed on us by God, stumble against a testimony of the soul itself, which affords an answer to these views. For if either divine or God-given, it doubtless knows its giver; and if it knows Him, it undoubtedly fears Him too, and especially as having been by Him endowed so amply. Has it no fear of Him whose favour it is so desirous to possess, and whose anger it is so anxious to avoid? Whence, then, the soul’s natural fear of God, if God cannot be angry? How is there any dread of Him whom nothing offends? What is feared but anger? Whence comes anger, but from observing what is done? What leads to watchful oversight, but judgment in prospect? Whence is judgment, but from power? To whom does supreme authority and power belong, but to God alone? So thou art always ready, O soul, from thine own knowledge, nobody casting scorn upon thee, and no one preventing, to exclaim, “God sees all,” and “I commend thee to God,” and “May God repay,” and “God shall judge between us.” How happens this, since thou art not Christian? How is it that, even with the garland of Ceres on the brow, wrapped in the purple cloak of Saturn, wearing the white robe of the goddess Isis, thou invokest God as judge? Standing under the statue of Æsculapius, adorning the brazen image of Juno, arraying the helmet of Minerva with dusky figures, thou never thinkest of appealing to any of these deities. In thine own forum thou appealest to a God who is elsewhere; thou permittest honour to be rendered in thy temples to a foreign god. Oh, striking testimony to truth, which in the very midst of demons obtains a witness for us Christians!
Footnotes
176:1478[The student of Plato will recall such evidence, readily. See The Laws, in Jowett’s Translation, vol. iv. p. 416. Also Elucidation I.]
Chapter III.
But when we say that there are demons—as though, in the simple fact that we alone expel them from the men’s bodies, 1479 we did not also prove their existence—some disciple of Chrysippus begins to curl the lip. Yet thy curses sufficiently attest that there are such beings, and that they are objects of thy strong dislike. 1480 As what comes to thee as a fit expression of thy strong hatred of him, thou callest the man a dæmon who annoys thee with his filthiness, or malice, or insolence, or any other vice which we ascribe to evil spirits. In expressing vexation, contempt, or abhorrence, thou hast Satan constantly upon thy lips; 1481 the very same we hold to be the angel of evil, the source of error, the corrupter of the whole world, by whom in the beginning man was entrapped into breaking the commandment of God. And (the man) being given over to death on account of his sin, the entire human race, tainted in their descent from him, were made a channel for transmitting his condemnation. Thou seest, then, thy destroyer; and though he is fully known only to Christians, or to whatever sect 1482 confesses the Lord, yet, even thou hast some acquaintance with him while yet thou abhorrest him!
Footnotes
176:1479[The existence of demoniacal possessions in heathen countries is said to be probable, even in our days. The Fathers unanimously assert the effectual exorcisms of their days.]
176:1480[e.g. Horace, Epodes, Ode V.]
177:1481[Satanan, in omni vexatione…pronuntias. Does he mean that they used this word? Rather, he means the demon is none other than Satan.]
177:1482[I have been obliged, somewhat, to simplify the translation here.]
Chapter IV.
Even now, as the matter refers to thy opinion on a point the more closely belonging to thee, in so far as it bears on thy personal well-being, we maintain that after life has passed away thou still remainest in existence, and lookest forward to a day of judgment, and according to thy deserts art assigned to misery or bliss, in either way of it for ever; that, to be capable of this, thy former substance must needs return to thee, the matter and the memory of the very same human being: for neither good nor evil couldst thou feel if thou wert not endowed again with that sensitive bodily organization, and there would be no grounds for judgment without the presentation of the very person to whom the sufferings of judgment were due. That Christian view, though much nobler than the Pythagorean, as it does not transfer thee into beasts; though more complete than the Platonic, since it endows thee again with a body; though more worthy of honour than the Epicurean, as it preserves thee from annihilation,—yet, because of the name connected with it, it is held to be nothing but vanity and folly, and, as it is called, a mere presumption. But we are not ashamed of ourselves if our presumption is found to have thy support. Well, in the first place, when thou speakest of one who is dead, thou sayest of him, “Poor man”—poor, surely, not because he has been taken from the good of life, but because he has been given over to punishment and condemnation. But at another time thou speakest of the dead as free from trouble; thou professest to think life a burden, and death a blessing. Thou art wont, too, to speak of the dead as in repose, 1483 when, returning to their graves beyond the city gates 1484 with food and dainties, thou art wont to present offerings to thyself rather than to them; or when, coming from the graves again, thou art staggering under the effects of wine. But I want thy sober opinion. Thou callest the dead poor when thou speakest thine own thoughts, when thou art at a distance from them. For at their feast, where in a sense they are present and recline along with thee, it would never do to cast reproach upon their lot. Thou canst not but adulate those for whose sake thou art feasting it so sumptuously. Dost thou then speak of him as poor who feels not? How happens it that thou cursest, as one capable of suffering from thy curse, the man whose memory comes back on thee with the sting in it of some old injury? It is thine imprecation that “the earth may lie heavy on him,” and that there may be trouble “to his ashes in the realm of the dead.” In like manner, in thy kindly feeling to him to whom thou art indebted for favours, thou entreatest “repose to his bones and ashes,” and thy desire is that among the dead he may “have pleasant rest.” If thou hast no power of suffering after death, if no feeling remains,—if, in a word, severance from the body is the annihilation of thee, what makes thee lie against thyself, as if thou couldst suffer in another state? Nay, why dost thou fear death at all? There is nothing after death to be feared, if there is nothing to be felt. For though it may be said that death is dreadful not for anything it threatens afterwards, but because it deprives us of the good of life; yet, on the other hand, as it puts an end to life’s discomforts, which are far more numerous, death’s terrors are mitigated by a gain that more than outweighs the loss. And there is no occasion to be troubled about a loss of good things, which is amply made up for by so great a blessing as relief from every trouble. There is nothing dreadful in that which delivers from all that is to be dreaded. If thou shrinkest from giving up life because thy experience of it has been sweet, at any rate there is no need to be in any alarm about death if thou hast no knowledge that it is evil. Thy dread of it is the proof that thou art aware of its evil. Thou wouldst never think it evil—thou wouldst have no fear of it at all—if thou wert not sure that after it there is something to make it evil, and so a thing of terror. 1485 Let us leave unnoted at this time that natural way of fearing death. It is a poor thing for any one to fear what is inevitable. I take up the other side, and argue on the ground of a joyful hope beyond our term of earthly life; for desire of posthumous fame is with almost every class an inborn thing. 1486 I have not time to speak of the Curtii, and the Reguli, or the brave men of Greece, who afford us innumerable cases of death despised for after renown. Who at this day is without the desire that he may be often remembered when he is dead? Who does not give all endeavour to preserve his name by works of literature, or by the simple glory of his virtues, or by the splendour even of his tomb? How is it the nature of the soul to have these posthumous ambitions and with such amazing effort to prepare the things it can only use after decease? It would care nothing about the future, if the future were quite unknown to it. But perhaps thou thinkest thyself surer, after thy exit from the body, of continuing still to feel, than of any future resurrection, which is a doctrine laid at our door as one of our presumptuous suppositions. But it is also the doctrine of the soul; for if any one inquires about a person lately dead as though he were alive, it occurs at once to say, “He has gone.” He is expected to return, then.
Footnotes
177:1483[This whole passage is useful as a commentary on classic authors who use these poetical expressions. Cœlo Musa beat (Hor. Ode viii. B. 4.) but the real feeling comes out in such expressions as one finds in Horace’s odes to Sextius, (B. i. Ode 4.), or to Postumus, B. ii. Od. 14.]
177:1484[The tombs, by the roadside, of which the traveller still sees specimens, used to be scenes of debauchery when the dead were honoured in this way. Now, the funeral honours (See De Corona, cap. iii.) which Christians substituted for these were Eucharistic alms and oblations: thanking God for their holy lives and perpetuating relations with them in the Communion of Saints.]
178:1485[Butler, Analogy, Part I. chap. i.]
178:1486[Horace, Book III. Ode 30.]
Chapter V.
These testimonies of the soul are simple as true, commonplace as simple, universal as commonplace, natural as universal, divine as natural. I don’t think they can appear frivolous or feeble to any one, if he reflect on the majesty of nature, from which the soul derives its authority. 1487 If you acknowledge the authority of the mistress, you will own it also in the disciple. Well, nature is the mistress here, and her disciple is the soul. But everything the one has taught or the other learned, has come from God—the Teacher of the teacher. And what the soul may know from the teachings of its chief instructor, thou canst judge from that which is within thee. Think of that which enables thee to think; reflect on that which in forebodings is the prophet, the augur in omens, the foreseer of coming events. Is it a wonderful thing, if, being the gift of God to man, it knows how to divine? Is it anything very strange, if it knows the God by whom it was bestowed? Even fallen as it is, the victim of the great adversary’s machinations, it does not forget its Creator, His goodness and law, and the final end both of itself and of its foe. Is it singular then, if, divine in its origin, its revelations agree with the knowledge God has given to His own people? But he who does not regard those outbursts of the soul as the teaching of a congenital nature and the secret deposit of an inborn knowledge, will say that the habit and, so to say, the vice of speaking in this way has been acquired and confirmed from the opinions of published books widely spread among men. Unquestionably the soul existed before letters, and speech before books, and ideas before the writing of them, and man himself before the poet and philosopher. 1488 Is it then to be believed, that before literature and its publication no utterances of the sort we have pointed out came from the lips of men? Did nobody speak of God and His goodness, nobody of death, nobody of the dead? Speech went a-begging, I suppose; nay, (the subjects being still awanting, without which it cannot even exist at this day, when it is so much more copious, and rich, and wise), it could not exist at all if the things which are now so easily suggested, that cling to us so constantly, that are so very near to us, that are somehow born on our very lips, had no existence in ancient times, before letters had any existence in the world—before there was a Mercury, I think, at all. And whence was it, I pray, that letters themselves came to know, and to disseminate for the use of speech, what no mind had ever conceived, or tongue put forth, or ear taken in? But, clearly, since the Scriptures of God, whether belonging to Christians or to Jews, into whose olive tree we have been grafted—are much more ancient than any secular literature, (or, let us only say, are of a somewhat earlier date, as we have shown in its proper place when proving their trustworthiness); if the soul have taken these utterances from writings at all, we must believe it has taken them from ours, and not from yours, its instruction coming more naturally from the earlier than the later works. Which latter indeed waited for their own instruction from the former, and though we grant that light has come from you, still it has flowed from the first fountainhead originally; and we claim as entirely ours, all you may have taken from us and handed down. Since it is thus, it matters little whether the soul’s knowledge was put into it by God or by His book. Why, then, O man, wilt thou maintain a view so groundless, as that those testimonies of the soul have gone forth from the mere human speculations of your literature, and got hardening of common use?
Footnotes
178:1487[This appeal to the universal conscience and consciousness of mankind is unanswerable, and assures us that counter-theories will never prevail. See Bossuet, De la Connoisance de Dieu et de Soi-même. Œuvres, Tom. V. pp. 86 et. seqq. Ed. Paris, 1846.]
178:1488[Compare the heathen ideas in Plato: e.g. the story Socrates tells in the Gorgias, (near the close) about death and Judgment.]
Chapter VI.
Believe, then, your own books, and as to our Scriptures so much the more believe writings which are divine, but in the witness of the soul itself give like confidence to Nature. Choose the one of these you observe to be the most faithful friend of truth. If your own writings are distrusted, neither God nor Nature lie. And if you would have faith in God and Nature, have faith in the soul; thus you will believe yourself. Certainly you value the soul as giving you your true greatness,—that to which you belong; which is all things to you; without which you can neither live nor die; on whose account you even put God away from you. Since, then, you fear to become a Christian, call the soul before you, and put her to the question. Why does she worship another? why name the name of God? Why does she speak of demons, when she means to denote spirits to be held accursed? Why does she make her protestations towards the heavens, and pronounce her ordinary execrations earthwards? Why does she render service in one place, in another invoke the Avenger? Why does she pass judgments on the dead? What Christian phrases are those she has got, though Christians she neither desires to see nor hear? Why has she either bestowed them on us, or received them from us? Why has she either taught us them, or learned them as our scholar? Regard with suspicion this accordance in words, while there is such difference in practice. It is utter folly—denying a universal nature—to ascribe this exclusively to our language and the Greek, which are regarded among us as so near akin. The soul is not a boon from heaven to Latins and Greeks alone. Man is the one name belonging to every nation upon earth: there is one soul and many tongues, one spirit and various sounds; every country has its own speech, but the subjects of speech are common to all. God is everywhere, and the goodness of God is everywhere; demons are everywhere, and the cursing of them is everywhere; the invocation of divine judgment is everywhere, death is everywhere, and the sense of death is everywhere, and all the world over is found the witness of the soul. There is not a soul of man that does not, from the light that is in itself, proclaim the very things we are not permitted to speak above our breath. Most justly, then, every soul is a culprit as well as a witness: in the measure that it testifies for truth, the guilt of error lies on it; and on the day of judgment it will stand before the courts of God, without a word to say. Thou proclaimedst God, O soul, but thou didst not seek to know Him: evil spirits were detested by thee, and yet they were the objects of thy adoration; the punishments of hell were foreseen by thee, but no care was taken to avoid them; thou hadst a savour of Christianity, and withal wert the persecutor of Christians.
Elucidations.
————————————
I.
(Recognition of the Supreme God, cap. ii., p. 176.)
The passage referred to in the note, begins thus in Jowett’s rendering: “The Ruler of the Universe has ordered all things with a view to the preservation and perfection of the whole etc.” So, in the same book: “Surely God must not be supposed to have a nature which he himself hates.” Again: “Let us not, then, deem God inferior to human workmen, who in proportion to their skill finish and perfect their works…or that God, the wisest of beings, who is willing and able to extend his care to all things, etc.” Now, it is a sublime plan which our author here takes up, (making only slight reference to the innumerable citations which were behind his apostrophe to the soul if any one should dispute it) to bid the soul stand forth and confess its consciousness of God.
II.
(Dæmons, cap. vi. p. 176.)
Those who would pursue the subject of Demonology, which Tertullian opens in this admirable treatise, should follow it up in a writer whom Tertullian greatly influenced, in many particulars, even when he presents a remarkable contrast. The Ninth Book of the City of God is devoted to inquiries which throw considerable light on some of the startling sayings of our author as to the heathen systems, and their testimony to the Soul’s Consciousness of God and of the great enemy of God and the inferior spirit of Evil.
IX.
A Treatise on the Soul. 1489
[Translated by Peter Holmes, D.D.]
————————————
Chapter I.—It is Not to the Philosophers that We Resort for Information About the Soul But to God. 1490
Having discussed with Hermogenes the single point of the origin of the soul, so far as his assumption led me, that the soul consisted rather in an adaptation 1491 of matter than of the inspiration 1492 of God, I now turn to the other questions incidental to the subject; and (in my treatment of these) I shall evidently have mostly to contend with the philosophers. In the very prison of Socrates they skirmished about the state of the soul. I have my doubts at once whether the time was an opportune one for their (great) master—(to say nothing of the place), although that perhaps does not much matter. For what could the soul of Socrates then contemplate with clearness and serenity? The sacred ship had returned (from Delos), the hemlock draft to which he had been condemned had been drunk, death was now present before him: (his mind) was, 1493 as one may suppose, 1494 naturally excited 1495 at every emotion; or if nature had lost her influence, it must have been deprived of all power of thought. 1496 Or let it have been as placid and tranquil so you please, inflexible, in spite of the claims of natural duty, 1497 at the tears of her who was so soon to be his widow, and at the sight of his thenceforward orphan children, yet his soul must have been moved even by its very efforts to suppress emotion; and his constancy itself must have been shaken, as he struggled against the disturbance of the excitement around him. Besides, what other thoughts could any man entertain who had been unjustly condemned to die, but such as should solace him for the injury done to him? Especially would this be the case with that glorious creature, the philosopher, to whom injurious treatment would not suggest a craving for consolation, but rather the feeling of resentment and indignation. Accordingly, after his sentence, when his wife came to him with her effeminate cry, O Socrates, you are unjustly condemned! he seemed already to find joy in answering, Would you then wish me justly condemned? It is therefore not to be wondered at, if even in his prison, from a desire to break the foul hands of Anytus and Melitus, he, in the face of death itself, asserts the immortality of the soul by a strong assumption such as was wanted to frustrate the wrong (they had inflicted upon him). So that all the wisdom of Socrates, at that moment, proceeded from the affectation of an assumed composure, rather than the firm conviction of ascertained truth. For by whom has truth ever been discovered without God? By whom has God ever been found without Christ? By whom has Christ ever been explored without the Holy Spirit? By whom has the Holy Spirit ever been attained without the mysterious gift of faith? 1498 Socrates, as none can doubt, was actuated by a different spirit. For they say that a demon clave to him from his boyhood—the very worst teacher certainly, notwithstanding the high place assigned to it by poets and philosophers—even next to, (nay, along with) the gods themselves. The teachings of the power of Christ had not yet been given—(that power) which alone can confute this most pernicious influence of evil that has nothing good in it, but is rather the author of all error, and the seducer from all truth. Now if Socrates was pronounced the wisest of men by the oracle of the Pythian demon, which, you may be sure, neatly managed the business for his friend, of how much greater dignity and constancy is the assertion of the Christian wisdom, before the very breath of which the whole host of demons is scattered! This wisdom of the school of heaven frankly and without reserve denies the gods of this world, and shows no such inconsistency as to order a “cock to be sacrificed to Æsculapius:” 1499 no new gods and demons does it introduce, but expels the old ones; it corrupts not youth, but instructs them in all goodness and moderation; and so it bears the unjust condemnation not of one city only, but of all the world, in the cause of that truth which incurs indeed the greater hatred in proportion to its fulness: so that it tastes death not out of a (poisoned) cup almost in the way of jollity; but it exhausts it in every kind of bitter cruelty, on gibbets and in holocausts. 1500 Meanwhile, in the still gloomier prison of the world amongst your Cebeses and Phædos, in every investigation concerning (man’s) soul, it directs its inquiry according to the rules of God. At all events, you can show us no more powerful expounder of the soul than the Author thereof. From God you may learn about that which you hold of God; but from none else will you get this knowledge, if you get it not from God. For who is to reveal that which God has hidden? To that quarter must we resort in our inquiries whence we are most safe even in deriving our ignorance. For it is really better for us not to know a thing, because He has not revealed it to us, than to know it according to man’s wisdom, because he has been bold enough to assume it.
Footnotes
181:1489[It is not safe to date this treatise before a.d. 203, and perhaps it would be unsafe to assign a later date. The note of the translator, which follows, relieves me from any necessity to add more, just here.]
181:1490In this treatise we have Tertullian’s speculations on the origin, the nature, and the destiny of the human soul. There are, no doubt, paradoxes startling to a modern reader to be found in it, such as that of the soul’s corporeity; and there are weak and inconclusive arguments. But after all such drawbacks (and they are not more than what constantly occur in the most renowned speculative writers of antiquity), the reader will discover many interesting proofs of our author’s character for originality of thought, width of information, firm grasp of his subject, and vivacious treatment of it, such as we have discovered in other parts of his writings. If his subject permits Tertullian less than usual of an appeal to his favourite Holy Scripture, he still makes room for occasional illustration from it, and with his characteristic ability; if, however, there is less of his sacred learning in it, the treatise teems with curious information drawn from the secular literature of that early age. Our author often measures swords with Plato in his discussions on the soul, and it is not too much to say that he shows himself a formidable opponent to the great philosopher. See Bp. Kaye, On Tertullian, pp. 199, 200.
181:1491Suggestu. [Kaye, pp. 60 and 541.]
181:1492Flatu “the breath.”
181:1493Utique.
181:1494Consternata.
181:1495Consternata.
181:1496Externata. “Externatus = ἐκτὸς φρενῶν. Gloss. Philox.
181:1497Pietatis.
181:1498Fidei sacramento.
182:1499The allusion is to the inconsistency of the philosopher, who condemned the gods of the vulgar, and died offering a gift to one of them.
182:1500Vivicomburio.
Chapter II.—The Christian Has Sure and Simple Knowledge Concerning the Subject Before Us.
Of course we shall not deny that philosophers have sometimes thought the same things as ourselves. The testimony of truth is the issue thereof. It sometimes happens even in a storm, when the boundaries of sky and sea are lost in confusion, that some harbour is stumbled on (by the labouring ship) by some happy chance; and sometimes in the very shades of night, through blind luck alone, one finds access to a spot, or egress from it. In nature, however, most conclusions are suggested, as it were, by that common intelligence wherewith God has been pleased to endow the soul of man. This intelligence has been caught up by philosophy, and, with the view of glorifying her own art, has been inflated (it is not to be wondered at that I use this language) with straining after that facility of language which is practised in the building up and pulling down of everything, and which has greater aptitude for persuading men by speaking than by teaching. She assigns to things their forms and conditions; sometimes makes them common and public, sometimes appropriates them to private use; on certainties she capriciously stamps the character of uncertainty; she appeals to precedents, as if all things are capable of being compared together; she describes all things by rule and definition, allotting diverse properties even to similar objects; she attributes nothing to the divine permission, but assumes as her principles the laws of nature. I could bear with her pretensions, if only she were herself true to nature, and would prove to me that she had a mastery over nature as being associated with its creation. She thought, no doubt, that she was deriving her mysteries from sacred sources, as men deem them, because in ancient times most authors were supposed to be (I will not say godlike, but) actually gods: as, for instance, the Egyptian Mercury, 1501 to whom Plato paid very great deference; 1502 and the Phrygian Silenus, to whom Midas lent his long ears, when the shepherds brought him to him; and Hermotimus, to whom the good people of Clazomenæ built a temple after his death; and Orpheus; and Musæus; and Pherecydes, the master of Pythagoras. But why need we care, since these philosophers have also made their attacks upon those writings which are condemned by us under the title of apocryphal, 1503 certain as we are that nothing ought to be received which does not agree with the true system of prophecy, which has arisen in this present age; 1504 because we do not forget that there have been false prophets, and long previous to them fallen spirits, which have instructed the entire tone and aspect of the world with cunning knowledge of this (philosophic) cast? It is, indeed, not incredible that any man who is in quest of wisdom may have gone so far, as a matter of curiosity, as to consult the very prophets; (but be this as it may), if you take the philosophers, you would find in them more diversity than agreement, since even in their agreement their diversity is discoverable. Whatever things are true in their systems, and agreeable to prophetic wisdom, they either recommend as emanating from some other source, or else perversely apply 1505 in some other sense. This process is attended with very great detriment to the truth, when they pretend that it is either helped by falsehood, or else that falsehood derives support from it. The following circumstance must needs have set ourselves and the philosophers by the ears, especially in this present matter, that they sometimes clothe sentiments which are common to both sides, in arguments which are peculiar to themselves, but contrary in some points to our rule and standard of faith; and at other times defend opinions which are especially their own, with arguments which both sides acknowledge to be valid, and occasionally conformable to their system of belief. The truth has, at this rate, been well-nigh excluded by the philosophers, through the poisons with which they have infected it; and thus, if we regard both the modes of coalition which we have now mentioned, and which are equally hostile to the truth, we feel the urgent necessity of freeing, on the one hand, the sentiments held by us in common with them from the arguments of the philosophers, and of separating, on the other hand, the arguments which both parties employ from the opinions of the same philosophers. And this we may do by recalling all questions to God’s inspired standard, with the obvious exception of such simple cases as being free from the entanglement of any preconceived conceits, one may fairly admit on mere human testimony; because plain evidence of this sort we must sometimes borrow from opponents, when our opponents have nothing to gain from it. Now I am not unaware what a vast mass of literature the philosophers have accumulated concerning the subject before us, in their own commentaries thereon—what various schools of principles there are, what conflicts of opinion, what prolific sources of questions, what perplexing methods of solution. Moreover, I have looked into Medical Science also, the sister (as they say) of Philosophy, which claims as her function to cure the body, and thereby to have a special acquaintance with the soul. From this circumstance she has great differences with her sister, pretending as the latter does to know more about the soul, through the more obvious treatment, as it were, of her in her domicile of the body. But never mind all this contention between them for pre-eminence! For extending their several researches on the soul, Philosophy, on the one hand, has enjoyed the full scope of her genius; while Medicine, on the other hand, has possessed the stringent demands of her art and practice. Wide are men’s inquiries into uncertainties; wider still are their disputes about conjectures. However great the difficulty of adducing proofs, the labour of producing conviction is not one whit less; so that the gloomy Heraclitus was quite right, when, observing the thick darkness which obscured the researches of the inquirers about the soul, and wearied with their interminable questions, he declared that he had certainly not explored the limits of the soul, although he had traversed every road in her domains. To the Christian, however, but few words are necessary for the clear understanding of the whole subject. But in the few words there always arises certainty to him; nor is he permitted to give his inquiries a wider range than is compatible with their solution; for “endless questions” the apostle forbids. 1506 It must, however, be added, that no solution may be found by any man, but such as is learned from God; and that which is learned of God is the sum and substance of the whole thing.
Footnotes
182:1501Mentioned below, c. xxxiii.; also Adv. Valent. c. xv.
182:1502See his Phædrus, c. lix. (p. 274); also Augustin, De. Civ. Dei, viii. 11; Euseb. Præp. Evang. ix. 3.
182:1503Or spurious; not to be confounded with our so-called Apocrypha, which were in Tertullian’s days called Libri Ecclesiastici.
182:1504Here is a touch of Tertullian’s Montanism.
183:1505Subornant.
183:15061 Tim. i. 4.
Chapter III.—The Soul’s Origin Defined Out of the Simple Words of Scripture.
Would to God that no “heresies had been ever necessary, in order that they which are approved may be made manifest!” 1507 We should then be never required to try our strength in contests about the soul with philosophers, those patriarchs of heretics, as they may be fairly called. 1508 The apostle, so far back as his own time, foresaw, indeed, that philosophy would do violent injury to the truth. 1509 This admonition about false philosophy he was induced to offer after he had been at Athens, had become acquainted with that loquacious city, 1510 and had there had a taste of its huckstering wiseacres and talkers. In like manner is the treatment of the soul according to the sophistical doctrines of men which “mix their wine with water.” 1511 Some of them deny the immortality of the soul; others affirm that it is immortal, and something more. Some raise disputes about its substance; others about its form; others, again, respecting each of its several faculties. One school of philosophers derives its state from various sources, while another ascribes its departure to different destinations. The various schools reflect the character of their masters, according as they have received their impressions from the dignity 1512 of Plato, or the vigour 1513 of Zeno, or the equanimity 1514 of Aristotle, or the stupidity 1515 of Epicurus, or the sadness 1516 of Heraclitus, or the madness 1517 of Empedocles. The fault, I suppose, of the divine doctrine lies in its springing from Judæa 1518 rather than from Greece. Christ made a mistake, too, in sending forth fishermen to preach, rather than the sophist. Whatever noxious vapours, accordingly, exhaled from philosophy, obscure the clear and wholesome atmosphere of truth, it will be for Christians to clear away, both by shattering to pieces the arguments which are drawn from the principles of things—I mean those of the philosophers—and by opposing to them the maxims of heavenly wisdom—that is, such as are revealed by the Lord; in order that both the pitfalls wherewith philosophy captivates the heathen may be removed, and the means employed by heresy to shake the faith of Christians may be repressed. We have already decided one point in our controversy with Hermogenes, as we said at the beginning of this treatise, when we claimed the soul to be formed by the breathing 1519 of God, and not out of matter. We relied even there on the clear direction of the inspired statement which informs us how that “the Lord God breathed on man’s face the breath of life, so that man became a living soul” 1520 —by that inspiration of God, of course. On this point, therefore, nothing further need be investigated or advanced by us. It has its own treatise, 1521 and its own heretic. I shall regard it as my introduction to the other branches of the subject.
Footnotes
183:15071 Cor. x. 19.
183:1508Compare Tertullian’s Adv. Hermog. c. viii.
183:1509Col. ii. 8.
183:1510Linguatam civitatem. Comp. Acts xvii. 21.
184:1511Isa. i. 22.
184:1512Honor.
184:1513Vigor. Another reading has “rigor” (ακληρότης), harshness.
184:1514Tenor.
184:1515Stupor.
184:1516Mœror.
184:1517Furor.
184:1518Isa. ii. 3.
184:1519Flatu.
184:1520Gen. ii. 7.
184:1521Titulus.
Chapter IV.—In Opposition to Plato, the Soul Was Created and Originated at Birth.
After settling the origin of the soul, its condition or state comes up next. For when we acknowledge that the soul originates in the breath of God, it follows that we attribute a beginning to it. This Plato, indeed, refuses to assign to it, for he will have the soul to be unborn and unmade. 1522 We, however, from the very fact of its having had a beginning, as well as from the nature thereof, teach that it had both birth and creation. And when we ascribe both birth and creation to it, we have made no mistake: for being born, indeed, is one thing, and being made is another,—the former being the term which is best suited to living beings. When distinctions, however, have places and times of their own, they occasionally possess also reciprocity of application among themselves. Thus, the being made admits of being taken in the sense of being brought forth; 1523 inasmuch as everything which receives being or existence, in any way whatever, is in fact generated. For the maker may really be called the parent of the thing that is made: in this sense Plato also uses the phraseology. So far, therefore, as concerns our belief in the souls being made or born, the opinion of the philosopher is overthrown by the authority of prophecy 1524 even.
Footnotes
184:1522See his Phædrus, c. xxiv.
184:1523Capit itaque et facturam provenisse poni.
184:1524Or, “inspiration.”
Chapter V.—Probable View of the Stoics, that the Soul Has a Corporeal Nature.
Suppose one summons a Eubulus to his assistance, and a Critolaus, and a Zenocrates, and on this occasion Plato’s friend Aristotle. They may very possibly hold themselves ready for stripping the soul of its corporeity, unless they happen to see other philosophers opposed to them in their purpose—and this, too, in greater numbers—asserting for the soul a corporeal nature. Now I am not referring merely to those who mould the soul out of manifest bodily substances, as Hipparchus and Heraclitus (do) out of fire; as Hippon and Thales (do) out of water; as Empedocles and Critias (do) out of blood; as Epicurus (does) out of atoms, since even atoms by their coherence form corporeal masses; as Critolaus and his Peripatetics (do) out of a certain indescribable quintessence, 1525 if that may be called a body which rather includes and embraces bodily substances;—but I call on the Stoics also to help me, who, while declaring almost in our own terms that the soul is a spiritual essence (inasmuch as breath and spirit are in their nature very near akin to each other), will yet have no difficulty in persuading (us) that the soul is a corporeal substance. Indeed, Zeno, defining the soul to be a spirit generated with (the body, 1526 ) constructs his argument in this way: That substance which by its departure causes the living being to die is a corporeal one. Now it is by the departure of the spirit, which is generated with (the body,) that the living being dies; therefore the spirit which is generated with (the body) is a corporeal substance. But this spirit which is generated with (the body) is the soul: it follows, then, that the soul is a corporeal substance. Cleanthes, too, will have it that family likeness passes from parents to their children not merely in bodily features, but in characteristics of the soul; as if it were out of a mirror of (a man’s) manners, and faculties, and affections, that bodily likeness and unlikeness are caught and reflected by the soul also. It is therefore as being corporeal that it is susceptible of likeness and unlikeness. Again, there is nothing in common between things corporeal and things incorporeal as to their susceptibility. But the soul certainly sympathizes with the body, and shares in its pain, whenever it is injured by bruises, and wounds, and sores: the body, too, suffers with the soul, and is united with it (whenever it is afflicted with anxiety, distress, or love) in the loss of vigour which its companion sustains, whose shame and fear it testifies by its own blushes and paleness. The soul, therefore, is (proved to be) corporeal from this inter-communion of susceptibility. Chrysippus also joins hands in fellowship with Cleanthes when he lays it down that it is not at all possible for things which are endued with body to be separated from things which have not body; because they have no such relation as mutual contact or coherence. Accordingly Lucretius says: 1527
“Tangere enim et tangi nisi corpus nulla potest res.”
“For nothing but body is capable of touching or of being touched.”
(Such severance, however, is quite natural between the soul and the body); for when the body is deserted by the soul, it is overcome by death. The soul, therefore, is endued with a body; for if it were not corporeal, it could not desert the body.
Footnotes
184:1525Ex quinta nescio qua substantia. Comp. Cicero’s Tuscul. i. 10.
185:1526Consitum.
185:1527De Nat. Rer. i. 305.
Chapter VI.—The Arguments of the Platonists for the Soul’s Incorporeality, Opposed, Perhaps Frivolously.
These conclusions the Platonists disturb more by subtilty than by truth. Every body, they say, has necessarily either an animate nature 1528 or an inanimate one. 1529 If it has the inanimate nature, it receives motion externally to itself; if the animate one, internally. Now the soul receives motion neither externally nor internally: not externally, since it has not the inanimate nature; nor internally, because it is itself rather the giver of motion to the body. It evidently, then, is not a bodily substance, inasmuch as it receives motion neither way, according to the nature and law of corporeal substances. Now, what first surprises us here, is the unsuitableness of a definition which appeals to objects which have no affinity with the soul. For it is impossible for the soul to be called either an animate body or an inanimate one, inasmuch as it is the soul itself which makes the body either animate, if it be present to it, or else inanimate, if it be absent from it. That, therefore, which produces a result, cannot itself be the result, so as to be entitled to the designation of an animate thing or an inanimate one. The soul is so called in respect of its own substance. If, then, that which is the soul admits not of being called an animate body or an inanimate one, how can it challenge comparison with the nature and law of animate and inanimate bodies? Furthermore, since it is characteristic of a body to be moved externally by something else, and as we have already shown that the soul receives motion from some other thing when it is swayed (from the outside, of course, by something else) by prophetic influence or by madness, therefore I must be right in regarding that as bodily substance which, according to the examples we have quoted, is moved by some other object from without. Now, if to receive motion from some other thing is characteristic of a body, how much more is it so to impart motion to something else! But the soul moves the body, all whose efforts are apparent externally, and from without. It is the soul which gives motion to the feet for walking, and to the hands for touching, and to the eyes for sight, and to the tongue for speech—a sort of internal image which moves and animates the surface. Whence could accrue such power to the soul, if it were incorporeal? How could an unsubstantial thing propel solid objects? But in what way do the senses in man seem to be divisible into the corporeal and the intellectual classes? They tell us that the qualities of things corporeal, such as earth and fire, are indicated by the bodily senses—of touch and sight; whilst (the qualities) of incorporeal things—for instance, benevolence and malignity—are discovered by the intellectual faculties. And from this (they deduce what is to them) the manifest conclusion, that the soul is incorporeal, its properties being comprehended by the perception not of bodily organs, but of intellectual faculties. Well, (I shall be much surprised) if I do not at once cut away the very ground on which their argument stands. For I show them how incorporeal things are commonly submitted to the bodily senses—sound, for instance, to the organ of hearing; colour, to the organ of sight; smell, to the olfactory organ. And, just as in these instances, the soul likewise has its contact with 1530 the body; not to say that the incorporeal objects are reported to us through the bodily organs, for the express reason that they come into contact with the said organs. Inasmuch, then, as it is evident that even incorporeal objects are embraced and comprehended by corporeal ones, why should not the soul, which is corporeal, be equally comprehended and understood by incorporeal faculties? It is thus certain that their argument fails. Among their more conspicuous arguments will be found this, that in their judgment every bodily substance is nourished by bodily substances; whereas the soul, as being an incorporeal essence, is nourished by incorporeal aliments—for instance, by the studies of wisdom. But even this ground has no stability in it, since Soranus, who is a most accomplished authority in medical science, affords us as answer, when he asserts that the soul is even nourished by corporeal aliments; that in fact it is, when failing and weak, actually refreshed oftentimes by food. Indeed, when deprived of all food, does not the soul entirely remove from the body? Soranus, then, after discoursing about the soul in the amplest manner, filling four volumes with his dissertations, and after weighing well all the opinions of the philosophers, defends the corporeality of the soul, although in the process he has robbed it of its immortality. For to all men it is not given to believe the truth which Christians are privileged to hold. As, therefore, Soranus has shown us from facts that the soul is nourished by corporeal aliments, let the philosopher (adopt a similar mode of proof, and) show that it is sustained by an incorporeal food. But the fact is, that no one has even been able to quench this man’s 1531 doubts and difficulties about the condition of the soul with the honey-water of Plato’s subtle eloquence, nor to surfeit them with the crumbs from the minute nostrums of Aristotle. But what is to become of the souls of all those robust barbarians, which have had no nurture of philosopher’s lore indeed, and yet are strong in untaught practical wisdom, and which although very starvelings in philosophy, without your Athenian academies and porches, and even the prison of Socrates, do yet contrive to live? For it is not the soul’s actual substance which is benefited by the aliment of learned study, but only its conduct and discipline; such ailment contributing nothing to increase its bulk, but only to enhance its grace. It is, moreover, a happy circumstance that the Stoics affirm that even the arts have corporeality; since at the rate the soul too must be corporeal, since it is commonly supposed to be nourished by the arts. Such, however, is the enormous preoccupation of the philosophic mind, that it is generally unable to see straight before it. Hence (the story of) Thales falling into the well. 1532 It very commonly, too, through not understanding even its own opinions, suspects a failure of its own health. Hence (the story of) Chrysippus and the hellebore. Some such hallucination, I take it, must have occurred to him, when he asserted that two bodies could not possibly be contained in one: he must have kept out of mind and sight the case of those pregnant women who, day after day, bear not one body, but even two and three at a time, within the embrace of a single womb. One finds likewise, in the records of the civil law, the instance of a certain Greek woman who gave birth to a quint 1533 of children, the mother of all these at one parturition, the manifold parent of a single brood, the prolific produce from a single womb, who, guarded by so many bodies—I had almost said, a people—was herself no less then the sixth person! The whole creation testifies how that those bodies which are naturally destined to issue from bodies, are already (included) in that from which they proceed. Now that which proceeds from some other thing must needs be second to it. Nothing, however, proceeds out of another thing except by the process of generation; but then they are two (things).
Footnotes
185:1528Animale, “having the nature of soul.”
185:1529Inanimale.
186:1530Accedit.
186:1531We follow Oehler’s view of this obscure passage, in preference to Rigaltius’.
186:1532See Tertullian’s Ad Nationes (our translation), p. 33, Supra..
186:1533Quinionem.
Chapter VII.—The Soul’s Corporeality Demonstrated Out of the Gospels.
So far as the philosophers are concerned, we have said enough. As for our own teachers, indeed, our reference to them is ex abundanti—a surplusage of authority: in the Gospel itself they will be found to have the clearest evidence for the corporeal nature of the soul. In hell the soul of a certain man is in torment, punished in flames, suffering excruciating thirst, and imploring from the finger of a happier soul, for his tongue, the solace of a drop of water. 1534 Do you suppose that this end of the blessed poor man and the miserable rich man is only imaginary? Then why the name of Lazarus in this narrative, if the circumstance is not in (the category of) a real occurrence? But even if it is to be regarded as imaginary, it will still be a testimony to truth and reality. For unless the soul possessed corporeality, the image of a soul could not possibly contain a finger of a bodily substance; nor would the Scripture feign a statement about the limbs of a body, if these had no existence. But what is that which is removed to Hades 1535 after the separation of the body; which is there detained; which is reserved until the day of judgment; to which Christ also, on dying, descended? I imagine it is the souls of the patriarchs. But wherefore (all this), if the soul is nothing in its subterranean abode? For nothing it certainly is, if it is not a bodily substance. For whatever is incorporeal is incapable of being kept and guarded in any way; it is also exempt from either punishment or refreshment. That must be a body, by which punishment and refreshment can be experienced. Of this I shall treat more fully in a more fitting place. Therefore, whatever amount of punishment or refreshment the soul tastes in Hades, in its prison or lodging, 1536 in the fire or in Abraham’s bosom, it gives proof thereby of its own corporeality. For an incorporeal thing suffers nothing, not having that which makes it capable of suffering; else, if it has such capacity, it must be a bodily substance. For in as far as every corporeal thing is capable of suffering, in so far is that which is capable of suffering also corporeal. 1537
Footnotes
187:1534Luke 16:23, 24.
187:1535Ad inferna. [See p. 59, supra.]
187:1536Diversorio.
187:1537Compare De Resur. Carnis, xvii. There is, however, some variation in Tertullian’s language on this subject. In his Apol. xlviii. he speaks as if the soul could not suffer when separated from the body. See also his De Testimonio Animæ, ch. iv., p. 177, supra; and see Bp. Kaye, p. 183.
Chapter VIII.—Other Platonist Arguments Considered.
Besides, it would be a harsh and absurd proceeding to exempt anything from the class of corporeal beings, on the ground that it is not exactly like the other constituents of that class. And where individual creatures possess various properties, does not this variety in works of the same class indicate the greatness of the Creator, in making them at the same time different and yet like, amicable yet rivals? Indeed, the philosophers themselves agree in saying that the universe consists of harmonious oppositions, according to Empedocles’ (theory of) friendship and enmity. Thus, then, although corporeal essences are opposed to incorporeal ones, they yet differ from each other in such sort as to amplify their species by their variety, without changing their genus, remaining all alike corporeal; contributing to God’s glory in their manifold existence by reason of their variety; so various, by reason of their differences; so diverse, in that some of them possess one kind of perception, others another; some feeding on one kind of aliment, others on another; some, again, possessing visibility, while others are invisible; some being weighty, others light. They are in the habit of saying that the soul must be pronounced incorporeal on this account, because the bodies of the dead, after its departure from them, become heavier, whereas they ought to be lighter, being deprived of the weight of a body—since the soul is a bodily substance. But what, says Soranus (in answer to this argument), if men should deny that the sea is a bodily substance, because a ship out of the water becomes a heavy and motionless mass? How much truer and stronger, then, is the soul’s corporeal essence, which carries about the body, which eventually assumes so great a weight with the nimblest motion! Again, even if the soul is invisible, it is only in strict accordance with the condition of its own corporeality, and suitably to the property of its own essence, as well as to the nature of even those beings to which its destiny made it to be invisible. The eyes of the owl cannot endure the sun, whilst the eagle is so well able to face his glory, that the noble character of its young is determined by the unblinking strength of their gaze; while the eaglet, which turns away its eye from the sun’s ray, is expelled from the nest as a degenerate creature! So true is it, therefore, than to one eye an object is invisible, which may be quite plainly seen by another,—without implying any incorporeality in that which is not endued with an equally strong power (of vision). The sun is indeed a bodily substance, because it is (composed of) fire; the object, however, which the eaglet at once admits the existence of, the owl denies, without any prejudice, nevertheless, to the testimony of the eagle. There is the selfsame difference in respect of the soul’s corporeality, which is (perhaps) invisible to the flesh, but perfectly visible to the spirit. Thus John, being “in the Spirit” of God, 1538 beheld plainly the souls of the martyrs. 1539
Footnotes
188:1538Rev. i. 10.
188:1539Rev. vi. 9.
Chapter IX.—Particulars of the Alleged Communication to a Montanist Sister.
When we aver that the soul has a body of a quality and kind peculiar to itself, in this special condition of it we shall be already supplied with a decision respecting all the other accidents of its corporeity; how that they belong to it, because we have shown it to be a body, but that even they have a quality peculiar to themselves, proportioned to the special nature of the body (to which they belong); or else, if any accidents (of a body) are remarkable in this instance for their absence, then this, too, results from the peculiarity of the condition of the soul’s corporeity, from which are absent sundry qualities which are present to all other corporeal beings. And yet, notwithstanding all this, we shall not be at all inconsistent if we declare that the more usual characteristics of a body, such as invariably accrue to the corporeal condition, belong also to the soul—such as form 1540 and limitation; and that triad of dimensions 1541 —I mean length, and breadth and height—by which philosophers gauge all bodies. What now remains but for us to give the soul a figure? 1542 Plato refuses to do this, as if it endangered the soul’s immortality. 1543 For everything which has figure is, according to him, compound, and composed of parts; 1544 whereas the soul is immortal; and being immortal, it is therefore indissoluble; and being indissoluble, it is figureless: for if, on the contrary, it had figure, it would be of a composite and structural formation. He, however, in some other manner frames for the soul an effigy of intellectual forms, beautiful for its just symmetry and tuitions of philosophy, but misshapen by some contrary qualities. As for ourselves, indeed, we inscribe on the soul the lineaments of corporeity, not simply from the assurance which reasoning has taught us of its corporeal nature, but also from the firm conviction which divine grace impresses on us by revelation. For, seeing that we acknowledge spiritual charismata, or gifts, we too have merited the attainment of the prophetic gift, although coming after John (the Baptist). We have now amongst us a sister whose lot it has been to be favoured with sundry gifts of revelation, which she experiences in the Spirit by ecstatic vision amidst the sacred rites of the Lord’s day in the church: she converses with angels, and sometimes even with the Lord; she both sees and hears mysterious communications; 1545 some men’s hearts she understands, and to them who are in need she distributes remedies. Whether it be in the reading of Scriptures, or in the chanting of psalms, or in the preaching of sermons, or in the offering up of prayers, in all these religious services matter and opportunity are afforded to her of seeing visions. It may possibly have happened to us, whilst this sister of ours was rapt in the Spirit, that we had discoursed in some ineffable way about the soul. After the people are dismissed at the conclusion of the sacred services, she is in the regular habit of reporting to us whatever things she may have seen in vision (for all her communications are examined with the most scrupulous care, in order that their truth may be probed). “Amongst other things,” says she, “there has been shown to me a soul in bodily shape, and a spirit has been in the habit of appearing to me; not, however, a void and empty illusion, but such as would offer itself to be even grasped by the hand, soft and transparent and of an etherial colour, and in form resembling that of a human being in every respect.” This was her vision, and for her witness there was God; and the apostle most assuredly foretold that there were to be “spiritual gifts” in the church. 1546 Now, can you refuse to believe this, even if indubitable evidence on every point is forthcoming for your conviction? Since, then, the soul is a corporeal substance, no doubt it possesses qualities such as those which we have just mentioned, amongst them the property of colour, which is inherent in every bodily substance. Now what colour would you attribute to the soul but an etherial transparent one? Not that its substance is actually the ether or air (although this was the opinion of Ænesidemus and Anaximenes, and I suppose of Heraclitus also, as some say of him), nor transparent light (although Heraclides of Pontus held it to be so). “Thunder-stones,” 1547 indeed, are not of igneous substance, because they shine with ruddy redness; nor are beryls composed of aqueous matter, because they are of a pure wavy whiteness. How many things also besides these are there which their colour would associate in the same class, but which nature keeps widely apart! Since, however, everything which is very attenuated and transparent bears a strong resemblance to the air, such would be the case with the soul, since in its material nature 1548 it is wind and breath, (or spirit); whence it is that the belief of its corporeal quality is endangered, in consequence of the extreme tenuity and subtilty of its essence. Likewise, as regards the figure of the human soul from your own conception, you can well imagine that it is none other than the human form; indeed, none other than the shape of that body which each individual soul animates and moves about. This we may at once be induced to admit from contemplating man’s original formation. For only carefully consider, after God hath breathed upon the face of man the breath of life, and man had consequently become a living soul, surely that breath must have passed through the face at once into the interior structure, and have spread itself throughout all the spaces of the body; and as soon as by the divine inspiration it had become condensed, it must have impressed itself on each internal feature, which the condensation had filled in, and so have been, as it were, congealed in shape, (or stereotyped). Hence, by this densifying process, there arose a fixing of the soul’s corporeity; and by the impression its figure was formed and moulded. This is the inner man, different from the outer, but yet one in the twofold condition. 1549 It, too, has eyes and ears of its own, by means of which Paul must have heard and seen the Lord; 1550 it has, moreover all the other members of the body by the help of which it effects all processes of thinking and all activity in dreams. Thus it happens that the rich man in hell has a tongue and poor (Lazarus) a finger and Abraham a bosom. 1551 By these features also the souls of the martyrs under the altar are distinguished and known. The soul indeed which in the beginning was associated with Adam’s body, which grew with its growth and was moulded after its form proved to be the germ both of the entire substance (of the human soul) and of that (part of) creation.
Footnotes
188:1540Habitum.
188:1541Illud trifariam distantivum (Τριχῶς διαστηματικόν) Fr. Junius.
188:1542Effigiem.
188:1543See his Phædo, pp. 105, 106.
188:1544Structile.
188:1545Sacramenta.
188:15461 Cor. xii. 1-11. [A key to our author’s
188:1547Cerauniis gemmis.
189:1548Tradux.
189:1549Dupliciter unus.
189:15502 Cor. xii. 2-4.
189:1551Luke 16:23, 24.
Chapter X.—The Simple Nature of the Soul is Asserted with Plato. The Identity of Spirit and Soul.
It is essential to a firm faith to declare with Plato 1552 that the soul is simple; in other words uniform and uncompounded; simply that is to say in respect of its substance. Never mind men’s artificial views and theories, and away with the fabrications of heresy! 1553 Some maintain that there is within the soul a natural substance—the spirit—which is different from it: 1554 as if to have life—the function of the soul—were one thing; and to emit breath—the alleged 1555 function of the spirit—were another thing. Now it is not in all animals that these two functions are found; for there are many which only live but do not breathe in that they do not possess the organs of respiration—lungs and windpipes. 1556 But of what use is it, in an examination of the soul of man, to borrow proofs from a gnat or an ant, when the great Creator in His divine arrangements has allotted to every animal organs of vitality suited to its own disposition and nature, so that we ought not to catch at any conjectures from comparisons of this sort? Man, indeed, although organically furnished with lungs and windpipes, will not on that account be proved to breathe by one process, and to live by another; 1557 nor can the ant, although defective in these organs, be on that account said to be without respiration, as if it lived and that was all. For by whom has so clear an insight into the works of God been really attained, as to entitle him to assume that these organic resources are wanting to any living thing? There is that Herophilus, the well-known surgeon, or (as I may almost call him) butcher, who cut up no end of persons, 1558 in order to investigate the secrets of nature, who ruthlessly handled 1559 human creatures to discover (their form and make): I have my doubts whether he succeeded in clearly exploring all the internal parts of their structure, since death itself changes and disturbs the natural functions of life, especially when the death is not a natural one, but such as must cause irregularity and error amidst the very processes of dissection. Philosophers have affirmed it to be a certain fact, that gnats, and ants, and moths have no pulmonary or arterial organs. Well, then, tell me, you curious and elaborate investigator of these mysteries, have they eyes for seeing withal? But yet they proceed to whatever point they wish, and they both shun and aim at various objects by processes of sight: point out their eyes to me, show me their pupils. Moths also gnaw and eat: demonstrate to me their mandibles, reveal their jaw-teeth. Then, again, gnats hum and buzz, nor even in the dark are they unable to find their way to our ears: 1560 point out to me, then, not only the noisy tube, but the stinging lance of that mouth of theirs. Take any living thing whatever, be it the tiniest you can find, it must needs be fed and sustained by some food or other: show me, then, their organs for taking into their system, digesting, and ejecting food. What must we say, therefore? If it is by such instruments that life is maintained, these instrumental means must of course exist in all things which are to live, even though they are not apparent to the eye or to the apprehension by reason of their minuteness. You can more readily believe this, if you remember that God manifests His creative greatness quite as much in small objects as in the very largest. If, however, you suppose that God’s wisdom has no capacity for forming such infinitesimal corpuscles, you can still recognise His greatness, in that He has furnished even to the smallest animals the functions of life, although in the absence of the suitable organs,—securing to them the power of sight, even without eyes; of eating, even without teeth; and of digestion, even without stomachs. Some animals also have the ability to move forward without feet, as serpents, by a gliding motion; or as worms, by vertical efforts; or as snails and slugs, by their slimy crawl. Why should you not then believe that respiration likewise may be effected without the bellows of the lungs, and without arterial canals? You would thus supply yourself with a strong proof that the spirit or breath is an adjunct of the human soul, for the very reason that some creatures lack breath, and that they lack it because they are not furnished with organs of respiration. You think it possible for a thing to live without breath; then why not suppose that a thing might breathe without lungs? Pray, tell me, what is it to breathe? I suppose it means to emit breath from yourself. What is it not to live? I suppose it means not to emit breath from yourself. This is the answer which I should have to make, if “to breathe” is not the same thing as “to live.” It must, however, be characteristic of a dead man not to respire: to respire, therefore, is the characteristic of a living man. But to respire is likewise the characteristic of a breathing man: therefore also to breathe is the characteristic of a living man. Now, if both one and the other could possibly have been accomplished without the soul, to breathe might not be a function of the soul, but merely to live. But indeed to live is to breathe, and to breathe is to live. Therefore this entire process, both of breathing and living, belongs to that to which living belongs—that is, to the soul. Well, then, since you separate the spirit (or breath) and the soul, separate their operations also. Let both of them accomplish some act apart from one another—the soul apart, the spirit apart. Let the soul live without the spirit; let the spirit breathe without the soul. Let one of them quit men’s bodies, let the other remain; let death and life meet and agree. If indeed the soul and the spirit are two, they may be divided; and thus, by the separation of the one which departs from the one which remains, there would accrue the union and meeting together of life and of death. But such a union never will accrue: therefore they are not two, and they cannot be divided; but divided they might have been, if they had been (two). Still two things may surely coalesce in growth. But the two in question never will coalesce, since to live is one thing, and to breathe is another. Substances are distinguished by their operations. How much firmer ground have you for believing that the soul and the spirit are but one, since you assign to them no difference; so that the soul is itself the spirit, respiration being the function of that of which life also is! But what if you insist on supposing that the day is one thing, and the light, which is incidental to the day, is another thing, whereas day is only the light itself? There must, of course, be also different kinds of light, as (appears) from the ministry of fires. So likewise will there be different sorts of spirits, according as they emanate from God or from the devil. Whenever, indeed, the question is about soul and spirit, the soul will be (understood to be) itself the spirit, just as the day is the light itself. For a thing is itself identical with that by means of which itself exists.
Footnotes
189:1552See his Phædo, p. 80; Timæus, § 12, p. 35 (Bekker, pp. 264, 265).
189:1553We have here combined two readings, effigies (Oehler’s) and hæreses (the usual one).
189:1554Aliam.
189:1555This is the force of the subjunctive fiat.
189:1556Arterias.
189:1557Aliunde spirabit, aliunde vivet. “In the nature of man, life and breath are inseparable,” Bp. Kaye, p. 184.
189:1558Sexcentos.
189:1559Odit.
190:1560Aurium cæci.
Chapter XI.—Spirit—A Term Expressive of an Operation of the Soul, Not of Its Nature. To Be Carefully Distinguished from the Spirit of God.
But the nature of my present inquiry obliges me to call the soul spirit or breath, because to breathe is ascribed to another substance. We, however, claim this (operation) for the soul, which we acknowledge to be an indivisible simple substance, and therefore we must call it spirit in a definitive sense—not because of its condition, but of its action; not in respect of its nature, but of its operation; because it respires, and not because it is spirit in any especial sense. 1561 For to blow or breathe is to respire. So that we are driven to describe, by (the term which indicates this respiration—that is to say) spirit—the soul which we hold to be, by the propriety of its action, breath. Moreover, we properly and especially insist on calling it breath (or spirit), in opposition to Hermogenes, who derives the soul from matter instead of from the afflatus or breath of God. He, to be sure, goes flatly against the testimony of Scripture, and with this view converts breath into spirit, because he cannot believe that the (creature on which was breathed the) Spirit of God fell into sin, and then into condemnation; and therefore he would conclude that the soul came from matter rather than from the Spirit or breath of God. For this reason, we on our side even from that passage, maintain the soul to be breath and not the spirit, in the scriptural and distinctive sense of the spirit; and here it is with regret that we apply the term spirit at all in the lower sense, in consequence of the identical action of respiring and breathing. In that passage, the only question is about the natural substance; to respire being an act of nature. I would not tarry a moment longer on this point, were it not for those heretics who introduce into the soul some spiritual germ which passes my comprehension: (they make it to have been) conferred upon the soul by the secret liberality of her mother Sophia (Wisdom), without the knowledge of the Creator. 1562 But (Holy) Scripture, which has a better knowledge of the soul’s Maker, or rather God, has told us nothing more than that God breathed on man’s face the breath of life, and that man became a living soul, by means of which he was both to live and breathe; at the same time making a sufficiently clear distinction between the spirit and the soul, 1563 in such passages as the following, wherein God Himself declares: “My Spirit went forth from me, and I made the breath of each. And the breath of my Spirit became soul.” 1564 And again: “He giveth breath unto the people that are on the earth, and Spirit to them that walk thereon.” 1565 First of all there comes the (natural) soul, that is to say, the breath, to the people that are on the earth,—in other words, to those who act carnally in the flesh; then afterwards comes the Spirit to those who walk thereon,—that is, who subdue the works of the flesh; because the apostle also says, that “that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, (or in possession of the natural soul,) and afterward that which is spiritual.” 1566 For, inasmuch as Adam straightway predicted that “great mystery of Christ and the church,” 1567 when he said, “This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they two shall become one flesh,” 1568 he experienced the influence of the Spirit. For there fell upon him that ecstasy, which is the Holy Ghost’s operative virtue of prophecy. And even the evil spirit too is an influence which comes upon a man. Indeed, the Spirit of God not more really “turned Saul into another man,” 1569 that is to say, into a prophet, when “people said one to another, What is this which is come to the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?” 1570 than did the evil spirit afterwards turn him into another man—in other words, into an apostate. Judas likewise was for a long time reckoned among the elect (apostles), and was even appointed to the office of their treasurer; he was not yet the traitor, although he was become fraudulent; but afterwards the devil entered into him. Consequently, as the spirit neither of God nor of the devil is naturally planted with a man’s soul at his birth, this soul must evidently exist apart and alone, previous to the accession to it of either spirit: if thus apart and alone, it must also be simple and uncompounded as regards its substance; and therefore it cannot respire from any other cause than from the actual condition of its own substance.
Footnotes
191:1561Proprie “by reason of its nature.”
191:1562See the tract Adv. Valentin., c. xxv. infra.
191:1563Compare Adv. Hermog. xxxii. xxxiii.; also Irenæus, v. 12, 17. [See Vol. I. p. 527, this Series.]
191:1564Tertullian’s reading of Isa. lvii. 16.
191:1565Isa. xlii. 5.
191:15661 Cor. xv. 46.
191:1567Eph. 5:31, 32.
191:1568Gen. 2:24, 25.
191:15691 Sam. x. 6.
191:15701 Sam. x. 11.
Chapter XII.—Difference Between the Mind and the Soul, and the Relation Between Them.
In like manner the mind also, or animus, which the Greeks designate ΝΟΥΣ, is taken by us in no other sense than as indicating that faculty or apparatus 1571 which is inherent and implanted in the soul, and naturally proper to it, whereby it acts, whereby it acquires knowledge, and by the possession of which it is capable of a spontaneity of motion within itself, and of thus appearing to be impelled by the mind, as if it were another substance, as is maintained by those who determine the soul to be the moving principle of the universe 1572 —the god of Socrates, Valentinus’ “only-begotten” of his father 1573 Bythus, and his mother Sige. How confused is the opinion of Anaxagoras! For, having imagined the mind to be the initiating principle of all things, and suspending on its axis the balance of the universe; affirming, moreover, that the mind is a simple principle, unmixed, and incapable of admixture, he mainly on this very consideration separates it from all amalgamation with the soul; and yet in another passage he actually incorporates it with 1574 the soul. This (inconsistency) Aristotle has also observed: but whether he meant his criticism to be constructive, and to fill up a system of his own, rather than destructive of the principles of others, I am hardly able to decide. As for himself, indeed, although he postpones his definition of the mind, yet he begins by mentioning, as one of the two natural constituents of the mind, 1575 that divine principle which he conjectures to be impassible, or incapable of emotion, and thereby removes from all association with the soul. For whereas it is evident that the soul is susceptible of those emotions which it falls to it naturally to suffer, it must needs suffer either by the mind or with the mind. Now if the soul is by nature associated with the mind, it is impossible to draw the conclusion that the mind is impassible; or again, if the soul suffers not either by the mind or with the mind, it cannot possibly have a natural association with the mind, with which it suffers nothing, and which suffers nothing itself. Moreover, if the soul suffers nothing by the mind and with the mind, it will experience no sensation, nor will it acquire any knowledge, nor will it undergo any emotion through the agency of the mind, as they maintain it will. For Aristotle makes even the senses passions, or states of emotion. And rightly too. For to exercise the senses is to suffer emotion, because to suffer is to feel. In like manner, to acquire knowledge is to exercise the senses; and to undergo emotion is to exercise the senses; and the whole of this is a state of suffering. But we see that the soul experiences nothing of these things, in such a manner as that the mind also is affected by the emotion, by which, indeed, and with which, all is effected. It follows, therefore, that the mind is capable of admixture, in opposition to Anaxagoras; and passible or susceptible of emotion, contrary to the opinion of Aristotle. Besides, if a separate condition between the soul and mind is to be admitted, so that they be two things in substance, then of one of them, emotion and sensation, and every sort of taste, and all action and motion, will be the characteristics; whilst of the other the natural condition will be calm, and repose, and stupor. There is therefore no alternative: either the mind must be useless and void, or the soul. But if these affections may certainly be all of them ascribed to both, then in that case the two will be one and the same, and Democritus will carry his point when he suppresses all distinction between the two. The question will arise how two can be one—whether by the confusion of two substances, or by the disposition of one? We, however, affirm that the mind coalesces with 1576 the soul,—not indeed as being distinct from it in substance, but as being its natural function and agent. 1577
Footnotes
191:1571Suggestum.
191:1572Comp. The Apology, c. xlviii.; August. De Civ. Dei, xiii. 17.
191:1573Comp. Adv. Valentin. vii. infra.
192:1574Addicit.
192:1575Alterum animi genus.
192:1576Concretum.
192:1577Substantiæ officium.
Chapter XIII.—The Soul’s Supremacy.
It next remains to examine where lies the supremacy; in other words, which of the two is superior to the other, so that with which the supremacy clearly lies shall be the essentially superior substance; 1578 whilst that over which this essentially superior substance shall have authority shall be considered as the natural functionary of the superior substance. Now who will hesitate to ascribe this entire authority to the soul, from the name of which the whole man has received his own designation in common phraseology? How many souls, says the rich man, do I maintain? not how many minds. The pilot’s desire, also, is to rescue so many souls from shipwreck, not so many minds; the labourer, too, in his work, and the soldier on the field of battle, affirms that he lays down his soul (or life), not his mind. Which of the two has its perils or its vows and wishes more frequently on men’s lips—the mind or the soul? Which of the two are dying persons, said to have to do with the mind or the soul? In short, philosophers themselves, and medical men, even when it is their purpose to discourse about the mind, do in every instance inscribe on their title-page 1579 and table of contents, 1580 “De Anima” (“A treatise on the soul”). And that you may also have God’s voucher on the subject, it is the soul which He addresses; it is the soul which He exhorts and counsels, to turn the mind and intellect to Him. It is the soul which Christ came to save; it is the soul which He threatens to destroy in hell; it is the soul (or life) which He forbids being made too much of; it is His soul, too (or life), which the good Shepherd Himself lays down for His sheep. It is to the soul, therefore, that you ascribe the supremacy; in it also you possess that union of substance, of which you perceive the mind to be the instrument, not the ruling power.
Footnotes
192:1578Substantiæ massa.
192:1579Faciem operis.
192:1580Fontem materiæ.
Chapter XIV.—The Soul Variously Divided by the Philosophers; This Division is Not a Material Dissection.
Being thus single, simple, and entire in itself, it is as incapable of being composed and put together from external constituents, as it is of being divided in and of itself, inasmuch as it is indissoluble. For if it had been possible to construct it and to destroy it, it would no longer be immortal. Since, however, it is not mortal, it is also incapable of dissolution and division. Now, to be divided means to be dissolved, and to be dissolved means to die. Yet (philosophers) have divided the soul into parts: Plato, for instance, into two; Zeno into three; Panætius, into five or six; Soranus, into seven; Chrysippus, into as many as eight; and Apollophanes, into as many as nine; whilst certain of the Stoics have found as many as twelve parts in the soul. Posidonius makes even two more than these: he starts with two leading faculties of the soul,—the directing faculty, which they designate ἡγεμονικόν; and the rational faculty, which they call λογικόν,—and ultimately subdivided these into seventeen 1581 parts. Thus variously is the soul dissected by the different schools. Such divisions, however, ought not to be regarded so much as parts of the soul, as powers, or faculties, or operations thereof, even as Aristotle himself has regarded some of them as being. For they are not portions or organic parts of the soul’s substance, but functions of the soul—such as those of motion, of action, of thought, and whatsoever others they divide in this manner; such, likewise, as the five senses themselves, so well known to all—seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling. Now, although they have allotted to the whole of these respectively certain parts of the body as their special domiciles, it does not from that circumstance follow that a like distribution will be suitable to the sections of the soul; for even the body itself would not admit of such a partition as they would have the soul undergo. But of the whole number of the limbs one body is made up, so that the arrangement is rather a concretion than a division. Look at that very wonderful piece of organic mechanism by Archimedes,—I mean his hydraulic organ, with its many limbs, parts, bands, passages for the notes, outlets for their sounds, combinations for their harmony, and the array of its pipes; but yet the whole of these details constitute only one instrument. In like manner the wind, which breathes throughout this organ at the impulse of the hydraulic engine, is not divided into separate portions from the fact of its dispersion through the instrument to make it play: it is whole and entire in its substance, although divided in its operation. This example is not remote from (the illustration) of Strato, and Ænesidemus, and Heraclitus: for these philosophers maintain the unity of the soul, as diffused over the entire body, and yet in every part the same. 1582 Precisely like the wind blown in the pipes throughout the organ, the soul displays its energies in various ways by means of the senses, being not indeed divided, but rather distributed in natural order. Now, under what designations these energies are to be known, and by what divisions of themselves they are to be classified, and to what special offices and functions in the body they are to be severally confined, the physicians and the philosophers must consider and decide: for ourselves, a few remarks only will be proper.
Footnotes
193:1581This is Oehler’s text; another reading has twelve, which one would suppose to be the right one.
193:1582Ubique ipsa.
Chapter XV.—The Soul’s Vitality and Intelligence. Its Character and Seat in Man.
In the first place, (we must determine) whether there be in the soul some supreme principle of vitality and intelligence 1583 which they call “the ruling power of the soul”—τὸ ἡγεμονικόν for if this be not admitted, the whole condition of the soul is put in jeopardy. Indeed, those men who say that there is no such directing faculty, have begun by supposing that the soul itself is simply a nonentity. One Dicæarchus, a Messenian, and amongst the medical profession Andreas and Asclepiades, have thus destroyed the (soul’s) directing power, by actually placing in the mind the senses, for which they claim the ruling faculty. Asclepiades rides rough-shod over us with even this argument, that very many animals, after losing those parts of their body in which the soul’s principle of vitality and sensation is thought mainly to exist, still retain life in a considerable degree, as well as sensation: as in the case of flies, and wasps, and locusts, when you have cut off their heads; and of she-goats, and tortoises, and eels, when you have pulled out their hearts. (He concludes), therefore, that there is no especial principle or power of the soul; for if there were, the soul’s vigour and strength could not continue when it was removed with its domiciles (or corporeal organs). However, Dicæarchus has several authorities against him—and philosophers too—Plato, Strato, Epicurus, Democritus, Empedocles, Socrates, Aristotle; whilst in opposition to Andreas and Asclepiades (may be placed their brother) physicians Herophilus, Erasistratus, Diocles, Hippocrates, and Soranus himself; and better than all others, there are our Christian authorities. We are taught by God concerning both these questions—viz. that there is a ruling power in the soul, and that it is enshrined 1584 in one particular recess of the body. For, when one reads of God as being “the searcher and witness of the heart;” 1585 when His prophet is reproved by His discovering to him the secrets of the heart; 1586 when God Himself anticipates in His people the thoughts of their heart, 1587 “Why think ye evil in your hearts?” 1588 when David prays “Create in me a clean heart, O God,” 1589 and Paul declares, “With the heart man believeth unto righteousness,” 1590 and John says, “By his own heart is each man condemned;” 1591 when, lastly, “he who looketh on a woman so as to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart,” 1592 —then both points are cleared fully up, that there is a directing faculty of the soul, with which the purpose of God may agree; in other words, a supreme principle of intelligence and vitality (for where there is intelligence, there must be vitality), and that it resides in that most precious part 1593 of our body to which God especially looks: so that you must not suppose, with Heraclitus, that this sovereign faculty of which we are treating is moved by some external force; nor with Moschion, 1594 that it floats about through the whole body; nor with Plato, that it is enclosed in the head; nor with Zenophanes, that it culminates in the crown of the head; nor that it reposes in the brain, according to the opinion of Hippocrates; nor around the basis of the brain, as Herophilus thought; nor in the membranes thereof, as Strato and Erasistratus said; nor in the space between the eyebrows, as Strato the physician held; nor within the enclosure 1595 of the breast, according to Epicurus: but rather, as the Egyptians have always taught, especially such of them as were accounted the expounders of sacred truths; 1596 in accordance, too, with that verse of Orpheus or Empedocles:
“Namque homini sanguis circumcordialis est sensus.” 1597
“Man has his (supreme) sensation in the blood around his heart.”
Even Protagoras 1598 likewise, and Apollodorus, and Chrysippus, entertain this same view, so that (our friend) Asclepiades may go in quest of his goats bleating without a heart, and hunt his flies without their heads; and let all those (worthies), too, who have predetermined the character of the human soul from the condition of brute animals, be quite sure that it is themselves rather who are alive in a heartless and brainless state.
Footnotes
193:1583Sapientialis.
194:1584Consecratum.
194:1585Wisd. i. 6.
194:1586Prov. xxiv. 12.
194:1587Ps. cxxxix. 23.
194:1588Matt. ix. 4.
194:1589Ps. li. 12.
194:1590Rom. x. 10.
194:15911 John iii. 20.
194:1592Matt. v. 28.
194:1593In eo thesauro.
194:1594Not Suidas’ philosopher of that name, but a renowned physician mentioned by Galen and Pliny (Oehler).
194:1595Lorica.
194:1596The Egyptian hierophants.
194:1597The original, as given in Stobæus, Eclog. i. p. 1026, is this hexameter: Αἶμα γὰρ ἀνθρώποις περικάρδιόν ἐστι νόημα.
194:1598Or probably that Praxagoras the physician who is often mentioned by Athenæus and by Pliny (Pamel.).
Chapter XVI.—The Soul’s Parts. Elements of the Rational Soul.
That position of Plato’s is also quite in keeping with the faith, in which he divides the soul into two parts—the rational and the irrational. To this definition we take no exception, except that we would not ascribe this twofold distinction to the nature (of the soul). It is the rational element which we must believe to be its natural condition, impressed upon it from its very first creation by its Author, who is Himself essentially rational. For how should that be other than rational, which God produced on His own prompting; nay more, which He expressly sent forth by His own afflatus or breath? The irrational element, however, we must understand to have accrued later, as having proceeded from the instigation of the serpent—the very achievement of (the first) transgression—which thenceforward became inherent in the soul, and grew with its growth, assuming the manner by this time of a natural development, happening as it did immediately at the beginning of nature. But, inasmuch as the same Plato speaks of the rational element only as existing in the soul of God Himself, if we were to ascribe the irrational element likewise to the nature which our soul has received from God, then the irrational element will be equally derived from God, as being a natural production, because God is the author of nature. Now from the devil proceeds the incentive to sin. All sin, however, is irrational: therefore the irrational proceeds from the devil, from whom sin proceeds; and it is extraneous to God, to whom also the irrational is an alien principle. The diversity, then, between these two elements arises from the difference of their authors. When, therefore, Plato reserves the rational element (of the soul) to God alone, and subdivides it into two departments: the irascible, which they call θυμικόν, and the concupiscible, which they designate by the term ἐπιθυμητικόν (in such a way as to make the first common to us and lions, and the second shared between ourselves and flies, whilst the rational element is confined to us and God)—I see that this point will have to be treated by us, owing to the facts which we find operating also in Christ. For you may behold this triad of qualities in the Lord. There was the rational element, by which He taught, by which He discoursed, by which He prepared the way of salvation; there was moreover indignation in Him, by which He inveighed against the scribes and the Pharisees; and there was the principle of desire, by which He so earnestly desired to eat the passover with His disciples. 1599 In our own cases, accordingly, the irascible and the concupiscible elements of our soul must not invariably be put to the account of the irrational (nature), since we are sure that in our Lord these elements operated in entire accordance with reason. God will be angry, with perfect reason, with all who deserve His wrath; and with reason, too, will God desire whatever objects and claims are worthy of Himself. For He will show indignation against the evil man, and for the good man will He desire salvation. To ourselves even does the apostle allow the concupiscible quality. “If any man,” says he, “desireth the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.” 1600 Now, by saying “a good work,” he shows us that the desire is a reasonable one. He permits us likewise to feel indignation. How should he not, when he himself experiences the same? “I would,” says he, “that they were even cut off which trouble you.” 1601 In perfect agreement with reason was that indignation which resulted from his desire to maintain discipline and order. When, however, he says, “We were formerly the children of wrath,” 1602 he censures an irrational irascibility, such as proceeds not from that nature which is the production of God, but from that which the devil brought in, who is himself styled the lord or “master” of his own class, “Ye cannot serve two masters,” 1603 and has the actual designation of “father:” “Ye are of your father the devil.” 1604 So that you need not be afraid to ascribe to him the mastery and dominion over that second, later, and deteriorated nature (of which we have been speaking), when you read of him as “the sewer of tares,” and the nocturnal spoiler of the crop of corn. 1605
Footnotes
195:1599Luke xxii. 15.
195:16001 Tim. iii. 1.
195:1601Gal. v. 12.
195:1602Eph. ii. 3.
195:1603Matt. vi. 24.
195:1604John vi. 44.
195:1605Matt. xiii. 25.
Chapter XVII.—The Fidelity of the Senses, Impugned by Plato, Vindicated by Christ Himself.
Then, again, when we encounter the question (as to the veracity of those five senses which we learn with our alphabet; since from this source even there arises some support for our heretics. They are the faculties of seeing, and hearing, and smelling, and tasting, and touching. The fidelity of these senses is impugned with too much severity by the Platonists, 1606 and according to some by Heraclitus also, and Diocles, and Empedocles; at any rate, Plato, in the Timæus, declares the operations of the senses to be irrational, and vitiated 1607 by our opinions or beliefs. Deception is imputed to the sight, because it asserts that oars, when immersed in the water, are inclined or bent, notwithstanding the certainty that they are straight; because, again, it is quite sure that that distant tower with its really quadrangular contour is round; because also it will discredit the fact of the truly parallel fabric of yonder porch or arcade, by supposing it to be narrower and narrower towards its end; and because it will join with the sea the sky which hangs at so great a height above it. In the same way, our hearing is charged with fallacy: we think, for instance, that that is a noise in the sky which is nothing else than the rumbling of a carriage; or, if you prefer it 1608 the other way, when the thunder rolled at a distance, we were quite sure that it was a carriage which made the noise. Thus, too, are our faculties of smell and taste at fault, because the selfsame perfumes and wines lose their value after we have used them awhile. On the same principle our touch is censured, when the identical pavement which seemed rough to the hands is felt by the feet to be smooth enough; and in the baths a stream of warm water is pronounced to be quite hot at first, and beautifully temperate afterwards. Thus, according to them, our senses deceive us, when all the while we are (the cause of the discrepancies, by) changing our opinions. The Stoics are more moderate in their views; for they do not load with the obloquy of deception every one of the senses, and at all times. The Epicureans, again, show still greater consistency, in maintaining that all the senses are equally true in their testimony, and always so—only in a different way. It is not our organs of sensation that are at fault, but our opinion. The senses only experience sensation, they do not exercise opinion; it is the soul that opines. They separated opinion from the senses, and sensation from the soul. Well, but whence comes opinion, if not from the senses? Indeed, unless the eye had descried a round shape in that tower, it could have had no idea that it possessed roundness. Again, whence arises sensation if not from the soul? For if the soul had no body, it would have no sensation. Accordingly, sensation comes from the soul, and opinion from sensation; and the whole (process) is the soul. But further, it may well be insisted on that there is a something which causes the discrepancy between the report of the senses and the reality of the facts. Now, since it is possible, (as we have seen), for phenomena to be reported which exist not in the objects, why should it not be equally possible for phenomena to be reported which are caused not by the senses, but by reasons and conditions which intervene, in the very nature of the case? If so, it will be only right that they should be duly recognised. The truth is, that it was the water which was the cause of the oar seeming to be inclined or bent: out of the water, it was perfectly straight in appearance (as well as in fact). The delicacy of the substance or medium which forms a mirror by means of its luminosity, according as it is struck or shaken, by the vibration actually destroys the appearance of the straightness of a right line. In like manner, the condition of the open space which fills up the interval between it and us, necessarily causes the true shape of the tower to escape our notice; for the uniform density of the surrounding air covering its angles with a similar light obliterates their outlines. So, again, the equal breadth of the arcade is sharpened or narrowed off towards its termination, until its aspect, becoming more and more contracted under its prolonged roof, comes to a vanishing point in the direction of its farthest distance. So the sky blends itself with the sea, the vision becoming spent at last, which had maintained duly the boundaries of the two elements, so long as its vigorous glance lasted. As for the (alleged cases of deceptive) hearing, what else could produce the illusion but the similarity of the sounds? And if the perfume afterwards was less strong to the smell, and the wine more flat to the taste, and the water not so hot to the touch, their original strength was after all found in the whole of them pretty well unimpaired. In the matter, however, of the roughness and smoothness of the pavement, it was only natural and right that limbs like the hands and the feet, so different in tenderness and callousness, should have different impressions. In this way, then, there cannot occur an illusion in our senses without an adequate cause. Now if special causes, (such as we have indicated,) mislead our senses and (through our senses) our opinions also, then we must no longer ascribe the deception to the senses, which follow the specific causes of the illusion, nor to the opinions we form; for these are occasioned and controlled by our senses, which only follow the causes. Persons who are afflicted with madness or insanity, mistake one object for another. Orestes in his sister sees his mother; Ajax sees Ulysses in the slaughtered herd; Athamas and Agave descry wild beasts in their children. Now is it their eyes or their phrenzy which you must blame for so vast a fallacy? All things taste bitter, in the redundancy of their bile, to those who have the jaundice. Is it their taste which you will charge with the physical prevarication, or their ill state of health? All the senses, therefore, are disordered occasionally, or imposed upon, but only in such a way as to be quite free of any fault in their own natural functions. But further still, not even against the specific causes and conditions themselves must we lay an indictment of deception. For, since these physical aberrations happen for stated reasons, the reasons do not deserve to be regarded as deceptions. Whatever ought to occur in a certain manner is not a deception. If, then, even these circumstantial causes must be acquitted of all censure and blame, how much more should we free from reproach the senses, over which the said causes exercise a liberal sway! Hence we are bound most certainly to claim for the senses truth, and fidelity, and integrity, seeing that they never render any other account of their impressions than is enjoined on them by the specific causes or conditions which in all cases produce that discrepancy which appears between the report of the senses and the reality of the objects. What mean you, then, O most insolent Academy? You overthrow the entire condition of human life; you disturb the whole order of nature; you obscure the good providence of God Himself: for the senses of man which God has appointed over all His works, that we might understand, inhabit, dispense, and enjoy them, (you reproach) as fallacious and treacherous tyrants! But is it not from these that all creation receives our services? Is it not by their means that a second form is impressed even upon the world?—so many arts, so many industrious resources, so many pursuits, such business, such offices, such commerce, such remedies, counsels, consolations, modes, civilizations, and accomplishments of life! All these things have produced the very relish and savour of human existence; whilst by these senses of man, he alone of all animated nature has the distinction of being a rational animal, with a capacity for intelligence and knowledge—nay, an ability to form the Academy itself! But Plato, in order to disparage the testimony of the senses, in the Phædrus denies (in the person of Socrates) his own ability to know even himself, according to the injunction of the Delphic oracle; and in the Theætetus he deprives himself of the faculties of knowledge and sensation; and again, in the Phædrus he postpones till after death the posthumous knowledge, as he calls it, of the truth; and yet for all he went on playing the philosopher even before he died. We may not, I say, we may not call into question the truth of the (poor vilified) senses, 1609 lest we should even in Christ Himself, bring doubt upon 1610 the truth of their sensation; lest perchance it should be said that He did not really “behold Satan as lightning fall from heaven;” 1611 that He did not really hear the Father’s voice testifying of Himself; 1612 or that He was deceived in touching Peter’s wife’s mother; 1613 or that the fragrance of the ointment which He afterwards smelled was different from that which He accepted for His burial; 1614 and that the taste of the wine was different from that which He consecrated in memory of His blood. 1615 On this false principle it was that Marcion actually chose to believe that He was a phantom, denying to Him the reality of a perfect body. Now, not even to His apostles was His nature ever a matter of deception. He was truly both seen and heard upon the mount; 1616 true and real was the draught of that wine at the marriage of (Cana in) Galilee; 1617 true and real also was the touch of the then believing Thomas. 1618 Read the testimony of John: “That which we have seen, which we have heard, which we have looked upon with our eyes, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life.” 1619 False, of course, and deceptive must have been that testimony, if the witness of our eyes, and ears, and hands be by nature a lie.
Footnotes
195:1606Academici.
195:1607Coimplicitam “entangled” or “embarrassed.” See the Timæus pp. 27, 28.
195:1608Vel.
197:1609Sensus istos.
197:1610Deliberetur.
197:1611Luke x. 18.
197:1612Matt. iii. 17.
197:1613Matt. viii. 15.
197:1614Matt. xxvi. 7-12.
197:1615Matt. 26:27, 28, Luke 22:19, 20, 1 Cor. 11:25.
197:1616Matt. xvii. 3-8.
197:1617John ii. 1-10.
197:1618John xx. 27.
197:16191 John i. 1.
Chapter XVIII.—Plato Suggested Certain Errors to the Gnostics. Functions of the Soul.
I turn now to the department of our intellectual faculties, such as Plato has handed it over to the heretics, distinct from our bodily functions, having obtained the knowledge of them before death. 1620 He asks in the Phædo, What, then, (do you think) concerning the actual possession of knowledge? Will the body be a hindrance to it or not, if one shall admit it as an associate in the search after knowledge? I have a similar question to ask: Have the faculties of their sight and hearing any truth and reality for human beings or not? Is it not the case, that even the poets are always muttering against us, that we can never hear or see anything for certain? He remembered, no doubt, what Epicharmus the comic poet had said: “It is the mind which sees, the mind that hears—all else is blind and deaf.” To the same purport he says again, that man is the wisest whose mental power is the clearest; who never applies the sense of sight, nor adds to his mind the help of any such faculty, but employs the intellect itself in unmixed serenity when he indulges in contemplation for the purpose of acquiring an unalloyed insight into the nature of things; divorcing himself with all his might from his eyes and ears and (as one must express himself) from the whole of his body, on the ground of its disturbing the soul, and not allowing it to possess either truth or wisdom, whenever it is brought into communication with it. We see, then, that in opposition to the bodily senses another faculty is provided of a much more serviceable character, even the powers of the soul, which produce an understanding of that truth whose realities are not palpable nor open to the bodily senses, but are very remote from men’s everyday knowledge, lying in secret—in the heights above, and in the presence of God Himself. For Plato maintains that there are certain invisible substances, incorporeal, celestial, 1621 divine, and eternal, which they call ideas, that is to say, (archetypal) forms, which are the patterns and causes of those objects of nature which are manifest to us, and lie under our corporeal senses: the former, (according to Plato,) are the actual verities, and the latter the images and likenesses of them. Well, now, are there not here gleams of the heretical principles of the Gnostics and the Valentinians? It is from this philosophy that they eagerly adopt the difference between the bodily senses and the intellectual faculties,—a distinction which they actually apply to the parable of the ten virgins: making the five foolish virgins to symbolize the five bodily senses, seeing that these are so silly and so easy to be deceived; and the wise virgin to express the meaning of the intellectual faculties, which are so wise as to attain to that mysterious and supernal truth, which is placed in the pleroma. (Here, then, we have) the mystic original of the ideas of these heretics. For in this philosophy lie both their Æons and their genealogies. Thus, too, do they divide sensation, both into the intellectual powers from their spiritual seed, and the sensuous faculties from the animal, which cannot by any means comprehend spiritual things. From the former germ spring invisible things; from the latter, visible things which are grovelling and temporary, and which are obvious to the senses, placed as they are in palpable forms. 1622 It is because of these views that we have in a former passage stated as a preliminary fact, that the mind is nothing else than an apparatus or instrument of the soul, 1623 and that the spirit is no other faculty, separate from the soul, but is the soul itself exercised in respiration; although that influence which either God on the one hand, or the devil on the other, has breathed upon it, must be regarded in the light of an additional element. 1624 And now, with respect to the difference between the intellectual powers and the sensuous faculties, we only admit it so far as the natural diversity between them requires of us. (There is, of course, a difference) between things corporeal and things spiritual, between visible and invisible beings, between objects which are manifest to the view and those which are hidden from it; because the one class are attributed to sensation, and the other to the intellect. But yet both the one and the other must be regarded as inherent in the soul, and as obedient to it, seeing that it embraces bodily objects by means of the body, in exactly the same way that it conceives incorporeal objects by help of the mind, except that it is even exercising sensation when it is employing the intellect. For is it not true, that to employ the senses is to use the intellect? And to employ the intellect amounts to a use of the senses? 1625 What indeed can sensation be, but the understanding of that which is the object of the sensation? And what can the intellect or understanding be, but the seeing of that which is the object understood? Why adopt such excruciating means of torturing simple knowledge and crucifying the truth? Who can show me the sense which does not understand the object of its sensation, or the intellect which perceives not the object which it understands, in so clear a way as to prove to me that the one can do without the other? If corporeal things are the objects of sense, and incorporeal ones objects of the intellect, it is the classes of the objects which are different, not the domicile or abode of sense and intellect; in other words, not the soul (anima) and the mind (animus). By what, in short, are corporeal things perceived? If it is by the soul, 1626 then the mind is a sensuous faculty, and not merely an intellectual power; for whilst it understands, it also perceives, because without the perception there is no understanding. If, however, corporeal things are perceived by the soul, then it follows that the soul’s power is an intellectual one, and not merely a sensuous faculty; for while it perceives it also understands, because without understanding there is no perceiving. And then, again, by what are incorporeal things understood? If it is by the mind, 1627 where will be the soul? If it is by the soul, where will be the mind? For things which differ ought to be mutually absent from each other, when they are occupied in their respective functions and duties. It must be your opinion, indeed, that the mind is absent from the soul on certain occasions; for (you suppose) that we are so made and constituted as not to know that we have seen or heard something, on the hypothesis 1628 that the mind was absent at the time. I must therefore maintain that the very soul itself neither saw nor heard, since it was at the given moment absent with its active power—that is to say, the mind. The truth is, that whenever a man is out of his mind, 1629 it is his soul that is demented—not because the mind is absent, but because it is a fellow-sufferer (with the soul) at the time. 1630 Indeed, it is the soul which is principally affected by casualties of such a kind. Whence is this fact confirmed? It is confirmed from the following consideration: that after the soul’s departure, the mind is no longer found in a man: it always follows the soul; nor does it at last remain behind it alone, after death. Now, since it follows the soul, it is also indissolubly attached to it; just as the understanding is attached to the soul, which is followed by the mind, with which the understanding is indissolubly connected. Granted now that the understanding is superior to the senses, and a better discoverer of mysteries, what matters it, so long as it is only a peculiar faculty of the soul, just as the senses themselves are? It does not at all affect my argument, unless the understanding were held to be superior to the senses, for the purpose of deducing from the allegation of such superiority its separate condition likewise. After thus combating their alleged difference, I have also to refute this question of superiority, previous to my approaching the belief (which heresy propounds) in a superior god. On this point, however, of a (superior) god, we shall have to measure swords with the heretics on their own ground. 1631 Our present subject concerns the soul, and the point is to prevent the insidious ascription of a superiority to the intellect or understanding. Now, although the objects which are touched by the intellect are of a higher nature, since they are spiritual, than those which are embraced by the senses, since these are corporeal, it will still be only a superiority in the objects—as of lofty ones contrasted with humble—not in the faculties of the intellect against the senses. For how can the intellect be superior to the senses, when it is these which educate it for the discovery of various truths? It is a fact, that these truths are learned by means of palpable forms; in other words, invisible things are discovered by the help of visible ones, even as the apostle tells us in his epistle: “For the invisible things of Him are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made;” 1632 and as Plato too might inform our heretics: “The things which appear are the image 1633 of the things which are concealed from view,” 1634 whence it must needs follow that this world is by all means an image of some other: so that the intellect evidently uses the senses for its own guidance, and authority, and mainstay; and without the senses truth could not be attained. How, then, can a thing be superior to that which is instrumental to its existence, which is also indispensable to it, and to whose help it owes everything which it acquires? Two conclusions therefore follow from what we have said: (1) That the intellect is not to be preferred above the senses, on the (supposed) ground that the agent through which a thing exists is inferior to the thing itself; and (2) that the intellect must not be separated from the senses, since the instrument by which a thing’s existence is sustained is associated with the thing itself.
Footnotes
197:1620Said ironically, as if rallying Plato for inconsistency between his theory here and the fact.
197:1621Supermundiales “placed above this world.”
198:1622Imaginibus.
198:1623See above, c. xii. p. 192.
198:1624Above, c. xi. p. 191.
198:1625Intelligere sentire est.
198:1626Oehler has “anima;” we should rather have expected “animo,” which is another reading.
198:1627“Animo” this time.
198:1628Subjunctive verb, “fuerit.”
198:1629Dementit.
198:1630The opposite opinion was held by Tertullian’s opponents, who distinguished between the mind and the soul. They said, that when a man was out of his mind, his mind left him, but that his soul remained. (Lactantius, De Opif. xviii.; Instit. Div. vii. 12; La Cerda).
199:1631See his treatise, Against Marcion.
199:1632Rom. i. 20.
199:1633Facies.
199:1634Timæus, pp. 29, 30, 37, 38.
Chapter XIX.—The Intellect Coeval with the Soul in the Human Being. An Example from Aristotle Converted into Evidence Favourable to These Views.
Nor must we fail to notice those writers who deprive the soul of the intellect even for a short period of time. They do this in order to prepare the way of introducing the intellect—and the mind also—at a subsequent time of life, even at the time when intelligence appears in a man. They maintain that the stage of infancy is supported by the soul alone, simply to promote vitality, without any intention of acquiring knowledge also, because not all things have knowledge which possess life. Trees, for instance, to quote Aristotle’s example, 1635 have vitality, but have not knowledge; and with him agrees every one who gives a share to all animated beings of the animal substance, which, according to our view, exists in man alone as his special property,—not because it is the work of God, which all other creatures are likewise, but because it is the breath of God, which this (human soul) alone is, which we say is born with the full equipment of its proper faculties. Well, let them meet us with the example of the trees: we will accept their challenge, (nor shall we find in it any detriment to our own argument;) for it is an undoubted fact, that whilst trees are yet but twigs and sprouts, and before they even reach the sapling stage, there is in them their own proper faculty of life, as soon as they spring out of their native beds. But then, as time goes on, the vigour of the tree slowly advances, as it grows and hardens into its woody trunk, until its mature age completes the condition which nature destines for it. Else what resources would trees possess in due course for the inoculation of grafts, and the formation of leaves, and the swelling of their buds, and the graceful shedding of their blossom, and the softening of their sap, were there not in them the quiet growth of the full provision of their nature, and the distribution of this life over all their branches for the accomplishment of their maturity? Trees, therefore, have ability or knowledge; and they derive it from whence they also derive vitality—that is, from the one source of vitality and knowledge which is peculiar to their nature, and that from the infancy which they, too, begin with. For I observe that even the vine, although yet tender and immature, still understands its own natural business, and strives to cling to some support, that, leaning on it, and lacing through it, 1636 it may so attain its growth. Indeed, without waiting for the husbandman’s training, without an espalier, without a prop, whatever its tendrils catch, it will fondly cling to, 1637 and embrace with really greater tenacity and force by its own inclination than by your volition. It longs and hastens to be secure. Take also ivy-plants, never mind how young: I observe their attempts from the very first to grasp objects above them, and outrunning everything else, to hang on to the highest thing, preferring as they do to spread over walls with their leafy web and woof rather than creep on the ground and be trodden under by every foot that likes to crush them. On the other hand, in the case of such trees as receive injury from contact with a building, how do they hang off as they grow and avoid what injures them! You can see that their branches were naturally meant to take the opposite direction, and can very well understand the vital instincts 1638 of such a tree from its avoidance of the wall. It is contented (if it be only a little shrub) with its own insignificant destiny, which it has in its foreseeing instinct thoroughly been aware of from its infancy, only it still fears even a ruined building. On my side, then, why should I not contend for these wise and sagacious natures of trees? Let them have vitality, as the philosophers permit it; but let them have knowledge too, although the philosophers disavow it. Even the infancy of a log, then, may have an intellect (suitable to it): how much more may that of a human being, whose soul (which may be compared with the nascent sprout of a tree) has been derived from Adam as its root, and has been propagated amongst his posterity by means of woman, to whom it has been entrusted for transmission, and thus has sprouted into life with all its natural apparatus, both of intellect and of sense! I am much mistaken if the human person, even from his infancy, when he saluted life with his infant cries, does not testify to his actual possession of the faculties of sensation and intellect by the fact of his birth, vindicating at one and the same time the use of all his senses—that of seeing by the light, that of hearing by sounds, that of taste by liquids, that of smell by the air, that of touch by the ground. This earliest voice of infancy, then, is the first effort of the senses, and the initial impulse of mental perceptions. 1639 There is also the further fact, that some persons understand this plaintive cry of the infant to be an augury of affliction in the prospect of our tearful life, whereby from the very moment of birth (the soul) has to be regarded as endued with prescience, much more with intelligence. Accordingly by this intuition 1640 the babe knows his mother, discerns the nurse, and even recognises the waiting-maid; refusing the breast of another woman, and the cradle that is not his own, and longing only for the arms to which he is accustomed. Now from what source does he acquire this discernment of novelty and custom, if not from instinctive knowledge? How does it happen that he is irritated and quieted, if not by help of his initial intellect? It would be very strange indeed that infancy were naturally so lively, if it had not mental power; and naturally so capable of impression and affection, if it had no intellect. But (we hold the contrary): for Christ, by “accepting praise out of the mouth of babes and sucklings,” 1641 has declared that neither childhood nor infancy is without sensibility, 1642 —the former of which states, when meeting Him with approving shouts, proved its ability to offer Him testimony; 1643 while the other, by being slaughtered, for His sake of course, knew what violence meant. 1644
Footnotes
199:1635His De Anima, ii. 2, 3.
200:1636Innixa et innexa.
200:1637Amabit.
200:1638Animationem. The possession and use of an “anima.”
200:1639Intellectuam.
200:1640Spiritu. The mental instinct, just mentioned.
200:1641Ps. 8:2, Matt. 21:16.
200:1642Hebetes.
200:1643Matt. xxi. 15.
200:1644Matt. ii. 16-18.
Chapter XX.—The Soul, as to Its Nature Uniform, But Its Faculties Variously Developed. Varieties Only Accidental.
And here, therefore, we draw our conclusion, that all the natural properties of the soul are inherent in it as parts of its substance; and that they grow and develope along with it, from the very moment of its own origin at birth. Just as Seneca says, whom we so often find on our side: 1645 “There are implanted within us the seeds of all the arts and periods of life. And God, our Master, secretly produces our mental dispositions;” that is, from the germs which are implanted and hidden in us by means of infancy, and these are the intellect: for from these our natural dispositions are evolved. Now, even the seeds of plants have, one form in each kind, but their development varies: some open and expand in a healthy and perfect state, while others either improve or degenerate, owing to the conditions of weather and soil, and from the appliance of labour and care; also from the course of the seasons, and from the occurrence of casual circumstances. In like manner, the soul may well be 1646 uniform in its seminal origin, although multiform by the process of nativity. 1647 And here local influences, too, must be taken into account. It has been said that dull and brutish persons are born at Thebes; and the most accomplished in wisdom and speech at Athens, where in the district of Colythus 1648 children speak—such is the precocity of their tongue—before they are a month old. Indeed, Plato himself tells us, in the Timæus, that Minerva, when preparing to found her great city, only regarded the nature of the country which gave promise of mental dispositions of this kind; whence he himself in The Laws instructs Megillus and Clinias to be careful in their selection of a site for building a city. Empedocles, however, places the cause of a subtle or an obtuse intellect in the quality of the blood, from which he derives progress and perfection in learning and science. The subject of national peculiarities has grown by this time into proverbial notoriety. Comic poets deride the Phrygians for their cowardice; Sallust reproaches the Moors for their levity, and the Dalmatians for their cruelty; even the apostle brands the Cretans as “liars.” 1649 Very likely, too, something must be set down to the score of bodily condition and the state of the health. Stoutness hinders knowledge, but a spare form stimulates it; paralysis prostrates the mind, a decline preserves it. How much more will those accidental circumstances have to be noticed, which, in addition to the state of one’s body or one’s health, tend to sharpen or to dull the intellect! It is sharpened by learned pursuits, by the sciences, the arts, by experimental knowledge, business habits, and studies; it is blunted by ignorance, idle habits, inactivity, lust, inexperience, listlessness, and vicious pursuits. Then, besides these influences, there must perhaps 1650 be added the supreme powers. Now these are the supreme powers: according to our (Christian) notions, they are the Lord God and His adversary the devil; but according to men’s general opinion about providence, they are fate and necessity; and about fortune, it is man’s freedom of will. Even the philosophers allow these distinctions; whilst on our part we have already undertaken to treat of them, on the principles of the (Christian) faith, in a separate work. 1651 It is evident how great must be the influences which so variously affect the one nature of the soul, since they are commonly regarded as separate “natures.” Still they are not different species, but casual incidents of one nature and substance—even of that which God conferred on Adam, and made the mould of all (subsequent ones). Casual incidents will they always remain, but never will they become specific differences. However great, too, at present is the variety of men’s maunders, it was not so in Adam, the founder of their race. But all these discordances ought to have existed in him as the fountainhead, and thence to have descended to us in an unimpaired variety, if the variety had been due to nature.
Footnotes
200:1645Sæpe noster.
201:1646Licebit.
201:1647Fetu.
201:1648Tertullian perhaps mentions this “demus” of Athens as the birthplace of Plato (Oehler).
201:1649Tit. i. 12.
201:1650Si et alia.
201:1651Tertullian wrote a work De Fato, which is lost. Fulgentius, p. 561, gives a quotation from it.
Chapter XXI.—As Free-Will Actuates an Individual So May His Character Change.
Now, if the soul possessed this uniform and simple nature from the beginning in Adam, previous to so many mental dispositions (being developed out of it), it is not rendered multiform by such various development, nor by the triple 1652 form predicated of it in “the Valentinian trinity” (that we may still keep the condemnation of that heresy in view), for not even this nature is discoverable in Adam. What had he that was spiritual? Is it because he prophetically declared “the great mystery of Christ and the church?” 1653 “This is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman. Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and he shall cleave unto his wife; and they two shall be one flesh.” 1654 But this (gift of prophecy) only came on him afterwards, when God infused into him the ecstasy, or spiritual quality, in which prophecy consists. If, again, the evil of sin was developed in him, this must not be accounted as a natural disposition: it was rather produced by the instigation of the (old) serpent as far from being incidental to his nature as it was from being material in him, for we have already excluded belief in “Matter.” 1655 Now, if neither the spiritual element, nor what the heretics call the material element, was properly inherent in him (since, if he had been created out of matter, the germ of evil must have been an integral part of his constitution), it remains that the one only original element of his nature was what is called the animal (the principle of vitality, the soul), which we maintain to be simple and uniform in its condition. Concerning this, it remains for us to inquire whether, as being called natural, it ought to be deemed subject to change. (The heretics whom we have referred to) deny that nature is susceptible of any change, 1656 in order that they may be able to establish and settle their threefold theory, or “trinity,” in all its characteristics as to the several natures, because “a good tree cannot produce evil fruit, nor a corrupt tree good fruit; and nobody gathers figs of thorns, nor grapes of brambles.” 1657 If so, then “God will not be able any longer to raise up from the stones children unto Abraham; nor to make a generation of vipers bring forth fruits of repentance.” 1658 And if so, the apostle too was in error when he said in his epistle, “Ye were at one time darkness, (but now are ye light in the Lord:)” 1659 and, “We also were by nature children of wrath;” 1660 and, “Such were some of you, but ye are washed.” 1661 The statements, however, of holy Scripture will never be discordant with truth. A corrupt tree will never yield good fruit, unless the better nature be grafted into it; nor will a good tree produce evil fruit, except by the same process of cultivation. Stones also will become children of Abraham, if educated in Abraham’s faith; and a generation of vipers will bring forth the fruits of penitence, if they reject the poison of their malignant nature. This will be the power of the grace of God, more potent indeed than nature, exercising its sway over the faculty that underlies itself within us—even the freedom of our will, which is described as αὐτεξούσιος (of independent authority); and inasmuch as this faculty is itself also natural and mutable, in whatsoever direction it turns, it inclines of its own nature. Now, that there does exist within us naturally this independent authority (τὸ αὐτεξούσιον ), we have already shown in opposition both to Marcion 1662 and to Hermogenes. 1663 If, then, the natural condition has to be submitted to a definition, it must be determined to be twofold—there being the category of the born and the unborn, the made and not-made. Now that which has received its constitution by being made or by being born, is by nature capable of being changed, for it can be both born again and re-made; whereas that which is not-made and unborn will remain for ever immoveable. Since, however, this state is suited to God alone, as the only Being who is unborn and not-made (and therefore immortal and unchangeable), it is absolutely certain that the nature of all other existences which are born and created is subject to modification and change; so that if the threefold state is to be ascribed to the soul, it must be supposed to arise from the mutability of its accidental circumstances, and not from the appointment of nature.
Footnotes
201:1652i.e., the carnal, the animal, and the spiritual. Comp. Adv. Valentin. xxv., and De Resur. Carnis, lv.
201:1653Eph. v. 32.
201:1654Gen. 2:23, 24.
201:1655See Adv. Hermog. xiii.
202:1656See Adv. Valentin. xxix.
202:1657Luke 6:43, 44.
202:1658Matt. iii. 7-9.
202:1659Eph. v. 8.
202:1660Eph. ii. 3.
202:16611 Cor. vi. 11.
202:1662See our Anti-Marcion, ii. 5–7.
202:1663In his work against this man, entitled De Censu Animæ, not now extant.
Chapter XXII.—Recapitulation. Definition of the Soul.
Hermogenes has already heard from us what are the other natural faculties of the soul, as well as their vindication and proof; whence it may be seen that the soul is rather the offspring of God than of matter. The names of these faculties shall here be simply repeated, that they may not seem to be forgotten and passed out of sight. We have assigned, then, to the soul both that freedom of the will which we just now mentioned, and its dominion over the works of nature, and its occasional gift of divination, independently of that endowment of prophecy which accrues to it expressly from the grace of God. We shall therefore now quit this subject of the soul’s disposition, in order to set out fully in order its various qualities. 1664 The soul, then, we define to be sprung from the breath of God, immortal, possessing body, having form, simple in its substance, intelligent in its own nature, developing its power in various ways, free in its determinations, subject to be changes of accident, in its faculties mutable, rational, supreme, endued with an instinct of presentiment, evolved out of one (archetypal soul). It remains for us now to consider how it is developed out of this one original source; in other words, whence, and when, and how it is produced.
Footnotes
202:1664Tertullian had shown that “the soul is the breath or afflatus of God,” in ch. iv. and xi. above. He demonstrated its “immortality” in ch. ii.–iv., vi., ix., xiv.; and he will repeat his proof hereafter, in ch. xxiv., xxxviii., xlv., li., liii., liv. Moreover, he illustrates the soul’s “corporeity” in ch. v.–viii.; its “endowment with form or figure,” in ch. ix.; its “simplicity in substance” in ch. x. and xi.; its “inherent intelligence,” in ch. xii.; its varied development, in ch. xiii.–xv. The soul’s “rationality,” “supremacy,” and “instinctive divination,” Tertullian treated of in his treatise De Censu Animæ against Hermogenes (as he has said in the text); but he has treated somewhat of the soul’s “rational nature” in the sixteenth chapter above; in the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters he referred to the soul’s “supremacy or hegemony;” whilst we have had a hint about its “divining faculty,” even in infants, in ch. xix. The propagation of souls from the one archetypal soul is the subject of the chapter before us, as well as of the five succeeding ones (La Cerda).
Chapter XXIII.—The Opinions of Sundry Heretics Which Originate Ultimately with Plato.
Some suppose that they came down from heaven, with as firm a belief as they are apt to entertain, when they indulge in the prospect of an undoubted return thither. Saturninus, the disciple of Menander, who belonged to Simon’s sect, introduced this opinion: he affirmed that man was made by angels. A futile, imperfect creation at first, weak and unable to stand, he crawled upon the ground like a worm, because he wanted the strength to maintain an erect posture; but afterwards having, by the compassion of the Supreme Power (in whose image, which had not been fully understood, he was clumsily formed), obtained a slender spark of life, this roused and righted his imperfect form, and animated it with a higher vitality, and provided for its return, on its relinquishment of life, to its original principle. Carpocrates, indeed, claims for himself so extreme an amount of the supernal qualities, that his disciples set their own souls at once on an equality with Christ (not to mention the apostles); and sometimes, when it suits their fancy, even give them the superiority—deeming them, forsooth, to have partaken of that sublime virtue which looks down upon the principalities that govern this world. Apelles tells us that our souls were enticed by earthly baits down from their super-celestial abodes by a fiery angel, Israel’s God and ours, who then enclosed them firmly within our sinful flesh. The hive of Valentinus fortifies the soul with the germ of Sophia, or Wisdom; by means of which germ they recognise, in the images of visible objects, the stories and Milesian fables of their own Æons. I am sorry from my heart that Plato has been the caterer to all these heretics. For in the Phædo he imagines that souls wander from this world to that, and thence back again hither; whilst in the Timæus he supposes that the children of God, to whom had been assigned the production of mortal creatures, having taken for the soul the germ of immortality, congealed around it a mortal body,—thereby indicating that this world is the figure of some other. Now, to procure belief in all this—that the soul had formerly lived with God in the heavens above, sharing His ideas with Him, and afterwards came down to live with us on earth, and whilst here recollects the eternal patterns of things which it had learnt before—he elaborated his new formula, μαθήσεις ἀναμνήσεις, which means that “learning is reminiscence;” implying that the souls which come to us from thence forget the things amongst which they formerly lived, but that they afterwards recall them, instructed by the objects they see around them. Forasmuch, therefore, as the doctrines which the heretics borrow from Plato are cunningly defended by this kind of argument, I shall sufficiently refute the heretics if I overthrow the argument of Plato.
Chapter XXIV.—Plato’s Inconsistency. He Supposes the Soul Self-Existent, Yet Capable of Forgetting What Passed in a Previous State.
In the first place, I cannot allow that the soul is capable of a failure of memory; because he has conceded to it so large an amount of divine quality as to put it on a par with God. He makes it unborn, which single attribute I might apply as a sufficient attestation of its perfect divinity; he then adds that the soul is immortal, incorruptible, incorporeal—since he believed God to be the same—invisible, incapable of delineation, uniform, supreme, rational, and intellectual. What more could he attribute to the soul, if he wanted to call it God? We, however, who allow no appendage to God 1665 (in the sense of equality), by this very fact reckon the soul as very far below God: for we suppose it to be born, and hereby to possess something of a diluted divinity and an attenuated felicity, as the breath (of God), though not His spirit; and although immortal, as this is an attribute of divinity, yet for all that passible, since this is an incident of a born condition, and consequently from the first capable of deviation from perfection and right, 1666 and by consequence susceptible of a failure in memory. This point I have discussed sufficiently with Hermogenes. 1667 But it may be further observed, that if the soul is to merit being accounted a god, by reason of all its qualities being equal to the attributes of God, it must then be subject to no passion, and therefore to no loss of memory; for this defect of oblivion is as great an injury to that of which you predicate it, as memory is the glory thereof, which Plato himself deems the very safeguard of the senses and intellectual faculties, and which Cicero has designated the treasury of all the sciences. Now we need not raise the doubt whether so divine a faculty as the soul was capable of losing memory: the question rather is, whether it is able to recover afresh that which it has lost. I could not decide whether that, which ought to have lost memory, if it once incurred the loss, would be powerful enough to recollect itself. Both alternatives, indeed, will agree very well with my soul, but not with Plato’s. In the second place, my objection to him will stand thus: (Plato,) do you endow the soul with a natural competency for understanding those well-known ideas of yours? Certainly I do, will be your answer. Well, now, no one will concede to you that the knowledge, (which you say is) the gift of nature, of the natural sciences can fail. But the knowledge of the sciences fails; the knowledge of the various fields of learning and of the arts of life fails; and so perhaps the knowledge of the faculties and affections of our minds fails, although they seem to be inherent in our nature, but really are not so: because, as we have already said, 1668 they are affected by accidents of place, of manners and customs, of bodily condition, of the state of man’s health—by the influences of the Supreme Powers, and the changes of man’s free-will. Now the instinctive knowledge of natural objects never fails, not even in the brute creation. The lion, no doubt, will forget his ferocity, if surrounded by the softening influence of training; he may become, with his beautiful mane, the plaything of some Queen Berenice, and lick her cheeks with his tongue. A wild beast may lay aside his habits, but his natural instincts will not be forgotten. He will not forget his proper food, nor his natural resources, nor his natural alarms; and should the queen offer him fishes or cakes, he will wish for flesh; and if, when he is ill, any antidote be prepared for him, he will still require the ape; and should no hunting-spear be presented against him, he will yet dread the crow of the cock. In like manner with man, who is perhaps the most forgetful of all creatures, the knowledge of everything natural to him will remain ineradicably fixed in him,—but this alone, as being alone a natural instinct. He will never forget to eat when he is hungry; or to drink when he is thirsty; or to use his eyes when he wants to see; or his ears, to hear; or his nose, to smell; or his mouth, to taste; or his hand, to touch. These are, to be sure, the senses, which philosophy depreciates by her preference for the intellectual faculties. But if the natural knowledge of the sensuous faculties is permanent, how happens it that the knowledge of the intellectual faculties fails, to which the superiority is ascribed? Whence, now, arises that power of forgetfulness itself which precedes recollection? From long lapse of time, he says. But this is a shortsighted answer. Length of time cannot be incidental to that which, according to him, is unborn, and which therefore must be deemed most certainly eternal. For that which is eternal, on the ground of its being unborn, since it admits neither of beginning nor end of time, is subject to no temporal criterion. And that which time does not measure, undergoes no change in consequence of time; nor is long lapse of time at all influential over it. If time is a cause of oblivion, why, from the time of the soul’s entrance into the body, does memory fail, as if thenceforth the soul were to be affected by time? for the soul, being undoubtedly prior to the body, was of course not irrespective of time. Is it, indeed, immediately on the soul’s entrance into the body that oblivion takes place, or some time afterwards? If immediately, where will be the long lapse of the time which is as yet inadmissible in the hypothesis? 1669 Take, for instance, the case of the infant. If some time afterwards, will not the soul, during the interval previous to the moment of oblivion, still exercise its powers of memory? And how comes it to pass that the soul subsequently forgets, and then afterwards again remembers? How long, too, must the lapse of the time be regarded as having been, during which the oblivion oppressed the soul? The whole course of one’s life, I apprehend, will be insufficient to efface the memory of an age which endured so long before the soul’s assumption of the body. But then, again, Plato throws the blame upon the body, as if it were at all credible that a born substance could extinguish the power of one that is unborn. There exist, however, among bodies a great many differences, by reason of their rationality, their bulk, their condition, their age, and their health. Will there then be supposed to exist similar differences in obliviousness? Oblivion, however, is uniform and identical. Therefore bodily peculiarity, with its manifold varieties, will not become the cause of an effect which is an invariable one. There are likewise, according to Plato’s own testimony, many proofs to show that the soul has a divining faculty, as we have already advanced against Hermogenes. But there is not a man living, who does not himself feel his soul possessed with a presage and augury of some omen, danger, or joy. Now, if the body is not prejudicial to divination, it will not, I suppose, be injurious to memory. One thing is certain, that souls in the same body both forget and remember. If any corporeal condition engenders forgetfulness, how will it admit the opposite state of recollection? Because recollection, after forgetfulness, is actually the resurrection of the memory. Now, how should not that which is hostile to the memory at first, be also prejudicial to it in the second instance? Lastly, who have better memories than little children, with their fresh, unworn souls, not yet immersed in domestic and public cares, but devoted only to those studies the acquirement of which is itself a reminiscence? Why, indeed, do we not all of us recollect in an equal degree, since we are equal in our forgetfulness? But this is true only of philosophers! But not even of the whole of them. Amongst so many nations, in so great a crowd of sages, Plato, to be sure, is the only man who has combined the oblivion and the recollection of ideas. Now, since this main argument of his by no means keeps its ground, it follows that its entire superstructure must fall with it, namely, that souls are supposed to be unborn, and to live in the heavenly regions, and to be instructed in the divine mysteries thereof; moreover, that they descend to this earth, and here recall to memory their previous existence, for the purpose, of course, of supplying to our heretics the fitting materials for their systems.
Footnotes
203:1665Nihil Deo appendimus.
203:1666Exorbitationis.
203:1667In his, now lost, treatise, De Censu Animæ.
204:1668Above, in ch. xix. xx. pp. 200, 201.
204:1669Or, “which has been too short for calculation.”
Chapter XXV.—Tertullian Refutes, Physiologically, the Notion that the Soul is Introduced After Birth.
I shall now return to the cause of this digression, in order that I may explain how all souls are derived from one, when and where and in what manner they are produced. Now, touching this subject, it matters not whether the question be started by the philosopher, by the heretic, or by the crowd. Those who profess the truth care nothing about their opponents, especially such of them as begin by maintaining that the soul is not conceived in the womb, nor is formed and produced at the time that the flesh is moulded, but is impressed from without upon the infant before his complete vitality, but after the process of parturition. They say, moreover, that the human seed having been duly deposited ex concubiterin the womb, and having been by natural impulse quickened, it becomes condensed into the mere substance of the flesh, which is in due time born, warm from the furnace of the womb, and then released from its heat. (This flesh) resembles the case of hot iron, which is in that state plunged into cold water; for, being smitten by the cold air (into which it is born), it at once receives the power of animation, and utters vocal sound. This view is entertained by the Stoics, along with Ænesidemus, and occasionally by Plato himself, when he tells us that the soul, being quite a separate formation, originating elsewhere and externally to the womb, is inhaled 1670 when the new-born infant first draws breath, and by and by exhaled 1671 with the man’s latest breath. We shall see whether this view of his is merely fictitious. Even the medical profession has not lacked its Hicesius, to prove a traitor both to nature and his own calling. These gentlemen, I suppose, were too modest to come to terms with women on the mysteries of childbirth, so well known to the latter. But how much more is there for them to blush at, when in the end they have the women to refute them, instead of commending them. Now, in such a question as this, no one can be so useful a teacher, judge, or witness, as the sex itself which is so intimately concerned. Give us your testimony, then, ye mothers, whether yet pregnant, or after delivery (let barren women and men keep silence),—the truth of your own nature is in question, the reality of your own suffering is the point to be decided. (Tell us, then,) whether you feel in the embryo within you any vital force 1672 other than your own, with which your bowels tremble, your sides shake, your entire womb throbs, and the burden which oppresses you constantly changes its position? Are these movements a joy to you, and a positive removal of anxiety, as making you confident that your infant both possesses vitality and enjoys it? Or, should his restlessness cease, your first fear would be for him; and he would be aware of it within you, since he is disturbed at the novel sound; and you would crave for injurious diet, 1673 or would even loathe your food—all on his account; and then you and he, (in the closeness of your sympathy,) would share together your common ailments—so far that with your contusions and bruises would he actually become marked,—whilst within you, and even on the selfsame parts of the body, taking to himself thus peremptorily 1674 the injuries of his mother! Now, whenever a livid hue and redness are incidents of the blood, the blood will not be without the vital principle, 1675 or soul; or when disease attacks the soul or vitality, (it becomes a proof of its real existence, since) there is no disease where there is no soul or principle of life. Again, inasmuch as sustenance by food, and the want thereof, growth and decay, fear and motion, are conditions of the soul or life, he who experiences them must be alive. And, so, he at last ceases to live, who ceases to experience them. And thus by and by infants are still-born; but how so, unless they had life? For how could any die, who had not previously lived? But sometimes by a cruel necessity, whilst yet in the womb, an infant is put to death, when lying awry in the orifice of the womb he impedes parturition, and kills his mother, if he is not to die himself. Accordingly, among surgeons’ tools there is a certain instrument, which is formed with a nicely-adjusted flexible frame for opening the uterus first of all, and keeping it open; it is further furnished with an annular blade, 1676 by means of which the limbs within the womb are dissected with anxious but unfaltering care; its last appendage being a blunted or covered hook, wherewith the entire fœtus is extracted 1677 by a violent delivery. There is also (another instrument in the shape of) a copper needle or spike, by which the actual death is managed in this furtive robbery of life: they give it, from its infanticide function, the name of ἐμβρυοσφάκτης , the slayer of the infant, which was of course alive. Such apparatus was possessed both by Hippocrates, and Asclepiades, and Erasistratus, and Herophilus, that dissector of even adults, and the milder Soranus himself, who all knew well enough that a living being had been conceived, and pitied this most luckless infant state, which had first to be put to death, to escape being tortured alive. Of the necessity of such harsh treatment I have no doubt even Hicesius was convinced, although he imported their soul into infants after birth from the stroke of the frigid air, because the very term for soul, forsooth, in Greek answered to such a refrigeration! 1678 Well, then, have the barbarian and Roman nations received souls by some other process, (I wonder;) for they have called the soul by another name than ψυχή? How many nations are there who commence life 1679 under the broiling sun of the torrid zone, scorching their skin into its swarthy hue? Whence do they get their souls, with no frosty air to help them? I say not a word of those well-warmed bed-rooms, and all that apparatus of heat which ladies in childbirth so greatly need, when a breath of cold air might endanger their life. But in the very bath almost a babe will slip into life, and at once his cry is heard! If, however, a good frosty air is to the soul so indispensable a treasure, then beyond the German and the Scythian tribes, and the Alpine and the Argæan heights, nobody ought ever to be born! But the fact really is, that population is greater within the temperate regions of the East and the West, and men’s minds are sharper; whilst there is not a Sarmatian whose wits are not dull and humdrum. The minds of men, too, would grow keener by reason of the cold, if their souls came into being amidst nipping frosts; for as the substance is, so must be its active power. Now, after these preliminary statements, we may also refer to the case of those who, having been cut out of their mother’s womb, have breathed and retained life—your Bacchuses 1680 and Scipios. 1681 If, however, there be any one who, like Plato, 1682 supposes that two souls cannot, more than two bodies could, co-exist in the same individual, I, on the contrary, could show him not merely the co-existence of two souls in one person, as also of two bodies in the same womb, but likewise the combination of many other things in natural connection with the soul—for instance, of demoniacal possession; and that not of one only, as in the case of Socrates’ own demon; but of seven spirits as in the case of the Magdalene; 1683 and of a legion in number, as in the Gadarene. 1684 Now one soul is naturally more susceptible of conjunction with another soul, by reason of the identity of their substance, than an evil spirit is, owing to their diverse natures. But when the same philosopher, in the sixth book of The Laws, warns us to beware lest a vitiation of seed should infuse a soil into both body and soul from an illicit or debased concubinage, I hardly know whether he is more inconsistent with himself in respect of one of his previous statements, or of that which he had just made. For he here shows us that the soul proceeds from human seed (and warns us to be on our guard about it), not, (as he had said before,) from the first breath of the new-born child. Pray, whence comes it that from similarity of soul we resemble our parents in disposition, according to the testimony of Cleanthes, 1685 if we are not produced from this seed of the soul? Why, too, used the old astrologers to cast a man’s nativity from his first conception, if his soul also draws not its origin from that moment? To this (nativity) likewise belongs the inbreathing of the soul, whatever that is.
Footnotes
205:1670“Inhaled” is Bp. Kaye’s word for adduci, “taken up.”
205:1671Educi.
205:1672Vivacitas.
205:1673Ciborum vanitates.
205:1674Rapiens.
205:1675Anima.
206:1676Anulocultro. [To be seen in the Museum at Naples.]
206:1677Or, “the whole business (totem facinus) is despatched.”
206:1678So Plato, Cratylus, p. 399, c. 17.
206:1679Censentur.
206:1680Liberi aliqui.
206:1681See Pliny, Natural History, vii. 9.
206:1682See above, ch. x.
206:1683Mark xvi. 9.
206:1684Mark vi. 1-9.
206:1685See above, ch. v.
Chapter XXVI.—Scripture Alone Offers Clear Knowledge on the Questions We Have Been Controverting.
Now there is no end to the uncertainty and irregularity of human opinion, until we come to the limits which God has prescribed. I shall at last retire within our own lines and firmly hold my ground there, for the purpose of proving to the Christian (the soundness of) my answers to the Philosophers and the Physicians. Brother (in Christ), on your own foundation 1686 build up your faith. Consider the wombs of the most sainted women instinct with the life within them, and their babes which not only breathed therein, but were even endowed with prophetic intuition. See how the bowels of Rebecca are disquieted, 1687 though her child-bearing is as yet remote, and there is no impulse of (vital) air. Behold, a twin offspring chafes within the mother’s womb, although she has no sign as yet of the twofold nation. Possibly we might have regarded as a prodigy the contention of this infant progeny, which struggled before it lived, which had animosity previous to animation, if it had simply disturbed the mother by its restlessness within her. But when her womb opens, and the number of her offspring is seen, and their presaged condition known, we have presented to us a proof not merely of the (separate) souls of the infants, but of their hostile struggles too. He who was the first to be born was threatened with detention by him who was anticipated in birth, who was not yet fully brought forth, but whose hand only had been born. Now if he actually imbibed life, and received his soul, in Platonic style, at his first breath; or else, after the Stoic rule, had the earliest taste of animation on touching the frosty air; what was the other about, who was so eagerly looked for, who was still detained within the womb, and was trying to detain (the other) outside? I suppose he had not yet breathed when he seized his brother’s heel; 1688 and was still warm with his mother’s warmth, when he so strongly wished to be the first to quit the womb. What an infant! so emulous, so strong, and already so contentious; and all this, I suppose, because even now full of life! Consider, again, those extraordinary conceptions, which were more wonderful still, of the barren woman and the virgin: these women would only be able to produce imperfect offspring against the course of nature, from the very fact that one of them was too old to bear seed, and the other was pure from the contact of man. If there was to be bearing at all in the case, it was only fitting that they should be born without a soul, (as the philosopher would say,) who had been irregularly conceived. However, even these have life, each of them in his mother’s womb. Elizabeth exults with joy, (for) John had leaped in her womb; 1689 Mary magnifies the Lord, (for) Christ had instigated her within. 1690 The mothers recognise each their own offspring, being moreover each recognised by their infants, which were therefore of course alive, and were not souls merely, but spirits also. Accordingly you read the word of God which was spoken to Jeremiah, “Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee.” 1691 Since God forms us in the womb, He also breathes upon us, as He also did at the first creation, when “the Lord God formed man, and breathed into him the breath of life.” 1692 Nor could God have known man in the womb, except in his entire nature: “And before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee.” 1693 Well, was it then a dead body at that early stage? Certainly not. For “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”
Footnotes
207:1686Of the Scriptures.
207:1687Gen. 25:22, 23.
207:1688Gen. xxv. 26.
207:1689Luke i. 41-45.
207:1690Luke i. 46.
207:1691Jer. i. 5.
207:1692Gen. ii. 7.
207:1693Jer. i. 5.
Chapter XXVII.—Soul and Body Conceived, Formed and Perfected in Element Simultaneously.
How, then, is a living being conceived? Is the substance of both body and soul formed together at one and the same time? Or does one of them precede the other in natural formation? We indeed maintain that both are conceived, and formed, and perfectly simultaneously, as well as born together; and that not a moment’s interval occurs in their conception, so that, a prior place can be assigned to either. 1694 Judge, in fact, of the incidents of man’s earliest existence by those which occur to him at the very last. As death is defined to be nothing else than the separation of body and soul, 1695 life, which is the opposite of death, is susceptible of no other definition than the conjunction of body and soul. If the severance happens at one and the same time to both substances by means of death, so the law of their combination ought to assure us that it occurs simultaneously to the two substances by means of life. Now we allow that life begins with conception, because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does. Thus, then, the processes which act together to produce separation by death, also combine in a simultaneous action to produce life. If we assign priority to (the formation of) one of the natures, and a subsequent time to the other, we shall have further to determine the precise times of the semination, according to the condition and rank of each. And that being so, what time shall we give to the seed of the body, and what to the seed of the soul? Besides, if different periods are to be assigned to the seminations then arising out of this difference in time, we shall also have different substances. 1696 For although we shall allow that there are two kinds of seed—that of the body and that of the soul—we still declare that they are inseparable, and therefore contemporaneous and simultaneous in origin. Now let no one take offence or feel ashamed at an interpretation of the processes of nature which is rendered necessary (by the defence of the truth). Nature should be to us an object of reverence, not of blushes. It is lust, not natural usage, which has brought shame on the intercourse of the sexes. It is the excess, not the normal state, which is immodest and unchaste: the normal condition has received a blessing from God, and is blest by Him: “Be fruitful, and multiply, (and replenish the earth.)” 1697 Excess, however, has He cursed, in adulteries, and wantonness, and chambering. 1698 Well, now, in this usual function of the sexes which brings together the male and the female in their common intercourse, we know that both the soul and the flesh discharge a duty together: the soul supplies desire, the flesh contributes the gratification of it; the soul furnishes the instigation, the flesh affords the realization. The entire man being excited by the one effort of both natures, his seminal substance is discharged, deriving its fluidity from the body, and its warmth from the soul. Now if the soul in Greek is a word which is synonymous with cold, 1699 how does it come to pass that the body grows cold after the soul has quitted it? Indeed (if I run the risk of offending modesty even, in my desire to prove the truth), I cannot help asking, whether we do not, in that very heat of extreme gratification when the generative fluid is ejected, feel that somewhat of our soul has gone from us? And do we not experience a faintness and prostration along with a dimness of sight? This, then, must be the soul-producing seed, which arises at once from the out-drip of the soul, just as that fluid is the body-producing seed which proceeds from the drainage of the flesh. Most true are the examples of the first creation. Adam’s flesh was formed of clay. Now what is clay but an excellent moisture, whence should spring the generating fluid? From the breath of God first came the soul. But what else is the breath of God than the vapour of the spirit, whence should spring that which we breathe out through the generative fluid? Forasmuch, therefore, as these two different and separate substances, the clay and the breath, combined at the first creation in forming the individual man, they then both amalgamated and mixed their proper seminal rudiments in one, and ever afterwards communicated to the human race the normal mode of its propagation, so that even now the two substances, although diverse from each other, flow forth simultaneously in a united channel; and finding their way together into their appointed seed-plot, they fertilize with their combined vigour the human fruit out of their respective natures. And inherent in this human product is his own seed, according to the process which has been ordained for every creature endowed with the functions of generation. Accordingly from the one (primeval) man comes the entire outflow and redundance of men’s souls—nature proving herself true to the commandment of God, “Be fruitful, and multiply.” 1700 For in the very preamble of this one production, “Let us make man,” 1701 man’s whole posterity was declared and described in a plural phrase, “Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea,” etc. 1702 And no wonder: in the seed lies the promise and earnest of the crop.
Footnotes
207:1694Comp. De Resurr. Carnis, xlv.
207:1695So Plato, Phædo, p. 64.
208:1696Materiæ.
208:1697Gen. i. 28.
208:1698Lupanaria.
208:1699See above, c. xxv. p. 206.
208:1700Gen. i. 28.
208:1701Gen. 1.26.
208:1702Gen. 1.26.
Chapter XXVIII.—The Pythagorean Doctrine of Transmigration Sketched and Censured.
What, then, by this time means that ancient saying, mentioned by Plato, 1703 concerning the reciprocal migration of souls; how they remove hence and go thither, and then return hither and pass through life, and then again depart from this life, and afterwards become alive from the dead? Some will have it that this is a saying of Pythagoras; Albinus supposes it to be a divine announcement, perhaps of the Egyptian Mercury. 1704 But there is no divine saying, except of the one true God, by whom the prophets, and the apostles, and Christ Himself declared their grand message. More ancient than Saturn a good deal (by some nine hundred years or so), and even than his grandchildren, is Moses; and he is certainly much more divine, recounting and tracing out, as he does, the course of the human race from the very beginning of the world, indicating the several births (of the fathers of mankind) according to their names and their epochs; giving thus plain proof of the divine character of his work, from its divine authority and word. If, indeed, the sophist of Samos is Plato’s authority for the eternally revolving migration of souls out of a constant alternation of the dead and the living states, then no doubt did the famous Pythagoras, however excellent in other respects, for the purpose of fabricating such an opinion as this, rely on a falsehood, which was not only shameful, but also hazardous. Consider it, you that are ignorant of it, and believe with us. He feigns death, he conceals himself underground, he condemns himself to that endurance for some seven years, during which he learns from his mother, who was his sole accomplice and attendant, what he was to relate for the belief of the world concerning those who had died since his seclusion; 1705 and when he thought that he had succeeded in reducing the frame of his body to the horrid appearance of a dead old man, he comes forth from the place of his concealment and deceit, and pretends to have returned from the dead. Who would hesitate about believing that the man, whom he had supposed to have died, was come back again to life? especially after hearing from him facts about the recently dead, 1706 which he evidently could only have discovered in Hades itself! Thus, that men are made alive after death, is rather an old statement. But what if it be rather a recent one also? The truth does not desire antiquity, nor does falsehood shun novelty. This notable saying I hold to be plainly false, though ennobled by antiquity. How should that not be false, which depends for its evidence on a falsehood?—How can I help believing Pythagoras to be a deceiver, who practises deceit to win my belief? How will he convince me that, before he was Pythagoras, he had been Æthalides, and Euphorbus, and the fisherman Pyrrhus, and Hermotimus, to make us believe that men live again after they have died, when he actually perjured himself afterwards as Pythagoras. In proportion as it would be easier for me to believe that he had returned once to life in his own person, than so often in the person of this man and that, in the same degree has he deceived me in things which are too hard to be credited, because he has played the impostor in matters which might be readily believed. Well, but he recognised the shield of Euphorbus, which had been formerly consecrated at Delphi, and claimed it as his own, and proved his claim by signs which were generally unknown. Now, look again at his subterranean lurking-place, and believe his story, if you can. For, as to the man who devised such a tricksty scheme, to the injury of his health, fraudulently wasting his life, and torturing it for seven years underground, amidst hunger, idleness, and darkness—with a profound disgust for the mighty sky—what reckless effort would he not make, what curious contrivance would he not attempt, to arrive at the discovery of this famous shield? Suppose now, that he found it in some of those hidden researches; suppose that he recovered some slight breath of report which survived the now obsolete tradition; suppose him to have come to the knowledge of it by an inspection which he had bribed the beadle to let him have,—we know very well what are the resources of magic skill for exploring hidden secrets: there are the catabolic spirits, which floor their victims; 1707 and the paredral spirits, which are ever at their side 1708 to haunt them; and the pythonic spirits, which entrance them by their divination and ventriloquistic 1709 arts. For was it not likely that Pherecydes also, the master of our Pythagoras, used to divine, or I would rather say rave and dream, by such arts and contrivances as these? Might not the self-same demon have been in him, who, whilst in Euphorbus, transacted deeds of blood? But lastly, why is it that the man, who proved himself to have been Euphorbus by the evidence of the shield, did not also recognise any of his former Trojan comrades? For they, too, must by this time have recovered life, since men were rising again from the dead.
Footnotes
208:1703Phædo, p. 70.
208:1704[Hermes. See Bacon, De Aug. i. p. 99.]
209:1705De posteris defunctis.
209:1706De posteris defunctis.
209:1707From καταβάλλειν, to knock down.
209:1708From πάρεδος, sitting by one.
209:1709From πυθωνικός, an attribute of Pythius Apollo; this class were sometimes called ἐγγαστρίμυθοι, ventriloquists.
Chapter XXIX.—The Pythagorean Doctrine Refuted by Its Own First Principle, that Living Men are Formed from the Dead.
It is indeed, manifest that dead men are formed from living ones; but it does not follow from that, that living men are formed from dead ones. For from the beginning the living came first in the order of things, and therefore also from the beginning the dead came afterwards in order. But these proceeded from no other source except from the living. The living had their origin in any other source (you please) than in the dead; whilst the dead had no source whence to derive their beginning, except from the living. If, then, from the very first the living came not from the dead, why should they afterwards (be said to) come from the dead? Had that original source, whatever it was, come to an end? Was the form or law thereof a matter for regret? Then why was it preserved in the case of the dead? Does it not follow that, because the dead came from the living at the first, therefore they always came from the living? For either the law which obtained at the beginning must have continued in both of its relations, or else it must have changed in both; so that, if it had become necessary for the living afterwards to proceed from the dead, it would be necessary, in like manner, for the dead also not to proceed from the living. For if a faithful adherence to the institution was not meant to be perpetuated in each respect, then contraries cannot in due alternation continue to be re-formed from contraries. We, too, will on our side adduce against you certain contraries, of the born and the unborn, of vision 1710 and blindness, of youth and old age, of wisdom and folly. Now it does not follow that the unborn proceeds from the born, on the ground that a contrary issues from a contrary; nor, again, that vision proceeds from blindness, because blindness happens to vision; nor, again, that youth revives from old age, because after youth comes the decrepitude of senility; nor that folly 1711 is born with its obtuseness from wisdom, because wisdom may possibly be sometimes sharpened out of folly. Albinus has some fears for his (master and friend) Plato in these points, and labours with much ingenuity to distinguish different kinds of contraries; as if these instances did not as absolutely partake of the nature of contrariety as those which are expounded by him to illustrate his great master’s principle—I mean, life and death. Nor is it, for the matter of that, true that life is restored out of death, because it happens that death succeeds 1712 life.
Footnotes
210:1710Visualitatis.
210:1711Insipientiam. “Imbecility” is the meaning here, though the word takes the more general sense in the next clause.
210:1712Deferatur.
Chapter XXX.—Further Refutation of the Pythagorean Theory. The State of Contemporary Civilisation.
But what must we say in reply to what follows? For, in the first place, if the living come from the dead, just as the dead proceed from the living, then there must always remain unchanged one and the selfsame number of mankind, even the number which originally introduced (human) life. The living preceded the dead, afterwards the dead issued from the living, and then again the living from the dead. Now, since this process was evermore going on with the same persons, therefore they, issuing from the same, must always have remained in number the same. For they who emerged (into life) could never have become more nor fewer than they who disappeared (in death). We find, however, in the records of the Antiquities of Man, 1713 that the human race has progressed with a gradual growth of population, either occupying different portions of the earth as aborigines, or as nomad tribes, or as exiles, or as conquerors—as the Scythians in Parthia, the Temenidæ in Peloponnesus, the Athenians in Asia, the Phrygians in Italy, and the Phœnicians in Africa; or by the more ordinary methods of migration, which they call ἀποικίαι or colonies, for the purpose of throwing off redundant population, disgorging into other abodes their overcrowded masses. The aborigines remain still in their old settlements, and have also enriched other districts with loans of even larger populations. Surely it is obvious enough, if one looks at the whole world, that it is becoming daily better cultivated and more fully peopled than anciently. All places are now accessible, all are well known, all open to commerce; most pleasant farms have obliterated all traces of what were once dreary and dangerous wastes; cultivated fields have subdued forests; flocks and herds have expelled wild beasts; sandy deserts are sown; rocks are planted; marshes are drained; and where once were hardly solitary cottages, there are now large cities. No longer are (savage) islands dreaded, nor their rocky shores feared; everywhere are houses, and inhabitants, and settled government, and civilized life. What most frequently meets our view (and occasions complaint), is our teeming population: our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly supply us from its natural elements; our wants grow more and more keen, and our complaints more bitter in all mouths, whilst Nature fails in affording us her usual sustenance. In very deed, pestilence, and famine, and wars, and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for nations, as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race; and yet, when the hatchet has once felled large masses of men, the world has hitherto never once been alarmed at the sight of a restitution of its dead coming back to life after their millennial exile. 1714 But such a spectacle would have become quite obvious by the balance of mortal loss and vital recovery, if it were true that the dead came back again to life. Why, however, is it after a thousand years, and not at the moment, that this return from death is to take place, when, supposing that the loss is not at once supplied, there must be a risk of an utter extinction, as the failure precedes the compensation? Indeed, this furlough of our present life would be quite disproportioned to the period of a thousand years; so much briefer is it, and on that account so much more easily is its torch extinguished than rekindled. Inasmuch, then, as the period which, on the hypothesis we have discussed, ought to intervene, if the living are to be formed from the dead, has not actually occurred, it will follow that we must not believe that men come back to life from the dead (in the way surmised in this philosophy).
Footnotes
210:1713A probable allusion to Varro’s work, De Antiqq. Rerum Humanarum.
210:1714An allusion to Plato’s notion that, at the end of a thousand years, such a restoration of the dead, took place. See his Phædrus, p. 248, and De Republ. x. p. 614.
Chapter XXXI.—Further Exposure of Transmigration, Its Inextricable Embarrassment.
Again, if this recovery of life from the dead take place at all, individuals must of course resume their own individuality. Therefore the souls which animated each several body must needs have returned separately to their several bodies. Now, whenever two, or three, or five souls are re-enclosed (as they constantly are) in one womb, it will not amount in such cases to life from the dead, because there is not the separate restitution which individuals ought to have; although at this rate, (no doubt,) the law of the primeval creation is signally kept, 1715 by the production still of several souls out of only one! Then, again, if souls depart at different ages of human life, how is it that they come back again at one uniform age? For all men are imbued with an infant soul at their birth. But how happens it that a man who dies in old age returns to life as an infant? If the soul, whilst disembodied, decreases thus by retrogression of its age, how much more reasonable would it be, that it should resume its life with a richer progress in all attainments of life after the lapse of a thousand years! At all events, it should return with the age it had attained at its death, that it might resume the precise life which it had relinquished. But even if, at this rate, they should reappear the same evermore in their revolving cycles, it would be proper for them to bring back with them, if not the selfsame forms of body, at least their original peculiarities of character, taste, and disposition, because it would be hardly possible 1716 for them to be regarded as the same, if they were deficient in those characteristics by means of which their identity should be proved. (You, however, meet me with this question): How can you possibly know, you ask, whether all is not a secret process? may not the work of a thousand years take from you the power of recognition, since they return unknown to you? But I am quite certain that such is not the case, for you yourself present Pythagoras to me as (the restored) Euphorbus. Now look at Euphorbus: he was evidently possessed of a military and warlike soul, as is proved by the very renown of the sacred shields. As for Pythagoras, however, he was such a recluse, and so unwarlike, that he shrank from the military exploits of which Greece was then so full, and preferred to devote himself, in the quiet retreat of Italy, to the study of geometry, and astrology, and music—the very opposite to Euphorbus in taste and disposition. Then, again, the Pyrrhus (whom he represented) spent his time in catching fish; but Pythagoras, on the contrary, would never touch fish, abstaining from even the taste of them as from animal food. Moreover, Æthalides and Hermotimus had included the bean amongst the common esculents at meals, while Pythagoras taught his disciples not even to pass through a plot which was cultivated with beans. I ask, then, how the same souls are resumed, which can offer no proof of their identity, either by their disposition, or habits, or living? And now, after all, (we find that) only four souls are mentioned as recovering life 1717 out of all the multitudes of Greece. But limiting ourselves merely to Greece, as if no transmigrations of souls and resumptions of bodies occurred, and that every day, in every nation, and amongst all ages, ranks, and sexes, how is it that Pythagoras alone experiences these changes into one personality and another? Why should not I too undergo them? Or if it be a privilege monopolized by philosophers—and Greek philosophers only, as if Scythians and Indians had no philosophers—how is it that Epicurus had no recollection that he had been once another man, nor Chrysippus, nor Zeno, nor indeed Plato himself, whom we might perhaps have supposed to have been Nestor, from his honeyed eloquence?
Footnotes
211:1715Signatur. Rigaltius reads “singulatur,” after the Codex Agobard., as meaning, “The single origin of the human race is in principle maintained,” etc.
211:1716Temere.
211:1717Recensentur.
Chapter XXXII.—Empedocles Increased the Absurdity of Pythagoras by Developing the Posthumous Change of Men into Various Animals.
But the fact is, Empedocles, who used to dream that he was a god, and on that account, I suppose, disdained to have it thought that he had ever before been merely some hero, declares in so many words: “I once was Thamnus, and a fish.” Why not rather a melon, seeing that he was such a fool; or a cameleon, for his inflated brag? It was, no doubt, as a fish (and a queer one too!) that he escaped the corruption of some obscure grave, when he preferred being roasted by a plunge into Ætna; after which accomplishment there was an end for ever to his μετενσωμάτωσις or putting himself into another body—(fit only now for) a light dish after the roast-meat. At this point, therefore, we must likewise contend against that still more monstrous presumption, that in the course of the transmigration beasts pass from human beings, and human beings from beasts. Let (Empedocles’) Thamnuses alone. Our slight notice of them in passing will be quite enough: (to dwell on them longer will inconvenience us,) lest we should be obliged to have recourse to raillery and laughter instead of serious instruction. Now our position is this: that the human soul cannot by any means at all be transferred to beasts, even when they are supposed to originate, according to the philosophers, out of the substances of the elements. Now let us suppose that the soul is either fire, or water, or blood, or spirit, or air, or light; we must not forget that all the animals in their several kinds have properties which are opposed to the respective elements. There are the cold animals which are opposed to fire—water-snakes, lizards, salamanders, and what things soever are produced out of the rival element of water. In like manner, those creatures are opposite to water which are in their nature dry and sapless; indeed, locusts, butterflies, and chameleons rejoice in droughts. So, again, such creatures are opposed to blood which have none of its purple hue, such as snails, worms, and most of the fishy tribes. Then opposed to spirit are those creatures which seem to have no respiration, being unfurnished with lungs and windpipes, such as gnats, ants, moths, and minute things of this sort. Opposed, moreover, to air are those creatures which always live under ground and under water, and never imbibe air—things of which you are more acquainted with the existence than with the names. Then opposed to light are those things which are either wholly blind, or possess eyes for the darkness only, such as moles, bats, and owls. These examples (have I adduced), that I might illustrate my subject from clear and palpable natures. But even if I could take in my hand the “atoms” of Epicurus, or if my eye could see the “numbers” of Pythagoras, or if my foot could stumble against the “ideas” of Plato, or if I could lay hold of the “entelechies” of Aristotle, the chances would be, that even in these (impalpable) classes I should find such animals as I must oppose to one another on the ground of their contrariety. For I maintain that, of whichsoever of the before-mentioned natures the human soul is composed, it would not have been possible for it to pass for new forms into animals so contrary to each of the separate natures, and to bestow an origin by its passage on those beings, from which it would have to be excluded and rejected rather than to be admitted and received, by reason of that original contrariety which we have supposed it to possess, 1718 and which commits the bodily substance receiving it to an interminable strife; and then again by reason of the subsequent contrariety, which results from the development inseparable from each several nature. Now it is on quite different conditions 1719 that the soul of man has had assigned to it (in individual bodies 1720 ) its abode, and aliment, and order, and sensation, and affection, and sexual intercourse, and procreation of children; also (on different conditions has it, in individual bodies, received especial) dispositions, as well as duties to fulfil, likings, dislikes, vices, desires, pleasures, maladies, remedies—in short, its own modes of living, its own outlets of death. How, then, shall that (human) soul which cleaves to the earth, and is unable without alarm to survey any great height, or any considerable depth, and which is also fatigued if it mounts many steps, and is suffocated if it is submerged in a fish-pond,—(how, I say, shall a soul which is beset with such weaknesses) mount up at some future stage into the air in an eagle, or plunge into the sea in an eel? How, again, shall it, after being nourished with generous and delicate as well as exquisite viands, feed deliberately on, I will not say husks, but even on thorns, and the wild fare of bitter leaves, and beasts of the dung-hill, and poisonous worms, if it has to migrate into a goat or into a quail?—nay, it may be, feed on carrion, even on human corpses in some bear or lion? But how indeed (shall it stoop to this), when it remembers its own (nature and dignity)? In the same way, you may submit all other instances to this criterion of incongruity, and so save us from lingering over the distinct consideration of each of them in turn. Now, whatever may be the measure and whatever the mode of the human soul, (the question is forced upon us,) what it will do in far larger animals, or in very diminutive ones? It must needs be, that every individual body of whatever size is filled up by the soul, and that the soul is entirely covered by the body. How, therefore, shall a man’s soul fill an elephant? How, likewise, shall it be contracted within a gnat? If it be so enormously extended or contracted, it will no doubt be exposed to peril. And this induces me to ask another question: If the soul is by no means capable of this kind of migration into animals, which are not fitted for its reception, either by the habits of their bodies or the other laws of their being, will it then undergo a change according to the properties of various animals, and be adapted to their life, notwithstanding its contrariety to human life—having, in fact, become contrary to its human self by reason of its utter change? Now the truth is, if it undergoes such a transformation, and loses what it once was, the human soul will not be what it was; and if it ceases to be its former self, the metensomatosis, or adaptation of some other body, comes to nought, and is not of course to be ascribed to the soul which will cease to exist, on the supposition of its complete change. For only then can a soul be said to experience this process of the metensomatosis, when it undergoes it by remaining unchanged in its own (primitive) condition. Since, therefore, the soul does not admit of change, lest it should cease to retain its identity; and yet is unable to remain unchanged in its original state, because it fails then to receive contrary (bodies),—I still want to know some credible reason to justify such a transformation as we are discussing. For although some men are compared to the beasts because of their character, disposition, and pursuits (since even God says, “Man is like the beasts that perish” 1721 ), it does not on this account follow that rapacious persons become kites, lewd persons dogs, ill-tempered ones panthers, good men sheep, talkative ones swallows, and chaste men doves, as if the selfsame substance of the soul everywhere repeated its own nature in the properties of the animals (into which it passed). Besides, a substance is one thing, and the nature of that substance is another thing; inasmuch as the substance is the special property of one given thing, whereas the nature thereof may possibly belong to many things. Take an example or two. A stone or a piece of iron is the substance: the hardness of the stone and the iron is the nature of the substance. Their hardness combines objects by a common quality; their substances keep them separate. Then, again, there is softness in wool, and softness in a feather: their natural qualities are alike, (and put them on a par;) their substantial qualities are not alike, (and keep them distinct.) Thus, if a man likewise be designated a wild beast or a harmless one, there is not for all that an identity of soul. Now the similarity of nature is even then observed, when dissimilarity of substance is most conspicuous: for, by the very fact of your judging that a man resembles a beast, you confess that their soul is not identical; for you say that they resemble each other, not that they are the same. This is also the meaning of the word of God (which we have just quoted): it likens man to the beasts in nature, but not in substance. Besides, God would not have actually made such a comment as this concerning man, if He had known him to be in substance only bestial.
Footnotes
212:1718Hujus.
212:1719Alias.
212:1720This is the force of the objective nouns, which are all put in the plural form.
213:1721Ps. xlix. 20.
Chapter XXXIII.—The Judicial Retribution of These Migrations Refuted with Raillery.
Forasmuch as this doctrine is vindicated even on the principle of judicial retribution, on the pretence that the souls of men obtain as their partners the kind of animals which are suited to their life and deserts,—as if they ought to be, according to their several characters, either slain in criminals destined to execution, or reduced to hard work in menials, or fatigued and wearied in labourers, or foully disgraced in the unclean; or, again, on the same principle, reserved for honour, and love, and care, and attentive regard in characters most eminent in rank and virtue, usefulness, and tender sensibility,—I must here also remark, that if souls undergo a transformation, they will actually not be able to accomplish and experience the destinies which they shall deserve; and the aim and purpose of judicial recompense will be brought to nought, as there will be wanting the sense and consciousness of merit and retribution. And there must be this want of consciousness, if souls lose their condition; and there must ensue this loss, if they do not continue in one stay. But even if they should have permanency enough to remain unchanged until the judgment,—a point which Mercurius Ægyptius recognised, when he said that the soul, after its separation from the body, was not dissipated back into the soul of the universe, but retained permanently its distinct individuality, “in order that it might render,” to use his own words, “an account to the Father of those things which it has done in the body;” —(even supposing all this, I say,) I still want to examine the justice, the solemnity, the majesty, and the dignity of this reputed judgment of God, and see whether human judgment has not too elevated a throne in it—exaggerated in both directions, in its office both of punishments and rewards, too severe in dealing out its vengeance, and too lavish in bestowing its favour. What do you suppose will become of the soul of the murderer? (It will animate), I suppose, some cattle destined for the slaughter-house and the shambles, that it may itself be killed, even as it has killed; and be itself flayed, since it has fleeced others; and be itself used for food, since it has cast to the wild beasts the ill-fated victims whom it once slew in woods and lonely roads. Now, if such be the judicial retribution which it is to receive, is not such a soul likely to find more of consolation than of punishment, in the fact that it receives its coup de grâce from the hands of most expert practitioners—is buried with condiments served in the most piquant styles of an Apicius or a Lurco, is introduced to the tables of your exquisite Ciceros, is brought up on the most splendid dishes of a Sylla, finds its obsequies in a banquet, is devoured by respectable (mouths) on a par with itself, rather than by kites and wolves, so that all may see how it has got a man’s body for its tomb, and has risen again after returning to its own kindred race—exulting in the face of human judgments, if it has experienced them? For these barbarous sentences of death consign to various wild beasts, which are selected and trained even against their nature for their horrible office the criminal who has committed murder, even while yet alive; nay, hindered from too easily dying, by a contrivance which retards his last moment in order to aggravate his punishment. But even if his soul should have anticipated by its departure the sword’s last stroke, his body at all events must not escape the weapon: retribution for his own crime is yet exacted by stabbing his throat and stomach, and piercing his side. After that he is flung into the fire, that his very grave may be cheated. 1722 In no other way, indeed, is a sepulture allowed him. Not that any great care, after all, is bestowed on his pyre, so that other animals light upon his remains. At any rate, no mercy is shown to his bones, no indulgence to his ashes, which must be punished with exposure and nakedness. The vengeance which is inflicted among men upon the homicide is really as great as that which is imposed by nature. Who would not prefer the justice of the world, which, as the apostle himself testifies, “beareth not the sword in vain,” 1723 and which is an institute of religion when it severely avenges in defence of human life? When we contemplate, too, the penalties awarded to other crimes—gibbets, and holocausts, and sacks, and harpoons, and precipices—who would not think it better to receive his sentence in the courts of Pythagoras and Empedocles? For even the wretches whom they will send into the bodies of asses and mules to be punished by drudgery and slavery, how will they congratulate themselves on the mild labour of the mill and the water-wheel, when they recollect the mines, and the convict-gangs, and the public works, and even the prisons and black-holes, terrible in their idle, do-nothing routine? Then, again, in the case of those who, after a course of integrity, have surrendered their life to the Judge, I likewise look for rewards, but I rather discover punishments. To be sure, it must be a handsome gain for good men to be restored to life in any animals whatsoever! Homer, so dreamt Ennius, remembered that he was once a peacock; however, I cannot for my part believe poets, even when wide awake. A peacock, no doubt, is a very pretty bird, pluming itself, at will, on its splendid feathers; but then its wings do not make amends for its voice, which is harsh and unpleasant; and there is nothing that poets like better than a good song. His transformation, therefore, into a peacock was to Homer a penalty, not an honour. The world’s remuneration will bring him a much greater joy, when it lauds him as the father of the liberal sciences; and he will prefer the ornaments of his fame to the graces of his tail! But never mind! let poets migrate into peacocks, or into swans, if you like, especially as swans have a respectable voice: in what animal will you invest that righteous hero Æacus? In what beast will you clothe the chaste and excellent Dido? What bird shall fall to the lot of Patience? what animal to the lot of Holiness? what fish to that of Innocence? Now all creatures are the servants of man; all are his subjects, all his dependants. If by and by he is to become one of these creatures, he is by such a change debased and degraded, he to whom, for his virtues, images, statues, and titles are freely awarded as public honours and distinguished privileges, he to whom the senate and the people vote even sacrifices! Oh, what judicial sentences for gods to pronounce, as men’s recompense after death! They are more mendacious than any human judgments; they are contemptible as punishments, disgusting as rewards; such as the worst of men could never fear, nor the best desire; such indeed, as criminals will aspire to, rather than saints,—the former, that they may escape more speedily the world’s stern sentence,—the latter that they may more tardily incur it. How well, (forsooth), O ye philosophers do you teach us, and how usefully do you advise us, that after death rewards and punishments fall with lighter weight! whereas, if any judgment awaits souls at all, it ought rather to be supposed that it will be heavier at the conclusion of life than in the conduct 1724 thereof, since nothing is more complete than that which comes at the very last—nothing, moreover, is more complete than that which is especially divine. Accordingly, God’s judgment will be more full and complete, because it will be pronounced at the very last, in an eternal irrevocable sentence, both of punishment and of consolation, (on men whose) souls are not to transmigrate into beasts, but are to return into their own proper bodies. And all this once for all, and on “that day, too, of which the Father only knoweth;” 1725 (only knoweth,) in order that by her trembling expectation faith may make full trial of her anxious sincerity, keeping her gaze ever fixed on that day, in her perpetual ignorance of it, daily fearing that for which she yet daily hopes.
Footnotes
214:1722Or, “that he may be punished even in his sepulture.”
214:1723Rom. xiii. 4.
215:1724In administratione.
215:1725Mark xiii. 32.
Chapter XXXIV.—These Vagaries Stimulated Some Profane Corruptions of Christianity. The Profanity of Simon Magus Condemned.
No tenet, indeed, under cover of any heresy has as yet burst upon us, embodying any such extravagant fiction as that the souls of human beings pass into the bodies of wild beasts; but yet we have deemed it necessary to attack and refute this conceit, as a consistent sequel to the preceding opinions, in order that Homer in the peacock might be got rid of as effectually as Pythagoras in Euphorbus; and in order that, by the demolition of the metempsychosis and metensomatosis by the same blow, the ground might be cut away which has furnished no inconsiderable support to our heretics. There is the (infamous) Simon of Samaria in the Acts of the Apostles, who chaffered for the Holy Ghost: after his condemnation by Him, and a vain remorse that he and his money must perish together, 1726 he applied his energies to the destruction of the truth, as if to console himself with revenge. Besides the support with which his own magic arts furnished him, he had recourse to imposture, and purchased a Tyrian woman of the name of Helen out of a brothel, with the same money which he had offered for the Holy Spirit,—a traffic worthy of the wretched man. He actually feigned himself to be the Supreme Father, and further pretended that the woman was his own primary conception, wherewith he had purposed the creation of the angels and the archangels; that after she was possessed of this purpose she sprang forth from the Father and descended to the lower spaces, and there anticipating the Father’s design had produced the angelic powers, which knew nothing of the Father, the Creator of this world; that she was detained a prisoner by these from a (rebellious) motive very like her own, lest after her departure from them they should appear to be the offspring of another being; and that, after being on this account exposed to every insult, to prevent her leaving them anywhere after her dishonour, she was degraded even to the form of man, to be confined, as it were, in the bonds of the flesh. Having during many ages wallowed about in one female shape and another, she became the notorious Helen who was so ruinous to Priam, and afterwards to the eyes of Stesichorus, whom, she blinded in revenge for his lampoons, and then restored to sight to reward him for his eulogies. After wandering about in this way from body to body, she, in her final disgrace, turned out a viler Helen still as a professional prostitute. This wench, therefore, was the lost sheep, upon whom the Supreme Father, even Simon, descended, who, after he had recovered her and brought her back—whether on his shoulders or loins I cannot tell—cast an eye on the salvation of man, in order to gratify his spleen by liberating them from the angelic powers. Moreover, to deceive these he also himself assumed a visible shape; and feigning the appearance of a man amongst men, he acted the part of the Son in Judea, and of the Father in Samaria. O hapless Helen, what a hard fate is yours between the poets and the heretics, who have blackened your fame sometimes with adultery, sometimes with prostitution! Only her rescue from Troy is a more glorious affair than her extrication from the brothel. There were a thousand ships to remove her from Troy; a thousand pence were probably more than enough to withdraw her from the stews. Fie on you, Simon, to be so tardy in seeking her out, and so inconstant in ransoming her! How different from Menelaus! As soon as he has lost her, he goes in pursuit of her; she is no sooner ravished than he begins his search; after a ten years’ conflict he boldly rescues her: there is no lurking, no deceiving, no cavilling. I am really afraid that he was a much better “Father,” who laboured so much more vigilantly, bravely, and perseveringly, about the recovery of his Helen.
Footnotes
215:1726Acts viii. 18-21. [Vol. I. pp. 171, 182, 193, 347.]
Chapter XXXV.—The Opinions of Carpocrates, Another Offset from the Pythagorean Dogmas, Stated and Confuted.
However, it is not for you alone, (Simon), that the transmigration philosophy has fabricated this story. Carpocrates also makes equally good use of it, who was a magician and a fornicator like yourself, only he had not a Helen. 1727 And why should he not? since he asserted that souls are reinvested with bodies, in order to ensure the overthrow by all means of divine and human truth. For, (according to his miserable doctrine,) this life became consummated to no man until all those blemishes which are held to disfigure it have been fully displayed in its conduct; because there is nothing which is accounted evil by nature, but simply as men think of it. The transmigration of human souls, therefore, into any kind of heterogeneous bodies, he thought by all means indispensable, whenever any depravity whatever had not been fully perpetrated in the early stage of life’s passage. Evil deeds (one may be sure) appertain to life. Moreover, as often as the soul has fallen short as a defaulter in sin, it has to be recalled to existence, until it “pays the utmost farthing,” 1728 thrust out from time to time into the prison of the body. To this effect does he tamper with the whole of that allegory of the Lord which is extremely clear and simple in its meaning, and ought to be from the first understood in its plain and natural sense. Thus our “adversary” (therein mentioned 1729 ) is the heathen man, who is walking with us along the same road of life which is common to him and ourselves. Now “we must needs go out of the world,” 1730 if it be not allowed us to have conversation with them. He bids us, therefore, show a kindly disposition to such a man. “Love your enemies,” says He, “pray for them that curse you,” 1731 lest such a man in any transaction of business be irritated by any unjust conduct of yours, and “deliver thee to the judge” of his own (nation 1732 ), and you be thrown into prison, and be detained in its close and narrow cell until you have liquidated all your debt against him. 1733 Then, again, should you be disposed to apply the term “adversary” to the devil, you are advised by the (Lord’s) injunction, “while you are in the way with him,” to make even with him such a compact as may be deemed compatible with the requirements of your true faith. Now the compact you have made respecting him is to renounce him, and his pomp, and his angels. Such is your agreement in this matter. Now the friendly understanding you will have to carry out must arise from your observance of the compact: you must never think of getting back any of the things which you have abjured, and have restored to him, lest he should summon you as a fraudulent man, and a transgressor of your agreement, before God the Judge (for in this light do we read of him, in another passage, as “the accuser of the brethren,” 1734 or saints, where reference is made to the actual practice of legal prosecution); and lest this Judge deliver you over to the angel who is to execute the sentence, and he commit you to the prison of hell, out of which there will be no dismissal until the smallest even of your delinquencies be paid off in the period before the resurrection. 1735 What can be a more fitting sense than this? What a truer interpretation? If, however, according to Carpocrates, the soul is bound to the commission of all sorts of crime and evil conduct, what must we from his system understand to be its “adversary” and foe? I suppose it must be that better mind which shall compel it by force to the performance of some act of virtue, that it may be driven from body to body, until it be found in none a debtor to the claims of a virtuous life. This means, that a good tree is known by its bad fruit—in other words, that the doctrine of truth is understood from the worst possible precepts. I apprehend 1736 that heretics of this school seize with especial avidity the example of Elias, whom they assume to have been so reproduced in John (the Baptist) as to make our Lord’s statement sponsor for their theory of transmigration, when He said, “Elias is come already, and they knew him not;” 1737 and again, in another passage, “And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.” 1738 Well, then, was it really in a Pythagorean sense that the Jews approached John with the inquiry, “Art thou Elias?” 1739 and not rather in the sense of the divine prediction, “Behold, I will send you Elijah” the Tisbite? 1740 The fact, however, is, that their metempsychosis, or transmigration theory, signifies the recall of the soul which had died long before, and its return to some other body. But Elias is to come again, not after quitting life (in the way of dying), but after his translation (or removal without dying); not for the purpose of being restored to the body, from which he had not departed, but for the purpose of revisiting the world from which he was translated; not by way of resuming a life which he had laid aside, but of fulfilling prophecy,—really and truly the same man, both in respect of his name and designation, as well as of his unchanged humanity. How, therefore could John be Elias? You have your answer in the angel’s announcement: “And he shall go before the people,” says he, “in the spirit and power of Elias”—not (observe) in his soul and his body. These substances are, in fact, the natural property of each individual; whilst “the spirit and power” are bestowed as external gifts by the grace of God and so may be transferred to another person according to the purpose and will of the Almighty, as was anciently the case with respect to the spirit of Moses. 1741
Footnotes
216:1727For Carpocrates, see Irenæus, i. 24; Eusebius, H. E. iv. 7; Epiphan. Hær. 27.
216:1728Matt. v. 26.
216:1729Mar. 5.25.
216:17301 Cor. v. 10.
216:1731Luke vi. 27.
216:1732Matt. v. 25.
216:1733Matt. 5.26.
216:1734Rev. xii. 10.
216:1735Morâ resurrectionis. For the force of this phrase, as apparently implying a doctrine of purgatory, and an explanation of Tertullian’s teaching on this point, see Bp. Kaye on Tertullian, pp. 328, 329. [See p. 59, supra.]
216:1736Spero.
216:1737Matt. xvii. 12.
216:1738Matt. xi. 14.
216:1739John i. 21.
217:1740Mal. iv. 5.
217:1741Num. xii. 2.
Chapter XXXVI.—The Main Points of Our Author’s Subject. On the Sexes of the Human Race.
For the discussion of these questions we abandoned, if I remember rightly, ground to which we must now return. We had established the position that the soul is seminally placed in man, and by human agency, and that its seed from the very beginning is uniform, as is that of the soul also, to the race of man; (and this we settled) owing to the rival opinions of the philosophers and the heretics, and that ancient saying mentioned by Plato (to which we referred above). 1742 We now pursue in their order the points which follow from them. The soul, being sown in the womb at the same time as the body, receives likewise along with it its sex; and this indeed so simultaneously, that neither of the two substances can be alone regarded as the cause of the sex. Now, if in the semination of these substances any interval were admissible in their conception, in such wise that either the flesh or the soul should be the first to be conceived, one might then ascribe an especial sex to one of the substances, owing to the difference in the time of the impregnations, so that either the flesh would impress its sex upon the soul, or the soul upon the sex; even as Apelles (the heretic, not the painter 1743 ) gives the priority over their bodies to the souls of men and women, as he had been taught by Philumena, and in consequence makes the flesh, as the later, receive its sex from the soul. They also who make the soul supervene after birth on the flesh predetermine, of course, the sex of the previously formed soul to be male or female, according to (the sex of) the flesh. But the truth is, the seminations of the two substances are inseparable in point of time, and their effusion is also one and the same, in consequence of which a community of gender is secured to them; so that the course of nature, whatever that be, shall draw the line (for the distinct sexes). Certainly in this view we have an attestation of the method of the first two formations, when the male was moulded and tempered in a completer way, for Adam was first formed; and the woman came far behind him, for Eve was the later formed. So that her flesh was for a long time without specific form (such as she afterwards assumed when taken out of Adam’s side); but she was even then herself a living being, because I should regard her at that time in soul as even a portion of Adam. Besides, God’s afflatus would have animated her too, if there had not been in the woman a transmission from Adam of his soul also as well as of his flesh.
Footnotes
217:1742In ch. xxviii. at the beginning.
217:1743See above, ch. xxiii. [Also p. 246, infra.]
Chapter XXXVII.—On the Formation and State of the Embryo. Its Relation with the Subject of This Treatise.
Now the entire process of sowing, forming, and completing the human embryo in the womb is no doubt regulated by some power, which ministers herein to the will of God, whatever may be the method which it is appointed to employ. Even the superstition of Rome, by carefully attending to these points, imagined the goddess Alemona to nourish the fœtus in the womb; as well as (the goddesses) Nona and Decima, called after the most critical months of gestation; and Partula, to manage and direct parturition; and Lucina, to bring the child to the birth and light of day. We, on our part, believe the angels to officiate herein for God. The embryo therefore becomes a human being in the womb from the moment that its form is completed. The law of Moses, indeed, punishes with due penalties the man who shall cause abortion, inasmuch as there exists already the rudiment of a human being, 1744 which has imputed to it even now the condition of life and death, since it is already liable to the issues of both, although, by living still in the mother, it for the most part shares its own state with the mother. I must also say something about the period of the soul’s birth, that I may omit nothing incidental in the whole process. A mature and regular birth takes place, as a general rule, at the commencement of the tenth month. They who theorize respecting numbers, honour the number ten as the parent of all the others, and as imparting perfection to the human nativity. For my own part, I prefer viewing this measure of time in reference to God, as if implying that the ten months rather initiated man into the ten commandments; so that the numerical estimate of the time needed to consummate our natural birth should correspond to the numerical classification of the rules of our regenerate life. But inasmuch as birth is also completed with the seventh month, I more readily recognize in this number than in the eighth the honour of a numerical agreement with the sabbatical period; so that the month in which God’s image is sometimes produced in a human birth, shall in its number tally with the day on which God’s creation was completed and hallowed. Human nativity has sometimes been allowed to be premature, and yet to occur in fit and perfect accordance with an hebdomad or sevenfold number, as an auspice of our resurrection, and rest, and kingdom. The ogdoad, or eightfold number, therefore, is not concerned in our formation; 1745 for in the time it represents there will be no more marriage. 1746 We have already demonstrated the conjunction of the body and the soul, from the concretion of their very seminations to the complete formation of the fœtus. We now maintain their conjunction likewise from the birth onwards; in the first place, because they both grow together, only each in a different manner suited to the diversity of their nature—the flesh in magnitude, the soul in intelligence—the flesh in material condition, the soul in sensibility. We are, however, forbidden to suppose that the soul increases in substance, lest it should be said also to be capable of diminution in substance, and so its extinction even should be believed to be possible; but its inherent power, in which are contained all its natural peculiarities, as originally implanted in its being, is gradually developed along with the flesh, without impairing the germinal basis of the substance, which it received when breathed at first into man. Take a certain quantity of gold or of silver—a rough mass as yet: it has indeed a compact condition, and one that is more compressed at the moment than it will be; yet it contains within its contour what is throughout a mass of gold or of silver. When this mass is afterwards extended by beating it into leaf, it becomes larger than it was before by the elongation of the original mass, but not by any addition thereto, because it is extended in space, not increased in bulk; although in a way it is even increased when it is extended: for it may be increased in form, but not in state. Then, again, the sheen of the gold or the silver, which when the metal was any in block was inherent in it no doubt really, but yet only obscurely, shines out in developed lustre. Afterwards various modifications of shape accrue, according to the feasibility in the material which makes it yield to the manipulation of the artisan, who yet adds nothing to the condition of the mass but its configuration. In like manner, the growth and developments of the soul are to be estimated, not as enlarging its substance, but as calling forth its powers.
Footnotes
217:1744Causa hominis.
218:1745The ogdoad, or number eight, mystically representing “heaven,” where they do not marry.
218:1746Beyond the hebdomad comes the resurrection, on which see Matt. xxii. 30.
Chapter XXXVIII.—On the Growth of the Soul. Its Maturity Coincident with the Maturity of the Flesh in Man.
Now we have already 1747 laid down the principle, that all the natural properties of the soul which relate to sense and intelligence are inherent in its very substance, and spring from its native constitution, but that they advance by a gradual growth through the stages of life and develope themselves in different ways by accidental circumstances, according to men’s means and arts, their manners and customs their local situations, and the influences of the Supreme Powers; 1748 but in pursuance of that aspect of the association of body and soul which we have now to consider, we maintain that the puberty of the soul coincides with that of the body, and that they attain both together to this full growth at about the fourteenth year of life, speaking generally,—the former by the suggestion of the senses, and the latter by the growth of the bodily members; and (we fix on this age) not because, as Asclepiades supposes, reflection then begins, nor because the civil laws date the commencement of the real business of life from this period, but because this was the appointed order from the very first. For as Adam and Eve felt that they must cover their nakedness after their knowledge of good and evil so we profess to have the same discernment of good and evil from the time that we experience the same sensation of shame. Now from the before-mentioned age (of fourteen years) sex is suffused and clothed with an especial sensibility, and concupiscence employs the ministry of the eye, and communicates its pleasure to another, and understands the natural relations between male and female, and wears the fig-tree apron to cover the shame which it still excites, and drives man out of the paradise of innocence and chastity, and in its wild pruriency falls upon sins and unnatural incentives to delinquency; for its impulse has by this time surpassed the appointment of nature, and springs from its vicious abuse. But the strictly natural concupiscence is simply confined to the desire of those aliments which God at the beginning conferred upon man. “Of every tree of the garden” He says, “ye shall freely eat;” 1749 and then again to the generation which followed next after the flood He enlarged the grant: “Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; behold, as the green herb have I given you all these things,” 1750 —where He has regard rather to the body than to the soul, although it be in the interest of the soul also. For we must remove all occasion from the caviller, who, because the soul apparently wants ailments, would insist on the soul’s being from this circumstance deemed mortal, since it is sustained by meat and drink and after a time loses its rigour when they are withheld, and on their complete removal ultimately droops and dies. Now the point we must keep in view is not merely which particular faculty it is which desires these (aliments), but also for what end; and even if it be for its own sake, still the question remains, Why this desire, and when felt, and how long? Then again there is the consideration, that it is one thing to desire by natural instinct, and another thing to desire through necessity; one thing to desire as a property of being, another thing to desire for a special object. The soul, therefore, will desire meat and drink—for itself indeed, because of a special necessity; for the flesh, however, from the nature of its properties. For the flesh is no doubt the house of the soul, and the soul is the temporary inhabitant of the flesh. The desire, then, of the lodger will arise from the temporary cause and the special necessity which his very designation suggests,—with a view to benefit and improve the place of his temporary abode, while sojourning in it; not with the view, certainly, of being himself the foundation of the house, or himself its walls, or himself its support and roof, but simply and solely with the view of being accommodated and housed, since he could not receive such accommodation except in a sound and well-built house. (Now, applying this imagery to the soul,) if it be not provided with this accommodation, it will not be in its power to quit its dwelling-place, and for want of fit and proper resources, to depart safe and sound, in possession, too, of its own supports, and the aliments which belong to its own proper condition,—namely immortality, rationality, sensibility, intelligence, and freedom of the will.
Footnotes
218:1747See above, in ch. xx.
218:1748See above, in ch. xxiv.
219:1749Gen. ii. 16.
219:1750Gen. ix. 3.
Chapter XXXIX.—The Evil Spirit Has Marred the Purity of the Soul from the Very Birth.
All these endowments of the soul which are bestowed on it at birth are still obscured and depraved by the malignant being who, in the beginning, regarded them with envious eye, so that they are never seen in their spontaneous action, nor are they administered as they ought to be. For to what individual of the human race will not the evil spirit cleave, ready to entrap their souls from the very portal of their birth, at which he is invited to be present in all those superstitious processes which accompany childbearing? Thus it comes to pass that all men are brought to the birth with idolatry for the midwife, whilst the very wombs that bear them, still bound with the fillets that have been wreathed before the idols, declare their offspring to be consecrated to demons: for in parturition they invoke the aid of Lucina and Diana; for a whole week a table is spread in honour of Juno; on the last day the fates of the horoscope 1751 are invoked; and then the infant’s first step on the ground is sacred to the goddess Statina. After this does any one fail to devote to idolatrous service the entire head of his son, or to take out a hair, or to shave off the whole with a razor, or to bind it up for an offering, or seal it for sacred use—in behalf of the clan, of the ancestry, or for public devotion? On this principle of early possession it was that Socrates, while yet a boy, was found by the spirit of the demon. Thus, too, is it that to all persons their genii are assigned, which is only another name for demons. Hence in no case (I mean of the heathen, of course) is there any nativity which is pure of idolatrous superstition. It was from this circumstance that the apostle said, that when either of the parents was sanctified, the children were holy; 1752 and this as much by the prerogative of the (Christian) seed as by the discipline of the institution (by baptism, and Christian education). “Else,” says he, “were the children unclean” by birth: 1753 as if he meant us to understand that the children of believers were designed for holiness, and thereby for salvation; in order that he might by the pledge of such a hope give his support to matrimony, which he had determined to maintain in its integrity. Besides, he had certainly not forgotten what the Lord had so definitively stated: “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God;” 1754 in other words, he cannot be holy.
Footnotes
219:1751Fata Scribunda.
220:17521 Cor. vii. 14.
220:17531 Cor. vii. 14.
220:1754John iii. 5.
Chapter XL.—The Body of Man Only Ancillary to the Soul in the Commission of Evil.
Every soul, then, by reason of its birth, has its nature in Adam until it is born again in Christ; moreover, it is unclean all the while that it remains without this regeneration; 1755 and because unclean, it is actively sinful, and suffuses even the flesh (by reason of their conjunction) with its own shame. Now although the flesh is sinful, and we are forbidden to walk in accordance with it, 1756 and its works are condemned as lusting against the spirit, 1757 and men on its account are censured as carnal, 1758 yet the flesh has not such ignominy on its own account. For it is not of itself that it thinks anything or feels anything for the purpose of advising or commanding sin. How should it, indeed? It is only a ministering thing, and its ministration is not like that of a servant or familiar friend—animated and human beings; but rather that of a vessel, or something of that kind: it is body, not soul. Now a cup may minister to a thirsty man; and yet, if the thirsty man will not apply the cup to his mouth, the cup will yield no ministering service. Therefore the differentia, or distinguishing property, of man by no means lies in his earthy element; nor is the flesh the human person, as being some faculty of his soul, and a personal quality; but it is a thing of quite a different substance and different condition, although annexed to the soul as a chattel or as an instrument for the offices of life. Accordingly the flesh is blamed in the Scriptures, because nothing is done by the soul without the flesh in operations of concupiscence, appetite, drunkenness, cruelty, idolatry, and other works of the flesh,—operations, I mean, which are not confined to sensations, but result in effects. The emotions of sin, indeed, when not resulting in effects, are usually imputed to the soul: “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after, hath already in his heart committed adultery with her.” 1759 But what has the flesh alone, without the soul, ever done in operations of virtue, righteousness, endurance, or chastity? What absurdity, however, it is to attribute sin and crime to that substance to which you do not assign any good actions or character of its own! Now the party which aids in the commission of a crime is brought to trial, only in such a way that the principal offender who actually committed the crime may bear the weight of the penalty, although the abettor too does not escape indictment. Greater is the odium which falls on the principal, when his officials are punished through his fault. He is beaten with more stripes who instigates and orders the crime, whilst at the same time he who obeys such an evil command is not acquitted.
Footnotes
220:1755Rom. vi. 4.
220:1756Gal. v. 16.
220:1757Gal. 5.17.
220:1758Rom. viii. 5.
220:1759Matt. v. 28.
Chapter XLI.—Notwithstanding the Depravity of Man’s Soul by Original Sin, There is Yet Left a Basis Whereon Divine Grace Can Work for Its Recovery by Spiritual Regeneration.
There is, then, besides the evil which supervenes on the soul from the intervention of the evil spirit, an antecedent, and in a certain sense natural, evil which arises from its corrupt origin. For, as we have said before, the corruption of our nature is another nature having a god and father of its own, namely the author of (that) corruption. Still there is a portion of good in the soul, of that original, divine, and genuine good, which is its proper nature. For that which is derived from God is rather obscured than extinguished. It can be obscured, indeed, because it is not God; extinguished, however, it cannot be, because it comes from God. As therefore light, when intercepted by an opaque body, still remains, although it is not apparent, by reason of the interposition of so dense a body; so likewise the good in the soul, being weighed down by the evil, is, owing to the obscuring character thereof, either not seen at all, its light being wholly hidden, or else only a stray beam is there visible where it struggles through by an accidental outlet. Thus some men are very bad, and some very good; but yet the souls of all form but one genus: even in the worst there is something good, and in the best there is something bad. For God alone is without sin; and the only man without sin is Christ, since Christ is also God. Thus the divinity of the soul bursts forth in prophetic forecasts in consequence of its primeval good; and being conscious of its origin, it bears testimony to God (its author) in exclamations such as: Good God! God knows! and Good-bye! 1760 Just as no soul is without sin, so neither is any soul without seeds of good. Therefore, when the soul embraces the faith, being renewed in its second birth by water and the power from above, then the veil of its former corruption being taken away, it beholds the light in all its brightness. It is also taken up (in its second birth) by the Holy Spirit, just as in its first birth it is embraced by the unholy spirit. The flesh follows the soul now wedded to the Spirit, as a part of the bridal portion—no longer the servant of the soul, but of the Spirit. O happy marriage, if in it there is committed no violation of the nuptial vow!
Footnotes
221:1760Deo commendo = God be wi’ ye. De Test. c. ii. p. 176, supra.
Chapter XLII.—Sleep, the Mirror of Death, as Introductory to the Consideration of Death.
It now remains (that we discuss the subject) of death, in order that our subject-matter may terminate where the soul itself completes it; although Epicurus, indeed, in his pretty widely known doctrine, has asserted that death does not appertain to us. That, says he, which is dissolved lacks sensation; and that which is without sensation is nothing to us. Well, but it is not actually death which suffers dissolution and lacks sensation, but the human person who experiences death. Yet even he has admitted suffering to be incidental to the being to whom action belongs. Now, if it is in man to suffer death, which dissolves the body and destroys the senses, how absurd to say that so great a susceptibility belongs not to man! With much greater precision does Seneca say: “After death all comes to an end, even (death) itself.” From which position of his it must needs follow that death will appertain to its own self, since itself comes to an end; and much more to man, in the ending of whom amongst the “all,” itself also ends. Death, (says Epicurus) belongs not to us; then at that rate, life belongs not to us. For certainly, if that which causes our dissolution have no relation to us, that also which compacts and composes us must be unconnected with us. If the deprivation of our sensation be nothing to us, neither can the acquisition of sensation have anything to do with us. The fact, however, is, he who destroys the very soul, (as Epicurus does), cannot help destroying death also. As for ourselves, indeed, (Christians as we are), we must treat of death just as we should of the posthumous life and of some other province of the soul, (assuming) that we at all events belong to death, if it does not pertain to us. And on the same principle, even sleep, which is the very mirror of death, is not alien from our subject-matter.
Chapter XLIII.—Sleep a Natural Function as Shown by Other Considerations, and by the Testimony of Scripture.
Let us therefore first discuss the question of sleep, and afterwards in what way the soul encounters 1761 death. Now sleep is certainly not a supernatural thing, as some philosophers will have it be, when they suppose it to be the result of causes which appear to be above nature. The Stoics affirm sleep to be “a temporary suspension of the activity of the senses;” 1762 the Epicureans define it as an intermission of the animal spirit; Anaxagoras and Xenophanes as a weariness of the same; Empedocles and Parmenides as a cooling down thereof; Strato as a separation of the (soul’s) connatural spirit; Democritus as the soul’s indigence; Aristotle as the interruption 1763 of the heat around the heart. As for myself, I can safely say that I have never slept in such a way as to discover even a single one of these conditions. Indeed, we cannot possibly believe that sleep is a weariness; it is rather the opposite, for it undoubtedly removes weariness, and a person is refreshed by sleep instead of being fatigued. Besides, sleep is not always the result of fatigue; and even when it is, the fatigue continues no longer. Nor can I allow that sleep is a cooling or decaying of the animal heat, for our bodies derive warmth from sleep in such a way that the regular dispersion of the food by means of sleep could not so easily go on if there were too much heat to accelerate it unduly, or cold to retard it, if sleep had the alleged refrigerating influence. There is also the further fact that perspiration indicates an over-heated digestion; and digestion is predicated of us as a process of concoction, which is an operation concerned with heat and not with cold. In like manner, the immortality of the soul precludes belief in the theory that sleep is an intermission of the animal spirit, or an indigence of the spirit, or a separation of the (soul’s) connatural spirit. The soul perishes if it undergoes diminution or intermission. Our only resource, indeed, is to agree with the Stoics, by determining the soul to be a temporary suspension of the activity of the senses, procuring rest for the body only, not for the soul also. For the soul, as being always in motion, and always active, never succumbs to rest,—a condition which is alien to immortality: for nothing immortal admits any end to its operation; but sleep is an end of operation. It is indeed on the body, which is subject to mortality, and on the body alone, that sleep graciously bestows 1764 a cessation from work. He, therefore, who shall doubt whether sleep is a natural function, has the dialectical experts calling in question the whole difference between things natural and supernatural—so that what things he supposed to be beyond nature he may, (if he likes,) be safe in assigning to nature, which indeed has made such a disposition of things, that they may seemingly be accounted as beyond it; and so, of course, all things are natural or none are natural, (as occasion requires.) With us (Christians), however, only that can receive a hearing which is suggested by contemplating God, the Author of all the things which we are now discussing. For we believe that nature, if it is anything, is a reasonable work of God. Now reason presides over sleep; for sleep is so fit for man, so useful, so necessary, that were it not for it, not a soul could provide agency for recruiting the body, for restoring its energies, for ensuring its health, for supplying suspension from work and remedy against labour, and for the legitimate enjoyment of which day departs, and night provides an ordinance by taking from all objects their very colour. Since, then, sleep is indispensable to our life, and health, and succour, there can be nothing pertaining to it which is not reasonable, and which is not natural. Hence it is that physicians banish beyond the gateway of nature everything which is contrary to what is vital, healthful, and helpful to nature; for those maladies which are inimical to sleep—maladies of the mind and of the stomach—they have decided to be contrariant to nature, and by such decision have determined as its corollary that sleep is perfectly natural. Moreover, when they declare that sleep is not natural in the lethargic state, they derive their conclusion from the fact that it is natural when it is in its due and regular exercise. For every natural state is impaired either by defect or by excess, whilst it is maintained by its proper measure and amount. That, therefore, will be natural in its condition which may be rendered non-natural by defect or by excess. Well, now, what if you were to remove eating and drinking from the conditions of nature? if in them lies the chief incentive to sleep. It is certain that, from the very beginning of his nature, man was impressed with these instincts (of sleep). 1765 If you receive your instruction from God, (you will find) that the fountain of the human race, Adam, had a taste of drowsiness before having a draught of repose; slept before he laboured, or even before he ate, nay, even before he spoke; in order that men may see that sleep is a natural feature and function, and one which has actually precedence over all the natural faculties. From this primary instance also we are led to trace even then the image of death in sleep. For as Adam was a figure of Christ, Adam’s sleep shadowed out the death of Christ, who was to sleep a mortal slumber, that from the wound inflicted on His side might, in like manner (as Eve was formed), be typified the church, the true mother of the living. This is why sleep is so salutary, so rational, and is actually formed into the model of that death which is general and common to the race of man. God, indeed, has willed (and it may be said in passing that He has, generally, in His dispensations brought nothing to pass without such types and shadows) to set before us, in a manner more fully and completely than Plato’s example, by daily recurrence the outlines of man’s state, especially concerning the beginning and the termination thereof; thus stretching out the hand to help our faith more readily by types and parables, not in words only, but also in things. He accordingly sets before your view the human body stricken by the friendly power of slumber, prostrated by the kindly necessity of repose immoveable in position, just as it lay previous to life, and just as it will lie after life is past: there it lies as an attestation of its form when first moulded, and of its condition when at last buried—awaiting the soul in both stages, in the former previous to its bestowal, in the latter after its recent withdrawal. Meanwhile the soul is circumstanced in such a manner as to seem to be elsewhere active, learning to bear future absence by a dissembling of its presence for the moment. We shall soon know the case of Hermotimus. But yet it dreams in the interval. Whence then its dreams? The fact is, it cannot rest or be idle altogether, nor does it confine to the still hours of sleep the nature of its immortality. It proves itself to possess a constant motion; it travels over land and sea, it trades, it is excited, it labours, it plays, it grieves, it rejoices, it follows pursuits lawful and unlawful; it shows what very great power it has even without the body, how well equipped it is with members of its own, although betraying at the same time the need it has of impressing on some body its activity again. Accordingly, when the body shakes off its slumber, it asserts before your eye the resurrection of the dead by its own resumption of its natural functions. Such, therefore, must be both the natural reason and the reasonable nature of sleep. If you only regard it as the image of death, you initiate faith, you nourish hope, you learn both how to die and how to live, you learn watchfulness, even while you sleep.
Footnotes
221:1761Decurrat.
221:1762So Bp. Kaye, p. 195.
221:1763Marcorem, “the decay.”
222:1764Adulatur.
222:1765Gen. ii. 21.
Chapter XLIV.—The Story of Hermotimus, and the Sleeplessness of the Emperor Nero. No Separation of the Soul from the Body Until Death.
With regard to the case of Hermotimus, they say that he used to be deprived of his soul in his sleep, as if it wandered away from his body like a person on a holiday trip. His wife betrayed the strange peculiarity. His enemies, finding him asleep, burnt his body, as if it were a corpse: when his soul returned too late, it appropriated (I suppose) to itself the guilt of the murder. However the good citizens of Clazomenæ consoled poor Hermotimus with a temple, into which no woman ever enters, because of the infamy of this wife. Now why this story? In order that, since the vulgar belief so readily holds sleep to be the separation of the soul from the body, credulity should not be encouraged by this case of Hermotimus. It must certainly have been a much heavier sort of slumber: one would presume it was the nightmare, or perhaps that diseased languor which Soranus suggests in opposition to the nightmare, or else some such malady as that which the fable has fastened upon Epimenides, who slept on some fifty years or so. Suetonius, however, informs us that Nero never dreamt, and Theopompus says the same thing about Thrasymedes; but Nero at the close of his life did with some difficulty dream after some excessive alarm. What indeed would be said, if the case of Hermotimus were believed to be such that the repose of his soul was a state of actual idleness during sleep, and a positive separation from his body? You may conjecture it to be anything but such a licence of the soul as admits of flights away from the body without death, and that by continual recurrence, as if habitual to its state and constitution. If indeed such a thing were told me to have happened at any time to the soul—resembling a total eclipse of the sun or the moon—I should verily suppose that the occurrence had been caused by God’s own interposition, for it would not be unreasonable for a man to receive admonition from the Divine Being either in the way of warning or of alarm, as by a flash of lightning, or by a sudden stroke of death; only it would be much the more natural conclusion to believe that this process should be by a dream, because if it must be supposed to be, (as the hypothesis we are resisting assumes it to be,) not a dream, the occurrence ought rather to happen to a man whilst he is wide awake.
Chapter XLV.—Dreams, an Incidental Effect of the Soul’s Activity. Ecstasy.
We are bound to expound at this point what is the opinion of Christians respecting dreams, as incidents of sleep, and as no slight or trifling excitements of the soul, which we have declared to be always occupied and active owing to its perpetual movement, which again is a proof and evidence of its divine quality and immortality. When, therefore, rest accrues to human bodies, it being their own especial comfort, the soul, disdaining a repose which is not natural to it, never rests; and since it receives no help from the limbs of the body, it uses its own. Imagine a gladiator without his instruments or arms, and a charioteer without his team, but still gesticulating the entire course and exertion of their respective employments: there is the fight, there is the struggle; but the effort is a vain one. Nevertheless the whole procedure seems to be gone through, although it evidently has not been really effected. There is the act, but not the effect. This power we call ecstasy, in which the sensuous soul stands out of itself, in a way which even resembles madness. 1766 Thus in the very beginning sleep was inaugurated by ecstasy: “And God sent an ecstasy upon Adam, and he slept.” 1767 The sleep came on his body to cause it to rest, but the ecstasy fell on his soul to remove rest: from that very circumstance it still happens ordinarily (and from the order results the nature of the case) that sleep is combined with ecstasy. In fact, with what real feeling, and anxiety, and suffering do we experience joy, and sorrow, and alarm in our dreams! Whereas we should not be moved by any such emotions, by what would be the merest fantasies of course, if when we dream we were masters of ourselves, (unaffected by ecstasy.) In these dreams, indeed, good actions are useless, and crimes harmless; for we shall no more be condemned for visionary acts of sin, than we shall be crowned for imaginary martyrdom. But how, you will ask, can the soul remember its dreams, when it is said to be without any mastery over its own operations? This memory must be an especial gift of the ecstatic condition of which we are treating, since it arises not from any failure of healthy action, but entirely from natural process; nor does it expel mental function—it withdraws it for a time. It is one thing to shake, it is another thing to move; one thing to destroy, another thing to agitate. That, therefore, which memory supplies betokens soundness of mind; and that which a sound mind ecstatically experiences whilst the memory remains unchecked, is a kind of madness. We are accordingly not said to be mad, but to dream, in that state; to be in the full possession also of our mental faculties, 1768 if we are at any time. For although the power to exercise these faculties 1769 may be dimmed in us, it is still not extinguished; except that it may seem to be itself absent at the very time that the ecstasy is energizing in us in its special manner, in such wise as to bring before us images of a sound mind and of wisdom, even as it does those of aberration.
Footnotes
223:1766We had better give Tertullian’s own succinct definition: “Excessus sensûs et amentiæ instar.”
223:1767Gen. ii. 21.
224:1768Prudentes.
224:1769Sapere.
Chapter XLVI.—Diversity of Dreams and Visions. Epicurus Thought Lightly of Them, Though Generally Most Highly Valued. Instances of Dreams.
We now find ourselves constrained to express an opinion about the character of the dreams by which the soul is excited. And when shall we arrive at the subject of death? And on such a question I would say, When God shall permit: that admits of no long delay which must needs happen at all events. Epicurus has given it as his opinion that dreams are altogether vain things; (but he says this) when liberating the Deity from all sort of care, and dissolving the entire order of the world, and giving to all things the aspect of merest chance, casual in their issues, fortuitous in their nature. Well, now, if such be the nature of things, there must be some chance even for truth, because it is impossible for it to be the only thing to be exempted from the fortune which is due to all things. Homer has assigned two gates to dreams, 1770 —the horny one of truth, the ivory one of error and delusion. For, they say, it is possible to see through horn, whereas ivory is untransparent. Aristotle, while expressing his opinion that dreams are in most cases untrue, yet acknowledges that there is some truth in them. The people of Telmessus will not admit that dreams are in any case unmeaning, but they blame their own weakness when unable to conjecture their signification. Now, who is such a stranger to human experience as not sometimes to have perceived some truth in dreams? I shall force a blush from Epicurus, if I only glance at some few of the more remarkable instances. Herodotus 1771 relates how that Astyages, king of the Medes, saw in a dream issuing from the womb of his virgin daughter a flood which inundated Asia; and again, in the year which followed her marriage, he saw a vine growing out from the same part of her person, which overspread the whole of Asia. The same story is told prior to Herodotus by Charon of Lampsacus. Now they who interpreted these visions did not deceive the mother when they destined her son for so great an enterprise, for Cyrus both inundated and overspread Asia. Philip of Macedon, before he became a father, had seen imprinted on the pudenda of his consort Olympias the form of a small ring, with a lion as a seal. He had concluded that an offspring from her was out of the question (I suppose because the lion only becomes once a father), when Aristodemus or Aristophon happened to conjecture that nothing of an unmeaning or empty import lay under that seal, but that a son of very illustrious character was portended. They who know anything of Alexander recognise in him the lion of that small ring. Ephorus writes to this effect. Again, Heraclides has told us, that a certain woman of Himera beheld in a dream Dionysius’ tyranny over Sicily. Euphorion has publicly recorded as a fact, that, previous to giving birth to Seleucus, his mother Laodice foresaw that he was destined for the empire of Asia. I find again from Strabo, that it was owing to a dream that even Mithridates took possession of Pontus; and I further learn from Callisthenes that it was from the indication of a dream that Baraliris the Illyrian stretched his dominion from the Molossi to the frontiers of Macedon. The Romans, too, were acquainted with dreams of this kind. From a dream Marcus Tullius (Cicero) had learnt how that one, who was yet only a little boy, and in a private station, who was also plain Julius Octavius, and personally unknown to (Cicero) himself, was the destined Augustus, and the suppressor and destroyer of (Rome’s) civil discords. This is recorded in the Commentaries of Vitellius. But visions of this prophetic kind were not confined to predictions of supreme power; for they indicated perils also, and catastrophes: as, for instance, when Cæsar was absent from the battle of Philippi through illness, and thereby escaped the sword of Brutus and Cassius, and then although he expected to encounter greater danger still from the enemy in the field, he quitted his tent for it, in obedience to a vision of Artorius, and so escaped (the capture by the enemy, who shortly after took possession of the tent); as, again, when the daughter of Polycrates of Samos foresaw the crucifixion which awaited him from the anointing of the sun and the bath of Jupiter. 1772 So likewise in sleep revelations are made of high honours and eminent talents; remedies are also discovered, thefts brought to light, and treasures indicated. Thus Cicero’s eminence, whilst he was still a little boy, was foreseen by his nurse. The swan from the breast of Socrates soothing men, is his disciple Plato. The boxer Leonymus is cured by Achilles in his dreams. Sophocles the tragic poet discovers, as he was dreaming, the golden crown, which had been lost from the citadel of Athens. Neoptolemus the tragic actor, through intimations in his sleep from Ajax himself, saves from destruction the hero’s tomb on the Rhoetean shore before Troy; and as he removes the decayed stones, he returns enriched with gold. How many commentators and chroniclers vouch for this phenomenon? There are Artemon, Antiphon, Strato, Philochorus, Epicharmus, Serapion, Cratippus, and Dionysius of Rhodes, and Hermippus—the entire literature of the age. I shall only laugh at all, if indeed I ought to laugh at the man who fancied that he was going to persuade us that Saturn dreamt before anybody else; which we can only believe if Aristotle, (who would fain help us to such an opinion,) lived prior to any other person. Pray forgive me for laughing. Epicharmus, indeed, as well as Philochorus the Athenian, assigned the very highest place among divinations to dreams. The whole world is full of oracles of this description: there are the oracles of Amphiaraus at Oropus, of Amphilochus at Mallus, of Sarpedon in the Troad, of Trophonius in Bœotia, of Mopsus in Cilicia, of Hermione in Macedon, of Pasiphäe in Laconia. Then, again, there are others, which with their original foundations, rites, and historians, together with the entire literature of dreams, Hermippus of Berytus in five portly volumes will give you all the account of, even to satiety. But the Stoics are very fond of saying that God, in His most watchful providence over every institution, gave us dreams amongst other preservatives of the arts and sciences of divination, as the especial support of the natural oracle. So much for the dreams to which credit has to be ascribed even by ourselves, although we must interpret them in another sense. As for all other oracles, at which no one ever dreams, what else must we declare concerning them, than that they are the diabolical contrivance of those spirits who even at that time dwelt in the eminent persons themselves, or aimed at reviving the memory of them as the mere stage of their evil purposes, going so far as to counterfeit a divine power under their shape and form, and, with equal persistence in evil, deceiving men by their very boons of remedies, warnings, and forecasts,—the only effect of which was to injure their victims the more they helped them; while the means whereby they rendered the help withdrew them from all search after the true God, by insinuating into their minds ideas of the false one? And of course so pernicious an influence as this is not shut up nor limited within the boundaries of shrines and temples: it roams abroad, it flies through the air, and all the while is free and unchecked. So that nobody can doubt that our very homes lie open to these diabolical spirits, who beset their human prey with their fantasies not only in their chapels but also in their chambers.
Footnotes
224:1770See the Odyssey, xix. 562, etc. [Also, Æneid, vi. 894.]
224:1771See i. 107, etc.
225:1772See an account of her vision and its interpretation in Herodot. iv. 124.
Chapter XLVII.—Dreams Variously Classified. Some are God-Sent, as the Dreams of Nebuchadnezzar; Others Simply Products of Nature.
We declare, then, that dreams are inflicted on us mainly by demons, although they sometimes turn out true and favourable to us. When, however, with the deliberate aim after evil, of which we have just spoken, they assume a flattering and captivating style, they show themselves proportionately vain, and deceitful, and obscure, and wanton, and impure. And no wonder that the images partake of the character of the realities. But from God—who has promised, indeed, “to pour out the grace of the Holy Spirit upon all flesh, and has ordained that His servants and His handmaids should see visions as well as utter prophecies” 1773 —must all those visions be regarded as emanating, which may be compared to the actual grace of God, as being honest, holy, prophetic, inspired, instructive, inviting to virtue, the bountiful nature of which causes them to overflow even to the profane, since God, with grand impartiality, “sends His showers and sunshine on the just and on the unjust.” 1774 It was, indeed by an inspiration from God that Nebuchadnezzar dreamt his dreams; 1775 and almost the greater part of mankind get their knowledge of God from dreams. Thus it is that, as the mercy of God super-abounds to the heathen, so the temptation of the evil one encounters the saints, from whom he never withdraws his malignant efforts to steal over them as best he may in their very sleep, if unable to assault them when they are awake. The third class of dreams will consist of those which the soul itself apparently creates for itself from an intense application to special circumstances. Now, inasmuch as the soul cannot dream of its own accord (for even Epicharmus is of this opinion), how can it become to itself the cause of any vision? Then must this class of dreams be abandoned to the action of nature, reserving for the soul, even when in the ecstatic condition, the power of enduring whatever incidents befall it? Those, moreover, which evidently proceed neither from God, nor from diabolical inspiration, nor from the soul, being beyond the reach as well of ordinary expectation, usual interpretation, or the possibility of being intelligibly related, will have to be ascribed in a separate category to what is purely and simply the ecstatic state and its peculiar conditions.
Footnotes
225:1773Joel iii. 1.
226:1774Matt. v. 45.
226:1775Dan. ii. 1, etc.
Chapter XLVIII.—Causes and Circumstances of Dreams. What Best Contributes to Efficient Dreaming.
They say that dreams are more sure and clear when they happen towards the end of the night, because then the vigour of the soul emerges, and heavy sleep departs. As to the seasons of the year, dreams are calmer in spring, since summer relaxes, and winter somehow hardens, the soul; while autumn, which in other respects is trying to health, is apt to enervate the soul by the lusciousness of its fruits. Then, again, as regards the position of one’s body during sleep, one ought not to lie on his back, nor on his right side, nor so as to wrench 1776 his intestines, as if their cavity were reversely stretched: a palpitation of the heart would ensue, or else a pressure on the liver would produce a painful disturbance of the mind. But however this be, I take it that it all amounts to ingenious conjecture rather than certain proof (although the author of the conjecture be no less a man than Plato); 1777 and possibly all may be no other than the result of chance. But, generally speaking, dreams will be under control of a man’s will, if they be capable of direction at all; for we must not examine what opinion on the one hand, and superstition on the other, have to prescribe for the treatment of dreams, in the matter of distinguishing and modifying different sorts of food. As for the superstition, we have an instance when fasting is prescribed for such persons as mean to submit to the sleep which is necessary for receiving the oracle, in order that such abstinence may produce the required purity; while we find an instance of the opinion when the disciples of Pythagoras, in order to attain the same end, reject the bean as an aliment which would load the stomach, and produce indigestion. But the three brethren, who were the companions of Daniel, being content with pulse alone, to escape the contamination of the royal dishes, 1778 received from God, besides other wisdom, the gift especially of penetrating and explaining the sense of dreams. For my own part, I hardly know whether fasting would not simply make me dream so profoundly, that I should not be aware whether I had in fact dreamt at all. Well, then, you ask, has not sobriety something to do in this matter? Certainly it is as much concerned in this as it is in the entire subject: if it contributes some good service to superstition, much more does it to religion. For even demons require such discipline from their dreamers as a gratification to their divinity, because they know that it is acceptable to God, since Daniel (to quote him again) “ate no pleasant bread” for the space of three weeks. 1779 This abstinence, however, he used in order to please God by humiliation, and not for the purpose of producing a sensibility and wisdom for his soul previous to receiving communication by dreams and visions, as if it were not rather to effect such action in an ecstatic state. This sobriety, then, (in which our question arises,) will have nothing to do with exciting ecstasy, but will rather serve to recommend its being wrought by God.
Footnotes
226:1776Conresupinatis.
226:1777See his Timæus, c. xxxii. p. 71.
226:1778Dan. i. 8-14
226:1779Dan. x. 2.
Chapter XLIX.—No Soul Naturally Exempt from Dreams.
As for those persons who suppose that infants do not dream, on the ground that all the functions of the soul throughout life are accomplished according to the capacity of age, they ought to observe attentively their tremors, and nods, and bright smiles as they sleep, and from such facts understand that they are the emotions of their soul as it dreams, which so readily escape to the surface through the delicate tenderness of their infantine body. The fact, however, that the African nation of the Atlantes are said to pass through the night in a deep lethargic sleep, brings down on them the censure that something is wrong in the constitution of their soul. Now either report, which is occasionally calumnious against barbarians, deceived Herodotus, 1780 or else a large force of demons of this sort domineers in those barbarous regions. Since, indeed, Aristotle remarks of a certain hero of Sardinia that he used to withhold the power of visions and dreams from such as resorted to his shrine for inspiration, it must lie at the will and caprice of the demons to take away as well as to confer the faculty of dreams; and from this circumstance may have arisen the remarkable fact (which we have mentioned 1781 ) of Nero and Thrasymedes only dreaming so late in life. We, however, derive dreams from God. Why, then, did not the Atlantes receive the dreaming faculty from God, because there is really no nation which is now a stranger to God, since the gospel flashes its glorious light through the world to the ends of the earth? Could it then be that rumour deceived Aristotle, or is this caprice still the way of demons? (Let us take any view of the case), only do not let it be imagined that any soul is by its natural constitution exempt from dreams.
Footnotes
227:1780Who mentions this story of the Atlantes in iv. 184.
227:1781In ch. xliv. p. 223.
Chapter L.—The Absurd Opinion of Epicurus and the Profane Conceits of the Heretic Menander on Death, Even Enoch and Elijah Reserved for Death.
We have by this time said enough about sleep, the mirror and image of death; and likewise about the occupations of sleep, even dreams. Let us now go on to consider the cause of our departure hence—that is, the appointment and course of death—because we must not leave even it unquestioned and unexamined, although it is itself the very end of all questions and investigations. According to the general sentiment of the human race, we declare death to be “the debt of nature.” So much has been settled by the voice of God; 1782 such is the contract with everything which is born: so that even from this the frigid conceit of Epicurus is refuted, who says that no such debt is due from us; and not only so, but the insane opinion of the Samaritan heretic Menander is also rejected, who will have it that death has not only nothing to do with his disciples, but in fact never reaches them. He pretends to have received such a commission from the secret power of One above, that all who partake of his baptism become immortal, incorruptible and instantaneously invested with resurrection-life. We read, no doubt, of very many wonderful kinds of waters: how, for instance, the vinous quality of the stream intoxicates people who drink of the Lyncestis; how at Colophon the waters of an oracle-inspiring fountain 1783 affect men with madness; how Alexander was killed by the poisonous water from Mount Nonacris in Arcadia. Then, again, there was in Judea before the time of Christ a pool of medicinal virtue. It is well known how the poet has commemorated the marshy Styx as preserving men from death; although Thetis had, in spite of the preservative, to lament her son. And for the matter of that, were Menander himself to take a plunge into this famous Styx, he would certainly have to die after all; for you must come to the Styx, placed as it is by all accounts in the regions of the dead. Well, but what and where are those blessed and charming waters which not even John Baptist ever used in his preministrations, nor Christ after him ever revealed to His disciples? What was this wondrous bath of Menander? He is a comical fellow, I ween. 1784 But why (was such a font) so seldom in request, so obscure, one to which so very few ever resorted for their cleansing? I really see something to suspect in so rare an occurrence of a sacrament to which is attached so very much security and safety, and which dispenses with the ordinary law of dying even in the service of God Himself, when, on the contrary, all nations have “to ascend to the mount of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob,” who demands of His saints in martyrdom that death which He exacted even of His Christ. No one will ascribe to magic such influence as shall exempt from death, or which shall refresh and vivify life, like the vine by the renewal of its condition. Such power was not accorded to the great Medea herself—over a human being at any rate, if allowed her over a silly sheep. Enoch no doubt was translated, 1785 and so was Elijah; 1786 nor did they experience death: it was postponed, (and only postponed,) most certainly: they are reserved for the suffering of death, that by their blood they may extinguish Antichrist. 1787 Even John underwent death, although concerning him there had prevailed an ungrounded expectation that he would remain alive until the coming of the Lord. 1788 Heresies, indeed, for the most part spring hurriedly into existence, from examples furnished by ourselves: they procure their defensive armour from the very place which they attack. The whole question resolves itself, in short, into this challenge: Where are to be found the men whom Menander himself has baptized? whom he has plunged into his Styx? Let them come forth and stand before us—those apostles of his whom he has made immortal? Let my (doubting) Thomas see them, let him hear them, let him handle them—and he is convinced.
Footnotes
227:1782Gen. ii. 17. [Not ex natura, but as penalty.]
227:1783Scaturigo dæmonica.
227:1784It is difficult to say what Tertullian means by his “comicum credo.” Is it a playful parody on the heretic’s name, the same as the comic poet’s (Menander)?
227:1785Gen. 5:24, Heb. 11:5.
227:17862 Kings ii. 11.
228:1787Rev. xi. 3.
228:1788John xxi. 23.
Chapter LI.—Death Entirely Separates the Soul from the Body.
But the operation of death is plain and obvious: it is the separation of body and soul. Some, however, in reference to the soul’s immortality, on which they have so feeble a hold through not being taught of God, maintain it with such beggarly arguments, that they would fain have it supposed that certain souls cleave to the body even after death. It is indeed in this sense that Plato, although he despatches at once to heaven such souls as he pleases, 1789 yet in his Republic 1790 exhibits to us the corpse of an unburied person, which was preserved a long time without corruption, by reason of the soul remaining, as he says, unseparated from the body. To the same purport also Democritus remarks on the growth for a considerable while of the human nails and hair in the grave. Now, it is quite possible that the nature of the atmosphere tended to the preservation of the above-mentioned corpse. What if the air were particularly dry, and the ground of a saline nature? What, too, if the substance of the body itself were unusually dry and arid? What, moreover, if the mode of the death had already eliminated from the corpse all corrupting matter? As for the nails, since they are the commencement of the nerves, they may well seem to be prolonged, owing to the nerves themselves being relaxed and extended, and to be protruded more and more as the flesh fails. The hair, again, is nourished from the brain, which would cause it endure for a long time as its secret aliment and defence. Indeed, in the case of living persons themselves, the whole head of hair is copious or scanty in proportion to the exuberance of the brain. You have medical men (to attest the fact). But not a particle of the soul can possibly remain in the body, which is itself destined to disappear when time shall have abolished the entire scene on which the body has played its part. And yet even this partial survival of the soul finds a place in the opinions of some men; and on this account they will not have the body consumed at its funeral by fire, because they would spare the small residue of the soul. There is, however, another way of accounting for this pious treatment, not as if it meant to favour the relics of the soul, but as if it would avert a cruel custom in the interest even of the body; since, being human, it is itself undeserving of an end which is also inflicted upon murderers. The truth is, the soul is indivisible, because it is immortal; (and this fact) compels us to believe that death itself is an indivisible process, accruing indivisibly to the soul, not indeed because it is immortal, but because it is indivisible. Death, however, would have to be divided in its operation, if the soul were divisible into particles, any one of which has to be reserved for a later stage of death. At this rate, a part of death will have to stay behind for a portion of the soul. I am not ignorant that some vestige of this opinion still exists. I have found it out from one of my own people. I am acquainted with the case of a woman, the daughter of Christian parents, 1791 who in the very flower of her age and beauty slept peacefully (in Jesus), after a singularly happy though brief married life. Before they laid her in her grave, and when the priest began the appointed office, at the very first breath of his prayer she withdrew her hands from her side, placed them in an attitude of devotion, and after the holy service was concluded restored them to their lateral position. Then, again, there is that well-known story among our own people, that a body voluntarily made way in a certain cemetery, to afford room for another body to be placed near to it. If, as is the case, similar stories are told amongst the heathen, (we can only conclude that) God everywhere manifests signs of His own power—to His own people for their comfort, to strangers for a testimony unto them. I would indeed much rather suppose that a portent of this kind happened from the direct agency of God than from any relics of the soul: for if there were a residue of these, they would be certain to move the other limbs; and even if they moved the hands, this still would not have been for the purpose of a prayer. Nor would the corpse have been simply content to have made way for its neighbour: it would, besides, have benefited its own self also by the change of its position. But from whatever cause proceeded these phenomena, which you must put down amongst signs and portents, it is impossible that they should regulate nature. Death, if it once falls short of totality in operation, is not death. If any fraction of the soul remain, it makes a living state. Death will no more mix with life, than will night with day.
Footnotes
228:1789See below, ch. liv.
228:1790Ch. x. p. 614.
228:1791Vernaculam ecclesiæ.
Chapter LII.—All Kinds of Death a Violence to Nature, Arising from Sin.—Sin an Intrusion Upon Nature as God Created It.
Such, then, is the work of death—the separation of the soul from the body. Putting out of the question fates and fortuitous circumstances, it has been, according to men’s views, distinguished in a twofold form—the ordinary and the extraordinary. The ordinary they ascribe to nature, exercising its quiet influence in the case of each individual decease; the extraordinary is said to be contrary to nature, happening in every violent death. As for our own views, indeed, we know what was man’s origin, and we boldly assert and persistently maintain that death happens not by way of natural consequence to man, but owing to a fault and defect which is not itself natural; although it is easy enough, no doubt, to apply the term natural to faults and circumstances which seem to have been (though from the emergence of an external cause 1792 ) inseparable to us from our very birth. If man had been directly appointed to die as the condition of his creation, 1793 then of course death must be imputed to nature. Now, that he was not thus appointed to die, is proved by the very law which made his condition depend on a warning, and death result from man’s arbitrary choice. Indeed, if he had not sinned, he certainly would not have died. That cannot be nature which happens by the exercise of volition after an alternative has been proposed to it, and not by necessity—the result of an inflexible and unalterable condition. Consequently, although death has various issues, inasmuch as its causes are manifold, we cannot say that the easiest death is so gentle as not to happen by violence (to our nature). The very law which produces death, simple though it be, is yet violence. How can it be otherwise, when so close a companionship of soul and body, so inseparable a growth together from their very conception of two sister substances, is sundered and divided? For although a man may breathe his last for joy, like the Spartan Chilon, while embracing his son who had just conquered in the Olympic games; or for glory, like the Athenian Clidemus, while receiving a crown of gold for the excellence of his historical writings; or in a dream, like Plato; or in a fit of laughter, like Publius Crassus,—yet death is much too violent, coming as it does upon us by strange and alien means, expelling the soul by a method all its own, calling on us to die at a moment when one might live a jocund life in joy and honour, in peace and pleasure. That is still a violence to ships: although far away from the Capharean rocks, assailed by no storms, without a billow to shatter them, with favouring gale, in gliding course, with merry crews, they founder amidst entire security, suddenly, owing to some internal shock. Not dissimilar are the shipwrecks of life,—the issues of even a tranquil death. It matters not whether the vessel of the human body goes with unbroken timbers or shattered with storms, if the navigation of the soul be overthrown.
Footnotes
229:1792Ex accidentia.
229:1793In mortem directo institutus est. [See p. 227, supra.]
Chapter LIII.—The Entire Soul Being Indivisible Remains to the Last Act of Vitality; Never Partially or Fractionally Withdrawn from the Body.
But where at last will the soul have to lodge, when it is bare and divested of the body? We must certainly not hesitate to follow it thither, in the order of our inquiry. We must, however, first of all fully state what belongs to the topic before us, in order that no one, because we have mentioned the various issues of death, may expect from us a special description of these, which ought rather to be left to medical men, who are the proper judges of the incidents which appertain to death, or its causes, and the actual conditions of the human body. Of course, with the view of preserving the truth of the soul’s immortality, whilst treating this topic, I shall have, on mentioning death, to introduce phrases about dissolution of such a purport as seems to intimate that the soul escapes by degrees, and piece by piece; for it withdraws (from the body) with all the circumstances of a decline, seeming to suffer consumption, and suggests to us the idea of being annihilated by the slow process of its departure. But the entire reason of this phenomenon is in the body, and arises from the body. For whatever be the kind of death (which operates on man), it undoubtedly produces the destruction either of the matter, or of the region, or of the passages of vitality: of the matter, such as the gall and the blood; of the region, such as the heart and the liver; of the passages, such as the veins and the arteries. Inasmuch, then, as these parts of the body are severally devastated by an injury proper to each of them, even to the very last ruin and annulling of the vital powers—in other words, of the ends, the sites, and the functions of nature—it must needs come to pass, amidst the gradual decay of its instruments, domiciles, and spaces, that the soul also itself, being driven to abandon each successive part, assumes the appearance of being lessened to nothing; in some such manner as a charioteer is assumed to have himself failed, when his horses, through fatigue, withdraw from him their energies. But this assumption applies only to the circumstances of the despoiled person, not to any real condition of suffering. Likewise the body’s charioteer, the animal spirit, fails on account of the failure of its vehicle, not of itself—abandoning its work, but not its vigour—languishing in operation, but not in essential condition—bankrupt in solvency, not in substance—because ceasing to put in an appearance, but not ceasing to exist. Thus every rapid death—such as a decapitation, or a breaking of the neck, 1794 which opens at once a vast outlet for the soul; or a sudden ruin, which at a stroke crushes every vital action, like that inner ruin apoplexy—retards not the soul’s escape, nor painfully separates its departure into successive moments. Where, however, the death is a lingering one, the soul abandons its position in the way in which it is itself abandoned. And yet it is not by this process severed in fractions: it is slowly drawn out; and whilst thus extracted, it causes the last remnant to seem to be but a part of itself. No portion, however, must be deemed separable, because it is the last; nor, because it is a small one, must it be regarded as susceptible of dissolution. Accordant with a series is its end, and the middle is prolonged to the extremes; and the remnants cohere to the mass, and are waited for, but never abandoned by it. And I will even venture to say, that the last of a whole is the whole; because while it is less, and the latest, it yet belongs to the whole, and completes it. Hence, indeed, many times it happens that the soul in its actual separation is more powerfully agitated with a more anxious gaze, and a quickened loquacity; whilst from the loftier and freer position in which it is now placed, it enunciates, by means of its last remnant still lingering in the flesh, what it sees, what it hears, and what it is beginning to know. In Platonic phrase, indeed, the body is a prison, 1795 but in the apostle’s it is “the temple of God,” 1796 because it is in Christ. Still, (as must be admitted,) by reason of its enclosure it obstructs and obscures the soul, and sullies it by the concretion of the flesh; whence it happens that the light which illumines objects comes in upon the soul in a more confused manner, as if through a window of horn. Undoubtedly, when the soul, by the power of death, is released from its concretion with the flesh, it is by the very release cleansed and purified: it is, moreover, certain that it escapes from the veil of the flesh into open space, to its clear, and pure, and intrinsic light; and then finds itself enjoying its enfranchisement from matter, and by virtue of its liberty it recovers its divinity, as one who awakes out of sleep passes from images to verities. Then it tells out what it sees; then it exults or it fears, according as it finds what lodging is prepared for it, as soon as it sees the very angel’s face, that arraigner of souls, the Mercury of the poets.
Footnotes
230:1794We have made Tertullian’s “cervicum messis” include both these modes of instantaneous death.
230:1795Phædo, p. 62, c. 6.
230:17961 Cor. 3:16, 1 Cor. 6:19, 2 Cor. 6:16.
Chapter LIV.—Whither Does the Soul Retire When It Quits the Body? Opinions of Philosophers All More or Less Absurd. The Hades of Plato.
To the question, therefore, whither the soul is withdrawn, we now give an answer. Almost all the philosophers, who hold the soul’s immortality, notwithstanding their special views on the subject, still claim for it this (eternal condition), as Pythagoras, and Empedocles, and Plato, and as they who indulge it with some delay from the time of its quitting the flesh to the conflagration of all things, and as the Stoics, who place only their own souls, that is, the souls of the wise, in the mansions above. Plato, it is true, does not allow this destination to all the souls, indiscriminately, of even all the philosophers, but only of those who have cultivated their philosophy out of love to boys. So great is the privilege which impurity obtains at the hands of philosophers! In his system, then, the souls of the wise are carried up on high into the ether: according to Arius, 1797 into the air; according to the Stoics, into the moon. I wonder, indeed, that they abandon to the earth the souls of the unwise, when they affirm that even these are instructed by the wise, so much their superiors. For where is the school where they can have been instructed in the vast space which divides them? By what means can the pupil-souls have resorted to their teachers, when they are parted from each other by so distant an interval? What profit, too, can any instruction afford them at all in their posthumous state, when they are on the brink of perdition by the universal fire? All other souls they thrust down to Hades, which Plato, in his Phædo, 1798 describes as the bosom of the earth, where all the filth of the world accumulates, settles, and exhales, and where every separate draught of air only renders denser still the impurities of the seething mass.
Footnotes
230:1797An Alexandrian philosopher in great repute with the Emperor Augustus.
231:1798Phædo, pp. 112–114.
Chapter LV.—The Christian Idea of the Position of Hades; The Blessedness of Paradise Immediately After Death. The Privilege of the Martyrs.
By ourselves the lower regions (of Hades) are not supposed to be a bare cavity, nor some subterranean sewer of the world, but a vast deep space in the interior of the earth, and a concealed recess in its very bowels; inasmuch as we read that Christ in His death spent three days in the heart of the earth, 1799 that is, in the secret inner recess which is hidden in the earth, and enclosed by the earth, and superimposed on the abysmal depths which lie still lower down. Now although Christ is God, yet, being also man, “He died according to the Scriptures,” 1800 and “according to the same Scriptures was buried.” 1801 With the same law of His being He fully complied, by remaining in Hades in the form and condition of a dead man; nor did He ascend into the heights of heaven before descending into the lower parts of the earth, that He might there make the patriarchs and prophets partakers of Himself. 1802 (This being the case), you must suppose Hades to be a subterranean region, and keep at arm’s length those who are too proud to believe that the souls of the faithful deserve a place in the lower regions. 1803 These persons, who are “servants above their Lord, and disciples above their Master,” 1804 would no doubt spurn to receive the comfort of the resurrection, if they must expect it in Abraham’s bosom. But it was for this purpose, say they, that Christ descended into hell, that we might not ourselves have to descend thither. Well, then, what difference is there between heathens and Christians, if the same prison awaits them all when dead? How, indeed, shall the soul mount up to heaven, where Christ is already sitting at the Father’s right hand, when as yet the archangel’s trumpet has not been heard by the command of God, 1805 —when as yet those whom the coming of the Lord is to find on the earth, have not been caught up into the air to meet Him at His coming, 1806 in company with the dead in Christ, who shall be the first to arise? 1807 To no one is heaven opened; the earth is still safe for him, I would not say it is shut against him. When the world, indeed, shall pass away, then the kingdom of heaven shall be opened. Shall we then have to sleep high up in ether, with the boy-loving worthies of Plato; or in the air with Arius; or around the moon with the Endymions of the Stoics? No, but in Paradise, you tell me, whither already the patriarchs and prophets have removed from Hades in the retinue of the Lord’s resurrection. How is it, then, that the region of Paradise, which as revealed to John in the Spirit lay under the altar, 1808 displays no other souls as in it besides the souls of the martyrs? How is it that the most heroic martyr Perpetua on the day of her passion saw only her fellow-martyrs there, in the revelation which she received of Paradise, if it were not that the sword which guarded the entrance permitted none to go in thereat, except those who had died in Christ and not in Adam? A new death for God, even the extraordinary one for Christ, is admitted into the reception-room of mortality, specially altered and adapted to receive the new-comer. Observe, then, the difference between a heathen and a Christian in their death: if you have to lay down your life for God, as the Comforter 1809 counsels, it is not in gentle fevers and on soft beds, but in the sharp pains of martyrdom: you must take up the cross and bear it after your Master, as He has Himself instructed you. 1810 The sole key to unlock Paradise is your own life’s blood. 1811 You have a treatise by us, 1812 (on Paradise), in which we have established the position that every soul is detained in safe keeping in Hades until the day of the Lord.
Footnotes
231:1799Matt. xii. 40.
231:18001 Cor. xv. 3.
231:18011 Cor. 15.4.
231:18021 Pet. iii. 19.
231:1803See Irenæus, adv. Hæres. v. [Vol. I. p. 566, this Series.]
231:1804Matt. x. 24.
231:18051 Cor. 15:52, 1 Thess. 4:16.
231:18061 Thess. iv. 17.
231:18071 Thess. 4.16.
231:1808Rev. vi. 9.
231:1809Paracletus.
231:1810Matt. xvi. 24.
231:1811The souls of the martyrs were, according to Tertullian, at once removed to Paradise (Bp. Kaye, p. 249).
231:1812De Paradiso. [Compare, p. 216, note 9, supra.]
Chapter LVI.—Refutation of the Homeric View of the Soul’s Detention from Hades Owing to the Body’s Being Unburied. That Souls Prematurely Separated from the Body Had to Wait for Admission into Hades Also Refuted.
There arises the question, whether this takes place immediately after the soul’s departure from the body; whether some souls are detained for special reasons in the meantime here on earth; and whether it is permitted them of their own accord, or by the intervention of authority, to be removed from Hades 1813 at some subsequent time? Even such opinions as these are not by any means lacking persons to advance them with confidence. It was believed that the unburied dead were not admitted into the infernal regions before they had received a proper sepulture; as in the case of Homer’s Patroclus, who earnestly asks for a burial of Achilles in a dream, on the ground that he could not enter Hades through any other portal, since the souls of the sepulchred dead kept thrusting him away. 1814 We know that Homer exhibited more than a poetic licence here; he had in view the rights of the dead. Proportioned, indeed, to his care for the just honours of the tomb, was his censure of that delay of burial which was injurious to souls. (It was also his purpose to add a warning), that no man should, by detaining in his house the corpse of a friend, only expose himself, along with the deceased, to increased injury and trouble, by the irregularity 1815 of the consolation which he nourishes with pain and grief. He has accordingly kept a twofold object in view in picturing the complaints of an unburied soul: he wished to maintain honour to the dead by promptly attending to their funeral, as well as to moderate the feelings of grief which their memory excited. But, after all, how vain is it to suppose that the soul could bear the rites and requirements of the body, or carry any of them away to the infernal regions! And how much vainer still is it, if injury be supposed to accrue to the soul from that neglect of burial which it ought to receive rather as a favour! For surely the soul which had no willingness to die might well prefer as tardy a removal to Hades as possible. It will love the undutiful heir, by whose means it still enjoys the light. If, however, it is certain that injury accrues to the soul from a tardy interment of the body—and the gist of the injury lies in the neglect of the burial—it is yet in the highest degree unfair, that that should receive all the injury to which the faulty delay could not possibly be imputed, for of course all the fault rests on the nearest relations of the dead. They also say that those souls which are taken away by a premature death wander about hither and thither until they have completed the residue of the years which they would have lived through, had it not been for their untimely fate. Now either their days are appointed to all men severally, and if so appointed, I cannot suppose them capable of being shortened; or if, notwithstanding such appointment, they may be shortened by the will of God, or some other powerful influence, then (I say) such shortening is of no validity, if they still may be accomplished in some other way. If, on the other hand, they are not appointed, there cannot be any residue to be fulfilled for unappointed periods. I have another remark to make. Suppose it be an infant that dies yet hanging on the breast; or it may be an immature boy; or it may be, once more, a youth arrived at puberty: suppose, moreover, that the life in each case ought to have reached full eighty years, how is it possible that the soul of either could spend the whole of the shortened years here on earth after losing the body by death? One’s age cannot be passed without one’s body, it being by help of the body that the period of life has its duties and labours transacted. Let our own people, moreover, bear this in mind, that souls are to receive back at the resurrection the self-same bodies in which they died. Therefore our bodies must be expected to resume the same conditions and the same ages, for it is these particulars which impart to bodies their especial modes. By what means, then, can the soul of an infant so spend on earth its residue of years, that it should be able at the resurrection to assume the state of an octogenarian, although it had barely lived a month? Or if it shall be necessary that the appointed days of life be fulfilled here on earth, must the same course of life in all its vicissitudes, which has been itself ordained to accompany the appointed days, be also passed through by the soul along with the days? Must it employ itself in school studies in its passage from infancy to boyhood; play the soldier in the excitement and vigour of youth and earlier manhood; and encounter serious and judicial responsibilities in the graver years between ripe manhood and old age? Must it ply trade for profit, turn up the soil with hoe and plough, go to sea, bring actions at law, get married, toil and labour, undergo illnesses, and whatever casualties of weal and woe await it in the lapse of years? Well, but how are all these transactions to be managed without one’s body? Life (spent) without life? But (you will tell me) the destined period in question is to be bare of all incident whatever, only to be accomplished by merely elapsing. What, then, is to prevent its being fulfilled in Hades, where there is absolutely no use to which you can apply it? We therefore maintain that every soul, whatever be its age on quitting the body, remains unchanged in the same, until the time shall come when the promised perfection shall be realized in a state duly tempered to the measure of the peerless angels. Hence those souls must be accounted as passing an exile in Hades, which people are apt to regard as carried off by violence, especially by cruel tortures, such as those of the cross, and the axe, and the sword, and the lion; but we do not account those to be violent deaths which justice awards, that avenger of violence. So then, you will say, it is all the wicked souls that are banished in Hades. (Not quite so fast, is my answer.) I must compel you to determine (what you mean by Hades), which of its two regions, the region of the good or of the bad. If you mean the bad, (all I can say is, that) even now the souls of the wicked deserve to be consigned to those abodes; if you mean the good why should you judge to be unworthy of such a resting-place the souls of infants and of virgins, and 1816 those which, by reason of their condition in life were pure and innocent?
Footnotes
232:1813Ab inferis.
232:1814Iliad, xxiii. 72, etc.
232:1815Enormitate.
233:1816We have treated this particle as a conjunction but it may only be an intensive particle introducing an explanatory clause: “even those which were pure,” etc. [a better rendering.]
Chapter LVII.—Magic and Sorcery Only Apparent in Their Effects. God Alone Can Raise the Dead.
It is either a very fine thing to be detained in these infernal regions with the Aori, or souls which were prematurely hurried away; or else a very bad thing indeed to be there associated with the Biaeothanati, who suffered violent deaths. I may be permitted to use the actual words and terms with which magic rings again, that inventor of all these odd opinions—with its Ostanes, and Typhon, and Dardanus, and Damigeron, and Nectabis, and Berenice. There is a well-known popular bit of writing, 1817 which undertakes to summon up from the abode of Hades the souls which have actually slept out their full age, and had passed away by an honourable death, and had even been buried with full rites and proper ceremony. What after this shall we say about magic? Say, to be sure, what almost everybody says of it—that it is an imposture. But it is not we Christians only whose notice this system of imposture does not escape. We, it is true, have discovered these spirits of evil, not, to be sure, by a complicity with them, but by a certain knowledge which is hostile to them; nor is it by any procedure which is attractive to them, but by a power which subjugates them that we handle (their wretched system)—that manifold pest of the mind of man, that artificer of all error, that destroyer of our salvation and our soul at one swoop. 1818 In this way, even by magic, which is indeed only a second idolatry, wherein they pretend that after death they become demons, just as they were supposed in the first and literal idolatry to become gods (and why not? since the gods are but dead things), the before-mentioned Aori Biaeothanati are actually invoked,—and not unfairly, 1819 if one grounds his faith on this principle, that it is clearly credible for those souls to be beyond all others addicted to violence and wrong, which with violence and wrong have been hurried away by a cruel and premature death and which would have a keen appetite for reprisals. Under cover, however, of these souls, demons operate, especially such as used to dwell in them when they were in life, and who had driven them, in fact, to the fate which had at last carried them off. For, as we have already suggested, 1820 there is hardly a human being who is unattended by a demon; and it is well known to many, that premature and violent deaths, which men ascribe to accidents, are in fact brought about by demons. This imposture of the evil spirit lying concealed in the persons of the dead, we are able, if I mistake not, to prove by actual facts, when in cases of exorcism (the evil spirit) affirms himself sometimes to be one of the relatives 1821 of the person possessed by him, sometimes a gladiator or a bestiarius, 1822 and sometimes even a god; always making it one of his chief cares to extinguish the very truth which we are proclaiming, that men may not readily believe that all souls remove to Hades, and that they may overthrow faith in the resurrection and the judgment. And yet for all that, the demon, after trying to circumvent the bystanders, is vanquished by the pressure of divine grace, and sorely against his will confesses all the truth. So also in that other kind of magic, which is supposed to bring up from Hades the souls now resting there, and to exhibit them to public view, there is no other expedient of imposture ever resorted to which operates more powerfully. Of course, why a phantom becomes visible, is because a body is also attached to it; and it is no difficult matter to delude the external vision of a man whose mental eye it is so easy to blind. The serpents which emerged from the magicians’ rods, certainly appeared to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians as bodily substances. It is true that the verity of Moses swallowed up their lying deceit. 1823 Many attempts were also wrought against the apostles by the sorcerers Simon and Elymas, 1824 but the blindness which struck (them) was no enchanter’s trick. What novelty is there in the effort of an unclean spirit to counterfeit the truth? At this very time, even, the heretical dupes of this same Simon (Magus) are so much elated by the extravagant pretensions of their art, that they undertake to bring up from Hades the souls of the prophets themselves. And I suppose that they can do so under cover of a lying wonder. For, indeed, it was no less than this that was anciently permitted to the Pythonic (or ventriloquistic) spirit 1825 —even to represent the soul of Samuel, when Saul consulted the dead, after (losing the living) God. 1826 God forbid, however, that we should suppose that the soul of any saint, much less of a prophet, can be dragged out of (its resting-place in Hades) by a demon. We know that “Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light” 1827 —much more into a man of light—and that at last he will “show himself to be even God,” 1828 and will exhibit “great signs and wonders, insomuch that, if it were possible, he shall deceive the very elect.” 1829 He hardly 1830 hesitated on the before-mentioned occasion to affirm himself to be a prophet of God, and especially to Saul, in whom he was then actually dwelling. You must not imagine that he who produced the phantom was one, and he who consulted it was another; but that it was one and the same spirit, both in the sorceress and in the apostate (king), which easily pretended an apparition of that which it had already prepared them to believe as real—(even the spirit) through whose evil influence Saul’s heart was fixed where his treasure was, and where certainly God was not. Therefore it came about, that he saw him through whose aid he believed that he was going to see, because he believed him through whose help he saw. But we are met with the objection, that in visions of the night dead persons are not unfrequently seen, and that for a set purpose. 1831 For instance, the Nasamones consult private oracles by frequent and lengthened visits to the sepulchres of their relatives, as one may find in Heraclides, or Nymphodorus, or Herodotus; 1832 and the Celts, for the same purpose, stay away all night at the tombs of their brave chieftains, as Nicander affirms. Well, we admit apparitions of dead persons in dreams to be not more really true than those of living persons; but we apply the same estimate to all alike—to the dead and to the living, and indeed to all the phenomena which are seen. Now things are not true because they appear to be so, but because they are fully proved to be so. The truth of dreams is declared from the realization, not the aspect. Moreover, the fact that Hades is not in any case opened for (the escape of) any soul, has been firmly established by the Lord in the person of Abraham, in His representation of the poor man at rest and the rich man in torment. 1833 No one, (he said,) could possibly be despatched from those abodes to report to us how matters went in the nether regions,—a purpose which, (if any could be,) might have been allowable on such an occasion, to persuade a belief in Moses and the prophets. The power of God has, no doubt, sometimes recalled men’s souls to their bodies, as a proof of His own transcendent rights; but there must never be, because of this fact, any agreement supposed to be possible between the divine faith and the arrogant pretensions of sorcerers, and the imposture of dreams, and the licence of poets. But yet in all cases of a true resurrection, when the power of God recalls souls to their bodies, either by the agency of prophets, or of Christ, or of apostles, a complete presumption is afforded us, by the solid, palpable, and ascertained reality (of the revived body), that its true form must be such as to compel one’s belief of the fraudulence of every incorporeal apparition of dead persons.
Footnotes
233:1817Litteratura.
233:1818Oehler takes these descriptive clauses as meant of Satan, instead of being synonymes of magic, as the context seems to require.
233:1819Æque.
233:1820Above, in ch. xxxix. p. 219.
233:1821Aliquem ex parentibus.
233:1822One who fought with wild beasts in the public games, only without the weapons allowed to the gladiator.
234:1823Ex. vii. 12.
234:1824Acts 8:9, Acts 13:8.
234:1825See above in ch. xxviii. p. 209, supra.
234:18261 Sam. xxviii. 6-16.
234:18272 Cor. xi. 14.
234:18282 Thess. ii. 4.
234:1829Matt. xxiv. 24.
234:1830Si forte.
234:1831Non frustra.
234:1832In iv. 172.
234:1833Luke xvi. 26. [Compare note 15, p. 231. supra.]
Chapter LVIII.—Conclusion. Points Postponed. All Souls are Kept in Hades Until the Resurrection, Anticipating Their Ultimate Misery or Bliss.
All souls, therefore, are shut up within Hades: do you admit this? (It is true, whether) you say yes or no: moreover, there are already experienced there punishments and consolations; and there you have a poor man and a rich. And now, having postponed some stray questions 1834 for this part of my work, I will notice them in this suitable place, and then come to a close. Why, then, cannot you suppose that the soul undergoes punishment and consolation in Hades in the interval, while it awaits its alternative of judgment, in a certain anticipation either of gloom or of glory? You reply: Because in the judgment of God its matter ought to be sure and safe, nor should there be any inkling beforehand of the award of His sentence; and also because (the soul) ought to be covered first by its vestment 1835 of the restored flesh, which, as the partner of its actions, should be also a sharer in its recompense. What, then, is to take place in that interval? Shall we sleep? But souls do not sleep even when men are alive: it is indeed the business of bodies to sleep, to which also belongs death itself, no less than its mirror and counterfeit sleep. Or will you have it, that nothing is there done whither the whole human race is attracted, and whither all man’s expectation is postponed for safe keeping? Do you think this state is a foretaste of judgment, or its actual commencement? a premature encroachment on it, or the first course in its full ministration? Now really, would it not be the highest possible injustice, even 1836 in Hades, if all were to be still well with the guilty even there, and not well with the righteous even yet? What, would you have hope be still more confused after death? would you have it mock us still more with uncertain expectation? or shall it now become a review of past life, and an arranging of judgment, with the inevitable feeling of a trembling fear? But, again, must the soul always tarry for the body, in order to experience sorrow or joy? Is it not sufficient, even of itself, to suffer both one and the other of these sensations? How often, without any pain to the body, is the soul alone tortured by ill-temper, and anger, and fatigue, and very often unconsciously, even to itself? How often, too, on the other hand, amidst bodily suffering, does the soul seek out for itself some furtive joy, and withdraw for the moment from the body’s importunate society? I am mistaken if the soul is not in the habit, indeed, solitary and alone, of rejoicing and glorifying over the very tortures of the body. Look for instance, at the soul of Mutius Scævola as he melts his right hand over the fire; look also at Zeno’s, as the torments of Dionysius pass over it. 1837 The bites of wild beasts are a glory to young heroes, as on Cyrus were the scars of the bear. 1838 Full well, then, does the soul even in Hades know how to joy and to sorrow even without the body; since when in the flesh it feels pain when it likes, though the body is unhurt; and when it likes it feels joy though the body is in pain. Now if such sensations occur at its will during life, how much rather may they not happen after death by the judicial appointment of God! Moreover, the soul executes not all its operations with the ministration of the flesh; for the judgment of God pursues even simple cogitations and the merest volitions. “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” 1839 Therefore, even for this cause it is most fitting that the soul, without at all waiting for the flesh, should be punished for what it has done without the partnership of the flesh. So, on the same principle, in return for the pious and kindly thoughts in which it shared not the help of the flesh, shall it without the flesh receive its consolation. Nay more, 1840 even in matters done through the flesh the soul is the first to conceive them, the first to arrange them, the first to authorize them, the first to precipitate them into acts. And even if it is sometimes unwilling to act, it is still the first to treat the object which it means to effect by help of the body. In no case, indeed, can an accomplished fact be prior to the mental conception 1841 thereof. It is therefore quite in keeping with this order of things, that that part of our nature should be the first to have the recompense and reward to which they are due on account of its priority. In short, inasmuch as we understand “the prison” pointed out in the Gospel to be Hades, 1842 and as we also interpret “the uttermost farthing” 1843 to mean the very smallest offence which has to be recompensed there before the resurrection, 1844 no one will hesitate to believe that the soul undergoes in Hades some compensatory discipline, without prejudice to the full process of the resurrection, when the recompense will be administered through the flesh besides. This point the Paraclete has also pressed home on our attention in most frequent admonitions, whenever any of us has admitted the force of His words from a knowledge of His promised spiritual disclosures. 1845 And now at last having, as I believe, encountered every human opinion concerning the soul, and tried its character by the teaching of (our holy faith,) we have satisfied the curiosity which is simply a reasonable and necessary one. As for that which is extravagant and idle, there will evermore be as great a defect in its information, as there has been exaggeration and self-will in its researches.
Footnotes
234:1834Nescio quid.
235:1835“Operienda” is Oehler’s text; another reading gives “opperienda,” q.d., “the soul must wait for the restored body.”
235:1836This “etiam” is “otium” in the Agobardine ms., a good reading; q.d. “a most iniquitous indifference to justice,” etc.
235:1837Comp. The Apology, last chapter.
235:1838Xen. Cyropæd. p. 6.
235:1839Matt. v. 28.
235:1840Quid nunc si.
235:1841Conscientia.
235:1842Matt. v. 25.
235:1843Matt. 5.26.
235:1844Morâ resurrectionis. See above, on this opinion of Tertullian, in ch. xxxv.
235:1845[A symptom of Montanism.]
Tertullian.
————————————
Part Second.
Introduction, by the American Editor.
————————————
The Second Class of Tertullian’s works, according to the logical method I have endeavoured to carry out, is that which includes his treatises against the heresies of his times. In these, the genius of our author is brilliantly illustrated, while, in melancholy fact, he is demonstrating the folly of his own final lapse and the wickedness of that schism and heresy into which he fell away from Truth. Were it not that history abounds in like examples of the frailty of the human intellect and of the insufficiency of “man that walketh to direct his steps,” we should be forced to a theory of mental decay to account for inconsistencies so gross and for delusions so besotted. “Genius to madness is indeed allied,” and who knows but something like that imbecility which closed the career of Swift 1846 may have been the fate of this splendid wit and versatile man of parts? Charity, admiration and love force this inquiry upon my own mind continually, as I explore his fascinating pages. And the order in which the student will find them in this series, will lead, I think, to similar reflections on the part of many readers. We observe a natural bent and turn of mind, even in his Catholic writings, which indicate his perils. These are more and more apparent in his recent works, as his enthusiasm heats itself into a frenzy which at last becomes a rage. He breaks down by degrees, as in orthodoxy so also in force and in character. It is almost like the collapse of Solomon or of Bacon. And though our own times have produced no example of stars of equal magnitude, to become falling-stars, we have seen illustrations the most humiliating, of those calm words of Bishop Kaye: “Human nature often presents the curious phenomenon of an union of the most opposite qualities in the same mind; of vigour, acuteness and discrimination on some subjects, with imbecility, dulness and bigotry on others.” Milton, himself another example of his own threnode, breaks forth in this splendid utterance of lyrical confession:
“God of our fathers what is man?
Nor do I name of men the common rout,
That, wandering loose about,
Grow up and perish as the summer fly,
Heads without name, no more remembered,
But such as thou hast solemnly elected,
With gifts and graces eminently adorned,
To some great work, thy glory
And people’s safety, which in part they effect.”
And here, I must venture a remark on the ambiguity of the expressions concerning our author’s Montanism. In the treatise against Marcion, written late in his career, Tertullian identifies himself with the Church and strenuously defends its faith and its apostolic order. In only rare instances does his weakness for the “new prophecy” crop out, and then, it is only as one identifies himself with a school within the church. Precisely so Fenelon maintained his milder Montanism, without a thought of deserting the Latin Church. Afterwards Fenelon drew back, but at last poor Tertullian fell away. So with the Jansenists. They credited the miracles and the convulsions (or ecstasies) of their school, 1847 and condemned those who rejected them, as Tertullian condemns the Psychics. The great expounder of the Nicene Faith (Bp. Bull) does indeed speak very decidedly of Tertullian as a lapser, even when he wrote his first book against Marcion. His semi-schismatic position must be allowed. But, was it a formal lapse at that time? The English non-jurors were long in communion with the Church, even while they denounced their brethren and the “Erastianizing” clergy, much as Tertullian does the Psychics. St. Augustine speaks of Tertullianists 1848 with great moderation, and notes the final downfall of our author as something distinct from Tertullianism. When we reflect, therefore, that only four of all his varied writings (now extant) are proofs of an accomplished lapse, ought we not carefully to maintain the distinction between the Montanistic Tertullian and Tertullian the Montanist? Bishop Bull, it seems to me would not object to this way of putting it, when we consider his own discrimination in the following weighty words. He says:
“A clear distinction must be made between those works which Tertullian, when already a Montanist, wrote specifically in defence of Montanism against the church, and those which he composed, as a Montanist indeed, yet not in defence of Montanism against the church, but rather, in defence of the common doctrines of the church—and of Montanus, in opposition to other heretics.”
Now in arranging the works of this second class, the Prescription comes logically first, because, written in Orthodoxy, it forcibly upholds the Scriptural Rule of Faith, the Catholic touchstone of all professed verity. It is also a necessary Introduction to the great work against Marcion which I have placed next in order; giving it the precedence to which it is entitled in part on chronological ground, in part because of the general purity of its material with the exhibition it presents of the author’s mental processes and of his very gradual decline from Truth.
Very fortunate were the Edinburgh Editors in securing for this work and some others, the valuable labours of Dr. Holmes, of whom I have elsewhere given some biographical particulars. The merit and fulness of his annotations are so marked, that I have been spared a great deal of work, such as I was forced to bestow on the former volumes of this American Edition. But on the other hand these pages have given me much patient study and toil as an editor, because of the “shreds and patches” in which Tertullian comes to us, in the Edinburgh Series; and because of some typographical peculiarities, exceptional in that Series itself, and presenting complications, when transferred to a new form of mechanical arrangement. For example, apart from some valuable material which belongs to the General Preface, and which I have transferred accordingly, the following dislocations confronted me to begin with: The Marcion is presented to us in Volume VII. apart from the other writings of Tertullian. At the close of Vol. XI. we reach the Ad Nationes, of which Dr. Holmes is the translator, another hand (Mr. Thelwall’s) having been employed on former pages of that volume. It is not till we reach Volume XV. that Tertullian again appears, but this volume is wholly the work of Dr. Holmes. Finally, in Volume XVIII., we meet Tertullian again, (Mr. Thelwall the able translator), but, here is placed the “Introduction” to all the works of Tertullian, which, of course, I have, transferred to its proper place. I make these explanations by no means censoriously, but to point out at once the nature of my own task, and the advantage that accrues to the reader, by the order in which the works of the great Tertullian appear in this edition, enabling him to compare different or parallel passages, all methodically arranged in consecutive pages, without a minute’s search, or delay.
Now, as to typographical difficulties to which I have referred, Dr. Holmes marks all his multiplied and useful notes with brackets, which are almost always superfluous, and which in this American Edition are used to designate my own contributions, when printed with the text, or apart from Preface and Elucidations. These, therefore, I have removed necessarily and with no appreciable loss to the work, but great gain to the beauty of the page. But, again, Dr. Holmes’ translations are all so heavily bracketed as to become an eyesore, and the disfigured pages have been often complained of as afflictive to the reader. Many words strictly implied by the original Latin, and which should therefore be unmarked, are yet put between brackets. Even minute words (and, or to wit, or again,) when, in the nature of the case the English idiom requires them, are thus marked. I have not retained these blemishes; but when an inconsiderable word or a repetition does add to the sense, or qualify it, I have italicized such words, throwing more important interpolations into parenthetical marks, which are less painful to the sight than brackets. I have found them quite as serviceable to denote the auxiliary word or phrase; and where the author himself uses a parenthesis, I have observed very few instances in which a sensible reader would confound it with the translator’s efforts to eke out the sense. Sometimes, an awkward interpolation has been thrown into a footnote. Occasionally the crabbed sentences of the great Carthaginian are so obscure that Dr. Holmes has been unable to make them lucid, although, with the original in hand, he probably felt a force in his own rendering which the mere English reader must fail to perceive. In a few such instances, noting the fact in the margin, I have tried to bring out the sense, by slight modifications of punctuation and arrangement. Occasionally too I have dropped a superfluous interpolation (such as e.g., to conclude, or let me say again,) when I have found that it only served to clog and overcharge a sentence. Last of all, Dr. Holmes’ headings have sometimes been condensed, to avoid phrases and sentences immediately recurring in the chapter. 1849 These purely mechanical parts require a terse form of statement, like those in the English Bible, and I have frequently reduced them on that model, dropping redundant adverbs and adjectives to bring out the catchwords.
Footnotes
239:1846“From Marlboro’s eyes the tears of dotage flow,
And Swift expires a driveller and a show.”
239:1847See the story of the Abbé Paris, Guettée, Histoire de L’Eglise de France, Tom. xii. p. 12. Also, Parton, Voltaire, Vol. I. pp. 236, 261, etc.
240:1848See opp. Tom. viii. p. 46, Ed. Migne.
241:1849Take e.g. the heading to chapter xxiv. of the De Præscriptione. It reads thus: “St. Peter’s further vindication. St. Paul was not at all superior to St. Peter in teaching. Nothing was imparted to the former, in the “third heaven,” to enable him to add to the faith—however foolishly the heretics may boast of him as if they had, forsooth, been favoured with some of the secrets so imparted to him in paradise.” If the reader will turn to the chapter referred to, he will observe an instance of condensation by which nothing is forfeited that is requisite to a heading, though redundancies are dropped.
I.
The Prescription Against Heretics. 1850
[Translated by the Rev. Peter Holmes, D.D., F.R.A.S., Etc., Etc.]
————————————
Chapter I.—Introductory. Heresies Must Exist, and Even Abound; They are a Probation to Faith.
The character of the times in which we live is such as to call forth from us even this admonition, that we ought not to be astonished at the heresies (which abound) 1851 neither ought their existence to surprise us, for it was foretold that they should come to pass; 1852 nor the fact that they subvert the faith of some, for their final cause is, by affording a trial to faith, to give it also the opportunity of being “approved.” 1853 Groundless, therefore, and inconsiderate is the offence of the many 1854 who are scandalized by the very fact that heresies prevail to such a degree. How great (might their offence have been) if they had not existed. 1855 When it has been determined that a thing must by all means be, it receives the (final) cause for which it has its being. This secures the power through which it exists, in such a way that it is impossible for it not to have existence.
Footnotes
243:1850Of the various forms of the title of this treatise, de Præscriptione Hæreticorum, de Præscriptionibus Hæreticorum, de Præscriptionibus adversus Hæreticos, the first is adopted by Oehler after the oldest authorities, such as the Liber Argobardinus and the Codex Paterniacensis (or Seletstadiensis), and the Editio Princeps of Rhenanus. The term præscriptio is a legal one, meaning a demurrer, or formal objection. The genitive hæreticorum is used in an objective sense, as if adversus hæreticos. Tertullian himself, in de Carne Christi, ii. says, “Sed plenius ejusmodi præscriptionibus adversus omnes hæreses alibi jam usi sumus.” The title therefore means, “On the Church’s Prescriptive Rule against Heresies of all kinds.” [Elucidation I.]
243:1851Istas.
243:1852Matt. 7:15, Matt. 24:4, 11, 24, 1 Tim. 4:1, 2 Pet. 2:1.
243:18531 Cor. xi. 19.
243:1854Plerique, “the majority.”
243:1855The Holy Ghost having foretold that they should exist. (Rigalt.)
Chapter II.—Analogy Between Fevers and Heresies. Heresies Not to Be Wondered At: Their Strength Derived from Weakness of Men’s Faith. They Have Not the Truth. Simile of Pugilists and Gladiators in Illustration.
Taking the similar case 1856 of fever, which is appointed a place amongst all other deadly and excruciating issues (of life) for destroying man: we are not surprised either that it exists, for there it is, or that it consumes man, for that is the purpose of its existence. In like manner, with respect to heresies, which are produced for the weakening and the extinction of faith, since we feel a dread because they have this power, we should first dread the fact of their existence; for as long as they exist, they have their power; and as long as they have their power, they have their existence. But still fever, as being an evil both in its cause 1857 and in its power, as all know, we rather loathe than wonder at, and to the best of our power guard against, not having its extirpation in our power. Some men prefer wondering at heresies, however, which bring with them eternal death and the heat of a stronger fire, for possessing this power, instead of avoiding their power when they have the means of escape: but heresies would have no power, if (men) would cease to wonder that they have such power. For it either happens that, while men wonder, they fall into a snare, or, because they are ensnared, they cherish their surprise, as if heresies were so powerful because of some truth which belonged to them. It would no doubt be a wonderful thing that evil should have any force of its own, were it not that heresies are strong in those persons who are not strong in faith. In a combat of boxers and gladiators, generally speaking, it is not because a man is strong that he gains the victory, or loses it because he is not strong, but because he who is vanquished was a man of no strength; and indeed this very conqueror, when afterwards matched against a really powerful man, actually retires crest-fallen from the contest. In precisely the same way, heresies derive such strength as they have from the infirmities of individuals—having no strength whenever they encounter a really powerful faith.
Footnotes
243:1856Denique has in Tertullian sometimes the meaning of proinde.
243:1857Causam “purpose,” “final cause.”
Chapter III.—Weak People Fall an Easy Prey to Heresy, Which Derives Strength from the General Frailty of Mankind. Eminent Men Have Fallen from Faith; Saul, David, Solomon. The Constancy of Christ.
It is usual, indeed, with persons of a weaker character, to be so built up (in confidence) by certain individuals who are caught by heresy, as to topple over into ruin themselves. How comes it to pass, (they ask), that this woman or that man, who were the most faithful, the most prudent, and the most approved 1858 in the church, have gone over to the other side? Who that asks such a question does not in fact reply to it himself, to the effect that men whom heresies have been able to pervert 1859 ought never to have been esteemed prudent, or faithful, or approved? This again is, I suppose, an extraordinary thing, that one who has been approved should afterwards fall back? Saul, who was good beyond all others, is afterwards subverted by envy. 1860 David, a good man “after the Lord’s own heart,” 1861 is guilty afterwards of murder and adultery. 1862 Solomon, endowed by the Lord with all grace and wisdom, is led into idolatry, by women. 1863 For to the Son of God alone was it reserved to persevere to the last without sin. 1864 But what if a bishop, if a deacon, if a widow, if a virgin, if a doctor, if even a martyr, 1865 have fallen from the rule (of faith), will heresies on that account appear to possess 1866 the truth? Do we prove the faith 1867 by the persons, or the persons by the faith? No one is wise, no one is faithful, no one excels in dignity, 1868 but the Christian; and no one is a Christian but he who perseveres even to the end. 1869 You, as a man, know any other man from the outside appearance. You think as you see. And you see as far only as you have eyes. But says (the Scripture), “the eyes of the Lord are lofty.” 1870 “Man looketh at the outward appearance, but God looketh at the heart.” 1871 “The Lord (beholdeth and) knoweth them that are His;” 1872 and “the plant which (my heavenly Father) hath not planted, He rooteth up;” 1873 and “the first shall,” as He shows, “be last;” 1874 and He carries “His fan in His hand to purge His threshing-floor.” 1875 Let the chaff of a fickle faith fly off as much as it will at every blast of temptation, all the purer will be that heap of corn which shall be laid up in the garner of the Lord. Did not certain of the disciples turn back from the Lord Himself, 1876 when they were offended? Yet the rest did not therefore think that they must turn away from following Him, 1877 but because they knew that He was the Word of Life, and was come from God, 1878 they continued in His company to the very last, after He had gently inquired of them whether they also would go away. 1879 It is a comparatively small thing, 1880 that certain men, like Phygellus, and Hermogenes, and Philetus, and Hymenæus, deserted His apostle: 1881 the betrayer of Christ was himself one of the apostles. We are surprised at seeing His churches forsaken by some men, although the things which we suffer after the example of Christ Himself, show us to be Christians. “They went out from us,” says (St. John,) “but they were not of us. If they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us.” 1882
Footnotes
244:1858Usitatissimi, “most experienced.”
244:1859Demutare.
244:18601 Sam. 18:8, 9.
244:18611 Sam. xiii. 14.
244:18622 Sam. xi.
244:18631 Kings xi. 4.
244:1864Heb. iv. 15. [See p. 221, supra.]
244:1865[Here the word martyr means no more than a witness or confessor, and may account for what are called exaggerated statements as to the number of primitive martyrs. See Kaye p. 128.]
244:1866Obtinere.
244:1867Fidem, “The Creed.”
244:1868Major.
244:1869Matt. x. 22.
244:1870Jer. xxxii. 19.
244:18711 Sam. xvi. 7.
244:18722 Tim. ii. 19.
244:1873Matt. xv. 13.
244:1874Matt. xx. 16.
244:1875Matt. iii. 12.
244:1876John vi. 66.
244:1877A vestigiis ejus.
244:1878John 1:1, John 6:68, John 16:30.
244:1879John vi. 67.
244:1880Minus.
244:18812 Tim. 1:15, 2 Tim. 2:17, 1 Tim. 1:20.
244:18821 John ii. 19. [i.e., with the Apostolic Churches. See Cap. xx, infra.]
Chapter IV.—Warnings Against Heresy Given Us in the New Testament. Sundry Passages Adduced. These Imply the Possibility of Falling into Heresy.
But let us rather be mindful of the sayings of the Lord, and of the letters of the apostles; for they have both told us beforehand that there shall be heresies, and have given us, in anticipation, warnings to avoid them; and inasmuch as we are not alarmed because they exist, so we ought not to wonder that they are capable of doing that, on account of which they must be shunned. The Lord teaches us that many “ravening wolves shall come in sheep’s clothing.” 1883 Now, what are these sheep’s clothing’s, but the external surface of the Christian profession? Who are the ravening wolves but those deceitful senses and spirits which are lurking within to waste the flock of Christ? Who are the false prophets but deceptive predictors of the future? Who are the false apostles but the preachers of a spurious gospel? 1884 Who also are the Antichrists, both now and evermore, but the men who rebel against Christ? 1885 Heresies, at the present time, will no less rend the church by their perversion of doctrine, than will Antichrist persecute her at that day by the cruelty of his attacks, 1886 except that persecution make seven martyrs, (but) heresy only apostates. And therefore “heresies must needs be in order that they which are approved might be made manifest,” 1887 both those who remained stedfast under persecution, and those who did not wander out of their way 1888 into heresy. For the apostle does not mean 1889 that those persons should be deemed approved who exchange their creed for heresy; although they contrariously interpret his words to their own side, when he says in another passage, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good;” 1890 as if, after proving all things amiss, one might not through error make a determined choice of some evil thing.
Footnotes
245:1883Matt. vii. 15.
245:1884Adulteri evangelizatores, the spurious preachers of the gospel. [Gal. 1:8, 9, an example of Apostolic præscription.]
245:1885Hoc scil. “tempore.”
245:1886Oehler’s “persecutionem” ought of course to be “persecutionum.”
245:18871 Cor. xi. 19.
245:1888Exorbitaverint.
245:1889Juvat.
245:18901 Thess. v. 21. [But Truth is to be demonstrated as a theorem, not treated as a problem of which we must seek the solution.]
Chapter V.—Heresy, as Well as Schism and Dissension, Disapproved by St. Paul, Who Speaks of the Necessity of Heresies, Not as a Good, But, by the Will of God, Salutary Trials for Training and Approving the Faith of Christians.
Moreover, when he blames dissensions and schisms, which undoubtedly are evils, he immediately adds heresies likewise. Now, that which he subjoins to evil things, he of course confesses to be itself an evil; and all the greater, indeed, because he tells us that his belief of their schisms and dissensions was grounded on his knowledge that “there must be heresies also.” 1891 For he shows us that it was owing to the prospect of the greater evil that he readily believed the existence of the lighter ones; and so far indeed was he from believing, in respect of evils (of such a kind), that heresies were good, that his object was to forewarn us that we ought not to be surprised at temptations of even a worse stamp, since (he said) they tended “to make manifest all such as were approved;” 1892 in other words, those whom they were unable to pervert. 1893 In short, since the whole passage 1894 points to the maintenance of unity and the checking of divisions, inasmuch as heresies sever men from unity no less than schisms and dissensions, no doubt he classes heresies under the same head of censure as he does schisms also and dissensions. And by so doing, he makes those to be “not approved,” who have fallen into heresies; more especially when with reproofs he exhorts 1895 men to turn away from such, teaching them that they should “all speak and think the selfsame thing,” 1896 the very object which heresies do not permit.
Footnotes
245:18911 Cor. xi. 19.
245:18921 Cor. xi. 18.
245:1893Depravare.
245:1894Capitulum.
245:1895Objurget.
245:18961 Cor. i. 10.
Chapter VI.—Heretics are Self-Condemned. Heresy is Self-Will, Whilst Faith is Submission of Our Will to the Divine Authority. The Heresy of Apelles.
On this point, however, we dwell no longer, since it is the same Paul who, in his Epistle to the Galatians, counts “heresies” among “the sins of the flesh,” 1897 who also intimates to Titus, that “a man who is a heretic” must be “rejected after the first admonition,” on the ground that “he that is such is perverted, and committeth sin, as a self-condemned man.” 1898 Indeed, in almost every epistle, when enjoining on us (the duty) of avoiding false doctrines, he sharply condemns 1899 heresies. Of these the practical effects 1900 are false doctrines, called in Greek heresies, 1901 a word used in the sense of that choice which a man makes when he either teaches them (to others) 1902 or takes up with them (for himself). 1903 For this reason it is that he calls the heretic self-condemned, 1904 because he has himself chosen that for which he is condemned. We, however, are not permitted to cherish any object 1905 after our own will, nor yet to make choice of that which another has introduced of his private fancy. In the Lord’s apostles we possess our authority; for even they did not of themselves choose to introduce anything, but faithfully delivered to the nations (of mankind) the doctrine 1906 which they had received from Christ. If, therefore, even “an angel from heaven should preach any other gospel” (than theirs), he would be called accursed 1907 by us. The Holy Ghost had even then foreseen that there would be in a certain virgin (called) Philumene 1908 an angel of deceit, “transformed into an angel of light,” 1909 by whose miracles and illusions 1910 Apelles was led (when) he introduced his new heresy.
Footnotes
245:1897Gal. v. 20.
245:1898Titus 3:10, 11.
245:1899Taxat.
245:1900Opera.
245:1901Αἱρέσεις .
245:1902Instituendas.
245:1903Suscipiendas.
245:1904[A remarkable word is subjoined by the Apostle (ἐξέστραπται) which signifies turned inside out, and so self-condemned, as exhibiting his inward contentiousness and pravity.
246:1905Nihil, any doctrine.
246:1906Disciplinam, including both the principles and practice of the Christian religion.
246:1907Anathema. See Gal. i. 8.
246:1908Concerning Philumene, see below, chap. xxv.; Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 13; Augustine, de Hæres, chap. xlii. ; Jerome, Epist. adv. Ctesiph. (Works, ed. Ben.) iv. 477, and in his Commentary on Galatians, ii. See also Tertullian, Against Marcion, p. 139, Edinb. Edition.
246:19092 Cor. xi. 14.
246:1910Præstigiis.
Chapter VII.—Pagan Philosophy the Parent of Heresies. The Connection Between Deflections from Christian Faith and the Old Systems of Pagan Philosophy.
These are “the doctrines” of men and “of demons” 1911 produced for itching ears of the spirit of this world’s wisdom: this the Lord called “foolishness,” 1912 and “chose the foolish things of the world” to confound even philosophy itself. For (philosophy) it is which is the material of the world’s wisdom, the rash interpreter of the nature and the dispensation of God. Indeed 1913 heresies are themselves instigated 1914 by philosophy. From this source came the Æons, and I known not what infinite forms, 1915 and the trinity of man 1916 in the system of Valentinus, who was of Plato’s school. From the same source came Marcion’s better god, with all his tranquillity; he came of the Stoics. Then, again, the opinion that the soul dies is held by the Epicureans; while the denial of the restoration of the body is taken from the aggregate school of all the philosophers; also, when matter is made equal to God, then you have the teaching of Zeno; and when any doctrine is alleged touching a god of fire, then Heraclitus comes in. The same subject-matter is discussed over and over again 1917 by the heretics and the philosophers; the same arguments 1918 are involved. Whence comes evil? Why is it permitted? What is the origin of man? and in what way does he come? Besides the question which Valentinus has very lately proposed—Whence comes God? Which he settles with the answer: From enthymesis and ectroma. 1919 Unhappy Aristotle! who invented for these men dialectics, the art of building up and pulling down; an art so evasive in its propositions, 1920 so far-fetched in its conjectures, so harsh, in its arguments, so productive of contentions—embarrassing 1921 even to itself, retracting everything, and really treating of 1922 nothing! Whence spring those “fables and endless genealogies,” 1923 and “unprofitable questions,” 1924 and “words which spread like a cancer?” 1925 From all these, when the apostle would restrain us, he expressly names philosophy as that which he would have us be on our guard against. Writing to the Colossians, he says, “See that no one beguile you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, and contrary to the wisdom of the Holy Ghost.” 1926 He had been at Athens, and had in his interviews (with its philosophers) become acquainted with that human wisdom which pretends to know the truth, whilst it only corrupts it, and is itself divided into its own manifold heresies, by the variety of its mutually repugnant sects. What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? what between heretics and Christians? Our instruction comes from “the porch of Solomon,” 1927 who had himself taught that “the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart.” 1928 Away with 1929 all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the gospel! With our faith, we desire no further belief. For this is our palmary faith, that there is nothing which we ought to believe besides.
Footnotes
246:19111 Tim. iv. 1.
246:19121 Cor. 3:18, 25.
246:1913Denique.
246:1914Subornantur.
246:1915Formeæ, “Ideæ” (Oehler).
246:1916See Tertullian’s treatises, adversus Valentinum, xxv., and de Anima, xxi.; also Epiphanius, Hær. xxxi . 23.
246:1917Volutatur.
246:1918Retractatus.
246:1919“De enthymesi;” for this word Tertullian gives animationem (in his tract against Valentinus, ix.), which seems to mean, “the mind in operation.” (See the same treatise, x. xi.) With regard to the other word, Jerome (on Amos. iii.) adduces Valentinus as calling Christ ἔκτρωμα, that is, abortion.
246:1920Sententiis.
246:1921Molestam.
246:1922Tractaverit, in the sense of conclusively settling.
246:19231 Tim. i. 4.
246:1924Tit. iii. 9.
246:19252 Tim. ii. 17.
246:1926Col. ii. 8. The last clause, “præter providentiam Spiritus Sancti,” is either Tertullian’s reading, or his gloss of the apostle’s οὐ κατὰ Χριστόν—“not after Christ.”
246:1927Because in the beginning of the church the apostles taught in Solomon’s porch, Acts iii. 5.
246:1928Wisd. 1.1.
246:1929Viderint.
Chapter VIII.—Christ’s Word, Seek, and Ye Shall Find, No Warrant for Heretical Deviations from the Faith. All Christ’s Words to the Jews are for Us, Not Indeed as Specific Commands, But as Principles to Be Applied.
I come now to the point which (is urged both by our own brethren and by the heretics). Our brethren adduce it as a pretext for entering on curious inquiries, 1930 and the heretics insist on it for importing the scrupulosity (of their unbelief). 1931 It is written, they say, “Seek, and ye shall find.” 1932 Let us remember at what time the Lord said this. I think it was at the very outset of His teaching, when there was still a doubt felt by all whether He were the Christ, and when even Peter had not yet declared Him to be the Son of God, and John (Baptist) had actually ceased to feel assurance about Him. 1933 With good reason, therefore, was it then said, “Seek, and ye shall find,” when inquiry was still be to made of Him who was not yet become known. Besides, this was said in respect of the Jews. For it is to them that the whole matter 1934 of this reproof 1935 pertains, seeing that they had (a revelation) where they might seek Christ.
“They have,” says He, “Moses and Elias,” 1936 —in other words, the law and the prophets, which preach Christ; as also in another place He says plainly, “Search the Scriptures, in which ye expect (to find) salvation; for they testify of me;” 1937 which will be the meaning of “Seek, and ye shall find.” For it is clear that the next words also apply to the Jews: “Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” 1938 The Jews had formerly been in covenant with 1939 God; but being afterwards cast off on account of their sins, they began to be 1940 without God. The Gentiles, on the contrary, had never been in covenant with God; they were only as “a drop from a bucket,” and “as dust from the threshing floor,” 1941 and were ever outside the door. Now, how shall he who was always outside knock at the place where he never was? What door does he know of, when he has passed through none, either by entrance or ejection? Is it not rather he who is aware that he once lived within and was thrust out, that (probably) found the door and knocked thereat? In like manner, “Ask, and ye shall receive,” 1942 is suitably said 1943 to one who was aware from whom he ought to ask,—by whom also some promise had been given; that is to say, “the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.” Now, the Gentiles knew nothing either of Him, or of any of His promises. Therefore it was to Israel that he spake when He said, “I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 1944 Not yet had He “cast to the dogs the children’s bread;” 1945 not yet did He charge them to “go into the way of the Gentiles.” 1946 It is only at the last that He instructs them to “go and teach all nations, and baptize them,” 1947 when they were so soon to receive “the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, who should guide them into all the truth.” 1948 And this, too, makes towards the same conclusion. If the apostles, who were ordained 1949 to be teachers to the Gentiles, were themselves to have the Comforter for their teacher, far more needless 1950 was it to say to us, “Seek, and ye shall find,” to whom was to come, without research, 1951 our instruction 1952 by the apostles, and to the apostles themselves by the Holy Ghost. All the Lord’s sayings, indeed, are set forth for all men; through the ears of the Jews have they passed on to us. Still most of them were addressed to Jewish persons; 1953 they therefore did not constitute instruction properly designed 1954 for ourselves, but rather an example. 1955
Footnotes
247:1930Curiositatem.
247:1931Scrupulositatem, “hair-splitting.”
247:1932Matt. vii. 7.
247:1933See our translation of the Anti-Marcion, iv. 18 (infra), and Tertullian’s treatise, de Bapt. x.
247:1934Sermo.
247:1935Suggillationis.
247:1936Luke xvi. 29.
247:1937John v. 39.
247:1938Matt. vii. 7.
247:1939Penes.
247:1940Or, “were for the first time.”
247:1941Isa. xl. 15.
247:1942Matt. vii. 7.
247:1943Competit.
247:1944Matt. xv. 24.
247:1945Matt. 15.26.
247:1946Matt. x. 5.
247:1947Matt. xxviii. 19.
247:1948John xvi. 13.
247:1949Destinati.
247:1950Multo magis vacabat.
247:1951Ultro.
247:1952Doctrina.
247:1953In personas, i.e., Judæorum (Oehler).
247:1954Proprietatem admonitionis.
247:1955“That is, not a specific command” primarily meant for us, but a principle “to be applied by us” (Dodgson).
Chapter IX.—The Research After Definite Truth Enjoined on Us. When We Have Discovered This, We Should Be Content.
I now purposely 1956 relinquish this ground of argument. Let it be granted, that the words, “Seek, and ye shall find,” were addressed to all men (equally). Yet even here one’s aim is 1957 carefully to determine 1958 the sense of the words 1959 consistently with 1960 (that reason), 1961 which is the guiding principle 1962 in all interpretation. (Now) no divine saying is so unconnected 1963 and diffuse, that its words only are to be insisted on, and their connection left undetermined. But at the outset I lay down (this position) that there is some one, and therefore definite, thing taught by Christ, which the Gentiles are by all means bound to believe, and for that purpose to “seek,” in order that they may be able, when they have “found” it, to believe. However, 1964 there can be no indefinite seeking for that which has been taught as one only definite thing. You must “seek” until you “find,” and believe when you have found; nor have you anything further to do but to keep what you have believed provided you believe this besides, that nothing else is to be believed, and therefore nothing else is to be sought, after you have found and believed what has been taught by Him who charges you to seek no other thing than that which He has taught. 1965 When, indeed, any man doubts about this, proof will be forthcoming, 1966 that we have in our possession 1967 that which was taught by Christ. Meanwhile, such is my confidence in our proof, that I anticipate it, in the shape of an admonition to certain persons, not “to seek” anything beyond what they have believed—that this is what they ought to have sought, how to avoid 1968 interpreting, “Seek, and ye shall find,” without regard to the rule of reason.
Footnotes
247:1956Sponte.
247:1957Expetit.
247:1958Certare.
247:1959Sensus.
247:1960Cum.
247:1961See Oehler’s note.
247:1962Gubernaculo. See Irenæus, ii. 46, for a similar view (Rigalt.). Surely Dodgson’s version, if intelligible in itself even, incorrectly represents Tertullian’s sense.
247:1963Dissoluta.
248:1964Porro.
248:1965[Not to be contented with Truth, once known, is a sin preceding that against the Holy Spirit, and this state of mind explains the judicial blindness inflicted on Lapsers, as asserted by St. Paul, 2 Thess. 2:10, 13, where note—“they received not the love of the truth.” They had it and were not content with it.]
248:1966Constabit.
248:1967Penes nos.
248:1968Ne.
Chapter X.—One Has Succeeded in Finding Definite Truth, When He Believes. Heretical Wits are Always Offering Many Things for Vain Discussion, But We are Not to Be Always Seeking.
Now the reason of this saying is comprised in three points: in the matter, in the time, in the limit. 1969 In the matter, so that you must consider what it is you have to seek; in the time, when you have to seek; in the limit, how long. What you have “to seek,” then, is that which Christ has taught, 1970 (and you must go on seeking) of course for such time as you fail to find, 1971 —until indeed you find 1972 it. But you have succeeded in finding 1973 when you have believed. For you would not have believed if you had not found; as neither would you have sought except with a view to find. Your object, therefore, in seeking was to find; and your object in finding was to believe. All further delay for seeking and finding you have prevented 1974 by believing. The very fruit of your seeking has determined for you this limit. This boundary 1975 has He set for you Himself, who is unwilling that you should believe anything else than what He has taught, or, therefore, even seek for it. If, however, because so many other things have been taught by one and another, we are on that account bound to go on seeking, so long as we are able to find anything, we must (at that rate) be ever seeking, and never believe anything at all. For where shall be the end of seeking? where the stop 1976 in believing? where the completion in finding? (Shall it be) with Marcion? But even Valentinus proposes (to us the) maxim, “Seek, and ye shall find.” (Then shall it be) with Valentinus? Well, but Apelles, too, will assail me with the same quotation; Hebion also, and Simon, and all in turn, have no other argument wherewithal to entice me, and draw me over to their side. Thus I shall be nowhere, and still be encountering 1977 (that challenge), “Seek, and ye shall find,” precisely as if I had no resting-place; 1978 as if (indeed) I had never found that which Christ has taught—that which ought 1979 to be sought, that which must needs 1980 be believed.
Footnotes
248:1969In modo.
248:1970This is, “the matter.”
248:1971“The time.”
248:1972“The limit.”
248:1973Invenisti.
248:1974Fixisti, “determined.”
248:1975Fossam.
248:1976Statio, “resting-place.”
248:1977Dum convenero.
248:1978This is the rendering of Oehler’s text, “et velut si nusquam. There are other readings of this obscure passage, of which as we add the two most intelligible. The Codex Agobardinus has, “et velim si nunquam;” that is, “and I would that I were nowhere,” with no fixed belief—in such wise as never to have had the truth; not, as must now be, to have forfeited it. (Dodgson). This seems far-fetched, and inferior to the reading of Pamelius and his mss.: “et velint me sic esse nusquam;”—or (as Semler puts it) “velint sic nusquam;” i.e., “and they (the heretics) would wish me to be nowhere”—without the fixed faith of the Catholic. This makes good sense. [Semler is here mentioned, and if anybody wishes to understand what sort of editor he was, he may be greatly amused by Kaye’s examination of some of his positions, pp. 64–84. Elucidation II.]
248:1979Oportet.
248:1980Necesse est. Observe these degrees of obligation.
Chapter XI.—After We Have Believed, Search Should Cease; Otherwise It Must End in a Denial of What We Have Believed. No Other Object Proposed for Our Faith.
There is impunity in erring, if there is no delinquency; although indeed to err it is itself an act of delinquency. 1981 With impunity, I repeat, does a man ramble, 1982 when he (purposely) deserts nothing. But yet, if I have believed what I was bound to believe, and then afterwards think that there is something new to be sought after, I of course expect that there is something else to be found, although I should by no means entertain such expectation, unless it were because I either had not believed, although I apparently had become a believer, or else have ceased to believe. If I thus desert my faith, I am found to be a denier thereof. Once for all I would say, No man seeks, except him who either never possessed, or else has lost (what he sought). The old woman (in the Gospel) 1983 had lost one of her ten pieces of silver, and therefore she sought it; 1984 when, however, she found it, she ceased to look for it. The neighbour was without bread, and therefore he knocked; but as soon as the door was opened to him, and he received the bread, he discontinued knocking. 1985 The widow kept asking to be heard by the judge, because she was not admitted; but when her suit was heard, thenceforth she was silent. 1986 So that there is a limit both to seeking, and to knocking, and to asking. “For to every one that asketh,” says He, “it shall be given, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened, and by him that seeketh it shall be found.” 1987 Away with the man 1988 who is ever seeking because he never finds; for he seeks there where nothing can be found. Away with him who is always knocking because it will never be opened to him; for he knocks where there is none (to open). Away with him who is always asking because he will never be heard; for he asks of one who does not hear.
Footnotes
248:1981Quamvis et errare delinquere est.
248:1982Vagatur.
249:1983Anus illa.
249:1984Luke xv. 8.
249:1985Luke xi. 5.
249:1986Luke 18:2, 3.
249:1987Luke xi. 9.
249:1988Viderit.
Chapter XII.—A Proper Seeking After Divine Knowledge, Which Will Never Be Out of Place or Excessive, is Always Within the Rule of Faith.
As for us, although we must still seek, and that always, yet where ought our search to be made? Amongst the heretics, where all things are foreign 1989 and opposed to our own verity, and to whom we are forbidden to draw near? What slave looks for food from a stranger, not to say an enemy of his master? What soldier expects to get bounty and pay from kings who are unallied, I might almost say hostile—unless forsooth he be a deserter, and a runaway, and a rebel? Even that old woman 1990 searched for the piece of silver within her own house. It was also at his neighbour’s door that the persevering assailant kept knocking. Nor was it to a hostile judge, although a severe one, that the widow made her appeal. No man gets instruction 1991 from that which tends to destruction. 1992 No man receives illumination from a quarter where all is darkness. Let our “seeking,” therefore be in that which is our own, and from those who are our own: and concerning that which is our own,—that, and only that, 1993 which can become an object of inquiry without impairing the rule of faith.
Footnotes
249:1989Extranea.
249:1990Although Tertullian calls her “anus,” St. Luke’s word is γυνή not γραῦς.
249:1991Instrui potest.
249:1992Unde destruitur.
249:1993Idque dumtaxat.
Chapter XIII.—Summary of the Creed, or Rule of Faith. No Questions Ever Raised About It by Believers. Heretics Encourage and Perpetuate Thought Independent of Christ’s Teaching.
Now, with regard to this rule of faith—that we may from this point 1994 acknowledge what it is which we defend—it is, you must know, that which prescribes the belief that there is one only God, and that He is none other than the Creator of the world, who produced all things out of nothing through His own Word, first of all sent forth; 1995 that this Word is called His Son, and, under the name of God, was seen “in diverse manners” by the patriarchs, heard at all times in the prophets, at last brought down by the Spirit and Power of the Father into the Virgin Mary, was made flesh in her womb, and, being born of her, went forth as Jesus Christ; thenceforth He preached the new law and the new promise of the kingdom of heaven, worked miracles; having been crucified, He rose again the third day; (then) having ascended 1996 into the heavens, He sat at the right hand of the Father; sent instead of Himself 1997 the Power of the Holy Ghost to lead such as believe; will come with glory to take the saints to the enjoyment of everlasting life and of the heavenly promises, and to condemn the wicked to everlasting fire, after the resurrection of both these classes shall have happened, together with the restoration of their flesh. This rule, as it will be proved, was taught by Christ, and raises amongst ourselves no other questions than those which heresies introduce, and which make men heretics. 1998
Footnotes
249:1994Jam hinc.
249:1995Primo omnium demissum. Literally, “sent down.” See on this procession of the Son of God to create the world, Bishop Bull’s Defence of the Nicene Creed, etc., by the translator of this work, pp. 445 and following.
249:1996Ereptum, having been taken away.
249:1997Vicariam. [Scott’s Christian Life, Vol. III. p. 64.]
249:1998[See Bunsen (Hippol. III. Notes, etc., p. 129.) for a castigated form of the Latin Creed, as used in Rome. Observe it lacks the word Catholic. But a much better study of these formulas may be found in Dupin’s comparative Table. First Cent. pp. 9–12.]
Chapter XIV.—Curiosity Ought Not Range Beyond the Rule of Faith. Restless Curiosity, the Feature of Heresy.
So long, however, as its form exists in its proper order, you may seek and discuss as much as you please, and give full rein to 1999 your curiosity, in whatever seems to you to hang in doubt, or to be shrouded in obscurity. You have at hand, no doubt, some learned 2000 brother gifted with the grace of knowledge, some one of the experienced class, some one of your close acquaintance who is curious like yourself; although with yourself, a seeker he will, after all, 2001 be quite aware 2002 that it is better for you to remain in ignorance, lest you should come to know what you ought not, because you have acquired the knowledge of what you ought to know. 2003 “Thy faith,” He says, “hath saved thee” 2004 not observe your skill 2005 in the Scriptures. Now, faith has been deposited in the rule; it has a law, and (in the observance thereof) salvation. Skill, 2006 however, consists in curious art, having for its glory simply the readiness that comes from knack. 2007 Let such curious art give place to faith; let such glory yield to salvation. At any rate, let them either relinquish their noisiness, 2008 or else be quiet. To know nothing in opposition to the rule (of faith), is to know all things. (Suppose) that heretics were not enemies to the truth, so that we were not forewarned to avoid them, what sort of conduct would it be to agree with men who do themselves confess that they are still seeking? For if they are still seeking, they have not as yet found anything amounting to certainty; and therefore, whatever they seem for a while 2009 to hold, they betray their own scepticism, 2010 whilst they continue seeking. You therefore, who seek after their fashion, looking to those who are themselves ever seeking, a doubter to doubters, a waverer to waverers, must needs be “led, blindly by the blind, down into the ditch.” 2011 But when, for the sake of deceiving us, they pretend that they are still seeking, in order that they may palm 2012 their essays 2013 upon us by the suggestion of an anxious sympathy, 2014 —when, in short (after gaining an access to us), they proceed at once to insist on the necessity of our inquiring into such points as they were in the habit of advancing, then it is high time for us in moral obligation 2015 to repel 2016 them, so that they may know that it is not Christ, but themselves, whom we disavow. For since they are still seekers, they have no fixed tenets yet; 2017 and being not fixed in tenet, they have not yet believed; and being not yet believers, they are not Christians. But even though they have their tenets and their belief, they still say that inquiry is necessary in order to discussion. 2018 Previous, however, to the discussion, they deny what they confess not yet to have believed, so long as they keep it an object of inquiry. When men, therefore, are not Christians even on their own admission, 2019 how much more (do they fail to appear such) to us! What sort of truth is that which they patronize, 2020 when they commend it to us with a lie? Well, but they actually 2021 treat of the Scriptures and recommend (their opinions) out of the Scriptures! To be sure they do. 2022 From what other source could they derive arguments concerning the things of the faith, except from the records of the faith?
Footnotes
250:1999Omnem libidinem effundas, “pour out the whole desire for.”
250:2000Doctor, literally, “teacher.” See Eph. iv. 11; also above; chap. iii. p. 244.
250:2001This seems to be the more probable meaning of novissime in this rather obscure sentence. Oehler treats it adverbially as “postremo,” and refers to a similar use of the word below in chap. xxx. Dr. Routh (and, after him, the translator in The Library of the Fathers, Tertullian, p. 448) makes the word a noun, “thou newest of novices,” and refers to Tertullian’s work, against Praxeas, chap. xxvii., for a like use. This seems to us too harsh for the present context.
250:2002Sciet.
250:2003See 1 Cor. xii. 8.
250:2004Luke xviii. 42.
250:2005Exercitatio.
250:2006Exercitatio.
250:2007De peritiæ studio.
250:2008Non obstrepant.
250:2009Interim.
250:2010Dubitationem.
250:2011Matt. xv. 14.
250:2012Insinuent.
250:2013Tractatus.
250:2014Or, “by instilling an anxiety into us” (Dodgson).
250:2015Jam debemus.
250:2016Refutare.
250:2017Nondum tenent.
250:2018Ut defendant.
250:2019Nec sibi sunt.
250:2020Patrocinantur.
250:2021Ipsi.
250:2022Scilicet.
Chapter XV.—Heretics Not to Be Allowed to Argue Out of the Scriptures. The Scriptures, in Fact, Do Not Belong to Them. 2023
We are therefore come to (the gist of) our position; for at this point we were aiming, and for this we were preparing in the preamble of our address (which we have just completed),—so that we may now join issue on the contention to which our adversaries challenge us. They put forward 2024 the Scriptures, and by this insolence 2025 of theirs they at once influence some. In the encounter itself, however, they weary the strong, they catch the weak, and dismiss waverers with a doubt. Accordingly, we oppose to them this step above all others, of not admitting them to any discussion of the Scriptures. 2026
If in these lie their resources, before they can use them, it ought to be clearly seen to whom belongs the possession of the Scriptures, that none may be admitted to the use thereof who has no title at all to the privilege.
Footnotes
250:2023[See Marcion, B. I. Cap. xxii. infra, note.]
250:2024Obtendunt.
250:2025Audacia.
250:2026De Scripturis. But as this preposition is often the sign of the instrument in Tertullian, this phrase may mean “out of,” or “by means of the Scriptures.” See the last chapter.
Chapter XVI.—Apostolic Sanction to This Exclusion of Heretics from the Use of the Scriptures. Heretics, According to the Apostle, are Not to Be Disputed With, But to Be Admonished.
I might be thought to have laid down this position to remedy distrust in my case, 2027 or from a desire of entering on the contest 2028 in some other way, were there not reasons on my side, especially this, that our faith owes deference 2029 to the apostle, who forbids us to enter on “questions,” or to lend our ears to new-fangled statements, 2030 or to consort with a heretic “after the first and second admonition,” 2031 not, (be it observed,) after discussion. Discussion he has inhibited in this way, by designating admonition as the purpose of dealing with a heretic, and the first one too, because he is not a Christian; in order that he might not, after the manner of a Christian, seem to require correction again and again, and “before two or three witnesses,” 2032 seeing that he ought to be corrected, for the very reason that he is not to be disputed with; and in the next place, because a controversy over the Scriptures can, clearly, 2033 produce no other effect than help to upset either the stomach or the brain.
Footnotes
251:2027De consilio diffidentiæ.
251:2028Constitutionis, “prima causarum conflictio,”—a term of the law courts.
251:2029Obsequium.
251:20301 Tim. 6:3, 4.
251:2031Tit. iii. 10.
251:2032Matt. xviii. 16.
251:2033Plane, ironical.
Chapter XVII.—Heretics, in Fact, Do Not Use, But Only Abuse, Scripture. No Common Ground Between Them and You.
Now this heresy of yours 2034 does not receive certain Scriptures; and whichever of them it does receive, it perverts by means of additions and diminutions, for the accomplishment of it own purpose; and such as it does receive, it receives not in their entirety; but even when it does receive any up to a certain point 2035 as entire, it nevertheless perverts even these by the contrivance of diverse interpretations. Truth is just as much opposed by an adulteration of its meaning as it is by a corruption of its text. 2036 Their vain presumptions must needs refuse to acknowledge the (writings) whereby they are refuted. They rely on those which they have falsely put together, and which they have selected, because of 2037 their ambiguity. Though most skilled 2038 in the Scriptures, you will make no progress, 2039 when everything which you maintain is denied on the other side, and whatever you deny is (by them) maintained. As for yourself, indeed, you will lose nothing but your breath, and gain nothing but vexation from their blasphemy.
Footnotes
251:2034Ista hæresis.
251:2035Aliquatenus.
251:2036Stilus.
251:2037“De” has often the sense of “propter” in our author.
251:2038Literally, “O most skilled.”
251:2039Quid promovebis.
Chapter XVIII.—Great Evil Ensues to the Weak in Faith, from Any Discussion Out of the Scriptures. Conviction Never Comes to the Heretic from Such a Process.
But with respect to the man for whose sake you enter on the discussion of the Scriptures, 2040 with the view of strengthening him when afflicted with doubts, (let me ask) will it be to the truth, or rather to heretical opinions that he will lean? Influenced by the very fact that he sees you have made no progress, whilst the other side is on an equal footing 2041 (with yourself) in denying and in defence, or at any rate on a like standing 2042 he will go away confirmed in his uncertainty 2043 by the discussion, not knowing which side to adjudge heretical. For, no doubt, they too are able 2044 to retort these things on us. It is indeed a necessary consequence that they should go so far as to say that adulterations of the Scriptures, and false expositions thereof, are rather introduced by ourselves, inasmuch as they, no less than we 2045 maintain that truth is on their side.
Footnotes
251:2040Or, “from the Scriptures.”
251:2041Æquo gradu.
251:2042Statu certe pari.
251:2043Incertior.
251:2044Habent.
251:2045Proinde.
Chapter XIX.—Appeal, in Discussion of Heresy, Lies Not to the Scriptures. The Scriptures Belong Only to Those Who Have the Rule of Faith.
Our appeal, therefore, must not be made to the Scriptures; nor must controversy be admitted on points in which victory will either be impossible, 2046 or uncertain, or not certain enough. 2047 But even if a discussion from the Scriptures 2048 should not turn out in such a way as to place both sides on a par, (yet) the natural order of things would require that this point should be first proposed, which is now the only one which we must discuss: “With whom lies that very faith to which the Scriptures belong. 2049 From what and through whom, and when, and to whom, has been handed down that rule, 2050 by which men become Christians?” For wherever it shall be manifest that the true Christian rule and faith shall be, there will likewise be the true Scriptures and expositions thereof, and all the Christian traditions.
Footnotes
251:2046Nulla.
251:2047Parum certa.
251:2048Conlatio scripturarum, or, “a polemical comparison of the Scriptures.”
251:2049Quibus competat fides ipsa cujus sint Scripturæ.
251:2050Disciplina [or, where was the guide-post set?]
Chapter XX.—Christ First Delivered the Faith. The Apostles Spread It; They Founded Churches as the Depositories Thereof. That Faith, Therefore, is Apostolic, Which Descended from the Apostles, Through Apostolic Churches.
Christ Jesus our Lord (may He bear with me a moment in thus expressing myself!), whosoever He is, of what God soever He is the Son, of what substance soever He is man and God, of what faith soever He is the teacher, of what reward soever He is the Promiser, did, whilst He lived on earth, Himself declare what He was, what He had been, what the Father’s will was which He was administering, what the duty of man was which He was prescribing; (and this declaration He made,) either openly to the people, or privately to His disciples, of whom He had chosen the twelve chief ones to be at His side, 2051 and whom He destined to be the teachers of the nations. Accordingly, after one of these had been struck off, He commanded the eleven others, on His departure to the Father, to “go and teach all nations, who were to be baptized into the Father, and into the Son, and into the Holy Ghost.” 2052 Immediately, therefore, so did the apostles, whom this designation indicates as “the sent.” Having, on the authority of a prophecy, which occurs in a psalm of David, 2053 chosen Matthias by lot as the twelfth, into the place of Judas, they obtained the promised power of the Holy Ghost for the gift of miracles and of utterance; and after first bearing witness to the faith in Jesus Christ throughout Judæa, and founding churches (there), they next went forth into the world and preached the same doctrine of the same faith to the nations. They then in like manner founded churches in every city, from which all the other churches, one after another, derived the tradition of the faith, 2054 and the seeds of doctrine, and are every day deriving them, 2055 that they may become churches. Indeed, it is on this account only that they will be able to deem themselves apostolic, as being the offspring of apostolic churches. Every sort of thing 2056 must necessarily revert to its original for its classification. 2057 Therefore the churches, although they are so many and so great, comprise but the one primitive church, (founded) by the apostles, from which they all (spring). In this way all are primitive, and all are apostolic, whilst they are all proved to be one, in (unbroken) unity, by their peaceful communion, 2058 and title of brotherhood, and bond 2059 of hospitality,—privileges 2060 which no other rule directs than the one tradition of the selfsame mystery. 2061
Footnotes
252:2051Mark iv. 34.
252:2052Matt. xxviii. 19.
252:2053Ps. cix. 8; comp. with Acts i. 15-20.
252:2054Traducem fidei.
252:2055Mutuantur “borrowing.”
252:2056Omne genus.
252:2057Censeatur or, “for its origin.”
252:2058Communicatio pacis.
252:2059Contesseratio. [3 John 8.]
252:2060Jura, “rights.”
252:2061That is, of the faith, or Christian creed.
Chapter XXI.—All Doctrine True Which Comes Through the Church from the Apostles, Who Were Taught by God Through Christ. All Opinion Which Has No Such Divine Origin and Apostolic Tradition to Show, is Ipso Facto False.
From this, therefore, do we draw up our rule. Since the Lord Jesus Christ sent the apostles to preach, (our rule is) that no others ought to be received as preachers than those whom Christ appointed; for “no man knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.” 2062 Nor does the Son seem to have revealed Him to any other than the apostles, whom He sent forth to preach—that, of course, which He revealed to them. Now, what that was which they preached—in other words, what it was which Christ revealed to them—can, as I must here likewise prescribe, properly be proved in no other way than by those very churches which the apostles founded in person, by declaring the gospel to them directly themselves, both vivâ voce, as the phrase is, and subsequently by their epistles. If, then, these things are so, it is in the same degree 2063 manifest that all doctrine which agrees with the apostolic churches—those moulds 2064 and original sources of the faith must be reckoned for truth, as undoubtedly containing that which the (said) churches received from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, Christ from God. Whereas all doctrine must be prejudged 2065 as false 2066 which savours of contrariety to the truth of the churches and apostles of Christ and God. It remains, then, that we demonstrate whether this doctrine of ours, of which we have now given the rule, has its origin 2067 in the tradition of the apostles, and whether all other doctrines do not ipso facto 2068 proceed from falsehood. We hold communion with the apostolic churches because our doctrine is in no respect different from theirs. This is our witness of truth.
Footnotes
252:2062Matt. xi. 27.
252:2063Perinde.
252:2064Matricibus.
252:2065Præjudicandam. [This then is Præscription.]
252:2066De mendacio.
252:2067Censeatur.
252:2068Ex hoc ipso, “from this very circumstance.”
Chapter XXII.—Attempt to Invalidate This Rule of Faith Rebutted. The Apostles Safe Transmitters of the Truth. Sufficiently Taught at First, and Faithful in the Transmission.
But inasmuch as the proof is so near at hand, 2069 that if it were at once produced there would be nothing left to be dealt with, let us give way for a while to the opposite side, if they think that they can find some means of invalidating this rule, just as if no proof were forthcoming from us. They usually tell us that the apostles did not know all things: (but herein) they are impelled by the same madness, whereby they turn round to the very opposite point, 2070 and declare that the apostles certainly knew all things, but did not deliver all things to all persons,—in either case exposing Christ to blame for having sent forth apostles who had either too much ignorance, or too little simplicity. What man, then, of sound mind can possibly suppose that they were ignorant of anything, whom the Lord ordained to be masters (or teachers), 2071 keeping them, as He did, inseparable (from Himself) in their attendance, in their discipleship, in their society, to whom, “when they were alone, He used to expound” all things 2072 which were obscure, telling them that “to them it was given to know those mysteries,” 2073 which it was not permitted the people to understand? Was anything withheld from the knowledge of Peter, who is called “the rock on which the church should be built,” 2074 who also obtained “the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” 2075 with the power of “loosing and binding in heaven and on earth?” 2076 Was anything, again, concealed from John, the Lord’s most beloved disciple, who used to lean on His breast 2077 to whom alone the Lord pointed Judas out as the traitor, 2078 whom He commended to Mary as a son in His own stead? 2079 Of what could He have meant those to be ignorant, to whom He even exhibited His own glory with Moses and Elias, and the Father’s voice moreover, from heaven? 2080 Not as if He thus disapproved 2081 of all the rest, but because “by three witnesses must every word be established.” 2082 After the same fashion, 2083 too, (I suppose,) were they ignorant to whom, after His resurrection also, He vouchsafed, as they were journeying together, “to expound all the Scriptures.” 2084 No doubt 2085 He had once said, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot hear them now;” but even then He added, “When He, the Spirit of truth, shall come, He will lead you into all truth.” 2086 He (thus) shows that there was nothing of which they were ignorant, to whom He had promised the future attainment of all truth by help of the Spirit of truth. And assuredly He fulfilled His promise, since it is proved in the Acts of the Apostles that the Holy Ghost did come down. Now they who reject that Scripture 2087 can neither belong to the Holy Spirit, seeing that they cannot acknowledge that the Holy Ghost has been sent as yet to the disciples, nor can they presume to claim to be a church themselves 2088 who positively have no means of proving when, and with what swaddling-clothes 2089 this body was established. Of so much importance is it to them not to have any proofs for the things which they maintain, lest along with them there be introduced damaging exposures 2090 of those things which they mendaciously devise.
Footnotes
253:2069Expedita.
253:2070Susam rursus convertun.
253:2071Magistros.
253:2072Mark iv. 34.
253:2073Matt. xiii. 11.
253:2074Matt. xvi. 18. [See Kaye p. 222, also Elucidation II.]
253:2075Matt. 16.19.
253:2076Matt. 16.19.
253:2077John xxi. 20.
253:2078John xiii. 25. [N.B. loco suo.]
253:2079John xix. 26.
253:2080Matt. xvii. 1-8.
253:2081Reprobans.
253:2082Deut. 19:15, 2 Cor. 13:1.
253:2083Itaque, ironical.
253:2084Luke xxiv. 27.
253:2085Plane.
253:2086John 16:12, 13.
253:2087See Tertullian’s Anti-Marcion, iv. 5, and v. 2 (Trans. pp. 187 and 377).
253:2088Nec ecclesiam se dicant defendere.
253:2089Incunabulis, infant nursing.
253:2090Traductiones.
Chapter XXIII.—The Apostles Not Ignorant. The Heretical Pretence of St. Peter’s Imperfection Because He Was Rebuked by St. Paul. St. Peter Not Rebuked for Error in Teaching.
Now, with the view of branding 2091 the apostles with some mark of ignorance, they put forth the case of Peter and them that were with him having been rebuked by Paul. “Something therefore,” they say, “was wanting in them.” (This they allege,) in order that they may from this construct that other position of theirs, that a fuller knowledge may possibly have afterwards come over (the apostles,) such as fell to the share of Paul when he rebuked those who preceded him. I may here say to those who reject The Acts of the Apostles: “It is first necessary that you show us who this Paul was,—both what he was before he was an apostle, and how he became an apostle,”—so very great is the use which they make of him in respect of other questions also. It is true that he tells us himself that he was a persecutor before he became an apostle, 2092 still this is not enough for any man who examines before he believes, since even the Lord Himself did not bear witness of Himself. 2093 But let them believe without the Scriptures, if their object is to believe contrary to the Scriptures. 2094 Still they should show, from the circumstance which they allege of Peter’s being rebuked by Paul, that Paul added yet another form of the gospel besides that which Peter and the rest had previously set forth. But the fact is, 2095 having been converted from a persecutor to a preacher, he is introduced as one of the brethren to brethren, by brethren—to them, indeed, by men who had put on faith from the apostles’ hands. Afterwards, as he himself narrates, he “went up to Jerusalem for the purpose of seeing Peter,” 2096 because of his office, no doubt, 2097 and by right of a common belief and preaching. Now they certainly would not have been surprised at his having become a preacher instead of a persecutor, if his preaching were of something contrary; nor, moreover, would they have “glorified the Lord,” 2098 because Paul had presented himself as an adversary to Him. They accordingly even gave him “the right hand of fellowship,” 2099 as a sign of their agreement with him, and arranged amongst themselves a distribution of office, not a diversity of gospel, so that they should severally preach not a different gospel, but (the same), to different persons, 2100 Peter to the circumcision, Paul to the Gentiles. Forasmuch, then, as Peter was rebuked because, after he had lived with the Gentiles, he proceeded to separate himself from their company out of respect for persons, the fault surely was one of conversation, not of preaching. 2101 For it does not appear from this, that any other God than the Creator, or any other Christ than (the son) of Mary, or any other hope than the resurrection, was (by him) announced.
Footnotes
253:2091Suggillandam.
254:2092Gal. i. 13.
254:2093John v. 31.
254:2094Ut credunt contra Scripturas.
254:2095Atquin.
254:2096Gal. i. 18.
254:2097Scilicet.
254:2098Gal. i. 24.
254:2099Gal. ii. 9.
254:2100The same verse. [Note Peter’s restriction to Jews.]
254:2101Gal. 2:12, 13. See also Anti-Marcion, iv. 3 (Trans. p. 182).
Chapter XXIV.—St. Peter’s Further Vindication. St. Paul Not Superior to St. Peter in Teaching. Nothing Imparted to the Former in the Third Heaven Enabled Him to Add to the Faith. Heretics Boast as If Favoured with Some of the Secrets Imparted to Him.
I have not the good fortune, 2102 or, as I must rather say, 2103 I have not the unenviable task, 2104 of setting apostles by the ears. 2105 But, inasmuch as our very perverse cavillers obtrude the rebuke in question for the set purpose of bringing the earlier 2106 doctrine into suspicion, I will put in a defence, as it were, for Peter, to the effect that even Paul said that he was “made all things to all men—to the Jews a Jew,” to those who were not Jews as one who was not a Jew—“that he might gain all.” 2107 Therefore it was according to times and persons and causes that they used to censure certain practices, which they would not hesitate themselves to pursue, in like conformity to times and persons and causes. Just (e.g.) as if Peter too had censured Paul, because, whilst forbidding circumcision, he actually circumcised Timothy himself. Never mind 2108 those who pass sentence on apostles! It is a happy fact that Peter is on the same level with Paul in the very glory 2109 of martyrdom. Now, although Paul was carried away even to the third heaven, and was caught up to paradise, 2110 and heard certain revelations there, yet these cannot possibly seem to have qualified him for (teaching) another doctrine, seeing that their very nature was such as to render them communicable to no human being. 2111 If, however, that unspeakable mystery 2112 did leak out, 2113 and become known to any man, and if any heresy affirms that it does itself follow the same, (then) either Paul must be charged with having betrayed the secret, or some other man must actually 2114 be shown to have been afterwards “caught up into paradise,” who had permission to speak out plainly what Paul was not allowed (even) to mutter.
Footnotes
254:2102Non mihi tam bene est.
254:2103Immo.
254:2104Non mihi tam male est.
254:2105Ut committam.
254:2106Superiorem, “that which Peter had preached.”
254:21071 Cor. 9:20, 22.
254:2108Viderint.
254:2109Et in martyrio.
254:21102 Cor. xii. 4.
254:2111Nulli hominum.
254:2112Nescio quid illud.
254:2113Emanavit.
254:2114Et.
Chapter XXV.—The Apostles Did Not Keep Back Any of the Deposit of Doctrine Which Christ Had Entrusted to Them. St. Paul Openly Committed His Whole Doctrine to Timothy.
But here is, as we have said, 2115 the same madness, in their allowing indeed that the apostles were ignorant of nothing, and preached not any (doctrines) which contradicted one another, but at the same time insisting that they did not reveal all to all men, for that they proclaimed some openly and to all the world, whilst they disclosed others (only) in secret and to a few, because Paul addressed even this expression to Timothy: “O Timothy, guard that which is entrusted to thee;” 2116 and again: “That good thing which was committed unto thee keep.” 2117 What is this deposit? Is it so secret as to be supposed to characterize 2118 a new doctrine? or is it a part of that charge of which he says, “This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy?” 2119 and also of that precept of which he says, “I charge thee in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and before Jesus Christ who witnessed a good confession under Pontius Pilate, that thou keep this commandment?” 2120 Now, what is (this) commandment and what is (this) charge? From the preceding and the succeeding contexts, it will be manifest that there is no mysterious 2121 hint darkly suggested in this expression about (some) far-fetched 2122 doctrine, but that a warning is rather given against receiving any other (doctrine) than that which Timothy had heard from himself, as I take it publicly: “Before many witnesses” is his phrase. 2123 Now, if they refuse to allow that the church is meant by these “many witnesses,” it matters nothing, since nothing could have been secret which was produced “before many witnesses.” Nor, again, must the circumstance of his having wished him to “commit these things to faithful men, who should be able to teach others also,” 2124 be construed into a proof of there being some occult gospel. For, when he says “these things,” he refers to the things of which he is writing at the moment. In reference, however, to occult subjects, he would have called them, as being absent, those things, not these things, to one who had a joint knowledge of them with himself. 2125
Footnotes
254:2115Above, in chap. xxii. [Note the Gnostic madness of such a plea. Kaye, p. 235 and Elucidation IV.]
255:21161 Tim. vi. 20.
255:21172 Tim. i. 14.
255:2118Ut alterius doctrinæ deputetur.
255:21191 Tim. i. 18.
255:21201 Tim. vi. 13.
255:2121Nescis quid.
255:2122Remotiore.
255:21232 Tim. ii. 2.
255:21242 Tim. ii. 2.
255:2125Apud conscientiam. [Clement of Alexandria is to be interpreted by Tertullian, with whom he does not essentially differ. For Clement’s Esoteric Doctrine (See Vol. II. pp. 302, 313, etc.) is defined as perfecting the type of the Christian by the strong meat of Truth, of which the entire deposit is presupposed as common to all Christians. We must not blame Clement for the abuse of his teaching by perverters of Truth itself.]
Chapter XXVI.—The Apostles Did in All Cases Teach the Whole Truth to the Whole Church. No Reservation, Nor Partial Communication to Favourite Friends.
Besides which, it must have followed, that, for the man to whom he committed the ministration of the gospel, he would add the injunction that it be not ministered in all places, 2126 and without respect to persons, 2127 in accordance with the Lord’s saying, “Not to cast one’s pearls before swine, nor that which is holy unto dogs.” 2128 Openly did the Lord speak, 2129 without any intimation of a hidden mystery. He had Himself commanded that, “whatsoever they had heard in darkness” and in secret, they should “declare in the light and on the house-tops.” 2130 He had Himself foreshown, by means of a parable, that they should not keep back in secret, fruitless of interest, 2131 a single pound, that is, one word of His. He used Himself to tell them that a candle was not usually “pushed away under a bushel, but placed on a candlestick,” in order to “give light to all who are in the house.” 2132 These things the apostles either neglected, or failed to understand, if they fulfilled them not, by concealing any portion of the light, that is, of the word of God and the mystery of Christ. Of no man, I am quite sure, were they afraid,—neither of Jews nor of Gentiles in their violence; 2133 with all the greater freedom, then, would they certainly preach in the church, who held not their tongue in synagogues and public places. Indeed they would have found it impossible either to convert Jews or to bring in Gentiles, unless they “set forth in order” 2134 that which they would have them believe. Much less, when churches were advanced in the faith, would they have withdrawn from them anything for the purpose of committing it separately to some few others. Although, even supposing that among intimate friends, 2135 so to speak, they did hold certain discussions, yet it is incredible that these could have been such as to bring in some other rule of faith, differing from and contrary to that which they were proclaiming through the Catholic churches, 2136 —as if they spoke of one God in the Church, (and) another at home, and described one substance of Christ, publicly, (and) another secretly, and announced one hope of the resurrection before all men, (and) another before the few; although they themselves, in their epistles, besought men that they would all speak one and the same thing, and that there should be no divisions and dissensions in the church, 2137 seeing that they, whether Paul or others, preached the same things. Moreover, they remembered (the words): “Let your communication be yea, yea; nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than this cometh of evil;” 2138 so that they were not to handle the gospel in a diversity of treatment.
Footnotes
255:2126Passim.
255:2127Inconsiderate.
255:2128Matt. vii. 6.
255:2129John xviii. 20.
255:2130Matt. x. 27.
255:2131Luke xix. 20-24.
255:2132Matt. v. 15.
255:2133Literally, “the violence of neither Jew nor Gentile.”
255:2134Luke i. 1.
255:2135Domesticos. [All this interprets Clement and utterly deprives the Trent System of its appeal to a secret doctrine, against our Præscription.]
255:2136Catholice, or, “which they were bringing before the public in catholic way.”
255:21371 Cor. i. 10.
256:2138Matt. v. 37.
Chapter XXVII.—Granted that the Apostles Transmitted the Whole Doctrine of Truth, May Not the Churches Have Been Unfaithful in Handing It On? Inconceivable that This Can Have Been the Case.
Since, therefore, it is incredible that the apostles were either ignorant of the whole scope of the message which they had to declare, 2139 or failed to make known to all men the entire rule of faith, let us see whether, while the apostles proclaimed it, perhaps, simply and fully, the churches, through their own fault, set it forth otherwise than the apostles had done. All these suggestions of distrust 2140 you may find put forward by the heretics. They bear in mind how the churches were rebuked by the apostle: “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you?” 2141 and, “Ye did run so well; who hath hindered you?” 2142 and how the epistle actually begins: “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from Him, who hath called you as His own in grace, to another gospel.” 2143 That they likewise (remember), what was written to the Corinthians, that they “were yet carnal,” who “required to be fed with milk,” being as yet “unable to bear strong meat;” 2144 who also “thought that they knew somewhat, whereas they knew not yet anything, as they ought to know.” 2145 When they raise the objection that the churches were rebuked, let them suppose that they were also corrected; let them also remember those (churches), concerning whose faith and knowledge and conversation the apostle “rejoices and gives thanks to God,” which nevertheless even at this day, unite with those which were rebuked in the privileges of one and the same institution.
Footnotes
256:2139Plenitudinem prædicationis.
256:2140Scrupulositatis.
256:2141Gal. iii. 1.
256:2142Gal. v. 7.
256:2143Gal. i. 6.
256:21441 Cor. iii. 1, and following verses.
256:21451 Cor. viii. 2.
Chapter XXVIII.—The One Tradition of the Faith, Which is Substantially Alike in the Churches Everywhere, a Good Proof that the Transmission Has Been True and Honest in the Main.
Grant, then, that all have erred; that the apostle was mistaken in giving his testimony; that the Holy Ghost had no such respect to any one (church) as to lead it into truth, although sent with this view by Christ, 2146 and for this asked of the Father that He might be the teacher of truth; 2147 grant, also, that He, the Steward of God, the Vicar of Christ, 2148 neglected His office, permitting the churches for a time to understand differently, (and) to believe differently, what He Himself was preaching by the apostles,—is it likely that so many churches, and they so great, should have gone astray into one and the same faith? No casualty distributed among many men issues in one and the same result. Error of doctrine in the churches must necessarily have produced various issues. When, however, that which is deposited among many is found to be one and the same, it is not the result of error, but of tradition. Can any one, then, be reckless 2149 enough to say that they were in error who handed on the tradition?
Footnotes
256:2146John xiv. 26.
256:2147John xv. 26.
256:2148[Tertullian knows no other Vicar of Christ than the Holy Spirit. They who attribute infallibility to any mortal man become Montanists; they attribute the Paraclete’s voice to their oracle.]
256:2149Audeat.
Chapter XXIX.—The Truth Not Indebted to the Care of the Heretics; It Had Free Course Before They Appeared. Priority of the Church’s Doctrine a Mark of Its Truth.
In whatever manner error came, it reigned of course 2150 only as long as there was an absence of heresies? Truth had to wait for certain Marcionites and Valentinians to set it free. During the interval the gospel was wrongly 2151 preached; men wrongly believed; so many thousands were wrongly baptized; so many works of faith were wrongly wrought; so many miraculous gifts, 2152 so many spiritual endowments, 2153 were wrongly set in operation; so many priestly functions, so many ministries, 2154 were wrongly executed; and, to sum up the whole, so many martyrs wrongly received their crowns! Else, if not wrongly done, and to no purpose, how comes it to pass that the things of God were on their course before it was known to what God they belonged? that there were Christians before Christ was found? that there were heresies before true doctrine? Not so; for in all cases truth precedes its copy, the likeness succeeds the reality. Absurd enough, however, is it, that heresy should be deemed to have preceded its own prior doctrine, even on this account, because it is that (doctrine) itself which foretold that there should be heresies against which men would have to guard! To a church which possessed this doctrine, it was written—yea, the doctrine itself writes to its own church—“Though an angel from heaven preach any other gospel than that which we have preached, let him be accursed.” 2155
Footnotes
256:2150Utique, ironical.
256:2151Perperam.
256:2152Virtutes, “potestatem edendi miracula” (Oehler).
256:2153Charismata.
256:2154Ministeria. Another reading has mysteria, “mysteries” or “sacraments.”
257:2155Gal. i. 8. [In this chapter (xxix.) the principle of Prescription is condensed and brought to the needle-point—Quod semper. If you can’t show that your doctrine was always taught, it is false: and this is “Prescription.”]
Chapter XXX.—Comparative Lateness of Heresies. Marcion’s Heresy. Some Personal Facts About Him. The Heresy of Apelles. Character of This Man; Philumene; Valentinus; Nigidius, and Hermogenes.
Where was Marcion then, that shipmaster of Pontus, the zealous student of Stoicism? Where was Valentinus then, the disciple of Platonism? For it is evident that those men lived not so long ago,—in the reign of Antoninus for the most part, 2156 —and that they at first were believers in the doctrine of the Catholic Church, in the church of Rome under the episcopate of the blessed Eleutherus, 2157 until on account of their ever restless curiosity, with which they even infected the brethren, they were more than once expelled. Marcion, indeed, [went] with the two hundred sesterces which he had brought into the church, and, 2158 when banished at last to a permanent excommunication, they scattered abroad the poisons of their doctrines. Afterwards, it is true, Marcion professed repentance, and agreed to the conditions granted to him—that he should receive reconciliation if he restored to the church all the others whom he had been training for perdition: he was prevented, however, by death. It was indeed 2159 necessary that there should be heresies; 2160 and yet it does not follow from that necessity, that heresies are a good thing. As if it has not been necessary also that there should be evil! It was even necessary that the Lord should be betrayed; but woe to the traitor! 2161 So that no man may from this defend heresies. If we must likewise touch the descent 2162 of Apelles, he is far from being “one of the old school,” 2163 like his instructor and moulder, Marcion; he rather forsook the continence of Marcion, by resorting to the company of a woman, and withdrew to Alexandria, out of sight of his most abstemious 2164 master. Returning therefrom, after some years, unimproved, except that he was no longer a Marcionite, he clave 2165 to another woman, the maiden Philumene (whom we have already 2166 mentioned), who herself afterwards became an enormous prostitute. Having been imposed on by her vigorous spirit, 2167 he committed to writing the revelations which he had learned of her. Persons are still living who remember them,—their own actual disciples and successors,—who cannot therefore deny the lateness of their date. But, in fact, by their own works they are convicted, even as the Lord said. 2168 For since Marcion separated the New Testament from the Old, he is (necessarily) subsequent to that which he separated, inasmuch as it was only in his power to separate what was (previously) united. Having then been united previous to its separation, the fact of its subsequent separation proves the subsequence also of the man who effected the separation. In like manner Valentinus, by his different expositions and acknowledged 2169 emendations, makes these changes on the express ground of previous faultiness, and therefore demonstrates the difference 2170 of the documents. These corrupters of the truth we mention as being more notorious and more public 2171 than others. There is, however, a certain man 2172 named Nigidius, and Hermogenes, and several others, who still pursue the course 2173 of perverting the ways of the Lord. Let them show me by what authority they come! If it be some other God they preach, how comes it that they employ the things and the writings and the names of that God against whom they preach? If it be the same God, why treat Him in some other way? Let them prove themselves to be new apostles! 2174 Let them maintain that Christ has come down a second time, taught in person a second time, has been twice crucified, twice dead, twice raised! For thus has the apostle described (the order of events in the life of Christ); for thus, too, is He 2175 accustomed to make His apostles—to give them, (that is), power besides of working the same miracles which He worked Himself. 2176 I would therefore have their mighty deeds also brought forward; except that I allow their mightiest deed to be that by which they perversely vie with the apostles. For whilst they used to raise men to life from the dead, these consign men to death from their living state.
Footnotes
257:2156Fere.
257:2157[Kaye, p. 226.]
257:2158See adv. Marcion, iv. 4. infra.
257:2159Enim, profecto (Oehler).
257:21601 Cor. xi. 19.
257:2161Mark. xiv. 21.
257:2162Stemma. The reading of the Cod. Agobard. is “stigma,” which gives very good sense.
257:2163Vetus.
257:2164Sanctissimi. This may be an ironical allusion to Marcion’s repudiation of marriage.
257:2165Impegit.
257:2166In chap. vi. p. 246 above.
257:2167Energemate. Oehler defines this word, “vis et efficacia dæmonum, quibus agebatur.” [But see Lardner, Credib. viii. p. 540.]
257:2168Matt. vii. 16.
257:2169Sine dubio.
257:2170Alterius fuisse. One reading is anterius; i.e., “demonstrates the priority” of the book he alters.
257:2171Frequentiores.
257:2172Nescio qui.
257:2173Ambulant.
257:2174Compare de Carne Christi, chap. ii. [Elucidation IV.]
257:2175Christ; so Routh.
257:2176We add Oehler’s reading of this obscure passage: “Sic enim apostolus descripsit, sic enim apostolos solet facere, dare præterea illis virtutem eadem signa edendi quæ et ipse.” [“It is worthy of remark” (says Kaye, p. 95), “that he does not appeal to any instance of the exercise of miraculous powers in his own day.”]
Chapter XXXI.—Truth First, Falsehood Afterwards, as Its Perversion. Christ’s Parable Puts the Sowing of the Good Seed Before the Useless Tares.
Let me return, however, from this digression 2177 to discuss 2178 the priority of truth, and the comparative lateness 2179 of falsehood, deriving support for my argument even from that parable which puts in the first place the sowing by the Lord of the good seed of the wheat, but introduces at a later stage the adulteration of the crop by its enemy the devil with the useless weed of the wild oats. For herein is figuratively described the difference of doctrines, since in other passages also the word of God is likened unto seed. From the actual order, therefore, it becomes clear, that that which was first delivered is of the Lord and is true, whilst that is strange and false which was afterwards introduced. This sentence will keep its ground in opposition to all later heresies, which have no consistent quality of kindred knowledge 2180 inherent in them—to claim the truth as on their side.
Footnotes
258:2177Ab excessu.
258:2178Disputandam. Another reading has deputandam, i.e., “to attribute.”
258:2179Posteritatem.
258:2180Nulla constantia de conscientia, “no conscientious ground of confidence” (Dodgson).
Chapter XXXII.—None of the Heretics Claim Succession from the Apostles. New Churches Still Apostolic, Because Their Faith is that Which the Apostles Taught and Handed Down. The Heretics Challenged to Show Any Apostolic Credentials.
But if there be any (heresies) which are bold enough to plant themselves in the midst of the apostolic age, that they may thereby seem to have been handed down by the apostles, because they existed in the time of the apostles, we can say: Let them produce the original records 2181 of their churches; let them unfold the roll of their bishops, running down in due succession from the beginning in such a manner that [that first bishop of theirs 2182 ] bishop shall be able to show for his ordainer and predecessor some one of the apostles or of apostolic men,—a man, moreover, who continued stedfast with the apostles. For this is the manner in which the apostolic churches transmit 2183 their registers: 2184 as the church of Smyrna, which records that Polycarp was placed therein by John; as also the church of Rome, which makes Clement to have been ordained in like manner by Peter. 2185 In exactly the same way the other churches likewise exhibit (their several worthies), whom, as having been appointed to their episcopal places by apostles, they regard as transmitters of the apostolic seed. Let the heretics contrive 2186 something of the same kind. For after their blasphemy, what is there that is unlawful for them (to attempt)? But should they even effect the contrivance, they will not advance a step. For their very doctrine, after comparison with that of the apostles, will declare, by its own diversity and contrariety, that it had for its author neither an apostle nor an apostolic man; because, as the apostles would never have taught things which were self-contradictory, so the apostolic men would not have inculcated teaching different from the apostles, unless they who received their instruction from the apostles went and preached in a contrary manner. To this test, therefore will they be submitted for proof 2187 by those churches, who, although they derive not their founder from apostles or apostolic men (as being of much later date, for they are in fact being founded daily), yet, since they agree in the same faith, they are accounted as not less apostolic because they are akin in doctrine. 2188 Then let all the heresies, when challenged to these two 2189 tests by our apostolic church, offer their proof of how they deem themselves to be apostolic. But in truth they neither are so, nor are they able to prove themselves to be what they are not. Nor are they admitted to peaceful relations and communion by such churches as are in any way connected with apostles, inasmuch as they are in no sense themselves apostolic because of their diversity as to the mysteries of the faith. 2190
Footnotes
258:2181Origines, “the originals” (Dodgson).
258:2182Ille. A touch of irony occurs in the phrase “primus ille episcopus.”
258:2183Deferunt.
258:2184Fastos.
258:2185[Linus and Cletus must have died or been martyred, therefore, almost as soon as appointed. Our author had seen these registers, no doubt.]
258:2186Confingant.
258:2187Probabuntur. Another reading is provocabuntur, “will be challenged.” [Not to one particular See, but to all the Apostolic churches: Quod ubique.]
258:2188Pro consanguinitate doctrinæ.
258:2189That is, the succession of bishops from the apostles, and the identity of doctrine with the apostolic.
258:2190Sacramenti.
Chapter XXXIII.—Present Heresies (Seedlings of the Tares Noted by the Sacred Writers) Already Condemned in Scripture. This Descent of Later Heresy from the Earlier Traced in Several Instances.
Besides all this, I add a review of the doctrines themselves, which, existing as they did in the days of the apostles, were both exposed and denounced by the said apostles. For by this method they will be more easily reprobated, 2191 when they are detected to have been even then in existence, or at any rate to have been seedlings 2192 of the (tares) which then were. Paul, in his first epistle to the Corinthians, sets his mark on certain who denied and doubted the resurrection. 2193 This opinion was the especial property of the Sadducees. 2194 A part of it, however, is maintained by Marcion and Apelles and Valentinus, and all other impugners of the resurrection. Writing also to the Galatians, he inveighs against such men as observed and defend circumcision and the (Mosaic) law. 2195 Thus runs Hebion’s heresy. Such also as “forbid to marry” he reproaches in his instructions to Timothy. 2196 Now, this is the teaching of Marcion and his follower Apelles. (The apostle) directs a similar blow 2197 against those who said that “the resurrection was past already.” 2198 Such an opinion did the Valentinians assert of themselves. When again he mentions “endless genealogies,” 2199 one also recognises Valentinus, in whose system a certain Æon, whosoever he be, 2200 of a new name, and that not one only, generates of his own grace 2201 Sense and Truth; and these in like manner produce of themselves Word 2202 and Life, while these again afterwards beget Man and the Church. From these primary eight 2203 ten other Æons after them spring, and then the twelve others arise with their wonderful names, to complete the mere story of the thirty Æons. The same apostle, when disapproving of those who are “in bondage to elements,” 2204 points us to some dogma of Hermogenes, who introduces matter as having no beginning, 2205 and then compares it with God, who has no beginning. 2206 By thus making the mother of the elements a goddess, he has it in his power “to be in bondage” to a being which he puts on a par with 2207 God. John, however, in the Apocalypse is charged to chastise those “who eat things sacrificed to idols,” and “who commit fornication.” 2208 There are even now another sort of Nicolaitans. Theirs is called the Gaian 2209 heresy. But in his epistle he especially designates those as “Antichrists” who “denied that Christ was come in the flesh,” 2210 and who refused to think that Jesus was the Son of God. The one dogma Marcion maintained; the other, Hebion. 2211 The doctrine, however, of Simon’s sorcery, which inculcated the worship of angels, 2212 was itself actually reckoned amongst idolatries and condemned by the Apostle Peter in Simon’s own person.
Footnotes
259:2191Traducentur.
259:2192Semina sumpsisse.
259:21931 Cor. xv. 12.
259:2194Comp. Tertull. De Resur. Carnis, xxxvi.
259:2195Gal. v. 2.
259:21961 Tim. iv. 3.
259:2197Æque tangit.
259:21982 Tim. ii. 3.
259:21991 Tim. i. 4.
259:2200Nescio qui.
259:2201Charite.
259:2202Sermonem.
259:2203De qua prima ogdoade. [See Irenæus, Vol. I. p. 316, etc. this Series.]
259:2204Gal. iv. 9.
259:2205Non natam, literally, “as being unbegotten.”
259:2206Deo non nato.
259:2207Comparat.
259:2208Rev. ii. 14.
259:2209Gaiana. So Oehler; the common reading being “Caiana.”
259:22101 John iv. 3.
259:2211Comp. Epiphanius, i. 30.
259:2212Referred to perhaps in Col. ii. 18.
Chapter XXXIV.—No Early Controversy Respecting the Divine Creator; No Second God Introduced at First. Heresies Condemned Alike by the Sentence and the Silence of Holy Scripture.
These are, as I suppose, the different kinds of spurious doctrines, which (as we are informed by the apostles themselves) existed in their own day. And yet we find amongst so many various perversions of truth, not one school 2213 which raised any controversy concerning God as the Creator of all things. No man was bold enough to surmise a second god. More readily was doubt felt about the Son than about the Father, until Marcion introduced, in addition to the Creator, another god of goodness only. Apelles made the Creator of some nondescript 2214 glorious angel, who belonged to the superior God, the god (according to him,) of the law and of Israel, affirming that he was fire. 2215 Valentinus disseminated his Æons, and traced the sin of one Æon 2216 to the production of God the Creator. To none, forsooth, except these, nor prior to these, was revealed the truth of the Divine Nature; and they obtained this especial honour and fuller favour from the devil, we cannot doubt, 2217 because he wished even in this respect to rival God, that he might succeed, by the poison of his doctrines, in doing himself what the Lord said could not be done—making “the disciples above their Master.” 2218 Let the entire mass 2219 of heresies choose, therefore, for themselves the times when they should appear, provided that the when be an unimportant point; allowing, too, that they be not of the truth, and (as a matter of course 2220 ) that such as had no existence in the time of the apostles could not possibly have had any connection with the apostles. If indeed they had then existed, their names would be extant, 2221 with a view to their own repression likewise. Those (heresies) indeed which did exist in the days of the apostles, are condemned in their very mention. 2222 If it be true, then, that those heresies, which in the apostolic times were in a rude form, are now found to be the same, only in a much more polished shape, they derive their condemnation from this very circumstance. Or if they were not the same, but arose afterwards in a different form, and merely assumed from them certain tenets, then, by sharing with them an agreement in their teaching, 2223 they must needs partake in their condemnation, by reason of the above-mentioned definition, 2224 of lateness of date, which meets us on the very threshold. 2225 Even if they were free from any participation in condemned doctrine, they would stand already judged 2226 on the mere ground of time, being all the more spurious because they were not even named by the apostles. Whence we have the firmer assurance, that these were (the heresies) which even then, 2227 were announced as about to arise.
Footnotes
259:2213Institutionem.
259:2214Nescio quem.
259:2215Igneum, “consisted of fire.”
259:2216“The ectroma, or fall of Sophia from the Pleroma, from whom the Creator was fabled to be descended” (Dodgson).
259:2217Scilicet.
259:2218Luke vi. 40.
259:2219Universæ.
259:2220Utique.
260:2221Nominarentur et ipsæ.
260:2222Nominatione, i.e. by the apostles.
260:2223Prædicationis.
260:2224Fine.
260:2225Præcedente.
260:2226Præjudicarentur. [i.e. by Præscription.]
260:2227i.e., in the days of the apostles, and by their mouth.
Chapter XXXV.—Let Heretics Maintain Their Claims by a Definite and Intelligible Evidence. This the Only Method of Solving Their Questions. Catholics Appeal Always to Evidence Traceable to Apostolic Sources.
Challenged and refuted by us, according to these definitions, let all the heresies boldly on their part also advance similar rules to these against our doctrine, whether they be later than the apostles or contemporary with the apostles, provided they be different from them; provided also they were, by either a general or a specific censure, precondemned by them. For since they deny the truth of (our doctrine), they ought to prove that it also is heresy, refutable by the same rule as that by which they are themselves refuted; and at the same time to show us where we must seek the truth, which it is by this time evident has no existence amongst them. Our system 2228 is not behind any in date; on the contrary, it is earlier than all; and this fact will be the evidence of that truth which everywhere occupies the first place. The apostles, again, nowhere condemn it; they rather defend it,—a fact which will show that it comes from themselves. 2229 For that doctrine which they refrain from condemning, when they have condemned every strange opinion, they show to be their own, and on that ground too they defend it.
Footnotes
260:2228Res.
260:2229Indicium proprietatis, a proof of its being their own.
Chapter XXXVI.—The Apostolic Churches the Voice of the Apostles. Let the Heretics Examine Their Apostolic Claims, in Each Case, Indisputable. The Church of Rome Doubly Apostolic; Its Early Eminence and Excellence. Heresy, as Perverting the Truth, is Connected Therewith.
Come now, you who would indulge a better curiosity, if you would apply it to the business of your salvation, run over the apostolic churches, in which the very thrones 2230 of the apostles are still pre-eminent in their places, 2231 in which their own authentic writings 2232 are read, uttering the voice and representing the face of each of them severally. Achaia is very near you, (in which) you find Corinth. Since you are not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi; (and there too) you have the Thessalonians. Since you are able to cross to Asia, you get Ephesus. Since, moreover, you are close upon Italy, 2233 you have Rome, from which there comes even into our own hands the very authority (of apostles themselves). 2234 How happy is its church, on which apostles poured forth all their doctrine along with their blood! where Peter endures a passion like his Lord’s! where Paul wins his crown in a death like John’s 2235 where the Apostle John was first plunged, unhurt, into boiling oil, and thence remitted to his island-exile! See what she has learned, what taught, what fellowship has had with even (our) churches in Africa! 2236 One Lord God does she acknowledge, the Creator of the universe, and Christ Jesus (born) of the Virgin Mary, the Son of God the Creator; and the Resurrection of the flesh; the law and the prophets she unites 2237 in one volume with the writings of evangelists and apostles, from which she drinks in her faith. This she seals with the water (of baptism), arrays with the Holy Ghost, feeds with the Eucharist, cheers with martyrdom, 2238 and against such a discipline thus (maintained) she admits no gainsayer. This is the discipline which I no longer say foretold that heresies should come, but from 2239 which they proceeded. However, they were not of her, because they were opposed to her. 2240 Even the rough wild-olive arises from the germ 2241 of the fruitful, rich, and genuine 2242 olive; also from the seed 2243 of the mellowest and sweetest fig there springs the empty and useless wild-fig. In the same way heresies, too, come from our plant, 2244 although not of our kind; (they come) from the grain of truth, 2245 but, owing to their falsehood, they have only wild leaves to show. 2246
Footnotes
260:2230Cathedræ.
260:2231Suis locis præsident.
260:2232Authenticæ. This much disputed phrase may refer to the autographs or the Greek originals (rather than the Latin translations), or full unmutilated copies as opposed to the garbled ones of the heretics. The second sense is probably the correct one.
260:2233[Note, those near by may resort to this ancient and glorious church; not as any better than Corinth, or Philippi, or having any higher Apostolic throne. See Irenæus, Vol. I. p. 415, (note) and Elucid. p. 460.]
260:2234Compare our Anti-Marcion, iv. 5, p. 186.
260:2235The Baptist’s.
260:2236[Observe—“even with us in Africa.” If this implies noteworthy love, it proves that there was no organic relation requiring such particular fellowship, even in the West.]
260:2237Miscet.
261:2238We have taken Oehler’s hint in favour of “martyrio.” The usual reading “martyrium” (meaning “she exhorts to martyrdom”) is stiff, and unsuited to the context.
261:2239De.
261:2240Or, “they were not of it, because they were opposed to it,” i.e., the discipline or teaching.
261:2241Nucleo.
261:2242Necessariæ.
261:2243Papavere. “Ego cum aliis papaver ficus interpretor de seminalibus ficus, non de ipso fructu” (Oehler).
261:2244Frutice.
261:2245We again follow Oehler’s hint, who would like to read “de grano veritatis.” The texts are obscure, and vary much here.
261:2246Silvestres.
Chapter XXXVII.—Heretics Not Being Christians, But Rather Perverters of Christ’s Teaching, May Not Claim the Christian Scriptures. These are a Deposit, Committed to and Carefully Kept by the Church.
Since this is the case, in order that the truth may be adjudged to belong to us, “as many as walk according to the rule,” which the church has handed down from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, and Christ from God, the reason of our position is clear, when it determines that heretics ought not to be allowed to challenge an appeal to the Scriptures, since we, without the Scriptures, prove that they have nothing to do with the Scriptures. For as they are heretics, they cannot be true Christians, because it is not from Christ that they get that which they pursue of their own mere choice, and from the pursuit incur and admit the name of heretics. 2247 Thus, not being Christians, they have acquired 2248 no right to the Christian Scriptures; and it may be very fairly said to them, “Who are you? When and whence did you come? As you are none of mine, what have you to do with that which is mine? Indeed, Marcion, by what right do you hew my wood? By whose permission, Valentinus, are you diverting the streams of my fountain? By what power, Apelles, are you removing my landmarks? This is my property. Why are you, the rest, sowing and feeding here at your own pleasure? This (I say) is my property. I have long possessed it; I possessed it before you. I hold sure title-deeds from the original owners themselves, to whom the estate belonged. I am the heir of the apostles. Just as they carefully prepared their will and testament, and committed it to a trust, and adjured (the trustees to be faithful to their charge), 2249 even so do I hold it. As for you, they have, it is certain, always held you as disinherited, and rejected you as strangers—as enemies. But on what ground are heretics strangers and enemies to the apostles, if it be not from the difference of their teaching, which each individual of his own mere will has either advanced or received in opposition to the apostles?”
Footnotes
261:2247“That is, in following out their own choice (αἳρεσις) of opinions, they both receive and admit the name of heretics,” αἱρετικοί, “self-choosers” (Dodgson). [In Theology, technically, one must be a baptized Christian in order to be a heretic. The Mohammedans, e.g., are not heretics but pagans. But, our author speaks rhetorically.]
261:2248Capiunt.
261:2249Compare 1 Tim. 5:21, 1 Tim. 6:13, 2 Tim. 2:14, 2 Tim. 4:1.
Chapter XXXVIII.—Harmony of the Church and the Scriptures. Heretics Have Tampered with the Scriptures, and Mutilated, and Altered Them. Catholics Never Change the Scriptures, Which Always Testify for Them.
Where diversity of doctrine is found, there, then, must the corruption both of the Scriptures and the expositions thereof be regarded as existing. On those whose purpose it was to teach differently, lay the necessity of differently arranging the instruments of doctrine. 2250 They could not possibly have effected their diversity of teaching in any other way than by having a difference in the means whereby they taught. As in their case, corruption in doctrine could not possibly have succeeded without a corruption also of its instruments, so to ourselves also integrity of doctrine could not have accrued, without integrity in those means by which doctrine is managed. Now, what is there in our Scriptures which is contrary to us? 2251 What of our own have we introduced, that we should have to take it away again, or else add to it, or alter it, in order to restore to its natural soundness anything which is contrary to it, and contained in the Scriptures? 2252 What we are ourselves, that also the Scriptures are (and have been) from the beginning. 2253 Of them we have our being, before there was any other way, before they were interpolated by you. Now, inasmuch as all interpolation must be believed to be a later process, for the express reason that it proceeds from rivalry which is never in any case previous to nor home-born 2254 with that which it emulates, it is as incredible to every man of sense that we should seem to have introduced any corrupt text into the Scriptures, existing, as we have been, from the very first, and being the first, as it is that they have not in fact introduced it who are both later in date and opposed (to the Scriptures). One man perverts the Scriptures with his hand, another their meaning by his exposition. For although Valentinus seems to use the entire volume, 2255 he has none the less laid violent hands on the truth only with a more cunning mind and skill 2256 than Marcion. Marcion expressly and openly used the knife, not the pen, since he made such an excision of the Scriptures as suited his own subject-matter. 2257 Valentinus, however, abstained from such excision, because he did not invent Scriptures to square with his own subject-matter, but adapted his matter to the Scriptures; and yet he took away more, and added more, by removing the proper meaning of every particular word, and adding fantastic arrangements of things which have no real existence. 2258
Footnotes
261:2250By the instrumenta doctrinæ he here means the writings of the New Testament.
261:2251[Our author insists on the precise agreement of Catholic Tradition with Holy Scripture. See valuable remarks on Schleiermacher, in Kaye, pp. 279–284.]
261:2252We add the original of this sentence, which is obscured by its terseness: “Quid de proprio intulimus, ut aliquid contrarium ei et in Scripturis deprehensum detractione vel adjectione vel transmutatione remediaremus?”
261:2253That is, teaching the same faith and conversation (De la Cerda).
262:2254Domestica.
262:2255Integro instrumento.
262:2256Callidiore ingenio.
262:2257That is, cutting out whatever did not fall in with it (Dodgson).
262:2258Non comparentium rerum. [Note, he says above “of them, the Scriptures, we, Catholics, have our being.” Præscription does not undervalue Scripture as the food and life of the Church, but supplies a short and decisive method with innovaters.]
Chapter XXXIX.—What St. Paul Calls Spiritual Wickednesses Displayed by Pagan Authors, and by Heretics, in No Dissimilar Manner. Holy Scripture Especially Liable to Heretical Manipulation. Affords Material for Heresies, Just as Virgil Has Been the Groundwork of Literary Plagiarisms, Different in Purport from the Original.
These were the ingenious arts of “spiritual wickednesses,” 2259 wherewith we also, my brethren, may fairly expect to have “to wrestle,” as necessary for faith, that the elect may be made manifest, (and) that the reprobate may be discovered. And therefore they possess influence, and a facility in thinking out and fabricating 2260 errors, which ought not to be wondered at as if it were a difficult and inexplicable process, seeing that in profane writings also an example comes ready to hand of a similar facility. You see in our own day, composed out of Virgil, 2261 a story of a wholly different character, the subject-matter being arranged according to the verse, and the verse according to the subject-matter. In short, 2262 Hosidius Geta has most completely pilfered his tragedy of Medea from Virgil. A near relative of my own, among some leisure productions 2263 of his pen, has composed out of the same poet The Table of Cebes. On the same principle, those poetasters are commonly called Homerocentones, “collectors of Homeric odds and ends,” who stitch into one piece, patchwork fashion, works of their own from the lines of Homer, out of many scraps put together from this passage and from that (in miscellaneous confusion). Now, unquestionably, the Divine Scriptures are more fruitful in resources of all kinds for this sort of facility. Nor do I risk contradiction in saying 2264 that the very Scriptures were even arranged by the will of God in such a manner as to furnish materials for heretics, inasmuch as I read that “there must be heresies,” 2265 which there cannot be without the Scriptures.
Footnotes
262:2259See Eph. 6:12, 1 Cor. 11:18.
262:2260Instruendis.
262:2261Oehler reads “ex Vergilio,” although the Codex Agobard. as “ex Virgilio.”
262:2262Denique. [“Getica lyra.”]
262:2263Otis.
262:2264Nec periclitor dicere. [Truly, a Tertullianic paradox; but compare 2 Pet. iii. 16. N.B. Scripture the test of heresy.]
262:22651 Cor. xi. 19.
Chapter XL.—No Difference in the Spirit of Idolatry and of Heresy. In the Rites of Idolatry, Satan Imitated and Distorted the Divine Institutions of the Older Scriptures. The Christian Scriptures Corrupted by Him in the Perversions of the Various Heretics.
The question will arise, By whom is to be interpreted 2266 the sense of the passages which make for heresies? By the devil, of course, to whom pertain those wiles which pervert the truth, and who, by the mystic rites of his idols, vies even with the essential portions 2267 of the sacraments of God. 2268 He, too, baptizes some—that is, his own believers and faithful followers; 2269 he promises the putting away 2270 of sins by a laver (of his own); and if my memory still serves me, Mithra there, (in the kingdom of Satan,) sets his marks on the foreheads of his soldiers; celebrates also the oblation of bread, and introduces an image of a resurrection, and before a sword wreathes a crown. 2271 What also must we say to (Satan’s) limiting his chief priest 2272 to a single marriage? He, too, has his virgins; he, too, has his proficients in continence. 2273 Suppose now we revolve in our minds the superstitions of Numa Pompilius, and consider his priestly offices and badges and privileges, his sacrificial services, too, and the instruments and vessels of the sacrifices themselves, and the curious rites of his expiations and vows: is it not clear to us that the devil imitated the well-known 2274 moroseness of the Jewish law? Since, therefore he has shown such emulation in his great aim of expressing, in the concerns of his idolatry, those very things of which consists the administration of Christ’s sacraments, it follows, of course, that the same being, possessing still the same genius, both set his heart upon, 2275 and succeeded in, adapting 2276 to his profane and rival creed the very documents of divine things and of the Christian saints 2277 —his interpretation from their interpretations, his words from their words, his parables from their parables. For this reason, then, no one ought to doubt, either that “spiritual wickednesses,” from which also heresies come, have been introduced by the devil, or that there is any real difference between heresies and idolatry, seeing that they appertain both to the same author and the same work that idolatry does. They either pretend that there is another god in opposition to the Creator, or, even if they acknowledge that the Creator is the one only God, they treat of Him as a different being from what He is in truth. The consequence is, that every lie which they speak of God is in a certain sense a sort of idolatry.
Footnotes
262:2266“Interpretur” is here a passive verb.
262:2267Res.
262:2268Sacramentorum divinorum. The form, however, of this phrase seems to point not only to the specific sacraments of the gospel, but to the general mysteries of our religion.
262:2269Compare Tertullian’s treatises, de Bapt. v. and de Corona, last chapter.
262:2270Expositionem.
263:2271“Et sub gladio redimit coronam” is the text of this obscure sentence, which seems to allude to a pretended martyrdom. Compare Tertullian’s tract, de Corona, last chapter.
263:2272The Flamen Dialis. See Tertullian’s tract, ad Uxorem, i. 7.
263:2273[Corruptio optimi pessima. Compare the surprising parallels of M. Huc between debased Christianity and the paganism of Thibet, etc. Souvenirs d’un voyage, etc. Hazlitt’s translation, 1867.]
263:2274Morositatem Illam. [He refers to the minute and vexatious ordinances complained of by St. Peter (Acts xiv. 10,) which Latin Christianity has ten-folded, in his name.]
263:2275Gestiit.
263:2276Attemperare.
263:2277i.e., the Scriptures of the New Testament.
Chapter XLI.—The Conduct of Heretics: Its Frivolity, Worldliness, and Irregularity. The Notorious Wantonness of Their Women.
I must not omit an account of the conduct 2278 also of the heretics—how frivolous it is, how worldly, how merely human, without seriousness, without authority, without discipline, as suits their creed. To begin with, it is doubtful who is a catechumen, and who a believer; they have all access alike, they hear alike, they pray alike—even heathens, if any such happen to come among them. “That which is holy they will cast to the dogs, and their pearls,” although (to be sure) they are not real ones, “they will fling to the swine.” 2279 Simplicity they will have to consist in the overthrow of discipline, attention to which on our part they call brothelry. 2280 Peace also they huddle up 2281 anyhow with all comers; for it matters not to them, however different be their treatment of subjects, provided only they can conspire together to storm the citadel of the one only Truth. All are puffed up, all offer you knowledge. Their catechumens are perfect before they are full-taught. 2282 The very women of these heretics, how wanton they are! For they are bold enough to teach, to dispute, to enact exorcisms, to undertake 2283 cures—it may be even to baptize. 2284 Their ordinations, are carelessly administered, 2285 capricious, changeable. 2286 At one time they put novices in office; at another time, men who are bound to some secular employment; 2287 at another, persons who have apostatized from us, to bind them by vainglory, since they cannot by the truth. Nowhere is promotion easier than in the camp of rebels, where the mere fact of being there is a foremost service. 2288 And so it comes to pass that to-day one man is their bishop, to-morrow another; to-day he is a deacon who to-morrow is a reader; to-day he is a presbyter who tomorrow is a layman. For even on laymen do they impose the functions of priesthood.
Footnotes
263:2278Conversationis.
263:2279See Matt. vii. 6.
263:2280Lenocinium. “Pandering” is Archdeacon Dodgson’s word.
263:2281Miscent.
263:2282Edocti.
263:2283Repromittere.
263:2284Compare Tertullian’s tract, de Bapt. I. and de Veland. Virg. viii. [Also, Epiphan. iv. p. 453, Ed. Oehler.]
263:2285Temerariæ.
263:2286They were constantly changing their ministers. It was a saying of the heretics, “Alius hodie episcopus, cras alius” (Rigalt.).
263:2287Sæculo obstrictos.
263:2288Promereri est.
Chapter XLII.—Heretics Work to Pull Down and to Destroy, Not to Edify and Elevate. Heretics Do Not Adhere Even to Their Own Traditions, But Harbour Dissent Even from Their Own Founders.
But what shall I say concerning the ministry of the word, since they make it their business not to convert the heathen, but to subvert our people? This is rather the glory which they catch at, to compass the fall of those who stand, not the raising of those who are down. Accordingly, since the very work which they purpose to themselves comes not from the building up of their own society, but from the demolition of the truth, they undermine our edifices, that they may erect their own. Only deprive them of the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the divinity of the Creator, and they have not another objection to talk about. The consequence is, that they more easily accomplish the ruin of standing houses than the erection of fallen ruins. It is only when they have such objects in view that they show themselves humble and bland and respectful. Otherwise they know no respect even for their own leaders. Hence it is [supposed] that schisms seldom happen among heretics, because, even when they exist, they are not obvious. 2289 Their very unity, however, 2290 is schism. I am greatly in error if they do not amongst themselves swerve even from their own regulations, forasmuch as every man, just as it suits his own temper, modifies the traditions he has received after the same fashion as the man who handed them down did, when he moulded them according to his own will. The progress of the matter is an acknowledgment at once of its character and of the manner of its birth. That was allowable to the Valentinians which had been allowed to Valentinus; that was also fair for the Marcionites which had been done by Marcion—even to innovate on the faith, as was agreeable to their own pleasure. In short, all heresies, when thoroughly looked into, are detected harbouring dissent in many particulars even from their own founders. The majority of them have not even churches. 2291 Motherless, houseless, creedless, outcasts, they wander about in their own essential worthlessness. 2292
Footnotes
264:2289Non parent.
264:2290Enim. [e.g. The Trent system of Unity, alas! is of this sort.]
264:2291Hence the saying, “Wasps make combs, so Marcionites make churches” (see our Anti-Marcion, p. 187); describing the strangeness and uselessness of the societies, not (as Gibbon said) their number (Dodgson).
264:2292Sua in vilitate. Another reading, pronounced corrupt by Oehler, has “quasi sibi latæ vagantur,” q.d. “All for themselves, as it were, they wander” etc. (Dodgson).
Chapter XLIII.—Loose Company Preferred by Heretics. Ungodliness the Effect of Their Teaching the Very Opposite of Catholic Truth, Which Promotes the Fear of God, Both in Religious Ordinances and Practical Life.
It has also been a subject of remark, how extremely frequent is the intercourse which heretics hold with magicians, with mountebanks, with astrologers, with philosophers; and the reason is, 2293 that they are men who devote themselves to curious questions. “Seek, and ye shall find,” is everywhere in their minds. Thus, from the very nature of their conduct, may be estimated the quality of their faith. In their discipline we have an index of their doctrine. They say that God is not to be feared; therefore all things are in their view free and unchecked. Where, however is God not feared, except where He is not? Where God is not, there truth also is not. Where there is no truth, then, naturally enough, there is also such a discipline as theirs. But where God is, there exists “the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom.” 2294 Where the fear of God is, there is seriousness, an honourable and yet thoughtful 2295 diligence, as well as an anxious carefulness and a well-considered admission (to the sacred ministry) 2296 and a safely-guarded 2297 communion, and promotion after good service, and a scrupulous submission (to authority), and a devout attendance, 2298 and a modest gait, and a united church, and God in all things.
Footnotes
264:2293Scilicet.
264:2294Ps. 11:10, Prov. 1:7.
264:2295Attonita, as if in fear that it might go wrong (Rigalt.).
264:2296In contrast to the opposite fault of the heresies exposed above.
264:2297Deliberata, where the character was well weighed previous to admission to the eucharist.
264:2298Apparitio, the duty and office of an apparitor, or attendant on men of higher rank, whether in church or state.
Chapter XLIV.—Heresy Lowers Respect for Christ, and Destroys All Fear of His Great Judgment. The Tendency of Heretical Teaching on This Solemn Article of the Faith. The Present Treatise an Introduction to Certain Other Anti-Heretical Works of Our Author.
These evidences, then, of a stricter discipline existing among us, are an additional proof of truth, from which no man can safely turn aside, who bears in mind that future judgment, when “we must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ,” 2299 to render an account of our faith itself before all things. What, then, will they say who shall have defiled it, even the virgin which Christ committed to them with the adultery of heretics? I suppose they will allege that no injunction was ever addressed to them by Him or by His apostles concerning depraved 2300 and perverse doctrines assailing them, 2301 or about their avoiding and abhorring the same. (He and His apostles, perhaps,) will acknowledge 2302 that the blame rather lies with themselves and their disciples, in not having given us previous warning and instruction! They 2303 will, besides, add a good deal respecting the high authority of each doctor of heresy,—how that these mightily strengthened belief in their own doctrine; how that they raised the dead, restored the sick, foretold the future, that so they might deservedly be regarded as apostles. As if this caution were not also in the written record: that many should come who were to work even the greatest miracles, in defence of the deceit of their corrupt preaching. So, forsooth, they will deserve to be forgiven! If, however, any, being mindful of the writings and the denunciations of the Lord and the apostles, shall have stood firm in the integrity of the faith, I suppose they will run great risk of missing pardon, when the Lord answers: I plainly forewarned you that there should be teachers of false doctrine in my name, as well as that of the prophets and apostles also; and to my own disciples did I give a charge, that they should preach the same things to you. But as for you, it was not, of course, to be supposed 2304 that you would believe me! I once gave the gospel and the doctrine of the said rule (of life and faith) to my apostles; but afterwards it was my pleasure to make considerable changes in it! I had promised a resurrection, even of the flesh; but, on second thoughts, it struck me 2305 that I might not be able to keep my promise! I had shown myself to have been born of a virgin; but this seemed to me afterwards to be a discreditable thing. 2306 I had said that He was my Father, who is the Maker of the sun and the showers; but another and better father has adopted me! I had forbidden you to lend an ear to heretics; but in this I erred! Such (blasphemies), it is possible, 2307 do enter the minds of those who go out of the right path, 2308 and who do not defend 2309 the true faith from the danger which besets it. On the present occasion, indeed, our treatise has rather taken up a general position against heresies, (showing that they must) all be refuted on definite, equitable, and necessary rules, without 2310 any comparison with the Scriptures. For the rest, if God in His grace permit, we shall prepare answers to certain of these heresies in separate treatises. 2311 To those who may devote their leisure in reading through these (pages), in the belief of the truth, be peace, and the grace of our God Jesus Christ for ever. 2312
Footnotes
264:22992 Cor. v. 10.
264:2300Scævis.
264:2301Futuris.
264:2302It seems to us, that this is the force of the strong irony, indicated by the “credo,” which pervades this otherwise unintelligible passage. Dodgson’s version seems untenable: “Let them (the heretics) acknowledge that the fault is with themselves rather than with those who prepared us so long beforehand.”
264:2303Christ and His apostles, as before, in continuation of the strong irony.
265:2304This must be the force of a sentence which is steeped in irony: “Scilicet cum vos non crederetis.” We are indebted to Oehler for restoring the sentence thus.
265:2305Recogitavi.
265:2306Turpe.
265:2307Capit.
265:2308Exorbitant.
265:2309Cavent.
265:2310This sense comes from the “repellendas” and the “a collatione Scripturarum.”
265:2311Specialiter. He did this, indeed, in his treatises against Marcion, Hermogenes, the Valentinians, Praxeas, and others. [These are to follow in this Series. Kaye (p. 47) justly considered this sentence as proving the De Præscript, a preface to all his treatises against particular heresies.]
265:2312Elucidation V.
Elucidations.
————————————
I.
(Prescription, Chap. I., p. 243, Supra.)
In adopting this expression from the Roman Law, Tertullian has simply puzzled beginners to get at his idea. Nor do they learn much when it is called a demurrer, which, if I comprehend the word as used in law-cases, is a rejoinder to the testimony of the other party, amounting to—“Well, what of it? It does not prove your case.” Something like this is indeed in Tertullian’s use of the term præscription; but Dr. Holmes furnishes what seems to me the best explanation, (though he only half renders it,) “the Prescriptive Rule against Heresies.” In a word, it means, “the Rule of Faith asserted against Heresies.” And his practical point is, it is useless to discuss Scripture with convicted (Titus 3:10, 11.) heretics; every one of them is ready with “his psalm, his doctrine, his interpretation,” and you may argue fruitlessly till Doomsday. But bring them to the test of (Quod Semper, etc.), the apostolic præscription (1 Corinthians xi. 16).—We have no such custom neither the Churches of God. State this Rule of Faith, viz. Holy Scripture, as interpreted from the apostolic day: if it proves the doctrine or custom a novelty, then it has no foundation, and even if it be harmless, it cannot be innocently professed against the order and peace of the churches.
II.
(Semler, cap. x., note 15, p. 248.)
The extent to which Bp. Kaye has stretched his notice of this critic is to be accounted for by the fact that, for a time, the German School of the last century exerted a sad influence in England. In early life Dr. Pusey came near to being led away by it, and Hugh James Rose was raised up to resist it. Semler lived (at Halle and elsewhere) from a.d. 1725 to 1791. Kahnis in his invaluable manual, named below, thus speaks of his Patristic theories: “The history of the Kingdom of God became, under his hands, a world of atoms, which crossed each other as chaotically as the masses of notes which lay heaped up in the memory of Semler.…Under his pragmatical touches the halo of the martyrs faded, etc.” Internal Hist. of German Protestantism (since circa 1750, ) by Ch. Fred. Aug. Kahnis, D.D. (Lutheran) Professor at Leipzig. Translated. T. and F. Clark, Edinburgh, 1856.
III.
(Peter, cap. xxii. note 6, p. 253.)
In the treatise of Cyprian, De Unitate, we shall have occasion to speak fully on this interesting point. The reference to Kaye may suffice, here. But, since the inveterate confusion of all that is said of Peter with all that is claimed by a modern bishop for himself promotes a false view of this passage, it may be well to note (1) that St. Peter’s name is expounded by himself (1 Pet. 2:4, 5) so as to make Christ the Rock and all believers “lively stones”—or Peters—by faith in Him. St. Peter is often called the rock, most justly, in this sense, by a rhetorical play on his name: Christ the Rock and all believers “lively stones,” being cemented with Him by the Spirit. But, (2) this specialty of St. Peter, as such, belongs to him (Cephas) only. (3) So far as transmitted it belongs to no particular See. (4) The claim of Rome is disproved by Præscription. (5) Were it otherwise, it would not justify that See in making new articles of Faith. (6) Nor in its Schism with the East. (7) When it restores St. Peter’s Doctrine and Holiness, to the Latin Churches, there will be no quarrel about pre-eminence. Meantime, Rome’s fallibility is expressly taught in Romans xi. 18-21.
IV.
(The Apostles, cap. xxv. p. 254.)
Nothing less than a new incarnation of Christ and a new commission to new apostles can give us anything new in religion. This præscription is our Catholic answer to the Vatican oracles of our own time. These give us a new revelation, prefacing the Gospels (1) by defining the immaculate conception of Mary in the womb of her mother; and (2) adding a new chapter to the Acts of the Apostles, in defining the infallibility of a single bishop.
Clearly, had Tertullian known anything of this last dogma of Latin Novelty, he would not have taken the trouble to write this treatise. He would have said to heretics, We can neither discuss Scripture nor Antiquity with you. Rome is the touchstone of dogma, and to its bishop we refer you.
V.
(Truth and Peace, cap. xliv. p. 265.)
The famous appeal of Bishop Jewel, known as “the Challenge at Paul’s Cross,” which he made in a sermon preached there on Passion Sunday, a.d. 1560, is an instance of “Præscription against heresies,” well worthy of being recalled, in a day which has seen Truth and Peace newly sacrificed to the ceaseless innovations of Rome. It is as follows:—“If any learned man of all our adversaries, or, if all the learned men that be alive, be able to bring any one sufficient sentence out of any old Catholic doctor or father; or out of any old general Council; or out of the Holy Scriptures of God; 2313 or, any one example of the primitive Church, whereby it may be clearly and plainly proved, that—
1. There was any private mass in the whole world at that time, for the space of six hundred years after Christ; or that—
2. There was then any communion ministered unto the people under one kind; or that—
3. The people had their common prayers, then, in a strange tongue that they understood not; or that—
4. The bishop of Rome was then called an universal bishop, or the head of the universal Church; or that—
5. The people was then taught to believe that Christ’s body is really, substantially, corporally, carnally or naturally in the Sacrament; or that—
6. His body is, or may be, in a thousand places or more, at one time; or that—
7. The priest did then hold up the Sacrament over his head; or that—
8. The people did then fall down and worship it with godly honour; or that—
9. The Sacrament was then, or now ought to be, hanged up under a canopy; or that—
10. In the Sacrament after the words of consecration there remaineth only the accidents and shews, without the substance of bread and wine; or that—
11. The priest then divided the Sacrament in three parts and afterwards received himself, alone; or that—
12. Whosoever had said the Sacrament is a pledge, a token, or a remembrance of Christ’s body, had therefore been judged a heretic; or that—
13. It was lawful, then, to have thirty, twenty, fifteen, ten, or five masses said in one Church, in one day; or that—
14. Images were then set up in churches to the intent the people might worship them; or that—
15. The lay people was then forbidden to read the word of God, in their own tongue:
“If any man alive be able to prove any of these articles, by any one clear or plain clause or sentence, either of the Scriptures, or of the old doctors, or of any old General Council, or by any Example of the Primitive Church; I promise, then, that I will give over and subscribe unto him.”
All this went far beyond the concession of præscription which makes little of any one saying of any one Father, and demands the general consent of Antiquity; but, it is needless to say that Jewel’s challenge has remained unanswered for more than three hundred years, and so it will be to all Eternity.
With great erudition Jewel enlarged his propositions and maintained all his points. See his works, vol. I., p. 20 et seqq. Cambridge University Press, 1845.
Footnotes
267:2313It must be remembered that an appeal to Scripture lies behind Tertullian’s Præscription: only he will not discuss Holy Scripture with heretics.
II.
The Five Books Against Marcion.
[Translated by Dr. Holmes.]
Introductory Notes.
————————————
Dedication.
To the Right Rev. The Lord Bishop of Chester.
My Dear Lord,
I am gratified to have your permission to dedicate this volume to your Lordship. It is the fruit of some two years’ leisure labour. Every man’s occupation spares to him some λείψανα χρόνου; and thirty years ago you taught me, at Oxford, how to husband these opportunities in the pleasant studies of Biblical and Theological Science. For that and many other kindnesses I cannot cease to be thankful to you.
But, besides this private motive, I have in your Lordship’s own past course an additional incentive for resorting to you on this occasion. You, until lately, presided over the theological studies of our great University; and you have given great encouragement to patristic literature by your excellent edition of the Apostolic Fathers. 2314 To whom could I more becomingly present this humble effort to make more generally known the great merits of perhaps the greatest work of the first of the Latin Fathers than to yourself?
I remain, with much respect,
My dear Lord,
Very faithfully yours,
Peter Holmes.
Mannamead, Plymouth, 2315
March, 1868.
Preface by the Translator. 2316
The reader has, in this volume a translation (attempted for the first time in English) of the largest of the extant works of the earliest Latin Fathers. The most important of Tertullian’s writings have always been highly valued in the church, although, as was natural from their varied character, for different reasons. Thus his two best-known treatises, The Apology and The Prescription against Heretics, have divided between them for more than sixteen centuries the admiration of all intelligent readers,—the one for its masterly defence of the Christian religion against its heathen persecutors, and the other for its lucid vindication of the church’s rule of faith against its heretical assailants. The present work has equal claims on the reader’s appreciation, in respect of those qualities of vigorous thought, close reasoning, terse expression, and earnest purpose, enlivened by sparkling wit and impassioned eloquence, which have always secured for Tertullian, in spite of many drawbacks, the esteem which is given to a great and favourite author. If these books against Marcion have received, as indeed it must be allowed they have, less attention from the general reader than their intrinsic merit deserves, the neglect is mainly due to the fact that the interesting character of their contents is concealed by the usual title-page, which points only to a heresy supposed to be extinct and inapplicable, whether in the materials of its defence or confutation, to any modern circumstances. But many treatises of great authors, which have outlived their literal occasion, retain a value from their collateral arguments, which is not inferior to that effected by their primary subject. Such is the case with the work before us. If Marcionism is in the letter obsolete, there is its spirit still left in the church, which in more ways than one develops its ancient characteristics. What these were, the reader will soon discover in this volume; but reference may be made even here, in passing, to that prominent aim of the heresy which gave Tertullian his opportunity of proving the essential coherence of the Old and the New Testaments, and of exhibiting both his great knowledge of the details of Holy Scripture, and his fine intelligence of the progressive nature of God’s revelation as a whole. This constitutes the charm of the present volume, which might almost be designated a Treatise on the Connection between the Jewish and the Christian Scriptures. How interesting this subject is to earnest men of the present age, is proved by the frequent treatment of it in our religious literature. 2317 In order to assist the reader to a more efficient use of this volume, in reference to its copiousness of Scripture illustration, a full Index of Scriptural Passages has been drawn up. Another satisfactory result will, it is believed, accompany the reading of this volume, in the evidence which it affords of the venerable catholicity of that system of biblical and dogmatic truth which constitutes the belief of what is called the “orthodox” Christian of the present day. Orthodoxy has been impugned of late, as if it had suffered much deterioration in its transmission to us; and an advanced school of thinkers has demanded its reform by a manipulation which they have called “free handling.” To such readers, then, as prize the deposit of the Christian creed which they have received, in the light of St. Jude’s description, as “the faith once for all delivered to the saints,” it cannot but prove satisfactory to be able to trace in Tertullian, writing more than sixteen centuries ago, the outlines of their own cherished convictions—held by one who cannot be charged with too great an obsequiousness to traditional authority, and who at the same time possessed honesty, earnestness, and intelligence enough to make him an unexceptionable witness to facts of such a kind. The translator would only add, that he has, in compliance with the wise canon laid down by the editors of this series, endeavoured always to present to the reader the meaning of the author in readable English, keeping as near as idiomatic rules allowed to the sense and even style of the original. Amidst the many well-known difficulties of Tertullian’s writings (and his Anti-Marcion is not exempt from any of these difficulties, 2318 ) the translator cannot hope that he has accomplished his labour without mistakes, for which he would beg the reader’s indulgence. He has, however, endeavoured to obviate the inconvenience of faulty translation by quoting in foot-notes all words, phrases, and passages which appeared to him difficult. 2319 He has also added such notes as seemed necessary to illustrate the author’s argument, or to explain any obscure allusions. The translation has been made always from Oehler’s edition, with the aid of his scholarly Index Verborum. Use has also been made of Semler’s edition, and the variorum reprint of the Abbé Migne, the chief result of which recension has been to convince the translator of the great superiority and general excellence of Oehler’s edition. When he had completed two-thirds of his work, he happened to meet with the French translation of Tertullian by Monr. Denain, in Genoude’s series, Les Pères de l’Eglise, published some twenty-five years ago. This version, which runs in fluent language always, is very unequal in its relation to the original: sometimes it has the brevity of an abridgment, sometimes the fulness of a paraphrase. Often does it miss the author’s point, and never does it keep his style. The Abbé Migne correctly describes it: “Elegans potius quam fidissimus interpres, qui Africanæ loquelæ asperitatem splendenti ornavit sermone, egregiaque interdum et ad vivum expressa interpretatione recreavit.”
Footnotes
269:2314[The name of Bishop Jacobson was often introduced in our first volume, in notes to the Apostolic Fathers. He has recently “fallen asleep,” after a life of exemplary labour “with good report of all men and of the Truth itself.” His learning and piety were adorned by a profound humility, which gave a primitive cast to his character. At the Lambeth Conference, having the honour to sit at his side, I observed his extreme modesty. He rarely rose to speak, though he sometimes honoured me with words in a whisper, which the whole assembly would have rejoiced to hear. Like his great predecessor, Pearson, in many respects, the mere filings and clippings of his thoughts were gold-dust.]
269:2315[Dr. Holmes is described, in the Edinburgh Edition, as “Domestic Chaplain to the Rt. Hon. the Countess of Rothes.” He was B.A. (Oxon.) in 1840, and took orders that year. Was Head-Master of Plymouth Grammar School at one time, and among his very valuable and learned works should be mentioned, as very useful to the reader of this series, his Translation of Bull’s Defensio Fidei Nicænæ (two vols. 8vo. Oxford, 1851), and of the same great author’s Judicium Ecclesiæ Catholicæ, 8vo. Oxford, 1855.]
269:2316[This preface and the frequent annotations of our author relieve the American editor, save very sparingly, from adding notes of his own.]
270:2317Two works are worth mentioning in connection with this topic for their succinct and handy form, as well as satisfactory treatment of their argument: Mr. Perowne’s Norrisian prize essay, entitled The Essential Coherence of the Old and New Testaments (1858), and Sir William Page Wood’s recent work, The Continuity of Scripture, as declared by the Testimony of our Lord, and of the evangelists and apostles.
270:2318Bishop Kaye says of Tertullian (page 62): “He is indeed the harshest and most obscure of writers, and the least capable of being accurately represented in a translation;” and he quotes the learned Ruhnken’s sentence of our author: “Latinitatis certè pessimum auctorem esse aio et confirmo.” This is surely much too sweeping. To the careful student Tertullian’s style commends itself, by and by, as suited exactly to his subject—as the terse and vigorous expression of terse and vigorous thought. Bishop Butler has been often censured for an awkward style; whereas it is a fairer criticism to say, that the arguments of the Analogy and the Sermons of Human Nature have been delivered in the language best suited to their character. This adaptation of style to matter is probably in all great authors a real characteristic of genius. A more just and favourable view is taken of Tertullian’s Latin by Niebuhr, Hist. Rom. (Schmitz), vol. v. p. 271, and his Lectures on Ancient Hist. (Schmitz), vol. ii. p. 54.
270:2319He has also, as the reader will observe, endeavoured to distinguish, by the help of type, between the true God and Marcion’s god, printing the initials of the former, and of the pronouns referring to Him, in capitals, and those of the latter in small letters. To do this was not always an easy matter, for in many passages the argument amalgamates the two. Moreover, in the earlier portion of the work the translator fears that he may have occasionally neglected to make the distinction.
II.
The Five Books Against Marcion.
Book I. 2320
Wherein is described the god of Marcion. He is shown to be utterly wanting in all the attributes of the true God.
————————————
Chapter I.—Preface. Reason for a New Work. Pontus Lends Its Rough Character to the Heretic Marcion, a Native. His Heresy Characterized in a Brief Invective.
Whatever in times past 2321 we have wrought in opposition to Marcion, is from the present moment no longer to be accounted of. 2322 It is a new work which we are undertaking in lieu of the old one. 2323 My original tract, as too hurriedly composed, I had subsequently superseded by a fuller treatise. This latter I lost, before it was completely published, by the fraud of a person who was then a brother, 2324 but became afterwards an apostate. He, as it happened, had transcribed a portion of it, full of mistakes, and then published it. The necessity thus arose for an amended work; and the occasion of the new edition induced me to make a considerable addition to the treatise. This present text, 2325 therefore, of my work—which is the third as superseding 2326 the second, but henceforward to be considered the first instead of the third—renders a preface necessary to this issue of the tract itself that no reader may be perplexed, if he should by chance fall in with the various forms of it which are scattered about.
The Euxine Sea, as it is called, is self-contradictory in its nature, and deceptive in its name. 2327 As you would not account it hospitable from its situation, so is it severed from our more civilised waters by a certain stigma which attaches to its barbarous character. The fiercest nations inhabit it, if indeed it can be called habitation, when life is passed in waggons. They have no fixed abode; their life has 2328 no germ of civilization; they indulge their libidinous desires without restraint, and for the most part naked. Moreover, when they gratify secret lust, they hang up their quivers on their car-yokes, 2329 to warn off the curious and rash observer. Thus without a blush do they prostitute their weapons of war. The dead bodies of their parents they cut up with their sheep, and devour at their feasts. They who have not died so as to become food for others, are thought to have died an accursed death. Their women are not by their sex softened to modesty. They uncover the breast, from which they suspend their battle-axes, and prefer warfare to marriage. In their climate, too, there is the same rude nature. 2330 The day-time is never clear, the sun never cheerful; 2331 the sky is uniformly cloudy; the whole year is wintry; the only wind that blows is the angry North. Waters melt only by fires; their rivers flow not by reason of the ice; their mountains are covered 2332 with heaps of snow. All things are torpid, all stiff with cold. Nothing there has the glow 2333 of life, but that ferocity which has given to scenic plays their stories of the sacrifices 2334 of the Taurians, and the loves 2335 of the Colchians, and the torments 2336 of the Caucasus. Nothing, however, in Pontus is so barbarous and sad as the fact that Marcion was born there, fouler than any Scythian, more roving than the waggon-life 2337 of the Sarmatian, more inhuman than the Massagete, more audacious than an Amazon, darker than the cloud, 2338 (of Pontus) colder than its winter, more brittle than its ice, more deceitful than the Ister, more craggy than Caucasus. Nay 2339 more, the true Prometheus, Almighty God, is mangled 2340 by Marcion’s blasphemies. Marcion is more savage than even the beasts of that barbarous region. For what beaver was ever a greater emasculator 2341 than he who has abolished the nuptial bond? What Pontic mouse ever had such gnawing powers as he who has gnawed the Gospels to pieces? Verily, O Euxine, thou hast produced a monster more credible to philosophers than to Christians. For the cynic Diogenes used to go about, lantern in hand, at mid-day to find a man; whereas Marcion has quenched the light of his faith, and so lost the God whom he had found. His disciples will not deny that his first faith he held along with ourselves; a letter of his own 2342 proves this; so that for the future 2343 a heretic may from his case 2344 be designated as one who, forsaking that which was prior, afterwards chose out for himself that which was not in times past. 2345 For in as far as what was delivered in times past and from the beginning will be held as truth, in so far will that be accounted heresy which is brought in later. But another brief treatise 2346 will maintain this position against heretics, who ought to be refuted even without a consideration of their doctrines, on the ground that they are heretical by reason of the novelty of their opinions. Now, so far as any controversy is to be admitted, I will for the time 2347 (lest our compendious principle of novelty, being called in on all occasions to our aid, should be imputed to want of confidence) begin with setting forth our adversary’s rule of belief, that it may escape no one what our main contention is to be.
Footnotes
271:2320[Written A.D. 207. See Chapter xv. infra. In cap. xxix. is the token of Montanism which denotes his impending lapse.]
271:2321Retro.
271:2322Jam hinc viderit.
271:2323Ex vetere.
271:2324Fratris.
271:2325Stilus.
271:2326De.
271:2327[Euxine=hospitable. One recalls Shakespeare:
—“Like to the Pontick Sea
Whose icy current and compulsive force
Ne’er feels retiring ebb.”—Othel.]
271:2328Cruda.
271:2329De jugo. See Strabo (Bohn’s trans.), vol. ii. p. 247.
271:2330Duritia.
271:2331Libens.
271:2332Exaggerantur.
271:2333Calet.
271:2334[Iphigenia of Euripides.]
271:2335[See the Medea of Euripides.]
271:2336[Prometheus of Æschylus.]
272:2337Hamaxobio. This Sarmatian clan received its name ῾Αμαξόβιοι from its gypsy kind of life.
272:2338[I fancy there is point in this singular, the sky of Pontus being always overcast. Cowper says:
“There is but one cloud in the sky,
But that doth the welkin invest,” etc.
272:2339Quidni.
272:2340Lancinatur.
272:2341Castrator carnis. See Pliny, N. H. viii. 47 (Bohn’s trans. vol. ii. p. 297).
272:2342Ipsius litteris.
272:2343Jam.
272:2344Hinc.
272:2345Retro.
272:2346He alludes to his book De Præscriptione Hæreticorum. [Was this work then already written? Dr. Allix thinks not. But see Kaye, p. 47.]
272:2347Interdum. [Can it be that when all this was written (speaking of ourselves) our author had fully lapsed from Communion with the Catholic Church?]
Chapter II.—Marcion, Aided by Cerdon, Teaches a Duality of Gods; How He Constructed This Heresy of an Evil and a Good God.
The heretic of Pontus introduces two Gods, like the twin Symplegades of his own shipwreck: One whom it was impossible to deny, i.e. our Creator; and one whom he will never be able to prove, i.e. his own god. The unhappy man gained 2348 the first idea 2349 of his conceit from the simple passage of our Lord’s saying, which has reference to human beings and not divine ones, wherein He disposes of those examples of a good tree and a corrupt one; 2350 how that “the good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit, neither the corrupt tree good fruit.” Which means, that an honest mind and good faith cannot produce evil deeds, any more than an evil disposition can produce good deeds. Now (like many other persons now-a-days, especially those who have an heretical proclivity), while morbidly brooding 2351 over the question of the origin of evil, his perception became blunted by the very irregularity of his researches; and when he found the Creator declaring, “I am He that createth evil,” 2352 inasmuch as he had already concluded from other arguments, which are satisfactory to every perverted mind, that God is the author of evil, so he now applied to the Creator the figure of the corrupt tree bringing forth evil fruit, that is, moral evil, 2353 and then presumed that there ought to be another god, after the analogy of the good tree producing its good fruit. Accordingly, finding in Christ a different disposition, as it were—one of a simple and pure benevolence 2354 —differing from the Creator, he readily argued that in his Christ had been revealed a new and strange 2355 divinity; and then with a little leaven he leavened the whole lump of the faith, flavouring it with the acidity of his own heresy.
He had, moreover, in one 2356 Cerdon an abettor of this blasphemy,—a circumstance which made them the more readily think that they saw most clearly their two gods, blind though they were; for, in truth, they had not seen the one God with soundness of faith. 2357 To men of diseased vision even one lamp looks like many. One of his gods, therefore, whom he was obliged to acknowledge, he destroyed by defaming his attributes in the matter of evil; the other, whom he laboured so hard to devise, he constructed, laying his foundation 2358 in the principle of good. In what articles 2359 he arranged these natures, we show by our own refutations of them.
Footnotes
272:2348Passus.
272:2349Instinctum.
272:2350St. Luke vi. 43 sq.
272:2351Languens.
272:2352Isa. xlv. 7.
272:2353Mala.
272:2354[This purely good or goodish divinity is an idea of the Stoics. De Præscript. chap. 7.]
272:2355Hospitam.
272:2356Quendam. [See Irenæus, Vol. I. p. 352, this Series.]
272:2357Integre.
273:2358Præstruendo.
273:2359Or sections.
Chapter III.—The Unity of God. He is the Supreme Being, and There Cannot Be a Second Supreme.
The principal, and indeed 2360 the whole, contention lies in the point of number: whether two Gods may be admitted, by poetic licence (if they must be), 2361 or pictorial fancy, or by the third process, as we must now add, 2362 of heretical pravity. But the Christian verity has distinctly declared this principle, “God is not, if He is not one;” because we more properly believe that that has no existence which is not as it ought to be. In order, however, that you may know that God is one, ask what God is, and you will find Him to be not otherwise than one. So far as a human being can form a definition of God, I adduce one which the conscience of all men will also acknowledge,—that God is the great Supreme existing in eternity, unbegotten, unmade without beginning, without end. For such a condition as this must needs be ascribed to that eternity which makes God to be the great Supreme, because for such a purpose as this is this very attribute 2363 in God; and so on as to the other qualities: so that God is the great Supreme in form and in reason, and in might and in power. 2364 Now, since all are agreed on this point (because nobody will deny that God is in some sense 2365 the great Supreme, except the man who shall be able to pronounce the opposite opinion, that God is but some inferior being, in order that he may deny God by robbing Him of an attribute of God), what must be the condition of the great Supreme Himself? Surely it must be that nothing is equal to Him, i.e. that there is no other great supreme; because, if there were, He would have an equal; and if He had an equal, He would be no longer the great Supreme, now that the condition and (so to say) our law, which permits nothing to be equal to the great Supreme, is subverted. That Being, then, which is the great Supreme, must needs be unique, 2366 by having no equal, and so not ceasing to be the great Supreme. Therefore He will not otherwise exist than by the condition whereby He has His being; that is, by His absolute uniqueness. Since, then, God is the great Supreme, our Christian verity has rightly declared, 2367 “God is not, if He is not one.” Not as if we doubted His being God, by saying, He is not, if He is not one; but because we define Him, in whose being we thoroughly believe, to be that without which He is not God; that is to say, the great Supreme. But then 2368 the great Supreme must needs be unique. This Unique Being, therefore, will be God—not otherwise God than as the great Supreme; and not otherwise the great Supreme than as having no equal; and not otherwise having no equal than as being Unique. Whatever other god, then, you may introduce, you will at least be unable to maintain his divinity under any other guise, 2369 than by ascribing to him too the property of Godhead—both eternity and supremacy over all. How, therefore, can two great Supremes co-exist, when this is the attribute of the Supreme Being, to have no equal,—an attribute which belongs to One alone, and can by no means exist in two?
Footnotes
273:2360Et exinde.
273:2361Si Forte.
273:2362Jam.
273:2363Of eternity.
273:2364We subjoin the original of this difficult passage: Hunc enim statum æternitati censendum, quæ summum magnum deum efficiat, dum hoc est in deo ipsa, atque ita et cetera, ut sit deus summum magnum et forma et ratione et vi et potestate.
273:2365Quid.
273:2366Unicus. [Alone of his kind.]
273:2367As its first principle.
273:2368Porro.
273:2369Forma.
Chapter IV.—Defence of the Divine Unity Against Objection. No Analogy Between Human Powers and God’s Sovereignty. The Objection Otherwise Untenable, for Why Stop at Two Gods?
But some one may contend that two great Supremes may exist, distinct and separate in their own departments; and may even adduce, as an example, the kingdoms of the world, which, though they are so many in number, are yet supreme in their several regions. Such a man will suppose that human circumstances are always comparable with divine ones. Now, if this mode of reasoning be at all tolerable, what is to prevent our introducing, I will not say a third god or a fourth, but as many as there are kings of the earth? Now it is God that is in question, whose main property it is to admit of no comparison with Himself. Nature itself, therefore, if not an Isaiah, or rather God speaking by Isaiah, will deprecatingly ask, “To whom will ye liken me?” 2370 Human circumstances may perhaps be compared with divine ones, but they may not be with God. God is one thing, and what belongs to God is another thing. Once more: 2371 you who apply the example of a king, as a great supreme, take care that you can use it properly. For although a king is supreme on his throne next to God, he is still inferior to God; and when he is compared with God, he will be dislodged 2372 from that great supremacy which is transferred to God. Now, this being the case, how will you employ in a comparison with God an object as your example, which fails 2373 in all the purposes which belong to a comparison? Why, when supreme power among kings cannot evidently be multifarious, but only unique and singular, is an exception made in the case of Him (of all others) 2374 who is King of kings, and (from the exceeding greatness of His power, and the subjection of all other ranks 2375 to Him) the very summit, 2376 as it were, of dominion? But even in the case of rulers of that other form of government, where they one by one preside in a union of authority, if with their petty 2377 prerogatives of royalty, so to say, they be brought on all points 2378 into such a comparison with one another as shall make it clear which of them is superior in the essential features 2379 and powers of royalty, it must needs follow that the supreme majesty will redound 2380 to one alone,—all the others being gradually, by the issue of the comparison, removed and excluded from the supreme authority. Thus, although, when spread out in several hands, supreme authority seems to be multifarious, yet in its own powers, nature, and condition, it is unique. It follows, then, that if two gods are compared, as two kings and two supreme authorities, the concentration of authority must necessarily, according to the meaning of the comparison, be conceded to one of the two; because it is clear from his own superiority that he is the supreme, his rival being now vanquished, and proved to be not the greater, however great. Now, from this failure of his rival, the other is unique in power, possessing a certain solitude, as it were, in his singular pre-eminence. The inevitable conclusion at which we arrive, then, on this point is this: either we must deny that God is the great Supreme, which no wise man will allow himself to do; or say that God has no one else with whom to share His power.
Footnotes
273:2370Isa. 40:18, 25.
273:2371Denique.
274:2372Excidet.
274:2373Amittitur. “Tertullian” (who thinks lightly of the analogy of earthly monarchs) “ought rather to have contended that the illustration strengthened his argument. In each kingdom there is only one supreme power; but the universe is God’s kingdom: there is therefore only one supreme power in the universe.”— Bp. Kaye, On the Writings of Tertullian, Third edition, p. 453, note 2.
274:2374Scilicet.
274:2375Graduum.
274:2376Culmen.
274:2377Minutalibus regnis.
274:2378Undique.
274:2379Substantiis.
274:2380Eliquetur.
Chapter V.—The Dual Principle Falls to the Ground; Plurality of Gods, of Whatever Number, More Consistent. Absurdity and Injury to Piety Resulting from Marcion’s Duality.
But on what principle did Marcion confine his supreme powers to two? I would first ask, If there be two, why not more? Because if number be compatible with the substance of Deity, the richer you make it in number the better. Valentinus was more consistent and more liberal; for he, having once imagined two deities, Bythos and Sige, 2381 poured forth a swarm of divine essences, a brood of no less than thirty Æons, like the sow of Æneas. 2382 Now, whatever principle refuses to admit several supreme beings, the same must reject even two, for there is plurality in the very lowest number after one. After unity, number commences. So, again, the same principle which could admit two could admit more. After two, multitude begins, now that one is exceeded. In short, we feel that reason herself expressly 2383 forbids the belief in more gods than one, because the self-same rule lays down one God and not two, which declares that God must be a Being to which, as the great Supreme, nothing is equal; and that Being to which nothing is equal must, moreover, be unique. But further, what can be the use or advantage in supposing two supreme beings, two co-ordinate 2384 powers? What numerical difference could there be when two equals differ not from one? For that thing which is the same in two is one. Even if there were several equals, all would be just as much one, because, as equals, they would not differ one from another. So, if of two beings neither differs from the other, since both of them are on the supposition 2385 supreme, both being gods, neither of them is more excellent than the other; and so, having no pre-eminence, their numerical distinction 2386 has no reason in it. Number, moreover, in the Deity ought to be consistent with the highest reason, or else His worship would be brought into doubt. For consider 2387 now, if, when I saw two Gods before me (who, being both Supreme Beings, were equal to each other), I were to worship them both, what should I be doing? I should be much afraid that the abundance of my homage would be deemed superstition rather than piety. Because, as both of them are so equal and are both included in either of the two, I might serve them both acceptably in only one; and by this very means I should attest their equality and unity, provided that I worshipped them mutually the one in the other, because in the one both are present to me. If I were to worship one of the two, I should be equally conscious of seeming to pour contempt on the uselessness of a numerical distinction, which was superfluous, because it indicated no difference; in other words, I should think it the safer course to worship neither of these two Gods than one of them with some scruple of conscience, or both of them to none effect.
Footnotes
274:2381Depth and silence.
274:2382See Virgil, Æneid, viii. 43, etc.
274:2383Ipso termino.
274:2384Paria.
274:2385Jam.
274:2386Numeri sui.
274:2387Ecce.
Chapter VI.—Marcion Untrue to His Theory. He Pretends that His Gods are Equal, But He Really Makes Them Diverse. Then, Allowing Their Divinity, Denies This Diversity.
Thus far our discussion seems to imply that Marcion makes his two gods equal. For while we have been maintaining that God ought to be believed as the one only great Supreme Being, excluding from Him every possibility 2388 of equality, we have treated of these topics on the assumption of two equal Gods; but nevertheless, by teaching that no equals can exist according to the law 2389 of the Supreme Being, we have sufficiently affirmed the impossibility that two equals should exist. For the rest, however, 2390 we know full well 2391 that Marcion makes his gods unequal: one judicial, harsh, mighty in war; the other mild, placid, and simply 2392 good and excellent. Let us with similar care consider also this aspect of the question, whether diversity (in the Godhead) can at any rate contain two, since equality therein failed to do so. Here again the same rule about the great Supreme will protect us, inasmuch as it settles 2393 the entire condition of the Godhead. Now, challenging, and in a certain sense arresting 2394 the meaning of our adversary, who does not deny that the Creator is God, I most fairly object 2395 against him that he has no room for any diversity in his gods, because, having once confessed that they are on a par, 2396 he cannot now pronounce them different; not indeed that human beings may not be very different under the same designation, but because the Divine Being can be neither said nor believed to be God, except as the great Supreme. Since, therefore, he is obliged to acknowledge that the God whom he does not deny is the great Supreme, it is inadmissible that he should predicate of the Supreme Being such a diminution as should subject Him to another Supreme Being. For He ceases (to be Supreme), if He becomes subject to any. Besides, it is not the characteristic of God to cease from any attribute 2397 of His divinity—say, from His supremacy. For at this rate the supremacy would be endangered even in Marcion’s more powerful god, if it were capable of depreciation in the Creator. When, therefore, two gods are pronounced to be two great Supremes, it must needs follow that neither of them is greater or less than the other, neither of them loftier or lowlier than the other. If you deny 2398 him to be God whom you call inferior, you deny 2399 the supremacy of this inferior being. But when you confessed both gods to be divine, you confessed them both to be supreme. Nothing will you be able to take away from either of them; nothing will you be able to add. By allowing their divinity, you have denied their diversity.
Footnotes
275:2388Parilitatem.
275:2389Formam.
275:2390Alioquin.
275:2391Certi (sumus).
275:2392Tantummodo.
275:2393Vindicet.
275:2394Injecta manu detinens.
275:2395Præscribo.
275:2396Ex æquo deos confessus.
275:2397De statu suo.
275:2398Nega.
275:2399Nega.
Chapter VII.—Other Beings Besides God are in Scripture Called God. This Objection Frivolous, for It is Not a Question of Names. The Divine Essence is the Thing at Issue. Heresy, in Its General Terms, Thus Far Treated.
But this argument you will try to shake with an objection from the name of God, by alleging that that name is a vague 2400 one, and applied to other beings also; as it is written, “God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; 2401 He judgeth among the gods.” And again, “I have said, Ye are gods.” 2402 As therefore the attribute of supremacy would be inappropriate to these, although they are called gods, so is it to the Creator. This is a foolish objection; and my answer to it is, that its author fails to consider that quite as strong an objection might be urged against the (superior) god of Marcion: he too is called god, but is not on that account proved to be divine, as neither are angels nor men, the Creator’s handiwork. If an identity of names affords a presumption in support of equality of condition, how often do worthless menials strut insolently in the names of kings—your Alexanders, Cæsars, and Pompeys! 2403 This fact, however, does not detract from the real attributes of the royal persons. Nay more, the very idols of the Gentiles are called gods. Yet not one of them is divine because he is called a god. It is not, therefore, for the name of god, for its sound or its written form, that I am claiming the supremacy in the Creator, but for the essence 2404 to which the name belongs; and when I find that essence alone is unbegotten and unmade—alone eternal, and the maker of all things—it is not to its name, but its state, not to its designation, but its condition, that I ascribe and appropriate the attribute of the supremacy. And so, because the essence to which I ascribe it has come 2405 to be called god, you suppose that I ascribe it to the name, because I must needs use a name to express the essence, of which indeed that Being consists who is called God, and who is accounted the great Supreme because of His essence, not from His name. In short, Marcion himself, when he imputes this character to his god, imputes it to the nature, 2406 not to the word. That supremacy, then, which we ascribe to God in consideration of His essence, and not because of His name, ought, as we maintain, to be equal 2407 in both the beings who consist of that substance for which the name of God is given; because, in as far as they are called gods (i.e. supreme beings, on the strength, of course, of their unbegotten and eternal, and therefore great and supreme essence), in so far the attribute of being the great Supreme cannot be regarded as less or worse in one than in another great Supreme. If the happiness, and sublimity, and perfection 2408 of the Supreme Being shall hold good of Marcion’s god, it will equally so of ours; and if not of ours, it will equally not hold of Marcion’s. Therefore two supreme beings will be neither equal nor unequal: not equal, because the principle which we have just expounded, that the Supreme Being admits of no comparison with Himself, forbids it; not unequal, because another principle meets us respecting the Supreme Being, that He is capable of no diminution. So, Marcion, you are caught 2409 in the midst of your own Pontic tide. The waves of truth overwhelm you on every side. You can neither set up equal gods nor unequal ones. For there are not two; so far as the question of number is properly concerned. Although the whole matter of the two gods is at issue, we have yet confined our discussion to certain bounds, within which we shall now have to contend about separate peculiarities.
Footnotes
275:2400Passivo.
275:2401לא”־תרַעַבְּ. Tertullian’s version is: In ecclesia deorum. The Vulgate: In synagoga deorum.
275:2402Ps. 82:1, 6.
275:2403The now less obvious nicknames of “Alex. Darius and Olofernes,” are in the text.
276:2404Substantiæ.
276:2405Vocari obtinuit.
276:2406Statum.
276:2407Ex pari.
276:2408Integritas.
276:2409Hæsisti.
Chapter VIII.—Specific Points. The Novelty of Marcion’s God Fatal to His Pretensions. God is from Everlasting, He Cannot Be in Any Wise New.
In the first place, how arrogantly do the Marcionites build up their stupid system, 2410 bringing forward a new god, as if we were ashamed of the old one! So schoolboys are proud of their new shoes, but their old master beats their strutting vanity out of them. Now when I hear of a new god, 2411 who, in the old world and in the old time and under the old god was unknown and unheard of; whom, (accounted as no one through such long centuries back, and ancient in men’s very ignorance of him), 2412 a certain “Jesus Christ,” and none else revealed; whom Christ revealed, they say—Christ himself new, according to them, even, in ancient names—I feel grateful for this conceit 2413 of theirs. For by its help I shall at once be able to prove the heresy of their tenet of a new deity. It will turn out to be such a novelty 2414 as has made gods even for the heathen by some new and yet again and ever new title 2415 for each several deification. What new god is there, except a false one? Not even Saturn will be proved to be a god by all his ancient fame, because it was a novel pretence which some time or other produced even him, when it first gave him godship. 2416 On the contrary, living and perfect 2417 Deity has its origin 2418 neither in novelty nor in antiquity, but in its own true nature. Eternity has no time. It is itself all time. It acts; it cannot then suffer. It cannot be born, therefore it lacks age. God, if old, forfeits the eternity that is to come; if new, the eternity which is past. 2419 The newness bears witness to a beginning; the oldness threatens an end. God, moreover, is as independent of beginning and end as He is of time, which is only the arbiter and measurer of a beginning and an end.
Footnotes
276:2410Stuporem suum.
276:2411[Cap. xix. infra.]
276:2412The original of this obscure passage is: “Novum igitur audiens deum, in vetere mundo et in vetere ævo et sub vetere deo inauditum quem tantis retro seculis neminem, et ipsa ignorantia antiquum, quidam Jesus Christus, et ille in veteribus nominibus novus, revelaverit, nec alius antehac.” The harsh expression, “quidam Jesus Christus,” bears, of course, a sarcastic reference to the capricious and inconsistent novelty which Marcion broached in his heresy about Christ. [By some slight chance in punctuation and arrangement, I have endeavoured to make it a little clearer.]
276:2413Gloriæ. [Qu. boast?]
276:2414Hæc erit novitas quæ.
276:2415Novo semper ac novo titulo.
276:2416Consecravit.
276:2417Germana.
276:2418Censetur. A frequent meaning in Tertullian. See Apol. 7 and 12.
276:2419We cannot preserve the terseness of the Latin: Deus, si est vetus, non erit; si est novus, non fuit.
Chapter IX.—Marcion’s Gnostic Pretensions Vain, for the True God is Neither Unknown Nor Uncertain. The Creator, Whom He Owns to Be God, Alone Supplies an Induction, by Which to Judge of the True God.
Now I know full well by what perceptive faculty they boast of their new god; even their knowledge. 2420 It is, however, this very discovery of a novel thing—so striking to common minds—as well as the natural gratification which is inherent in novelty, that I wanted to refute, and thence further to challenge a proof of this unknown god. For him whom by their knowledge 2421 they present to us as new, they prove to have been unknown previous to that knowledge. Let us keep within the strict limits and measure of our argument. Convince me there could have been an unknown god. I find, no doubt, 2422 that altars have been lavished on unknown gods; that, however, is the idolatry of Athens. And on uncertain gods; but that, too, is only Roman superstition. Furthermore, uncertain gods are not well known, because no certainty about them exists; and because of this uncertainty they are therefore unknown. Now, which of these two titles shall we carve for Marcion’s god? Both, I suppose, as for a being who is still uncertain, and was formerly unknown. For inasmuch as the Creator, being a known God, caused him to be unknown; so, as being a certain God, he made him to be uncertain. But I will not go so far out of my way, as to say: 2423 If God was unknown and concealed, He was overshadowed in such a region of darkness, as must have been itself new and unknown, and be even now likewise uncertain—some immense region indeed, one undoubtedly greater than the God whom it concealed. But I will briefly state my subject, and afterwards most fully pursue it, promising that God neither could have been, nor ought to have been, unknown. Could not have been, because of His greatness; ought not to have been, because of His goodness, especially as He is (supposed, by Marcion) more excellent in both these attributes than our Creator. Since, however, I observe that in some points the proof of every new and heretofore unknown god ought, for its test, 2424 to be compared to the form of the Creator, it will be my duty 2425 first of all to show that this very course is adopted by me in a settled plan, 2426 such as I might with greater confidence 2427 use in support of my argument. Before every other consideration, (let me ask) how it happens that you, 2428 who acknowledge 2429 the Creator to be God, and from your knowledge confess Him to be prior in existence, do not know that the other god should be examined by you in exactly the same course of investigation which has taught you how to find out a god in the first case? Every prior thing has furnished the rule for the latter. In the present question two gods are propounded, the unknown and the known. Concerning the known there is no 2430 question. It is plain that He exists, else He would not be known. The dispute is concerning the unknown god. Possibly he has no existence; because, if he had, he would have been known. Now that which, so long as it is unknown, is an object to be questioned, is an uncertainty so long as it remains thus questionable; and all the while it is in this state of uncertainty, it possibly has no existence at all. You have a god who is so far certain, as he is known; and uncertain, as unknown. This being the case, does it appear to you to be justly defensible, that uncertainties should be submitted for proof to the rule, and form, and standard of certainties? Now, if to the subject before us, which is in itself full of uncertainty thus far, there be applied also arguments 2431 derived from uncertainties, we shall be involved in such a series of questions arising out of our treatment of these same uncertain arguments, as shall by reason of their uncertainty be dangerous to the faith, and we shall drift into those insoluble questions which the apostle has no affection for. If, again, 2432 in things wherein there is found a diversity of condition, they shall prejudge, as no doubt they will, 2433 uncertain, doubtful, and intricate points, by the certain, undoubted, and clear sides 2434 of their rule, it will probably happen that 2435 (those points) will not be submitted to the standard of certainties for determination, as being freed by the diversity of their essential condition 2436 from the application of such a standard in all other respects. As, therefore, it is two gods which are the subject of our proposition, their essential condition must be the same in both. For, as concerns their divinity, they are both unbegotten, unmade, eternal. This will be their essential condition. All other points Marcion himself seems to have made light of, 2437 for he has placed them in a different 2438 category. They are subsequent in the order of treatment; indeed, they will not have to be brought into the discussion, 2439 since on the essential condition there is no dispute. Now there is this absence of our dispute, because they are both of them gods. Those things, therefore, whose community of condition is evident, will, when brought to a test on the ground of that common condition, 2440 have to be submitted, although they are uncertain, to the standard 2441 of those certainties with which they are classed in the community of their essential condition, so as on this account to share also in their manner of proof. I shall therefore contend 2442 with the greatest confidence that he is not God who is to-day uncertain, because he has been hitherto unknown; for of whomsoever it is evident that he is God, from this very fact it is (equally) evident, that he never has been unknown, and therefore never uncertain.
Footnotes
277:2420Agnitione. The distinctive term of the Gnostic pretension was the Greek equivalent Γνῶσις.
277:2421Agnitione.
277:2422Plane.
277:2423Non evagabor, ut dicam.
277:2424Provocari.
277:2425Debebo.
277:2426Ratione.
277:2427Constantius.
277:2428Quale est ut.
277:2429Agnoscis.
277:2430Vacat.
277:2431Argumenta ="proofs.”
277:2432Sin.
277:2433Plane.
277:2434Regulæ partibus.
277:2435Fortasse an.
277:2436Status principalis.
278:2437Viderit.
278:2438In diversitate.
278:2439Nec admittentur.
278:2440Sub eo.
278:2441Formam.
278:2442Dirigam.
Chapter X.—The Creator Was Known as the True God from the First by His Creation. Acknowledged by the Soul and Conscience of Man Before He Was Revealed by Moses.
For indeed, as the Creator of all things, He was from the beginning discovered equally with them, they having been themselves manifested that He might become known as God. For although Moses, some long while afterwards, seems to have been the first to introduce the knowledge of 2443 the God of the universe in the temple of his writings, yet the birthday of that knowledge must not on that account be reckoned from the Pentateuch. For the volume of Moses does not at all initiate 2444 the knowledge of the Creator, but from the first gives out that it is to be traced from Paradise and Adam, not from Egypt and Moses. The greater part, therefore, 2445 of the human race, although they knew not even the name of Moses, much less his writings, yet knew the God of Moses; and even when idolatry overshadowed the world with its extreme prevalence, men still spoke of Him separately by His own name as God, and the God of gods, and said, “If God grant,” and, “As God pleases,” and, “I commend you to God.” 2446 Reflect, then, whether they knew Him, of whom they testify that He can do all things. To none of the writings of Moses do they owe this. The soul was before prophecy. 2447 From the beginning the knowledge of God is the dowry of the soul, one and the same amongst the Egyptians, and the Syrians, and the tribes of Pontus. For their souls call the God of the Jews their God. Do not, O barbarian heretic, put Abraham before the world. Even if the Creator had been the God of one family, He was yet not later than your god; even in Pontus was He known before him. Take then your standard from Him who came first: from the Certain (must be judged) the uncertain; from the Known the unknown. Never shall God be hidden, never shall God be wanting. Always shall He be understood, always be heard, nay even seen, in whatsoever way He shall wish. God has for His witnesses this whole being of ours, and this universe wherein we dwell. He is thus, because not unknown, proved to be both God and the only One, although another still tries hard to make out his claim.
Footnotes
278:2443Dedicasse.
278:2444Instituat.
278:2445Denique.
278:2446See also De test, anim. 2, and De anima, 41. [Bp. Kaye refers (p. 166) to Profr. Andrews Norton of Harvard, with great respect: specially to a Note on this usage of the Heathen, in his Evidences, etc. Vol. III.]
278:2447Prophetia, inspired Scripture.
Chapter XI.—The Evidence for God External to Him; But the External Creation Which Yields This Evidence is Really Not Extraneous, for All Things are God’s. Marcion’s God, Having Nothing to Show for Himself, No God at All. Marcion’s Scheme Absurdly Defective, Not Furnishing Evidence for His New God’s Existence, Which Should at Least Be Able to Compete with the Full Evidence of the Creator.
And justly so, they say. For who is there that is less well known by his own (inherent) qualities than by strange 2448 ones? No one. Well, I keep to this statement. How could anything be strange 2449 to God, to whom, if He were personally existent, nothing would be strange? For this is the attribute of God, that all things are His, and all things belong to Him; or else this question would not so readily be heard from us: What has He to do with things strange to Him?—a point which will be more fully noticed in its proper place. It is now sufficient to observe, that no one is proved to exist to whom nothing is proved to belong. For as the Creator is shown to be God, God without any doubt, from the fact that all things are His, and nothing is strange to Him; so the rival 2450 god is seen to be no god, from the circumstance that nothing is his, and all things are therefore strange to him. Since, then, the universe belongs to the Creator, I see no room for any other god. All things are full of their Author, and occupied by Him. If in created beings there be any portion of space anywhere void of Deity, the void will be of a false deity clearly. 2451 By falsehood the truth is made clear. Why cannot the vast crowd of false gods somewhere find room for Marcion’s god? This, therefore, I insist upon, from the character 2452 of the Creator, that God must have been known from the works of some world peculiarly His own, both in its human constituents, and the rest of its organic life; 2453 when even the error of the world has presumed to call gods those men whom it sometimes acknowledges, on the ground that in every such case something is seen which provides for the uses and advantages of life. 2454 Accordingly, this also was believed from the character of God to be a divine function; namely, to teach or point out what is convenient and needful in human concerns. So completely has the authority which has given influence to a false divinity been borrowed from that source, whence it had previously flowed forth to the true one. One stray vegetable 2455 at least Marcion’s god ought to have produced as his own; so might he be preached up as a new Triptolemus. 2456 Or else state some reason which shall be worthy of a God, why he, supposing him to exist, created nothing; because he must, on supposition of his existence, have been a creator, on that very principle on which it is clear to us that our God is no otherwise existent, than as having been the Creator of this universe of ours. For, once for all, the rule 2457 will hold good, that they cannot both acknowledge the Creator to be God, and also prove him divine whom they wish to be equally believed in as God, except they adjust him to the standard of Him whom they and all men hold to be God; which is this, that whereas no one doubts the Creator to be God on the express ground of His having made the universe, so, on the selfsame ground, no one ought to believe that he also is God who has made nothing—except, indeed, some good reason be forthcoming. And this must needs be limited to one of two: he was either unwilling to create, or else unable. There is no third reason. 2458 Now, that he was unable, is a reason unworthy of God. Whether to have been unwilling to be a worthy one, I want to inquire. Tell me, Marcion, did your god wish himself to be recognised at any time or not? With what other purpose did he come down from heaven, and preach, and having suffered rise again from the dead, if it were not that he might be acknowledged? And, doubtless, since he was acknowledged, he willed it. For no circumstance could have happened to him, if he had been unwilling. What indeed tended so greatly to the knowledge of himself, as his appearing in the humiliation of the flesh,—a degradation all the lower indeed if the flesh were only illusory? 2459 For it was all the more shameful if he, who brought on himself the Creator’s curse by hanging on a tree, only pretended the assumption of a bodily substance. A far nobler foundation might he have laid for the knowledge of himself in some evidences of a creation of his own, especially when he had to become known in opposition to Him in whose territory 2460 he had remained unknown by any works from the beginning. For how happens it that the Creator, although unaware, as the Marcionites aver, of any god being above Himself, and who used to declare even with an oath that He existed alone, should have guarded by such mighty works the knowledge of Himself, about which, on the assumption of His being alone without a rival, He might have spared Himself all care; while the Superior God, knowing all the while how well furnished in power His inferior rival was, should have made no provision at all towards getting Himself acknowledged? Whereas He ought to have produced works more illustrious and exalted still, in order that He might, after the Creator’s standard, both be acknowledged as God from His works, and even by nobler deeds show Himself to be more potent and more gracious than the Creator.
Footnotes
278:2448Extraneous.
278:2449Extraneum.
278:2450Alius.
279:2451Plane falsæ vacabit.
279:2452Forma.
279:2453Proprii sui mundi, et hominis et sæculi.
279:2454[Kaye, p. 206.]
279:2455Cicerculam.
279:2456[—“uncique puer monstrator aratri,” Virg. Georg. i. 19, and see Heyne’s note.]
279:2457Præscriptio.
279:2458Tertium cessat.
279:2459Falsæ. An allusion to the Docetism of Marcion.
279:2460Apud quem.
Chapter XII.—Impossibility of Acknowledging God Without This External Evidence 2461 Of His Existence. Marcion’s Rejection of Such Evidence for His God Savours of Impudence and Malignity.
But even if we were able to allow that he exists, we should yet be bound to argue that he is without a cause. 2462 For he who had nothing (to show for himself as proof of his existence), would be without a cause, since (such) proof 2463 is the whole cause that there exists some person to whom the proof belongs. Now, in as far as nothing ought to be without a cause, that is, without a proof (because if it be without a cause, it is all one as if it be not, not having the very proof which is the cause of a thing), in so far shall I more worthily believe that God does not exist, than that He exists without a cause. For he is without a cause who has not a cause by reason of not having a proof. God, however, ought not to be without a cause, that is to say, without a proof. Thus, as often as I show that He exists without a cause, although (I allow 2464 that) He exists, I do really determine this, that He does not exist; because, if He had existed, He could not have existed altogether without a cause. 2465 So, too, even in regard to faith itself, I say that he 2466 seeks to obtain it 2467 without cause from man, who is otherwise accustomed to believe in God from the idea he gets of Him from the testimony of His works: 2468 (without cause, I repeat,) because he has provided no such proof as that whereby man has acquired the knowledge of God. For although most persons believe in Him, they do not believe at once by unaided reason, 2469 without having some token of Deity in works worthy of God. And so upon this ground of inactivity and lack of works he 2470 is guilty both of impudence and malignity: of impudence, in aspiring after a belief which is not due to him, and for which he has provided no foundation; 2471 of malignity, in having brought many persons under the charge of unbelief by furnishing to them no groundwork for their faith.
Footnotes
279:2461The word cause throughout this chapter is used in the popular, inaccurate sense, which almost confounds it with effect, the “causa cognoscendi,” as distinguished from the “causa essendi,” the strict cause.
279:2462The word cause throughout this chapter is used in the popular, inaccurate sense, which almost confounds it with effect, the “causa cognoscendi,” as distinguished from the “causa essendi,” the strict cause.
279:2463The word “res” is throughout this argument used strictly by Tertullian; it refers to “the thing” made by God—that product of His creative energy which affords to us evidence of His existence. We have translated it “proof” for want of a better word.
280:2464The “tanquam sit,” in its subjunctive form, seems to refer to the concession indicated at the outset of the chapter.
280:2465Omnino sine causa.
280:2466Illum, i.e., Marcion’s god.
280:2467Captare.
280:2468Deum ex operum auctoritate formatum.
280:2469Non statim ratione, on a priori grounds.
280:2470i.e., Marcion’s god.
280:2471Compare Rom. i. 20, a passage which is quite subversive of Marcion’s theory.
Chapter XIII.—The Marcionites Depreciate the Creation, Which, However, is a Worthy Witness of God. This Worthiness Illustrated by References to the Heathen Philosophers, Who Were Apt to Invest the Several Parts of Creation with Divine Attributes.
While we are expelling from this rank (of Deity) a god who has no evidence to show for himself which is so proper and God-worthy as the testimony of the Creator, Marcion’s most shameless followers with haughty impertinence fall upon the Creator’s works to destroy them. To be sure, say they, the world is a grand work, worthy of a God. 2472 Then is the Creator not at all a God? By all means He is God. 2473 Therefore 2474 the world is not unworthy of God, for God has made nothing unworthy of Himself; although it was for man, and not for Himself, that He made the world, (and) although every work is less than its maker. And yet, if to have been the author of our creation, such as it is, be unworthy of God, how much more unworthy of Him is it to have created absolutely nothing at all!—not even a production which, although unworthy, might yet have encouraged the hope of some better attempt. To say somewhat, then, concerning the alleged 2475 unworthiness of this world’s fabric, to which among the Greeks also is assigned a name of ornament and grace, 2476 not of sordidness, those very professors of wisdom, 2477 from whose genius every heresy derives its spirit, 2478 called the said unworthy elements divine; as Thales did water, Heraclitus fire, Anaximenes air, Anaximander all the heavenly bodies, Strato the sky and earth, Zeno the air and ether, and Plato the stars, which he calls a fiery kind of gods; whilst concerning the world, when they considered indeed its magnitude, and strength, and power, and honour, and glory,—the abundance, too, the regularity, and law of those individual elements which contribute to the production, the nourishment, the ripening, and the reproduction of all things,—the majority of the philosophers hesitated 2479 to assign a beginning and an end to the said world, lest its constituent elements, 2480 great as they undoubtedly are, should fail to be regarded as divine, 2481 which are objects of worship with the Persian magi, the Egyptian hierophants, and the Indian gymnosophists. The very superstition of the crowd, inspired by the common idolatry, when ashamed of the names and fables of their ancient dead borne by their idols, has recourse to the interpretation of natural objects, and so with much ingenuity cloaks its own disgrace, figuratively reducing Jupiter to a heated substance, and Juno to an aërial one (according to the literal sense of the Greek words); 2482 Vesta, in like manner, to fire, and the Muses to waters, and the Great Mother 2483 to the earth, mowed as to its crops, ploughed up with lusty arms, and watered with baths. 2484 Thus Osiris also, whenever he is buried, and looked for to come to life again, and with joy recovered, is an emblem of the regularity wherewith the fruits of the ground return, and the elements recover life, and the year comes round; as also the lions of Mithras 2485 are philosophical sacraments of arid and scorched nature. It is, indeed, enough for me that natural elements, foremost in site and state, should have been more readily regarded as divine than as unworthy of God. I will, however, come down to 2486 humbler objects. A single floweret from the hedgerow, I say not from the meadows; a single little shellfish from any sea, I say not from the Red Sea; a single stray wing of a moorfowl, I say nothing of the peacock,—will, I presume, prove to you that the Creator was but a sorry 2487 artificer!
Footnotes
280:2472This is an ironical concession from the Marcionite side.
280:2473Another concession.
280:2474Tertullian’s rejoinder.
280:2475De isto.
280:2476They called it κόσμος.
280:2477By sapientiæ professores he means the heathen philosophers; see De Præscript. Hæret. c. 7.
280:2478In his book adv. Hermogenem, c. 8, Tertullian calls the philosophers “hæreticorum patriarchæ.”
280:2479Formidaverint.
280:2480Substantiæ.
280:2481Dei.
280:2482The Greek name of Jupiter, Ζεύς, is here derived from ζέω, ferveo, I glow. Juno’s name, ῞Ηρα, Tertullian connects with ἀήρ, the air; παρὰ τὸ ἀὴρ καθ᾽ ὑπέρθεσιν ῞Ηρα. These names of the two great deities suggest a connection with fire and air.
280:2483i.e., Cybele.
281:2484The earth’s irrigations, and the washings of the image of Cybele every year in the river Almo by her priests, are here confusedly alluded to. For references to the pagan custom, see White and Riddle’s large Lat. Dict. s. v. Almo.
281:2485Mithras, the Persian sun-god, was symbolized by the image of a lion. The sun entering the zodiacal sign Leo amidst summer heat may be glanced at.
281:2486Deficiam ad.
281:2487Sordidum. [Well and nobly said.]
Chapter XIV.—All Portions of Creation Attest the Excellence of the Creator, Whom Marcion Vilifies. His Inconsistency Herein Exposed. Marcion’s Own God Did Not Hesitate to Use the Creator’s Works in Instituting His Own Religion.
Now, when you make merry with those minuter animals, which their glorious Maker has purposely endued with a profusion of instincts and resources, 2488 —thereby teaching us that greatness has its proofs in lowliness, just as (according to the apostle) there is power even in infirmity 2489 —imitate, if you can, the cells of the bee, the hills of the ant, the webs of the spider, and the threads of the silkworm; endure, too, if you know how, those very creatures 2490 which infest your couch and house, the poisonous ejections of the blister-beetle, 2491 the spikes of the fly, and the gnat’s sheath and sting. What of the greater animals, when the small ones so affect you with pleasure or pain, that you cannot even in their case despise their Creator? Finally, take a circuit round your own self; survey man within and without. Even this handiwork of our God will be pleasing to you, inasmuch as your own lord, that better god, loved it so well, 2492 and for your sake was at the pains 2493 of descending from the third heaven to these poverty-stricken 2494 elements, and for the same reason was actually crucified in this sorry 2495 apartment of the Creator. Indeed, up to the present time, he has not disdained the water which the Creator made wherewith he washes his people; nor the oil with which he anoints them; nor that union of honey and milk wherewithal he gives them the nourishment 2496 of children; nor the bread by which he represents his own proper body, thus requiring in his very sacraments the “beggarly 2497 elements” of the Creator. You, however, are a disciple above his master, and a servant above his lord; you have a higher reach of discernment than his; you destroy what he requires. I wish to examine whether you are at least honest in this, so as to have no longing for those things which you destroy. You are an enemy to the sky, and yet you are glad to catch its freshness in your houses. You disparage the earth, although the elemental parent 2498 of your own flesh, as if it were your undoubted enemy, and yet you extract from it all its fatness 2499 for your food. The sea, too, you reprobate, but are continually using its produce, which you account the more sacred diet. 2500 If I should offer you a rose, you will not disdain its Maker. You hypocrite, however much of abstinence you use to show yourself a Marcionite, that is, a repudiator of your Maker (for if the world displeased you, such abstinence ought to have been affected by you as a martyrdom), you will have to associate yourself with 2501 the Creator’s material production, into what element soever you shall be dissolved. How hard is this obstinacy of yours! You vilify the things in which you both live and die.
Footnotes
281:2488De industria ingeniis aut viribus ampliavit.
281:24892 Cor. xii. 5.
281:2490Tertullian, it should be remembered, lived in Africa.
281:2491Cantharidis.
281:2492Adamavit.
281:2493Laboravit.
281:2494Paupertina. This and all such passages are, of course, in imitation of Marcion’s contemptuous view of the Creator’s work.
281:2495Cellula.
281:2496Infantat.
281:2497Mendicitatibus.
281:2498Matricem.
281:2499Medullas.
281:2500[The use of fish for fasting-days has no better warrant than Marcion’s example.]
281:2501Uteris.
Chapter XV.—The Lateness of the Revelation of Marcion’s God. The Question of the Place Occupied by the Rival Deities. Instead of Two Gods, Marcion Really (Although, as It Would Seem, Unconsciously) Had Nine Gods in His System.
After all, or, if you like, 2502 before all, since you have said that he has a creation 2503 of his own, and his own world, and his own sky; we shall see, 2504 indeed, about that third heaven, when we come to discuss even your own apostle. 2505 Meanwhile, whatever is the (created) substance, it ought at any rate to have made its appearance in company with its own god. But now, how happens it that the Lord has been revealed since the twelfth year of Tiberius Cæsar, while no creation of His at all has been discovered up to the fifteenth of the Emperor Severus; 2506 although, as being more excellent than the paltry works 2507 of the Creator, it should certainly have ceased to conceal itself, when its lord and author no longer lies hid? I ask, therefore, 2508 if it was unable to manifest itself in this world, how did its Lord appear in this world? If this world received its Lord, why was it not able to receive the created substance, unless perchance it was greater than its Lord? But now there arises a question about place, having reference both to the world above and to the God thereof. For, behold, if he 2509 has his own world beneath him, above the Creator, he has certainly fixed it in a position, the space of which was empty between his own feet and the Creator’s head. Therefore God both Himself occupied local space, and caused the world to occupy local space; and this local space, too, will be greater than God and the world together. For in no case is that which contains not greater than that which is contained. And indeed we must look well to it that no small patches 2510 be left here and there vacant, in which some third god also may be able with a world of his own to foist himself in. 2511 Now, begin to reckon up your gods. There will be local space for a god, not only as being greater than God, but as being also unbegotten and unmade, and therefore eternal, and equal to God, in which God has ever been. Then, inasmuch as He too has fabricated 2512 a world out of some underlying material which is unbegotten, and unmade, and contemporaneous with God, just as Marcion holds of the Creator, you reduce this likewise to the dignity of that local space which has enclosed two gods, both God and matter. For matter also is a god according to the rule of Deity, being (to be sure) unbegotten, and unmade, and eternal. If, however, it was out of nothing that he made his world, this also (our heretic) will be obliged to predicate 2513 of the Creator, to whom he subordinates 2514 matter in the substance of the world. But it will be only right that he 2515 too should have made his world out of matter, because the same process occurred to him as God which lay before the Creator as equally God. And thus you may, if you please, reckon up so far, 2516 three gods as Marcion’s,—the Maker, local space, and matter. Furthermore, 2517 he in like manner makes the Creator a god in local space, which is itself to be appraised on a precisely identical scale of dignity; and to Him as its lord he subordinates matter, which is notwithstanding unbegotten, and unmade, and by reason hereof eternal. With this matter he further associates evil, an unbegotten principle with an unbegotten object, an unmade with an unmade, and an eternal with an eternal; so here he makes a fourth God. Accordingly you have three substances of Deity in the higher instances, and in the lower ones four. When to these are added their Christs—the one which appeared in the time of Tiberius, the other which is promised by the Creator—Marcion suffers a manifest wrong from those persons who assume that he holds two gods, whereas he implies 2518 no less than nine, 2519 though he knows it not.
Footnotes
281:2502Vel.
281:2503Conditionem.
281:2504Adv. Marcionem, v. 12.
282:2505For Marcion’s exclusive use, and consequent abuse, of St. Paul, see Neander’s Antignostikus (Bohn), vol. ii. pp. 491, 505, 506.
282:2506[This date not merely settles the time of our author’s work against Marcion, but supplies us with evidence that his total lapse must have been very late in life. For the five books, written at intervals and marked by progressive tokens of his spiritual decline, are as a whole, only slightly offensive to Orthodoxy. This should be borne in mind.]
282:2507Frivolis. Again in reference to Marcion undervaluing the creation as the work of the Demiurge.
282:2508Et ideo.
282:2509In this and the following sentences, the reader will observe the distinction which is drawn between the Supreme and good God of Marcion and his “Creator,” or Demiurge.
282:2510Subsiciva.
282:2511Stipare se.
282:2512Molitus est.
282:2513Sentire.
282:2514Subicit.
282:2515The Supreme and good God. Tertullian here gives it as one of Marcion’s tenets, that the Demiurge created the World out of pre-existent matter.
282:2516Interim.
282:2517Proinde et.
282:2518Assignet.
282:2519Namely, (1) the supreme and good God; (2) His Christ; (3) the space in which He dwells; (4) the matter of His creation; (5) the Demiurge (or Marcion’s “Creator”); (6) his promised Christ; (7) the space which contains him; (8) this world, his creation; (9) evil, inherent in it.
Chapter XVI.—Marcion Assumes the Existence of Two Gods from the Antithesis Between Things Visible and Things Invisible. This Antithetical Principle in Fact Characteristic of the Works of the Creator, the One God—Maker of All Things Visible and Invisible.
Since, then, that other world does not appear, nor its god either, the only resource left 2520 to them is to divide things into the two classes of visible and invisible, with two gods for their authors, and so to claim 2521 the invisible for their own, (the supreme) God. But who, except an heretical spirit, could ever bring his mind to believe that the invisible part of creation belongs to him who had previously displayed no visible thing, rather than to Him who, by His operation on the visible world, produced a belief in the invisible also, since it is far more reasonable to give one’s assent after some samples (of a work) than after none? We shall see to what author even (your favourite) apostle attributes 2522 the invisible creation, when we come to examine him. At present (we withhold his testimony), for 2523 we are for the most part engaged in preparing the way, by means of common sense and fair arguments, for a belief in the future support of the Scriptures also. We affirm, then, that this diversity of things visible and invisible must on this ground be attributed to the Creator, even because the whole of His work consists of diversities—of things corporeal and incorporeal; of animate and inanimate; of vocal and mute of moveable and stationary; of productive and sterile; of arid and moist; of hot and cold. Man, too, is himself similarly tempered with diversity, both in his body and in his sensation. Some of his members are strong, others weak; some comely, others uncomely; some twofold, others unique; some like, others unlike. In like manner there is diversity also in his sensation: now joy, then anxiety; now love, then hatred; now anger, then calmness. Since this is the case, inasmuch as the whole of this creation of ours has been fashioned 2524 with a reciprocal rivalry amongst its several parts, the invisible ones are due to the visible, and not to be ascribed to any other author than Him to whom their counterparts are imputed, marking as they do diversity in the Creator Himself, who orders what He forbade, and forbids what He ordered; who also strikes and heals. Why do they take Him to be uniform in one class of things alone, as the Creator of visible things, and only them; whereas He ought to be believed to have created both the visible and the invisible, in just the same way as life and death, or as evil things and peace? 2525 And verily, if the invisible creatures are greater than the visible, which are in their own sphere great, so also is it fitting that the greater should be His to whom the great belong; because neither the great, nor indeed the greater, can be suitable property for one who seems to possess not even the smallest things.
Footnotes
282:2520Consequens est ut.
282:2521Defendant.
283:2522Col. i. 16.
283:2523Nunc enim. The elliptical νῦν γάρ of Greek argumentation.
283:2524Modulata.
283:2525“I make peace, and create evil,” Isa. xlv. 7.
Chapter XVII.—Not Enough, as the Marcionites Pretend, that the Supreme God Should Rescue Man; He Must Also Have Created Him. The Existence of God Proved by His Creation, a Prior Consideration to His Character.
Pressed by these arguments, they exclaim: One work is sufficient for our god; he has delivered man by his supreme and most excellent goodness, which is preferable to (the creation of) all the locusts. 2526 What superior god is this, of whom it has not been possible to find any work so great as the man of the lesser god! Now without doubt the first thing you have to do is to prove that he exists, after the same manner that the existence of God must ordinarily be proved—by his works; and only after that by his good deeds. For the first question is, Whether he exists? and then, What is his character? The former is to be tested 2527 by his works, the other by the beneficence of them. It does not simply follow that he exists, because he is said to have wrought deliverance for man; but only after it shall have been settled that he exists, will there be room for saying that he has affected this liberation. And even this point also must have its own evidence, because it may be quite possible both that he has existence, and yet has not wrought the alleged deliverance. Now in that section of our work which concerned the question of the unknown god, two points were made clear enough—both that he had created nothing: and that he ought to have been a creator, in order to be known by his works; because, if he had existed, he ought to have been known, and that too from the beginning of things; for it was not fit that God should have lain hid. It will be necessary that I should revert to the very trunk of that question of the unknown god, that I may strike off into some of its other branches also. For it will be first of all proper to inquire, Why he, who afterwards brought himself into notice, did so—so late, and not at the very first? From creatures, with which as God he was indeed so closely connected (and the closer this connection was, 2528 the greater was his goodness), he ought never to have been hidden. For it cannot be pretended that there was not either any means of arriving at the knowledge of God, or a good reason for it, when from the beginning man was in the world, for whom the deliverance is now come; as was also that malevolence of the Creator, in opposition to which the good God has wrought the deliverance. He was therefore either ignorant of the good reason for and means of his own necessary manifestation, or doubted them; or else was either unable or unwilling to encounter them. All these alternatives are unworthy of God, especially the supreme and best. This topic, 2529 however, we shall afterwards 2530 more fully treat, with a condemnation of the tardy manifestation; we at present simply point it out.
Footnotes
283:2526To depreciate the Creator’s work the more, Marcion (and Valentinus too) used to attribute to Him the formation of all the lower creatures—worms, locusts, etc.—reserving the mightier things to the good and supreme God. See St. Jerome’s Proem. in Epist. ad Philem. [See, Stier, Words of Jesus, Vol. vi. p. 81.]
283:2527Dinoscetur.
283:2528Quo necessarior.
284:2529Locum.
284:2530In chap. xxii.
Chapter XVIII.—Notwithstanding Their Conceits, the God of the Marcionites Fails in the Vouchers Both of Created Evidence and of Adequate Revelation.
Well, then, 2531 he has now advanced into notice, just when he willed, when he could, when the destined hour arrived. For perhaps he was hindered hitherto by his leading star, 2532 or some weird malignants, or Saturn in quadrature, 2533 or Mars at the trine. 2534 The Marcionites are very strongly addicted to astrology; nor do they blush to get their livelihood by help of the very stars which were made by the Creator (whom they depreciate). We must here also treat of the quality 2535 of the (new) revelation; whether Marcion’s supreme god has become known in a way worthy of him, so as to secure the proof of his existence: and in the way of truth, so that he may be believed to be the very being who had been already proved to have been revealed in a manner worthy of his character. For things which are worthy of God will prove the existence of God. We maintain 2536 that God must first be known 2537 from nature, and afterwards authenticated 2538 by instruction: from nature by His works; by instruction, 2539 through His revealed announcements. 2540 Now, in a case where nature is excluded, no natural means (of knowledge) are furnished. He ought, therefore, to have carefully supplied 2541 a revelation of himself, even by announcements, especially as he had to be revealed in opposition to One who, after so many and so great works, both of creation and revealed announcement, had with difficulty succeeded in satisfying 2542 men’s faith. In what manner, therefore, has the revelation been made? If by man’s conjectural guesses, do not say that God can possibly become known in any other way than by Himself, and appeal not only to the standard of the Creator, but to the conditions both of God’s greatness and man’s littleness; so that man seem not by any possibility to be greater than God, by having somehow drawn Him out into public recognition, when He was Himself unwilling to become known by His own energies, although man’s littleness has been able, according to experiments all over the world, more easily to fashion for itself gods, than to follow the true God whom men now understand by nature. As for the rest, 2543 if man shall be thus able to devise a god,—as Romulus did Consus, and Tatius Cloacina, and Hostilius Fear, and Metellus Alburnus, and a certain authority 2544 some time since Antinous,—the same accomplishment may be allowed to others. As for us, we have found our pilot in Marcion, although not a king nor an emperor.
Footnotes
284:2531Age.
284:2532Anabibazon. The ἀναβιβάζων was the most critical point in the ecliptic, in the old astrology, for the calculation of stellar influences.
284:2533Quadratus.
284:2534Trigonus. Saturn and Mars were supposed to be malignant planets. See Smith, Greek and Rom. Ant. p. 144, c. 2.
284:2535Qualitate.
284:2536Definimus.
284:2537Cognoscendum.
284:2538Recognoscendum.
284:2539Doctrina.
284:2540Ex prædicationibus.
284:2541Operari.
284:2542Vix impleverat.
284:2543Alioquin.
284:2544He means the Emperor Hadrian; comp. Apolog. c. 13.
Chapter XIX.—Jesus Christ, the Revealer of the Creator, Could Not Be the Same as Marcion’s God, Who Was Only Made Known by the Heretic Some CXV. Years After Christ, and That, Too, on a Principle Utterly Unsuited to the Teaching of Jesus Christ, I.e., the Opposition Between the Law and the Gospels.
Well, but our god, say the Marcionites, although he did not manifest himself from the beginning and by means of the creation, has yet revealed himself in Christ Jesus. A book will be devoted 2545 to Christ, treating of His entire state; for it is desirable that these subject-matters should be distinguished one from another, in order that they may receive a fuller and more methodical treatment. Meanwhile it will be sufficient if, at this stage of the question, I show—and that but briefly—that Christ Jesus is the revealer 2546 of none other god but the Creator. In the fifteenth year of Tiberius, 2547 Christ Jesus vouchsafed to come down from heaven, as the spirit of saving health. 2548 I cared not to inquire, indeed, in what particular year of the elder Antoninus. He who had so gracious a purpose did rather, like a pestilential sirocco, 2549 exhale this health or salvation, which Marcion teaches from his Pontus. Of this teacher there is no doubt that he is a heretic of the Antonine period, impious under the pious. Now, from Tiberius to Antoninus Pius, there are about 115 years and 6-1/2 months. Just such an interval do they place between Christ and Marcion. Inasmuch, then, as Marcion, as we have shown, first introduced this god to notice in the time of Antoninus, the matter becomes at once clear, if you are a shrewd observer. The dates already decide the case, that he who came to light for the first time 2550 in the reign of Antoninus, did not appear in that of Tiberius; in other words, that the God of the Antonine period was not the God of the Tiberian; and consequently, that he whom Marcion has plainly preached for the first time, was not revealed by Christ (who announced His revelation as early as the reign of Tiberius). Now, to prove clearly what remains of the argument, I shall draw materials from my very adversaries. Marcion’s special and principal work is the separation of the law and the gospel; and his disciples will not deny that in this point they have their very best pretext for initiating and confirming themselves in his heresy. These are Marcion’s Antitheses, or contradictory propositions, which aim at committing the gospel to a variance with the law, in order that from the diversity of the two documents which contain them, 2551 they may contend for a diversity of gods also. Since, therefore, it is this very opposition between the law and the gospel which has suggested that the God of the gospel is different from the God of the law, it is clear that, before the said separation, that god could not have been known who became known 2552 from the argument of the separation itself. He therefore could not have been revealed by Christ, who came before the separation, but must have been devised by Marcion, the author of the breach of peace between the gospel and the law. Now this peace, which had remained unhurt and unshaken from Christ’s appearance to the time of Marcion’s audacious doctrine, was no doubt maintained by that way of thinking, which firmly held that the God of both law and gospel was none other than the Creator, against whom after so long a time a separation has been introduced by the heretic of Pontus.
Footnotes
284:2545The third of these books against Marcion.
284:2546Circumlatorem.
284:2547The author says this, not as his own, but as Marcion’s opinion; as is clear from his own words in his fourth book against Marcion, c. 7, (Pamelius).
284:2548Spiritus salutaris.
284:2549Aura canicularis.
285:2550Primum processit.
285:2551Utriusque instrumenti.
285:2552Innotuit.
Chapter XX.—Marcion, Justifying His Antithesis Between the Law and the Gospel by the Contention of St. Paul with St. Peter, Shown to Have Mistaken St. Paul’s Position and Argument. Marcion’s Doctrine Confuted Out of St. Paul’s Teaching, Which Agrees Wholly with the Creator’s Decrees.
This most patent conclusion requires to be defended by us against the clamours of the opposite side. For they allege that Marcion did not so much innovate on the rule (of faith) by his separation of the law and the gospel, as restore it after it had been previously adulterated. O Christ, 2553 most enduring Lord, who didst bear so many years with this interference with Thy revelation, until Marcion forsooth came to Thy rescue! Now they adduce the case of Peter himself, and the others, who were pillars of the apostolate, as having been blamed by Paul for not walking uprightly, according to the truth of the gospel—that very Paul indeed, who, being yet in the mere rudiments of grace, and trembling, in short, lest he should have run or were still running in vain, then for the first time held intercourse with those who were apostles before himself. Therefore because, in the eagerness of his zeal against Judaism as a neophyte, he thought that there was something to be blamed in their conduct—even the promiscuousness of their conversation 2554 —but afterwards was himself to become in his practice all things to all men, that he might gain all,—to the Jews, as a Jew, and to them that were under the law, as under the law,—you would have his censure, which was merely directed against conduct destined to become acceptable even to their accuser, suspected of prevarication against God on a point of public doctrine. 2555 Touching their public doctrine, however, they had, as we have already said, joined hands in perfect concord, and had agreed also in the division of their labour in their fellowship of the gospel, as they had indeed in all other respects: 2556 “Whether it were I or they, so we preach.” 2557 When, again, he mentioned “certain false brethren as having crept in unawares,” who wished to remove the Galatians into another gospel, 2558 he himself shows that that adulteration of the gospel was not meant to transfer them to the faith of another god and christ, but rather to perpetuate the teaching of the law; because he blames them for maintaining circumcision, and observing times, and days, and months, and years, according to those Jewish ceremonies which they ought to have known were now abrogated, according to the new dispensation purposed by the Creator Himself, who of old foretold this very thing by His prophets. Thus He says by Isaiah: Old things have passed away. “Behold, I will do a new thing.” 2559 And in another passage: “I will make a new covenant, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.” 2560 In like manner by Jeremiah: Make to yourselves a new covenant, “circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your heart.” 2561 It is this circumcision, therefore, and this renewal, which the apostle insisted on, when he forbade those ancient ceremonies concerning which their very founder announced that they were one day to cease; thus by Hosea: “I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast-days, her new moons, and her Sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.” 2562 So likewise by Isaiah: “The new moons, and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; your holy days, and fasts, and feast-days, my soul hateth.” 2563 Now, if even the Creator had so long before discarded all these things, and the apostle was now proclaiming them to be worthy of renunciation, the very agreement of the apostle’s meaning with the decrees of the Creator proves that none other God was preached by the apostle than He whose purposes he now wished to have recognised, branding as false both apostles and brethren, for the express reason that they were pushing back the gospel of Christ the Creator from the new condition which the Creator had foretold, to the old one which He had discarded.
Footnotes
285:2553Tertullian’s indignant reply.
285:2554Passivum scilicet convictum.
285:2555Prædicationis. [Largely ad hominem, this argument.]
285:2556Et alibi.
285:25571 Cor. xv. 11.
285:2558See Gal. 1:6, 7, Gal. 2:4.
285:2559Isa. xliii. 19.
286:2560This quotation, however, is from Jer. xxxi. 32.
286:2561Jer. iv. 4.
286:2562Hos. ii. 11.
286:2563Slightly altered from Isa. 1:13, 14.
Chapter XXI.—St. Paul Preached No New God, When He Announced the Repeal of Some of God’s Ancient Ordinances. Never Any Hesitation About Belief in the Creator, as the God Whom Christ Revealed, Until Marcion’s Heresy.
Now if it was with the view of preaching a new god that he was eager to abrogate the law of the old God, how is it that he prescribes no rule about 2564 the new god, but solely about the old law, if it be not because faith in the Creator 2565 was still to continue, and His law alone was to come to an end? 2566 —just as the Psalmist had declared: “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth stand up, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and against His Anointed.” 2567 And, indeed, if another god were preached by Paul, there could be no doubt about the law, whether it were to be kept or not, because of course it would not belong to the new lord, the enemy 2568 of the law. The very newness and difference of the god would take away not only all question about the old and alien law, but even all mention of it. But the whole question, as it then stood, was this, that although the God of the law was the same as was preached in Christ, yet there was a disparagement 2569 of His law. Permanent still, therefore, stood faith in the Creator and in His Christ; manner of life and discipline alone fluctuated. 2570 Some disputed about eating idol sacrifices, others about the veiled dress of women, others again about marriage and divorce, and some even about the hope of the resurrection; but about God no one disputed. Now, if this question also had entered into dispute, surely it would be found in the apostle, and that too as a great and vital point. No doubt, after the time of the apostles, the truth respecting the belief of God suffered corruption, but it is equally certain that during the life of the apostles their teaching on this great article did not suffer at all; so that no other teaching will have the right of being received as apostolic than that which is at the present day proclaimed in the churches of apostolic foundation. You will, however, find no church of apostolic origin 2571 but such as reposes its Christian faith in the Creator. 2572 But if the churches shall prove to have been corrupt from the beginning, where shall the pure ones be found? Will it be amongst the adversaries of the Creator? Show us, then, one of your churches, tracing its descent from an apostle, and you will have gained the day. 2573 Forasmuch then as it is on all accounts evident that there was from Christ down to Marcion’s time no other God in the rule of sacred truth 2574 than the Creator, the proof of our argument is sufficiently established, in which we have shown that the god of our heretic first became known by his separation of the gospel and the law. Our previous position 2575 is accordingly made good, that no god is to be believed whom any man has devised out of his own conceits; except indeed the man be a prophet, 2576 and then his own conceits would not be concerned in the matter. If Marcion, however, shall be able to lay claim to this inspired character, it will be necessary for it to be shown. There must be no doubt or paltering. 2577 For all heresy is thrust out by this wedge of the truth, that Christ is proved to be the revealer of no God else but the Creator. 2578
Footnotes
286:2564Nihil præscribit de.
286:2565i.e., “the old God,” as he has just called Him.
286:2566Concessare debebat.
286:2567Ps. 2:3, 1, 2.
286:2568Æmulum.
286:2569Derogaretur.
286:2570Nutabat.
286:2571Census.
286:2572In Creatore christianizet.
286:2573Obduxeris. For this sense of the word, see Apol. 1. sub init. “sed obducimur,” etc.
286:2574Sacramenti.
286:2575Definito.
286:2576That is, “inspired.”
286:2577Nihil retractare oportebat.
286:2578[Kaye, p. 274.]
Chapter XXII.—God’s Attribute of Goodness Considered as Natural; The God of Marcion Found Wanting Herein. It Came Not to Man’s Rescue When First Wanted.
But how shall (this) Antichrist be fully overthrown unless we relax our defence by mere prescription, 2579 and give ourselves scope for rebutting all his other attacks? Let us therefore next take the very person of God Himself, or rather His shadow or phantom, 2580 as we have it in Christ, and let Him be examined by that condition which makes Him superior to the Creator. And undoubtedly there will come to hand unmistakeable rules for examining God’s goodness. My first point, however, is to discover and apprehend the attribute, and then to draw it out into rules. Now, when I survey the subject in its aspects of time, I nowhere descry it 2581 from the beginning of material existences, or at the commencement of those causes, with which it ought to have been found, proceeding thence to do 2582 whatever had to be done. For there was death already, and sin the sting of death, and that malignity too of the Creator, against which the goodness of the other god should have been ready to bring relief; falling in with this as the primary rule of the divine goodness (if it were to prove itself a natural agency), at once coming as a succour when the cause for it began. For in God all things should be natural and inbred, just like His own condition indeed, in order that they may be eternal, and so not be accounted casual 2583 and extraneous, and thereby temporary and wanting in eternity. In God, therefore, goodness is required to be both perpetual and unbroken, 2584 such as, being stored up and kept ready in the treasures of His natural properties, might precede its own causes and material developments; and if thus preceding, might underlie 2585 every first material cause, instead of looking at it from a distance, 2586 and standing aloof from it. 2587 In short, here too I must inquire, Why his 2588 goodness did not operate from the beginning? no less pointedly than when we inquired concerning himself, Why he was not revealed from the very first? Why, then, did it not? since he had to be revealed by his goodness if he had any existence. That God should at all fail in power must not be thought, much less that He should not discharge all His natural functions; for if these were restrained from running their course, they would cease to be natural. Moreover, the nature of God Himself knows nothing of inactivity. Hence (His goodness) is reckoned as having a beginning, 2589 if it acts. It will thus be evident that He had no unwillingness to exercise His goodness at any time on account of His nature. Indeed, it is impossible that He should be unwilling because of His nature, since that so directs itself that it would no longer exist if it ceased to act. In Marcion’s god, however, goodness ceased from operation at some time or other. A goodness, therefore, which could thus at any time have ceased its action was not natural, because with natural properties such cessation is incompatible. And if it shall not prove to be natural, it must no longer be believed to be eternal nor competent to Deity; because it cannot be eternal so long as, failing to be natural, it neither provides from the past nor guarantees for the future any means of perpetuating itself. Now as a fact it existed not from the beginning, and, doubtless, will not endure to the end. For it is possible for it to fail in existence some future 2590 time or other, as it has failed in some past 2591 period. Forasmuch, then, as the goodness of Marcion’s god failed in the beginning (for he did not from the first deliver man), this failure must have been the effect of will rather than of infirmity. Now a wilful suppression of goodness will be found to have a malignant end in view. For what malignity is so great as to be unwilling to do good when one can, or to thwart 2592 what is useful, or to permit injury? The whole description, therefore, of Marcion’s Creator will have to be transferred 2593 to his new god, who helped on the ruthless 2594 proceedings of the former by the retardation of his own goodness. For whosoever has it in his power to prevent the happening of a thing, is accounted responsible for it if it should occur. Man is condemned to death for tasting the fruit of one poor tree, 2595 and thence proceed sins with their penalties; and now all are perishing who yet never saw a single sod of Paradise. And all this your better god either is ignorant of, or else brooks. Is it that 2596 he might on this account be deemed the better, and the Creator be regarded as all that the worse? Even if this were his purpose he would be malicious enough, for both wishing to aggravate his rival’s obloquy by permitting His (evil) works to be done, and by keeping the world harrassed by the wrong. What would you think of a physician who should encourage a disease by withholding the remedy, and prolong the danger by delaying his prescription, in order that his cure might be more costly and more renowned? Such must be the sentence to be pronounced against Marcion’s god: tolerant of evil, encouraging wrong, wheedling about his grace, prevaricating in his goodness, which he did not exhibit simply on its own account, but which he must mean to exhibit purely, if he is good by nature and not by acquisition, 2597 if he is supremely good in attribute 2598 and not by discipline, if he is God from eternity and not from Tiberius, nay (to speak more truly), from Cerdon only and Marcion. As the case now stands, 2599 however, such a god as we are considering would have been more fit for Tiberius, that the goodness of the Divine Being might be inaugurated in the world under his imperial sway!
Footnotes
287:2579In his book, De Præscrip. Hæret., [cap. xv.] Tertullian had enjoined that heretics ought not to be argued with, but to be met with the authoritative rule of the faith. He here proposes to forego that course.
287:2580Marcion’s Docetic doctrine of Christ as having only appeared in human shape, without an actual incarnation, is indignantly confuted by Tertullian in his De Carne Christi, c.v.
287:2581That is, the principle in question—the bonitas Dei.
287:2582Exinde agens.
287:2583Obvenientia.
287:2584Jugis.
287:2585Susciperet.
287:2586Despiceret.
287:2587Destitueret.
287:2588That is, Marcion’s god’s.
287:2589Censetur.
287:2590Quandoque.
287:2591Aliquando.
287:2592Cruciare.
287:2593Rescribetur.
287:2594Sævitias.
287:2595Arbusculæ.
287:2596Si ut?
288:2597Accessione.
288:2598Ingenio.
288:2599Nunc. [Comp. chapter xv. supra, p. 282.]
Chapter XXIII.—God’s Attribute of Goodness Considered as Rational. Marcion’s God Defective Here Also; His Goodness Irrational and Misapplied.
Here is another rule for him. All the properties of God ought to be as rational as they are natural. I require reason in His goodness, because nothing else can properly be accounted good than that which is rationally good; much less can goodness itself be detected in any irrationality. More easily will an evil thing which has something rational belonging to it be accounted good, than that a good thing bereft of all reasonable quality should escape being regarded as evil. Now I deny that the goodness of Marcion’s god is rational, on this account first, because it proceeded to the salvation of a human creature which was alien to him. I am aware of the plea which they will adduce, that that is rather 2600 a primary and perfect goodness which is shed voluntarily and freely upon strangers without any obligation of friendship, 2601 on the principle that we are bidden to love even our enemies, such as are also on that very account strangers to us. Now, inasmuch as from the first he had no regard for man, a stranger to him from the first, he settled beforehand, by this neglect of his, that he had nothing to do with an alien creature. Besides, the rule of loving a stranger or enemy is preceded by the precept of your loving your neighbour as yourself; and this precept, although coming from the Creator’s law, even you ought to receive, because, so far from being abrogated by Christ, it has rather been confirmed by Him. For you are bidden to love your enemy and the stranger, in order that you may love your neighbour the better. The requirement of the undue is an augmentation of the due benevolence. But the due precedes the undue, as the principal quality, and more worthy of the other, for its attendant and companion. 2602 Since, therefore, the first step in the reasonableness of the divine goodness is that it displays itself on its proper object 2603 in righteousness, and only at its second stage on an alien object by a redundant righteousness over and above that of scribes and Pharisees, how comes it to pass that the second is attributed to him who fails in the first, not having man for his proper object, and who makes his goodness on this very account defective? Moreover, how could a defective benevolence, which had no proper object whereon to expend itself, overflow 2604 on an alien one? Clear up the first step, and then vindicate the next. Nothing can be claimed as rational without order, much less can reason itself 2605 dispense with order in any one. Suppose now the divine goodness begin at the second stage of its rational operation, that is to say, on the stranger, this second stage will not be consistent in rationality if it be impaired in any way else. 2606 For only then will even the second stage of goodness, that which is displayed towards the stranger, be accounted rational, when it operates without wrong to him who has the first claim. 2607 It is righteousness 2608 which before everything else makes all goodness rational. It will thus be rational in its principal stage, when manifested on its proper object, if it be righteous. And thus, in like manner, it will be able to appear rational, when displayed towards the stranger, if it be not unrighteous. But what sort of goodness is that which is manifested in wrong, and that in behalf of an alien creature? For peradventure a benevolence, even when operating injuriously, might be deemed to some extent rational, if exerted for one of our own house and home. 2609 By what rule, however, can an unjust benevolence, displayed on behalf of a stranger, to whom not even an honest one is legitimately due, be defended as a rational one? For what is more unrighteous, more unjust, more dishonest, than so to benefit an alien slave as to take him away from his master, claim him as the property of another, and suborn him against his master’s life; and all this, to make the matter more iniquitous still whilst he is yet living in his master’s house and on his master’s garner, and still trembling beneath his stripes? Such a deliverer, 2610 I had almost said 2611 kidnapper, 2612 would even meet with condemnation in the world. Now, no other than this is the character of Marcion’s god, swooping upon an alien world, snatching away man from his God, 2613 the son from his father, the pupil from his tutor, the servant from his master—to make him impious to his God, undutiful to his father, ungrateful to his tutor, worthless to his master. If, now, the rational benevolence makes man such, what sort of being prithee 2614 would the irrational make of him? None I should think more shameless than him who is baptized to his 2615 god in water which belongs to another, who stretches out his hands 2616 to his god towards a heaven which is another’s, who kneels to his god on ground which is another’s, offers his thanksgivings to his god over bread which belongs to another, 2617 and distributes 2618 by way of alms and charity, for the sake of his god, gifts which belong to another God. Who, then, is that so good a god of theirs, that man through him becomes evil; so propitious, too, as to incense against man that other God who is, indeed, his own proper Lord?
Footnotes
288:2600Atquin.
288:2601Familiaritatis.
288:2602This is the sense of the passage as read by Oehler: “Antecedit autem debita indebitam, ut principalis, ut dignior ministra et comite sua, id est indebita.” Fr. Junius, however, added the word “prior” which begins the next sentence to these words, making the last clause run thus: “ut dignior ministra, et comite sua, id est indebita, prior”—“as being more worthy of an attendant, and as being prior to its companion, that is, the undue benevolence.” It is difficult to find any good use of the “prior” in the next sentence, “Prior igitur cum prima bonitatis ratio sit,” etc., as Oehler and others point it.
288:2603In rem suam.
288:2604Redundavit.
288:2605Ratio ipsa, i.e., rationality, or the character of reasonableness, which he is now vindicating.
288:2606Alio modo destructus.
288:2607Cujus est res.
288:2608Justitia, right as opposed to the wrong (injuria) of the preceding sentence.
289:2609Pro domestico, opposed to the pro extraneo, the alien or stranger of the preceding and succeeding context.
289:2610Assertor.
289:2611Nedum.
289:2612Plagiator.
289:2613i.e., the Creator.
289:2614Oro te.
289:2615Alii Deo. The strength of this phrase is remarkable by the side of the oft-repeated aliena.
289:2616Therefore Christians used to lift their hands and arms towards heaven in prayer. Compare The Apology, chap. 30, (where the manibus expansis betokens the open hand, not merely as the heathen tendens ad sidera palmas). See also De Orat. c. 13, and other passages from different writers referred to in the “Tertullian” of the Oxford Library of the Fathers, p. 70. [See the figures in the Catacombs as represented by Parker, Marriott and others.]
289:2617To the same effect Irenæus had said: “How will it be consistent in them to hold that the bread on which thanks are given is the body of their Lord, and that the cup is His blood, if they do not acknowledge that He is the Son of the Creator of the world, that is, the Word of God?” (Rigalt.) [The consecrated bread is still bread, in Patristic theology.]
289:2618Operatur, a not unfrequent use of the word. Thus Prudentius (Psychom. 572) opposes operatio to avaritia.
Chapter XXIV.—The Goodness of Marcion’s God Only Imperfectly Manifested; It Saves But Few, and the Souls Merely of These. Marcion’s Contempt of the Body Absurd.
But as God is eternal and rational, so, I think, He is perfect in all things. “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” 2619 Prove, then, that the goodness of your god also is a perfect one. That it is indeed imperfect has been already sufficiently shown, since it is found to be neither natural nor rational. The same conclusion, however, shall now be made clear 2620 by another method; it is not simply 2621 imperfect, but actually 2622 feeble, weak, and exhausted, failing to embrace the full number 2623 of its material objects, and not manifesting itself in them all. For all are not put into a state of salvation 2624 by it; but the Creator’s subjects, both Jew and Christian, are all excepted. 2625 Now, when the greater part thus perish, how can that goodness be defended as a perfect one which is inoperative in most cases, is somewhat only in few, naught in many, succumbs to perdition, and is a partner with destruction? 2626 And if so many shall miss salvation, it will not be with goodness, but with malignity, that the greater perfection will lie. For as it is the operation of goodness which brings salvation, so is it malevolence which thwarts it. 2627 Since, however, this goodness) saves but few, and so rather leans to the alternative of not saving, it will show itself to greater perfection by not interposing help than by helping. Now, you will not be able to attribute goodness (to your god) in reference to the Creator, (if accompanied with) failure towards all. For whomsoever you call in to judge the question, it is as a dispenser of goodness, if so be such a title can be made out, 2628 and not as a squanderer thereof, as you claim your god to be, that you must submit the divine character for determination. So long, then, as you prefer your god to the Creator on the simple ground of his goodness, and since he professes to have this attribute as solely and wholly his own, he ought not to have been wanting in it to any one. However, I do not now wish to prove that Marcion’s god is imperfect in goodness because of the perdition of the greater number. I am content to illustrate this imperfection by the fact that even those whom he saves are found to possess but an imperfect salvation—that is, they are saved only so far as the soul is concerned, 2629 but lost in their body, which, according to him, does not rise again. Now, whence comes this halving of salvation, if not from a failure of goodness? What could have been a better proof of a perfect goodness, than the recovery of the whole man to salvation? Totally damned by the Creator, he should have been totally restored by the most merciful god. I rather think that by Marcion’s rule the body is baptized, is deprived of marriage, 2630 is cruelly tortured in confession. But although sins are attributed to the body, yet they are preceded by the guilty concupiscence of the soul; nay, the first motion of sin must be ascribed to the soul, to which the flesh acts in the capacity of a servant. By and by, when freed from the soul, the flesh sins no more. 2631 So that in this matter goodness is unjust, and likewise imperfect, in that it leaves to destruction the more harmless substance, which sins rather by compliance than in will. Now, although Christ put not on the verity of the flesh, as your heresy is pleased to assume, He still vouchsafed to take upon Him the semblance thereof. Surely, therefore, some regard was due to it from Him, because of this His feigned assumption of it. Besides, what else is man than flesh, since no doubt it was the corporeal rather than the spiritual 2632 element from which the Author of man’s nature gave him his designation? 2633 “And the Lord God made man of the dust of the ground,” not of spiritual essence; this afterwards came from the divine afflatus: “and man became a living soul.” What, then, is man? Made, no doubt of it, of the dust; and God placed him in paradise, because He moulded him, not breathed him, into being—a fabric of flesh, not of spirit. Now, this being the case, with what face will you contend for the perfect character of that goodness which did not fail in some one particular only of man’s deliverance, but in its general capacity? If that is a plenary grace and a substantial mercy which brings salvation to the soul alone, this were the better life which we now enjoy whole and entire; whereas to rise again but in part will be a chastisement, not a liberation. The proof of the perfect goodness is, that man, after his rescue, should be delivered from the domicile and power of the malignant deity unto the protection of the most good and merciful God. Poor dupe of Marcion, fever 2634 is hard upon you; and your painful flesh produces a crop of all sorts of briers and thorns. Nor is it only to the Creator’s thunderbolts that you lie exposed, or to wars, and pestilences, and His other heavier strokes, but even to His creeping insects. In what respect do you suppose yourself liberated from His kingdom when His flies are still creeping upon your face? If your deliverance lies in the future, why not also in the present, that it may be perfectly wrought? Far different is our condition in the sight of Him who is the Author, the Judge, the injured 2635 Head of our race! You display Him as a merely good God; but you are unable to prove that He is perfectly good, because you are not by Him perfectly delivered.
Footnotes
289:2619Matt. v. 48.
289:2620Traducetur.
289:2621Nec jam.
289:2622Immo.
289:2623Minor numero.
289:2624Non fiunt salvi. [Kaye, p. 347.]
289:2625Pauciores.
289:2626Partiaria exitii.
289:2627Non facit salvos.
289:2628Si forte (i.e., εἰ τύχοι εἴπερ ἄρα, with a touch of irony,— a frequent phrase in Tertullian.
290:2629Anima tenus. Comp.De Præscr. Hær. 33, where Marcion, as well as Apelles, Valentinus, and others, are charged with the Sadducean denial of the resurrection of the flesh, which is censured by St. Paul, 1 Cor. xv. 12.
290:2630Compare De Præscr. Hær. 33, where Marcion and Apelles are brought under St. Paul’s reproach in 1 Tim. iv. 3.
290:2631Hactenus. [Kaye, p. 260.]
290:2632Animalis (from anima, the vital principle, “the breath of life”) is here opposed to corporalis.
290:2633םרָאָהָ, homo, from המָרַאְַהָ, humus, the ground; see the Hebrew of Gen. ii. 7.
290:2634Febricitas.
290:2635Offensum, probably in respect of the Marcionite treatment of His attributes.
Chapter XXV.—God is Not a Being of Simple Goodness; Other Attributes Belong to Him. Marcion Shows Inconsistency in the Portraiture of His Simply Good and Emotionless God.
As touching this question of goodness, we have in these outlines of our argument shown it to be in no way compatible with Deity,—as being neither natural, 2636 nor rational, nor perfect, but wrong, 2637 and unjust, and unworthy of the very name of goodness,—because, as far as the congruity of the divine character is concerned, it cannot indeed be fitting that that Being should be regarded as God who is alleged to have such a goodness, and that not in a modified way, but simply and solely. For it is, furthermore, at this point quite open to discussion, whether God ought to be regarded as a Being of simple goodness, to the exclusion of all those other attributes, 2638 sensations, and affections, which the Marcionites indeed transfer from their god to the Creator, and which we acknowledge to be worthy characteristics of the Creator too, but only because we consider Him to be God. Well, then, on this ground we shall deny him to be God in whom all things are not to be found which befit the Divine Being. If (Marcion) chose 2639 to take any one of the school of Epicurus, and entitle him God in the name of Christ, on the ground that what is happy and incorruptible can bring no trouble either on itself or anything else (for Marcion, while poring over 2640 this opinion of the divine indifference, has removed from him all the severity and energy of the judicial 2641 character), it was his duty to have developed his conceptions into some imperturbable and listless god (and then what could he have had in common with Christ, who occasioned trouble both to the Jews by what He taught, and to Himself by what He felt?), or else to have admitted that he was possessed of the same emotions as others 2642 (and in such case what would he have had to do with Epicurus, who was no friend 2643 to either him or Christians?). For that a being who in ages past 2644 was in a quiescent state, not caring to communicate any knowledge of himself by any work all the while, should come after so long a time to entertain a concern for man’s salvation, of course by his own will,—did he not by this very fact become susceptible of the impulse 2645 of a new volition, so as palpably to be open to all other emotions? But what volition is unaccompanied with the spur of desire? 2646 Who wishes for what he desires not? Moreover, care will be another companion of the will. For who will wish for any object and desire to have it, without also caring to obtain it? When, therefore, (Marcion’s god) felt both a will and a desire for man’s salvation, he certainly occasioned some concern and trouble both to himself and others. This Marcion’s theory suggests, though Epicurus demurs. For he 2647 raised up an adversary against himself in that very thing against which his will and desire, and care were directed,—whether it were sin or death,—and more especially in their Tyrant and Lord, the Creator of man. Again, 2648 nothing will ever run its course without hostile rivalry, 2649 which shall not (itself) be without a hostile aspect. In fact, 2650 when willing, desiring, and caring to deliver man, (Marcion’s god) already in the very act encounters a rival, both in Him from whom He effects the deliverance (for of course 2651 he means the liberation to be an opposition to Him), and also in those things from which the deliverance is wrought (the intended liberation being to the advantage of some other things). For it must needs be, that upon rivalry its own ancillary passions 2652 will be in attendance, against whatever objects its emulation is directed: anger, discord, hatred, disdain, indignation, spleen, loathing, displeasure. Now, since all these emotions are present to rivalry; since, moreover, the rivalry which arises in liberating man excites them; and since, again, this deliverance of man is an operation of goodness, it follows that this goodness avails nothing without its endowments, 2653 that is to say, without those sensations and affections whereby it carries out its purpose 2654 against the Creator; so that it cannot even in this be ruled 2655 to be irrational, as if it were wanting in proper sensations and affections. These points we shall have to insist on 2656 much more fully, when we come to plead the cause of the Creator, where they will also incur our condemnation.
Footnotes
290:2636Ingenitam. In chap. xxii. this word seems to be synonymous with naturalem. Comp. book ii. 3, where it has this sense in the phrase “Deo ingenita.”
290:2637Improbam.
290:2638Appendicibus.
290:2639Affectavit.
291:2640Ruminans.
291:2641Judiciarias vires.
291:2642De ceteris motibus.
291:2643Nec necessario.
291:2644Retro.
291:2645Concussibilis.
291:2646Concupiscentiæ.
291:2647(i.e., Marcion’s god.)
291:2648Porro.
291:2649Æmulatione.
291:2650Denique.
291:2651Scilicet.
291:2652Officiales suæ.
291:2653Suis dotibus.
291:2654Administratur.
291:2655Præscribatur.
291:2656Defendemus.
Chapter XXVI.—In the Attribute of Justice, Marcion’s God is Hopelessly Weak and Ungodlike. He Dislikes Evil, But Does Not Punish Its Perpetration.
But it is here sufficient that the extreme perversity of their god is proved from the mere exposition of his lonely goodness, in which they refuse to ascribe to him such emotions of mind as they censure in the Creator. Now, if he is susceptible of no feeling of rivalry, or anger, or damage, or injury, as one who refrains from exercising judicial power, I cannot tell how any system of discipline—and that, too, a plenary one—can be consistent in him. For how is it possible that he should issue commands, if he does not mean to execute them; or forbid sins, if he intends not to punish them, but rather to decline the functions of the judge, as being a stranger to all notions of severity and judicial chastisement? For why does he forbid the commission of that which he punishes not when perpetrated? It would have been far more right, if he had not forbidden what he meant not to punish, than that he should punish what he had not forbidden. Nay, it was his duty even to have permitted what he was about to prohibit in so unreasonable a way, as to annex no penalty to the offence. 2657 For even now that is tacitly permitted which is forbidden without any infliction of vengeance. Besides, he only forbids the commission of that which he does not like to have done. Most listless, therefore, is he, since he takes no offence at the doing of what he dislikes to be done, although displeasure ought to be the companion of his violated will. Now, if he is offended, he ought to be angry; if angry, he ought to inflict punishment. For such infliction is the just fruit of anger, and anger is the debt of displeasure, and displeasure (as I have said) is the companion of a violated will. However, he inflicts no punishment; therefore he takes no offence.
He takes no offence, therefore his will is not wronged, although that is done which he was unwilling to have done; and the transgression is now committed with the acquiescence of 2658 his will, because whatever offends not the will is not committed against the will. Now, if this is to be the principle of the divine virtue or goodness, to be unwilling indeed that a thing be done and to prohibit it, and yet not be moved by its commission, we then allege that he has been moved already when he declared his unwillingness; and that it is vain for him not to be moved by the accomplishment of a thing after being moved at the possibility thereof, when he willed it not to be done. For he prohibited it by his not willing it. Did he not therefore do a judicial act, when he declared his unwillingness, and consequent prohibition of it? For he judged that it ought not to be done, and he deliberately declared 2659 that it should be forbidden. Consequently by this time even he performs the part of a judge. If it is unbecoming for God to discharge a judicial function, or at least only so far becoming that He may merely declare His unwillingness, and pronounce His prohibition, then He may not even punish for an offence when it is committed. Now, nothing is so unworthy of the Divine Being as not to execute retribution on what He has disliked and forbidden. First, He owes the infliction of chastisement to whatever sentence or law He promulges, for the vindication of His authority and the maintenance of submission to it; secondly, because hostile opposition is inevitable to what He has disliked to be done, and by that dislike forbidden. Moreover, it would be a more unworthy course for God to spare the evil-doer than to punish him, especially in the most good and holy God, who is not otherwise fully good than as the enemy of evil, and that to such a degree as to display His love of good by the hatred of evil, and to fulfil His defence of the former by the extirpation of the latter.
Footnotes
291:2657Ut non defensurus. Defendo = vindico. See Oehler’s note for other instances.
292:2658Secundum.
292:2659Pronunciavit.
Chapter XXVII.—Dangerous Effects to Religion and Morality of the Doctrine of So Weak a God.
Again, he plainly judges evil by not willing it, and condemns it by prohibiting it; while, on the other hand, he acquits it by not avenging it, and lets it go free by not punishing it. What a prevaricator of truth is such a god! What a dissembler with his own decision! Afraid to condemn what he really condemns, afraid to hate what he does not love, permitting that to be done which he does not allow, choosing to indicate what he dislikes rather than deeply examine it! This will turn out an imaginary goodness, a phantom of discipline, perfunctory in duty, careless in sin. Listen, ye sinners; and ye who have not yet come to this, hear, that you may attain to such a pass! A better god has been discovered, who never takes offence, is never angry, never inflicts punishment, who has prepared no fire in hell, no gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness! He is purely and simply good. He indeed forbids all delinquency, but only in word. He is in you, if you are willing to pay him homage, 2660 for the sake of appearances, that you may seem to honour God; for your fear he does not want. And so satisfied are the Marcionites with such pretences, that they have no fear of their god at all. They say it is only a bad man who will be feared, a good man will be loved. Foolish man, do you say that he whom you call Lord ought not to be feared, whilst the very title you give him indicates a power which must itself be feared? But how are you going to love, without some fear that you do not love? Surely (such a god) is neither your Father, towards whom your love for duty’s sake should be consistent with fear because of His power; nor your proper 2661 Lord, whom you should love for His humanity and fear as your teacher. 2662 Kidnappers 2663 indeed are loved after this fashion, but they are not feared. For power will not be feared, except it be just and regular, although it may possibly be loved even when corrupt: for it is by allurement that it stands, not by authority; by flattery, not by proper influence. And what can be more direct flattery than not to punish sins? Come, then, if you do not fear God as being good, why do you not boil over into every kind of lust, and so realize that which is, I believe, the main enjoyment of life to all who fear not God? Why do you not frequent the customary pleasures of the maddening circus, the bloodthirsty arena, and the lascivious theatre? 2664 Why in persecutions also do you not, when the censer is presented, at once redeem your life by the denial of your faith? God forbid, you say with redoubled 2665 emphasis. So you do fear sin, and by your fear prove that He is an object of fear Who forbids the sin. This is quite a different matter from that obsequious homage you pay to the god whom you do not fear, which is identical in perversity indeed to is own conduct, in prohibiting a thing without annexing the sanction of punishment. Still more vainly do they act, who when asked, What is to become of every sinner in that great day? reply, that he is to be cast away out of sight. Is not even this a question of judicial determination? He is adjudged to deserve rejection, and that by a sentence of condemnation; unless the sinner is cast away forsooth for his salvation, that even a leniency like this may fall in consistently with the character of your most good and excellent god! And what will it be to be cast away, but to lose that which a man was in the way of obtaining, were it not for his rejection—that is, his salvation? Therefore his being cast away will involve the forfeiture of salvation; and this sentence cannot possibly be passed upon him, except by an angry and offended authority, who is also the punisher of sin—that is, by a judge.
Footnotes
292:2660Obsequium subsignare.
292:2661Legitimus.
292:2662Propter disciplinam.
292:2663Plagiarii. The Plagiarius is the ἀνδραποδιστής or the ψυχαγωγός of Alex. Greek. This “man-stealing” profession was often accompanied with agreeable external accomplishments. Nempe ψυχαγωγοί, quia blandis et mellitis verbis servos alienos sollicitant, et ad se alliciunt. Clemens Alex. Strom. i. λύκοι ἅρπαγες προβάτων κωδίοις ἐγκεκρυμμένοι, ἀνδραποδιστοί τε καὶ ψυχαγωγοὶ εὐγλῶσσοι, κλέπτοντες μὲν ἀφανῶς, κ.τ.λ.—Desid. Herald. Animad. ad Arnobium, p. 101.
293:2664Comp. Apology, 38.
293:2665Absit, inquis, absit. [i.e., the throwing of a grain of incense into the censer, before the Emperor’s image or that of a heathen god.]
Chapter XXVIII.—This Perverse Doctrine Deprives Baptism of All Its Grace. If Marcion Be Right, the Sacrament Would Confer No Remission of Sins, No Regeneration, No Gift of the Spirit.
And what will happen to him after he is cast away? He will, they say, be thrown into the Creator’s fire. Then has no remedial provision been made (by their god) for the purpose of banishing those that sin against him, without resorting to the cruel measure of delivering them over to the Creator? And what will the Creator then do? I suppose He will prepare for them a hell doubly charged with brimstone, 2666 as for blasphemers against Himself; except indeed their god in his zeal, as perhaps might happen, should show clemency to his rival’s revolted subjects. Oh, what a god is this! everywhere perverse; nowhere rational; in all cases vain; and therefore a nonentity! 2667 —in whose state, and condition, and nature, and every appointment, I see no coherence and consistency; no, not even in the very sacrament of his faith! For what end does baptism serve, according to him? If the remission of sins, how will he make it evident that he remits sins, when he affords no evidence that he retains them? Because he would retain them, if he performed the functions of a judge. If deliverance from death, how could he deliver from death, who has not delivered to death? For he must have delivered the sinner to death, if he had from the beginning condemned sin. If the regeneration of man, how can he regenerate, who has never generated? For the repetition of an act is impossible to him, by whom nothing any time has been ever done. If the bestowal of the Holy Ghost, how will he bestow the Spirit, who did not at first impart the life? For the life is in a sense the supplement 2668 of the Spirit. He therefore seals man, who had never been unsealed 2669 in respect of him; 2670 washes man, who had never been defiled so far as he was concerned; 2671 and into this sacrament of salvation wholly plunges that flesh which is beyond the pale of salvation! 2672 No farmer will irrigate ground that will yield him no fruit in return, except he be as stupid as Marcion’s god. Why then impose sanctity upon our most infirm and most unworthy flesh, either as a burden or as a glory? What shall I say, too, of the uselessness of a discipline which sanctifies what is already sanctified? Why burden the infirm, or glorify the unworthy? Why not remunerate with salvation what it burdens or else glorifies? Why keep back from a work its due reward, by not recompensing the flesh with salvation? Why even permit the honour of sanctity in it to die?
Footnotes
293:2666Sulphuratiorem gehennam.
293:2667Ita neminem.
293:2668Suffectura. A something whereon the Spirit may operate; so that the Spirit has a præfectura over the anima. [Kaye, p. 179.]
293:2669Resignatum. Tertullian here yields to his love of antithesis, and makes almost nonsense of signo and resigno. The latter verb has the meaning violate (in opposition to signo, in the phrase virgo signata, a pure unviolated virgin).
293:2670Apud se.
293:2671Apud se.
293:2672Exsortem salutis.
Chapter XXIX.—Marcion Forbids Marriage. Tertullian Eloquently Defends It as Holy, and Carefully Discriminates Between Marcion’s Doctrine and His Own Montanism.
The flesh is not, according to Marcion, immersed in the water of the sacrament, unless it be 2673 in virginity, widowhood, or celibacy, or has purchased by divorce a title to baptism, as if even generative impotents 2674 did not all receive their flesh from nuptial union. Now, such a scheme as this must no doubt involve the proscription of marriage. Let us see, then, whether it be a just one: not as if we aimed at destroying the happiness of sanctity, as do certain Nicolaitans in their maintenance of lust and luxury, but as those who have come to the knowledge of sanctity, and pursue it and prefer it, without detriment, however, to marriage; not as if we superseded a bad thing by a good, but only a good thing by a better. For we do not reject marriage, but simply refrain from it. 2675 Nor do we prescribe sanctity 2676 as the rule, but only recommend it, observing it as a good, yea, even the better state, if each man uses it carefully 2677 according to his ability; but at the same time earnestly vindicating marriage, whenever hostile attacks are made against it is a polluted thing, to the disparagement of the Creator. For He bestowed His blessing on matrimony also, as on an honourable estate, for the increase of the human race; as He did indeed on the whole of His creation, 2678 for wholesome and good uses. Meats and drinks are not on this account to be condemned, because, when served up with too exquisite a daintiness, they conduce to gluttony; nor is raiment to be blamed, because, when too costlily adorned, it becomes inflated with vanity and pride. So, on the same principle, the estate of matrimony is not to be refused, because, when enjoyed without moderation, it is fanned into a voluptuous flame. There is a great difference between a cause and a fault, 2679 between a state and its excess. Consequently it is not an institution of this nature that is to be blamed, but the extravagant use of it; according to the judgment of its founder Himself, who not only said, “Be fruitful, and multiply,” 2680 but also, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife;” 2681 and who threatened with death the unchaste, sacrilegious, and monstrous abomination both of adultery and unnatural sin with man and beast. 2682 Now, if any limitation is set to marrying—such as the spiritual rule, 2683 which prescribes but one marriage under the Christian obedience, 2684 maintained by the authority of the Paraclete, 2685 —it will be His prerogative to fix the limit Who had once been diffuse in His permission; His to gather, Who once scattered; His to cut down the tree, Who planted it; His to reap the harvest, Who sowed the seed; His to declare, “It remaineth that they who have wives be as though they had none,” 2686 Who once said, “Be fruitful, and multiply;” His the end to Whom belonged the beginning. Nevertheless, the tree is not cut down as if it deserved blame; nor is the corn reaped, as if it were to be condemned,—but simply because their time is come. So likewise the state of matrimony does not require the hook and scythe of sanctity, as if it were evil; but as being ripe for its discharge, and in readiness for that sanctity which will in the long run bring it a plenteous crop by its reaping. For this leads me to remark of Marcion’s god, that in reproaching marriage as an evil and unchaste thing, he is really prejudicing the cause of that very sanctity which he seems to serve. For he destroys the material on which it subsists; if there is to be no marriage, there is no sanctity. All proof of abstinence is lost when excess is impossible; for sundry things have thus their evidence in their contraries. Just as “strength is made perfect in weakness,” 2687 so likewise is continence made manifest by the permission to marry. Who indeed will be called continent, if that be taken away which gives him the opportunity of pursuing a life of continence? What room for temperance in appetite does famine give? What repudiation of ambitious projects does poverty afford? What bridling of lust can the eunuch merit? To put a complete stop, however, to the sowing of the human race, may, for aught I know, be quite consistent for Marcion’s most good and excellent god. For how could he desire the salvation of man, whom he forbids to be born, when he takes away that institution from which his birth arises? How will he find any one on whom to set the mark of his goodness, when he suffers him not to come into existence? How is it possible to love him whose origin he hates? Perhaps he is afraid of a redundant population, lest he should be weary in liberating so many; lest he should have to make many heretics; lest Marcionite parents should produce too many noble disciples of Marcion. The cruelty of Pharaoh, which slew its victims at their birth, will not prove to be more inhuman in comparison. 2688 For while he destroyed lives, our heretic’s god refuses to give them: the one removes from life, the other admits none to it. There is no difference in either as to their homicide—man is slain by both of them; by the former just after birth, by the latter as yet unborn. Thanks should we owe thee, thou god of our heretic, hadst thou only checked 2689 the dispensation of the Creator in uniting male and female; for from such a union indeed has thy Marcion been born! Enough, however, of Marcion’s god, who is shown to have absolutely no existence at all, both by our definitions 2690 of the one only Godhead, and the condition of his attributes. 2691 The whole course, however, of this little work aims directly at this conclusion. If, therefore, we seem to anybody to have achieved but little result as yet, let him reserve his expectations, until we examine the very Scripture which Marcion quotes.
Footnotes
293:2673Free from all matrimonial impurity.
293:2674Spadonibus. This word is more general in sense than eunuch, embracing such as are impotent both by nature and by castration, White and Riddle’s Lat. Dict. s.v.
294:2675Tertullian’s Montanism appears here.
294:2676i.e., abstinence from marriage.
294:2677Sectando. [This, indeed, seems to be a fair statement of Patristic doctrine concerning marriage. As to our author’s variations see Kaye, p. 378.]
294:2678Universum conditionis.
294:2679Causa in its proper sense is, “that through which anything takes place;” its just and normal state, therefore. Culpa is the derangement of the cause; some flaw in it.
294:2680Gen. i. 28.
294:2681Exod. 20:14, 17.
294:2682Lev. 20:10, 13, 15.
294:2683Ratio.
294:2684In fide. Tertullian uses (De Pud. 18) “ante fidem” as synonymous with ante baptismum; similarly “post fidem.”
294:2685[Bad as this is, does it argue the lapse of our author as at this time complete?]
294:26861 Cor. vii. 29.
294:26872 Cor. xii. 9.
294:2688This is the force of the erit instead of the past tense.
295:2689Isses in, i.e., obstitisses, check or resist, for then Marcion would, of course, not have been born: the common text has esses in.
295:2690Tertullian has discussed these “definitions” in chap. ii. vii., and the “conditions” from chap. viii. onward. He will “examine the Scripture” passages in books iv. and v. Fr. Junius.
295:2691Statuum.
Book II. 2692
Wherein Tertullian shows that the creator, or demiurge, whom Marcion calumniated, is the true and good God.
————————————
Chapter I.—The Methods of Marcion’s Argument Incorrect and Absurd. The Proper Course of the Argument.
The occasion of reproducing this little work, the fortunes of which we noticed in the preface of our first book, has furnished us with the opportunity of distinguishing, in our treatment of the subject of two Gods in opposition to Marcion, each of them with a description and section of his own, according to the division of the subject-matter, defining one of the gods to have no existence at all, and maintaining of the Other that He is rightly 2693 God; thus far keeping pace with the heretic of Pontus, who has been pleased to admit one unto, and exclude the other. 2694 For he could not build up his mendacious scheme without pulling down the system of truth. He found it necessary to demolish 2695 some other thing, in order to build up the theory which he wished. This process, however, is like constructing a house without preparing suitable materials. 2696 The discussion ought to have been directed to this point alone, that he is no god who supersedes the Creator. Then, when the false god had been excluded by certain rules which prescriptively settle what is the character of the One only perfect Divinity, there could have remained no longer any question as to the true God. The proof of His existence would have been clear, and that, too, amid the failure of all evidence in support of any other god; and still clearer 2697 would have seemed the point as to the honour in which He ought without controversy to be held: that He ought to be worshipped rather than judged; served reverentially rather than handled critically, or even dreaded for His severity. For what was more fully needed by man than a careful estimate of 2698 the true God, on whom, so to speak, he had alighted, 2699 because there was no other god?
Footnotes
297:2692[Contains no marks of Montanism of a decisive nature. Kaye, p. 54.]
297:2693Digne.
297:2694From the dignity of the supreme Godhead.
297:2695Snbruere.
297:2696Propria paratura.
297:2697With the tanto (answering to the previous quanto) should be understood magis, a frequent omission in our author.
297:2698Cura in.
297:2699Inciderat.
Chapter II.—The True Doctrine of God the Creator. The Heretics Pretended to a Knowledge of the Divine Being, Opposed to and Subversive of Revelation. God’s Nature and Ways Past Human Discovery. Adam’s Heresy.
We have now, then, cleared our way to the contemplation of the Almighty God, the Lord and Maker of the universe. His greatness, as I think, is shown in this, that from the beginning He made Himself known: He never hid Himself, but always shone out brightly, even before the time of Romulus, to say nothing of that of Tiberius; with the exception indeed that the heretics, and they alone, know Him not, although they take such pains about Him. They on this account suppose that another god must be assumed to exist, because they are more able to censure than deny Him whose existence is so evident, deriving all their thoughts about God from the deductions of sense; just as if some blind man, or a man of imperfect vision, 2700 chose to assume some other sun of milder and healthier ray, because he sees not that which is the object of sight. 2701 There is, O man, but one sun which rules 2702 this world and even when you think otherwise of him, he is best and useful; and although to you he may seem too fierce and baneful, or else, it may be, too sordid and corrupt, he yet is true to the laws of his own existence. Unable as you are to see through those laws, you would be equally impotent to bear the rays of any other sun, were there one, however great and good. Now, you whose sight is defective 2703 in respect of the inferior god, what is your view of the sublimer One? Really you are too lenient 2704 to your weakness; and set not yourself to the proof 2705 of things, holding God to be certainly, undoubtedly, and therefore sufficiently known, the very moment you have discovered Him to exist, though you know Him not except on the side where He has willed His proofs to lie. But you do not even deny God intelligently, 2706 you treat of Him ignorantly; 2707 nay, you accuse Him with a semblance of intelligence, 2708 whom if you did but know Him, you would never accuse, nay, never treat of. 2709 You give Him His name indeed, but you deny the essential truth of that name, that is, the greatness which is called God; not acknowledging it to be such as, were it possible for it to have been known to man in every respect, 2710 would not be greatness. Isaiah even so early, with the clearness of an apostle, foreseeing the thoughts of heretical hearts, asked, “Who hath known the mind of the Lord? For who hath been His counsellor? With whom took He counsel?…or who taught Him knowledge, and showed to Him the way of understanding?” 2711 With whom the apostle agreeing exclaims, “Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!” 2712 “His judgments unsearchable,” as being those of God the Judge; and “His ways past finding out,” as comprising an understanding and knowledge which no man has ever shown to Him, except it may be those critics of the Divine Being, who say, God ought not to have been this, 2713 and He ought rather to have been that; as if any one knew what is in God, except the Spirit of God. 2714 Moreover, having the spirit of the world, and “in the wisdom of God by wisdom knowing not God,” 2715 they seem to themselves to be wiser 2716 than God; because, as the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God, so also the wisdom of God is folly in the world’s esteem. We, however, know that “the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” 2717 Accordingly, God is then especially great, when He is small 2718 to man; then especially good, when not good in man’s judgment; then especially unique, when He seems to man to be two or more. Now, if from the very first “the natural man, not receiving the things of the Spirit of God,” 2719 has deemed God’s law to be foolishness, and has therefore neglected to observe it; and as a further consequence, by his not having faith, “even that which he seemeth to have hath been taken from him” 2720 —such as the grace of paradise and the friendship of God, by means of which he might have known all things of God, if he had continued in his obedience—what wonder is it, if he, 2721 reduced to his material nature, and banished to the toil of tilling the ground, has in his very labour, downcast and earth-gravitating as it was, handed on that earth-derived spirit of the world to his entire race, wholly natural 2722 and heretical as it is, and not receiving the things which belong to God? Or who will hesitate to declare the great sin of Adam to have been heresy, when he committed it by the choice 2723 of his own will rather than of God’s? Except that Adam never said to his fig-tree, Why hast thou made me thus? He confessed that he was led astray; and he did not conceal the seducer. He was a very rude heretic. He was disobedient; but yet he did not blaspheme his Creator, nor blame that Author of his being, Whom from the beginning of his life he had found to be so good and excellent, and Whom he had perhaps 2724 made his own judge from the very first.
Footnotes
297:2700Fluitantibus oculis.
297:2701Quem videat non videt.
298:2702Temperat.
298:2703Cæcutis.
298:2704Quin potius parcis.
298:2705In periculum extenderis.
298:2706Ut sciens.
298:2707Ut nesciens.
298:2708Quasi sciens.
298:2709Retractares.
298:2710Omnifariam.
298:2711Comp. Isa. 40:13, 14, Rom. 11:34.
298:2712Rom. xi. 33.
298:2713Sic non debuit Deus. This perhaps may mean, God ought not to have done this, etc.
298:27141 Cor. ii. 11.
298:27151 Cor. i. 21.
298:2716Consultiores.
298:27171 Cor. i. 25.
298:2718Pusillus.
298:27191 Cor. ii. 14.
298:2720Luke 8:18, Matt. 13:12.
298:2721That is, the natural man, the ψυχικός.
298:2722Animali = ψυχικῷ.
298:2723Electionem. By this word our author translates the Greek αἵρεσις. Comp. De Præscr. Her. 6, p. 245, supra.
298:2724Si forte.
Chapter III.—God Known by His Works. His Goodness Shown in His Creative Energy; But Everlasting in Its Nature; Inherent in God, Previous to All Exhibition of It. The First Stage of This Goodness Prior to Man.
It will therefore be right for us, as we enter on the examination of the known God, when the question arises, in what condition He is known to us, to begin with His works, which are prior to man; so that His goodness, being discovered immediately along with Himself, and then constituted and prescriptively settled, may suggest to us some sense whereby we may understand how the subsequent order of things came about. The disciples of Marcion, moreover, may possibly be able, while recognising the goodness of our God, to learn how worthy it is likewise of the Divine Being, on those very grounds whereby we have proved it to be unworthy in the case of their god. Now this very point, 2725 which is a material one in their scheme, 2726 Marcion did not find in any other god, but eliminated it for himself out of his own god. The first goodness, then, 2727 was that of the Creator, whereby God was unwilling to remain hidden for ever; in other words, (unwilling) that there should not be a something by which God should become known. For what, indeed, is so good as the knowledge and fruition 2728 of God? Now, although it did not transpires that this was good, because as yet there existed nothing to which it could transpire, 2729 yet God foreknew what good would eventually transpire, and therefore He set Himself about developing 2730 His own perfect goodness, for the accomplishment of the good which was to transpire; not, indeed, a sudden goodness issuing in some accidental boon 2731 or in some excited impulse, 2732 such as must be dated simply from the moment when it began to operate. For if it did itself produce its own beginning when it began to operate, it had not, in fact, a beginning itself when it acted. When, however, an initial act had been once done by it, the scheme of temporal seasons began, for distinguishing and noting which, the stars and luminaries of heaven were arranged in their order. “Let them be,” says God, “for seasons, and for days, and years.” 2733 Previous, then, to this temporal course, (the goodness) which created time had not time; nor before that beginning which the same goodness originated, had it a beginning. Being therefore without all order of a beginning, and all mode of time, it will be reckoned to possess an age, measureless in extent 2734 and endless in duration; 2735 nor will it be possible to regard it as a sudden or adventitious or impulsive emotion, because it has nothing to occasion such an estimate of itself; in other words, no sort of temporal sequence. It must therefore be accounted an eternal attribute, inbred in God, 2736 and everlasting, 2737 and on this account worthy of the Divine Being, putting to shame for ever 2738 the benevolence of Marcion’s god, subsequent as he is to (I will not say) all beginnings and times, but to the very malignity of the Creator, if indeed malignity could possibly have been found in goodness.
Footnotes
299:2725That is, “the goodness” of God.
299:2726Agnitionis, their Gnostic scheme.
299:2727Denique. This particle refers back to the argument previous to its interruption by the allusion to Marcion and his followers.
299:2728Fructus, the enjoyment of God’s works.
299:2729Apparebat. [Was not manifest.]
299:2730Commisit in.
299:2731Obventiciæ bonitatis.
299:2732Provocaticiæ animationis.
299:2733Gen. i. 14.
299:2734Immensa.
299:2735Interminabili.
299:2736Deo ingenita “Natural to,” or “inherent in.”
299:2737Perpetua. [Truly, a sublime Theodicy.]
299:2738Suffundens jam hinc.
Chapter IV.—The Next Stage Occurs in the Creation of Man by the Eternal Word. Spiritual as Well as Physical Gifts to Man. The Blessings of Man’s Free-Will.
The goodness of God having, therefore, provided man for the pursuit of the knowledge of Himself, added this to its original notification, 2739 that it first prepared a habitation for him, the vast fabric (of the world) to begin with, and then afterwards 2740 the vaster one (of a higher world, 2741 ) that he might on a great as well as on a smaller stage practise and advance in his probation, and so be promoted from the good which God had given him, that is, from his high position, to God’s best; that is, to some higher abode. 2742 In this good work God employs a most excellent minister, even His own Word. “My heart,” He says, “hath emitted my most excellent Word.” 2743 Let Marcion take hence his first lesson on the noble fruit of this truly most excellent tree. But, like a most clumsy clown, he has grafted a good branch on a bad stock. The sapling, however, of his blasphemy shall be never strong: it shall wither with its planter, and thus shall be manifested the nature of the good tree. Look at the total result: how fruitful was the Word! God issued His fiat, and it was done: God also saw that it was good; 2744 not as if He were ignorant of the good until He saw it; but because it was good, He therefore saw it, and honoured it, and set His seal upon it; and consummated 2745 the goodness of His works by His vouchsafing to them that contemplation. Thus God blessed what He made good, in order that He might commend Himself to you as whole and perfect, good both in word and act. 2746 As yet the Word knew no malediction, because He was a stranger to malefaction. 2747 We shall see what reasons required this also of God. Meanwhile the world consisted of all things good, plainly foreshowing how much good was preparing for him for whom all this was provided. Who indeed was so worthy of dwelling amongst the works of God, as he who was His own image and likeness? That image was wrought out by a goodness even more operative than its wont, 2748 with no imperious word, but with friendly hand preceded by an almost affable 2749 utterance: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” 2750 Goodness spake the word; Goodness formed man of the dust of the ground into so great a substance of the flesh, built up out of one material with so many qualities; Goodness breathed into him a soul, not dead but living. Goodness gave him dominion 2751 over all things, which he was to enjoy and rule over, and even give names to. In addition to this, Goodness annexed pleasures 2752 to man so that, while master of the whole world, 2753 he might tarry among higher delights, being translated into paradise, out of the world into the Church. 2754 The self-same Goodness provided also a help meet for him, that there might be nothing in his lot that was not good. For, said He, that the man be alone is not good. 2755 He knew full well what a blessing to him would be the sex of Mary, 2756 and also of the Church. The law, however, which you find fault with, 2757 and wrest into a subject of contention, was imposed on man by Goodness, aiming at his happiness, that he might cleave to God, and so not show himself an abject creature rather than a free one, nor reduce himself to the level of the other animals, his subjects, which were free from God, and exempt from all tedious subjection; 2758 but might, as the sole human being, boast that he alone was worthy of receiving laws from God; and as a rational being, capable of intelligence and knowledge, be restrained within the bounds of rational liberty, subject to Him who had subjected all things unto him. To secure the observance of this law, Goodness likewise took counsel by help of this sanction: “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” 2759 For it was a most benignant act of His thus to point out the issues of transgression, lest ignorance of the danger should encourage a neglect of obedience. Now, since 2760 it was given as a reason previous to the imposition of the law, it also amounted to a motive for subsequently observing it, that a penalty was annexed to its transgression; a penalty, indeed, which He who proposed it was still unwilling that it should be incurred. Learn then the goodness of our God amidst these things and up to this point; learn it from His excellent works, from His kindly blessings, from His indulgent bounties, from His gracious providences, from His laws and warnings, so good and merciful.
Footnotes
299:2739Præconio suo.
299:2740Postmodum…postmodum.
299:2741See Bp. Bull on The State of Man before the Fall, Works, ii. 73–81.
299:2742Habitaculum majus.
299:2743“Eructavit cor. meum Sermonem optimum” is Tertullian’s reading of Ps. xlv. 1, “My heart is inditing a good matter,” A.V., which the Vulgate, Ps. xliv. 1, renders by “Eructavit cor meum verbum bonum,” and the Septuagint by ᾽Εξηρεύξατο ἡ καρδία μου λόγον ἀγαθόν. This is a tolerably literal rendering of the original words, בוֹט רבָרָ יבִּלִ שׁהַרָ. In these words the Fathers used to descry an adumbration of the mystery of the Son’s eternal generation from the Father, and His coming forth in time to create the world. See Bellarmine, On the Psalms (Paris ed. 1861), vol. i. 292. The Psalm is no doubt eminently Messianic, as both Jewish and Christian writers have ever held. See Perowne, The Psalms, vol. i. p. 216. Bishop Bull reviews at length the theological opinions of Tertullian, and shows that he held the eternity of the Son of God, whom he calls “Sermo” or “Verbum Dei.” See Defensio Fidei Nicænæ (translation in the “Oxford Library of the Fathers,” by the translator of this work) vol. ii. 509–545. In the same volume, p. 482, the passage from the Psalm before us is similarly applied by Novatian: “Sic Dei Verbum processit, de quo dictum est, Eructavit cor meum Verbum bonum.” [See vol. ii. p. 98, this series: and Kaye, p. 515.]
300:2744Gen. i.
300:2745Dispungens, i.e., examinans et probans et ita quasi consummans (Oehler).
300:2746This twofold virtue is very tersely expressed: “Sic et benedicebat quæ benefaciebat.”
300:2747This, the translator fears, is only a clumsy way of representing the terseness of our author’s “maledicere” and “malefacere.”
300:2748Bonitas et quidem operantior.
300:2749Blandiente.
300:2750Gen. i. 26.
300:2751Præfecit.
300:2752Delicias.
300:2753Totius orbis possidens.
300:2754There is a profound thought here; in his tract, De Pœnit. 10, he says, “Where one or two are, is the church, and the church is Christ.” Hence what he here calls Adam’s “higher delights,” even spiritual blessings in Christ with Eve. [Important note in Kaye, p. 304.]
300:2755See Gen. ii. 18.
300:2756Sexum Mariæ. For the Virgin Mary gave birth to Christ, the Saviour of men; and the virgin mother the Church, the spouse of Christ, gives birth to Christians (Rigalt.).
300:2757Arguis.
300:2758Ex fastidio liberis.
300:2759Gen. ii. 17.
300:2760Porro si.
Chapter V.—Marcion’s Cavils Considered. His Objection Refuted, I.e., Man’s Fall Showed Failure in God. The Perfection of Man’s Being Lay in His Liberty, Which God Purposely Bestowed on Him. The Fall Imputable to Man’s Own Choice.
Now then, ye dogs, whom the apostle puts outside, 2761 and who yelp at the God of truth, let us come to your various questions. These are the bones of contention, which you are perpetually gnawing! If God is good, and prescient of the future, and able to avert evil, why did He permit man, the very image and likeness of Himself, and, by the origin of his soul, His own substance too, to be deceived by the devil, and fall from obedience of the law into death? For if He had been good, and so unwilling that such a catastrophe should happen, and prescient, so as not to be ignorant of what was to come to pass, and powerful enough to hinder its occurrence, that issue would never have come about, which should be impossible under these three conditions of the divine greatness. Since, however, it has occurred, the contrary proposition is most certainly true, that God must be deemed neither good, nor prescient, nor powerful. For as no such issue could have happened had God been such as He is reputed—good, and prescient, and mighty—so has this issue actually happened, because He is not such a God. In reply, we must first vindicate those attributes in the Creator which are called in question—namely, His goodness and foreknowledge, and power. But I shall not linger long over this point 2762 for Christ’s own definition 2763 comes to our aid at once. From works must proofs be obtained. The Creator’s works testify at once to His goodness, since they are good, as we have shown, and to His power, since they are mighty, and spring indeed out of nothing. And even if they were made out of some (previous) matter, as some 2764 will have it, they are even thus out of nothing, because they were not what they are. In short, both they are great because they are good; and 2765 God is likewise mighty, because all things are His own, whence He is almighty. But what shall I say of His prescience, which has for its witnesses as many prophets as it inspired? After all, 2766 what title to prescience do we look for in the Author of the universe, since it was by this very attribute that He foreknew all things when He appointed them their places, and appointed them their places when He foreknew them? There is sin itself. If He had not foreknown this, He would not have proclaimed a caution against it under the penalty of death. Now if there were in God such attributes as must have rendered it both impossible and improper for any evil to have happened to man, 2767 and yet evil did occur, let us consider man’s condition also—whether it were not, in fact, rather the cause why that came to pass which could not have happened through God. I find, then, that man was by God constituted free, master of his own will and power; indicating the presence of God’s image and likeness in him by nothing so well as by this constitution of his nature. For it was not by his face, and by the lineaments of his body, though they were so varied in his human nature, that he expressed his likeness to the form of God; but he showed his stamp 2768 in that essence which he derived from God Himself (that is, the spiritual, 2769 which answered to the form of God), and in the freedom and power of his will. This his state was confirmed even by the very law which God then imposed upon him. For a law would not be imposed upon one who had it not in his power to render that obedience which is due to law; nor again, would the penalty of death be threatened against sin, if a contempt of the law were impossible to man in the liberty of his will. So in the Creator’s subsequent laws also you will find, when He sets before man good and evil, life and death, that the entire course of discipline is arranged in precepts by God’s calling men from sin, and threatening and exhorting them; and this on no other ground than 2770 that man is free, with a will either for obedience or resistance.
Footnotes
300:2761Rev. xxii. 15.
301:2762Articulo.
301:2763John x. 25.
301:2764He refers to Hermogenes; see Adv. Hermog. chap. xxxii.
301:2765Vel…vel.
301:2766Quanquam.
301:2767As the Marcionites alleged.
301:2768Signatus est.
301:2769Animæ.
301:2770Nec alias nisi.
Chapter VI.—This Liberty Vindicated in Respect of Its Original Creation; Suitable Also for Exhibiting the Goodness and the Purpose of God. Reward and Punishment Impossible If Man Were Good or Evil Through Necessity and Not Choice.
But although we shall be understood, from our argument, to be only so affirming man’s unshackled power over his will, that what happens to him should be laid to his own charge, and not to God’s, yet that you may not object, even now, that he ought not to have been so constituted, since his liberty and power of will might turn out to be injurious, I will first of all maintain that he was rightly so constituted, that I may with the greater confidence commend both his actual constitution, and the additional fact of its being worthy of the Divine Being; the cause which led to man’s being created with such a constitution being shown to be the better one. Moreover, man thus constituted will be protected by both the goodness of God and by His purpose, 2771 both of which are always found in concert in our God. For His purpose is no purpose without goodness; nor is His goodness goodness without a purpose, except forsooth in the case of Marcion’s god, who is purposelessly 2772 good, as we have shown. 2773 Well, then, it was proper that God should be known; it was no doubt 2774 a good and reasonable 2775 thing. Proper also was it that there should be something worthy of knowing God. What could be found so worthy as the image and likeness of God? This also was undoubtedly good and reasonable. Therefore it was proper that (he who is) the image and likeness of God should be formed with a free will and a mastery of himself; 2776 so that this very thing—namely, freedom of will and self-command—might be reckoned as the image and likeness of God in him. For this purpose such an essence 2777 was adapted 2778 to man as suited this character, 2779 even the afflatus of the Deity, Himself free and uncontrolled. 2780 But if you will take some other view of the case, 2781 how came it to pass 2782 that man, when in possession of the whole world, did not above all things reign in self-possession 2783 —a master over others, a slave to himself? The goodness of God, then, you can learn from His gracious gift 2784 to man, and His purpose from His disposal of all things. 2785 At present, let God’s goodness alone occupy our attention, that which gave so large a gift to man, even the liberty of his will. God’s purpose claims some other opportunity of treatment, offering as it does instruction of like import. Now, God alone is good by nature. For He, who has that which is without beginning, has it not by creation, 2786 but by nature. Man, however, who exists entirely by creation, having a beginning, along with that beginning obtained the form in which he exists; and thus he is not by nature disposed to good, but by creation, not having it as his own attribute to be good, because, (as we have said,) it is not by nature, but by creation, that he is disposed to good, according to the appointment of his good Creator, even the Author of all good. In order, therefore, that man might have a goodness of his own, 2787 bestowed 2788 on him by God, and there might be henceforth in man a property, and in a certain sense a natural attribute of goodness, there was assigned to him in the constitution of his nature, as a formal witness 2789 of the goodness which God bestowed upon him, freedom and power of the will, such as should cause good to be performed spontaneously by man, as a property of his own, on the ground that no less than this 2790 would be required in the matter of a goodness which was to be voluntarily exercised by him, that is to say, by the liberty of his will, without either favour or servility to the constitution of his nature, so that man should be good 2791 just up to this point, 2792 if he should display his goodness in accordance with his natural constitution indeed, but still as the result of his will, as a property of his nature; and, by a similar exercise of volition, 2793 should show himself to be too strong 2794 in defence against evil also (for even this God, of course, foresaw), being free, and master of himself; because, if he were wanting in this prerogative of self-mastery, so as to perform even good by necessity and not will, he would, in the helplessness of his servitude, become subject to the usurpation of evil, a slave as much to evil as to good. Entire freedom of will, therefore, was conferred upon him in both tendencies; so that, as master of himself, he might constantly encounter good by spontaneous observance of it, and evil by its spontaneous avoidance; because, were man even otherwise circumstanced, it was yet his bounden duty, in the judgment of God, to do justice according to the motions 2795 of his will regarded, of course, as free. But the reward neither of good nor of evil could be paid to the man who should be found to have been either good or evil through necessity and not choice. In this really lay 2796 the law which did not exclude, but rather prove, human liberty by a spontaneous rendering of obedience, or a spontaneous commission of iniquity; so patent was the liberty of man’s will for either issue. Since, therefore, both the goodness and purpose of God are 2797 discovered in the gift to man of freedom in his will, it is not right, after ignoring the original definition of goodness and purpose which it was necessary to determine previous to any discussion of the subject, on subsequent facts to presume to say that God ought not in such a way to have formed man, because the issue was other than what was assumed to be 2798 proper for God. We ought rather, 2799 after duly considering that it behoved God so to create man, to leave this consideration unimpaired, and to survey the other aspects of the case. It is, no doubt, an easy process for persons who take offence at the fall of man, before they have looked into the facts of his creation, to impute the blame of what happened to the Creator, without any examination of His purpose. To conclude: the goodness of God, then fully considered from the beginning of His works, will be enough to convince us that nothing evil could possibly have come forth from God; and the liberty of man will, after a second thought, 2800 show us that it alone is chargeable with the fault which itself committed.
Footnotes
301:2771Ratio, or, “His reason.” We have used both words, which are equally suitable to the Divine Being, as seemed most convenient.
301:2772Irrationaliter, or, “irrationally.”
301:2773See above, book i. chap. xxiii. p. 288.
301:2774Utique.
301:2775Rationale, or, “consistent with His purpose.”
302:2776Suæ potestatis.
302:2777Substantia.
302:2778Accommodata.
302:2779Status.
302:2780Suæ potestatis.
302:2781Sed et alias.
302:2782Quale erat.
302:2783Animi sui possessione.
302:2784Dignatione.
302:2785Ex dispositione. The same as the “universa disponendo” above.
302:2786Institutione.
302:2787Bonum jam suum, not bonitatem.
302:2788Emancipatum.
302:2789Libripens. The language here is full of legal technicalities, derived from the Roman usage in conveyance of property. “Libripens quasi arbiter mancipationis” (Rigalt.).
302:2790Quoniam (with a subj.) et hoc.
302:2791Bonus consisteret.
302:2792Ita demum.
302:2793Proinde.
302:2794Fortior.
302:2795Meritis.
302:2796Constituta est.
302:2797Our author’s word invenitur (in the singular) combines the bonitas and ratio in one view.
302:2798The verb is subj., “deceret.”
302:2799Sed, with oportet understood.
303:2800Recogitata. [Again, a noble Theodicy.]
Chapter VII.—If God Had Anyhow Checked Man’s Liberty, Marcion Would Have Been Ready with Another and Opposite Cavil. Man’s Fall Foreseen by God. Provision Made for It Remedially and Consistently with His Truth and Goodness.
By such a conclusion all is reserved 2801 unimpaired to God; both His natural goodness, and the purposes of His governance and foreknowledge, and the abundance of His power. You ought, however, to deduct from God’s attributes both His supreme earnestness of purpose 2802 and most excellent truth in His whole creation, if you would cease to inquire whether anything could have happened against the will of God. For, while holding this earnestness and truth of the good God, which are indeed 2803 capable of proof from the rational creation, you will not wonder at the fact that God did not interfere to prevent the occurrence of what He wished not to happen, in order that He might keep from harm what He wished. For, since He had once for all allowed (and, as we have shown, worthily allowed) to man freedom of will and mastery of himself, surely He from His very authority in creation permitted these gifts to be enjoyed: to be enjoyed, too, so far as lay in Himself, according to His own character as God, that is, for good (for who would permit anything hostile to himself?); and, so far as lay in man, according to the impulses of his liberty (for who does not, when giving anything to any one to enjoy, accompany the gift with a permission to enjoy it with all his heart and will?). The necessary consequence, 2804 therefore, was, that God must separate from the liberty which He had once for all bestowed upon man (in other words, keep within Himself), both His foreknowledge and power, through which He might have prevented man’s falling into danger when attempting wrongly to enjoy his liberty. Now, if He had interposed, He would have rescinded the liberty of man’s will, which He had permitted with set purpose, and in goodness. But, suppose God had interposed; suppose Him to have abrogated man’s liberty, by warning him from the tree, and keeping off the subtle serpent from his interview with the woman; would not Marcion then exclaim, What a frivolous, unstable, and faithless Lord, cancelling the gifts He had bestowed! Why did He allow any liberty of will, if He afterwards withdrew it? Why withdraw it after allowing it? Let Him choose where to brand Himself with error, either in His original constitution of man, or in His subsequent abrogation thereof! If He had checked (man’s freedom), would He not then seem to have been rather deceived, through want of foresight into the future? But in giving it full scope, who would not say that He did so in ignorance of the issue of things? God, however, did foreknow that man would make a bad use of his created constitution; and yet what can be so worthy of God as His earnestness of purpose, and the truth of His created works, be they what they may? Man must see, if he failed to make the most of 2805 the good gift he had received, how that he was himself guilty in respect of the law which he did not choose to keep, and not that the Lawgiver was committing a fraud against His own law, by not permitting its injunctions to be fulfilled. Whenever you are inclined to indulge in such censure 2806 (and it is the most becoming for you) against the Creator, recall gently to your mind in His behalf 2807 His earnestness, and endurance, and truth, in having given completeness 2808 to His creatures both as rational and good.
Footnotes
303:2801Salva.
303:2802Gravitatem.
303:2803Sed, for scilicet, not unfrequent with our author.
303:2804That is, from the Marcionite position referred to in the second sentence of this chapter, in opposition to that of Tertullian which follows.
303:2805Si non bene dispunxisset.
303:2806Peroraturus.
303:2807Tibi insusurra pro Creatore.
303:2808Functo.
Chapter VIII.—Man, Endued with Liberty, Superior to the Angels, Overcomes Even the Angel Which Lured Him to His Fall, When Repentant and Resuming Obedience to God.
For it was not merely that he might live the natural life that God had produced man, but 2809 that he should live virtuously, that is, in relation to God and to His law. Accordingly, God gave him to live when he was formed into a living soul; but He charged him to live virtuously when he was required to obey a law. So also God shows that man was not constituted for death, by now wishing that he should be restored to life, preferring the sinner’s repentance to his death. 2810 As, therefore, God designed for man a condition of life, so man brought on himself a state of death; and this, too, neither through infirmity nor through ignorance, so that no blame can be imputed to the Creator. No doubt it was an angel who was the seducer; but then the victim of that seduction was free, and master of himself; and as being the image and likeness of God, was stronger than any angel; and as being, too, the afflatus of the Divine Being, was nobler than that material spirit of which angels were made. Who maketh, says he, His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire. 2811 He would not have made all things subject to man, if he had been too weak for the dominion, and inferior to the angels, to whom He assigned no such subjects; nor would He have put the burden of law upon him, if he had been incapable of sustaining so great a weight; nor, again, would He have threatened with the penalty of death a creature whom He knew to be guiltless on the score of his helplessness: in short, if He had made him infirm, it would not have been by liberty and independence of will, but rather by the withholding from him these endowments. And thus it comes to pass, that even now also, the same human being, the same substance of his soul, the same condition as Adam’s, is made conqueror over the same devil by the self-same liberty and power of his will, when it moves in obedience to the laws of God. 2812
Footnotes
303:2809Ut non, “as if he were not,” etc.
303:2810Ezek. xviii. 23.
304:2811Ps. civ. 4.
304:2812[On capp. viii. and ix. See Kaye’s references in notes p. 178 et seqq.]
Chapter IX.—Another Cavil Answered, I.e., the Fall Imputable to God, Because Man’s Soul is a Portion of the Spiritual Essence of the Creator. The Divine Afflatus Not in Fault in the Sin of Man, But the Human Will Which Was Additional to It.
But, you say, in what way soever the substance of the Creator is found to be susceptible of fault, when the afflatus of God, that is to say, the soul, 2813 offends in man, it cannot but be that that fault of the portion is refferible to the original whole. Now, to meet this objection, we must explain the nature 2814 of the soul. We must at the outset hold fast the meaning of the Greek scripture, which has afflatus, not spirit. 2815 Some interpreters of the Greek, without reflecting on the difference of the words, and careless about their exact meaning, put spirit for afflatus; they thus afford to heretics an opportunity of tarnishing 2816 the Spirit of God, that is to say, God Himself, with default. And now comes the question. Afflatus, observe then, is less than spirit, although it comes from spirit; it is the spirit’s gentle breeze, 2817 but it is not the spirit. Now a breeze is rarer than the wind; and although it proceeds from wind, yet a breeze is not the wind. One may call a breeze the image of the spirit. In the same manner, man is the image of God, that is, of spirit; for God is spirit. Afflatus is therefore the image of the spirit. Now the image is not in any case equal to the very thing. 2818 It is one thing to be like the reality, and another thing to be the reality itself. So, although the afflatus is the image of the spirit, it is yet not possible to compare the image of God in such a way, that, because the reality—that is, the spirit, or in other words, the Divine Being—is faultless, therefore the afflatus also, that is to say, the image, ought not by any possibility to have done wrong. In this respect will the image be less than the reality, and the afflatus inferior to the spirit, in that, while it possesses beyond doubt the true lineaments of divinity, such as an immortal soul, freedom and its own mastery over itself, foreknowledge in a great degree, 2819 reasonableness, capacity of understanding and knowledge, it is even in these respects an image still, and never amounts to the actual power of Deity, nor to absolute exemption from fault,—a property which is only conceded to God, that is, to the reality, and which is simply incompatible with an image. An image, although it may express all the lineaments of the reality, is yet wanting in its intrinsic power; it is destitute of motion. In like manner, the soul, the image of the spirit, is unable to express the simple power thereof, that is to say, its happy exemption from sinning. 2820 Were it otherwise, 2821 it would not be soul, but spirit; not man, who received a soul, but God. Besides, to take another view of the matter, 2822 not everything which pertains to God will be regarded as God, so that you would not maintain that His afflatus was God, that is, exempt from fault, because it is the breath of God. And in an act of your own, such as blowing into a flute, you would not thereby make the flute human, although it was your own human breath which you breathed into it, precisely as God breathed of His own Spirit. In fact, 2823 the Scripture, by expressly saying 2824 that God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, and that man became thereby a living soul, not a life-giving spirit, has distinguished that soul from the condition of the Creator. The work must necessarily be distinct from the workman, and it is inferior to him. The pitcher will not be the potter, although made by the potter; nor in like manner, will the afflatus, because made by the spirit, be on that account the spirit. The soul has often been called by the same name as the breath. You should also take care that no descent be made from the breath to a still lower quality. So you have granted (you say) the infirmity of the soul, which you denied before! Undoubtedly, when you demand for it an equality with God, that is, a freedom from fault, I contend that it is infirm. But when the comparison is challenged with an angel, I am compelled to maintain that the head over all things is the stronger of the two, to whom the angels are ministers, 2825 who is destined to be the judge of angels, 2826 if he shall stand fast in the law of God—an obedience which he refused at first. Now this disobedience 2827 it was possible for the afflatus of God to commit: it was possible, but it was not proper. The possibility lay in its slenderness of nature, as being the breath and not the spirit; the impropriety, however, arose from its power of will, as being free, and not a slave. It was furthermore assisted by the warning against committing sin under the threat of incurring death, which was meant to be a support for its slender nature, and a direction for its liberty of choice. So that the soul can no longer appear to have sinned, because it has an affinity with God, that is to say, through the afflatus, but rather through that which was an addition to its nature, that is, through its free-will, which was indeed given to it by God in accordance with His purpose and reason, but recklessly employed 2828 by man according as he chose. This, then, being the case, the entire course 2829 of God’s action is purged from all imputation to evil. For the liberty of the will will not retort its own wrong on Him by whom it was bestowed, but on him by whom it was improperly used. What is the evil, then, which you want to impute to the Creator? If it is man’s sin, it will not be God’s fault, because it is man’s doing; nor is that Being to be regarded as the author of the sin, who turns out to be its forbidder, nay, its condemner. If death is the evil, death will not give the reproach of being its own author to Him who threatened it, but to him who despised it. For by his contempt he introduced it, which assuredly 2830 would not have appeared had man not despised it.
Footnotes
304:2813Anima, for animus. This meaning seems required throughout this passage, where afterwards occurs the phrase immortalis anima.
304:2814Qualitas.
304:2815Πνοήν, not πνεῦμα; so the Vulgate has spiraculum, not spiritum. [Kaye (p. 247) again refers to Profr. Andrews Norton of Harvard for valuable remarks concerning the use of the word spiritus by the ancients. Evidences, Vol. III. p. 160, note 7.]
304:2816Infuscandi.
304:2817Aurulam.
304:2818Veritati.
304:2819Plerumque.
304:2820Non deliquendi felicitatem.
304:2821Ceterum.
304:2822Et alias autem.
304:2823Denique.
304:2824Gen. ii. 7.
305:2825Heb. i. 14.
305:28261 Cor. vi. 3.
305:2827Hoc ipsum, referring to the noluit of the preceding clause.
305:2828Agitatum.
305:2829Dispositio.
305:2830Utique.
Chapter X.—Another Cavil Met, I.e., the Devil Who Instigated Man to Sin Himself the Creature of God. Nay, the Primeval Cherub Only Was God’s Work. The Devilish Nature Superadded by Wilfulness. In Man’s Recovery the Devil is Vanquished in a Conflict on His Own Ground.
If, however, you choose to transfer the account 2831 of evil from man to the devil as the instigator of sin, and in this way, too, throw the blame on the Creator, inasmuch as He created the devil,—for He maketh those spiritual beings, the angels—then it will follow that 2832 what was made, that is to say, the angel, will belong to Him who made it; while that which was not made by God, even the devil, or accuser, 2833 cannot but have been made by itself; and this by false detraction 2834 from God: first, how that God had forbidden them to eat of every tree; then, with the pretence that they should not die if they ate; thirdly, as if God grudged them the property of divinity. Now, whence originated this malice of lying and deceit towards man, and slandering of God? Most certainly not from God, who made the angel good after the fashion of His good works. Indeed, before he became the devil, he stands forth the wisest of creatures; and 2835 wisdom is no 2836 evil. If you turn to the prophecy of Ezekiel, you will at once perceive that this angel was both by creation good and by choice corrupt. For in the person of the prince of Tyre it is said in reference to the devil: “Moreover, the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God: Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty” (this belongs to him as the highest of the angels, the archangel, the wisest of all); “amidst the delights of the paradise of thy God wast thou born” (for it was there, where God had made the angels in a shape which resembled the figure of animals). “Every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, the topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle; and with gold hast thou filled thy barns and thy treasuries. From the day when thou wast created, when I set thee, a cherub, upon the holy mountain of God, thou wast in the midst of stones of fire, thou wast irreproachable in thy days, from the day of thy creation, until thine iniquities were discovered. By the abundance of thy merchandise thou hast filled thy storehouses, and thou hast sinned,” etc. 2837 This description, it is manifest, properly belongs to the transgression of the angel, and not to the prince’s: for none among human beings was either born in the paradise of God, not even Adam himself, who was rather translated thither; nor placed with a cherub upon God’s holy mountain, that is to say, in the heights of heaven, from which the Lord testifies that Satan fell; nor detained amongst the stones of fire, and the flashing rays of burning constellations, whence Satan was cast down like lightning. 2838 No, it is none else than the very author of sin who was denoted in the person of a sinful man: he was once irreproachable, at the time of his creation, formed for good by God, as by the good Creator of irreproachable creatures, and adorned with every angelic glory, and associated with God, good with the Good; but afterwards of his own accord removed to evil. From the day when thine iniquities, 2839 says he, were discovered,—attributing to him those injuries wherewith he injured man when he was expelled from his allegiance to God,—even from that time did he sin, when he propagated his sin, and thereby plied “the abundance of his merchandise,” that is, of his Wickedness, even the tale 2840 of his transgressions, because he was himself as a spirit no less (than man) created, with the faculty of free-will. For God would in nothing fail to endow a being who was to be next to Himself with a liberty of this kind. Nevertheless, by precondemning him, God testified that he had departed from the condition 2841 of his created nature, through his own lusting after the wickedness which was spontaneously conceived within him; and at the same time, by conceding a permission for the operation of his designs, He acted consistently with the purpose of His own goodness, deferring the devil’s destruction for the self-same reason as He postponed the restitution of man. For He afforded room for a conflict, wherein man might crush his enemy with the same freedom of his will as had made him succumb to him (proving that the fault was all his own, not God’s), and so worthily recover his salvation by a victory; wherein also the devil might receive a more bitter punishment, through being vanquished by him whom he had previously injured; and wherein God might be discovered to be so much the more good, as waiting 2842 for man to return from his present life to a more glorious paradise, with a right to pluck of the tree of life. 2843
Footnotes
305:2831Elogium.
305:2832Ergo.
305:2833Delator.
305:2834Deferendo, in reference to the word delator, our author’s synonyme for διάβολος.
305:2835Nisi.
305:2836Nisi.
306:2837Ezek. xxviii. 11-16 (Sept.).
306:2838Luke x. 18.
306:2839Læsuræ ="injuries.” ᾽Αδικήματα ἔν σοι—Iniquitates in te.”—Hieron.
306:2840Censum.
306:2841Forma.
306:2842Sustinens.
306:2843[Kaye. p. 313.]
Chapter XI.—If, After Man’s Sin, God Exercised His Attribute of Justice and Judgment, This Was Compatible with His Goodness, and Enhances the True Idea of the Perfection of God’s Character.
Up to the fall of man, therefore, from the beginning God was simply good; after that He became a judge both severe and, as the Marcionites will have it, cruel. Woman is at once condemned to bring forth in sorrow, and to serve her husband, 2844 although before she had heard without pain the increase of her race proclaimed with the blessing, Increase and multiply, and although she had been destined to be a help and not a slave to her male partner. Immediately the earth is also cursed, 2845 which before was blessed. Immediately spring up briers and thorns, where once had grown grass, and herbs, and fruitful trees. Immediately arise sweat and labour for bread, where previously on every tree was yielded spontaneous food and untilled 2846 nourishment. Thenceforth it is “man to the ground,” and not as before, “from the ground”; to death thenceforth, but before, to life; thenceforth with coats of skins, but before, nakedness without a blush. Thus God’s prior goodness was from 2847 nature, His subsequent severity from 2848 a cause. The one was innate, the other accidental; the one His own, the other adapted; 2849 the one issuing from Him, the other admitted by Him. But then nature could not have rightly permitted His goodness to have gone on inoperative, nor the cause have allowed His severity to have escaped in disguise or concealment. God provided the one for Himself, the other for the occasion. 2850 You should now set about showing also that the position of a judge is allied with evil, who have been dreaming of another god as a purely good one—solely because you cannot understand the Deity to be a judge; although we have proved God to be also a judge. Or if not a judge, at any rate a perverse and useless originator of a discipline which is not to be vindicated—in other words, not to be judged. You do not, however, disprove God’s being a judge, who have no proof to show that He is a judge. You will undoubtedly have to accuse justice herself, which provides the judge, or else to reckon her among the species of evil, that is, to add injustice to the titles of goodness. But then justice is an evil, if injustice is a good. And yet you are forced to declare injustice to be one of the worst of things, and by the same rule are constrained to class justice amongst the most excellent. Since there is nothing hostile 2851 to evil which is not good, and no enemy of good which is not evil. It follows, then, that as injustice is an evil, so in the same degree is justice a good. Nor should it be regarded as simply a species of goodness, but as the practical observance 2852 of it, because goodness (unless justice be so controlled as to be just) will not be goodness, if it be unjust. For nothing is good which is unjust; while everything, on the other hand, which is just is good.
Footnotes
306:2844Gen. iii. 16.
306:2845Gen. iii. 18.
306:2846Secura.
306:2847Secundum.
306:2848Secundum.
306:2849Accommodata.
306:2850Rei.
307:2851Æmulum.
307:2852Tutela.
Chapter XII.—The Attributes of Goodness and Justice Should Not Be Separated. They are Compatible in the True God. The Function of Justice in the Divine Being Described.
Since, therefore, there is this union and agreement between goodness and justice, you cannot prescribe 2853 their separation. With what face will you determine the separation of your two Gods, regarding in their separate condition one as distinctively the good God, and the other as distinctively the just God? Where the just is, there also exists the good. In short, from the very first the Creator was both good and also just. And both His attributes advanced together. His goodness created, His justice arranged, the world; and in this process it even then decreed that the world should be formed of good materials, because it took counsel with goodness. The work of justice is apparent, in the separation which was pronounced between light and darkness, between day and night, between heaven and earth, between the water above and the water beneath, between the gathering together of the sea and the mass of the dry land, between the greater lights and the lesser, between the luminaries of the day and those of the night, between male and female, between the tree of knowledge of death and of life, between the world and paradise, between the aqueous and the earth-born animals. As goodness conceived all things, so did justice discriminate them. With the determination of the latter, everything was arranged and set in order. Every site and quality 2854 of the elements, their effect, motion, and state, the rise and setting of each, are the judicial determinations of the Creator. Do not suppose that His function as a judge must be defined as beginning when evil began, and so tarnish His justice with the cause of evil. By such considerations, then, do we show that this attribute advanced in company with goodness, the author 2855 of all things,—worthy of being herself, too, deemed innate and natural, and not as accidentally accruing 2856 to God, inasmuch as she was found to be in Him, her Lord, the arbiter of His works.
Footnotes
307:2853Cavere. This is Oehler’s reading, and best suits the sense of the passage and the style of our author.
307:2854Habitus.
307:2855Auctrice.
307:2856Obventiciam.
Chapter XIII.—Further Description of the Divine Justice; Since the Fall of Man It Has Regulated the Divine Goodness. God’s Claims on Our Love and Our Fear Reconciled.
But yet, when evil afterwards broke out, and the goodness of God began now to have an adversary to contend against, God’s justice also acquired another function, even that of directing His goodness according to men’s application for it. 2857 And this is the result: the divine goodness, being interrupted in that free course whereby God was spontaneously good, is now dispensed according to the deserts of every man; it is offered to the worthy, denied to the unworthy, taken away from the unthankful, and also avenged on all its enemies. Thus the entire office of justice in this respect becomes an agency 2858 for goodness: whatever it condemns by its judgment, whatever it chastises by its condemnation, whatever (to use your phrase) it ruthlessly pursues, 2859 it, in fact, benefits with good instead of injuring. Indeed, the fear of judgment contributes to good, not to evil. For good, now contending with an enemy, was not strong enough to recommend itself 2860 by itself alone. At all events, if it could do so much, it could not keep its ground; for it had lost its impregnability through the foe, unless some power of fear supervened, such as might compel the very unwilling to seek after good, and take care of it. But who, when so many incentives to evil were assailing him, would desire that good, which he could despise with impunity? Who, again, would take care of what he could lose without danger? You read how broad is the road to evil, 2861 how thronged in comparison with the opposite: would not all glide down that road were there nothing in it to fear? We dread the Creator’s tremendous threats, and yet scarcely turn away from evil. What, if He threatened not? Will you call this justice an evil, when it is all unfavourable to evil? Will you deny it to be a good, when it has its eye towards 2862 good? What sort of being ought you to wish God to be? Would it be right to prefer that He should be such, that sins might flourish under Him, and the devil make mock at Him? Would you suppose Him to be a good God, who should be able to make a man worse by security in sin? Who is the author of good, but He who also requires it? In like manner who is a stranger to evil, except Him who is its enemy? Who its enemy, besides Him who is its conqueror? Who else its conqueror, than He who is its punisher? Thus God is wholly good, because in all things He is on the side of good. In fact, He is omnipotent, because able both to help and to hurt. Merely to profit is a comparatively small matter, because it can do nothing else than a good turn. From such a conduct 2863 with what confidence can I hope for good, if this is its only ability? How can I follow after the reward of innocence, if I have no regard to the requital of wrong-doing? I must needs have my doubts whether he might not fail in recompensing one or other alternative, who was unequal in his resources to meet both. Thus far, then, justice is the very fulness of the Deity Himself, manifesting God as both a perfect father and a perfect master: a father in His mercy, a master in His discipline; a father in the mildness of His power, a master in its severity; a father who must be loved with dutiful affection, a master who must needs be feared; be loved, because He prefers mercy to sacrifice; 2864 be feared because He dislikes sin; be loved, because He prefers the sinner’s repentance to his death; 2865 be feared, because He dislikes the sinners who do not repent. Accordingly, the divine law enjoins duties in respect of both these attributes: Thou shalt love God, and, Thou shalt fear God. It proposed one for the obedient man, the other for the transgressor. 2866
Footnotes
307:2857Secundum adversionem.
307:2858Procuratio.
307:2859Sævit.
307:2860Commendari.
307:2861Matt. vii. 13.
308:2862Prospicit.
308:2863De ejusmodi.
308:2864Hos. vi. 6.
308:2865Ezek. xxxiii. 11.
308:2866Matt. xxii. 37 f.
Chapter XIV.—Evil of Two Kinds, Penal and Criminal. It is Not of the Latter Sort that God is the Author, But Only of the Former, Which are Penal, and Included in His Justice.
On all occasions does God meet you: it is He who smites, but also heals; who kills, but also makes alive; who humbles, and yet exalts; who “creates 2867 evil,” but also “makes peace;” 2868 —so that from these very (contrasts of His providence) I may get an answer to the heretics. Behold, they say, how He acknowledges Himself to be the creator of evil in the passage, “It is I who create evil.” They take a word whose one form reduces to confusion and ambiguity two kinds of evils (because both sins and punishments are called evils), and will have Him in every passage to be understood as the creator of all evil things, in order that He may be designated the author of evil. We, on the contrary, distinguish between the two meanings of the word in question, and, by separating evils of sin from penal evils, mala culpæ from mala pœnæ, confine to each of the two classes its own author,—the devil as the author of the sinful evils (culpæ), and God as the creator of penal evils (pœnæ); so that the one class shall be accounted as morally bad, and the other be classed as the operations of justice passing penal sentences against the evils of sin. Of the latter class of evils which are compatible with justice, God is therefore avowedly the creator. They are, no doubt, evil to those by whom they are endured, but still on their own account good, as being just and defensive of good and hostile to sin. In this respect they are, moreover, worthy of God. Else prove them to be unjust, in order to show them deserving of a place in the sinful class, that is to say, evils of injustice; because if they turn out to belong to justice, they will be no longer evil things, but good—evil only to the bad, by whom even directly good things are condemned as evil. In this case, you must decide that man, although the wilful contemner of the divine law, unjustly bore the doom which he would like to have escaped; that the wickedness of those days was unjustly smitten by the deluge, afterwards by the fire (of Sodom); that Egypt, although most depraved and superstitious, and, worse still, the harasser of its guest-population, 2869 was unjustly stricken with the chastisement of its ten plagues. God hardens the heart of Pharaoh. He deserved, however, to be influenced 2870 to his destruction, who had already denied God, already in his pride so often rejected His ambassadors, accumulated heavy burdens on His people, and (to sum up all) as an Egyptian, had long been guilty before God of Gentile idolatry, worshipping the ibis and the crocodile in preference to the living God. Even His own people did God visit in their ingratitude. 2871 Against young lads, too, did He send forth bears, for their irreverence to the prophet. 2872
Footnotes
308:2867Condens.
308:2868See Isa. xlv. 7.
308:2869Hospitis populi conflictatricem.
308:2870Subministrari. In Apol. ii., the verb ministrare is used to indicate Satan’s power in influencing men. [The translator here corrects his own word seduced and I have substituted his better word influenced. The Lord gave him over to Satan’s influence.]
308:2871Num. 11:0, Num. 21:0.
309:28722 Kings 2:23, 24. [See notes 4, 5, 9, following.]
Chapter XV.—The Severity of God Compatible with Reason and Justice. When Inflicted, Not Meant to Be Arbitrary, But Remedial.
Consider well, 2873 then, before all things the justice of the Judge; and if its purpose 2874 be clear, then the severity thereof, and the operations of the severity in its course, will appear compatible with reason and justice. Now, that we may not linger too long on the point, (I would challenge you to) assert the other reasons also, that you may condemn the Judge’s sentences; extenuate the delinquencies of the sinner, that you may blame his judicial conviction. Never mind censuring the Judge; rather prove Him to be an unjust one. Well, then, even though 2875 He required the sins of the fathers at the hands of the children, the hardness of the people made such remedial measures necessary 2876 for them, in order that, having their posterity in view, they might obey the divine law. For who is there that feels not a greater care for his children than for himself? Again, if the blessing of the fathers was destined likewise for their offspring, previous to 2877 any merit on the part of these, why might not the guilt of the fathers also redound to their children? As was the grace, so was the offence; so that the grace and the offence equally ran down through the whole race, with the reservation, indeed, of that subsequent ordinance by which it became possible to refrain from saying, that “the fathers had eaten a sour grape, and the children’s teeth were set on edge:” 2878 in other words, that the father should not bear the iniquity of the son, nor the son the iniquity of the father, but that every man should be chargeable with his own sin; so that the harshness of the law having been reduced 2879 after the hardness of the people, justice was no longer to judge the race, but individuals. If, however, you accept the gospel of truth, you will discover on whom recoils the sentence of the Judge, when requiting on sons the sins of their fathers, even on those who had been (hardened enough) to imprecate spontaneously on themselves this condemnation: “His blood be on us, and on our children.” 2880 This, therefore, the providence of God has ordered throughout its course, 2881 even as it had heard it.
Footnotes
309:2873Dispice.
309:2874Ratio.
309:2875Nam et si.
309:2876Compulerat.
309:2877Sine adhuc.
309:2878Jer. xxxi. 29.
309:2879Edomita, cf. chap. xix. sub init. and xxix.
309:2880Matt. xxvii. 25.
309:2881Omnis providentia.
Chapter XVI.—To the Severity of God There Belong Accessory Qualities, Compatible with Justice. If Human Passions are Predicated of God, They Must Not Be Measured on the Scale of Human Imperfection.
Even His severity then is good, because just: when the judge is good, that is just. Other qualities likewise are good, by means of which the good work of a good severity runs out its course, whether wrath, or jealousy, 2882 or sternness. 2883 For all these are as indispensable 2884 to severity as severity is to justice. The shamelessness of an age, which ought to have been reverent, had to be avenged. Accordingly, qualities which pertain to the judge, when they are actually free from blame, as the judge himself is, will never be able to be charged upon him as a fault. 2885 What would be said, if, when you thought the doctor necessary, you were to find fault with his instruments, because they cut, or cauterize, or amputate, or tighten; whereas there could be no doctor of any value without his professional tools? Censure, if you please, the practitioner who cuts badly, amputates clumsily, is rash in his cautery; and even blame his implements as rough tools of his art. Your conduct is equally unreasonable, 2886 when you allow indeed that God is a judge, but at the same time destroy those operations and dispositions by which He discharges His judicial functions. We are taught 2887 God by the prophets, and by Christ, not by the philosophers nor by Epicurus. We who believe that God really lived on earth, and took upon Him the low estate of human form, 2888 for the purpose of man’s salvation, are very far from thinking as those do who refuse to believe that God cares for 2889 anything. Whence has found its way to the heretics an argument of this kind: If God is angry, and jealous, and roused, and grieved, He must therefore be corrupted, and must therefore die. Fortunately, however, it is a part of the creed of Christians even to believe that God did die, 2890 and yet that He is alive for evermore. Superlative is their folly, who prejudge divine things from human; so that, because in man’s corrupt condition there are found passions of this description, therefore there must be deemed to exist in God also sensations 2891 of the same kind. Discriminate between the natures, and assign to them their respective senses, which are as diverse as their natures require, although they seem to have a community of designations. We read, indeed, of God’s right hand, and eyes, and feet: these must not, however, be compared with those of human beings, because they are associated in one and the same name. Now, as great as shall be the difference between the divine and the human body, although their members pass under identical names, so great will also be the diversity between the divine and the human soul, notwithstanding that their sensations are designated by the same names. These sensations in the human being are rendered just as corrupt by the corruptibility of man’s substance, as in God they are rendered incorruptible by the incorruption of the divine essence. Do you really believe the Creator to be God? By all means, is your reply. How then do you suppose that in God there is anything human, and not that all is divine? Him whom you do not deny to be God, you confess to be not human; because, when you confess Him to be God, you have, in fact, already determined that He is undoubtedly diverse from every sort of human conditions. Furthermore, although you allow, with others, 2892 that man was inbreathed by God into a living soul, not God by man, it is yet palpably absurd of you to be placing human characteristics in God rather than divine ones in man, and clothing God in the likeness of man, instead of man in the image of God. And this, therefore, is to be deemed the likeness of God in man, that the human soul have the same emotions and sensations as God, although they are not of the same kind; differing as they do both in their conditions and their issues according to their nature. Then, again, with respect to the opposite sensations,—I mean meekness, patience, mercy, and the very parent of them all, goodness,—why do you form your opinion of 2893 the divine displays of these (from the human qualities)? For we indeed do not possess them in perfection, because it is God alone who is perfect. So also in regard to those others,—namely, anger and irritation, we are not affected by them in so happy a manner, because God alone is truly happy, by reason of His property of incorruptibility. Angry He will possibly be, but not irritated, nor dangerously tempted; 2894 He will be moved, but not subverted. 2895 All appliances He must needs use, because of all contingencies; as many sensations as there are causes: anger because of the wicked, and indignation because of the ungrateful, and jealousy because of the proud, and whatsoever else is a hinderance to the evil. So, again, mercy on account of the erring, and patience on account of the impenitent, and pre-eminent resources 2896 on account of the meritorious, and whatsoever is necessary to the good. All these affections He is moved by in that peculiar manner of His own, in which it is profoundly fit 2897 that He should be affected; and it is owing to Him that man is also similarly affected in a way which is equally his own.
Footnotes
309:2882Æmulatio.
309:2883Sævitia.
309:2884Debita.
309:2885Exprobrari.
309:2886Proinde est enim.
309:2887Erudimur.
309:2888Habitus.
309:2889Curare.
309:2890[See Vol. II. p. 71 (this series), for an early example of this Communicatio idiomatum.]
310:2891Status.
310:2892Pariter.
310:2893Præsumitis. [So of generation, Sonship, etc.]
310:2894Periclitabitur.
310:2895Evertetur.
310:2896Præstantiam, “Qua scilicet præstat præmia vel supplicia” (Rigalt.).
310:2897Condecet.
Chapter XVII.—Trace God’s Government in History and in His Precepts, and You Will Find It Full of His Goodness.
These considerations show that the entire order of God as Judge is an operative one, and (that I may express myself in worthier words) protective of His Catholic 2898 and supreme goodness, which, removed as it is from judiciary emotions, and pure in its own condition, the Marcionites refuse to acknowledge to be in one and the same Deity, “raining on the just and on the unjust, and making His sun to rise on the evil and on the good,” 2899 —a bounty which no other god at all exercises. It is true that Marcion has been bold enough to erase from the gospel this testimony of Christ to the Creator; but yet the world itself is inscribed with the goodness of its Maker, and the inscription is read by each man’s conscience. Nay, this very long-suffering of the Creator will tend to the condemnation of Marcion; that patience, (I mean,) which waits for the sinner’s repentance rather than his death, which prefers mercy to sacrifice, 2900 averting from the Ninevites the ruin which had been already denounced against them, 2901 and vouchsafing to Hezekiah’s tears an extension of his life, 2902 and restoring his kingly state to the monarch of Babylon after his complete repentance; 2903 that mercy, too, which conceded to the devotion of the people the son of Saul when about to die, 2904 and gave free forgiveness to David on his confessing his sins against the house of Uriah; 2905 which also restored the house of Israel as often as it condemned it, and addressed to it consolation no less frequently than reproof. Do not therefore look at God simply as Judge, but turn your attention also to examples of His conduct as the Most Good. 2906 Noting Him, as you do, when He takes vengeance, consider Him likewise when He shows mercy. 2907 In the scale, against His severity place His gentleness. When you shall have discovered both qualities to co-exist in the Creator, you will find in Him that very circumstance which induces you to think there is another God. Lastly, come and examine into His doctrine, discipline, precepts, and counsels. You will perhaps say that there are equally good prescriptions in human laws. But Moses and God existed before all your Lycurguses and Solons. There is not one after-age 2908 which does not take from primitive sources. At any rate, my Creator did not learn from your God to issue such commandments as: Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness; thou shalt not covet what is thy neighbour’s; honour thy father and thy mother; and, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. To these prime counsels of innocence, chastity, and justice, and piety, are also added prescriptions of humanity, as when every seventh year slaves are released for liberty; 2909 when at the same period the land is spared from tillage; a place is also granted to the needy; and from the treading ox’s mouth the muzzle is removed, for the enjoyment of the fruit of his labour before him, in order that kindness first shown in the case of animals might be raised from such rudiments 2910 to the refreshment 2911 of men.
Footnotes
310:2898Catholic, because diffused throughout creation (Pamelius).
310:2899Matt. v. 45. T. predicts this (by the word pluentem) strictly of the “goodness” of God, the quam.
310:2900Hos. vi. 6.
310:2901Jonah iii. 10.
310:29022 Kings 20:0, 2 Kings 1:0.
310:2903Dan. iv. 33.
310:29041 Sam. xiv. 45.
311:29052 Sam. xii. 13.
311:2906Optimi.
311:2907Indulget.
311:2908Posteritas.
311:2909Lev. xxv. 4, etc.
311:2910Erudiretur.
311:2911Refrigeria. [1 Cor. ix. 10.]
Chapter XVIII.—Some of God’s Laws Defended as Good, Which the Marcionites Impeached, Such as the Lex Talionis. Useful Purposes in a Social and Moral Point of View of This, and Sundry Other Enactments.
But what parts of the law can I defend as good with a greater confidence than those which heresy has shown such a longing for?—as the statute of retaliation, requiring eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and stripe for stripe. 2912 Now there is not here any smack of a permission to mutual injury; but rather, on the whole, a provision for restraining violence. To a people which was very obdurate, and wanting in faith towards God, it might seem tedious, and even incredible, to expect from God that vengeance which was subsequently to be declared by the prophet: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” 2913 Therefore, in the meanwhile, the commission of wrong was to be checked 2914 by the fear of a retribution immediately to happen; and so the permission of this retribution was to be the prohibition of provocation, that a stop might thus be put to all hot-blooded 2915 injury, whilst by the permission of the second the first is prevented by fear, and by this deterring of the first the second fails to be committed. By the same law another result is also obtained, 2916 even the more ready kindling of the fear of retaliation by reason of the very savour of passion which is in it. There is no more bitter thing, than to endure the very suffering which you have inflicted upon others. When, again, the law took somewhat away from men’s food, by pronouncing unclean certain animals which were once blessed, you should understand this to be a measure for encouraging continence, and recognise in it a bridle imposed on that appetite which, while eating angels’ food, craved after the cucumbers and melons of the Egyptians. Recognise also therein a precaution against those companions of the appetite, even lust and luxury, which are usually chilled by the chastening of the appetite. 2917 For “the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.” 2918 Furthermore, that an eager wish for money might be restrained, so far as it is caused by the need of food, the desire for costly meat and drink was taken out of their power. Lastly, in order that man might be more readily educated by God for fasting, he was accustomed to such articles of food as were neither plentiful nor sumptuous, and not likely to pamper the appetite of the luxurious. Of course the Creator deserved all the greater blame, because it was from His own people that He took away food, rather than from the more ungrateful Marcionites. As for the burdensome sacrifices also, and the troublesome scrupulousness of their ceremonies 2919 and oblations, no one should blame them, as if God specially required them for Himself: for He plainly asks, “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?” and, “Who hath required them at your hand?” 2920 But he should see herein a careful provision 2921 on God’s part, which showed His wish to bind to His own religion a people who were prone to idolatry and transgression by that kind of services wherein consisted the superstition of that period; that He might call them away therefrom, while requesting it to be performed to Himself, as if He desired that no sin should be committed in making idols.
Footnotes
311:2912Ex. xxi. 24.
311:2913Deut. 32:35, Rom. 12:19.
311:2914Repastinaretur.
311:2915Æstuata.
311:2916Qua et alias.
311:2917Ventris.
311:2918Ex. xxxii. 6.
311:2919Operationes.
312:2920Isa. 1:11, 12.
312:2921Industriam.
Chapter XIX.—The Minute Prescriptions of the Law Meant to Keep the People Dependent on God. The Prophets Sent by God in Pursuance of His Goodness. Many Beautiful Passages from Them Quoted in Illustration of This Attribute.
But even in the common transactions of life, and of human intercourse at home and in public, even to the care of the smallest vessels, He in every possible manner made distinct arrangement; in order that, when they everywhere encountered these legal instructions, they might not be at any moment out of the sight of God. For what could better tend to make a man happy, than having “his delight in the law of the Lord?” “In that law would he meditate day and night.” 2922 It was not in severity that its Author promulgated this law, but in the interest of the highest benevolence, which rather aimed at subduing 2923 the nation’s hardness of heart, and by laborious services hewing out a fealty which was (as yet) untried in obedience: for I purposely abstain from touching on the mysterious senses of the law, considered in its spiritual and prophetic relation, and as abounding in types of almost every variety and sort. It is enough at present, that it simply bound a man to God, so that no one ought to find fault with it, except him who does not choose to serve God. To help forward this beneficent, not onerous, purpose of the law, the prophets were also ordained by the self-same goodness of God, teaching precepts worthy of God, how that men should “cease to do evil, learn to do well, seek judgment, judge the fatherless, 2924 and plead for the widow:” 2925 be fond of the divine expostulations: 2926 avoid contact with the wicked: 2927 “let the oppressed go free:” 2928 dismiss the unjust sentence, 2929 “deal their bread to the hungry; bring the outcast into their house; cover the naked, when they see him; nor hide themselves from their own flesh and kin:” 2930 “keep their tongue from evil, and their lips from speaking guile: depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it:” 2931 be angry, and sin not; that is, not persevere in anger, or be enraged: 2932 “walk not in the counsel of the ungodly; nor stand in the way of sinners; nor sit in the seat of the scornful.” 2933 Where then? “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity;” 2934 meditating (as they do) day and night in the law of the Lord, because “it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man; better to hope in the Lord than in man.” 2935 For what recompense shall man receive from God? “He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.” 2936 “He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, who hath not taken God’s name in vain, nor sworn deceitfully to his neighbour, he shall receive blessing from the Lord, and mercy from the God of his salvation.” 2937 “For the eyes of the Lord are upon them that fear Him, upon them that hope in His mercy, to deliver their souls from death,” even eternal death, “and to nourish them in their hunger,” that is, after eternal life. 2938 “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth them out of them all.” 2939 “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” 2940 “The Lord keepeth all their bones; not one of them shall be broken.” 2941 The Lord will redeem the souls of His servants. 2942 We have adduced these few quotations from a mass of the Creator’s Scriptures; and no more, I suppose, are wanted to prove Him to be a most good God, for they sufficiently indicate both the precepts of His goodness and the first-fruits 2943 thereof.
Footnotes
312:2922Ps. i. 2.
312:2923Edomantis, cf. chap. xv. sub fin. and xxix.
312:2924Pupillo.
312:2925Isa. 1:16, 17.
312:2926Quæstiones, alluding to Isa. i. 18: δεῦτε καὶ διαλεχθῶμεν, λέγει Κύριος.
312:2927Alluding to Isa. lviii. 6: “Loose the bands of wickedness.”
312:2928Isa. lviii. 6.
312:2929A lax quotation, perhaps, of the next clause in the same verse: “Break every yoke.”
312:2930Isa. lviii. 7, slightly changed from the second to the third person.
312:2931Ps. 34:13, 14.
312:2932Comp. Ps. iv. 4.
312:2933Ps. i. 1.
312:2934Ps. cxxxiii. 1.
312:2935Ps. cxviii. 4.
312:2936Ps. i. 3.
312:2937Ps. 24:4, 5. He has slightly misquoted the passage.
312:2938Ps. 33:18, 19, slightly altered.
312:2939Ps. xxxiv. 19.
312:2940Ps. cxvi. 15.
312:2941Ps. xxxiv. 20, modified.
312:2942Ps. xxxiv. 22.
312:2943Præmissa.
Chapter XX.—The Marcionites Charged God with Having Instigated the Hebrews to Spoil the Egyptians. Defence of the Divine Dispensation in that Matter.
But these “saucy cuttles” 2944 (of heretics) under the figure of whom the law about things to be eaten 2945 prohibited this very kind of piscatory aliment, as soon as they find themselves confuted, eject the black venom of their blasphemy, and so spread about in all directions the object which (as is now plain) they severally have in view, when they put forth such assertions and protestations as shall obscure and tarnish the rekindled light 2946 of the Creator’s bounty. We will, however, follow their wicked design, even through these black clouds, and drag to light their tricks of dark calumny, laying to the Creator’s charge with especial emphasis the fraud and theft of gold and silver which the Hebrews were commanded by Him to practise against the Egyptians. Come, unhappy heretic, I cite even you as a witness; first look at the case of the two nations, and then you will form a judgment of the Author of the command. The Egyptians put in a claim on the Hebrews for these gold and silver vessels. 2947 The Hebrews assert a counter claim, alleging that by the bond 2948 of their respective fathers, attested by the written engagement of both parties, there were due to them the arrears of that laborious slavery of theirs, for the bricks they had so painfully made, and the cities and palaces 2949 which they had built. What shall be your verdict, you discoverer 2950 of the most good God? That the Hebrews must admit the fraud, or the Egyptians the compensation? For they maintain that thus has the question been settled by the advocates on both sides, 2951 of the Egyptians demanding their vessels, and the Hebrews claiming the requital of their labours. But for all they say, 2952 the Egyptians justly renounced their restitution-claim then and there; while the Hebrews to this day, in spite of the Marcionites, re-assert their demand for even greater damages, 2953 insisting that, however large was their loan of the gold and silver, it would not be compensation enough, even if the labour of six hundred thousand men should be valued at only “a farthing” 2954 a day a piece. Which, however, were the more in number—those who claimed the vessel, or those who dwelt in the palaces and cities? Which, too, the greater—the grievance of the Egyptians against the Hebrews, or “the favour” 2955 which they displayed towards them? Were free men reduced to servile labour, in order that the Hebrews might simply proceed against the Egyptians by action at law for injuries; or in order that their officers might on their benches sit and exhibit their backs and shoulders shamefully mangled by the fierce application of the scourge? It was not by a few plates and cup—in all cases the property, no doubt, of still fewer rich men—that any one would pronounce that compensation should have been awarded to the Hebrews, but both by all the resources of these and by the contributions of all the people. 2956 If, therefore, the case of the Hebrews be a good one, the Creator’s case must likewise be a good one; that is to say, his command, when He both made the Egyptians unconsciously grateful, and also gave His own people their discharge in full 2957 at the time of their migration by the scanty comfort of a tacit requital of their long servitude. It was plainly less than their due which He commanded to be exacted. The Egyptians ought to have given back their men-children 2958 also to the Hebrews.
Footnotes
312:2944Sepiæ isti. Pliny, in his Nat. Hist. ix. 29, says: “The males of the cuttles kind are spotted with sundry colours more dark and blackish, yes, and more firme and steady, than the female. If the female be smitted with the trout-speare, they will come to succour her; but she again is not so kind to them: for if the male be stricken, she will not stand to it, but runs away. But both of them, if they perceive that they be taken in such streights that they cannot escape, shed from them a certain black humor like to ink; and when the water therewith is troubled and made duskish, therein they hide themselves, and are no more seen” (Holland’s Translation, p. 250). Our epithet “saucy cuttle” comes from Shakespeare, 2 Henry iv 2, 4, where, however, the word seems employed in a different sense.
313:2945Deut. xiv.
313:2946Relucentem, “rekindled” by the confutation.
313:2947Vasa = the jewels and the raiment mentioned in Ex. iii. 22.
313:2948Nomine. [Here our author exhibits his tact as a jurisconsult.]
313:2949Villis.
313:2950Elector.
313:2951For a discussion of the spoiling of the Egyptians by the Israelites, the reader is referred to Calmet’s Commentary, on Ex. iii. 22, where he adduces, besides this passage of Tertullian, the opinions of Irenæus, adv. Hæres. iv. 49; Augustine, contra Faust. ii. 71; Theodoret, Quæst. in Exod. xxiii.; Clement of Alex. Stromat. i. 1; of Philo, De Vita Moysis, i.; Josephus, Antiqq. ii. 8, who says that “the Egyptians freely gave all to the Israelites;” of Melchior Canus, Loc. Theoll. i. 4. He also refers to the book of Wisdom, x. 17–20. These all substantially agree with our author. See also a full discussion in Selden, De Jure Nat. et Gentium, vii. 8, who quotes from the Gemara, Sanhedrin, c. ii. f. 91a; and Bereshith Rabba, par. 61 f., 68, col. 2, where such a tribunal as Tertullian refers to is mentioned as convened by Alexander the Great, who, after hearing the pleadings, gave his assent to the claims of the advocates of Israel.
313:2952Tamen.
313:2953Amplius.
313:2954Singulis nummis. [Clem. Alex. Strom. i. 23. Vol. II., p. 336, supra.]
313:2955Gratia Hebræorum, either a reference to Ex. iii. 21, or meaning, perhaps, “the unpaid services of the Hebrews.”
313:2956Popularium omnium.
313:2957Expunxit.
313:2958Exod. 1:18, 22. [An ingenious and eloquent defence.]
Chapter XXI.—The Law of the Sabbath-Day Explained. The Eight Days’ Procession Around Jericho. The Gathering of Sticks a Violation.
Similarly on other points also, you reproach Him with fickleness and instability for contradictions in His commandments, such as that He forbade work to be done on Sabbath-days, and yet at the siege of Jericho ordered the ark to be carried round the walls during eight days; in other words, of course, actually on a Sabbath. You do not, however, consider the law of the Sabbath: they are human works, not divine, which it prohibits. 2959 For it says, “Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work.” What work? Of course your own. The conclusion is, that from the Sabbath-day He removes those works which He had before enjoined for the six days, that is, your own works; in other words, human works of daily life. Now, the carrying around of the ark is evidently not an ordinary daily duty, nor yet a human one; but a rare and a sacred work, and, as being then ordered by the direct precept of God, a divine one. And I might fully explain what this signified, were it not a tedious process to open out the forms 2960 of all the Creator’s proofs, which you would, moreover, probably refuse to allow. It is more to the point, if you be confuted on plain matters 2961 by the simplicity of truth rather than curious reasoning. Thus, in the present instance, there is a clear distinction respecting the Sabbath’s prohibition of human labours, not divine ones. Accordingly, the man who went and gathered sticks on the Sabbath-day was punished with death. For it was his own work which he did; and this 2962 the law forbade. They, however, who on the Sabbath carried the ark round Jericho, did it with impunity. For it was not their own work, but God’s, which they executed, and that too, from His express commandment.
Footnotes
313:2959Exod. 20:9, 10.
314:2960Figuras.
314:2961De absolutis.
314:2962[He was not punished for gathering sticks, but for setting an example of contempt of the Divine Law.]
Chapter XXII.—The Brazen Serpent and the Golden Cherubim Were Not Violations of the Second Commandment. Their Meaning.
Likewise, when forbidding the similitude to be made of all things which are in heaven, and in earth, and in the waters, He declared also the reasons, as being prohibitory of all material exhibition 2963 of a latent 2964 idolatry. For He adds: “Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor serve them.” The form, however, of the brazen serpent which the Lord afterwards commanded Moses to make, afforded no pretext 2965 for idolatry, but was meant for the cure of those who were plagued with the fiery serpents. 2966 I say nothing of what was figured by this cure. 2967 Thus, too, the golden Cherubim and Seraphim were purely an ornament in the figured fashion 2968 of the ark; adapted to ornamentation for reasons totally remote from all condition of idolatry, on account of which the making a likeness is prohibited; and they are evidently not at variance with 2969 this law of prohibition, because they are not found in that form 2970 of similitude, in reference to which the prohibition is given. We have spoken 2971 of the rational institution of the sacrifices, as calling off their homage from idols to God; and if He afterwards rejected this homage, saying, “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?” 2972 —He meant nothing else than this to be understood, that He had never really required such homage for Himself. For He says, “I will not eat the flesh of bulls;” 2973 and in another passage: “The everlasting God shall neither hunger nor thirst.” 2974 Although He had respect to the offerings of Abel, and smelled a sweet savour from the holocaust of Noah, yet what pleasure could He receive from the flesh of sheep, or the odour of burning victims? And yet the simple and God-fearing mind of those who offered what they were receiving from God, both in the way of food and of a sweet smell, was favourably accepted before God, in the sense of respectful homage 2975 to God, who did not so much want what was offered, as that which prompted the offering. Suppose now, that some dependant were to offer to a rich man or a king, who was in want of nothing, some very insignificant gift, will the amount and quality of the gift bring dishonour 2976 to the rich man and the king; or will the consideration 2977 of the homage give them pleasure? Were, however, the dependant, either of his own accord or even in compliance with a command, to present to him gifts suitably to his rank, and were he to observe the solemnities due to a king, only without faith and purity of heart, and without any readiness for other acts of obedience, will not that king or rich man consequently exclaim: “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? I am full of your solemnities, your feast-days, and your Sabbaths.” 2978 By calling them yours, as having been performed 2979 after the giver’s own will, and not according to the religion of God (since he displayed them as his own, and not as God’s), the Almighty in this passage, demonstrated how suitable to the conditions of the case, and how reasonable, was His rejection of those very offerings which He had commanded to be made to Him.
Footnotes
314:2963Substantiam.
314:2964Cæcæ.
314:2965Titulum. [See Vol. II. p. 477, this series.]
314:2966Num. 21:8, 9.
314:2967See John iii. 14.
314:2968Exemplum.
314:2969Refragari.
314:2970Statu.
314:2971In chap. xviii. towards the end. [p. 311, supra.]
314:2972Isa. i. 11.
314:2973Ps. l. 13.
314:2974An inexact quotation of Isa. 40:0, Isa. 28:0.
314:2975Honorem.
314:2976Infuscabit.
314:2977Titulus.
314:2978See Isa. i. 11-14.
314:2979Fecerat seems the better reading: q.d. “which he had performed,” etc. Oehler reads fecerant.
Chapter XXIII.—God’s Purposes in Election and Rejection of the Same Men, Such as King Saul, Explained, in Answer to the Marcionite Cavil.
Now, although you will have it that He is inconstant 2980 in respect of persons, sometimes disapproving where approbation is deserved; or else wanting in foresight, bestowing approbation on men who ought rather to be reprobated, as if He either censured 2981 His own past judgments, or could not forecast His future ones; yet 2982 nothing is so consistent for even a good judge 2983 as both to reject and to choose on the merits of the present moment. Saul is chosen, 2984 but he is not yet the despiser of the prophet Samuel. 2985 Solomon is rejected; but he is now become a prey to foreign women, and a slave to the idols of Moab and Sidon. What must the Creator do, in order to escape the censure of the Marcionites? Must He prematurely condemn men, who are thus far correct in their conduct, because of future delinquencies? But it is not the mark of a good God to condemn beforehand persons who have not yet deserved condemnation. Must He then refuse to eject sinners, on account of their previous good deeds? But it is not the characteristic of a just judge to forgive sins in consideration of former virtues which are no longer practised. Now, who is so faultless among men, that God could always have him in His choice, and never be able to reject him? Or who, on the other hand, is so void of any good work, that God could reject him for ever, and never be able to choose him? Show me, then, the man who is always good, and he will not be rejected; show me, too, him who is always evil, and he will never be chosen. Should, however, the same man, being found on different occasions in the pursuit of both (good and evil) be recompensed 2986 in both directions by God, who is both a good and judicial Being, He does not change His judgments through inconstancy or want of foresight, but dispenses reward according to the deserts of each case with a most unwavering and provident decision. 2987
Footnotes
315:2980Levem.
315:2981Damnet.
315:2982Atquin.
315:2983Or, “for one who is a good man and a judge.”
315:29841 Sam. ix.
315:29851 Sam. xiii.
315:2986Dispungetur.
315:2987Censura.
Chapter XXIV.—Instances of God’s Repentance, and Notably in the Case of the Ninevites, Accounted for and Vindicated.
Furthermore, with respect to the repentance which occurs in His conduct, 2988 you interpret it with similar perverseness just as if it were with fickleness and improvidence that He repented, or on the recollection of some wrong-doing; because He actually said, “It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king,” 2989 very much as if He meant that His repentance savoured of an acknowledgment of some evil work or error. Well, 2990 this is not always implied. For there occurs even in good works a confession of repentance, as a reproach and condemnation of the man who has proved himself unthankful for a benefit. For instance, in this case of Saul, the Creator, who had made no mistake in selecting him for the kingdom, and endowing him with His Holy Spirit, makes a statement respecting the goodliness of his person, how that He had most fitly chosen him as being at that moment the choicest man, so that (as He says) there was not his fellow among the children of Israel. 2991 Neither was He ignorant how he would afterwards turn out. For no one would bear you out in imputing lack of foresight to that God whom, since you do not deny Him to be divine, you allow to be also foreseeing; for this proper attribute of divinity exists in Him. However, He did, as I have said, burden 2992 the guilt of Saul with the confession of His own repentance; but as there is an absence of all error and wrong in His choice of Saul, it follows that this repentance is to be understood as upbraiding another 2993 rather than as self-incriminating. 2994 Look here then, say you: I discover a self-incriminating case in the matter of the Ninevites, when the book of Jonah declares, “And God repented of the evil that He had said that He would do unto them; and He did it not.” 2995 In accordance with which Jonah himself says unto the Lord, “Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish; for I knew that Thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest Thee of the evil.” 2996 It is well, therefore, that he premised the attribute 2997 of the most good God as most patient over the wicked, and most abundant in mercy and kindness over such as acknowledged and bewailed their sins, as the Ninevites were then doing. For if He who has this attribute is the Most Good, you will have first to relinquish that position of yours, that the very contact with 2998 evil is incompatible with such a Being, that is, with the most good God. And because Marcion, too, maintains that a good tree ought not to produce bad fruit; but yet he has mentioned “evil” (in the passage under discussion), which the most good God is incapable of, 2999 is there forthcoming any explanation of these “evils,” which may render them compatible with even the most Good? There is. We say, in short, that evil in the present case 3000 means, not what may be attributed to the Creator’s nature as an evil being, but what may be attributed to His power as a judge. In accordance with which He declared, “I create evil,” 3001 and, “I frame evil against you;” 3002 meaning not to sinful evils, but avenging ones. What sort of stigma 3003 pertains to these, congruous as they are with God’s judicial character, we have sufficiently explained. 3004 Now although these are called “evils,” they are yet not reprehensible in a judge; nor because of this their name do they show that the judge is evil: so in like manner will this particular evil 3005 be understood to be one of this class of judiciary evils, and along with them to be compatible with (God as) a judge. The Greeks also sometimes 3006 use the word “evils” for troubles and injuries (not malignant ones), as in this passage of yours 3007 is also meant. Therefore, if the Creator repented of such evil as this, as showing that the creature deserve decondemnation, and ought to be punished for his sin, then, in 3008 the present instance no fault of a criminating nature will be imputed to the Creator, for having deservedly and worthily decreed the destruction of a city so full of iniquity. What therefore He had justly decreed, having no evil purpose in His decree, He decreed from the principle of justice, 3009 not from malevolence. Yet He gave it the name of “evil,” because of the evil and desert involved in the very suffering itself. Then, you will say, if you excuse the evil under name of justice, on the ground that He had justly determined destruction against the people of Nineveh, He must even on this argument be blameworthy, for having repented of an act of justice, which surely should not be repented of. Certainly not, 3010 my reply is; God will never repent of an act of justice. And it now remains that we should understand what God’s repentance means. For although man repents most frequently on the recollection of a sin, and occasionally even from the unpleasantness 3011 of some good action, this is never the case with God. For, inasmuch as God neither commits sin nor condemns a good action, in so far is there no room in Him for repentance of either a good or an evil deed. Now this point is determined for you even in the scripture which we have quoted. Samuel says to Saul, “The Lord hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbour of thine that is better than thou;” 3012 and into two parts shall Israel be divided: “for He will not turn Himself, nor repent; for He does not repent as a man does.” 3013 According, therefore, to this definition, the divine repentance takes in all cases a different form from that of man, in that it is never regarded as the result of improvidence or of fickleness, or of any condemnation of a good or an evil work. What, then, will be the mode of God’s repentance? It is already quite clear, 3014 if you avoid referring it to human conditions. For it will have no other meaning than a simple change of a prior purpose; and this is admissible without any blame even in a man, much more 3015 in God, whose every purpose is faultless. Now in Greek the word for repentance (μετάνοια) is formed, not from the confession of a sin, but from a change of mind, which in God we have shown to be regulated by the occurrence of varying circumstances.
Footnotes
315:2988Apud illum.
315:29891 Sam. xv. 11.
315:2990Porro.
315:29911 Sam. ix. 2.
315:2992Onerabat.
315:2993Invidiosam.
315:2994Criminosam.
315:2995Jonah iii. 10.
315:2996Jonah iv. 2.
315:2997Titulum.
315:2998Malitiæ concursum.
316:2999Non capit.
316:3000Nunc.
316:3001Isa. xlv. 7.
316:3002Jer. xviii. 11.
316:3003Infamiam.
316:3004See above, chap. xiv. [p. 308, supra.]
316:3005Malitia, i.e., “the evil” mentioned in the cited Jonah iii. 10.
316:3006Thus, according to St. Jerome, in Matt. vi. 34, κακία means κάκωσις. “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof”—the occurent adversities.
316:3007In isto articulo.
316:3008Atqui hic.
316:3009Or, “in his capacity as Judge,” ex justitia.
316:3010Immo.
316:3011Ingratia.
316:30121 Sam. xv. 28.
316:30131 Sam. 15.29, but inexactly quoted.
316:3014Relucet.
316:3015Nedum.
Chapter XXV.—God’s Dealings with Adam at the Fall, and with Cain After His Crime, Admirably Explained and Defended.
It is now high time that I should, in order to meet all 3016 objections of this kind, proceed to the explanation and clearing up 3017 of the other trifles, 3018 weak points, and inconsistencies, as you deemed them. God calls out to Adam, 3019 Where art thou? as if ignorant where he was; and when he alleged that the shame of his nakedness was the cause (of his hiding himself), He inquired whether he had eaten of the tree, as if He were in doubt. By no means; 3020 God was neither uncertain about the commission of the sin, nor ignorant of Adam’s whereabouts. It was certainly proper to summon the offender, who was concealing himself from the consciousness of his sin, and to bring him forth into the presence of his Lord, not merely by the calling out of his name, but with a home-thrust blow 3021 at the sin which he had at that moment committed. For the question ought not to be read in a merely interrogative tone, Where art thou, Adam? but with an impressive and earnest voice, and with an air of imputation, Oh, Adam, where art thou?—as much as to intimate: thou art no longer here, thou art in perdition—so that the voice is the utterance of One who is at once rebuking and sorrowing. 3022 But of course some part of paradise had escaped the eye of Him who holds the universe in His hand as if it were a bird’s nest, and to whom heaven is a throne and earth a footstool; so that He could not see, before He summoned him forth, where Adam was, both while lurking and when eating of the forbidden fruit! The wolf or the paltry thief escapes not the notice of the keeper of your vineyard or your garden! And God, I suppose, with His keener vision, 3023 from on high was unable to miss the sight of 3024 aught which lay beneath Him! Foolish heretic, who treat with scorn 3025 so fine an argument of God’s greatness and man’s instruction! God put the question with an appearance of uncertainty, in order that even here He might prove man to be the subject of a free will in the alternative of either a denial or a confession, and give to him the opportunity of freely acknowledging his transgression, and, so far, 3026 of lightening it. 3027 In like manner He inquires of Cain where his brother was, just as if He had not yet heard the blood of Abel crying from the ground, in order that he too might have the opportunity from the same power of the will of spontaneously denying, and to this degree aggravating, his crime; and that thus there might be supplied to us examples of confessing sins rather than of denying them: so that even then was initiated the evangelic doctrine, “By thy words 3028 thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” 3029 Now, although Adam was by reason of his condition under law 3030 subject to death, yet was hope preserved to him by the Lord’s saying, “Behold, Adam is become as one of us;” 3031 that is, in consequence of the future taking of the man into the divine nature. Then what follows? “And now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, (and eat), and live for ever.” Inserting thus the particle of present time, “And now,” He shows that He had made for a time, and at present, a prolongation of man’s life. Therefore He did not actually 3032 curse Adam and Eve, for they were candidates for restoration, and they had been relieved 3033 by confession. Cain, however, He not only cursed; but when he wished to atone for his sin by death, He even prohibited his dying, so that he had to bear the load of this prohibition in addition to his crime. This, then, will prove to be the ignorance of our God, which was simulated on this account, that delinquent man should not be unaware of what he ought to do. Coming down to the case of Sodom and Gomorrha, he says: “I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.” 3034 Well, was He in this instance also uncertain through ignorance, and desiring to know? Or was this a necessary tone of utterance, as expressive of a minatory and not a dubious sense, under the colour of an inquiry? If you make merry at God’s “going down,” as if He could not except by the descent have accomplished His judgment, take care that you do not strike your own God with as hard a blow. For He also came down to accomplish what He wished.
Footnotes
316:3016Ut omnia expediam.
316:3017Purgandas.
316:3018Pusillitates.
316:3019Gen. 3:9, 11.
316:3020Immo.
317:3021Sugillatione.
317:3022Dolendi.
317:3023Oculatiorem.
317:3024Præterire.
317:3025Naso.
317:3026Hoc nomine.
317:3027Relevandi.
317:3028Ex ore tuo, “out of thine own mouth.”
317:3029Matt. xii. 37.
317:3030Propter statum legis.
317:3031Gen. 3:22, 2 Pet. 1:4.]
317:3032Ipsum. [Comp. Heb. 9:8, Rev. 22:14.]
317:3033Relevatos.
317:3034Gen. xviii. 21. [Marcion’s god also “comes down.” p. 284, supra.]
Chapter XXVI.—The Oath of God: Its Meaning. Moses, When Deprecating God’s Wrath Against Israel, a Type of Christ.
But God also swears. Well, is it, I wonder, by the God of Marcion? No, no, he says; a much vainer oath—by Himself! 3035 What was He to do, when He knew 3036 of no other God; especially when He was swearing to this very point, that besides himself there was absolutely no God? Is it then of swearing falsely that you convict 3037 Him, or of swearing a vain oath? But it is not possible for him to appear to have sworn falsely, when he was ignorant, as you say he was, that there was another God. For when he swore by that which he knew, he really committed no perjury. But it was not a vain oath for him to swear that there was no other God. It would indeed be a vain oath, if there had been no persons who believed that there were other Gods, like the worshippers of idols then, and the heretics of the present day. Therefore He swears by Himself, in order that you may believe God, even when He swears that there is besides Himself no other God at all. But you have yourself, O Marcion, compelled God to do this. For even so early as then were you foreseen. Hence, if He swears both in His promises and His threatenings, and thus extorts 3038 faith which at first was difficult, nothing is unworthy of God which causes men to believe in God. But (you say) God was even then mean 3039 enough in His very fierceness, when, in His wrath against the people for their consecration of the calf, He makes this request of His servant Moses: “Let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them; and I will make of thee a great nation.” 3040 Accordingly, you maintain that Moses is better than his God, as the deprecator, nay the averter, of His anger. “For,” said he, “Thou shalt not do this; or else destroy me along with them.” 3041 Pitiable are ye also, as well as the people, since you know not Christ, prefigured in the person of Moses as the deprecator of the Father, and the offerer of His own life for the salvation of the people. It is enough, however, that the nation was at the instant really given to Moses. That which he, as a servant, was able to ask of the Lord, the Lord required of Himself. For this purpose did He say to His servant, “Let me alone, that I may consume them,” in order that by his entreaty, and by offering himself, he might hinder 3042 (the threatened judgment), and that you might by such an instance learn how much privilege is vouchsafed 3043 with God to a faithful man and a prophet.
Footnotes
317:3035See Jer. xxii. 5.
317:3036Isa. xliv. 8.
317:3037Deprehendis.
318:3038Extorquens.
318:3039Pusillus.
318:3040Ex. xxxii. 10.
318:3041An allusion to, rather than a quotation of, Ex. xxxii. 32.
318:3042Non sineret.
318:3043Quantum liceat.
Chapter XXVII.—Other Objections Considered. God’s Condescension in the Incarnation. Nothing Derogatory to the Divine Being in This Economy. The Divine Majesty Worthily Sustained by the Almighty Father, Never Visible to Man. Perverseness of the Marcionite Cavils.
And now, that I may briefly pass in review 3044 the other points which you have thus far been engaged in collecting, as mean, weak, and unworthy, for demolishing 3045 the Creator, I will propound them in a simple and definite statement: 3046 that God would have been unable to hold any intercourse with men, if He had not taken on Himself the emotions and affections of man, by means of which He could temper the strength of His majesty, which would no doubt have been incapable of endurance to the moderate capacity of man, by such a humiliation as was indeed degrading 3047 to Himself, but necessary for man, and such as on this very account became worthy of God, because nothing is so worthy of God as the salvation of man. If I were arguing with heathens, I should dwell more at length on this point; although with heretics too the discussion does not stand on very different grounds. Inasmuch as ye yourselves have now come to the belief that God moved about 3048 in the form and all other circumstances of man’s nature, 3049 you will of course no longer require to be convinced that God conformed Himself to humanity, but feel yourselves bound by your own faith. For if the God (in whom ye believe,) even from His higher condition, prostrated the supreme dignity of His majesty to such a lowliness as to undergo death, even the death of the cross, why can you not suppose that some humiliations 3050 are becoming to our God also, only more tolerable than Jewish contumelies, and crosses, 3051 and sepulchres? Are these the humiliations which henceforth are to raise a prejudice against Christ (the subject as He is of human passions 3052 ) being a partaker of that Godhead 3053 against which you make the participation in human qualities a reproach? Now we believe that Christ did ever act in the name of God the Father; that He actually 3054 from the beginning held intercourse with (men); actually 3055 communed with 3056 patriarchs and prophets; was the Son of the Creator; was His Word; whom God made His Son 3057 by emitting Him from His own self, 3058 and thenceforth set Him over every dispensation and (administration of) His will, 3059 making Him a little lower than the angels, as is written in David. 3060 In which lowering of His condition He received from the Father a dispensation in those very respects which you blame as human; from the very beginning learning, 3061 even then, (that state of a) man which He was destined in the end to become. 3062 It is He who descends, He who interrogates, He who demands, He who swears. With regard, however, to the Father, the very gospel which is common to us will testify that He was never visible, according to the word of Christ: “No man knoweth the Father, save the Son.” 3063 For even in the Old Testament He had declared, “No man shall see me, and live.” 3064 He means that the Father is invisible, in whose authority and in whose name was He God who appeared as the Son of God. But with us 3065 Christ is received in the person of Christ, because even in this manner is He our God. Whatever attributes therefore you require as worthy of God, must be found in the Father, who is invisible and unapproachable, and placid, and (so to speak) the God of the philosophers; whereas those qualities which you censure as unworthy must be supposed to be in the Son, who has been seen, and heard, and encountered, the Witness and Servant of the Father, uniting in Himself man and God, God in mighty deeds, in weak ones man, in order that He may give to man as much as He takes from God. What in your esteem is the entire disgrace of my God, is in fact the sacrament of man’s salvation. God held converse with man, that man might learn to act as God. God dealt on equal terms 3066 with man, that man might be able to deal on equal terms with God. God was found little, that man might become very great. You who disdain such a God, I hardly know whether you ex fidebelieve that God was crucified. How great, then, is your perversity in respect of the two characters of the Creator! You designate Him as Judge, and reprobate as cruelty that severity of the Judge which only acts in accord with the merits of cases. You require God to be very good, and yet despise as meanness that gentleness of His which accorded with His kindness, (and) held lowly converse in proportion to the mediocrity of man’s estate. He pleases you not, whether great or little, neither as your judge nor as your friend! What if the same features should be discovered in your God? That He too is a judge, we have already shown in the proper section: 3067 that from being a judge He must needs be severe; and from being severe He must also be cruel, if indeed cruel. 3068
Footnotes
318:3044Absolvam.
318:3045Ad destructionem.
318:3046Ratione.
318:3047Indigna.
318:3048Diversatum.
318:3049Conditionis.
318:3050Pusillitates.
318:3051Patibulis.
318:3052i.e., the sensations of our emotional nature.
318:3053Ejus Dei.
318:3054Ipsum.
318:3055Ipsum.
318:3056Congressum.
318:3057On this mode of the eternal generation of the Son from the Father, as the Λόγος προφορικός, the reader is referred for much patristic information to Bp. Bull’s Defensio Fid. Nic. (trans. in Anglo-Cath. Library by the translator of this work).
318:3058Proferendo ex semet ipso.
318:3059Voluntati.
318:3060Ps. viii. 6.
318:3061Ediscens, “practising” or “rehearsing.”
318:3062This doctrine of theology is more fully expressed by our author in a fine passage in his Treatise against Praxeas, xvi. (Oehler, vol. ii. p. 674), of which the translator gave this version in Bp. Bull’s Def. Nic. Creed, vol. i. p. 18: “The Son hath executed judgment from the beginning, throwing down the haughty tower, and dividing the tongues, punishing the whole world by the violence of waters, raining upon Sodom and Gomorrha fire and brimstone ‘the Lord from the Lord.’ For he it was who at all times came down to hold converse with men, from Adam on to the patriarchs and the prophets, in vision, in dream, in mirror, in dark saying; ever from the beginning laying the foundation of the course (of His dispensations), which He meant to follow out unto the end. Thus was He ever learning (practising or rehearsing); and the God who conversed with men upon earth could be no other than the Word, which was to be made flesh. But He was thus learning (or rehearsing, ediscebat) in order to level for us the way of faith, that we might the more readily believe that the Son of God had come down into the world, if we knew that in times past also something similar had been done.” The original thus opens: “Filius itaque est qui ab initio judicavit.” This the author connects with John 3:35, Matt. 28:18, John 5:22. The “judgment” is dispensational from the first to the last. Every judicial function of God’s providence from Eden to the judgment day is administered by the Son of God. This office of judge has been largely dealt with in its general view by Tertullian, in this book ii. against Marcion (see chap. xi.–xvii.).
319:3063Matt. xi. 27.
319:3064Ex. xxxiii. 20.
319:3065Penes nos. Christians, not Marcionites. [Could our author have regarded himself as formally at war with the church, at this time?]
319:3066Ex æquo agebat.
319:3067In the 1st book, 25th and following chapters.
319:3068Sævum.
Chapter XXVIII.—The Tables Turned Upon Marcion, by Contrasts, in Favour of the True God.
Now, touching the weaknesses and malignities, and the other (alleged), notes (of the Creator), I too shall advance antitheses in rivalry to Marcion’s. If my God knew not of any other superior to Himself, your god also was utterly unaware that there was any beneath himself. It is just what Heraclitus “the obscure” 3069 said; whether it be up or down, 3070 it comes to the same thing. If, indeed, he was not ignorant (of his position), it must have occurred to Him from the beginning. Sin and death, and the author of sin too—the devil—and all the evil which my God permitted to be, this also, did your god permit; for he allowed Him to permit it. Our God changed His purposes; 3071 in like manner yours did also. For he who cast his look so late in the human race, changed that purpose, which for so long a period had refused to cast that look. Our God repented Him of the evil in a given case; so also did yours. For by the fact that he at last had regard to the salvation of man, he showed such a repentance of his previous disregard 3072 as was due for a wrong deed. But neglect of man’s salvation will be accounted a wrong deed, simply because it has been remedied 3073 by his repentance in the conduct of your god. Our God you say commanded a fraudulent act, but in a matter of gold and silver. Now, inasmuch as man is more precious than gold and silver, in so far is your god more fraudulent still, because he robs man of his Lord and Creator. Eye for eye does our God require; but your god does even a greater injury, (in your ideas,) when he prevents an act of retaliation. For what man will not return a blow, without waiting to be struck a second time. 3074 Our God (you say) knows not whom He ought to choose. Nor does your god, for if he had foreknown the issue, he would not have chosen the traitor Judas. If you allege that the Creator practised deception 3075 in any instance, there was a far greater mendacity in your Christ, whose very body was unreal. 3076 Many were consumed by the severity of my God. Those also who were not saved by your god are verily disposed by him to ruin. My God ordered a man to be slain. Your god willed himself to be put to death; not less a homicide against himself than in respect of him by whom he meant to be slain. I will moreover prove to Marcion that they were many who were slain by his god; for he made every one a homicide: in other words, he doomed him to perish, except when people failed in no duty towards Christ. 3077 But the straightforward virtue of truth is contented with few resources. 3078 Many things will be necessary for falsehood.
Footnotes
319:3069Tenebrosus. Cicero, De finibus, ii. says: “Heraclitus qui cognomento Σκοτεινὸς perhibetur, quia de natura nimis obscure memoravit.”
319:3070Sursam et deorsum. An allusion to Heraclitus’ doctrine of constant change, flux and reflux, out of which all things came. Καὶ τὴν μεταβολὴν ὁδὸν ἄνω κάτω, τόν τε κόσμον γίνεσθαι κατὰ ταύτην, κ.τ.λ. “Change is the way up and down; the world comes into being thus,” etc. (Diogenes Laertius, ix. 8).
319:3071Sententias.
319:3072Dissimulationes.
319:3073Non nisi emendata.
319:3074Non repercussus.
320:3075Mentitum.
320:3076Non verum. An allusion to the Docetism of Marcion.
320:3077Nihil deliquit in Christum, that is, Marcion’s Christ.
320:3078Paucis amat.
Chapter XXIX.—Marcion’s Own Antitheses, If Only the Title and Object of the Work Be Excepted, Afford Proofs of the Consistent Attributes of the True God.
But I would have attacked Marcion’s own Antitheses in closer and fuller combat, if a more elaborate demolition of them were required in maintaining for the Creator the character of a good God and a Judge, after 3079 the examples of both points, which we have shown to be so worthy of God. Since, however, these two attributes of goodness and justice do together make up the proper fulness of the Divine Being as omnipotent, I am able to content myself with having now compendiously refuted his Antitheses, which aim at drawing distinctions out of the qualities of the (Creator’s) artifices, 3080 or of His laws, or of His great works; and thus sundering Christ from the Creator, as the most Good from the Judge, as One who is merciful from Him who is ruthless, and One who brings salvation from Him who causes ruin. The truth is, 3081 they 3082 rather unite the two Beings whom they arrange in those diversities (of attribute), which yet are compatible in God. For only take away the title of Marcion’s book, 3083 and the intention and purpose of the work itself, and you could get no better demonstration that the self-same God was both very good and a Judge, inasmuch as these two characters are only competently found in God. Indeed, the very effort which is made in the selected examples to oppose Christ to the Creator, conduces all the more to their union. For so entirely one and the same was the nature of the Divine Beings, the good and the severe, as shown both by the same examples and in similar proofs, that It willed to display Its goodness to those on whom It had first inflicted Its severity. The difference in time was no matter of surprise, when the same God was afterwards merciful in presence of evils which had been subdued, 3084 who had once been so austere whilst they were as yet unsubdued. Thus, by help of the Antitheses, the dispensation of the Creator can be more readily shown to have been reformed by Christ, rather than destroyed; 3085 restored, rather than abolished; 3086 especially as you sever your own god from everything like acrimonious conduct, 3087 even from all rivalry whatsoever with the Creator. Now, since this is the case, how comes it to pass that the Antitheses demonstrate Him to have been the Creator’s rival in every disputed cause? 3088 Well, even here, too, I will allow that in these causes my God has been a jealous God, who has in His own right taken especial care that all things done by Him should be in their beginning of a robuster growth; 3089 and this in the way of a good, because rational 3090 emulation, which tends to maturity. In this sense the world itself will acknowledge His “antitheses,” from the contrariety of its own elements, although it has been regulated with the very highest reason. 3091 Wherefore, most thoughtless Marcion, it was your duty to have shown that one (of the two Gods you teach) was a God of light, and the other a God of darkness; and then you would have found it an easier task to persuade us that one was a God of goodness, the other a God of severity. How ever, the “antithesis” (or variety of administration) will rightly be His property, to whom it actually belongs in (the government of) the world.
Footnotes
320:3079Secundum.
320:3080Ingeniorum.
320:3081Enim.
320:3082i.e., Marcion’s Antitheses.
320:3083Antitheses so called because Marcion in it had set passages out of the O.T. and the N.T. in opposition to each other, intending his readers to infer from the apparent disagreement that the law and the gospel were not from the same author (Bp. Kaye on Tertullian, p. 468).
320:3084Pro rebus edomitis. See chap. xv. and xix., where he refers to the law as the subduing instrument.
320:3085Repercussus: perhaps “refuted.”
320:3086Exclusus.
320:3087Ab omni motu amariore.
320:3088Singulas species, a law term.
320:3089Arbustiores. A figurative word, taken from vines more firmly supported on trees instead of on frames. He has used the word indomitis above to express his meaning.
320:3090Rationali. Compare chap. vi. of this book, where the “ratio,” or purpose of God, is shown to be consistent with His goodness in providing for its highest development in man’s interest.
320:3091Ratione: in reference to God’s ratio or purpose in creation. See chap. vi. note 10. [p. 301, supra.]
Book III.
Wherein Christ is shown to be the Son of God, Who created the world; to have been predicted by the prophets; to have taken human flesh like our own, by a real incarnation.
————————————
Chapter I.—Introductory; A Brief Statement of the Preceding Argument in Connection with the Subject of This Book.
Following the track of my original treatise, the loss of which we are steadily proceeding 3092 to restore, we come now, in the order of our subject, to treat of Christ, although this be a work of supererogation, 3093 after the proof which we have gone through that there is but one only God. For no doubt it has been already ruled with sufficient clearness, that Christ must be regarded as pertaining to 3094 no other God than the Creator, when it has been determined that no other God but the Creator should be the object of our faith. Him did Christ so expressly preach, whilst the apostles one after the other also so clearly affirmed that Christ belonged to 3095 no other God than Him whom He Himself preached—that is, the Creator—that no mention of a second God (nor, accordingly, of a second Christ) was ever agitated previous to Marcion’s scandal. This is most easily proved by an examination 3096 of both the apostolic and the heretical churches, 3097 from which we are forced to declare that there is undoubtedly a subversion of the rule (of faith), where any opinion is found of later date, 3098 —a point which I have inserted in my first book. 3099 A discussion of it would unquestionably be of value even now, when we are about to make a separate examination into (the subject of) Christ; because, whilst proving Christ to be the Creator’s Son, we are effectually shutting out the God of Marcion. Truth should employ all her available resources, and in no limping way. 3100 In our compendious rules of faith, however, she has it all her own way. 3101 But I have resolved, like an earnest man, 3102 to meet my adversary every way and everywhere in the madness of his heresy, which is so great, that he has found it easier to assume that that Christ has come who was never heard of, than He who has always been predicted.
Footnotes
321:3092Perseveramus.
321:3093Ex abundanti.
321:3094i.e., “as the Son of, or sent by, no other God.”
321:3095i.e., “was the Son of, or sent by, no other God.”
321:3096Recensu.
321:3097[Surely Tertullian, when he wrote this, imagined himself not separated formally from the Apostolic churches. Of which see De Præscriptione, (p. 258) supra.]
321:3098Ubi posteritas invenitur. Compare De Præscript. Hæret. 34, where Tertullian refers to “that definite rule, before laid down, touching ‘the later date’ (illo fine supra dicto posteritatis), whereby they (i.e., certain novel opinions) would at once be condemned on the ground of their age alone.” In 31 of the same work he contrasts “posteritatem mendacitatis” with “principalitatem veritatis”—“the latter date of falsehood” with “the primary date of truth.” [pp. 258, 260, supra.]
321:3099See book i. chap. 1.
321:3100Non ut laborantem. “Qui enim laborant non totis sed fractis utuntur viribus.” Πανστρατιᾷ πανσυδίῃ; Anglice, “with all her might.”
321:3101In præscript. compendiis vincit.
321:3102Ut gestientem.
Chapter II.—Why Christ’s Coming Should Be Previously Announced.
Coming then at once to the point, 3103 I have to encounter the question, Whether Christ ought to have come so suddenly? 3104 (I answer, No.) First, because He was the Son of God His Father. For this was a point of order, that the Father should announce 3105 the Son before the Son should the Father, and that the Father should testify of the Son before the Son should testify of the Father. Secondly, because, in addition to the title of Son, He was the Sent. The authority, 3106 therefore, of the Sender must needs have first appeared in a testimony of the Sent; because none who comes in the authority of another does himself set it forth 3107 for himself on his own assertion, but rather looks out for protection from it, for first comes the support 3108 of him who gives him his authority. Now (Christ) will neither be acknowledged as Son if the Father never named Him, nor be believed in as the Sent One if no Sender 3109 gave Him a commission: the Father, if any, purposely naming Him; and the Sender, if any, purposely commissioning Him. Everything will be open to suspicion which transgresses a rule. Now the primary order of all things will not allow that the Father should come after the Son in recognition, or the Sender after the Sent, or God after Christ. Nothing can take precedence of its own original in being acknowledged, nor in like manner can it in its ordering. 3110 Suddenly a Son, suddenly Sent, and suddenly Christ! On the contrary, I should suppose that from God nothing comes suddenly, because there is nothing which is not ordered and arranged by God. And if ordered, why not also foretold, that it may be proved to have been ordered by the prediction, and by the ordering to be divine? And indeed so great a work, which (we may be sure) required preparation, 3111 as being for the salvation of man, could not have been on that very account a sudden thing, because it was through faith that it was to be of avail. 3112 Inasmuch, then, as it had to be believed in order to be of use, so far did it require, for the securing of this faith, a preparation built upon the foundations of pro-arrangement and fore-announcement. Faith, when informed by such a process, might justly be required 3113 of man by God, and by man be reposed in God; it being a duty, after that knowledge 3114 has made it a possibility, to believe those things which a man had learned indeed to believe from the fore-announcement. 3115
Footnotes
321:3103Hinc denique.
321:3104As Marcion makes Him.
321:3105Profiteretur.
321:3106Patrocinium.
322:3107Defendit, “insist on it.”
322:3108Suggestu.
322:3109Mandator.
322:3110Dispositione, “its being ordered or arranged.”
322:3111Parabatur.
322:3112Per fidem profuturum.
322:3113Indiceretur.
322:3114Agnitione.
322:3115Prædicatione, “prophecy.”
Chapter III.—Miracles Alone, Without Prophecy, an Insufficient Evidence of Christ’s Mission.
A procedure 3116 of this kind, you say, was not necessary, because He was forthwith to prove Himself the Son and the Sent One, and the Christ of God in very deed, by means of the evidence of His wonderful works. 3117 On my side, however, I have to deny that evidence simply of this sort was sufficient as a testimony to Him. He Himself afterwards deprived it of its authority, 3118 because when He declared that many would come and “show great signs and wonders,” 3119 so as to turn aside the very elect, and yet for all that were not to be received, He showed how rash was belief in signs and wonders, which were so very easy of accomplishment by even false christs. Else how happens it, if He meant Himself to be approved and understood, and received on a certain evidence—I mean that of miracles—that He forbade the recognition of those others who had the very same sort of proof to show, and whose coming was to be quite as sudden and unannounced by any authority? 3120 If, because He came before them, and was beforehand with them in displaying the signs of His mighty deeds, He therefore seized the first right to men’s faith,—just as the firstcomers do the first place in the baths,—and so forestalled all who came after Him in that right, take care that He, too, be not caught in the condition of the later comers, if He be found to be behindhand with the Creator, who had already been made known, and had already worked miracles like Him, 3121 and like Him had forewarned men not to believe in others, even such as should come after Him. If, therefore, to have been the first to come and utter this warning, is to bar and limit faith, 3122 He will Himself have to be condemned, because He was later in being acknowledged; and authority to prescribe such a rule about later comers will belong to the Creator alone, who could have been posterior to none. And now, when I am about to prove that the Creator sometimes displayed by His servants of old, and in other cases reserved for His Christ to display, the self-same miracles which you claim as solely due to faith in your Christ, I may fairly even from this maintain that there was so much the greater reason wherefore Christ should not be believed in simply on account of His miracles, inasmuch as these would have shown Him to belong to none other (God) than the Creator, because answering to the mighty deeds of the Creator, both as performed by His servants and reserved for 3123 His Christ; although, even if some other proofs should be found in your Christ—new ones, to wit—we should more readily believe that they, too, belong to the same God as do the old ones, rather than to him who has no other than new 3124 proofs, such as are wanting in the evidences of that antiquity which wins the assent of faith, 3125 so that even on this ground he ought to have come announced as much by prophecies of his own building up faith in him, as by miracles, especially in opposition to the Creator’s Christ who was to come fortified by signs and prophets of His own, in order that he might shine forth as the rival of Christ by help of evidence of different kinds. But how was his Christ to be foretold by a god who was himself never predicted? This, therefore, is the unavoidable inference, that neither your god nor your Christ is an object of faith, because God ought not to have been unknown, and Christ ought to have been made known through God. 3126
Footnotes
322:3116Ordo.
322:3117Virtutum, “miracles.”
322:3118Exauctoravit.
322:3119Matt. xxiv. 24. [See Kaye, p. 125.]
322:3120Auctore.
322:3121Proinde.
322:3122Cludet, quasi claudet.
322:3123Repromissis in.
323:3124Tantummodo nova.
323:3125Egentia experimentis fidei victricis vetustatis.
323:3126i.e., through God’s announcement by prophecy.
Chapter IV.—Marcion’s Christ Not the Subject of Prophecy. The Absurd Consequences of This Theory of the Heretic.
He 3127 disdained, I suppose, to imitate the order of our God, as one who was displeasing to him, and was by all means to be vanquished. He wished to come, as a new being in a new way—a son previous to his father’s announcement, a sent one before the authority of the sender; so that he might in person 3128 propagate a most monstrous faith, whereby it should come to be believed that Christ was come before it should be known that He had an existence. It is here convenient to me to treat that other point: Why he came not after Christ? For when I observe that, during so long a period, his lord 3129 bore with the greatest patience the very ruthless Creator who was all the while announcing His Christ to men, I say, that whatever reason impelled him to do so, postponing thereby his own revelation and interposition, the self-same reason imposed on him the duty of bearing with the Creator (who had also in His Christ dispensations of His own to carry out); so that, after the completion and accomplishment of the entire plan of the rival God and the rival Christ, 3130 he might then superinduce his own proper dispensation. But he grew weary of so long an endurance, and so failed to wait till the end of the Creator’s course. It was of no use, his enduring that his Christ should be predicted, when he refused to permit him to be manifested. 3131 Either it was without just cause that he interrupted the full course of his rival’s time, or without just cause did he so long refrain from interrupting it. What held him back at first? Or what disturbed him at last? As the case now stands, however, 3132 he has committed himself in respect of both, having revealed himself so tardily after the Creator, so hurriedly before His Christ; whereas he ought long ago to have encountered the one with a confutation, the other to have forborne encountering as yet—not to have borne with the one so long in His ruthless hostility, nor to have disquieted the other, who was as yet quiescent! In the case of both, while depriving them of their title to be considered the most good God, he showed himself at least capricious and uncertain; lukewarm (in his resentment) towards the Creator, but fervid against His Christ, and powerless 3133 in respect of them both! For he no more restrained the Creator than he resisted His Christ. The Creator still remains such as He really is. His Christ also will come, 3134 just as it is written of Him. Why did he 3135 come after the Creator, since he was unable to correct Him by punishment? 3136 Why did he reveal himself before Christ, whom he could not hinder from appearing? 3137 If, on the contrary, 3138 he did chastise the Creator, he revealed himself, (I suppose,) after Him in order that things which require correction might come first. On which account also, (of course,) he ought to have waited for Christ to appear first, whom he was going to chastise in like manner; then he would be His punisher coming after Him, 3139 just as he had been in the case of the Creator. There is another consideration: since he will at his second advent come after Him, that as he at His first coming took hostile proceedings against the Creator, destroying the law and the prophets, which were His, so he may, to be sure, 3140 at his second coming proceed in opposition to Christ, upsetting 3141 His kingdom. Then, no doubt, he would terminate his course, and then (if ever) 3142 be worthy of belief; for else, if his work has been already perfected, it would be in vain for him to come, for there would indeed be nothing that he could further accomplish.
Footnotes
323:3127Your God.
323:3128Ipse.
323:3129Ejus (i.e. Marcionis) Dominum, meaning Marcion’s God, who had not yet been revealed.
323:3130The Creator and His Christ, as rivals of Marcion’s.
323:3131He twits Marcion with introducing his Christ on the scene too soon. He ought to have waited until the Creator’s Christ (prophesied of through the Old Testament) had come. Why allow him to be predicted, and then forbid His actual coming, by his own arrival on the scene first? Of course, M. must be understood to deny that the Christ of the New Testament is the subject of the Old Testament prophecies at all. Hence T.’s anxiety to adduce prophecy as the main evidence of our Lord as being really the Creator’s Christ.
323:3132Atquin.
323:3133Vanus.
323:3134The reader will remember that Tertullian is here arguing on Marcion’s ground, according to whom the Creator’s Christ, the Christ predicted through the O.T., was yet to come. Marcion’s Christ, however, had proved himself so weak to stem the Creator’s course, that he had no means really of checking the Creator’s Christ from coming. It had been better, adds Tertullian, if Marcion’s Christ had waited for the Creator’s Christ to have first appeared.
323:3135Marcion’s Christ.
323:3136Emendare.
323:3137Revocare.
323:3138Aut si.
323:3139Posterior emendator futurus: an instance of Tertullian’s style in paradox.
323:3140Vero.
323:3141Redarguens.
324:3142Si forte.
Chapter V.—Sundry Features of the Prophetic Style: Principles of Its Interpretation.
These preliminary remarks I have ventured to make 3143 at this first step of the discussion and while the conflict is, as it were, from a distance. But inasmuch as I shall now from this point have to grapple with my opponent on a distinct issue and in close combat, I perceive that I must advance even here some lines, at which the battle will have to be delivered; they are the Scriptures of the Creator. For as I shall have to prove that Christ was from the Creator, according to these (Scriptures), which were afterwards accomplished in the Creator’s Christ, I find it necessary to set forth the form and, so to speak, the nature of the Scriptures themselves, that they may not distract the reader’s attention by being called into controversy at the moment of their application to subjects of discussion, and by their proof being confounded with the proof of the subjects themselves. Now there are two conditions of prophetic announcement which I adduce, as requiring the assent of our adversaries in the future stages of the discussion. One, that future events are sometimes announced as if they were already passed. For it is 3144 consistent with Deity to regard as accomplished facts whatever It has determined on, because there is no difference of time with that Being in whom eternity itself directs a uniform condition of seasons. It is indeed more natural 3145 to the prophetic divination to represent as seen and already brought to pass, 3146 even while forseeing it, that which it foresees; in other words, that which is by all means future. As for instance, in Isaiah: “I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks (I exposed) to their hands. I hid not my face from shame and spitting.” 3147 For whether it was Christ even then, as we hold, or the prophet, as the Jews say, who pronounced these words concerning himself, in either case, that which as yet had not happened sounded as if it had been already accomplished. Another characteristic will be, that very many events are figuratively predicted by means of enigmas and allegories and parables, and that they must be understood in a sense different from the literal description. For we both read of “the mountains dropping down new wine,” 3148 but not as if one might expect “must” from the stones, or its decoction from the rocks; and also hear of “a land flowing with milk and honey,” 3149 but not as if you were to suppose that you would ever gather Samian cakes from the ground; nor does God, forsooth, offer His services as a water-bailiff or a farmer when He says, “I will open rivers in a land; I will plant in the wilderness the cedar and the box-tree.” 3150 In like manner, when, foretelling the conversion of the Gentiles, He says, “The beasts of the field shall honour me, the dragons and the owls,” He surely never meant to derive 3151 His fortunate omens from the young of birds and foxes, and from the songsters of marvel and fable. But why enlarge on such a subject? When the very apostle whom our heretics adopt, 3152 interprets the law which allows an unmuzzled mouth to the oxen that tread out the corn, not of cattle, but of ourselves; 3153 and also alleges that the rock which followed (the Israelites) and supplied them with drink was Christ; 3154 teaching the Galatians, moreover, that the two narratives of the sons of Abraham had an allegorical meaning in their course; 3155 and to the Ephesians giving an intimation that, when it was declared in the beginning that a man should leave his father and mother and become one flesh with his wife, he applied this to Christ and the church. 3156
Footnotes
324:3143Proluserim.
324:3144[An important principle, see Kaye, p. 325.]
324:3145Familiare.
324:3146Expunctum.
324:3147Isa. 50.6, slightly altered.
324:3148Joel iii. 18.
324:3149Exod. 3:8, 17, Deut. 26:9, 15.
324:3150Isa. 41:18, 19, inexactly quoted.
324:3151Relaturus.
324:3152Hæreticorum apostolus. We have already referred to Marcion’s acceptance of St. Paul’s epistles. It has been suggested that Tertullian in the text uses hæreticorum apostolus as synonymous with ethnicorum apostolus="apostle of the Gentiles,” in which case allusion to St. Paul would of course be equally clear. But this interpretation is unnecessary.
324:31531 Cor. ix. 9.
324:31541 Cor. x. 4; compare below, book v., chap. vii.
324:3155Gal. 4:22, 24.
324:3156Eph. 5:31, 32.
Chapter VI.—Community in Certain Points of Marcionite and Jewish Error. Prophecies of Christ’s Rejection Examined.
Since, therefore, there clearly exist these two characteristics in the Jewish prophetic literature, let the reader remember, 3157 whenever we adduce any evidence therefrom, that, by mutual consent, 3158 the point of discussion is not the form of the scripture, but the subject it is called in to prove. When, therefore, our heretics in their phrenzy presumed to say that that Christ was come who had never been fore-announced, it followed that, on their assumption, that Christ had not yet appeared who had always been predicted; and thus they are obliged to make common cause with 3159 Jewish error, and construct their arguments with its assistance, on the pretence that the Jews were themselves quite certain that it was some other who came: so they not only rejected Him as a stranger, but slew Him as an enemy, although they would without doubt have acknowledged Him, and with all religious devotion followed Him, if He had only been one of themselves. Our shipmaster 3160 of course got his craft-wisdom not from the Rhodian law, 3161 but from the Pontic, 3162 which cautioned him against believing that the Jews had no right to sin against their Christ; whereas (even if nothing like their conduct had been predicted against them) human nature alone, liable to error as it is, might well have induced him to suppose that it was quite possible for the Jews to have committed such a sin, considered as men, without assuming any unfair prejudice regarding their feelings, whose sin was antecedently so credible. Since, however, it was actually foretold that they would not acknowledge Christ, and therefore would even put Him to death, it will therefore follow that He was both ignored 3163 and slain by them, who were beforehand pointed out as being about to commit such offences against Him. If you require a proof of this, instead of turning out those passages of Scripture which, while they declare Christ to be capable of suffering death, do thereby also affirm the possibility of His being rejected (for if He had not been rejected, He could not really suffer anything), but rather reserving them for the subject of His sufferings, I shall content myself at the present moment with adducing those which simply show that there was a probability of Christ’s rejection. This is quickly done, since the passages indicate that the entire power of understanding was by the Creator taken from the people. “I will take away,” says He, “the wisdom of their wise men; and the understanding of their prudent men will I hide;” 3164 and again: “With your ear ye shall hear, and not understand; and with your eyes ye shall see, but not perceive: for the heart of this people hath growth fat, and with their ears they hear heavily, and their eyes have they shut; lest they hear with their ears, and see with their eyes, and understand with the heart, and be converted, and I heal them.” 3165 Now this blunting of their sound senses they had brought on themselves, loving God with their lips, but keeping far away from Him in their heart. Since, then, Christ was announced by the Creator, “who formeth the lightning, and createth the wind, and declareth unto man His Christ,” as the prophet Joel says, 3166 since the entire hope of the Jews, not to say of the Gentiles too, was fixed on the manifestation of Christ,—it was demonstrated that they, by their being deprived of those powers of knowledge and understanding—wisdom and prudence, would fail to know and understand that which was predicted, even Christ; when the chief of their wise men should be in error respecting Him—that is to say, their scribes and prudent ones, or Pharisees; and when the people, like them, should hear with their ears and not understand Christ while teaching them, and see with their eyes and not perceive Christ, although giving them signs. Similarly it is said elsewhere: “Who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, but he who ruleth over them?” 3167 Also when He upbraids them by the same Isaiah: “I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know; my people doth not consider.” 3168 We indeed, who know for certain that Christ always spoke in the prophets, as the Spirit of the Creator (for so says the prophet: “The person of our Spirit, Christ the Lord,” 3169 who from the beginning was both heard and seen as the Father’s vicegerent in the name of God), are well aware that His words, when actually upbraiding Israel, were the same as those which it was foretold that He should denounce against him: “Ye have forsaken the Lord, and have provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger.” 3170 If, however, you would rather refer to God Himself, instead of to Christ, the whole imputation of Jewish ignorance from the first, through an unwillingness to allow that even anciently 3171 the Creator’s word and Spirit—that is to say, His Christ—was despised and not acknowledged by them, you will even in this subterfuge be defeated. For when you do not deny that the Creator’s Son and Spirit and Substance is also His Christ, you must needs allow that those who have not acknowledged the Father have failed likewise to acknowledge the Son through the identity of their natural substance; 3172 for if in Its fulness It has baffled man’s understanding, much more has a portion of It, especially when partaking of the fulness. 3173 Now, when these things are carefully considered, it becomes evident how the Jews both rejected Christ and slew Him; not because they regarded Him as a strange Christ, but because they did not acknowledge Him, although their own. For how could they have understood the strange One, concerning whom nothing had ever been announced, when they failed to understand Him about whom there had been a perpetual course of prophecy? That admits of being understood or being not understood, which, by possessing a substantial basis for prophecy, 3174 will also have a subject-matter 3175 for either knowledge or error; whilst that which lacks such matter admits not the issue of wisdom. So that it was not as if He belonged to another 3176 god that they conceived an aversion for Christ, and persecuted Him, but simply as a man whom they regarded as a wonder-working juggler, 3177 and an enemy 3178 in His doctrines. They brought Him therefore to trial as a mere man, and one of themselves too—that is, a Jew (only a renegade and a destroyer of Judaism)—and punished Him according to their law. If He had been a stranger, indeed, they would not have sat in judgment over Him. So far are they from appearing to have understood Him to be a strange Christ, that they did not even judge Him to be a stranger to their own human nature. 3179
Footnotes
324:3157“Remember, O reader.”
324:3158Constitisse.
325:3159Sociari cum.
325:3160Marcion.
325:3161The model of wise naval legislation, much of which found its way into the Roman pandects.
325:3162Symbol of barbarism and ignorance—a heavy joke against the once seafaring heretic.
325:3163Ignoratus, “rejected of men.”
325:3164Isa. xxix. 14.
325:3165Isa. 6:9, 10. Quoted with some verbal differences.
325:3166A supposed quotation of Amos iv. 13. See Oehler’s marginal reference. If so, the reference to Joel is either a slip of Tertullian or a corruption of his text; more likely the former, for the best mss. insert Joel’s name. Amos iv. 13, according to the LXX., runs, ᾽Απαγγέλλων εἰς ἀνθρώπους τὸν Χριστὸν αὐτοῦ, which exactly suits Tertullian’s quotation. Junius supports the reference to Joel, supposing that Tertullian has his ch. ii. 31 in view, as compared with Acts ii. 16-33. This is too harsh an interpretation. It is simpler and better to suppose that Tertullian really meant to quote the LXX. of the passage in Amos, but in mistake named Joel as his prophet.
325:3167Isa. xlii. 19, altered.
325:3168Isa. 1:2, 3.
325:3169This seems to be a translation with a slight alteration of the LXX. version of Lam. iv. 20, πνεῦμα προσώπου ἡμῶν Χριστὸς Κύριος .
325:3170Isa. i. 4.
325:3171Retro.
326:3172Per ejusdem substantiæ conditionem.
326:3173He seems here to allude to such statements of God’s being as Col. ii. 9.
326:3174Substantiam prædictationis.
326:3175Materiam.
326:3176Alterius, “the other,” i.e., Marcion’s rival God.
326:3177Planum in signis, cf. the Magnum in potestate of Apolog. 21.
326:3178Æmulum, “a rival,” i.e., to Moses.
326:3179Nec hominem ejus ut alienum judicaverunt, “His manhood they judged not to be different.”
Chapter VII.—Prophecy Sets Forth Two Different Conditions of Christ, One Lowly, the Other Majestic. This Fact Points to Two Advents of Christ.
Our heretic will now have the fullest opportunity of learning the clue 3180 of his errors along with the Jew himself, from whom he has borrowed his guidance in this discussion. Since, however, the blind leads the blind, they fall into the ditch together. We affirm that, as there are two conditions demonstrated by the prophets to belong to Christ, so these presignified the same number of advents; one, and that the first, was to be in lowliness, 3181 when He had to be led as a sheep to be slain as a victim, and to be as a lamb dumb before the shearer, not opening His mouth, and not fair to look upon. 3182 For, says (the prophet), we have announced concerning Him: “He is like a tender plant, 3183 like a root out of a thirsty ground; He hath no form nor comeliness; and we beheld Him, and He was without beauty: His form was disfigured;” 3184 “marred more than the sons of men; a man stricken with sorrows, and knowing how to bear our infirmity;” 3185 “placed by the Father as a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence;” 3186 “made by Him a little lower than the angels;” 3187 declaring Himself to be “a worm and not a man, a reproach of men, and despised of the people.” 3188 Now these signs of degradation quite suit His first coming, just as the tokens of His majesty do His second advent, when He shall no longer remain “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence,” but after His rejection become “the chief corner-stone,” accepted and elevated to the top place 3189 of the temple, even His church, being that very stone in Daniel, cut out of the mountain, which was to smite and crush the image of the secular kingdom. 3190 Of this advent the same prophet says: “Behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days; and they brought Him before Him, and there was given Him dominion and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away; and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.” 3191 Then indeed He shall have both a glorious form, and an unsullied beauty above the sons of men. “Thou art fairer,” says (the Psalmist), “than the children of men; grace is poured into Thy lips; therefore God hath blessed Thee for ever. Gird Thy sword upon Thy thigh, O most mighty, with Thy glory and Thy majesty.” 3192 For the Father, after making Him a little lower than the angels, “will crown Him with glory and honour, and put all things under His feet.” 3193 “Then shall they look on Him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, tribe after tribe;” 3194 because, no doubt, they once refused to acknowledge Him in the lowliness of His human condition. He is even a man, says Jeremiah, and who shall recognise Him. Therefore, asks Isaiah, “who shall declare His generation?” 3195 So also in Zechariah, Christ Jesus, the true High Priest of the Father, in the person of Joshua, nay, in the very mystery of His name, 3196 is portrayed in a twofold dress with reference to both His advents. At first He is clad in sordid garments, that is to say, in the lowliness of suffering and mortal flesh: then the devil resisted Him, as the instigator of the traitor Judas, not to mention his tempting Him after His baptism: afterwards He was stripped of His first filthy raiment, and adorned with the priestly robe 3197 and mitre, and a pure diadem; 3198 in other words, with the glory and honour of His second advent. 3199 If I may offer, moreover, an interpretation of the two goats which were presented on “the great day of atonement,” 3200 do they not also figure the two natures of Christ? They were of like size, and very similar in appearance, owing to the Lord’s identity of aspect; because He is not to come in any other form, having to be recognised by those by whom He was also wounded and pierced. One of these goats was bound 3201 with scarlet, 3202 and driven by the people out of the camp 3203 into the wilderness, 3204 amid cursing, and spitting, and pulling, and piercing, 3205 being thus marked with all the signs of the Lord’s own passion; while the other, by being offered up for sins, and given to the priests of the temple for meat, afforded proofs of His second appearance, when (after all sins have been expiated) the priests of the spiritual temple, that is, the church, are to enjoy the flesh, as it were, 3206 of the Lord’s own grace, whilst the residue go away from salvation without tasting it. 3207 Since, therefore, the first advent was prophetically declared both as most obscure in its types, and as deformed with every kind of indignity, but the second as glorious and altogether worthy of God, they would on this very account, while confining their regards to that which they were easily able both to understand and to believe, even the second advent, be not undeservedly deceived respecting the more obscure, and, at any rate, the more lowly first coming. Accordingly, to this day they deny that their Christ has come, because He has not appeared in majesty, while they ignore the fact that He was to come also in lowliness.
Footnotes
326:3180Rationem.
326:3181Humilitate.
326:3182A reference to, rather than quotation from, Isa. liii. 7.
326:3183Sicut puerulus, “like a little boy,” or, “a sorry slave.”
326:3184Isa. 53:2, 3, according to the Septuagint.
326:3185See Isa. 52:14, Isa. 53:3, 4.
326:3186Isa. viii. 14.
326:3187Ps. viii. 6.
326:3188Ps. xxii. 7.
326:3189Consummationem: an allusion to Zech. iv. 7.
326:3190See Dan. ii. 34.
326:3191Dan. 7:13, 14.
326:3192Ps. 45:2, 3.
326:3193Ps. 8:5, 6.
327:3194Zech. 12:10, 12.
327:3195Isa. liii. 8.
327:3196Joshua, i.e., Jesus.
327:3197Podere.
327:3198Cidari munda.
327:3199See Zech. iii.
327:3200Jejunio, see Lev. 16:5, 7, etc.
327:3201Circumdatus.
327:3202Perhaps in reference to Heb. ix. 19.
327:3203Civitatem, “city.”
327:3204In perditionem.
327:3205This treatment of the scape-goat was partly ceremonial, partly disorderly. The Mischna (Yoma vi. 4–6) mentions the scarlet ribbon which was bound round the animal’s head between the horns, and the “pulling” (rather plucking out of its hair); but this latter was an indignity practised by scoffers and guarded against by Jews. Tertullian repeats the whole of this passage, Adv. Jud. xiv. Similar use is made of the type of the scape-goat by other fathers, as Justin Martyr (Dial. cum Tryph.) and Cyril of Alex. (Epist. ad Acacium). In this book ix. Against Julian, he expressly says: “Christ was described by the two goats,—as dying for us in the flesh, and then (as shown by the scape-goat) overcoming death in His divine nature.” See Tertullian’s passages illustrated fully in Rabbi Chiga, Addit. ad Cod. de die Expiat. (in Ugolini, Thes. i. 88).
327:3206Quasi visceratione. [See Kaye’s important comment, p. 426.]
327:3207Jejunantibus.
Chapter VIII.—Absurdity of Marcion’s Docetic Opinions; Reality of Christ’s Incarnation.
Our heretic must now cease to borrow poison from the Jew—“the asp,” as the adage runs, “from the viper” 3208 —and henceforth vomit forth the virulence of his own disposition, as when he alleges Christ to be a phantom. Except, indeed, that this opinion of his will be sure to have others to maintain it in his precocious and somewhat abortive Marcionites, whom the Apostle John designated as antichrists, when they denied that Christ was come in the flesh; not that they did this with the view of establishing the right of the other god (for on this point also they had been branded by the same apostle), but because they had started with assuming the incredibility of an incarnate God. Now, the more firmly the antichrist Marcion had seized this assumption, the more prepared was he, of course, to reject the bodily substance of Christ, since he had introduced his very god to our notice as neither the author nor the restorer of the flesh; and for this very reason, to be sure, as pre-eminently good, and most remote from the deceits and fallacies of the Creator. His Christ, therefore, in order to avoid all such deceits and fallacies, and the imputation, if possible, of belonging to the Creator, was not what he appeared to be, and feigned himself to be what he was not—incarnate without being flesh, human without being man, and likewise a divine Christ without being God! But why should he not have propagated also the phantom of God? Can I believe him on the subject of the internal nature, who was all wrong touching the external substance? How will it be possible to believe him true on a mystery, when he has been found so false on a plain fact? How, moreover, when he confounds the truth of the spirit with the error of the flesh, 3209 could he combine within himself that communion of light and darkness, or truth and error, which the apostle says cannot co-exist? 3210 Since however, Christ’s being flesh is now discovered to be a lie, it follows that all things which were done by the flesh of Christ were done untruly, 3211 —every act of intercourse, 3212 of contact, of eating or drinking, 3213 yea, His very miracles. If with a touch, or by being touched, He freed any one of a disease, whatever was done by any corporeal act cannot be believed to have been truly done in the absence of all reality in His body itself. Nothing substantial can be allowed to have been effected by an unsubstantial thing; nothing full by a vacuity. If the habit were putative, the action was putative; if the worker were imaginary, the works were imaginary. On this principle, too, the sufferings of Christ will be found not to warrant faith in Him. For He suffered nothing who did not truly suffer; and a phantom could not truly suffer. God’s entire work, therefore, is subverted. Christ’s death, wherein lies the whole weight and fruit of the Christian name, is denied although the apostle asserts 3214 it so expressly 3215 as undoubtedly real, making it the very foundation of the gospel, of our salvation and of his own preaching. 3216 “I have delivered unto you before all things,” says he, “how that Christ died for our sins, and that he was buried, and that He rose again the third day.” Besides, if His flesh is denied, how is His death to be asserted; for death is the proper suffering of the flesh, which returns through death back to the earth out of which it was taken, according to the law of its Maker? Now, if His death be denied, because of the denial of His flesh, there will be no certainty of His resurrection. For He rose not, for the very same reason that He died not, even because He possessed not the reality of the flesh, to which as death accrues, so does resurrection likewise. Similarly, if Christ’s resurrection be nullified, ours also is destroyed. If Christ’s resurrection be not realized, 3217 neither shall that be for which Christ came. For just as they, who said that there is no resurrection of the dead, are refuted by the apostle from the resurrection of Christ, so, if the resurrection of Christ falls to the ground, the resurrection of the dead is also swept away. 3218 And so our faith is vain, and vain also is the preaching of the apostles. Moreover, they even show themselves to be false witnesses of God, because they testified that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise. And we remain in our sins still. 3219 And those who have slept in Christ have perished; destined, forsooth, 3220 to rise again, but peradventure in a phantom state, 3221 just like Christ.
Footnotes
327:3208So Epiphanius, adv. Hæres. l. 23. 7, quotes the same proverb, ὡς ἀσπὶς παρ᾽ ἐχίδνης ἰὸν δανιζομένη. [Tom. II. p. 144. Ed. Oehler.]
328:3209As in his Docetic views of the body of Christ.
328:32102 Cor. vi. 14.
328:3211Mendacio.
328:3212Congressus.
328:3213Convictus.
328:3214Demandat.
328:3215Tam impresse, “so strongly.”
328:32161 Cor. 15:3, 4, 14, 17, 18.
328:3217Valebit.
328:3218Aufertur.
328:32191 Cor. xv. 13-18.
328:3220Sane.
328:3221Phantasmate forsitan.
Chapter IX.—Refutation of Marcion’s Objections Derived from the Cases of the Angels, and the Pre-Incarnate Manifestations of the Son of God.
Now, in this discussion of yours, 3222 when you suppose that we are to be met with the case of the Creator’s angels, as if they held intercourse with Abraham and Lot in a phantom state, that of merely putative flesh, 3223 and yet did truly converse, and eat, and work, as they had been commissioned to do, you will not, to begin with, be permitted to use as examples the acts of that God whom you are destroying. For by how much you make your god a better and more perfect being, by just so much will all examples be unsuitable to him of that God from whom he totally differs, and without which difference he would not be at all better or more perfect. But then, secondly, you must know that it will not be conceded to you, that in the angels there was only a putative flesh, but one of a true and solid human substance. For if (on your terms) it was no difficulty to him to manifest true sensations and actions in a putative flesh, it was much more easy for him still to have assigned the true substance of flesh to these true sensations and actions, as the proper maker and former thereof. But your god, perhaps on the ground of his having produced no flesh at all, was quite right in introducing the mere phantom of that of which he had been unable to produce the reality. My God, however, who formed that which He had taken out of the dust of the ground in the true quality of flesh, although not issuing as yet from conjugal seed, was equally able to apply to angels too a flesh of any material whatsoever, who built even the world out of nothing, into so many and so various bodies, and that at a word! And, really, if your god promises to men some time or other the true nature of angels 3224 (for he says, “They shall be like the angels”), why should not my God also have fitted on to angels the true substance of men, from whatever source derived? For not even you will tell me, in reply, whence is obtained that angelic nature on your side; so that it is enough for me to define this as being fit and proper to God, even the verity of that thing which was objective to three senses—sight, touch, and hearing. It is more difficult for God to practise deception 3225 than to produce real flesh from any material whatever, even without the means of birth. But for other heretics, also, who maintain that the flesh in the angels ought to have been born of flesh, if it had been really human, we have an answer on a sure principle, to the effect that it was truly human flesh, and yet not born. It was truly human, because of the truthfulness of God, who can neither lie nor deceive, and because (angelic beings) cannot be dealt with by men in a human way except in human substance: it was withal unborn, because none 3226 but Christ could become incarnate by being born of the flesh in order that by His own nativity He might regenerate 3227 our birth, and might further by His death also dissolve our death, by rising again in that flesh in which, that He might even die, He was born. Therefore on that occasion He did Himself appear with the angels to Abraham in the verity of the flesh, which had not as yet undergone birth, because it was not yet going to die, although it was even now learning to hold intercourse amongst men. Still greater was the propriety in angels, who never received a dispensation to die for us, not having assumed even a brief experience 3228 of flesh by being born, because they were not destined to lay it down again by dying; but, from whatever quarter they obtained it, and by what means soever they afterwards entirely divested themselves of it, they yet never pretended it to be unreal flesh. Since the Creator “maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire”—as truly spirits as also fire—so has He truly made them flesh likewise; wherefore we can now recall to our own minds, and remind the heretics also, that He has promised that He will one day form men into angels, who once formed angels into men.
Footnotes
328:3222Ista. [See Kaye, p. 205.]
328:3223[Pamelius attributes this doctrine to Appelles a disciple of Marcion, of whom see Kaye, pp. 479, 480.]
329:3224Luke xx. 36.
329:3225Mentiri.
329:3226i.e., among the angels.
329:3227Reformaret.
329:3228Commeatum.
Chapter X.—The Truly Incarnate State More Worthy of God Than Marcion’s Fantastic Flesh.
Therefore, since you are not permitted to resort to any instances of the Creator, as alien from the subject, and possessing special causes of their own, I should like you to state yourself the design of your god, in exhibiting his Christ not in the reality of flesh. If he despised it as earthly, and (as you express it) full of dung, 3229 why did he not on that account include the likeness of it also in his contempt? For no honour is to be attributed to the image of anything which is itself unworthy of honour. As the natural state is, so will the likeness be. But how could he hold converse with men except in the image of human substance? 3230 Why, then, not rather in the reality thereof, that his intercourse might be real, since he was under the necessity of holding it? And to how much better account would this necessity have been turned by ministering to faith rather than to a fraud! 3231 The god whom you make is miserable enough, for this very reason that he was unable to display his Christ except in the effigy of an unworthy, and indeed an alien, thing. In some instances, it will be convenient to use even unworthy things, if they be only our own, as it will also be quite improper to use things, be they ever so worthy, if they be not our own. 3232 Why, then, did he not come in some other worthier substance, and especially his own, that he might not seem as if he could not have done without an unworthy and an alien one? Now, since my Creator held intercourse with man by means of even a bush and fire, and again afterwards by means of a cloud and column, 3233 and in representations of Himself used bodies composed of the elements, these examples of divine power afford sufficient proof that God did not require the instrumentality of false or even of real flesh. But yet, if we look steadily into the subject, there is really no substance which is worthy of becoming a vestment for God. Whatsoever He is pleased to clothe Himself withal, He makes worthy of Himself—only without untruth. 3234 Therefore how comes it to pass that he should have thought the verity of the flesh, rather than its unreality, a disgrace? Well, but he honoured it by his fiction of it. How great, then, is that flesh, the very phantasy of which was a necessity to the superior God!
Footnotes
329:3229Stercoribus infersam.
329:3230A Marcionite argument.
329:3231Stropham, a player’s trick; so in Spectac. 29.
329:3232Alienis.
329:3233Globum.
329:3234Mendacio.
Chapter XI.—Christ Was Truly Born; Marcion’s Absurd Cavil in Defence of a Putative Nativity.
All these illusions of an imaginary corporeity 3235 in (his) Christ, Marcion adopted with this view, that his nativity also might not be furnished with any evidence from his human substance, and that thus the Christ of the Creator might be free to have assigned to Him all predictions which treated of Him as one capable of human birth, and therefore fleshly. But most foolishly did our Pontic heresiarch act in this too. As if it would not be more readily believed that flesh in the Divine Being should rather be unborn than untrue, this belief having in fact had the way mainly prepared for it by the Creator’s angels when they conversed in flesh which was real, although unborn. For indeed the notorious Philumena 3236 persuaded Apelles and the other seceders from Marcion rather to believe that Christ did really carry about a body of flesh; not derived to Him, however, from birth, but one which He borrowed from the elements. Now, as Marcion was apprehensive that a belief of the fleshly body would also involve a belief of birth, undoubtedly He who seemed to be man was believed to be verily and indeed born. For a certain woman had exclaimed, “Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the paps which Thou hast sucked!” 3237 And how else could they have said that His mother and His brethren were standing without? 3238 But we shall see more of this in the proper place. 3239 Surely, when He also proclaimed Himself as the Son of man, He, without doubt, confessed that He had been born. Now I would rather refer all these points to an examination of the gospel; but still, as I have already stated, if he, who seemed to be man, had by all means to pass as having been born, it was vain for him to suppose that faith in his nativity was to be perfected 3240 by the device of an imaginary flesh. For what advantage was there in that being not true which was held to be true, whether it were his flesh or his birth? Or if you should say, let human opinion go for nothing; 3241 you are then honouring your god under the shelter of a deception, since he knew himself to be something different from what he had made men to think of him. In that case you might possibly have assigned to him a putative nativity even, and so not have hung the question on this point. For silly women fancy themselves pregnant sometimes, when they are corpulent 3242 either from their natural flux 3243 or from some other malady. And, no doubt, it had become his duty, since he had put on the mere mask of his substance, to act out from its earliest scene the play of his phantasy, lest he should have failed in his part at the beginning of the flesh. You have, of course, 3244 rejected the sham of a nativity, and have produced true flesh itself. And, no doubt, even the real nativity of a God is a most mean thing. 3245 Come then, wind up your cavils 3246 against the most sacred and reverend works of nature; inveigh against all that you are; destroy the origin of flesh and life; call the womb a sewer of the illustrious animal—in other words, the manufactory for the production of man; dilate on the impure and shameful tortures of parturition, and then on the filthy, troublesome, contemptible issues of the puerperal labour itself! But yet, after you have pulled all these things down to infamy, that you may affirm them to be unworthy of God, birth will not be worse for Him than death, infancy than the cross, punishment than nature, condemnation than the flesh. If Christ truly suffered all this, to be born was a less thing for Him. If Christ suffered evasively, 3247 as a phantom; evasively, too, might He have been born. Such are Marcion’s chief arguments by which he makes out another Christ; and I think that we show plainly enough that they are utterly irrelevant, when we teach how much more truly consistent with God is the reality rather than the falsehood of that condition 3248 in which He manifested His Christ. Since He was “the truth,” He was flesh; since He was flesh, He was born. For the points which this heresy assaults are confirmed, when the means of the assault are destroyed. Therefore if He is to be considered in the flesh, 3249 because He was born; and born, because He is in the flesh, and because He is no phantom,—it follows that He must be acknowledged as Himself the very Christ of the Creator, who was by the Creator’s prophets foretold as about to come in the flesh, and by the process of human birth. 3250
Footnotes
330:3235Corpulentiæ.
330:3236This woman is called in De Præscr. Hæret. 6, “an angel of deceit,” and (in 30) “a virgin, but afterwards a monstrous prostitute.” Our author adds: “Induced by her tricks and miracles, Apelles introduced a new heresy.” See also Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 13; Augustin, De Hæres. 42; Hieronymus, Epist. adv. Ctesiph. p. 477, tom. iv. ed. Benedictin.
330:3237Luke xi. 27.
330:3238Luke viii. 20.
330:3239Below, iv. 26; also in De carne Christi, cap. vii.
330:3240Expungendam, “consummated,” a frequent use of the word in our author.
330:3241Viderit opinio humana.
330:3242Inflatæ.
330:3243Sanguinis tributo.
330:3244Plane, ironically said.
330:3245Turpissimum.
330:3246Perora.
330:3247Mendacio.
330:3248Habitus.
330:3249Carneus.
330:3250Ex nativitate.
Chapter XII.—Isaiah’s Prophecy of Emmanuel. Christ Entitled to that Name.
And challenge us first, as is your wont, to consider Isaiah’s description of Christ, while you contend that in no point does it suit. For, to begin with, you say that Isaiah’s Christ will have to be called Emmanuel; 3251 then, that He takes the riches of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of Assyria. 3252 But yet He who is come was neither born under such a name, nor ever engaged in any warlike enterprise. I must, however, remind you that you ought to look into the contexts 3253 of the two passages. For there is immediately added the interpretation of Emmanuel, “God with us;” so that you have to consider not merely the name as it is uttered, but also its meaning. The utterance is Hebrew, Emmanuel, of the prophet’s own nation; but the meaning of the word, God with us, is by the interpretation made common property. Inquire, then, whether this name, God-with-us, which is Emmanuel, be not often used for the name of Christ, 3254 from the fact that Christ has enlightened the world. And I suppose you will not deny it, inasmuch as you do yourself admit that He is called God-with-us, that is, Emmanuel. Else if you are so foolish, that, because with you He gets the designation God-with-us, not Emmanuel, you therefore are unwilling to grant that He is come whose property it is to be called Emmanuel, as if this were not the same name as God-with-us, you will find among the Hebrew Christians, and amongst Marcionites too, that they name Him Emmanuel when they mean Him to be called God-with-us; just indeed as every nation, by whatever word they would express God-with-us, has called Him Emmanuel, completing the sound in its sense. Now since Emmanuel is God-with-us, and God-with-us is Christ, who is in us (for “as many of you as are baptized into Christ, have put on Christ” 3255 ), Christ is as properly implied in the meaning of the name, which is God-with-us, as He is in the pronunciation of the name, which is Emmanuel. And thus it is evident that He is now come who was foretold as Emmanuel, because what Emmanuel signifies is come, that is to say, God-with-us.
Footnotes
331:3251Isa. vii. 14.
331:3252Isa. viii. 4. Compare adv. Judæos, 9.
331:3253Cohærentia.
331:3254Agitetur in Christo.
331:3255Gal. iii. 27.
Chapter XIII.—Isaiah’s Prophecies Considered. The Virginity of Christ’s Mother a Sign. Other Prophecies Also Signs. Metaphorical Sense of Proper Names in Sundry Passages of the Prophets.
You are equally led away by the sound of names, 3256 when you so understand the riches of Damascus, and the spoils of Samaria, and the king of Assyria, as if they portended that the Creator’s Christ was a warrior, not attending to the promise contained in the passage, “For before the Child shall have knowledge to cry, My father and My mother, He shall take away the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria before the king of Assyria.” 3257 You should first examine the point of age, whether it can be taken to represent Christ as even yet a man, 3258 much less a warrior. Although, to be sure, He might be about to call to arms by His cry as an infant; might be about to sound the alarm of war not with a trumpet, but with a little rattle; might be about to seek His foe, not on horseback, or in chariot, or from parapet, but from nurse’s neck or nursemaid’s back, and so be destined to subjugate Damascus and Samaria from His mother’s breasts! It is a different matter, of course, when the babes of your barbarian Pontus spring forth to the fight. They are, I ween, taught to lance before they lacerate; 3259 swathed at first in sunshine and ointment, 3260 afterwards armed with the satchel, 3261 and rationed on bread and butter! 3262 Now, since nature, certainly, nowhere grants to man to learn warfare before life, to pillage the wealth of a Damascus before he knows his father and mother’s name, it follows that the passage in question must be deemed to be a figurative one. Well, but nature, says he, does not permit “a virgin to conceive,” and still the prophet is believed. And indeed very properly; for he has paved the way for the incredible thing being believed, by giving a reason for its occurrence, in that it was to be for a sign. “Therefore,” says he, “the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son.” 3263 Now a sign from God would not have been a sign, 3264 unless it had been some novel and prodigious thing. Then, again, Jewish cavillers, in order to disconcert us, boldly pretend that Scripture does not hold 3265 that a virgin, but only a young woman, 3266 is to conceive and bring forth. They are, however, refuted by this consideration, that nothing of the nature of a sign can possibly come out of what is a daily occurrence, the pregnancy and child-bearing of a young woman. A virgin mother is justly deemed to be proposed 3267 by God as a sign, but a warlike infant has no like claim to the distinction; for even in such a case 3268 there does not occur the character of a sign. But after the sign of the strange and novel birth has been asserted, there is immediately afterwards declared as a sign the subsequent course of the Infant, 3269 who was to eat butter and honey. Not that this indeed is of the nature of a sign, nor is His “refusing the evil;” for this, too, is only a characteristic of infancy. 3270 But His destined capture of the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria before the king of Assyria is no doubt a wonderful sign. 3271 Keep to the measure of His age, and seek the purport of the prophecy, and give back also to the truth of the gospel what you have taken away from it in the lateness of your heresy, 3272 and the prophecy at once becomes intelligible and declares its own accomplishment. Let those eastern magi wait on the new-born Christ, presenting to Him, (although) in His infancy, their gifts of gold and frankincense; and surely an Infant will have received the riches of Damascus without a battle, and unarmed.
For besides the generally known fact, that the riches of the East, that is to say, its strength and resources, usually consist of gold and spices, it is certainly true of the Creator, that He makes gold the riches of the other 3273 nations also. Thus He says by Zechariah: “And Judah shall also fight at Jerusalem and shall gather together all the wealth of the nations round about, gold and silver.” 3274 Moreover, respecting that gift of gold, David also says: “And there shall be given to Him of the gold of Arabia;” 3275 and again: “The kings of Arabia and Saba shall offer to Him gifts.” 3276 For the East generally regarded the magi as kings; and Damascus was anciently deemed to belong to Arabia, before it was transferred to Syrophœnicia on the division of the Syrias (by Rome). 3277 Its riches Christ then received, when He received the tokens thereof in the gold and spices; while the spoils of Samaria were the magi themselves. These having discovered Him and honoured Him with their gifts, and on bended knee adored Him as their God and King, through the witness of the star which led their way and guided them, became the spoils of Samaria, that is to say, of idolatry, because, as it is easy enough to see, 3278 they believed in Christ. He designated idolatry under the name of Samaria, as that city was shameful for its idolatry, through which it had then revolted from God from the days of king Jeroboam. Nor is this an unusual manner for the Creator, (in His Scriptures 3279 ) figuratively to employ names of places as a metaphor derived from the analogy of their sins. Thus He calls the chief men of the Jews “rulers of Sodom,” and the nation itself “people of Gomorrah.” 3280 And in another passage He also says: “Thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite,” 3281 by reason of their kindred iniquity; 3282 although He had actually called them His sons: “I have nourished and brought up children.” 3283 So likewise by Egypt is sometimes understood, in His sense, 3284 the whole world as being marked out by superstition and a curse. 3285 By a similar usage Babylon also in our (St.) John is a figure of the city of Rome, as being like (Babylon) great and proud in royal power, and warring down the saints of God. Now it was in accordance with this style that He called the magi by the name of Samaritans, because (as we have said) they had practised idolatry as did the Samaritans. Moreover, by the phrase “before or against the king of Assyria,” understand “against Herod;” against whom the magi then opposed themselves, when they refrained from carrying him back word concerning Christ, whom he was seeking to destroy.
Footnotes
331:3256Compare with this chapter, T.’s adv. Judæos, 9.
331:3257Isa. viii. 4.
331:3258Jam hominem, jam virum in Adv. Judæos, “at man’s estate.”
331:3259Lanceare ante quam lancinare. This play on words points to the very early training of the barbarian boys to war. Lancinare perhaps means, “to nibble the nipple with the gum.”
331:3260He alludes to the suppling of their young joints with oil, and then drying them in the sun.
331:3261Pannis.
331:3262Butyro.
331:3263Isa. vii. 14.
331:3264The tam dignum of this place is “jam signum” in adv. Judæos.
331:3265Contineat.
331:3266This opinion of Jews and Judaizing heretics is mentioned by Irenæus, Adv. Hæret. iii. 21 (Stieren’s ed. i. 532); Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. v. 8; Jerome, Adv. Helvid. (ed. Benedict), p. 132. Nor has the cavil ceased to be held, as is well known, to the present day. The המָלְעַהָ of Isa. vii. 4 is supposed by the Jewish Fuerst to be Isaiah’s wife, and he quotes Kimchi’s authority; while the neologian Gesenius interprets the word, a bride, and rejects the Catholic notion of an unspotted virgin. To make way, however, for their view, both Fuerst and Gesenius have to reject the LXX. rendering, παρθένος.
332:3267Disposita.
332:3268Et hic.
332:3269Alius ordo jam infantis.
332:3270Infantia est. Better in adv. Judæos, “est infantiæ.”
332:3271The italicised words we have added from adv. Judæos, “hoc est mirabile signum.”
332:3272Posterior. Posteritas is an attribute of heresy in T.’s view.
332:3273Ceterarum, other than the Jews, i.e., Gentiles.
332:3274Zech. xiv. 14.
332:3275Ps. lxxii. 15.
332:3276Ps. lxxii. 10.
332:3277See Otto’s Justin Martyr, ii. 273, n. 23. [See Vol. I. p. 238, supra.]
332:3278Videlicet.
332:3279The Creatori here answers to the Scripturis divinis of the parallel passage in adv. Judæos. Of course there is a special force in this use of the Creator’s name here against Marcion.
332:3280Isa. i. 10.
332:3281Ezek. xvi. 3.
332:3282To the sins of these nations.
332:3283Isa. i. 2.
332:3284Apud illum, i.e., Creatorem.
332:3285Maledictionis.
Chapter XIV.—Figurative Style of Certain Messianic Prophecies in the Psalms. Military Metaphors Applied to Christ.
This interpretation of ours will derive confirmation, when, on your supposing that Christ is in any passage called a warrior, from the mention of certain arms and expressions of that sort, you weigh well the analogy of their other meanings, and draw your conclusions accordingly. “Gird on Thy sword,” says David, “upon Thy thigh.” 3286 But what do you read about Christ just before? “Thou art fairer than the children of men; grace is poured forth upon Thy lips.” 3287 It amuses me to imagine that blandishments of fair beauty and graceful lips are ascribed to one who had to gird on His sword for war! So likewise, when it is added, “Ride on prosperously in Thy majesty,” 3288 the reason is subjoined: “Because of truth, and meekness, and righteousness.” 3289 But who shall produce these results with the sword, and not their opposites rather—deceit, and harshness, and injury—which, it must be confessed, are the proper business of battles? Let us see, therefore, whether that is not some other sword, which has so different an action. Now the Apostle John, in the Apocalypse, describes a sword which proceeded from the mouth of God as “a doubly sharp, two-edged one.” 3290 This may be understood to be the Divine Word, who is doubly edged with the two testaments of the law and the gospel—sharpened with wisdom, hostile to the devil, arming us against the spiritual enemies of all wickedness and concupiscence, and cutting us off from the dearest objects for the sake of God’s holy name. If, however, you will not acknowledge John, you have our common master Paul, who “girds our loins about with truth, and puts on us the breastplate of righteousness, and shoes us with the preparation of the gospel of peace, not of war; who bids us take the shield of faith, wherewith we may be able to quench all the fiery darts of the devil, and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which (he says) is the word of God.” 3291 This sword the Lord Himself came to send on earth, and not peace. 3292 If he is your Christ, then even he is a warrior. If he is not a warrior, and the sword he brandishes is an allegorical one, then the Creator’s Christ in the psalm too may have been girded with the figurative sword of the Word, without any martial gear. The above-mentioned “fairness” of His beauty and “grace of His lips” would quite suit such a sword, girt as it even then was upon His thigh in the passage of David, and sent as it would one day be by Him on earth. For this is what He says: “Ride on prosperously in Thy majesty 3293 ”—advancing His word into every land, so as to call all nations: destined to prosper in the success of that faith which received Him, and reigning, from the fact that 3294 He conquered death by His resurrection. “Thy right hand,” says He, “shall wonderfully lead Thee forth,” 3295 even the might of Thy spiritual grace, whereby the knowledge of Christ is spread. “Thine arrows are sharp;” 3296 everywhere Thy precepts fly about, Thy threatenings also, and convictions 3297 of heart, pricking and piercing each conscience. “The people shall fall under Thee,” 3298 that is, in adoration. Thus is the Creator’s Christ mighty in war, and a bearer of arms; thus also does He now take the spoils, not of Samaria alone, but of all nations. Acknowledge, then, that His spoils are figurative, since you have learned that His arms are allegorical. Since, therefore, both the Lord speaks and His apostle writes such things 3299 in a figurative style, we are not rash in using His interpretations, the records 3300 of which even our adversaries admit; and thus in so far will it be Isaiah’s Christ who has come, in as far as He was not a warrior, because it is not of such a character that He is described by Isaiah.
Footnotes
332:3286Ps. xlv. 3.
333:3287Ps. xlv. 2.
333:3288Literally, “Advance, and prosper, and reign.”
333:3289Ps. xlv. 4.
333:3290Rev. i. 16.
333:3291Eph. vi. 14-17.
333:3292Matt. x. 34.
333:3293“Advance, and prosper, and reign.”
333:3294Exinde qua.
333:3295Ps. xlv. 4, but changed.
333:3296Ps. xlv. 5.
333:3297Traductiones.
333:3298Ps. xlv. 5.
333:3299Ejusmodi.
333:3300Exempla.
Chapter XV.—The Title Christ Suitable as a Name of the Creator’s Son, But Unsuited to Marcion’s Christ.
Touching then the discussion of His flesh, and (through that) of His nativity, and incidentally 3301 of His name Emmanuel, let this suffice. Concerning His other names, however, and especially that of Christ, what has the other side to say in reply? If the name of Christ is as common with you as is the name of God—so that as the Son of both Gods may be fitly called Christ, so each of the Fathers may be called Lord—reason will certainly be opposed to this argument. For the name of God, as being the natural designation of Deity, may be ascribed to all those beings for whom a divine nature is claimed,—as, for instance, even to idols. The apostle says: “For there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth.” 3302 The name of Christ, however, does not arise from nature, but from dispensation; 3303 and so becomes the proper name of Him to whom it accrues in consequence of the dispensation. Nor is it subject to be shared in by any other God, especially a rival, and one that has a dispensation of His own, to whom it will be also necessary that He should possess names apart from all others. For how happens it that, after they have devised different dispensations for two Gods they admit into this diversity of dispensation a community of names; whereas no proof could be more useful of two Gods being rival ones, than if there should be found coincident with their (diverse) dispensations a diversity also of names? For that is not a state of diverse qualities, which is not distinctly indicated 3304 in the specific meanings 3305 of their designations. Whenever these are wanting, there occurs what the Greeks call the katachresis 3306 of a term, by its improper application to what does not belong to it. 3307 In God, however, there ought, I suppose, to be no defect, no setting up of His dispensations by katachrestic abuse of words. Who is this god, that claims for his son names from the Creator? I say not names which do not belong to him, but ancient and well-known names, which even in this view of them would be unsuitable for a novel and unknown god. How is it, again, that he tells us that “a piece of new cloth is not sewed on to an old garment,” or that “new wine is not trusted to old bottles,” 3308 when he is himself patched and clad in an old suit 3309 of names? How is it he has rent off the gospel from the law, when he is wholly invested with the law,—in the name, forsooth, of Christ? What hindered his calling himself by some other name, seeing that he preached another (gospel), came from another source, and refused to take on him a real body, for the very purpose that he might not be supposed to be the Creator’s Christ? Vain, however, was his unwillingness to seem to be He whose name he was willing to assume; since, even if he had been truly corporeal, he would more certainly escape being taken for the Christ of the Creator, if he had not taken on him His name. But, as it is, he rejects the substantial verity of Him whose name he has assumed, even though he should give a proof of that verity by his name. For Christ means anointed, and to be anointed is certainly an affair 3310 of the body. He who had not a body, could not by any possibility have been anointed; he who could not by any possibility have been anointed, could not in any wise have been called Christ. It is a different thing (quite), if he only assumed the phantom of a name too. But how, he asks, was he to insinuate himself into being believed by the Jews, except through a name which was usual and familiar amongst them? Then ’tis a fickle and tricksty God whom you describe! To promote any plan by deception, is the resource of either distrust or of maliciousness. Much more frank and simple was the conduct of the false prophets against the Creator, when they came in His name as their own God. 3311 But I do not find that any good came of this proceeding, 3312 since they were more apt to suppose either that Christ was their own, or rather was some deceiver, than that He was the Christ of the other god; and this the gospel will show.
Footnotes
333:3301Interim.
333:33021 Cor. viii. 5.
333:3303Ex dispositione. This word seems to mean what is implied in the phrases, “Christian dispensation,” “Mosaic dispensation,” etc.
334:3304Consignatur.
334:3305Proprietatibus.
334:3306Quintilian, Inst. viii. 6, defines this as a figure “which lends a name to things which have it not.”
334:3307De alieno abutendo.
334:3308Matt. 9:16, 17.
334:3309Senio.
334:3310Passio.
334:3311Adversus Creatorem, in sui Dei nomine venientes.
334:3312i.e., to the Marcionite position.
Chapter XVI.—The Sacred Name Jesus Most Suited to the Christ of the Creator. Joshua a Type of Him.
Now if he caught at the name Christ, just as the pickpocket clutches the dole-basket, why did he wish to be called Jesus too, by a name which was not so much looked for by the Jews? For although we, who have by God’s grace attained to the understanding of His mysteries, acknowledge that this name also was destined for Christ, yet, for all that, the fact was not known to the Jews, from whom wisdom was taken away. To this day, in short, it is Christ that they are looking for, not Jesus; and they interpret Elias to be Christ rather than Jesus. He, therefore, who came also in a name in which Christ was not expected, might have come only in that name which was solely anticipated for Him. 3313 But since he has mixed up the two, 3314 the expected one and the unexpected, his twofold project is defeated. For if he be Christ for the very purpose of insinuating himself as the Creator’s, then Jesus opposes him, because Jesus was not looked for in the Christ of the Creator; or if he be Jesus, in order that he might pass as belonging to the other (God), then Christ hinders him, because Christ was not expected to belong to any other than the Creator. I know not which one of these names may be able to hold its ground. 3315 In the Christ of the Creator, however, both will keep their place, for in Him a Jesus too is found. Do you ask, how? Learn it then here, with the Jews also who are partakers of your heresy. When Oshea the son of Nun was destined to be the successor of Moses, is not his old name then changed, and for the first time he is called 3316 Joshua? It is true, you say. This, then, we first observe, was a figure of Him who was to come. For inasmuch as Jesus Christ was to introduce a new generation 3317 (because we are born in the wilderness of this world) into the promised land which flows with milk and honey, that is, into the possession of eternal life, than which nothing can be sweeter; inasmuch, too, as this was to be brought about not by Moses, that is to say, not by the discipline of the law, but by Joshua, by the grace of the gospel, our circumcision being effected by a knife of stone, that is, (by the circumcision) of Christ, for Christ is a rock (or stone), therefore that great man, 3318 who was ordained as a type of this mystery, was actually consecrated with the figure of the Lord’s own name, being called Joshua. This name Christ Himself even then testified to be His own, when He talked with Moses. For who was it that talked with him, but the Spirit of the Creator, which is Christ? When He therefore spake this commandment to the people, “Behold, I send my angel before thy face, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the land which I have prepared for thee; attend to him, and obey his voice and do not provoke him; for he has not shunned you, 3319 since my name is upon him,” 3320 He called him an angel indeed, because of the greatness of the powers which he was to exercise, and because of his prophetic office, 3321 while announcing the will of God; but Joshua also (Jesus), because it was a type 3322 of His own future name. Often 3323 did He confirm that name of His which He had thus conferred upon (His servant); because it was not the name of angel, nor Oshea, but Joshua (Jesus), which He had commanded him to bear as his usual appellation for the time to come. Since, therefore, both these names are suitable to the Christ of the Creator, they are proportionately unsuitable to the non-Creator’s Christ; and so indeed is all the rest of (our Christ’s) destined course. 3324 In short, there must now for the future be made between us that certain and equitable rule, necessary to both sides, which shall determine that there ought to be absolutely nothing at all in common between the Christ of the other god and the Creator’s Christ. For you will have as great a necessity to maintain their diversity as we have to resist it, inasmuch as you will be as unable to show that the Christ of the other god has come, until you have proved him to be a far different being from the Creator’s Christ, as we, to claim Him (who has come) as the Creator’s, until we have shown Him to be such a one as the Creator has appointed. Now respecting their names, such is our conclusion against (Marcion). 3325 I claim for myself Christ; I maintain for myself Jesus.
Footnotes
334:3313That is, Christ.
334:3314Surely it is Duo, not Deo.
334:3315Constare.
334:3316Incipit vocari.
334:3317Secundum populum.
335:3318Vir.
335:3319Non celavit te, “not concealed Himself from you.”
335:3320Exod. 23:20, 21.
335:3321Officium prophetæ.
335:3322Sacramentum.
335:3323Identidem.
335:3324Reliquus ordo.
335:3325Obduximus.
Chapter XVII.—Prophecies in Isaiah and the Psalms Respecting Christ’s Humiliation.
Let us compare with Scripture the rest of His dispensation. Whatever that poor despised body 3326 may be, because it was an object of touch 3327 and sight, 3328 it shall be my Christ, be He inglorious, be He ignoble, be He dishonoured; for such was it announced that He should be, both in bodily condition and aspect. Isaiah comes to our help again: “We have announced (His way) before Him,” says he; “He is like a servant, 3329 like a root in a dry ground; He hath no form nor comeliness; we saw Him, and He had neither form nor beauty; but His form was despised, marred above all men.” 3330 Similarly the Father addressed the Son just before: “Inasmuch as many will be astonished at Thee, so also will Thy beauty be without glory from men.” 3331 For although, in David’s words, He is fairer than the children of men,” 3332 yet it is in that figurative state of spiritual grace, when He is girded with the sword of the Spirit, which is verily His form, and beauty, and glory. According to the same prophet, however, He is in bodily condition “a very worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and an outcast of the people.” 3333 But no internal quality of such a kind does He announce as belonging to Him. In Him dwelt the fulness of the Spirit; therefore I acknowledge Him to be “the rod of the stem of Jesse.” His blooming flower shall be my Christ, upon whom hath rested, according to Isaiah, “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of piety, and of the fear of the Lord.” 3334 Now to no man, except Christ, would the diversity of spiritual proofs suitably apply. He is indeed like a flower for the Spirit’s grace, reckoned indeed of the stem of Jesse, but thence to derive His descent through Mary. Now I purposely demand of you, whether you grant to Him the destination 3335 of all this humiliation, and suffering, and tranquillity, from which He will be the Christ of Isaiah,—a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, who was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and who, like a lamb before the shearer, opened not His mouth; 3336 who did not struggle nor cry, nor was His voice heard in the street who broke not the bruised reed—that is, the shattered faith of the Jews—nor quenched the smoking flax—that is, the freshly-kindled 3337 ardour of the Gentiles. He can be none other than the Man who was foretold. It is right that His conduct 3338 be investigated according to the rule of Scripture, distinguishable as it is unless I am mistaken, by the twofold operation of preaching 3339 and of miracle. But the treatment of both these topics I shall so arrange as to postpone, to the chapter wherein I have determined to discuss the actual gospel of Marcion, the consideration of His wonderful doctrines and miracles—with a view, however, to our present purpose. Let us here, then, in general terms complete the subject which we had entered upon, by indicating, as we pass on, 3340 how Christ was fore-announced by Isaiah as a preacher: “For who is there among you,” says he, “that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of His Son?” 3341 And likewise as a healer: “For,” says he, “He hath taken away our infirmities, and carried our sorrows.” 3342
Footnotes
335:3326Corpusculum illud.
335:3327Habitum.
335:3328Conspectum.
335:3329Puerulus, “little child,” perhaps.
335:3330Sentences out of Isa. 52:14, Isa. 53:2, etc.
335:3331Isa. lii. 14.
335:3332Ps. xlv. 2.
335:3333Ps. xxii. 6.
335:3334Isa. 11:1, 2.
335:3335Intentionem.
336:3336Isa. 53:3, 7.
336:3337Momentaneum.
336:3338Actum.
336:3339Prædicationis.
336:3340Interim.
336:3341Isa. l. 10.
336:3342Isa. liii. 4.
Chapter XVIII. 3343 —Types of the Death of Christ. Isaac; Joseph; Jacob Against Simeon and Levi; Moses Praying Against Amalek; The Brazen Serpent.
On the subject of His death, 3344 I suppose, you endeavour to introduce a diversity of opinion, simply because you deny that the suffering of the cross was predicted of the Christ of the Creator, and because you contend, moreover, that it is not to be believed that the Creator would expose His Son to that kind of death on which He had Himself pronounced a curse. “Cursed,” says He, “is every one who hangeth on a tree.” 3345 But what is meant by this curse, worthy as it is of the simple prediction of the cross, of which we are now mainly inquiring, I defer to consider, because in another passage 3346 we have given the reason 3347 of the thing preceded by proof. First, I shall offer a full explanation 3348 of the types. And no doubt it was proper that this mystery should be prophetically set forth by types, and indeed chiefly by that method: for in proportion to its incredibility would it be a stumbling-block, if it were set forth in bare prophecy; and in proportion too, to its grandeur, was the need of obscuring it in shadow, 3349 that the difficulty of understanding it might lead to prayer for the grace of God. First, then, Isaac, when he was given up by his father as an offering, himself carried the wood for his own death. By this act he even then was setting forth the death of Christ, who was destined by His Father as a sacrifice, and carried the cross whereon He suffered. Joseph likewise was a type of Christ, not indeed on this ground (that I may not delay my course 3350 ), that he suffered persecution for the cause of God from his brethren, as Christ did from His brethren after the flesh, the Jews; but when he is blessed by his father in these words: “His glory is that of a bullock; his horns are the horns of a unicorn; with them shall he push the nations to the very ends of the earth,” 3351 —he was not, of course, designated as a mere unicorn with its one horn, or a minotaur with two; but Christ was indicated in him—a bullock in respect of both His characteristics: to some as severe as a Judge, to others gentle as a Saviour, whose horns were the extremities of His cross. For of the antenna, which is a part of a cross, the ends are called horns; while the midway stake of the whole frame is the unicorn. By this virtue, then, of His cross, and in this manner “horned,” He is both now pushing all nations through faith, bearing them away from earth to heaven; and will then push them through judgment, casting them down from heaven to earth. He will also, according to another passage in the same scripture, be a bullock, when He is spiritually interpreted to be Jacob against Simeon and Levi, which means against the scribes and the Pharisees; for it was from them that these last derived their origin. 3352 Like Simeon and Levi, they consummated their wickedness by their heresy, with which they persecuted Christ. “Into their counsel let not my soul enter; to their assembly let not my heart be united: for in their anger they slew men,” that is, the prophets; “and in their self-will they hacked the sinews of a bullock,” 3353 that is, of Christ. For against Him did they wreak their fury after they had slain His prophets, even by affixing Him with nails to the cross. Otherwise, it is an idle thing 3354 when, after slaying men, he inveighs against them for the torture of a bullock! Again, in the case of Moses, wherefore did he at that moment particularly, when Joshua was fighting Amalek, pray in a sitting posture with outstretched hands, when in such a conflict it would surely have been more seemly to have bent the knee, and smitten the breast, and to have fallen on the face to the ground, and in such prostration to have offered prayer? Wherefore, but because in a battle fought in the name of that Lord who was one day to fight against the devil, the shape was necessary of that very cross through which Jesus was to win the victory? Why, once more, did the same Moses, after prohibiting the likeness of everything, set up the golden serpent on the pole; and as it hung there, propose it as an object to be looked at for a cure? 3355 Did he not here also intend to show the power of our Lord’s cross, whereby that old serpent the devil was vanquished,—whereby also to every man who was bitten by spiritual serpents, but who yet turned with an eye of faith to it, was proclaimed a cure from the bite of sin, and health for evermore?
Footnotes
336:3343Compare adv. Judæos, chap. 10. [pp. 165, 166, supra.]
336:3344De exitu.
336:3345Compare Deut. 21:23, Gal. 3:13.
336:3346The words “quiaet aliasantecedit rerum probatio rationem,” seem to refer to the parallel passage in adv. Judæos, where he has described the Jewish law of capital punishment, and argued for the exemption of Christ from its terms. He begins that paragraph with saying, “Sed hujus maledictionis sensum antecedit rerum ratio.” [See, p. 164, supra.]
336:3347Perhaps rationale or procedure.
336:3348Edocebo.
336:3349Magis obumbrandum.
336:3350But he may mean, by “ne demorer cursum,” “that I may not obstruct the course of the type,” by taking off attention from its true force. In the parallel place, however, another turn is given to the sense; Joseph is a type, “even on this ground—that I may but briefly allude to it—that he suffered,” etc.
336:3351Deut. xxxiii. 17.
336:3352Census.
336:3353Gen. xlix. 6. The last clause is, “ceciderunt nervos tauro.”
337:3354Vanum.
337:3355Spectaculum salutare.
Chapter XIX.—Prophecies of the Death of Christ.
Come now, when you read in the words of David, how that “the Lord reigneth from the tree,” 3356 I want to know what you understand by it. Perhaps you think some wooden 3357 king of the Jews is meant!—and not Christ, who overcame death by His suffering on the cross, and thence reigned! Now, although death reigned from Adam even to Christ, why may not Christ be said to have reigned from the tree, from His having shut up the kingdom of death by dying upon the tree of His cross? Likewise Isaiah also says: “For unto us a child is born.” 3358 But what is there unusual in this, unless he speaks of the Son of God? “To us is given He whose government is upon His shoulder.” 3359 Now, what king is there who bears the ensign of his dominion upon his shoulder, and not rather upon his head as a diadem, or in his hand as a sceptre, or else as a mark in some royal apparel? But the one new King of the new ages, Jesus Christ, carried on His shoulder both the power and the excellence of His new glory, even His cross; so that, according to our former prophecy, He might thenceforth reign from the tree as Lord. This tree it is which Jeremiah likewise gives you intimation of, when he prophesies to the Jews, who should say, “Come, let us destroy the tree with the fruit, (the bread) thereof,” 3360 that is, His body. For so did God in your own gospel even reveal the sense, when He called His body bread; so that, for the time to come, you may understand that He has given to His body the figure of bread, whose body the prophet of old figuratively turned into bread, the Lord Himself designing to give by and by an interpretation of the mystery. If you require still further prediction of the Lord’s cross, the twenty-first Psalm 3361 is sufficiently able to afford it to you, containing as it does the entire passion of Christ, who was even then prophetically declaring 3362 His glory. “They pierced,” says He, “my hands and my feet,” 3363 which is the special cruelty of the cross. And again, when He implores His Father’s help, He says, “Save me from the lion’s mouth,” that is, the jaws of death, “and my humiliation from the horns of the unicorns;” in other words, from the extremities of the cross, as we have shown above. Now, David himself did not suffer this cross, nor did any other king of the Jews; so that you cannot suppose that this is the prophecy of any other’s passion than His who alone was so notably crucified by the nation. Now should the heretics, in their obstinacy, 3364 reject and despise all these interpretations, I will grant to them that the Creator has given us no signs of the cross of His Christ; but they will not prove from this concession that He who was crucified was another (Christ), unless they could somehow show that this death was predicted as His by their own god, so that from the diversity of predictions there might be maintained to be a diversity of sufferers, 3365 and thereby also a diversity of persons. But since there is no prophecy of even Marcion’s Christ, much less of his cross, it is enough for my Christ that there is a prophecy merely of death. For, from the fact that the kind of death is not declared, it was possible for the death of the cross to have been still intended, which would then have to be assigned to another (Christ), if the prophecy had had reference to another. Besides, 3366 if he should be unwilling to allow that the death of my Christ was predicted, his confusion must be the greater 3367 if he announces that his own Christ indeed died, whom he denies to have had a nativity, whilst denying that my Christ is mortal, though he allows Him to be capable of birth. However, I will show him the death, and burial, and resurrection of my Christ all 3368 indicated in a single sentence of Isaiah, who says, “His sepulture was removed from the midst of them.” Now there could have been no sepulture without death, and no removal of sepulture except by resurrection. Then, finally, he added: “Therefore He shall have many for his inheritance, and He shall divide the spoil of the many, because He poured out His soul unto death.” 3369 For there is here set forth the cause of this favour to Him, even that it was to recompense Him for His suffering of death. It was equally shown that He was to obtain this recompense for His death, was certainly to obtain it after His death by means of the resurrection. 3370
Footnotes
337:3356Ps. xcvi. 10, with a ligno added.
337:3357Lignarium aliquem regem.
337:3358Isa. ix. 6.
337:3359Isa. ix. 6.
337:3360Jer. xi. 19.
337:3361The twenty-second Psalm. A.V.
337:3362Canentis.
337:3363Ps. xxii. 16.
337:3364Hæretica duritia.
337:3365Passionum, literally sufferings, which would hardly give the sense.
337:3366Nisi.
338:3367Quo magis erubescat.
338:3368Et—et—et.
338:3369Isa. liii. 12.
338:3370Both His own and His people’s.
Chapter XX. 3371 —The Subsequent Influence of Christ’s Death in the World Predicted. The Sure Mercies of David. What These are.
It is sufficient for my purpose to have traced thus far the course of Christ’s dispensation in these particulars. This has proved Him to be such a one as prophecy announced He should be, so that He ought not to be regarded in any other character than that which prediction assigned to Him; and the result of this agreement between the facts of His course and the Scriptures of the Creator should be the restoration of belief in them from that prejudice which has, by contributing to diversity of opinion, either thrown doubt upon, or led to a denial of, a considerable part of them. And now we go further and build up the superstructure of those kindred events 3372 out of the Scriptures of the Creator which were predicted and destined to happen after Christ. For the dispensation would not be found complete, if He had not come after whom it had to run on its course. 3373 Look at all nations from the vortex of human error emerging out of it up to the Divine Creator, the Divine Christ, and deny Him to be the object of prophecy, if you dare. At once there will occur to you the Father’s promise in the Psalms: “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee. Ask of me, and I shall give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.” 3374 You will not be able to put in a claim for some son of David being here meant, rather than Christ; or for the ends of the earth being promised to David, whose kingdom was confined to the Jewish nation simply, rather than to Christ, who now embraces the whole world in the faith of His gospel. So again He says by Isaiah: “I have given Thee for a dispensation of the people, for a light of the Gentiles, to open the eyes of the blind,” that is, those that be in error, “to bring out the prisoners from the prison,” that is, to free them from sin, “and from the prison-house,” that is, of death, “those that sit in darkness”—even that of ignorance. 3375 If these things are accomplished through Christ, they would not have been designed in prophecy for any other than Him through whom they have their accomplishment. In another passage He also says: “Behold, I have set Him as a testimony to the nations, a prince and commander to the nations; nations which know Thee not shall invoke Thee, and peoples shall run together unto Thee.” 3376 You will not interpret these words of David, because He previously said, “I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.” 3377 Indeed, you will be obliged from these words all the more to understand that Christ is reckoned to spring from David by carnal descent, by reason of His birth 3378 of the Virgin Mary. Touching this promise of Him, there is the oath to David in the psalm, “Of the fruit of thy body 3379 will I set upon thy throne.” 3380 What body is meant? David’s own? Certainly not. For David was not to give birth to a son. 3381 Nor his wife’s either. For instead of saying, “Of the fruit of thy body,” he would then have rather said, “Of the fruit of thy wife’s body.” But by mentioning his 3382 body, it follows that He pointed to some one of his race of whose body the flesh of Christ was to be the fruit, which bloomed forth from 3383 Mary’s womb. He named the fruit of the body (womb) alone, because it was peculiarly fruit of the womb, of the womb only in fact, and not of the husband also; and he refers the womb (body) to David, as to the chief of the race and father of the family. Because it could not consist with a virgin’s condition to consort her with a husband, 3384 He therefore attributed the body (womb) to the father. That new dispensation, then, which is found in Christ now, will prove to be what the Creator then promised under the appellation of “the sure mercies of David,” which were Christ’s, inasmuch as Christ sprang from David, or rather His very flesh itself was David’s “sure mercies,” consecrated by religion, and “sure” after its resurrection. Accordingly the prophet Nathan, in the first of Kings, 3385 makes a promise to David for his seed, “which shall proceed,” says he, “out of thy bowels.” 3386 Now, if you explain this simply of Solomon, you will send me into a fit of laughter. For David will evidently have brought forth Solomon! But is not Christ here designated the seed of David, as of that womb which was derived from David, that is, Mary’s? Now, because Christ rather than any other 3387 was to build the temple of God, that is to say, a holy manhood, wherein God’s Spirit might dwell as in a better temple, Christ rather than David’s son Solomon was to be looked for as 3388 the Son of God. Then, again, the throne for ever with the kingdom for ever is more suited to Christ than to Solomon, a mere temporal king. From Christ, too, God’s mercy did not depart, whereas on Solomon even God’s anger alighted, after his luxury and idolatry. For Satan 3389 stirred up an Edomite as an enemy against him. Since, therefore, nothing of these things is compatible with Solomon, but only with Christ, the method of our interpretations will certainly be true; and the very issue of the facts shows that they were clearly predicted of Christ. And so in Him we shall have “the sure mercies of David.” Him, not David, has God appointed for a testimony to the nations; Him, for a prince and commander to the nations, not David, who ruled over Israel alone. It is Christ whom all nations now invoke, which knew Him not; Christ to whom all races now betake themselves, whom they were ignorant of before. It is impossible that that should be said to be future, which you see (daily) coming to pass.
Footnotes
338:3371Comp. adv. Judæos, 11 and 12.
338:3372Ea paria.
338:3373Evenire.
338:3374Ps. ii. 7.
338:3375Isa. 42:6, 7.
338:3376Isa. 55:4, 5.
338:3377Isa. lv. 3.
338:3378Censum. [Kaye, p. 149.]
338:3379Ventris, “womb.”
338:3380Ps. cxxxii. 11.
338:3381He treats “body” as here meaning womb.
338:3382Ipsius.
338:3383Floruit ex.
338:3384Viro deputare.
339:3385The four books of the Kings were sometimes regarded as two, “the first” of which contained 1 and 2 Samuel, “the second” 1 and 2 Kings. The reference in this place is to 2 Samuel vii. 12.
339:3386He here again makes bowels synonymous with womb.
339:3387Magis.
339:3388Habendus in.
339:3389In 1 Kings xi. 14, “the Lord” is said to have done this. Comp. 2 Sam. 24:1, 1 Chr. 21:1
Chapter XXI.—The Call of the Gentiles Under the Influence of the Gospel Foretold.
So you cannot get out of this notion of yours a basis for your difference between the two Christs, as if the Jewish Christ were ordained by the Creator for the restoration of the people alone 3390 from its dispersion, whilst yours was appointed by the supremely good God for the liberation of the whole human race. Because, after all, the earliest Christians are found on the side of the Creator, not of Marcion, 3391 all nations being called to His kingdom, from the fact that God set up that kingdom from the tree (of the cross), when no Cerdon was yet born, much less a Marcion. However, when you are refuted on the call of the nations, you betake yourself to proselytes. You ask, who among the nations can turn to the Creator, when those whom the prophet names are proselytes of individually different and private condition? 3392 “Behold,” says Isaiah, “the proselytes shall come unto me through Thee,” showing that they were even proselytes who were to find their way to God through Christ. But nations (Gentiles) also, like ourselves, had likewise their mention (by the prophet) as trusting in Christ. “And in His name,” says he, “shall the Gentiles trust.” Besides, the proselytes whom you substitute for the nations in prophecy, are not in the habit of trusting in Christ’s name, but in the dispensation of Moses, from whom comes their instruction. But it was in the last days that the choice 3393 of the nations had its commencement. 3394 In these very words Isaiah says: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord,” that is, God’s eminence, “and the house of God,” that is, Christ, the Catholic temple of God, in which God is worshipped, “shall be established upon the mountains,” over all the eminences of virtues and powers; “and all nations shall come unto it; and many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us His way, and we will walk in it: for out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” 3395 The gospel will be this “way,” of the new law and the new word in Christ, no longer in Moses. “And He shall judge among the nations,” even concerning their error. “And these shall rebuke a large nation,” that of the Jews themselves and their proselytes. “And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears 3396 into pruning-hooks;” in other words, they shall change into pursuits of moderation and peace the dispositions of injurious minds, and hostile tongues, and all kinds of evil, and blasphemy. “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,” shall not stir up discord. “Neither shall they learn war any more,” 3397 that is, the provocation of hostilities; so that you here learn that Christ is promised not as powerful in war, but pursuing peace. Now you must deny either that these things were predicted, although they are plainly seen, or that they have been accomplished, although you read of them; else, if you cannot deny either one fact or the other, they must have been accomplished in Him of whom they were predicted. For look at the entire course of His call up to the present time from its beginning, how it is addressed to the nations (Gentiles) who are in these last days approaching to God the Creator, and not to proselytes, whose election 3398 was rather an event of the earliest days. Verily the apostles have annulled 3399 that belief of yours.
Footnotes
339:3390i.e., the Jews.
339:3391Or perhaps, “are found to belong to the Creator’s Christ, not to Marcion’s.”
339:3392Marcion denied that there was any prophecy of national or Gentile conversion; it was only the conversion of individual proselytes that he held.
339:3393Allectio.
339:3394Exorta est.
339:3395Isa. 2:2, 3.
339:3396Sibynas, Σιβύνη· ὅπλον δόρατι παραπλήσιον. Hesychius, “Sibynam appellant Illyrii telum venabuli simile.” Paulus, ex Festo, p. 336, Müll. (Oehler.)
340:3397Isa. ii. 4.
340:3398Allectio.
340:3399Junius explains the author’s induxerunt by deleverunt; i.e., “they annulled your opinion about proselytes being the sole called, by their promulgation of the gospel.”
Chapter XXII.—The Success of the Apostles, and Their Sufferings in the Cause of the Gospel, Foretold.
You have the work of the apostles also predicted: “How beautiful are the feet of them which preach the gospel of peace, which bring good tidings of good,” 3400 not of war nor evil tidings. In response to which is the psalm, “Their sound is gone through all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world;” 3401 that is, the words of them who carry round about the law that proceeded from Sion and the Lord’s word from Jerusalem, in order that that might come to pass which was written: “They who were far from my righteousness, have come near to my righteousness and truth.” 3402 When the apostles girded their loins for this business, they renounced the elders and rulers and priests of the Jews. Well, says he, but was it not above all things that they might preach the other god? Rather 3403 (that they might preach) that very self-same God, whose scripture they were with all their might fulfilling! “Depart ye, depart ye,” exclaims Isaiah; “go ye out from thence, and touch not the unclean thing,” that is blasphemy against Christ; “Go ye out of the midst of her,” even of the synagogue. “Be ye separate who bear the vessels of the Lord.” 3404 For already had the Lord, according to the preceding words (of the prophet), revealed His Holy One with His arm, that is to say, Christ by His mighty power, in the eyes of the nations, so that all the 3405 nations and the utmost parts of the earth have seen the salvation, which was from God. By thus departing from Judaism itself, when they exchanged the obligations and burdens of the law for the liberty of the gospel, they were fulfilling the psalm, “Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast away their yoke from us;” and this indeed (they did) after that “the heathen raged, and the people imagined vain devices;” after that “the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers took their counsel together against the Lord, and against His Christ.” 3406 What did the apostles thereupon suffer? You answer: Every sort of iniquitous persecutions, from men that belonged indeed to that Creator who was the adversary of Him whom they were preaching. Then why does the Creator, if an adversary of Christ, not only predict that the apostles should incur this suffering, but even express His displeasure 3407 thereat? For He ought neither to predict the course of the other god, whom, as you contend, He knew not, nor to have expressed displeasure at that which He had taken care to bring about. “See how the righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart; and how merciful men are taken away, and no man considereth. For the righteous man has been removed from the evil person.” 3408 Who is this but Christ? “Come, say they, let us take away the righteous, because He is not for our turn, (and He is clean contrary to our doings).” 3409 Premising, therefore, and likewise subjoining the fact that Christ suffered, He foretold that His just ones should suffer equally with Him—both the apostles and all the faithful in succession; and He signed them with that very seal of which Ezekiel spake: “The Lord said unto me, Go through the gate, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set the mark Tau upon the foreheads of the men.” 3410 Now the Greek letter Tau and our own letter T is the very form of the cross, which He predicted would be the sign on our foreheads in the true Catholic Jerusalem, 3411 in which, according to the twenty-first Psalm, the brethren of Christ or children of God would ascribe glory to God the Father, in the person of Christ Himself addressing His Father; “I will declare Thy name unto my brethren; in the midst of the congregation will I sing praise unto Thee.” For that which had to come to pass in our day in His name, and by His Spirit, He rightly foretold would be of Him. And a little afterwards He says: “My praise shall be of Thee in the great congregation.” 3412 In the sixty-seventh Psalm He says again: “In the congregations bless ye the Lord God.” 3413 So that with this agrees also the prophecy of Malachi: “I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord; neither will I accept your offerings: for from the rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place sacrifice shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering” 3414 —such as the ascription of glory, and blessing, and praise, and hymns. Now, inasmuch as all these things are also found amongst you, and the sign upon the forehead, 3415 and the sacraments of the church, and the offerings of the pure sacrifice, you ought now to burst forth, and declare that the Spirit of the Creator prophesied of your Christ.
Footnotes
340:3400Isa. 52:7, Rom. 10:15.
340:3401Ps. xix. 5.
340:3402Pamelius regards this as a quotation from Isa. 46:12, 13, only put narratively, in order to indicate briefly its realization.
340:3403Atquin.
340:3404Isa. lii. 11.
340:3405Universæ.
340:3406Comp. Ps. 2:2, 3, Acts 4:25.
340:3407Exprobrat.
340:3408Isa. lvii. 1.
340:3409Wisd. of Sol. ii. 12.
340:3410Ezek. ix. 4. The ms. which T. used seems to have agreed with the versions of Theodotion and Aquila mentioned thus by Origen (Selecta in Ezek.): ὁ δὲ ᾽Ακύλας καὶ Θεοδοτίων φασι. Σημείωσις τοῦ Θαῦ ἐπὶ τὰ μέτωπα, κ.τ.λ. Origen, in his own remarks, refers to the sign of the cross, as indicated by this letter. Ed. Bened. (by Migne), iii. 802.
341:3411[Ambiguous, according to Kaye, p. 304, may mean a transition from Paganism to true Christianity.]
341:3412Ps. 22:22, 25.
341:3413Ps. lxviii. 26.
341:3414Mal. 1:10, 11.
341:3415[Kaye remarks that traditions of practice, unlike the traditions of doctrine, may be varied according to times and circumstances. See p. 286.]
Chapter XXIII.—The Dispersion of the Jews, and Their Desolate Condition for Rejecting Christ, Foretold.
Now, since you join the Jews in denying that their Christ has come, recollect also what is that end which they were predicted as about to bring on themselves after the time of Christ, for the impiety wherewith they both rejected and slew Him. For it began to come to pass from that day, when, according to Isaiah, “a man threw away his idols of gold and of silver, which they made into useless and hurtful objects of worship;” 3416 in other words, from the time when he threw away his idols after the truth had been made clear by Christ. Consider whether what follows in the prophet has not received its fulfilment: “The Lord of hosts hath taken away from Judah and from Jerusalem, amongst other things, both the prophet and the wise artificer;” 3417 that is, His Holy Spirit, who builds the church, which is indeed the temple, and household and city of God. For thenceforth God’s grace failed amongst them; and “the clouds were commanded to rain no rain upon the vineyard” of Sorech; to withhold, that is, the graces of heaven, that they shed no blessing upon “the house of Israel,” which had but produced “the thorns” wherewith it had crowned the Lord, and “instead of righteousness, the cry” wherewith it had hurried Him away to the cross. 3418 And so in this manner the law and the prophets were until John, but the dews of divine grace were withdrawn from the nation. After his time their madness still continued, and the name of the Lord was blasphemed by them, as saith the Scripture: “Because of you my name is continually blasphemed amongst the nations” 3419 (for from them did the blasphemy originate); neither in the interval from Tiberius to Vespasian did they learn repentance. 3420 Therefore “has their land become desolate, their cities are burnt with fire, their country strangers are devouring before their own eyes; the daughter of Sion has been deserted like a cottage in a vineyard, or a lodge in a garden of cucumbers,” 3421 ever since the time when “Israel acknowledged not the Lord, and the people understood Him not, but forsook Him, and provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger.” 3422 So likewise that conditional threat of the sword, “If ye refuse and hear me not, the sword shall devour you,” 3423 has proved that it was Christ, for rebellion against whom they have perished. In the fifty-eighth Psalm He demands of the Father their dispersion: “Scatter them in Thy power.” 3424 By Isaiah He also says, as He finishes a prophecy of their consumption by fire: 3425 “Because of me has this happened to you; ye shall lie down in sorrow.” 3426 But all this would be unmeaning enough, if they suffered this retribution not on account of Him, who had in prophecy assigned their suffering to His own cause, but for the sake of the Christ of the other god. Well, then, although you affirm that it is the Christ of the other god who was driven to the cross by the powers and authorities of the Creator, as it were by hostile beings, still I have to say, See how manifestly He was defended 3427 by the Creator: there were given to Him both “the wicked for His burial,” even those who had strenuously maintained that His corpse had been stolen, “and the rich for His death,” 3428 even those who had redeemed Him from the treachery of Judas, as well as from the lying report of the soldiers that His body had been taken away. Therefore these things either did not happen to the Jews on His account, in which case you will be refuted by the sense of the Scriptures tallying with the issue of the facts and the order of the times, or else they did happen on His account, and then the Creator could not have inflicted the vengeance except for His own Christ; nay, He must have rather had a reward for Judas, if it had been his master’s enemy whom they put to death. At all events, 3429 if the Creator’s Christ has not come yet, on whose account the prophecy dooms them to such sufferings, they will have to endure the sufferings when He shall have come. Then where will there be a daughter of Sion to be reduced to desolation, for there is none now to be found? Where will there be cities to be burnt with fire, for they are now in heaps? 3430 Where a nation to be dispersed, which is already in banishment? Restore to Judæa its former state, that the Creator’s Christ may find it, and then you may contend that another Christ has come. But then, again, 3431 how is it that He can have permitted to range through 3432 His own heaven one whom He was some day to put to death on His own earth, after the more noble and glorious region of His kingdom had been violated, and His own very palace and sublimest height had been trodden by him? Or was it only in appearance rather that he did this? 3433 God is no doubt 3434 a jealous God! Yet he gained the victory. You should blush with shame, who put your faith in a vanquished god! What have you to hope for from him, who was not strong enough to protect himself? For it was either through his infirmity that he was crushed by the powers and human agents of the Creator, or else through maliciousness, in order that he might fasten so great a stigma on them by his endurance of their wickedness.
Footnotes
341:3416Isa. ii. 20.
341:3417Architectum, Isa. iii. 1-3, abridged.
341:3418Isa. 5:6, 7.
341:3419Isa. lii. 5.
341:3420Compare Adv. Judæos, 13, p. 171, for a like statement.
341:3421Isa. 1:7, 8.
341:3422Isa. 1:3, 4.
341:3423Isa. i. 20.
341:3424Ps. lix. 11.
341:3425Exustionem.
341:3426Isa. l. 11.
341:3427Defensus, perhaps “claimed.”
342:3428See Isa. liii. 9.
342:3429Certe.
342:3430Compare a passage in the Apology, chap. xxi. p. 34, supra.
342:3431Jam vero.
342:3432Admiserit per.
342:3433Hoc affectavit.
342:3434Plane.
Chapter XXV.—Christ’s Millennial and Heavenly Glory in Company with His Saints.
Yes, certainly, 3435 you say, I do hope from Him that which amounts in itself to a proof of the diversity (of Christs), God’s kingdom in an everlasting and heavenly possession. Besides, your Christ promises to the Jews their primitive condition, with the recovery of their country; and after this life’s course is over, repose in Hades 3436 in Abraham’s bosom. Oh, most excellent God, when He restores in amnesty 3437 what He took away in wrath! Oh, what a God is yours, who both wounds and heals, creates evil and makes peace! Oh, what a God, that is merciful even down to Hades! I shall have something to say about Abraham’s bosom in the proper place. 3438 As for the restoration of Judæa, however, which even the Jews themselves, induced by the names of places and countries, hope for just as it is described, 3439 it would be tedious to state at length 3440 how the figurative 3441 interpretation is spiritually applicable to Christ and His church, and to the character and fruits thereof; besides, the subject has been regularly treated 3442 in another work, which we entitle De Spe Fidelium. 3443 At present, too, it would be superfluous 3444 for this reason, that our inquiry relates to what is promised in heaven, not on earth. But we do confess that a kingdom is promised to us upon the earth, although before heaven, only in another state of existence; inasmuch as it will be after the resurrection for a thousand years in the divinely-built city of Jerusalem, 3445 “let down from heaven,” 3446 which the apostle also calls “our mother from above;” 3447 and, while declaring that our πολίτευμα , or citizenship, is in heaven, 3448 he predicates of it 3449 that it is really a city in heaven. This both Ezekiel had knowledge of 3450 and the Apostle John beheld. 3451 And the word of the new prophecy which is a part of our belief, 3452 attests how it foretold that there would be for a sign a picture of this very city exhibited to view previous to its manifestation. This prophecy, indeed, has been very lately fulfilled in an expedition to the East. 3453 For it is evident from the testimony of even heathen witnesses, that in Judæa there was suspended in the sky a city early every morning for forty days. As the day advanced, the entire figure of its walls would wane gradually, 3454 and sometimes it would vanish instantly. 3455 We say that this city has been provided by God for receiving the saints on their resurrection, and refreshing them with the abundance of all really spiritual blessings, as a recompense for those which in the world we have either despised or lost; since it is both just and God-worthy that His servants should have their joy in the place where they have also suffered affliction for His name’s sake. Of the heavenly kingdom this is the process. 3456 After its thousand years are over, within which period is completed the resurrection of the saints, who rise sooner or later according to their deserts there will ensue the destruction of the world and the conflagration of all things at the judgment: we shall then be changed in a moment into the substance of angels, even by the investiture of an incorruptible nature, and so be removed to that kingdom in heaven of which we have now been treating, just as if it had not been predicted by the Creator, and as if it were proving Christ to belong to the other god and as if he were the first and sole revealer of it. But now learn that it has been, in fact, predicted by the Creator, and that even without prediction it has a claim upon our faith in respect of 3457 the Creator. What appears to be probable to you, when Abraham’s seed, after the primal promise of being like the sand of the sea for multitude, is destined likewise to an equality with the stars of heaven—are not these the indications both of an earthly and a heavenly dispensation? 3458 When Isaac, in blessing his son Jacob, says, “God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth,” 3459 are there not in his words examples of both kinds of blessing? Indeed, the very form of the blessing is in this instance worthy of notice. For in relation to Jacob, who is the type of the later and more excellent people, that is to say ourselves, 3460 first comes the promise of the heavenly dew, and afterwards that about the fatness of the earth. So are we first invited to heavenly blessings when we are separated from the world, and afterwards we thus find ourselves in the way of obtaining also earthly blessings. And your own gospel likewise has it in this wise: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and these things shall be added unto you.” 3461 But to Esau the blessing promised is an earthly one, which he supplements with a heavenly, after the fatness of the earth, saying, “Thy dwelling shall be also of the dew of heaven.” 3462 For the dispensation of the Jews (who were in Esau, the prior of the sons in birth, but the later in affection 3463 ) at first was imbued with earthly blessings through the law, and afterwards brought round to heavenly ones through the gospel by faith. When Jacob sees in his dream the steps of a ladder set upon the earth, and reaching to heaven, with angels ascending and descending thereon, and the Lord standing above, we shall without hesitation venture to suppose, 3464 that by this ladder the Lord has in judgment appointed that the way to heaven is shown to men, whereby some may attain to it, and others fall therefrom. For why, as soon as he awoke out of his sleep, and shook through a dread of the spot, does he fall to an interpretation of his dream? He exclaims, “How terrible is this place!” And then adds, “This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven!” 3465 For he had seen Christ the Lord, the temple of God, and also the gate by whom heaven is entered. Now surely he would not have mentioned the gate of heaven, if heaven is not entered in the dispensation of the 3466 Creator. But there is now a gate provided by Christ, which admits and conducts to glory. Of this Amos says: “He buildeth His ascensions into heaven;” 3467 certainly not for Himself alone, but for His people also, who will be with Him. “And Thou shalt bind them about Thee,” says he, “like the adornment of a bride.” 3468 Accordingly the Spirit, admiring such as soar up to the celestial realms by these ascensions, says, “They fly, as if they were kites; they fly as clouds, and as young doves, unto me” 3469 —that is, simply like a dove. 3470 For we shall, according to the apostle, be caught up into the clouds to meet the Lord (even the Son of man, who shall come in the clouds, according to Daniel 3471 ) and so shall we ever be with the Lord, 3472 so long as He remains both on the earth and in heaven, who, against such as are thankless for both one promise and the other, calls the elements themselves to witness: “Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth.” 3473 Now, for my own part indeed, even though Scripture held out no hand of heavenly hope to me (as, in fact, it so often does), I should still possess a sufficient presumption 3474 of even this promise, in my present enjoyment of the earthly gift; and I should look out for something also of the heavenly, from Him who is the God of heaven as well as of earth. I should thus believe that the Christ who promises the higher blessings is (the Son) of Him who had also promised the lower ones; who had, moreover, afforded proofs of greater gifts by smaller ones; who had reserved for His Christ alone this revelation 3475 of a (perhaps 3476 ) unheard of kingdom, so that, while the earthly glory was announced by His servants, the heavenly might have God Himself for its messenger. You, however, argue for another Christ, from the very circumstance that He proclaims a new kingdom. You ought first to bring forward some example of His beneficence, 3477 that I may have no good reason for doubting the credibility of the great promise, which you say ought to be hoped for; nay, it is before all things necessary that you should prove that a heaven belongs to Him, whom you declare to be a promiser of heavenly things. As it is, you invite us to dinner, but do not point out your house; you assert a kingdom, but show us no royal state. 3478 Can it be that your Christ promises a kingdom of heaven, without having a heaven; as He displayed Himself man, without having flesh? O what a phantom from first to last! 3479 O hollow pretence of a mighty promise!
Footnotes
342:3435Immo.
342:3436Apud inferos.
342:3437Placatus.
342:3438See below, in book iv. chap. iv.
342:3439Ita ut describitur, i.e., in the literal sense.
342:3440Persequi.
342:3441Allegorica.
342:3442Digestum.
342:3443On the Hope of the Faithful. This work, which is not extant (although its title appears in one of the oldest mss. of Tertullian, the Codex Agobardinus), is mentioned by St. Jerome in his Commentary on Ezekiel, chap. xxxvi.; in the preface to his Comment. on Isaiah, chap. xviii.; and in his notice of Papias of Hierapolis (Oehler).
342:3444Otiosum.
342:3445[See Kaye’s important Comment. p. 345.]
342:3446Rev. xxi. 2.
342:3447Gal. iv. 26.
342:3448Phil. iii. 20, “our conversation,” A.V.
342:3449Deputat.
342:3450Ezek. xlviii. 30-35.
342:3451Rev. xxi. 10-23.
342:3452That is, the Montanist. [Regarded as conclusive; but not conclusive evidence of an accomplished lapse from Catholic Communion.]
342:3453He means that of Severus against the Parthians. Tertullian is the only author who mentions this prodigy.
343:3454Evanescente.
343:3455Et alias de proximo nullam: or “de proximo” may mean, “on a near approach.”
343:3456Ratio.
343:3457Apud: or, “in the dispensation of the Creator.”
343:3458Dispositionis.
343:3459Gen. xxvii. 28.
343:3460Nostri, i.e., Christians. [Not Montanist, but Catholic.]
343:3461Luke xii. 31.
343:3462Gen. xxvii. 39.
343:3463Judæorum enim dispositio in Esau priorum natu et posteriorum affectu filiorum. This is the original of a difficult passage, in which Tertullian, who has taken Jacob as a type of the later, the Christian church, seems to make Esau the symbol of the former, the Jewish church, which, although prior in time, was later in allegiance to the full truth of God.
343:3464Temere, si forte, interpretabimur.
343:3465Gen. xxviii. 12-17.
343:3466Apud.
343:3467Amos ix. 6.
343:3468Isa. xlix. 18.
343:3469Isa. lx. 8.
343:3470In allusion to the dove as the symbol of the Spirit, see Matt. iii. 16.
343:3471Dan. vii. 13.
343:34721 Thess. iv. 17.
344:3473Isa. i. 2.
344:3474Præjudicium.
344:3475Præconium.
344:3476Si forte.
344:3477Indulgentiæ.
344:3478Regiam: perhaps “capital” or “palace.”
344:3479Omne.
Book IV. 3480
In Which Tertullian Pursues His Argument. Jesus is the Christ of the Creator. He Derives His Proofs from St. Luke’s Gospel; That Being the Only Historical Portion of the New Testament Partially Accepted by Marcion. This Book May Also Be Regarded as a Commentary on St. Luke. It Gives Remarkable Proof of Tertullian’s Grasp of Scripture, and Proves that “The Old Testament is Not Contrary to the New.” It Also Abounds in Striking Expositions of Scriptural Passages, Embracing Profound Views of Revelation, in Connection with the Nature of Man.
————————————
Chapter I.—Examination of the Antitheses of Marcion, Bringing Them to the Test of Marcion’s Own Gospel. Certain True Antitheses in the Dispensations of the Old and the New Testaments. These Variations Quite Compatible with One and the Same God, Who Ordered Them.
Every opinion and the whole scheme 3481 of the impious and sacrilegious Marcion we now bring to the test 3482 of that very Gospel which, by his process of interpolation, he has made his own. To encourage a belief of this Gospel he has actually 3483 devised for it a sort of dower, 3484 in a work composed of contrary statements set in opposition, thence entitled Antitheses, and compiled with a view to such a severance of the law from the gospel as should divide the Deity into two, nay, diverse, gods—one for each Instrument, or Testament 3485 as it is more usual to call it; that by such means he might also patronize 3486 belief in “the Gospel according to the Antitheses.” These, however, I would have attacked in special combat, hand to hand; that is to say, I would have encountered singly the several devices of the Pontic heretic, if it were not much more convenient to refute them in and with that very gospel to which they contribute their support. Although it is so easy to meet them at once with a peremptory demurrer, 3487 yet, in order that I may both make them admissible in argument, and account them valid expressions of opinion, and even contend that they make for our side, that so there may be all the redder shame for the blindness of their author, we have now drawn out some antitheses of our own in opposition to Marcion. And indeed 3488 I do allow that one order did run its course in the old dispensation under the Creator, 3489 and that another is on its way in the new under Christ. I do not deny that there is a difference in the language of their documents, in their precepts of virtue, and in their teachings of the law; but yet all this diversity is consistent with one and the same God, even Him by whom it was arranged and also foretold. Long ago 3490 did Isaiah declare that “out of Sion should go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem” 3491 —some other law, that is, and another word. In short, says he, “He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people;” 3492 meaning not those of the Jewish people only, but of the nations which are judged by the new law of the gospel and the new word of the apostles, and are amongst themselves rebuked of their old error as soon as they have believed. And as the result of this, “they beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears (which are a kind of hunting instruments) into pruning-hooks;” 3493 that is to say, minds, which once were fierce and cruel, are changed by them into good dispositions productive of good fruit. And again: “Hearken unto me, hearken unto me, my people, and ye kings, give ear unto me; for a law shall proceed from me, and my judgment for a light to the nations;” 3494 wherefore He had determined and decreed that the nations also were to be enlightened by the law and the word of the gospel. This will be that law which (according to David also) is unblameable, because “perfect, converting the soul” 3495 from idols unto God. This likewise will be the word concerning which the same Isaiah says, “For the Lord will make a decisive word in the land.” 3496 Because the New Testament is compendiously short, 3497 and freed from the minute and perplexing 3498 burdens of the law. But why enlarge, when the Creator by the same prophet foretells the renovation more manifestly and clearly than the light itself? “Remember not the former things, neither consider the things of old” (the old things have passed away, and new things are arising). “Behold, I will do new things, which shall now spring forth.” 3499 So by Jeremiah: “Break up for yourselves new pastures, 3500 and sow not among thorns, and circumcise yourselves in the foreskin of your heart.” 3501 And in another passage: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Jacob, and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I arrested their dispensation, in order to bring them out of the land of Egypt.” 3502 He thus shows that the ancient covenant is temporary only, when He indicates its change; also when He promises that it shall be followed by an eternal one. For by Isaiah He says: “Hear me, and ye shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you,” adding “the sure mercies of David,” 3503 in order that He might show that that covenant was to run its course in Christ. That He was of the family of David, according to the genealogy of Mary, 3504 He declared in a figurative way even by the rod which was to proceed out of the stem of Jesse. 3505 Forasmuch then as he said, that from the Creator there would come other laws, and other words, and new dispensations of covenants, indicating also that the very sacrifices were to receive higher offices, and that amongst all nations, by Malachi when he says: “I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord, neither will I accept your sacrifices at your hands. For from the rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place a sacrifice is offered unto my name, even a pure offering” 3506 —meaning simple prayer from a pure conscience,—it is of necessity that every change which comes as the result of innovation, introduces a diversity in those things of which the change is made, from which diversity arises also a contrariety. For as there is nothing, after it has undergone a change, which does not become different, so there is nothing different which is not contrary. 3507 Of that very thing, therefore, there will be predicated a contrariety in consequence of its diversity, to which there accrued a change of condition after an innovation. He who brought about the change, the same instituted the diversity also; He who foretold the innovation, the same announced beforehand the contrariety likewise. Why, in your interpretation, do you impute a difference in the state of things to a difference of powers? Why do you wrest to the Creator’s prejudice those examples from which you draw your antitheses, when you may recognise them all in His sensations and affections? “I will wound,” He says, “and I will heal;” “I will kill,” He says again, “and I will make alive” 3508 —even the same “who createth evil and maketh peace;” 3509 from which you are used even to censure Him with the imputation of fickleness and inconstancy, as if He forbade what He commanded, and commanded what He forbade. Why, then, have you not reckoned up the Antitheses also which occur in the natural works of the Creator, who is for ever contrary to Himself? You have not been able, unless I am misinformed, to recognise the fact, 3510 that the world, at all events, 3511 even amongst your people of Pontus, is made up of a diversity of elements which are hostile to one another. 3512 It was therefore your bounden duty first to have determined that the god of the light was one being, and the god of darkness was another, in such wise that you might have been able to have distinctly asserted one of them to be the god of the law and the other the god of the gospel. It is, however, the settled conviction already 3513 of my mind from manifest proofs, that, as His works and plans 3514 exist in the way of Antitheses, so also by the same rule exist the mysteries of His religion. 3515
Footnotes
345:3480[The remarks of Bishop Kaye on our author’s Marcion are simply invaluable, and the student cannot dispense with what is said more particularly of this Book. See Kaye, pp. 450–480.]
345:3481Paraturam.
345:3482Provocamus ad. [Kaye, p. 469, refers to Schleiermacher’s Critical Essay on St. Luke and to a learned note of Mr. Andrews Norton of Harvard (vol. iii. Appendix C.) for valuable remarks on Marcion’s Gospel.]
345:3483Et, emphatic.
345:3484Dotem quandam.
345:3485[See cap. 2, infra.]
345:3486Patrocinaretur.
345:3487Præscriptive occurere. This law term (the Greek παραγραφή) seems to refer to the Church’s “rule of faith” (præscriptio), which he might at once put in against Marcion’s heresy; only he prefers to refute him on his own ground.
345:3488Atque adeo.
345:3489Apud Creatorem.
346:3490Olim.
346:3491Isa. ii. 3.
346:3492Isa. ii. 4.
346:3493Isa. ii. 4.
346:3494Isa. ii. 4, according to the Sept.
346:3495Ps. xix. 7.
346:3496T.’s version of Isa. x. 23. “Decisus Sermo” ="determined” of A.V.
346:3497Compendiatum.
346:3498Laciniosis.
346:3499Isa. 43:18, 19.
346:3500Novate novamen novum. Agricultural words.
346:3501Altered version of Jer. 4:3, 4.
346:3502Jer. 31:31, 32, with slight change.
346:3503Isa. lv. 3.
346:3504Secundum Mariæ censum. See Kitto’s Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature (third edition), in the article “Genealogy of Jesus Christ,” where the translator of this work has largely given reasons for believing that St. Luke in his genealogy, (chap. iii.) has traced the descent of the Virgin Mary. To the authorities there given may be added this passage of Tertullian, and a fuller one, Adversus Judæos, ix., towards the end. [p. 164, supra.]
346:3505Isa. xi. 1.
346:3506Mal. 1:10, 11.
346:3507To its former self.
346:3508Deut. xxxii. 39.
347:3509Isa. xlv. 7.
347:3510Recogitare.
347:3511Saltim.
347:3512Æmularum invicem.
347:3513Præjudicatum est.
347:3514In the external world.
347:3515Sacramenta.
Chapter II.—St. Luke’s Gospel, Selected by Marcion as His Authority, and Mutilated by Him. The Other Gospels Equally Authoritative. Marcion’s Terms of Discussion, However, Accepted, and Grappled with on the Footing of St. Luke’s Gospel Alone.
You have now our answer to the Antitheses compendiously indicated by us. 3516 I pass on to give a proof of the Gospel 3517 —not, to be sure, of Jewry, but of Pontus—having become meanwhile 3518 adulterated; and this shall indicate 3519 the order by which we proceed. We lay it down as our first position, that the evangelical Testament 3520 has apostles for its authors, 3521 to whom was assigned by the Lord Himself this office of publishing the gospel. Since, however, there are apostolic 3522 men also, 3523 they are yet not alone, but appear with apostles and after apostles; because the preaching of disciples might be open to the suspicion of an affectation of glory, if there did not accompany it 3524 the authority of the masters, which means that of Christ, 3525 for it was that which made the apostles their masters. Of the apostles, therefore, John and Matthew first instil 3526 faith into us; whilst of apostolic men, Luke and Mark renew it afterwards. 3527 These all start with the same principles of the faith, 3528 so far as relates to the one only God the Creator and His Christ, how that He was born of the Virgin, and came to fulfil 3529 the law and the prophets. Never mind 3530 if there does occur some variation in the order of their narratives, provided that there be agreement in the essential matter 3531 of the faith, in which there is disagreement with Marcion. Marcion, on the other hand, you must know, 3532 ascribes no author to his Gospel, as if it could not be allowed him to affix a title to that from which it was no crime (in his eyes) to subvert 3533 the very body. And here I might now make a stand, and contend that a work ought not to be recognised, which holds not its head erect, which exhibits no consistency, which gives no promise of credibility from the fulness of its title and the just profession of its author. But we prefer to join issue 3534 on every point; nor shall we leave unnoticed 3535 what may fairly be understood to be on our side. 3536 Now, of the authors whom we possess, Marcion seems to have singled out Luke 3537 for his mutilating process. 3538 Luke, however, was not an apostle, but only an apostolic man; not a master, but a disciple, and so inferior to a master—at least as far subsequent to 3539 him as the apostle whom he followed (and that, no doubt, was Paul 3540 ) was subsequent to the others; so that, had Marcion even published his Gospel in the name of St. Paul himself, the single authority of the document, 3541 destitute of all support from preceding authorities, would not be a sufficient basis for our faith. There would be still wanted that Gospel which St. Paul found in existence, to which he yielded his belief, and with which he so earnestly wished his own to agree, that he actually on that account went up to Jerusalem to know and consult the apostles, “lest he should run, or had been running in vain;” 3542 in other words, that the faith which he had learned, and the gospel which he was preaching, might be in accordance with theirs. Then, at last, having conferred with the (primitive) authors, and having agreed with them touching the rule of faith, they joined their hands in fellowship, and divided their labours thenceforth in the office of preaching the gospel, so that they were to go to the Jews, and St. Paul to the Jews and the Gentiles. Inasmuch, therefore, as the enlightener of St. Luke himself desired the authority of his predecessors for both his own faith and preaching, how much more may not I require for Luke’s Gospel that which was necessary for the Gospel of his master. 3543
Footnotes
347:3516Expeditam a nobis.
347:3517[The term εὐαγγέλιον was often employed for a written book, says Kaye (p. 298), who refers to Book i. cap. 1. supra, etc.]
347:3518Interim, perhaps “occasionally.”
347:3519Præstructuram.
347:3520Instrumentum. [See cap. 1, supra. And, above, note 9. Also in cap. iii. and the Apology, (cap. xlvii.) he calls the Testaments, Digests, or Sancta Digesta.]
347:3521By this canon of his, that the true Gospels must have for their authors either apostles or companions and disciples of apostles, he shuts out the false Gospels of the heretics, such as the Ebionites, Encratites, Nazarenes, and Marcionites (Le Prieur).
347:3522Apostolicos, companions of the apostles associated in the authorship.
347:3523He means, of course, St. Mark and St. Luke.
347:3524Adsistat illi.
347:3525Immo Christi.
347:3526Insinuant.
347:3527Instaurant.
347:3528Isdem regulis.
347:3529Supplementum.
347:3530Viderit.
347:3531De capite.
347:3532Scilicet.
347:3533Evertere.
347:3534Congredi.
347:3535Dissimulamus.
347:3536Ex nostro.
347:3537Compare Irenæus, Adversus Hæreses (Harvey), i. 25 and iii. 11; also Epiphanius, Hær. xlii. See also the editor’s notes on the passages in Irenæus, who quotes other authorities also, and shows the particulars of Marcion’s mutilations. [Vol. I. 429.]
347:3538Quem cæderet.
347:3539Posterior.
347:3540See Hieronymi, Catal. Scriptt. Eccles. 7, and Fabricius’ notes.
347:3541Instrumenti.
348:3542Gal. ii. 2.
348:3543[Dr. Holmes not uniformly, yet constantly inserts the prefix St. before the name of Paul, and brackets it, greatly disfiguring the page. It is not in our author’s text, but I venture to dispense with the ever-recurring brackets.]
Chapter III. 3544 —Marcion Insinuated the Untrustworthiness of Certain Apostles Whom St. Paul Rebuked. The Rebuke Shows that It Cannot Be Regarded as Derogating from Their Authority. The Apostolic Gospels Perfectly Authentic.
In the scheme of Marcion, on the contrary, 3545 the mystery 3546 of the Christian religion begins from the discipleship of Luke. Since, however, it was on its course previous to that point, it must have had 3547 its own authentic materials, 3548 by means of which it found its own way down to St. Luke; and by the assistance of the testimony which it bore, Luke himself becomes admissible. Well, but 3549 Marcion, finding the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians (wherein he rebukes even apostles 3550 ) for “not walking uprightly according to the truth of the gospel,” 3551 as well as accuses certain false apostles of perverting the gospel of Christ), labours very hard to destroy the character 3552 of those Gospels which are published as genuine 3553 and under the name of apostles, in order, forsooth, to secure for his own Gospel the credit which he takes away from them. But then, even if he censures Peter and John and James, who were thought to be pillars, it is for a manifest reason. They seemed to be changing their company 3554 from respect of persons. And yet as Paul himself “became all things to all men,” 3555 that he might gain all, it was possible that Peter also might have betaken himself to the same plan of practising somewhat different from what he taught. And, in like manner, if false apostles also crept in, their character too showed itself in their insisting upon circumcision and the Jewish ceremonies. So that it was not on account of their preaching, but of their conversation, that they were marked by St. Paul, who would with equal impartiality have marked them with censure, if they had erred at all with respect to God the Creator or His Christ. Each several case will therefore have to be distinguished. When Marcion complains that apostles are suspected (for their prevarication and dissimulation) of having even depraved the gospel, he thereby accuses Christ, by accusing those whom Christ chose. If, then, the apostles, who are censured simply for inconsistency of walk, composed the Gospel in a pure form, 3556 but false apostles interpolated their true record; and if our own copies have been made from these, 3557 where will that genuine text 3558 of the apostle’s writings be found which has not suffered adulteration? Which was it that enlightened Paul, and through him Luke? It is either completely blotted out, as if by some deluge—being obliterated by the inundation of falsifiers—in which case even Marcion does not possess the true Gospel; or else, is that very edition which Marcion alone possesses the true one, that is, of the apostles? How, then, does that agree with ours, which is said not to be (the work) of apostles, but of Luke? Or else, again, if that which Marcion uses is not to be attributed to Luke simply because it does agree with ours (which, of course, 3559 is, also adulterated in its title), then it is the work of apostles. Our Gospel, therefore, which is in agreement with it, is equally the work of apostles, but also adulterated in its title. 3560
Footnotes
348:3544This is Oehler’s arrangement of the chapter, for the sake of the sense. The former editions begin this third chapter with “Sed enim Marcion nactus.”
348:3545Aliud est si.
348:3546Sacramentum.
348:3547Habuit utique.
348:3548Paraturam.
348:3549Sed enim.
348:3550See Gal. 2:13, 14.
348:3551Compare what has been already said in book i. chap. 20, and below in book v. chap. 3. See also Tertullian’s treatise, De Præscript. Hæret. chap. 23. [Kaye, p. 275.]
348:3552Statum.
348:3553Propria.
348:3554Variare convictum.
348:35551 Cor. ix. 22.
348:3556Integrum.
348:3557Inde nostra digesta.
348:3558Germanum instrumentum.
348:3559That is, according to the Marcionite cavil.
348:3560De titulo quoque.
Chapter IV.—Each Side Claims to Possess the True Gospel. Antiquity the Criterion of Truth in Such a Matter. Marcion’s Pretensions as an Amender of the Gospel.
We must follow, then, the clue 3561 of our discussion, meeting every effort of our opponents with reciprocal vigor. I say that my Gospel is the true one; Marcion, that his is. I affirm that Marcion’s Gospel is adulterated; Marcion, that mine is. Now what is to settle the point for us, except it be that principle 3562 of time, which rules that the authority lies with that which shall be found to be more ancient; and assumes as an elemental truth, 3563 that corruption (of doctrine) belongs to the side which shall be convicted of comparative lateness in its origin. 3564 For, inasmuch as error 3565 is falsification of truth, it must needs be that truth therefore precede error. A thing must exist prior to its suffering any casualty; 3566 and an object 3567 must precede all rivalry to itself. Else how absurd it would be, that, when we have proved our position to be the older one, and Marcion’s the later, ours should yet appear to be the false one, before it had even received from truth its objective existence; 3568 and Marcion’s should also be supposed to have experienced rivalry at our hands, even before its publication; and, in fine, that that should be thought to be the truer position which is the later one—a century 3569 later than the publication of all the many and great facts and records of the Christian religion, which certainly could not have been published without, that is to say, before, the truth of the gospel. With regard, then, to the pending 3570 question, of Luke’s Gospel (so far as its being the common property 3571 of ourselves and Marcion enables it to be decisive of the truth, 3572 ) that portion of it which we alone receive 3573 is so much older than Marcion, that Marcion himself once believed it, when in the first warmth of faith he contributed money to the Catholic church, which along with himself was afterwards rejected, 3574 when he fell away from our truth into his own heresy. What if the Marcionites have denied that he held the primitive faith amongst ourselves, in the face even of his own letter? What, if they do not acknowledge the letter? They, at any rate, receive his Antitheses; and more than that, they make ostentatious use 3575 of them. Proof out of these is enough for me. For if the Gospel, said to be Luke’s which is current amongst us 3576 (we shall see whether it be also current with Marcion), is the very one which, as Marcion argues in his Antitheses, was interpolated by the defenders of Judaism, for the purpose of such a conglomeration with it of the law and the prophets as should enable them out of it to fashion their Christ, surely he could not have so argued about it, unless he had found it (in such a form). No one censures things before they exist, 3577 when he knows not whether they will come to pass. Emendation never precedes the fault. To be sure, 3578 an amender of that Gospel, which had been all topsy-turvy 3579 from the days of Tiberius to those of Antoninus, first presented himself in Marcion alone—so long looked for by Christ, who was all along regretting that he had been in so great a hurry to send out his apostles without the support of Marcion! But for all that, 3580 heresy, which is for ever mending the Gospels, and corrupting them in the act, is an affair of man’s audacity, not of God’s authority; and if Marcion be even a disciple, he is yet not “above his master;” 3581 if Marcion be an apostle, still as Paul says, “Whether it be I or they, so we preach;” 3582 if Marcion be a prophet, even “the spirits of the prophets will be subject to the prophets,” 3583 for they are not the authors of confusion, but of peace; or if Marcion be actually an angel, he must rather be designated “as anathema than as a preacher of the gospel,” 3584 because it is a strange gospel which he has preached. So that, whilst he amends, he only confirms both positions: both that our Gospel is the prior one, for he amends that which he has previously fallen in with; and that that is the later one, which, by putting it together out of the emendations of ours, he has made his own Gospel, and a novel one too.
Footnotes
348:3561Funis ducendus est.
349:3562Ratio.
349:3563Præjudicans.
349:3564Posterius revincetur. See De Præscriptione Hæret., which goes on this principle of time. Compare especially chapters xxix. and xxx. [p. 256, supra.]
349:3565Falsum.
349:3566Passione.
349:3567Materia.
349:3568De veritate materiam.
349:3569Sæculo post.
349:3570Interim.
349:3571Communio ejus.
349:3572De veritate disceptat.
349:3573Quod est secundum nos. [A note of T.’s position.]
349:3574Projectam. [Catholic = Primitive.]
349:3575Præferunt.
349:3576Penes nos.
349:3577Post futura.
349:3578Sane.
349:3579Eversi.
349:3580Nisi quod.
349:3581Matt. x. 24.
349:35821 Cor. xv. 11.
349:35831 Cor. xiv. 32.
349:3584Gal. i. 8.
Chapter V.—By the Rule of Antiquity, the Catholic Gospels are Found to Be True, Including the Real St. Luke’s. Marcion’s Only a Mutilated Edition. The Heretic’s Weakness and Inconsistency in Ignoring the Other Gospels. 3585
On the whole, then, if that is evidently more true which is earlier, if that is earlier which is from the very beginning, if that is from the beginning which has the apostles for its authors, then it will certainly be quite as evident, that that comes down from the apostles, which has been kept as a sacred deposit 3586 in the churches of the apostles. Let us see what milk the Corinthians drank from Paul; to what rule of faith the Galatians were brought for correction; what the Philippians, the Thessalonians, the Ephesians read by it; what utterance also the Romans give, so very near 3587 (to the apostles), to whom Peter and Paul conjointly 3588 bequeathed the gospel even sealed with their own blood. We have also St. John’s foster churches. 3589 For although Marcion rejects his Apocalypse, the order 3590 of the bishops (thereof), when traced up to their origin, will yet rest on John as their author. In the same manner is recognised the excellent source 3591 of the other churches. I say, therefore, that in them (and not simply such of them as were founded by apostles, but in all those which are united with them in the fellowship of the mystery of the gospel of Christ 3592 ) that Gospel of Luke which we are defending with all our might has stood its ground from its very first publication; whereas Marcion’s Gospel is not known to most people, and to none whatever is it known without being at the same time 3593 condemned. It too, of course, 3594 has its churches, but specially its own—as late as they are spurious; and should you want to know their original, 3595 you will more easily discover apostasy in it than apostolicity, with Marcion forsooth as their founder, or some one of Marcion’s swarm. 3596 Even wasps make combs; 3597 so also these Marcionites make churches. The same authority of the apostolic churches will afford evidence 3598 to the other Gospels also, which we possess equally through their means, 3599 and according to their usage—I mean the Gospels of John and Matthew—whilst that which Mark published may be affirmed to be Peter’s 3600 whose interpreter Mark was. For even Luke’s form 3601 of the Gospel men usually ascribe to Paul. 3602 And it may well seem 3603 that the works which disciples publish belong to their masters. Well, then, Marcion ought to be called to a strict account 3604 concerning these (other Gospels) also, for having omitted them, and insisted in preference 3605 on Luke; as if they, too, had not had free course in the churches, as well as Luke’s Gospel, from the beginning. Nay, it is even more credible that they 3606 existed from the very beginning; for, being the work of apostles, they were prior, and coeval in origin with 3607 the churches themselves. But how comes it to pass, if the apostles published nothing, that their disciples were more forward in such a work; for they could not have been disciples, without any instruction from their masters? If, then, it be evident that these (Gospels) also were current in the churches, why did not Marcion touch them—either to amend them if they were adulterated, or to acknowledge them if they were uncorrupt? For it is but natural 3608 that they who were perverting the gospel, should be more solicitous about the perversion of those things whose authority they knew to be more generally received. Even the false apostles (were so called) on this very account, because they imitated the apostles by means of their falsification. In as far, then, as he might have amended what there was to amend, if found corrupt, in so far did he firmly imply 3609 that all was free from corruption which he did not think required amendment. In short, 3610 he simply amended what he thought was corrupt; though, indeed, not even this justly, because it was not really corrupt. For if the (Gospels) of the apostles 3611 have come down to us in their integrity, whilst Luke’s, which is received amongst us, 3612 so far accords with their rule as to be on a par with them in permanency of reception in the churches, it clearly follows that Luke’s Gospel also has come down to us in like integrity until the sacrilegious treatment of Marcion. In short, when Marcion laid hands on it, it then became diverse and hostile to the Gospels of the apostles. I will therefore advise his followers, that they either change these Gospels, however late to do so, into a conformity with their own, whereby they may seem to be in agreement with the apostolic writings (for they are daily retouching their work, as daily they are convicted by us); or else that they blush for their master, who stands self-condemned 3613 either way—when once 3614 he hands on the truth of the gospel conscience smitten, or again 3615 subverts it by shameless tampering. Such are the summary arguments which we use, when we take up arms 3616 against heretics for the faith 3617 of the gospel, maintaining both that order of periods, which rules that a late date is the mark of forgers, 3618 and that authority of churches 3619 which lends support to the tradition of the apostles; because truth must needs precede the forgery, and proceed straight from those by whom it has been handed on.
Footnotes
349:3585[On this whole chapter and subject, consult Kaye, pp. 278–289.]
350:3586Sacrosanctum. Inviolate. Westcott, On the Canon, p. 384. Compare De Præscript. Hæret. c. 36, supra.
350:3587De proximo. Westcott renders this, “who are nearest to us.” See in loco.
350:3588et…et. [N.B. Not Peter’s See, then.]
350:3589Alumnas ecclesias. He seems to allude to the seven churches of the Apocalypse.
350:3590[Not the Order of bishops (as we now speak) but of their succession from St. John. Kaye, p. 219.]
350:3591Generositas.
350:3592De societate sacramenti. [i.e. Catholic Unity.]
350:3593Eadem.
350:3594Plane.
350:3595Censum.
350:3596Examine.
350:3597Favos. See Pliny, Nat. Hist. xi. 21.
350:3598Patrocinabitur. [Jones on the Canon, Vol. I. p. 66.]
350:3599Proinde per illas.
350:3600See Hieronymus, Catal. Scriptt. Eccles. c. 8.
350:3601Digestum.
350:3602See above, chap. 2, p. 347.
350:3603Capit videri.
350:3604Flagitandus.
350:3605Potius institerit.
350:3606The Gospels of the apostles John and Matthew, and perhaps Mark’s also, as being St. Peter’s.
350:3607Dedicata cum.
350:3608Competit.
350:3609Confirmavit.
350:3610Denique.
350:3611Apostolica, i.e., evangelia.
350:3612That is, the canonical Gospel of St. Luke, as distinct from Marcion’s corruption of it. [N.B. “Us” = Catholics.]
350:3613Traducto.
350:3614Nunc—nunc.
350:3615Nunc—nunc.
351:3616Expedimur.
351:3617Fide, integrity.
351:3618Posteritati falsariorum præscribentem.
351:3619[Mark the authority of churches. He uses the plural—quod ab omnibus.]
Chapter VI.—Marcion’s Object in Adulterating the Gospel. No Difference Between the Christ of the Creator and the Christ of the Gospel. No Rival Christ Admissible. The Connection of the True Christ with the Dispensation of the Old Testament Asserted.
But we now advance a step further on, and challenge (as we promised to do) the very Gospel of Marcion, with the intention of thus proving that it has been adulterated. For it is certain 3620 that the whole aim at which he has strenuously laboured even in the drawing up of his Antitheses, centres in this, that he may establish a diversity between the Old and the New Testaments, so that his own Christ may be separate from the Creator, as belonging to this rival god, and as alien from the law and the prophets. It is certain, also, that with this view 3621 he has erased everything that was contrary to his own opinion and made for the Creator, as if it had been interpolated by His advocates, whilst everything which agreed with his own opinion he has retained. The latter statements we shall strictly examine; 3622 and if they shall turn out rather for our side, and shatter the assumption of Marcion, we shall embrace them. It will then become evident, that in retaining them he has shown no less of the defect of blindness, which characterizes heresy, than he displayed when he erased all the former class of subjects. Such, then, is to be 3623 the drift and form of my little treatise; subject, of course, to whatever condition may have become requisite on both sides of the question. 3624 Marcion has laid down the position, that Christ who in the days of Tiberius was, by a previously unknown god, revealed for the salvation of all nations, is a different being from Him who was ordained by God the Creator for the restoration of the Jewish state, and who is yet to come. Between these he interposes the separation of 3625 a great and absolute difference—as great as lies between what is just and what is good; 3626 as great as lies between the law and the gospel; as great, (in short,) as is the difference between Judaism and Christianity. Hence will arise also our rule, 3627 by which we determine 3628 that there ought to be nothing in common between the Christ of the rival god and the Creator; but that (Christ) must be pronounced to belong to the Creator, 3629 if He has administered His dispensations, fulfilled His prophecies, promoted 3630 His laws, given reality to 3631 His promises, revived His mighty power, 3632 remoulded His determinations, 3633 expressed His attributes, His properties. This law and this rule I earnestly request the reader to have ever in his mind, and so let him begin to investigate whether Christ be Marcion’s or the Creator’s.
Footnotes
351:3620Certe, for certo.
351:3621Propterea.
351:3622Conveniemus.
351:3623Sic habebit.
351:3624This seems to be the sense of the words, “sub illa utique conditione quæ ex utraque parte condicta sit.”
351:3625Scindit.
351:3626That is, between what is severe and judicial and punitive on one side, that is, the Creator’s; and what is mild, merciful, and forgiving, on the other, that is, the Redeemer’s side (Rigalt.).
351:3627Præscriptio.
351:3628Defigimus.
351:3629Creatoris pronunciandum.
351:3630Adjuverit.
351:3631Repræsentaverit.
351:3632Restauraverit virtutes ejus.
351:3633Sententias reformaverit.
Chapter VII.—Marcion Rejected the Preceding Portion of St. Luke’s Gospel. Therefore This Review Opens with an Examination of the Case of the Evil Spirit in the Synagogue of Capernaum. He Whom the Demon Acknowledged Was the Creator’s Christ.
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius 3634 (for such is Marcion’s proposition) he “came down to the Galilean city of Capernaum,” of course meaning 3635 from the heaven of the Creator, to which he had previously descended from his own. What then had been his course, 3636 for him to be described as first descending from his own heaven to the Creator’s? For why should I abstain from censuring those parts of the statement which do not satisfy the requirement of an ordinary narrative, but always end in a falsehood? To be sure, our censure has been once for all expressed in the question, which we have already 3637 suggested: Whether, when descending through the Creator’s domain, and indeed in hostility to him, he could possibly have been admitted by him, and by him been transmitted to the earth, which was equally his territory? Now, however, I want also to know the remainder of his course down, assuming that he came down. For we must not be too nice in inquiring 3638 whether it is supposed that he was seen in any place. To come into view 3639 indicates 3640 a sudden unexpected glance, which for a moment fixed 3641 the eye upon the object that passed before the view, without staying. But when it happens that a descent has been effected, it is apparent, and comes under the notice of the eyes. 3642 Moreover, it takes account of fact, and thus obliges one to examine in what condition with what preparation, 3643 with how much violence or moderation, and further, at what time of the day or night, the descent was made; who, again, saw the descent, who reported it, who seriously avouched the fact, which certainly was not easy to be believed, even after the asseveration. It is, in short, too bad 3644 that Romulus should have had in Proculus an avoucher of his ascent to heaven, when the Christ of (this) god could not find any one to announce his descent from heaven; just as if the ascent of the one and the descent of the other were not effected on one and the same ladder of falsehood! Then, what had he to do with Galilee, if he did not belong to the Creator by whom 3645 that region was destined (for His Christ) when about to enter on His ministry? 3646 As Isaiah says: “Drink in this first, and be prompt, O region of Zabulon and land of Nephthalim, and ye others who (inhabit) the sea-coast, and that of Jordan, Galilee of the nations, ye people who sit in darkness, behold a great light; upon you, who inhabit (that) land, sitting in the shadow of death, the light hath arisen.” 3647 It is, however, well that Marcion’s god does claim to be the enlightener of the nations, that so he might have the better reason for coming down from heaven; only, if it must needs be, 3648 he should rather have made Pontus his place of descent than Galilee. But since both the place and the work of illumination according to the prophecy are compatible with Christ, we begin to discern 3649 that He is the subject of the prophecy, which shows that at the very outset of His ministry, He came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but rather to fulfil them; 3650 for Marcion has erased the passage as an interpolation. 3651 It will, however, be vain for him to deny that Christ uttered in word what He forthwith did partially indeed. For the prophecy about place He at once fulfilled. From heaven straight to the synagogue. As the adage runs: “The business on which we are come, do at once.” Marcion must even expunge from the Gospel, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel;” 3652 and, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs,” 3653 —in order, forsooth, that Christ may not appear to be an Israelite. But facts will satisfy me instead of words. Withdraw all the sayings of my Christ, His acts shall speak. Lo, He enters the synagogue; surely (this is going) to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Behold, it is to Israelites first that He offers the “bread” of His doctrine; surely it is because they are “children” that He shows them this priority. 3654 Observe, He does not yet impart it to others; surely He passes them by as “dogs.” For to whom else could He better have imparted it, than to such as were strangers to the Creator, if He especially belonged not to the Creator? And yet how could He have been admitted into the synagogue—one so abruptly appearing, 3655 so unknown; one, of whom no one had as yet been apprised of His tribe, His nation, His family, and lastly, His enrolment in the census of Augustus—that most faithful witness of the Lord’s nativity, kept in the archives of Rome? They certainly would have remembered, if they did not know Him to be circumcised, that He must not be admitted into their most holy places. And even if He had the general right of entering 3656 the synagogue (like other Jews), yet the function of giving instruction was allowed only to a man who was extremely well known, and examined and tried, and for some time invested with the privilege after experience duly attested elsewhere. But “they were all astonished at His doctrine.” Of course they were; “for, says (St. Luke), “His word was with power 3657 —not because He taught in opposition to the law and the prophets. No doubt, His divine discourse 3658 gave forth both power and grace, building up rather than pulling down the substance of the law and the prophets. Otherwise, instead of “astonishment, they would feel horror. It would not be admiration, but aversion, prompt and sure, which they would bestow on one who was the destroyer of law and prophets, and the especial propounder as a natural consequence of a rival god; for he would have been unable to teach anything to the disparagement of the law and the prophets, and so far of the Creator also, without premising the doctrine of a different and rival divinity. Inasmuch, then, as the Scripture makes no other statement on the matter than that the simple force and power of His word produced astonishment, it more naturally 3659 shows that His teaching was in accordance with the Creator by not denying (that it was so), than that it was in opposition to the Creator, by not asserting (such a fact). And thus He will either have to be acknowledged as belonging to Him, 3660 in accordance with whom He taught; or else will have to be adjudged a deceiver since He taught in accordance with One whom He had come to oppose. In the same passage, “the spirit of an unclean devil” exclaims: “What have we to do with Thee, Thou Jesus? Art Thou come to destroy us? I know Thee who Thou art, the Holy One of God.” 3661 I do not here raise the question whether this appellation was suitable to one who ought not to be called Christ, unless he were sent by the Creator. 3662 Elsewhere 3663 there has been already given a full consideration of His titles.
My present discussion is, how the evil spirit could have known that He was called by such a name, when there had never at any time been uttered about Him a single prophecy by a god who was unknown, and up to that time silent, of whom it was not possible for Him to be attested as “the Holy One,” as (of a god) unknown even to his own Creator. What similar event could he then have published 3664 of a new deity, whereby he might betoken for “the holy one” of the rival god? Simply that he went into the synagogue, and did nothing even in word against the Creator? As therefore he could not by any means acknowledge him, whom he was ignorant of, to be Jesus and the Holy One of God; so did he acknowledge Him whom he knew (to be both). For he remembered how that the prophet had prophesied 3665 of “the Holy One” of God, and how that God’s name of “Jesus” was in the son of Nun. 3666 These facts he had also received 3667 from the angel, according to our Gospel: “Wherefore that which shall be born of thee shall be called the Holy One, the Son of God;” 3668 and, “Thou shalt call his name Jesus.” 3669 Thus he actually had (although only an evil spirit) some idea of the Lord’s dispensation, rather than of any strange and heretofore imperfectly understood one. Because he also premised this question: “What have we to do with Thee?”—not as if referring to a strange Jesus, to whom pertain the evil spirits of the Creator. Nor did he say, What hast Thou to do with us? but, “What have we to do with Thee?” as if deploring himself, and deprecating his own calamity; at the prospect of which he adds: “Art Thou come to destroy us?” So completely did he acknowledge in Jesus the Son of that God who was judicial and avenging, and (so to speak) severe, 3670 and not of him who was simply good, 3671 and knew not how to destroy or how to punish! Now for what purpose have we adduced his passage first? 3672 In order to show that Jesus was neither acknowledged by the evil spirit, nor affirmed by Himself, to be any other than the Creator’s. Well, but Jesus rebuked him, you say. To be sure he did, as being an envious (spirit), and in his very confession only petulant, and evil in adulation—just as if it had been Christ’s highest glory to have come for the destruction of demons, and not for the salvation of mankind; whereas His wish really was that His disciples should not glory in the subjection of evil spirits but in the fair beauty of salvation. 3673 Why else 3674 did He rebuke him? If it was because he was entirely wrong (in his invocation), then He was neither Jesus nor the Holy One of God; if it was because he was partially wrong—for having supposed him to be, rightly enough, 3675 Jesus and the Holy One of God, but also as belonging to the Creator—most unjustly would He have rebuked him for thinking what he knew he ought to think (about Him), and for not supposing that of Him which he knew not that he ought to suppose—that he was another Jesus, and the holy one of the other god. If, however, the rebuke has not a more probable meaning 3676 than that which we ascribe to it, it follows that the evil spirit made no mistake, and was not rebuked for lying; for it was Jesus Himself, besides whom it was impossible for the evil spirit to have acknowledged any other, whilst Jesus affirmed that He was He whom the evil spirit had acknowledged, by not rebuking him for uttering a lie.
Footnotes
351:3634Luke 3:1, Luke 4:31.
351:3635Utique.
351:3636Ecquid ordinis.
351:3637See above, book i. chap. xxiii. [Comp. i. cap. xix.]
352:3638This is here the force of viderit, our author’s very favourite idiom.
352:3639Apparere.
352:3640Sapit.
352:3641Impegerit.
352:3642Descendisse autem, dum fit, videtur et subit oculos. Probably this bit of characteristic Latinity had better be rendered thus: “The accomplishment of a descent, however, is, whilst happening, a visible process, and one that meets the eye.” Of the various readings, “dum sit,” “dum it,” “dum fit,” we take the last with Oehler, only understanding the clause as a parenthesis.
352:3643Suggestu.
352:3644Indignum.
352:3645Cui.
352:3646Ingressuro prædicationem.
352:3647This is the literal rendering of Tertullian’s version of the prophet’s words, which occur chap. ix. 1, 2. The first clause closely follows the LXX. (ed. Tisch.): Τοῦτο πρῶτον πίε, ταχύ ποίει. This curious passage is explained by Grotius (on Matt. iv. 14) as a mistake of ancient copyists; as if what the Seventy had originally rendered ταχὺ ποίει, from the hiphil of ללק, had been faultily written ταχὺ πίε, and the latter had crept into the text with the marginal note πρῶτον, instead of a repetition of ταχὺ. However this be, Tertullian’s old Latin Bible had the passage thus: “Hoc primum bibito, cito facito, regio Zabulon,” etc.
352:3648Si utique.
352:3649Agnoscere.
352:3650Matt. v. 17.
352:3651Additum.
352:3652Matt. xv. 24.
352:3653Matt. xv. 26.
352:3654Præfert.
352:3655Tam repentinus.
352:3656Etsi passim adiretur.
352:3657Luke iv. 32.
353:3658Eloquium.
353:3659Facilius.
353:3660That is, the Creator.
353:3661Luke 4:33, 34.
353:3662Si non Creatoris.
353:3663See above, in book iii. chap. xii., on the name Emmanuel; in chap. xv., on the name Christ; and in chap. xvi., on the name Jesus.
353:3664Quid tale ediderit.
353:3665Ps. 16:10, Dan. 9:24.
353:3666Compare what was said above in book iii., chap. xvi. p. 335.
353:3667Exceperat.
353:3668Such is our author’s reading of Luke i. 35.
353:3669Matt. i. 21.
353:3670Sævi.
353:3671Optimi.
353:3672Præmisimus.
353:3673De candida salutis: see Luke x. 20.
353:3674Aut cur.
353:3675Quidem.
354:3676Verisimiliorem statum.
Chapter VIII.—Other Proofs from the Same Chapter, that Jesus, Who Preached at Nazareth, and Was Acknowledged by Certain Demons as Christ the Son of God, Was the Creator’s Christ. As Occasion Offers, the Docetic Errors of Marcion are Exposed.
The Christ of the Creator had 3677 to be called a Nazarene according to prophecy; whence the Jews also designate us, on that very account, 3678 Nazerenes 3679 after Him. For we are they of whom it is written, “Her Nazarites were whiter than snow;” 3680 even they who were once defiled with the stains of sin, and darkened with the clouds of ignorance. But to Christ the title Nazarene was destined to become a suitable one, from the hiding-place of His infancy, for which He went down and dwelt at Nazareth, 3681 to escape from Archelaus the son of Herod. This fact I have not refrained from mentioning on this account, because it behoved Marcion’s Christ to have forborne all connection whatever with the domestic localities of the Creator’s Christ, when he had so many towns in Judæa which had not been by the prophets thus assigned 3682 to the Creator’s Christ. But Christ will be (the Christ) of the prophets, wheresoever He is found in accordance with the prophets. And yet even at Nazareth He is not remarked as having preached anything new, 3683 whilst in another verse He is said to have been rejected 3684 by reason of a simple proverb. 3685 Here at once, when I observe that they laid their hands on Him, I cannot help drawing a conclusion respecting His bodily substance, which cannot be believed to have been a phantom, 3686 since it was capable of being touched and even violently handled, when He was seized and taken and led to the very brink of a precipice. For although He escaped through the midst of them, He had already experienced their rough treatment, and afterwards went His way, no doubt 3687 because the crowd (as usually happens) gave way, or was even broken through; but not because it was eluded as by an impalpable disguise, 3688 which, if there had been such, would not at all have submitted to any touch.
“Tangere enim et tangi, nisi corpus, nulla potest res,” 3689
is even a sentence worthy of a place in the world’s wisdom. In short, He did himself touch others, upon whom He laid His hands, which were capable of being felt, and conferred the blessings of healing, 3690 which were not less true, not less unimaginary, than were the hands wherewith He bestowed them. He was therefore the very Christ of Isaiah, the healer of our sicknesses. 3691 “Surely,” says he, “He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” Now the Greeks are accustomed to use for carry a word which also signifies to take away. A general promise is enough for me in passing. 3692 Whatever were the cures which Jesus effected, He is mine. We will come, however, to the kinds of cures. To liberate men, then, from evil spirits, is a cure of sickness. Accordingly, wicked spirits (just in the manner of our former example) used to go forth with a testimony, exclaiming, “Thou art the Son of God,” 3693 —of what God, is clear enough from the case itself. But they were rebuked, and ordered not to speak; precisely because 3694 Christ willed Himself to be proclaimed by men, not by unclean spirits, as the Son of God—even that Christ alone to whom this was befitting, because He had sent beforehand men through whom He might become known, and who were assuredly worthier preachers. It was natural to Him 3695 to refuse the proclamation of an unclean spirit, at whose command there was an abundance of saints. He, however, 3696 who had never been foretold (if, indeed, he wished to be acknowledged; for if he did not wish so much, his coming was in vain), would not have spurned the testimony of an alien or any sort of substance, who did not happen to have a substance of his own, 3697 but had descended in an alien one. And now, too, as the destroyer also of the Creator, he would have desired nothing better than to be acknowledged by His spirits, and to be divulged for the sake of being feared: 3698 only that Marcion says 3699 that his god is not feared; maintaining that a good being is not an object of fear, but only a judicial being, in whom reside the grounds 3700 of fear—anger, severity, judgments, vengeance, condemnation. But it was from fear, undoubtedly, that the evil spirits were cowed. 3701 Therefore they confessed that (Christ) was the Son of a God who was to be feared, because they would have an occasion of not submitting if there were none for fearing. Besides, He showed that He was to be feared, because He drave them out, not by persuasion like a good being, but by command and reproof. Or else did he 3702 reprove them, because they were making him an object of fear, when all the while he did not want to be feared? And in what manner did he wish them to go forth, when they could not do so except with fear? So that he fell into the dilemma 3703 of having to conduct himself contrary to his nature, whereas he might in his simple goodness have at once treated them with leniency. He fell, too, into another false position 3704 —of prevarication, when he permitted himself to be feared by the demons as the Son of the Creator, that he might drive them out, not indeed by his own power, but by the authority of the Creator. “He departed, and went into a desert place.” 3705 This was, indeed, the Creator’s customary region. It was proper that the Word 3706 should there appear in body, where He had aforetime, wrought in a cloud. To the gospel also was suitable that condition of place 3707 which had once been determined on for the law. 3708 “Let the wilderness and the solitary place, therefore, be glad and rejoice;” so had Isaiah promised. 3709 When “stayed” by the crowds, He said, “I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also.” 3710 Had He displayed His God anywhere yet? I suppose as yet nowhere. But was He speaking of those who knew of another god also? I do not believe so. If, therefore, neither He had preached, nor they had known, any other God but the Creator, He was announcing the kingdom of that God whom He knew to be the only God known to those who were listening to Him.
Footnotes
354:3677Habebat.
354:3678Ipso nomine, or by His very name.
354:3679Nazaræos; or, Nazarites. [Christians were still so called by the Jews in the Third Century. Kaye, 446.]
354:3680Lam. iv. 7.
354:3681Descendit apud, see Luke iv. 16-30.
354:3682Emancipata.
354:3683Luke iv. 23.
354:3684Luke iv. 29.
354:3685Luke iv. 24.
354:3686A rebuke of Marcion’s Docetic views of Christ.
354:3687Scilicet.
354:3688Per caliginem.
354:3689“For nothing can touch and be touched but a bodily substance.” This line from Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, i. 305, is again quoted by Tertullian in his De Anima, chap. v. (Oehler).
354:3690Luke iv. 40.
354:3691See Isa. liii. 4.
354:3692Interim.
354:3693Luke iv. 41.
354:3694Proinde enim.
354:3695Illius erat.
354:3696Porro.
354:3697Propriæ non habebat.
355:3698Præ timore.
355:3699See above, book i. chap. vii. xxvi. and xxvii.
355:3700Materiæ.
355:3701Cedebant.
355:3702Aut nunquid.
355:3703Necessitatem.
355:3704In aliam notam.
355:3705Luke iv. 42.
355:3706Sermonem. [Nota Bene, Acts vii. 38.]
355:3707Habitus loci.
355:3708The law was given in the wilderness of Sinai; see Ex. xix. 1.
355:3709Isa. xxxv. 1.
355:3710Luke 4:42, 43.
Chapter IX.—Out of St. Luke’s Fifth Chapter are Found Proofs of Christ’s Belonging to the Creator, E.g. In the Call of Fishermen to the Apostolic Office, and in the Cleansing of the Leper. Christ Compared with the Prophet Elisha.
Out of so many kinds of occupations, why indeed had He such respect for that of fishermen, as to select from it for apostles Simon and the sons of Zebedee (for it cannot seem to be the mere fact itself for which the narrative was meant to be drawn out 3711 ), saying to Peter, when he trembled at the very large draught of the fishes, “Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men?” 3712 By saying this, He suggested to them the meaning of the fulfilled prophecy, that it was even He who by Jeremiah had foretold, “Behold, I will send many fishers; and they shall fish them,” 3713 that is, men. Then at last they left their boats, and followed Him, understanding that it was He who had begun to accomplish what He had declared. It is quite another case, when he affected to choose from the college of shipmasters, intending one day to appoint the shipmaster Marcion his apostle. We have indeed already laid it down, in opposition to his Antitheses, that the position of Marcion derives no advantage from the diversity which he supposes to exist between the Law and the Gospel, inasmuch as even this was ordained by the Creator, and indeed predicted in the promise of the new Law, and the new Word, and the new Testament. Since, however, he quotes with especial care, 3714 as a proof in his domain, 3715 a certain companion in misery (συνταλαίπωρον), and associate in hatred (συμμισούμενον ), with himself, for the cure of leprosy, 3716 I shall not be sorry to meet him, and before anything else to point out to him the force of the law figuratively interpreted, which, in this example of a leper (who was not to be touched, but was rather to be removed from all intercourse with others), prohibited any communication with a person who was defiled with sins, with whom the apostle also forbids us even to eat food, 3717 forasmuch as the taint of sins would be communicated as if contagious, wherever a man should mix himself with the sinner. The Lord, therefore, wishing that the law should be more profoundly understood as signifying spiritual truths by carnal facts 3718 —and thus 3719 not destroying, but rather building up, that law which He wanted to have more earnestly acknowledged—touched the leper, by whom (even although as man He might have been defiled) He could not be defiled as God, being of course incorruptible. The prescription, therefore, could not be meant for Him, that He was bound to observe the law and not touch the unclean person, seeing that contact with the unclean would not cause defilement to Him. I thus teach that this (immunity) is consistent in my Christ, the rather when I show that it is not consistent in yours. Now, if it was as an enemy 3720 of the law that He touched the leper—disregarding the precept of the law by a contempt of the defilement—how could he be defiled, when he possessed not a body 3721 which could be defiled? For a phantom is not susceptible of defilement. He therefore, who could not be defiled, as being a phantom, will not have an immunity from pollution by any divine power, but owing to his fantastic vacuity; nor can he be regarded as having despised pollution, who had not in fact any material capacity 3722 for it; nor, in like manner, as having destroyed the law, who had escaped defilement from the occasion of his phantom nature, not from any display of virtue. If, however, the Creator’s prophet Elisha cleansed Naaman the Syrian alone, 3723 to the exclusion of 3724 so many lepers in Israel, 3725 this fact contributes nothing to the distinction of Christ, as if he were in this way the better one for cleansing this Israelite leper, although a stranger to him, whom his own Lord had been unable to cleanse. The cleansing of the Syrian rather 3726 was significant throughout the nations of the world 3727 of their own cleansing in Christ their light, 3728 steeped as they were in the stains of the seven deadly sins: 3729 idolatry, blasphemy, murder, adultery, fornication, false-witness, and fraud. 3730 Seven times, therefore, as if once for each, 3731 did he wash in Jordan; both in order that he might celebrate the expiation of a perfect hebdomad; 3732 and because the virtue and fulness of the one baptism was thus solemnly imputed 3733 to Christ, alone, who was one day to establish on earth not only a revelation, but also a baptism, endued with compendious efficacy. 3734 Even Marcion finds here an antithesis: 3735 how that Elisha indeed required a material resource, applied water, and that seven times; whereas Christ, by the employment of a word only, and that but once for all, instantly effected 3736 the cure. And surely I might venture 3737 to claim 3738 the Very Word also as of the Creator’s substance. There is nothing of which He who was the primitive Author is not also the more powerful one. Forsooth, 3739 it is incredible that that power of the Creator should have, by a word, produced a remedy for a single malady, which once by a word brought into being so vast a fabric as the world! From what can the Christ of the Creator be better discerned, than from the power of His word? But Christ is on this account another (Christ), because He acted differently from Elisha—because, in fact, the master is more powerful than his servant! Why, Marcion, do you lay down the rule, that things are done by servants just as they are by their very masters? Are you not afraid that it will turn to your discredit, if you deny that Christ belongs to the Creator, on the ground that He was once more powerful than a servant of the Creator—since, in comparison with the weakness of Elisha, He is acknowledged to be the greater, if indeed greater! 3740 For the cure is the same, although there is a difference in the working of it. What has your Christ performed more than my Elisha? Nay, what great thing has the word of your Christ performed, when it has simply done that which a river of the Creator effected? On the same principle occurs all the rest. So far as renouncing all human glory went, He forbade the man to publish abroad the cure; but so far as the honour of the law was concerned, He requested that the usual course should be followed: “Go, show thyself to the priest, and present the offering which Moses commanded.” 3741 For the figurative signs of the law in its types He still would have observed, because of their prophetic import. 3742 These types signified that a man, once a sinner, but afterwards purified 3743 from the stains thereof by the word of God, was bound to offer unto God in the temple a gift, even prayer and thanksgiving in the church through Christ Jesus, who is the Catholic Priest of the Father. 3744 Accordingly He added: “that it may be for a testimony unto you”—one, no doubt, whereby He would testify that He was not destroying the law, but fulfilling it; whereby, too, He would testify that it was He Himself who was foretold as about to undertake 3745 their sicknesses and infirmities. This very consistent and becoming explanation of “the testimony,” that adulator of his own Christ, Marcion seeks to exclude under the cover of mercy and gentleness. For, being both good (such are his words), and knowing, besides, that every man who had been freed from leprosy would be sure to perform the solemnities of the law, therefore He gave this precept. Well, what then? Has He continued in his goodness (that is to say, in his permission of the law) or not? For if he has persevered in his goodness, he will never become a destroyer of the law; nor will he ever be accounted as belonging to another god, because there would not exist that destruction of the law which would constitute his claim to belong to the other god. If, however, he has not continued good, by a subsequent destruction of the law, it is a false testimony which he has since imposed upon them in his cure of the leper; because he has forsaken his goodness, in destroying the law. If, therefore, he was good whilst upholding the law, 3746 he has now become evil as a destroyer of the law. However, by the support which he gave to the law, he affirmed that the law was good. For no one permits himself in the support of an evil thing. Therefore he is not only bad if he has permitted obedience to a bad law; but even worse still, if he has appeared 3747 as the destroyer of a good law. So that if he commanded the offering of the gift because he knew that every cured leper would be sure to bring one; he possibly abstained from commanding what he knew would be spontaneously done. In vain, therefore, was his coming down, as if with the intention of destroying the law, when he makes concessions to the keepers of the law. And yet, 3748 because he knew their disposition, 3749 he ought the more earnestly to have prevented their neglect of the law, 3750 since he had come for this purpose. Why then did he not keep silent, that man might of his own simple will obey the law? For then might he have seemed to some extent 3751 to have persisted in his patience. But he adds also his own authority increased by the weight of this “testimony.” Of what testimony, I ask, 3752 if not that of the assertion of the law? Surely it matters not in what way he asserted the law—whether as good, or as supererogatory, 3753 or as patient, or as inconstant—provided, Marcion, I drive you from your position. 3754 Observe, 3755 he commanded that the law should be fulfilled. In whatever way he commanded it, in the same way might he also have first uttered that sentiment: 3756 “I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it.” 3757 What business, therefore, had you to erase out of the Gospel that which was quite consistent in it? 3758 For you have confessed that, in his goodness, he did in act what you deny that he did in word. 3759 We have therefore good proof that He uttered the word, in the fact that He did the deed; and that you have rather expunged the Lord’s word, than that our (evangelists) 3760 have inserted it.
Footnotes
355:3711Argumentum processurum erat.
355:3712See Luke v. 1-11.
355:3713Jer. xvi. 16.
355:3714Attentius argumentatur.
355:3715Apud illum, i.e., the Creator.
355:3716Luke v. 12-14.
355:37171 Cor. v. 11.
355:3718Per carnalia, by material things.
355:3719Hoc nomine.
356:3720Æmulus.
356:3721Another allusion to Marcion’s Docetic doctrine.
356:3722Materiam.
356:3723Unicum.
356:3724Ex., literally, “alone of.” So Luke iv. 27.
356:3725Compare 2 Kings 5:9, Luke 4:27.
356:3726Facilius—rather than of Israelites.
356:3727Per Nationes. [Bishop Andrewes thus classifies the “Sins of the Nations,” as Tertullian’s idea seems to have suggested: (1) Pride, Amorite; (2) Envy, Hittite; (3) Wrath, Perizzite; (4) Gluttony, Girgashite; (5) Lechery, Hivite; (6) Covetousness, Canaanite; (7) Sloth, Jebusite.]
356:3728Compare, in Simeon’s song, Luke ii. 32, the designation, “A light to lighten the Gentiles.”
356:3729[See Elucidation I.]
356:3730Such seems to be the meaning of the obscure passage in the original, “Syro facilius emundato significato per nationes emundationis in Christo lumine earum quæ septem maculis, capitalium delictorum inhorrerent, idoatria,” etc. We have treated significato as one member of an ablative absolute clause, from significatum, a noun occuring in Gloss. Lat. Gr. synonymous with δήλωσις. Rigault, in a note on the passage, imputes the obscurity to Tertullian’s arguing on the Marcionite hypothesis. “Marcion,” says he, “held that the prophets, like Elisha, belonged to the Creator, and Christ to the good God. To magnify Christ’s beneficence, he prominently dwells on the alleged fact, that Christ, although a stranger to the Creator’s world, yet vouchsafed to do good in it. This vain conceit Tertullian refutes from the Marcionite hypothesis itself. God the Creator, said they, had found Himself incapable of cleansing this Israelite; but He had more easily cleansed the Syrian. Christ, however, cleansed the Israelite, and so showed himself the superior power. Tertullian denies both positions.”
356:3731Quasi per singulos titulos.
356:3732There was a mystic completeness in the number seven.
356:3733Dicabatur.
356:3734Sicut sermonem compendiatum, ita et lavacrum. In chap. i. of this book, the N.T. is called the compendiatum. This illustrates the present phrase.
356:3735Et hoc opponit.
356:3736Repræsentavit.
356:3737Quasi non audeam.
356:3738Vindicare in.
356:3739Plane. An ironical cavil from the Marcionite view.
356:3740Si tamen major.
357:3741Luke v. 14.
357:3742Utpote prophetatæ.
357:3743Emaculatum.
357:3744[i.e., the Great High Priest whose sacrifice is accepted of the Father, for the sins of the whole world.]
357:3745Suscepturus: to carry or take away.
357:3746Legis indultor.
357:3747Advenit.
357:3748Atquin.
357:3749Formam.
357:3750Ab ea avertendos.
357:3751Aliquatenus.
357:3752Jam.
357:3753Supervacuus.
357:3754Gradu.
357:3755Ecce.
357:3756Sententiam.
357:3757Matt. v. 17.
357:3758Quod salvum est.
357:3759That is, you retain the passage in St. Luke, which relates the act of honouring the law; but you reject that in St. Matthew, which contains Christ’s profession of honouring the law.
357:3760Nostros: or, perhaps, “our people,”—that is, the Catholics.
Chapter X.—Further Proofs of the Same Truth in the Same Chapter, from the Healing of the Paralytic, and from the Designation Son of Man Which Jesus Gives Himself. Tertullian Sustains His Argument by Several Quotations from the Prophets.
The sick of the palsy is healed, 3761 and that in public, in the sight of the people. For, says Isaiah, “they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God.” 3762 What glory, and what excellency? “Be strong, ye weak hands, and ye feeble knees:” 3763 this refers to the palsy. “Be strong; fear not.” 3764 Be strong is not vainly repeated, nor is fear not vainly added; because with the renewal of the limbs there was to be, according to the promise, a restoration also of bodily energies: “Arise, and take up thy couch;” and likewise moral courage 3765 not to be afraid of those who should say, “Who can forgive sins, but God alone?” So that you have here not only the fulfilment of the prophecy which promised a particular kind of healing, but also of the symptoms which followed the cure. In like manner, you should also recognise Christ in the same prophet as the forgiver of sins. “For,” he says, “He shall remit to many their sins, and shall Himself take away our sins.” 3766 For in an earlier passage, speaking in the person of the Lord himself, he had said: “Even though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them as white as snow; even though they be like crimson, I will whiten them as wool.” 3767 In the scarlet colour He indicates the blood of the prophets; in the crimson, that of the Lord, as the brighter. Concerning the forgiveness of sins, Micah also says: “Who is a God like unto Thee? pardoning iniquity, and passing by the transgressions of the remnant of Thine heritage. He retaineth not His anger as a testimony against them, because He delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, and will have compassion upon us; He wipeth away our iniquities, and casteth our sins into the depths of the sea.” 3768 Now, if nothing of this sort had been predicted of Christ, I should find in the Creator examples of such a benignity as would hold out to me the promise of similar affections also in the Son of whom He is the Father. I see how the Ninevites obtained forgiveness of their sins from the Creator 3769 —not to say from Christ, even then, because from the beginning He acted in the Father’s name. I read, too, how that, when David acknowledged his sin against Uriah, the prophet Nathan said unto him, “The Lord hath cancelled 3770 thy sin, and thou shalt not die;” 3771 how king Ahab in like manner, the husband of Jezebel, guilty of idolatry and of the blood of Naboth, obtained pardon because of his repentance; 3772 and how Jonathan the son of Saul blotted out by his deprecation the guilt of a violated fast. 3773 Why should I recount the frequent restoration of the nation itself after the forgiveness of their sins?—by that God, indeed, who will have mercy rather than sacrifice, and a sinner’s repentance rather than his death. 3774 You will first have to deny that the Creator ever forgave sins; then you must in reason show 3775 that He never ordained any such prerogative for His Christ; and so you will prove how novel is that boasted 3776 benevolence of the, of course, novel Christ when you shall have proved that it is neither compatible with 3777 the Creator nor predicted by the Creator. But whether to remit sins can appertain to one who is said to be unable to retain them, and whether to absolve can belong to him who is incompetent even to condemn, and whether to forgive is suitable to him against whom no offence can be committed, are questions which we have encountered elsewhere, 3778 when we preferred to drop suggestions 3779 rather than treat them anew. 3780 Concerning the Son of man our rule 3781 is a twofold one: that Christ cannot lie, so as to declare Himself the Son of man, if He be not truly so; nor can He be constituted the Son of man, unless He be born of a human parent, either father or mother. And then the discussion will turn on the point, of which human parent He ought to be accounted the son—of the father or the mother? Since He is (begotten) of God the Father, He is not, of course, (the son) of a human father. If He is not of a human father, it follows that He must be (the son) of a human mother. If of a human mother, it is evident that she must be a virgin. For to whom a human father is not ascribed, to his mother a husband will not be reckoned; and then to what mother a husband is not reckoned, the condition of virginity belongs. 3782 But if His mother be not a virgin, two fathers will have to be reckoned to Him—a divine and a human one. For she must have a husband, not to be a virgin; and by having a husband, she would cause two fathers—one divine, the other human—to accrue to Him, who would thus be Son both of God and of a man. Such a nativity (if one may call it so) 3783 the mythic stories assign to Castor or to Hercules. Now, if this distinction be observed, that is to say, if He be Son of man as born of His mother, because not begotten of a father, and His mother be a virgin, because His father is not human—He will be that Christ whom Isaiah foretold that a virgin should conceive, 3784 on what principle you, Marcion, can admit Him Son of man, I cannot possibly see. If through a human father, then you deny him to be Son of God; if through a divine one also, 3785 then you make Christ the Hercules of fable; if through a human mother only, then you concede my point; if not through a human father also, 3786 then He is not the son of any man, 3787 and He must have been guilty of a lie for having declared Himself to be what He was not. One thing alone can help you in your difficulty: boldness on your part either to surname your God as actually the human father of Christ, as Valentinus did 3788 with his Æon; or else to deny that the Virgin was human, which even Valentinus did not do. What now, if Christ be described 3789 in Daniel by this very title of “Son of man?” Is not this enough to prove that He is the Christ of prophecy? For if He gives Himself that appellation which was provided in the prophecy for the Christ of the Creator, He undoubtedly offers Himself to be understood as Him to whom (the appellation) was assigned by the prophet. But perhaps 3790 it can be regarded as a simple identity of names; 3791 and yet we have maintained 3792 that neither Christ nor Jesus ought to have been called by these names, if they possessed any condition of diversity. But as regards the appellation “Son of man,” in as far as it occurs by accident, 3793 in so far there is a difficulty in its occurrence along with 3794 a casual identity of names. For it is of pure 3795 accident, especially when the same cause does not appear 3796 whereby the identity may be occasioned. And therefore, if Marcion’s Christ be also said to be born of man, then he too would receive an identical appellation, and there would be two Sons of man, as also two Christs and two Jesuses. Therefore, since the appellation is the sole right of Him in whom it has a suitable reason, 3797 if it be claimed for another in whom there is an identity of name, but not of appellation, 3798 then the identity of name even looks suspicious in him for whom is claimed without reason the identity of appellation. And it follows that He must be believed to be One and the Same, who is found to be the more fit to receive both the name and the appellation; while the other is excluded, who has no right to the appellation, because he has no reason to show for it. Nor will any other be better entitled to both than He who is the earlier, and has had allotted to Him the name of Christ and the appellation of Son of man, even the Jesus of the Creator. It was He who was seen by the king of Babylon in the furnace with His martyrs: “the fourth, who was like the Son of man.” 3799 He also was revealed to Daniel himself expressly as “the Son of man, coming in the clouds of heaven” as a Judge, as also the Scripture shows. 3800 What I have advanced might have been sufficient concerning the designation in prophecy of the Son of man. But the Scripture offers me further information, even in the interpretation of the Lord Himself. For when the Jews, who looked at Him as merely man, and were not yet sure that He was God also, as being likewise the Son of God, rightly enough said that a man could not forgive sins, but God alone, why did He not, following up their point 3801 about man, answer them, that He 3802 had power to remit sins; inasmuch as, when He mentioned the Son of man, He also named a human being? except it were because He wanted, by help of the very designation “Son of man” from the book of Daniel, so to induce them to reflect 3803 as to show them that He who remitted sins was God and man—that only Son of man, indeed, in the prophecy of Daniel, who had obtained the power of judging, and thereby, of course, of forgiving sins likewise (for He who judges also absolves); so that, when once that objection of theirs 3804 was shattered to pieces by their recollection of Scripture, they might the more easily acknowledge Him to be the Son of man Himself by His own actual forgiveness of sins. I make one more observation, 3805 how that He has nowhere as yet professed Himself to be the Son of God—but for the first time in this passage, in which for the first time He has remitted sins; that is, in which for the first time He has used His function of judgment, by the absolution. All that the opposite side has to allege in argument against these things, (I beg you) carefully weigh 3806 what it amounts to. For it must needs strain itself to such a pitch of infatuation as, on the one hand, to maintain that (their Christ) is also Son of man, in order to save Him from the charge of falsehood; and, on the other hand, to deny that He was born of woman, lest they grant that He was the Virgin’s son. Since, however, the divine authority and the nature of the case, and common sense, do not admit this insane position of the heretics, we have here the opportunity of putting in a veto 3807 in the briefest possible terms, on the substance of Christ’s body, against Marcion’s phantoms. Since He is born of man, being the Son of man. He is body derived from body. 3808 You may, I assure you, 3809 more easily find a man born without a heart or without brains, like Marcion himself, than without a body, like Marcion’s Christ. And let this be the limit to your examination of the heart, or, at any rate, the brains of the heretic of Pontus. 3810
Footnotes
357:3761Luke v. 16-26.
357:3762Isa. xxxv. 2.
357:3763Isa. xxxv. 3 in an altered form.
357:3764Isa. xxxv. 4.
358:3765Animi vigorem.
358:3766This seems to be Isa. liii. 12, last clause.
358:3767Isa. i. 18.
358:3768Mic. 7:18, 19.
358:3769Jonah iii. 10.
358:3770Circumduxit.
358:37712 Sam. xii. 13.
358:37721 Kings xxi. 29.
358:3773Resignati jejunii. See 1 Sam. xiv. 43-45.
358:3774Ezek. xxxiii. 11.
358:3775Consequens est ut ostendas.
358:3776Istam.
358:3777Parem.
358:3778See book i. chap. xxvi.–xxviii.
358:3779Admonere.
358:3780Retractare: give a set treatise about them.
358:3781Præscriptio.
358:3782To secure terseness in the premisses, we are obliged to lengthen out the brief terms of the conclusion, virgo est.
358:3783Si forte.
358:3784Isa. vii. 14.
359:3785Si et Dei.
359:3786Si neque patris.
359:3787On Marcion’s principles, it must be remembered.
359:3788Compare T.’s treatise, Adversus Valentinianos, chap. xii.
359:3789Censentur.
359:3790Si forte.
359:3791Nominum communio simplex.
359:3792Defendimus. See above, book iii. chap. xv. xvi.
359:3793Ex accidenti obvenit.
359:3794Super.
359:3795Proprio.
359:3796Non convenit.
359:3797Causam.
359:3798The context explains the difference between nomen and appellatio. The former refers to the name Jesus or Christ, the latter to the designation Son of man.
359:3799Dan. iii. 25.
359:3800Dan. vii. 13.
359:3801Secundum intentionem eorum.
359:3802Eum: that is, man.
359:3803Repercutere.
359:3804Scandalo isto.
359:3805Denique.
359:3806Dispice.
360:3807Interpellandi.
360:3808Corpus ex corpore.
360:3809Plane: introducing the sharp irony.
360:3810This is perhaps the best sense of T.’s sarcasm: “Atque adeo (thus far) inspice cor Pontici aut (or else) cerebrum.”
Chapter XI.—The Call of Levi the Publican. Christ in Relation to the Baptist. Christ as the Bridegroom. The Parable of the Old Wine and the New. Arguments Connecting Christ with the Creator.
The publican who was chosen by the Lord, 3811 he adduces for a proof that he was chosen as a stranger to the law and uninitiated in 3812 Judaism, by one who was an adversary to the law. The case of Peter escaped his memory, who, although he was a man of the law, was not only chosen by the Lord, but also obtained the testimony of possessing knowledge which was given to him by the Father. 3813 He had nowhere read of Christ’s being foretold as the light, and hope, and expectation of the Gentiles! He, however, rather spoke of the Jews in a favourable light, when he said, “The whole needed not a physician, but they that are sick.” 3814 For since by “those that are sick” he meant that the heathens and publicans should be understood, whom he was choosing, he affirmed of the Jews that they were “whole” for whom he said that a physician was not necessary. This being the case, he makes a mistake in coming down 3815 to destroy the law, as if for the remedy of a diseased condition. because they who were living under it were “whole,” and “not in want of a physician.” How, moreover, does it happen that he proposed the similitude of a physician, if he did not verify it? For, just as nobody uses a physician for healthy persons, so will no one do so for strangers, in so far as he is one of Marcion’s god-made men, 3816 having to himself both a creator and preserver, and a specially good physician, in his Christ. This much the comparison predetermines, that a physician is more usually furnished by him to whom the sick people belong. Whence, too, does John come upon the scene? Christ, suddenly; and just as suddenly, John! 3817 After this fashion occur all things in Marcion’s system. They have their own special and plenary course 3818 in the Creator’s dispensation. Of John, however, what else I have to say will be found in another passage. 3819 To the several points which now come before us an answer must be given. This, then, I will take care to do 3820 —demonstrate that, reciprocally, John is suitable to Christ, and Christ to John, the latter, of course, as a prophet of the Creator, just as the former is the Creator’s Christ; and so the heretic may blush at frustrating, to his own frustration, the mission of John the Baptist. For if there had been no ministry of John at all—“the voice,” as Isaiah calls him, “of one crying in the wilderness,” and the preparer of the ways of the Lord by denunciation and recommendation of repentance; if, too, he had not baptized (Christ) Himself 3821 along with others, nobody could have challenged the disciples of Christ, as they ate and drank, to a comparison with the disciples of John, who were constantly fasting and praying; because, if there existed any diversity 3822 between Christ and John, and their followers respectively, no exact comparison would be possible, nor would there be a single point where it could be challenged. For nobody would feel surprise, and nobody would be perplexed, although there should arise rival predictions of a diverse deity, which should also mutually differ about modes of conduct, 3823 having a prior difference about the authorities 3824 upon which they were based. Therefore Christ belonged to John, and John to Christ; while both belonged to the Creator, and both were of the law and the prophets, preachers and masters. Else Christ would have rejected the discipline of John, as of the rival god, and would also have defended the disciples, as very properly pursuing a different walk, because consecrated to the service of another and contrary deity. But as it is, while modestly 3825 giving a reason why “the children of the bridegroom are unable to fast during the time the bridegroom is with them,” but promising that “they should afterwards fast, when the bridegroom was taken away from them,” 3826 He neither defended the disciples, (but rather excused them, as if they had not been blamed without some reason), nor rejected the discipline of John, but rather allowed 3827 it, referring it to the time of John, although destining it for His own time. Otherwise His purpose would have been to reject it, 3828 and to defend its opponents, if He had not Himself already belonged to it as then in force. I hold also that it is my Christ who is meant by the bridegroom, of whom the psalm says: “He is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber; His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and His return is back to the end of it again.” 3829 By the mouth of Isaiah He also says exultingly of the Father: “Let my soul rejoice in the Lord; for He hath clothed me with the garment of salvation and with the tunic of joy, as a bridegroom. He hath put a mitre round about my head, as a bride.” 3830 To Himself likewise He appropriates 3831 the church, concerning which the same 3832 Spirit says to Him: “Thou shalt clothe Thee with them all, as with a bridal ornament.” 3833 This spouse Christ invites home to Himself also by Solomon from the call of the Gentiles, because you read: “Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse.” 3834 He elegantly makes mention of Lebanon (the mountain, of course) because it stands for the name of frankincense with the Greeks; 3835 for it was from idolatry that He betrothed Himself the church. Deny now, Marcion, your utter madness, (if you can)! Behold, you impugn even the law of your god. He unites not in the nuptial bond, nor, when contracted, does he allow it; no one does he baptize but a cælebs or a eunuch; until death or divorce does he reserve baptism. 3836 Wherefore, then, do you make his Christ a bridegroom? This is the designation of Him who united man and woman, not of him who separated them. You have erred also in that declaration of Christ, wherein He seems to make a difference between things new and old. You are inflated about the old bottles, and brain-muddled with the new wine; and therefore to the old (that is to say, to the prior) gospel you have sewed on the patch of your new-fangled heresy. I should like to know in what respect the Creator is inconsistent with Himself. 3837 When by Jeremiah He gave this precept, “Break up for yourselves new pastures,” 3838 does He not turn away from the old state of things? And when by Isaiah He proclaims how “old things were passed away; and, behold, all things, which I am making, are new,” 3839 does He not advert to a new state of things? We have generally been of opinion 3840 that the destination of the former state of things was rather promised by the Creator, and exhibited in reality by Christ, only under the authority of one and the same God, to whom appertain both the old things and the new. For new wine is not put into old bottles, except by one who has the old bottles; nor does anybody put a new piece to an old garment, unless the old garment be forthcoming to him. That person only 3841 does not do a thing when it is not to be done, who has the materials wherewithal to do it if it were to be done. And therefore, since His object in making the comparison was to show that He was separating the new condition 3842 of the gospel from the old state 3843 of the law, He proved that that 3844 from which He was separating His own 3845 ought not to have been branded 3846 as a separation 3847 of things which were alien to each other; for nobody ever unites his own things with things that are alien to them, 3848 in order that he may afterwards be able to separate them from the alien things. A separation is possible by help of the conjunction through which it is made. Accordingly, the things which He separated He also proved to have been once one; as they would have remained, were it not for His separation. But still we make this concession, that there is a separation, by reformation, by amplification, 3849 by progress; just as the fruit is separated from the seed, although the fruit comes from the seed. So likewise the gospel is separated from the law, whilst it advances 3850 from the law—a different thing 3851 from it, but not an alien one; diverse, but not contrary. Nor in Christ do we even find any novel form of discourse. Whether He proposes similitudes or refute questions, it comes from the seventy-seventh Psalm. “I will open,” says He, “my mouth in a parable” (that is, in a similitude); “I will utter dark problems” (that is, I will set forth questions). 3852 If you should wish to prove that a man belonged to another race, no doubt you would fetch your proof from the idiom of his language.
Footnotes
360:3811He means Levi or St. Matthew; see Luke v. 27-39.
360:3812Profanum.
360:3813Matt. xvi. 17.
360:3814Luke v. 31.
360:3815Male descendit.
360:3816Homo a deo Marcionis.
360:3817See chap. vii. of this book, and chap. ii. of book. iii.
360:3818Plenum ordinem.
360:3819See below, chap. xviii.
360:3820Tuebor.
360:3821Ipsum.
360:3822Marcion’s diversitas implied an utter incompatibility between John and Christ; for it assigned John to the Creator, from whom it took Christ away.
360:3823De disciplinis: or, “about discipleships.”
360:3824De auctoritatibus; or, “about the authors thereof.”
360:3825Humiliter.
361:3826Luke 5:34, 35.
361:3827Concessit.
361:3828Rejecturus alioquin.
361:3829Ps. 19:5, 6.
361:3830Isa. lxi. 10.
361:3831Deputat.
361:3832The same, which spake again by Isaiah.
361:3833Isa. xlix. 18.
361:3834Song of Sol. iv. 8.
361:3835There is also in Hebrew an affinity between הנבל, “frankincense,” and זובבִל, “Lebanon.” [Note this strange but reiterated and emphatic identification of incense with idolatry. In the Gentile church it was thoroughly identified with Paganism.]
361:3836See also book i. chap. xxix. [On this reservation of Baptism see Elucidation II.]
361:3837Alter.
361:3838Jer. iv. 3.
361:3839His reading of (probably) Isa. 43:19, 2 Cor. 5:17.
361:3840Olim statuimus.
361:3841Ille.
361:3842Novitas.
361:3843Vetustas.
361:3844That is, “the oldness of the law.”
361:3845That is, “the newness of the gospel.”
361:3846Notandam.
361:3847Separatione. The more general reading is separationem.
361:3848Alienis: i.e., “things not his own.”
361:3849Amplitudinem.
361:3850Provehitur, “is developed.”
361:3851Aliud.
362:3852See Ps. lxxviii. 2.
Chapter XII.—Christ’s Authority Over the Sabbath. As Its Lord He Recalled It from Pharisaic Neglect to the Original Purpose of Its Institution by the Creator the Case of the Disciples Who Plucked the Ears of Corn on the Sabbath. The Withered Hand Healed on the Sabbath.
Concerning the Sabbath also I have this to premise, that this question could not have arisen, if Christ did not publicly proclaim 3853 the Lord of the Sabbath. Nor could there be any discussion about His annulling 3854 the Sabbath, if He had a right 3855 to annul it. Moreover, He would have the right, if He belonged to the rival god; nor would it cause surprise to any one that He did what it was right for Him to do. Men’s astonishment therefore arose from their opinion that it was improper for Him to proclaim the Creator to be God and yet to impugn His Sabbath. Now, that we may decide these several points first, lest we should be renewing them at every turn to meet each argument of our adversary which rests on some novel institution 3856 of Christ, let this stand as a settled point, that discussion concerning the novel character of each institution ensued on this account, because as nothing was as yet advanced by Christ touching any new deity, so discussion thereon was inadmissible; nor could it be retorted, that from the very novelty of each several institution another deity was clearly enough demonstrated by Christ, inasmuch as it was plain that novelty was not in itself a characteristic to be wondered at in Christ, because it had been foretold by the Creator. And it would have been, of course, but right that a new 3857 god should first be expounded, and his discipline be introduced afterwards; because it would be the god that would impart authority to the discipline, and not the discipline to the god; except that (to be sure) it has happened that Marcion acquired his very perverse opinions not from a master, but his master from his opinion! All other points respecting the Sabbath I thus rule. If Christ interfered with 3858 the Sabbath, He simply acted after the Creator’s example; inasmuch as in the siege of the city of Jericho the carrying around the walls of the ark of the covenant for eight days running, and therefore on a Sabbath-day, actually 3859 annulled the Sabbath, by the Creator’s command—according to the opinion of those who think this of Christ in this passage of St. Luke, in their ignorance that neither Christ nor the Creator violated the Sabbath, as we shall by and by show. And yet the Sabbath was actually then broken 3860 by Joshua, 3861 so that the present charge might be alleged also against Christ. But even if, as being not the Christ of the Jews, He displayed a hatred against the Jews’ most solemn day, He was only professedly following 3862 the Creator, as being His Christ, in this very hatred of the Sabbath; for He exclaims by the mouth of Isaiah: “Your new moons and your Sabbaths my soul hateth.” 3863 Now, in whatever sense these words were spoken, we know that an abrupt defence must, in a subject of this sort, be used in answer to an abrupt challenge. I shall now transfer the discussion to the very matter in which the teaching of Christ seemed to annul the Sabbath. The disciples had been hungry; on that the Sabbath day they had plucked some ears and rubbed them in their hands; by thus preparing their food, they had violated the holy day. Christ excuses them, and became their accomplice in breaking the Sabbath. The Pharisees bring the charge against Him. Marcion sophistically interprets the stages of the controversy (if I may call in the aid of the truth of my Lord to ridicule his arts), both in the scriptural record and in Christ’s purpose. 3864 For from the Creator’s Scripture, and from the purpose of Christ, there is derived a colourable precedent 3865 —as from the example of David, when he went into the temple on the Sabbath, and provided food by boldly breaking up the shew-bread. 3866 Even he remembered that this privilege (I mean the dispensation from fasting) was allowed to the Sabbath from the very beginning, when the Sabbath-day itself was instituted. For although the Creator had forbidden that the manna should be gathered for two days, He yet permitted it on the one occasion only of the day before the Sabbath, in order that the yesterday’s provision of food might free from fasting the feast of the following Sabbath-day. Good reason, therefore, had the Lord for pursuing the same principle in the annulling of the Sabbath (since that is the word which men will use); good reason, too, for expressing the Creator’s will, 3867 when He bestowed the privilege of not fasting on the Sabbath-day. In short, He would have then and there 3868 put an end to the Sabbath, nay, to the Creator Himself, if He had commanded His disciples to fast on the Sabbath-day, contrary to the intention 3869 of the Scripture and of the Creator’s will. But because He did not directly defend 3870 His disciples, but excuses them; because He interposes human want, as if deprecating censure; because He maintains the honour of the Sabbath as a day which is to be free from gloom rather than from work; 3871 because he puts David and his companions on a level with His own disciples in their fault and their extenuation; because He is pleased to endorse 3872 the Creator’s indulgence: 3873 because He is Himself good according to His example—is He therefore alien from the Creator? Then the Pharisees watch whether He would heal on the Sabbath-day, 3874 that they might accuse Him—surely as a violator of the Sabbath, not as the propounder of a new god; for perhaps I might be content with insisting on all occasions on this one point, that another Christ 3875 is nowhere proclaimed. The Pharisees, however, were in utter error concerning the law of the Sabbath, not observing that its terms were conditional, when it enjoined rest from labour, making certain distinctions of labour. For when it says of the Sabbath-day, “In it thou shalt not do any work of thine,” 3876 by the word thine 3877 it restricts the prohibition to human work—which every one performs in his own employment or business—and not to divine work. Now the work of healing or preserving is not proper to man, but to God. So again, in the law it says, “Thou shalt not do any manner of work in it,” 3878 except what is to be done for any soul, 3879 that is to say, in the matter of delivering the soul; 3880 because what is God’s work may be done by human agency for the salvation of the soul. By God, however, would that be done which the man Christ was to do, for He was likewise God. 3881 Wishing, therefore, to initiate them into this meaning of the law by the restoration of the withered hand, He requires, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath-days to do good, or not? to save life, or to destroy it?” 3882 In order that He might, whilst allowing that amount of work which He was about to perform for a soul, 3883 remind them what works the law of the Sabbath forbade—even human works; and what it enjoined—even divine works, which might be done for the benefit of any soul, 3884 He was called “Lord of the Sabbath,” 3885 because He maintained 3886 the Sabbath as His own institution. Now, even if He had annulled the Sabbath, He would have had the right to do so, 3887 as being its Lord, (and) still more as He who instituted it. But He did not utterly destroy it, although its Lord, in order that it might henceforth be plain that the Sabbath was not broken 3888 by the Creator, even at the time when the ark was carried around Jericho. For that was really 3889 God’s work, which He commanded Himself, and which He had ordered for the sake of the lives of His servants when exposed to the perils of war. Now, although He has in a certain place expressed an aversion of Sabbaths, by calling them your Sabbaths, 3890 reckoning them as men’s Sabbaths, not His own, because they were celebrated without the fear of God by a people full of iniquities, and loving God “with the lip, not the heart,” 3891 He has yet put His own Sabbaths (those, that is, which were kept according to His prescription) in a different position; for by the same prophet, in a later passage, 3892 He declared them to be “true, and delightful, and inviolable.” Thus Christ did not at all rescind the Sabbath: He kept the law thereof, and both in the former case did a work which was beneficial to the life of His disciples, for He indulged them with the relief of food when they were hungry, and in the present instance cured the withered hand; in each case intimating by facts, “I came not to destroy, the law, but to fulfil it,” 3893 although Marcion has gagged 3894 His mouth by this word. 3895 For even in the case before us He fulfilled the law, while interpreting its condition; moreover, He exhibits in a clear light the different kinds of work, while doing what the law excepts from the sacredness of the Sabbath 3896 and while imparting to the Sabbath-day itself, which from the beginning had been consecrated by the benediction of the Father, an additional sanctity by His own beneficent action. For He furnished to this day divine safeguards, 3897 —a course which 3898 His adversary would have pursued for some other days, to avoid honouring the Creator’s Sabbath, and restoring to the Sabbath the works which were proper for it. Since, in like manner, the prophet Elisha on this day restored to life the dead son of the Shunammite woman, 3899 you see, O Pharisee, and you too, O Marcion, how that it was proper employment for the Creator’s Sabbaths of old 3900 to do good, to save life, not to destroy it; how that Christ introduced nothing new, which was not after the example, 3901 the gentleness, the mercy, and the prediction also of the Creator. For in this very example He fulfils 3902 the prophetic announcement of a specific healing: “The weak hands are strengthened,” as were also “the feeble knees” 3903 in the sick of the palsy.
Footnotes
362:3853Circumferret.
362:3854Cur destrueret.
362:3855Deberet.
362:3856Institutione: or, teaching, perhaps.
362:3857Alium.
362:3858Intervertit.
362:3859Operatione.
362:3860Concussum est sabbatum.
362:3861Per Jesum.
362:3862Professus…sequebatur.
362:3863Isa. i. 14.
362:3864This obscure passage runs thus in the original: “Marcion captat status controversiæ (ut aliquid ludam cum mei Domini veritate), scripti et voluntatis.” Status is a technical word in rhetoric. “Est quæstio quæ ex prima causarum conflictione nascitur.” See Cicero, Topic. c. 25, Part. c. 29; and Quinctilian, Instit. Rhetor. iii. 6. (Oehler).
362:3865Sumitur color.
362:3866Luke 6:1, 1 Sam. 21:2.
363:3867Affectum.
363:3868Tunc demum.
363:3869Statum.
363:3870Non constanter tuebatur.
363:3871Non contristandi quam vacandi.
363:3872[This adoption of an Americanism is worthy of passing notice.]
363:3873Placet illi quia Creator indulsit.
363:3874Luke vi. 7.
363:3875That is, the Christ of another God.
363:3876Ex. xx. 16.
363:3877It is impossible to say where Tertullian got this reading. Perhaps his LXX. copy might have had (in Ex. xx. 10): Οὐ ποιήσεις ἐν αὐτῇ πᾶν ἔργον σου, instead of συ; every clause ending in σου, which follows in that verse. No critical authority, however, now known warrants such a reading. [It is probably based inferentially on Ex. 20.9, “all thy work.”]
363:3878Ex. xii. 16.
363:3879The LXX. of the latter clause of Ex. xii. 16 thus runs: πλὴν ὅσα ποιηθήσεται πάσῃ ψυχῇ. Tertullian probably got this reading from this clause, although the Hebrew is to this effect: “Save that which every man (or, every soul) must eat,” which the Vulgate renders: “Exceptis his, quæ ad vescendum pertinent.”
363:3880Liberandæ animæ: perhaps saving life.
363:3881In salutem animæ: or, for saving life.
363:3882Luke vi. 9.
363:3883Pro anima: or, for a life.
363:3884Animæ omni: or, any life.
363:3885Luke vi. 5.
363:3886Tuebatur.
363:3887Merito.
363:3888Destructum. We have, as has been most convenient, rendered this word by annul, destroy, break.
363:3889Et.
363:3890Isa. 1:13, 14.
363:3891Isa. xxix. 13.
363:3892Isa. 58:13, Isa. 56:2.
364:3893Matt. v. 17.
364:3894Obstruxit.
364:3895“Destroy”…It was hardly necessary for Oehler to paraphrase our author’s characteristically strong sentence by, “since Marcion thought that he had gagged,” etc.
364:3896In other words, “permits to be done on the Sabbath.”
364:3897Præsidia.
364:3898Quod, not quæ, as if in apposition with præsidia.
364:3899See 2 Kings iv. 23.
364:3900Olim.
364:3901Forma.
364:3902Repræsentat.
364:3903Isa. xxxv. 3.
Chapter XIII.—Christ’s Connection with the Creator Shown. Many Quotations Out of the Old Testament Prophetically Bear on Certain Events of the Life of Jesus—Such as His Ascent to Praying on the Mountain; His Selection of Twelve Apostles; His Changing Simon’s Name to Peter, and Gentiles from Tyre and Sidon Resorting to Him.
Surely to Sion He brings good tidings, and to Jerusalem peace and all blessings; He goes up into a mountain, and there spends a night in prayer, 3904 and He is indeed heard by the Father. Accordingly turn over the prophets, and learn therefrom His entire course. 3905 “Into the high mountain,” says Isaiah, “get Thee up, who bringest good tidings to Sion; lift up Thy voice with strength, who bringest good tidings to Jerusalem.” 3906 “They were mightily 3907 astonished at His doctrine; for He was teaching as one who had power.” 3908 And again: “Therefore, my people shall know my name in that day.” What name does the prophet mean, but Christ’s? “That I am He that doth speak—even I.” 3909 For it was He who used to speak in the prophets—the Word, the Creator’s Son. “I am present, while it is the hour, upon the mountains, as one that bringeth glad tidings of peace, as one that publisheth good tidings of good.” 3910 So one of the twelve (minor prophets), Nahum: “For behold upon the mountain the swift feet of Him that bringeth glad tidings of peace.” 3911 Moreover, concerning the voice of His prayer to the Father by night, the psalm manifestly says: “O my God, I will cry in the day-time, and Thou shalt hear; and in the night season, and it shall not be in vain to me.” 3912 In another passage touching the same voice and place, the psalm says: “I cried unto the Lord with my voice, and He heard me out of His holy mountain.” 3913 You have a representation of the name; you have the action of the Evangelizer; you have a mountain for the site; and the night as the time; and the sound of a voice; and the audience of the Father: you have, (in short,) the Christ of the prophets. But why was it that He chose twelve apostles, 3914 and not some other number? In truth, 3915 I might from this very point conclude 3916 of my Christ, that He was foretold not only by the words of prophets, but by the indications of facts. For of this number I find figurative hints up and down the Creator’s dispensation 3917 in the twelve springs of Elim; 3918 in the twelve gems of Aaron’s priestly vestment; 3919 and in the twelve stones appointed by Joshua to be taken out of the Jordan, and set up for the ark of the covenant. Now, the same number of apostles was thus portended, as if they were to be fountains and rivers which should water the Gentile world, which was formerly dry and destitute of knowledge (as He says by Isaiah: “I will put streams in the unwatered ground” 3920 ); as if they were to be gems to shed lustre upon the church’s sacred robe, which Christ, the High Priest of the Father, puts on; as if, also, they were to be stones massive in their faith, which the true Joshua took out of the laver of the Jordan, and placed in the sanctuary of His covenant. What equally good defence of such a number has Marcion’s Christ to show? It is impossible that anything can be shown to have been done by him unconnectedly, 3921 which cannot be shown to have been done by my Christ in connection (with preceding types). 3922 To him will appertain the event 3923 in whom is discovered the preparation for the same. 3924 Again, He changes the name of Simon to Peter, 3925 inasmuch as the Creator also altered the names of Abram, and Sarai, and Oshea, by calling the latter Joshua, and adding a syllable to each of the former. But why Peter? If it was because of the vigour of his faith, there were many solid materials which might lend a name from their strength. Was it because Christ was both a rock and a stone? For we read of His being placed “for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence.” 3926 I omit the rest of the passage. 3927 Therefore He would fain 3928 impart to the dearest of His disciples a name which was suggested by one of His own especial designations in figure; because it was, I suppose, more peculiarly fit than a name which might have been derived from no figurative description of Himself. 3929 There come to Him from Tyre, and from other districts even, a transmarine multitude. This fact the psalm had in view: “And behold tribes of foreign people, and Tyre, and the people of the Ethiopians; they were there. Sion is my mother, shall a man say; and in her was born a man” (forasmuch as the God-man was born), and He built her by the Father’s will; that you may know how Gentiles then flocked to Him, because He was born the God-man who was to build the church according to the Father’s will—even of other races also. 3930 So says Isaiah too: “Behold, these come from far; and these from the north and from the west; 3931 and these from the land of the Persians.” 3932 Concerning whom He says again: “Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold, all these have gathered themselves together.” 3933 And yet again: “Thou seest these unknown and strange ones; and thou wilt say in thine heart, Who hath begotten me these? But who hath brought me up these? And these, where have they been?” 3934 Will such a Christ not be (the Christ) of the prophets? And what will be the Christ of the Marcionites? Since perversion of truth is their pleasure, he could not be (the Christ) of the prophets.
Footnotes
364:3904Luke vi. 12.
364:3905Ordinem.
364:3906Isa. xl. 9.
364:3907In vigore. Or this phrase may qualify the noun thus: “They were astonished at His doctrine, in its might.”
364:3908Luke iv. 32.
364:3909Isa. lii. 6.
364:3910Our author’s reading of Isa. lii. 7.
364:3911Nahum i. 15.
364:3912Ps. xxii. 2.
364:3913Ps. iii. 4.
364:3914Luke vi. 13-19.
364:3915Næ.
364:3916Interpretari.
364:3917Apud creatorem.
364:3918Num. xxxiii. 9.
364:3919Ex. xxviii. 13-21.
364:3920Isa. xliii. 20.
365:3921Simpliciter: i.e., simply or without relation to any types or prophecies.
365:3922Non simpliciter.
365:3923Res.
365:3924Rei præparatura.
365:3925Luke vi. 14. [Elucidation III.]
365:3926Isa. 8:14, Rom. 9:33, 1 Pet. 2:8.
365:3927Cætera.
365:3928Affectavit.
365:3929De non suis; opposed to the de figuris suis peculiariter. [St. Peter was not the dearest of the Apostles though he was the foremost.]
365:3930Ps. 87:4, 5, according to the Septuagint.
365:3931Mari.
365:3932Isa. xlix. 12.
365:3933Isa. xlix. 18.
365:3934Isa. xlix. 21.
Chapter XIV.—Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. In Manner and Contents It So Resembles the Creator’s Dispensational Words and Deeds. It Suggests Therefore the Conclusion that Jesus is the Creator’s Christ. The Beatitudes.
I now come to those ordinary precepts of His, by means of which He adapts the peculiarity 3935 of His doctrine to what I may call His official proclamation as the Christ. 3936 “Blessed are the needy” (for no less than this is required for interpreting the word in the Greek, 3937 “because theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 3938 Now this very fact, that He begins with beatitudes, is characteristic of the Creator, who used no other voice than that of blessing either in the first fiat or the final dedication of the universe: for “my heart,” says He, “hath indited a very good word.” 3939 This will be that “very good word” of blessing which is admitted to be the initiating principle of the New Testament, after the example of the Old. What is there, then, to wonder at, if He entered on His ministry with the very attributes 3940 of the Creator, who ever in language of the same sort loved, consoled, protected, and avenged the beggar, and the poor, and the humble, and the widow, and the orphan? So that you may believe this private bounty as it were of Christ to be a rivulet streaming from the springs of salvation. Indeed, I hardly know which way to turn amidst so vast a wealth of good words like these; as if I were in a forest, or a meadow, or an orchard of apples. I must therefore look out for such matter as chance may present to me. 3941
In the psalm he exclaims: “Defend the fatherless and the needy; do justice to the humble and the poor; deliver the poor, and rid the needy out of the hand of the wicked.” 3942 Similarly in the seventy-first Psalm: “In righteousness shall He judge the needy amongst the people, and shall save the children of the poor.” 3943 And in the following words he says of Christ: “All nations shall serve Him.” 3944 Now David only reigned over the Jewish nation, so that nobody can suppose that this was spoken of David; whereas He had taken upon Himself the condition of the poor, and such as were oppressed with want, “Because He should deliver the needy out of the hand of the mighty man; He shall spare the needy and the poor, and shall deliver the souls of the poor. From usury and injustice shall He redeem their souls, and in His sight shall their name be honoured.” 3945 Again: “The wicked shall be turned into hell, even all the nations that forget God; because the needy shall not alway be forgotten; the endurance of the poor shall not perish for ever.” 3946 Again: “Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on high, and yet looketh on the humble things that are in heaven and on earth!—who raiseth up the needy from off the ground, and out of the dunghill exalteth the poor; that He may set him with the princes of His people,” 3947 that is, in His own kingdom. And likewise earlier, in the book of Kings, 3948 Hannah the mother of Samuel gives glory to God in these words: “He raiseth the poor man from the ground, and the beggar, that He may set him amongst the princes of His people (that is, in His own kingdom), and on thrones of glory” (even royal ones). 3949 And by Isaiah how He inveighs against the oppressors of the needy! “What mean ye that ye set fire to my vineyard, and that the spoil of the poor is in your houses? Wherefore do ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the face of the needy?” 3950 And again: “Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees; for in their decrees they decree wickedness, turning aside the needy from judgment, and taking away their rights from the poor of my people.” 3951 These righteous judgments He requires for the fatherless also, and the widows, as well as for consolation 3952 to the very needy themselves. “Do justice to the fatherless, and deal justly with the widow; and come, let us be reconciled, 3953 saith the Lord.” 3954 To him, for whom in every stage of lowliness there is provided so much of the Creator’s compassionate regard, shall be given that kingdom also which is promised by Christ, to whose merciful compassion belong, and for a great while have belonged, 3955 those to whom the promise is made. For even if you suppose that the promises of the Creator were earthly, but that Christ’s are heavenly, it is quite clear that heaven has been as yet the property of no other God whatever, than Him who owns the earth also; quite clear that the Creator has given even the lesser promises (of earthly blessing), in order that I may more readily believe Him concerning His greater promises (of heavenly blessings) also, than (Marcion’s god), who has never given proof of his liberality by any preceding bestowal of minor blessings. “Blessed are they that hunger, for they shall be filled.” 3956 I might connect this clause with the former one, because none but the poor and needy suffer hunger, if the Creator had not specially designed that the promise of a similar blessing should serve as a preparation for the gospel, that so men might know it to be His. 3957 For thus does He say, by Isaiah, concerning those whom He was about to call from the ends of the earth—that is, the Gentiles: “Behold, they shall come swiftly with speed:” 3958 swiftly, because hastening towards the fulness of the times; with speed, because unclogged by the weights of the ancient law. They shall neither hunger nor thirst. Therefore they shall be filled,—a promise which is made to none but those who hunger and thirst. And again He says: “Behold, my servants shall be filled, but ye shall be hungry; behold, my servants shall drink, but ye shall be thirsty.” 3959 As for these oppositions, we shall see whether they are not premonitors of Christ. 3960 Meanwhile the promise of fulness to the hungry is a provision of God the Creator. “Blessed are they that weep, for they shall laugh.” 3961 Turn again to the passage of Isaiah: “Behold, my servants shall exult with joy, but ye shall be ashamed; behold, my servants shall be glad, but ye shall cry for sorrow of heart.” 3962 And recognise these oppositions also in the dispensation of Christ. Surely gladness and joyous exultation is promised to those who are in an opposite condition—to the sorrowful, and sad, and anxious. Just as it is said in the 125th Psalm: “They who sow in tears shall reap in joy.” 3963 Moreover, laughter is as much an accessory to the exulting and glad, as weeping is to the sorrowful and grieving. Therefore the Creator, in foretelling matters for laughter and tears, was the first who said that those who mourned should laugh. Accordingly, He who began (His course) with consolation for the poor, and the humble, and the hungry, and the weeping, was at once eager 3964 to represent Himself as Him whom He had pointed out by the mouth of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the poor.” 3965 “Blessed are the needy, because theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 3966 “He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted.” 3967 “Blessed are they that hunger, for they shall be filled.” 3968 “To comfort all that mourn.” 3969 “Blessed are they that weep, for they shall laugh.” 3970 “To give unto them that mourn in Sion, beauty (or glory) for ashes, and the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.” 3971 Now since Christ, as soon as He entered on His course, 3972 fulfilled such a ministration as this, He is either, Himself, He who predicted His own coming to do all this; or else if he is not yet come who predicted this, the charge to Marcion’s Christ must be a ridiculous one (although I should perhaps add a necessary 3973 one), which bade him say, “Blessed shall ye be, when men shall hate you, and shall reproach you, and shall cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.” 3974 In this declaration there is, no doubt, an exhortation to patience. Well, what did the Creator say otherwise by Isaiah? “Fear ye not the reproach of men, nor be diminished by their contempt.” 3975 What reproach? what contempt? That which was to be incurred for the sake of the Son of man. What Son of man? He who (is come) according to the Creator’s will. Whence shall we get our proof? From the very cutting off, which was predicted against Him; as when He says by Isaiah to the Jews, who were the instigators of hatred against Him: “Because of you, my name is blasphemed amongst the Gentiles;” 3976 and in another passage: “Lay the penalty on 3977 Him who surrenders 3978 His own life, who is held in contempt by the Gentiles, whether servants or magistrates.” 3979 Now, since hatred was predicted against that Son of man who has His mission from the Creator, whilst the Gospel testifies that the name of Christians, as derived from Christ, was to be hated for the Son of man’s sake, because He is Christ, it determines the point that that was the Son of man in the matter of hatred who came according to the Creator’s purpose, and against whom the hatred was predicted. And even if He had not yet come, the hatred of His name which exists at the present day could not in any case have possibly preceded Him who was to bear the name. 3980 But He has both suffered the penalty 3981 in our presence, and surrendered His life, laying it down for our sakes, and is held in contempt by the Gentiles. And He who was born (into the world) will be that very Son of man on whose account our name also is rejected.
Footnotes
365:3935Proprietatem.
365:3936The original runs thus: “Venio nunc ad ordinarias sententias ejus, per quas proprietatem doctrinæ suæ inducit ad edictum, ut ita dixerim, Christi.” There is here an allusion to the edict of the Roman prætor, that is, his public announcement, in which he states (when entering on his office) the rules by which he will be guided in the administration of the same (see White and Riddle, Latin Dict. s. v. Edictum).
365:3937οί πτωχοι, not πένητες
365:3938Luke vi. 20.
365:3939Ps. xlv. 1. [And see Vol. I. p. 213, supra.]
365:3940Affectibus.
365:3941Prout incidit.
365:3942Ps. 82:3, 4.
366:3943Ps. lxxii. 4.
366:3944Ps. lxxii. 11.
366:3945Ps. 72:12, 13, 14.
366:3946Ps. 9:17, 18.
366:3947Ps. cxiii. 5-8.
366:3948The books of “Samuel” were also called the books of “Kings.”
366:39491 Sam. ii. 8.
366:3950Isa. 3:14, 15.
366:3951Isa. 10:1, 2.
366:3952Solatii.
366:3953Tertullian seems to have read διαλλαχθῶμεν instead of διαλεχθῶμεν, let us reason together, in his LXX.
366:3954Isa. 1:17, 18.
366:3955Jamdudum pertinent.
366:3956Luke vi. 21.
366:3957In evangelii scilicet sui præstructionem.
366:3958Isa. v. 26.
366:3959Isa. lxv. 13.
366:3960An Christo præministrentur.
366:3961Luke vi. 21.
366:3962Isa. 65:13, 14.
366:3963Ps. cxxvi. 5.
367:3964Gestivit.
367:3965Isa. lxi. 1.
367:3966Luke vi. 20.
367:3967Isa. lxi. 1.
367:3968Luke vi. 21.
367:3969Isa. lxi. 2.
367:3970Luke vi. 21.
367:3971Isa. lxi. 3.
367:3972Statim admissus.
367:3973Said in irony, as if Marcion’s Christ deserved the rejection.
367:3974Luke vi. 22.
367:3975His reading of Isa. li. 7.
367:3976Isa. lii. 5.
367:3977Sancite.
367:3978Circumscribit.
367:3979Famulis et magistratibus. It is uncertain what passage this quotation represents. It sounds like some of the clauses of Isa. liii.
367:3980Personam nominis.
367:3981Sancitur.
Chapter XV.—Sermon on the Mount Continued. Its Woes in Strict Agreement with the Creator’s Disposition. Many Quotations Out of the Old Testament in Proof of This.
“In the like manner,” says He, 3982 “did their fathers unto the prophets.” What a turncoat 3983 is Marcion’s Christ! Now the destroyer, now the advocate of the prophets! He destroyed them as their rival, by converting their disciples; he took up their cause as their friend, by stigmatizing 3984 their persecutors. But, 3985 in as far as the defence of the prophets could not be consistent in the Christ of Marcion, who came to destroy them; in so far is it becoming to the Creator’s Christ that He should stigmatize those who persecuted the prophets, for He in all things accomplished their predictions. Again, it is more characteristic of the Creator to upbraid sons with their fathers’ sins, than it is of that god who chastizes no man for even his own misdeeds. But you will say, He cannot be regarded as defending the prophets simply because He wished to affirm the iniquity of the Jews for their impious dealings with their own prophets. Well, then, in this case, 3986 no sin ought to have been charged against the Jews: they were rather deserving of praise and approbation when they maltreated 3987 those whom the absolutely good god of Marcion, after so long a time, bestirred himself 3988 to destroy. I suppose, however, that by this time he had ceased to be the absolutely good god; 3989 he had now sojourned a considerable while even with the Creator, and was no longer (like) the god of Epicurus 3990 purely and simply. For see how he condescends 3991 to curse, and proves himself capable of taking offence and feeling anger! He actually pronounces a woe! But a doubt is raised against us as to the import of this word, as if it carried with it less the sense of a curse than of an admonition. Where, however, is the difference, since even an admonition is not given without the sting of a threat, especially when it is embittered with a woe? Moreover, both admonition and threatening will be the resources of him 3992 who knows how to feel angry. For no one will forbid the doing of a thing with an admonition or a threat, except him who will inflict punishment for the doing of it. No one would inflict punishment, except him who was susceptible of anger. Others, again, admit that the word implies a curse; but they will have it that Christ pronounced the woe, not as if it were His own genuine feeling, but because the woe is from the Creator, and He wanted to set forth to them the severity of the Creator in order that He might the more commend His own long-suffering 3993 in His beatitudes. Just as if it were not competent to the Creator, in the pre-eminence of both His attributes as the good God and Judge, that, as He had made clemency 3994 the preamble of His benediction so He should place severity in the sequel of His curses; thus fully developing His discipline in both directions, both in following out the blessing and in providing against the curse. 3995 He had already said of old, “Behold, I have set before you blessing and cursing.” 3996 Which statement was really a presage of 3997 this temper of the gospel. Besides, what sort of being is that who, to insinuate a belief in his own goodness, invidiously contrasted 3998 with it the Creator’s severity? Of little worth is the recommendation which has for its prop the defamation of another. And yet by thus setting forth the severity of the Creator, he, in fact, affirmed Him to be an object of fear. 3999 Now if He be an object of fear, He is of course more worthy of being obeyed than slighted; and thus Marcion’s Christ begins to teach favourably to the Creator’s interests. 4000 Then, on the admission above mentioned, since the woe which has regard to the rich is the Creator’s, it follows that it is not Christ, but the Creator, who is angry with the rich; while Christ approves of 4001 the incentives of the rich 4002 —I mean, their pride, their pomp, 4003 their love of the world, and their contempt of God, owing to which they deserve the woe of the Creator. But how happens it that the reprobation of the rich does not proceed from the same God who had just before expressed approbation of the poor? There is nobody but reprobates the opposite of that which he has approved. If, therefore, there be imputed to the Creator the woe pronounced against the rich, there must be claimed for Him also the promise of the blessing upon the poor; and thus the entire work of the Creator devolves on Christ.—If to Marcion’s god there be ascribed the blessing of the poor, he must also have imputed to him the malediction of the rich; and thus will he become the Creator’s equal, 4004 both good and judicial; nor will there be left any room for that distinction whereby two gods are made; and when this distinction is removed, there will remain the verity which pronounces the Creator to be the one only God. Since, therefore, “woe” is a word indicative of malediction, or of some unusually austere 4005 exclamation; and since it is by Christ uttered against the rich, I shall have to show that the Creator is also a despiser 4006 of the rich, as I have shown Him to be the defender 4007 of the poor, in order that I may prove Christ to be on the Creator’s side in this matter, even when He enriched Solomon. 4008 But with respect to this man, since, when a choice was left to him, he preferred asking for what he knew to be well-pleasing to God—even wisdom—he further merited the attainment of the riches, which he did not prefer. The endowing of a man indeed with riches, is not an incongruity to God, for by the help of riches even rich men are comforted and assisted; moreover, by them many a work of justice and charity is carried out. But yet there are serious faults 4009 which accompany riches; and it is because of these that woes are denounced on the rich, even in the Gospel. “Ye have received,” says He, “your consolation;” 4010 that is, of course, from their riches, in the pomps and vanities of the world which these purchase for them. Accordingly, in Deuteronomy, Moses says: “Lest, when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, as well as thy silver and thy gold, thine heart be then lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God.” 4011 In similar terms, when king Hezekiah became proud of his treasures, and gloried in them rather than in God before those who had come on an embassy from Babylon, 4012 (the Creator) breaks forth 4013 against him by the mouth of Isaiah: “Behold, the days come when all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store, shall be carried to Babylon.” 4014 So by Jeremiah likewise did He say: “Let not the rich man glory in his riches but let him that glorieth even glory in the Lord.” 4015 Similarly against the daughters of Sion does He inveigh by Isaiah, when they were haughty through their pomp and the abundance of their riches, 4016 just as in another passage He utters His threats against the proud and noble: “Hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth, and down to it shall descend the illustrious, and the great, and the rich (this shall be Christ’s ‘woe to the rich’); and man 4017 shall be humbled,” even he that exalts himself with riches; “and the mighty man 4018 shall be dishonoured,” even he who is mighty from his wealth. 4019 Concerning whom He says again: “Behold, the Lord of hosts shall confound the pompous together with their strength: those that are lifted up shall be hewn down, and such as are lofty shall fall by the sword.” 4020 And who are these but the rich? Because they have indeed received their consolation, glory, and honour and a lofty position from their wealth. In Psalm xlviii. He also turns off our care from these and says: “Be not thou afraid when one is made rich, and when his glory is increased: for when he shall die, he shall carry nothing away; nor shall his glory descend along with him.” 4021 So also in Psalm lxi.: “Do not desire riches; and if they do yield you their lustre, 4022 do not set your heart upon them.” 4023 Lastly, this very same woe is pronounced of old by Amos against the rich, who also abounded in delights. “Woe unto them,” says he, “who sleep upon beds of ivory, and deliciously stretch themselves upon their couches; who eat the kids from the flocks of the goats, and sucking calves from the flocks of the heifers, while they chant to the sound of the viol; as if they thought they should continue long, and were not fleeting; who drink their refined wines, and anoint themselves with the costliest ointments.” 4024 Therefore, even if I could do nothing else than show that the Creator dissuades men from riches, without at the same time first condemning the rich, in the very same terms in which Christ also did, no one could doubt that, from the same authority, there was added a commination against the rich in that woe of Christ, from whom also had first proceeded the dissuasion against the material sin of these persons, that is, their riches. For such commination is the necessary sequel to such a dissuasive. He inflicts a woe also on “the full, because they shall hunger; on those too which laugh now, because they shall mourn.” 4025 To these will correspond these opposites which occur, as we have seen above, in the benedictions of the Creator: “Behold, my servants shall be full, but ye shall be hungry”—even because ye have been filled; “behold, my servants shall rejoice, but ye shall be ashamed” 4026 —even ye who shall mourn, who now are laughing. For as it is written in the psalm, “They who sow in tears shall reap in joy,” 4027 so does it run in the Gospel: They who sow in laughter, that is, in joy, shall reap in tears. These principles did the Creator lay down of old; and Christ has renewed them, by simply bringing them into prominent view, 4028 not by making any change in them. “Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets.” 4029 With equal stress does the Creator, by His prophet Isaiah, censure those who seek after human flattery and praise: “O my people, they who call you happy mislead you, and disturb the paths of your feet.” 4030 In another passage He forbids all implicit trust in man, and likewise in the applause of man; as by the prophet Jeremiah: “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man.” 4031 Whereas in Psalm cxvii. it is said: “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man; it is better to trust in the Lord than to place hope in princes.” 4032 Thus everything which is caught at by men is adjured by the Creator, down to their good words. 4033 It is as much His property to condemn the praise and flattering words bestowed on the false prophets by their fathers, as to condemn their vexatious and persecuting treatment of the (true) prophets. As the injuries suffered by the prophets could not be imputed 4034 to their own God, so the applause bestowed on the false prophets could not have been displeasing to any other god but the God of the true prophets.
Footnotes
367:3982Luke vi. 26.
367:3983Versipellem. An indignant exclamation on Marcion’s Christ.
367:3984Suggillans.
367:3985Porro.
367:3986Hic.
367:3987Suggillaverunt. This is Oehler’s emendation; the common reading is figuraverunt.
368:3988Motus est.
368:3989Deus optimus.
368:3990That is, apathetic, inert, and careless about human affairs.
368:3991Demutat.
368:3992Ejus erunt.
368:3993Sufferentiam.
368:3994Benignitatem.
368:3995Ad maledictionem præcavendam.
368:3996Deut. xxx. 19.
368:3997Portendebat in.
368:3998Opposuit.
368:3999Timendum.
368:4000Creatori docere.
368:4001Ratas habet.
368:4002Divitum causas.
368:4003Gloriam.
368:4004Erit par creatoris.
368:4005Austerioris.
368:4006Aspernatorem.
368:4007Advocatorem.
368:40081 Kings iii. 5-13.
368:4009Vitia.
368:4010Luke vi. 24. [See Southey’s Wesley, on “Riches,” vol. ii. p. 310.]
369:4011Deut. viii. 12-14.
369:4012Tertullian says, ex Perside.
369:4013Insilit.
369:4014Isa. xxxix. 6.
369:4015Jer. 9:23, 24.
369:4016Isa. iii. 16-24.
369:4017Homo: “the mean man,” A.V.
369:4018Vir.
369:4019Isa. v. 14.
369:4020Isa. x. 33.
369:4021Ps. 49:16, 17.
369:4022Relucent.
369:4023Ps. lxii. 11.
369:4024Amos vi. 1-6.
369:4025Luke vi. 25.
369:4026Isa. lxv. 13.
369:4027Ps. cxxvi. 5.
369:4028Distinguendo.
369:4029Luke vi. 26.
369:4030Isa. iii. 12.
369:4031Jer. xvii. 5.
369:4032Ps. 18:8, 9.
370:4033Nedum benedictionem.
370:4034Non pertinuissent ad.
Chapter XVI.—The Precept of Loving One’s Enemies. It is as Much Taught in the Creator’s Scriptures of the Old Testament as in Christ’s Sermon. The Lex Talionis of Moses Admirably Explained in Consistency with the Kindness and Love Which Jesus Christ Came to Proclaim and Enforce in Behalf of the Creator. Sundry Precepts of Charity Explained.
“But I say unto you which hear” (displaying here that old injunction, of the Creator: “Speak to the ears of those who lend them to you” 4035 ), “Love your enemies, and bless 4036 those which hate you, and pray for them which calumniate you.” 4037 These commands the Creator included in one precept by His prophet Isaiah: “Say, Ye are our brethren, to those who hate you.” 4038 For if they who are our enemies, and hate us, and speak evil of us, and calumniate us, are to be called our brethren, surely He did in effect bid us bless them that hate us, and pray for them who calumniate us, when He instructed us to reckon them as brethren. Well, but Christ plainly teaches a new kind of patience, 4039 when He actually prohibits the reprisals which the Creator permitted in requiring “an eye for an eye, 4040 and a tooth for a tooth,” 4041 and bids us, on the contrary, “to him who smiteth us on the one cheek, to offer the other also, and to give up our coat to him that taketh away our cloak.” 4042 No doubt these are supplementary additions by Christ, but they are quite in keeping with the teaching of the Creator. And therefore this question must at once be determined, 4043 Whether the discipline of patience be enjoined by 4044 the Creator? When by Zechariah He commanded, “Let none of you imagine evil against his brother,” 4045 He did not expressly include his neighbour; but then in another passage He says, “Let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbour.” 4046 He who counselled that an injury should be forgotten, was still more likely to counsel the patient endurance of it. But then, when He said, “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay,” 4047 He thereby teaches that patience calmly waits for the infliction of vengeance. Therefore, inasmuch as it is incredible 4048 that the same (God) should seem to require “a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye,” in return for an injury, who forbids not only all reprisals, but even a revengeful thought or recollection of an injury, in so far does it become plain to us in what sense He required “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,”—not, indeed, for the purpose of permitting the repetition of the injury by retaliating it, which it virtually prohibited when it forbade vengeance; but for the purpose of restraining the injury in the first instance, which it had forbidden on pain of retaliation or reciprocity; 4049 so that every man, in view of the permission to inflict a second (or retaliatory) injury, might abstain from the commission of the first (or provocative) wrong. For He knows how much more easy it is to repress violence by the prospect of retaliation, than by the promise of (indefinite) vengeance. Both results, however, it was necessary to provide, in consideration of the nature and the faith of men, that the man who believed in God might expect vengeance from God, while he who had no faith (to restrain him) might fear the laws which prescribed retaliation. 4050 This purpose 4051 of the law, which it was difficult to understand, Christ, as the Lord of the Sabbath and of the law, and of all the dispensations of the Father, both revealed and made intelligible, 4052 when He commanded that “the other cheek should be offered (to the smiter),” in order that He might the more effectually extinguish all reprisals of an injury, which the law had wished to prevent by the method of retaliation, (and) which most certainly revelation 4053 had manifestly restricted, both by prohibiting the memory of the wrong, and referring the vengeance thereof to God. Thus, whatever (new provision) Christ introduced, He did it not in opposition to the law, but rather in furtherance of it, without at all impairing the prescription 4054 of the Creator. If, therefore, 4055 one looks carefully 4056 into the very grounds for which patience is enjoined (and that to such a full and complete extent), one finds that it cannot stand if it is not the precept of the Creator, who promises vengeance, who presents Himself as the judge (in the case). If it were not so, 4057 —if so vast a weight of patience—which is to refrain from giving blow for blow; which is to offer the other cheek; which is not only not to return railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing; and which, so far from keeping the coat, is to give up the cloak also—is laid upon me by one who means not to help me,—(then all I can say is,) he has taught me patience to no purpose, 4058 because he shows me no reward to his precept—I mean no fruit of such patience. There is revenge which he ought to have permitted me to take, if he meant not to inflict it himself; if he did not give me that permission, then he should himself have inflicted it; 4059 since it is for the interest of discipline itself that an injury should be avenged. For by the fear of vengeance all iniquity is curbed. But if licence is allowed to it without discrimination, 4060 it will get the mastery—it will put out (a man’s) both eyes; it will knock out 4061 every tooth in the safety of its impunity. This, however, is (the principle) of your good and simply beneficent god—to do a wrong to patience, to open the door to violence, to leave the righteous undefended, and the wicked unrestrained! “Give to every one that asketh of thee” 4062 —to the indigent of course, or rather to the indigent more especially, although to the affluent likewise. But in order that no man may be indigent, you have in Deuteronomy a provision commanded by the Creator to the creditor. 4063 “There shall not be in thine hand an indigent man; so that the Lord thy God shall bless thee with blessings,” 4064 —thee meaning the creditor to whom it was owing that the man was not indigent. But more than this. To one who does not ask, He bids a gift to be given. “Let there be, not,” He says, “a poor man in thine hand;” in other words, see that there be not, so far as thy will can prevent; 4065 by which command, too, He all the more strongly by inference requires 4066 men to give to him that asks, as in the following words also: “If there be among you a poor man of thy brethren, thou shalt not turn away thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother. But thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him as much as he wanteth.” 4067 Loans are not usually given, except to such as ask for them. On this subject of lending, 4068 however, more hereafter. 4069 Now, should any one wish to argue that the Creator’s precepts extended only to a man’s brethren, but Christ’s to all that ask, so as to make the latter a new and different precept, (I have to reply) that one rule only can be made out of those principles, which show the law of the Creator to be repeated in Christ. 4070 For that is not a different thing which Christ enjoined to be done towards all men, from that which the Creator prescribed in favour of a man’s brethren. For although that is a greater charity, which is shown to strangers, it is yet not preferable to that 4071 which was previously due to one’s neighbours. For what man will be able to bestow the love (which proceeds from knowledge of character, 4072 upon strangers? Since, however, the second step 4073 in charity is towards strangers, while the first is towards one’s neighbours, the second step will belong to him to whom the first also belongs, more fitly than the second will belong to him who owned no first. 4074 Accordingly, the Creator, when following the course of nature, taught in the first instance kindness to neighbours, 4075 intending afterwards to enjoin it towards strangers; and when following the method of His dispensation, He limited charity first to the Jews, but afterwards extended it to the whole race of mankind. So long, therefore, as the mystery of His government 4076 was confined to Israel, He properly commanded that pity should be shown only to a man’s brethren; but when Christ had given to Him “the Gentiles for His heritage, and the ends of the earth for His possession,” then began to be accomplished what was said by Hosea: “Ye are not my people, who were my people; ye have not obtained mercy, who once obtained mercy” 4077 —that is, the (Jewish) nation. Thenceforth Christ extended to all men the law of His Father’s compassion, excepting none from His mercy, as He omitted none in His invitation. So that, whatever was the ampler scope of His teaching, He received it all in His heritage of the nations. “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” 4078 In this command is no doubt implied its counterpart: “And as ye would not that men should do to you, so should ye also not do to them likewise.” Now, if this were the teaching of the new and previously unknown and not yet fully proclaimed deity, who had favoured me with no instruction beforehand, whereby I might first learn what I ought to choose or to refuse for myself, and to do to others what I would wish done to myself, not doing to them what I should be unwilling to have done to myself, it would certainly be nothing else than the chance-medley of my own sentiments 4079 which he would have left to me, binding me to no proper rule of wish or action, in order that I might do to others what I would like for myself, or refrain from doing to others what I should dislike to have done to myself. For he has not, in fact, defined what I ought to wish or not to wish for myself as well as for others, so that I shape my conduct 4080 according to the law of my own will, and have it in my power 4081 not to render 4082 to another what I would like to have rendered to myself—love, obedience, consolation, protection, and such like blessings; and in like manner to do to another what I should be unwilling to have done to myself—violence, wrong, insult, deceit, and evils of like sort. Indeed, the heathen who have not been instructed by God act on this incongruous liberty of the will and the conduct. 4083 For although good and evil are severally known by nature, yet life is not thereby spent 4084 under the discipline of God, which alone at last teaches men the proper liberty of their will and action in faith, as in the fear of God. The god of Marcion, therefore, although specially revealed, was, in spite of his revelation, unable to publish any summary of the precept in question, which had hitherto been so confined, 4085 and obscure, and dark, and admitting of no ready interpretation, except according to my own arbitrary thought, 4086 because he had provided no previous discrimination in the matter of such a precept. This, however, was not the case with my God, for 4087 He always and everywhere enjoined that the poor, and the orphan, and the widow should be protected, assisted, refreshed; thus by Isaiah He says: “Deal thy bread to the hungry, and them that are houseless bring into thine house; when thou seest the naked, cover him.” 4088 By Ezekiel also He thus describes the just man: “His bread will he give to the hungry, and the naked will he cover with a garment.” 4089 That teaching was even then a sufficient inducement to me to do to others what I would that they should do unto me. Accordingly, when He uttered such denunciations as, “Thou shalt do no murder; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness,” 4090 —He taught me to refrain from doing to others what I should be unwilling to have done to myself; and therefore the precept developed in the Gospel will belong to Him alone, who anciently drew it up, and gave it distinctive point, and arranged it after the decision of His own teaching, and has now reduced it, suitably to its importance, 4091 to a compendious formula, because (as it was predicted in another passage) the Lord—that is, Christ—“was to make (or utter) a concise word on earth.” 4092
Footnotes
370:40352 Esdras xv. 1 and comp. Luke 6:27, 28.
370:4036Benedicite. St. Luke’s word, however, is καλῶς ποιεῖτε, “do good.”
370:4037Calumniantur. St. Luke’s word applies to injury of speech as well as of act.
370:4038Isa. lxvi. 5.
370:4039“We have here the sense of Marcion’s objection. I do not suppose Tertullian quotes his very words.”—Le Prieur.
370:4040Le Prieur refers to a similar passage in Tertullian’s De Patientia, chap. vi. Oehler quotes an eloquent passage in illustration from Valerianus Episc. Hom. xiii.
370:4041Ex. xxi. 24.
370:4042Luke vi. 29.
370:4043Renuntiandum est.
370:4044Penes.
370:4045Zech. vii. 10.
370:4046Zech. viii. 17.
370:4047Deut. 32:35, Rom. 12:19, Heb. 10:30.
370:4048Fidem non capit.
370:4049Talione, opposito.
370:4050Leges talionis. [Judicial, not personal, reprisals.]
370:4051Voluntatem.
370:4052Compotem facit. That is, says Oehler, intellectus sui.
370:4053Prophetia.
371:4054Disciplinas: or, “lessons.”
371:4055Denique.
371:4056Considerem, or, as some of the editions have it, consideremus.
371:4057Alioquin.
371:4058In vacuum.
371:4059Præstare, i.e., debuerat præstare.
371:4060Passim.
371:4061Excitatura.
371:4062Luke vi. 30.
371:4063Datori.
371:4064The author’s reading of Deut. xv. 4.
371:4065Cura ultro ne sit.
371:4066Præjudicat.
371:4067Deut. 15:7, 8.
371:4068De fenore.
371:4069Below, in the next chapter.
371:4070This obscure passage runs thus: “Immo unum erit ex his per quæ lex Creatoris erit in Christo.”
371:4071Prior ea.
371:4072This is the idea, apparently, of Tertullian’s question: “Quis enim poterit diligere extraneos?” But a different turn is given to the sense in the older reading of the passage: Quis enim non diligens proximos poterit diligere extraneos? “For who that loveth not his neighbours will be able to love strangers?” The inserted words, however, were inserted conjecturally by Fulvius Ursinus without ms. authority.
371:4073Gradus.
371:4074Cujus non extitit primus.
371:4075In proximos.
371:4076Sacramentum.
372:4077The sense rather than the words of Hos. 1:6, 9.
372:4078Luke vi. 31.
372:4079Passivitatem sententiæ meæ.
372:4080Parem factum.
372:4081Possim.
372:4082Præstare.
372:4083Hac inconvenientia voluntatis et facti. Will and action.
372:4084Non agitur.
372:4085Strictum.
372:4086Pro meo arbitrio.
372:4087At enim. The Greek ἀλλὰ γάρ.
372:4088Isa. lviii. 7.
372:4089Ezek. xviii. 7.
372:4090Ex. xx. 13-16.
372:4091Merito.
372:4092“Recisum sermonem facturus in terris Dominus.” This reading of Isa. x. 23 is very unlike the original, but (as frequently happens in Tertullian) is close upon the Septuagint version: ῞Οτι λόγον συντετμημένον Κύριος ποιήσει ἐν τῇ οἰκουμένῃ ὅλῃ. [Rom. ix. 28.]
Chapter XVII.—Concerning Loans. Prohibition of Usury and the Usurious Spirit. The Law Preparatory to the Gospel in Its Provisions; So in the Present Instance. On Reprisals. Christ’s Teaching Throughout Proves Him to Be Sent by the Creator.
And now, on the subject of a loan, when He asks, “And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye?” 4093 compare with this the following words of Ezekiel, in which He says of the before-mentioned just man, “He hath not given his money upon usury, nor will he take any increase” 4094 —meaning the redundance of interest, 4095 which is usury. The first step was to eradicate the fruit of the money lent, 4096 the more easily to accustom a man to the loss, should it happen, of the money itself, the interest of which he had learnt to lose. Now this, we affirm, was the function of the law as preparatory to the gospel. It was engaged in forming the faith of such as would learn, 4097 by gradual stages, for the perfect light of the Christian discipline, through the best precepts of which it was capable, 4098 inculcating a benevolence which as yet expressed itself but falteringly. 4099 For in the passage of Ezekiel quoted above He says, “And thou shalt restore the pledge of the loan” 4100 —to him, certainly, who is incapable of repayment, because, as a matter of course, He would not anyhow prescribe the restoration of a pledge to one who was solvent. Much more clearly is it enjoined in Deuteronomy: “Thou shalt not sleep upon his pledge; thou shalt be sure to return to him his garment about sunset, and he shall sleep in his own garment.” 4101 Clearer still is a former passage: “Thou shalt remit every debt which thy neighbour oweth thee; and of thy brother thou shalt not require it, because it is called the release of the Lord thy God.” 4102 Now, when He commands that a debt be remitted to a man who shall be unable to pay it (for it is a still stronger argument when He forbids its being asked for from a man who is even able to repay it), what else does He teach than that we should lend to those of whom we cannot receive again, inasmuch as He has imposed so great a loss on lending? “And ye shall be the children of God.” 4103 What can be more shameless, than for him to be making us his children, who has not permitted us to make children for ourselves by forbidding marriage? 4104 How does he propose to invest his followers with a name which he has already erased? I cannot be the son of a eunuch especially when I have for my Father the same great Being whom the universe claims for its! For is not the Founder of the universe as much a Father, even of all men, as (Marcion’s) castrated deity, 4105 who is the maker of no existing thing? Even if the Creator had not united male and female, and if He had not allowed any living creature whatever to have children, I yet had this relation to Him 4106 before Paradise, before the fall, before the expulsion, before the two became one. 4107 I became His son a second time, 4108 as soon as He fashioned me 4109 with His hands, and gave me motion with His inbreathing. Now again He names me His son, not begetting me into natural life, but into spiritual life. 4110 “Because,” says He, “He is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.” 4111 Well done, 4112 Marcion! how cleverly have you withdrawn from Him the showers and the sunshine, that He might not seem to be a Creator! But who is this kind being 4113 which hitherto has not been even known? How can he be kind who had previously shown no evidences of such a kindness as this, which consists of the loan to us of sunshine and rain?—who is not destined to receive from the human race (the homage due to that) Creator,—who, up to this very moment, in return for His vast liberality in the gift of the elements, bears with men while they offer to idols, more readily than Himself, the due returns of His graciousness. But God is truly kind even in spiritual blessings. “The utterances 4114 of the Lord are sweeter than honey and honeycombs.” 4115 He then has taunted 4116 men as ungrateful who deserved to have their gratitude—even He, whose sunshine and rain even you, O Marcion, have enjoyed, but without gratitude! Your god, however, had no right to complain of man’s ingratitude, because he had used no means to make them grateful. Compassion also does He teach: “Be ye merciful,” says He, “as your Father also that had mercy upon you.” 4117 This injunction will be of a piece with, “Deal thy bread to the hungry; and if he be houseless, bring him into thine house; and if thou seest the naked, cover him;” 4118 also with, “Judge the fatherless, plead with the widow.” 4119 I recognise here that ancient doctrine of Him who “prefers mercy to sacrifice.” 4120 If, however, it be now some other being which teaches mercy, on the ground of his own mercifulness, how happens it that he has been wanting in mercy to me for so vast an age? “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged; condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned; forgive, and ye shall be forgiven; give, and it shall be given unto you: good measure, pressed down, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye measure withal, it shall be measured to you again.” 4121 As it seems to me, this passage announces a retribution proportioned to the merits. But from whom shall come the retribution? If only from men, in that case he teaches a merely human discipline and recompense; and in everything we shall have to obey man: if from the Creator, as the Judge and the Recompenser of merits, then He compels our submission to Him, in whose hands 4122 He has placed a retribution which will be acceptable or terrible according as every man shall have judged or condemned, acquitted or dealt with, 4123 his neighbour; if from (Marcion’s god) himself, he will then exercise a judicial function which Marcion denies. Let the Marcionites therefore make their choice: Will it not be just the same inconsistency to desert the prescription of their master, as to have Christ teaching in the interest of men or of the Creator? But “a blind man will lead a blind man into the ditch.” 4124 Some persons believe Marcion. But “the disciple is not above his master.” 4125 Apelles ought to have remembered this—a corrector of Marcion, although his disciple. 4126 The heretic ought to take the beam out of his own eye, and then he may convict 4127 the Christian, should he suspect a mote to be in his eye. Just as a good tree cannot produce evil fruit, so neither can truth generate heresy; and as a corrupt tree cannot yield good fruit, so heresy will not produce truth. Thus, Marcion brought nothing good out of Cerdon’s evil treasure; nor Apelles out of Marcion’s. 4128 For in applying to these heretics the figurative words which Christ used of men in general, we shall make a much more suitable interpretation of them than if we were to deduce out of them two gods, according to Marcion’s grievous exposition. 4129 I think that I have the best reason possible for insisting still upon the position which I have all along occupied, that in no passage to be anywhere found has another God been revealed by Christ. I wonder that in this place alone Marcion’s hands should have felt benumbed in their adulterating labour. 4130 But even robbers have their qualms now and then. There is no wrong-doing without fear, because there is none without a guilty conscience. So long, then, were the Jews cognisant of no other god but Him, beside whom they knew none else; nor did they call upon any other than Him whom alone they knew. This being the case, who will He clearly be 4131 that said, “Why callest thou me Lord, Lord?” 4132 Will it be he who had as yet never been called on, because never yet revealed; 4133 or He who was ever regarded as the Lord, because known from the beginning—even the God of the Jews? Who, again, could possibly have added, “and do not the things which I say?” Could it have been he who was only then doing his best 4134 to teach them? Or He who from the beginning had addressed to them His messages 4135 both by the law and the prophets? He could then upbraid them with disobedience, even if He had no ground at any time else for His reproof. The fact is, that He who was then imputing to them their ancient obstinacy was none other than He who, before the coming of Christ, had addressed to them these words, “This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart standeth far off from me.” 4136 Otherwise, how absurd it were that a new god, a new Christ, the revealer of a new and so grand a religion should denounce as obstinate and disobedient those whom he had never had it in his power to make trial of!
Footnotes
372:4093Luke vi. 34. [Bossuet, Traité de l’usure, Opp. ix. 48.]
372:4094Ezek. xviii. 8. [Huet, Règne Social, etc., p. 334. Paris, 1858.]
372:4095Literally, what redounds to the loan.
372:4096Fructum fenoris: the interest.
373:4097Quorundam tunc fidem.
373:4098Primis quibusque præceptis.
373:4099Balbutientis adhuc benignitatis. [Elucidation IV.]
373:4100Pignus reddes dati (i.e., fenoris) is his reading of a clause in Ezek. xviii. 16.
373:4101Deut. 24:12, 13.
373:4102Deut. xv. 2.
373:4103Luke vi. 35. In the original the phrase is, υἱοὶ τοῦ ύψίστου.
373:4104One of the flagrant errors of Marcion’s belief of God. See above, chap. xi.
373:4105Quam spado.
373:4106Hoc eram ejus.
373:4107Ante duos unum. Before God made Adam and Eve one flesh, “I was created Adam, not became so by birth.”—Fr. Junius.
373:4108Denuo.
373:4109Me enixus est.
373:4110Non in animam sed in spiritum.
373:4111Luke vi. 35.
373:4112Euge.
373:4113Suavis.
373:4114Eloquia.
373:4115Ps. xix. 11.
373:4116Suggillavit.
373:4117Reading of Luke vi. 36.
373:4118Isa. lviii. 7.
373:4119Isa. i. 17.
373:4120Hos. vi. 6.
374:4121Luke 6:37, 38.
374:4122Apud quem.
374:4123Mensus fuerit.
374:4124Luke vi. 39.
374:4125Luke vi. 40.
374:4126De discipulo.
374:4127Revincat.
374:4128Luke vi. 41-45. Cerdon is here referred to as Marcion’s master, and Apelles as Marcion’s pupil.
374:4129Scandalum. See above, book i. chap. ii., for Marcion’s perverse application of the figure of the good and the corrupt tree.
374:4130In hoc solo adulterium Marcionis manus stupuisse miror. He means that this passage has been left uncorrupted by M. (as if his hand failed in the pruning process), foolishly for him.
374:4131Videbitur.
374:4132Luke vi. 46.
374:4133Editus.
374:4134Temptabat. Perhaps, “was tampering with them.”
374:4135Eloquia.
374:4136Isa. xxix. 13.
Chapter XVIII.—Concerning the Centurion’s Faith. The Raising of the Widow’s Son. John Baptist, and His Message to Christ; And the Woman Who Was a Sinner. Proofs Extracted from All of the Relation of Christ to the Creator.
Likewise, when extolling the centurion’s faith, how incredible a thing it is, that He should confess that He had “found so great a faith not even in Israel,” 4137 to whom Israel’s faith was in no way interesting! 4138 But not from the fact (here stated by Christ) 4139 could it have been of any interest to Him to approve and compare what was hitherto crude, nay, I might say, hitherto naught. Why, however, might He not have used the example of faith in another 4140 god? Because, if He had done so, He would have said that no such faith had ever had existence in Israel; but as the case stands, 4141 He intimates that He ought to have found so great a faith in Israel, inasmuch as He had indeed come for the purpose of finding it, being in truth the God and Christ of Israel, and had now stigmatized 4142 it, only as one who would enforce and uphold it. If, indeed, He had been its antagonist, 4143 He would have preferred finding it to be such faith, 4144 having come to weaken and destroy it rather than to approve of it. He raised also the widow’s son from death. 4145 This was not a strange miracle. 4146 The Creator’s prophets had wrought such; then why not His Son much rather? Now, so evidently had the Lord Christ introduced no other god for the working of so momentous a miracle as this, that all who were present gave glory to the Creator, saying: “A great prophet is risen up among us, and God hath visited His people.” 4147 What God? He, of course, whose people they were, and from whom had come their prophets. But if they glorified the Creator, and Christ (on hearing them, and knowing their meaning) refrained from correcting them even in their very act of invoking 4148 the Creator in that vast manifestation of His glory in this raising of the dead, undoubtedly He either announced no other God but Him, whom He thus permitted to be honoured in His own beneficent acts and miracles, or else how happens it that He quietly permitted these persons to remain so long in their error, especially as He came for the very purpose to cure them of their error? But John is offended 4149 when he hears of the miracles of Christ, as of an alien god. 4150 Well, I on my side 4151 will first explain the reason of his offence, that I may the more easily explode the scandal 4152 of our heretic. Now, that the very Lord Himself of all might, the Word and Spirit of the Father, 4153 was operating and preaching on earth, it was necessary that the portion of the Holy Spirit which, in the form of the prophetic gift, 4154 had been through John preparing the ways of the Lord, should now depart from John, 4155 and return back again of course to the Lord, as to its all-embracing original. 4156 Therefore John, being now an ordinary person, and only one of the many, 4157 was offended indeed as a man, but not because he expected or thought of another Christ as teaching or doing nothing new, for he was not even expecting such a one. 4158 Nobody will entertain doubts about any one whom (since he knows him not to exist) he has no expectation or thought of. Now John was quite sure that there was no other God but the Creator, even as a Jew, especially as a prophet. 4159 Whatever doubt he felt was evidently rather 4160 entertained about Him 4161 whom he knew indeed to exist but knew not whether He were the very Christ. With this fear, therefore, even John asks the question, “Art thou He that should come, or look we for another?” 4162 —simply inquiring whether He was come as He whom he was looking for. “Art thou He that should come?” i.e. Art thou the coming One? “or look we for another?” i.e. Is He whom we are expecting some other than Thou, if Thou art not He whom we expect to come? For he was supposing, 4163 as all men then thought, from the similarity of the miraculous evidences, 4164 that a prophet might possibly have been meanwhile sent, from whom the Lord Himself, whose coming was then expected, was different, and to whom He was superior. 4165 And there lay John’s difficulty. 4166 He was in doubt whether He was actually come whom all men were looking for; whom, moreover, they ought to have recognised by His predicted works, even as the Lord sent word to John, that it was by means of these very works that He was to be recognised. 4167 Now, inasmuch as these predictions evidently related to the Creator’s Christ—as we have proved in the examination of each of them—it was perverse enough, if he gave himself out to be not the Christ of the Creator, and rested the proof of his statement on those very evidences whereby he was urging his claims to be received as the Creator’s Christ. Far greater still is his perverseness when, not being the Christ of John, 4168 he yet bestows on John his testimony, affirming him to be a prophet, nay more, his messenger, 4169 applying to him the Scripture, “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.” 4170 He graciously 4171 adduced the prophecy in the superior sense of the alternative mentioned by the perplexed John, in order that, by affirming that His own precursor was already come in the person of John, He might quench the doubt 4172 which lurked in his question: “Art thou He that should come, or look we for another?” Now that the forerunner had fulfilled his mission, and the way of the Lord was prepared, He ought now to be acknowledged as that (Christ) for whom the forerunner had made ready the way. That forerunner was indeed “greater than all of women born;” 4173 but for all that, He who was least in the kingdom of God 4174 was not subject to him; 4175 as if the kingdom in which the least person was greater than John belonged to one God, while John, who was greater than all of women born, belonged himself to another God. For whether He speaks of any “least person” by reason of his humble position, or of Himself, as being thought to be less than John—since all were running into the wilderness after John rather than after Christ (“What went ye out into the wilderness to see?” 4176 )—the Creator has equal right 4177 to claim as His own both John, greater than any born of women, and Christ, or every “least person in the kingdom of heaven,” who was destined to be greater than John in that kingdom, although equally pertaining to the Creator, and who would be so much greater than the prophet, 4178 because he would not have been offended at Christ, an infirmity which then lessened the greatness of John. We have already spoken of the forgiveness 4179 of sins. The behaviour of “the woman which was a sinner,” when she covered the Lord’s feet with her kisses, bathed them with her tears, wiped them with the hairs of her head, anointed them with ointment, 4180 produced an evidence that what she handled was not an empty phantom, 4181 but a really solid body, and that her repentance as a sinner deserved forgiveness according to the mind of the Creator, who is accustomed to prefer mercy to sacrifice. 4182 But even if the stimulus of her repentance proceeded from her faith, she heard her justification by faith through her repentance pronounced in the words, “Thy faith hath saved thee,” by Him who had declared by Habakkuk, “The just shall live by his faith.” 4183
Footnotes
374:4137Luke vii. 1-10.
374:4138Comp. Epiphanius, Hæres. xlii., Refut. 7, for the same argument: Εἰ οὐδὲ ἐν τῷ ᾽Ισραὴλ τοιαύτην πίστιν εὖρεν, κ.τ.λ. “If He found not so great faith, even in Israel, as He discovered in this Gentile centurion, He does not therefore condemn the faith of Israel. For if He were alien from Israel’s God, and did not pertain to Him, even as His father, He would certainly not have inferentially praised Israel’s faith” (Oehler).
374:4139Nec exinde. This points to Christ’s words, “I have not found such faith in Israel.”—Oehler.
374:4140Alienæ fidei.
375:4141Ceterum.
375:4142Suggillasset.
375:4143Æmulus.
375:4144Eam talem, that is, the faith of Israel.
375:4145Luke vii. 11-17.
375:4146Documentum.
375:4147Luke vii. 16.
375:4148Et quidem adhuc orantes.
375:4149Comp. Epiphanius, Hæres. xlii., Schol. 8, cum Refut.; Tertullian, De Præscript Hæret. 8; and De Bapt. 10.
375:4150Ut ulterius. This is the absurd allegation of Marcion. So Epiphanius (Le Prieur).
375:4151Ego.
375:4152Scandalum. Playing on the word “scandalum” in its application to the Baptist and to Marcion.
375:4153“It is most certain that the Son of God, the second Person of the Godhead, is in the writings of the fathers throughout called by the title of Spirit, Spirit of God, etc.; with which usage agree the Holy Scriptures. See Mark 2:8, Rom. 1:3, 4, 1 Tim. 3:16, Heb. 9:14, 1 Pet. 3:18; also John 6:63, John 56:0.”—Bp. Bull, Def. Nic. Creed (translated by the translator of this work), vol. i. p. 48 and note X. [The whole passage should be consulted.]
375:4154Ex forma prophetici moduli.
375:4155Tertullian stands alone in the notion that St. John’s inquiry was owing to any withdrawal of the Spirit, so soon before his martyrdom, or any diminution of his faith. The contrary is expressed by Origen, Homil. xxvii., on Luke vii.; Chrysostom on Matt. xi.; Augustine, Sermon. 66, de Verbo; Hilary on Matthew; Jerome on Matthew, and Epist. 121, ad Algas.; Ambrose on Luke, book v. § 93. They say mostly that the inquiry was for the sake of his disciples. (Oxford Library of the Fathers, vol. x. p. 267, note e). [Elucidation V.]
375:4156Ut in massalem suam summam.
375:4157Unus jam de turba.
375:4158Eundem.
375:4159Etiam prophetes.
375:4160Facilius.
375:4161Jesus.
375:4162Luke vii. 20.
375:4163Sperabat.
375:4164Documentorum.
375:4165Major.
375:4166Scandalum.
375:4167Luke 7:21, 22.
376:4168That is, not the Creator’s Christ—whose prophet John was—therefore a different Christ from Him whom John announced. This is said, of course, on the Marcionite hypothesis (Oehler).
376:4169Angelum.
376:4170Luke 7:26, 27, Mal. 3:1.
376:4171Eleganter.
376:4172Scrupulum.
376:4173Luke vii. 28.
376:4174That is, Christ, according to Epiphanius. See next note.
376:4175Comp. the Refutation of Epiphanius (Hæres. xlii. Refut. 8): “Whether with reference to John or to the Saviour, He pronounces a blessing on such as should not be offended in Himself or in John. Nor should they devise for themselves whatsoever things they heard not from him. He also has a greater object in view, on account of which the Saviour said this; even that no one should think that John (who was pronounced to be greater than any born of women) was greater than the Saviour Himself, because even He was born of a woman. He guards against this mistake, and says, ‘Blessed is he who shall not be offended in me.’ He then adds, ‘He that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.’ Now, in respect of His birth in the flesh, the Saviour was less than he by the space of six months. But in the kingdom He was greater, being even his God. For the Only-begotten came not to say aught in secret, or to utter a falsehood in His preaching, as He says Himself, ‘In secret have I said nothing, but in public,’ etc. (Κἄν τε πρὸς ᾽Ιωάννην ἔχοι…ἀλλὰ μετὰ παῤῥησίας).”— Oehler.
376:4176Luke vii. 25.
376:4177Tantundem competit creatori.
376:4178Major tanto propheta.
376:4179De remissa.
376:4180Luke vii. 36-50.
376:4181Comp. Epiphanius, Hæres. xlii., Refut. 10, 11.
376:4182Hos. vi. 6.
376:4183Hab. ii. 4.
Chapter XIX.—The Rich Women of Piety Who Followed Jesus Christ’s Teaching by Parables. The Marcionite Cavil Derived from Christ’s Remark, When Told of His Mother and His Brethren. Explanation of Christ’s Apparent Rejection Them.
The fact that certain rich women clave to Christ, “which ministered unto Him of their substance,” amongst whom was the wife of the king’s steward, is a subject of prophecy. By Isaiah the Lord called these wealthy ladies—“Rise up, ye women that are at ease, and hear my voice” 4184 —that He might prove 4185 them first as disciples, and then as assistants and helpers: “Daughters, hear my words in hope; this day of the year cherish the memory of, in labour with hope.” For it was “in labour” that they followed Him, and “with hope” did they minister to Him. On the subject of parables, let it suffice that it has been once for all shown that this kind of language 4186 was with equal distinctness promised by the Creator. But there is that direct mode of His speaking 4187 to the people—“Ye shall hear with the ear, but ye shall not understand” 4188 —which now claims notice as having furnished to Christ that frequent form of His earnest instruction: “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” 4189 Not as if Christ, actuated with a diverse spirit, permitted a hearing which the Creator had refused; but because the exhortation followed the threatening. First came, “Ye shall hear with the ear, but shall not understand;” then followed, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” For they wilfully refused to hear, although they had ears. He, however, was teaching them that it was the ears of the heart which were necessary; and with these the Creator had said that they would not hear. Therefore it is that He adds by His Christ, “Take heed how ye hear,” 4190 and hear not,—meaning, of course, with the hearing of the heart, not of the ear. If you only attach a proper sense to the Creator’s admonition, 4191 suitable to the meaning of Him who was rousing the people to hear by the words, “Take heed how ye hear,” it amounted to a menace to such as would not hear. In fact, 4192 that most merciful god of yours, who judges not, neither is angry, is minatory. This is proved even by the sentence which immediately follows: “Whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have.” 4193 What shall be given? The increase of faith, or understanding, or even salvation. What shall be taken away? That, of course, which shall be given. By whom shall the gift and the deprivation be made? If by the Creator it be taken away, by Him also shall it be given. If by Marcion’s god it be given, by Marcion’s god also will it be taken away. Now, for whatever reason He threatens the “deprivation,” it will not be the work of a god who knows not how to threaten, because incapable of anger. I am, moreover, astonished when he says that “a candle is not usually hidden,” 4194 who had hidden himself—a greater and more needful light—during so long a time; and when he promises that “everything shall be brought out of its secrecy and made manifest,” 4195 who hitherto has kept his god in obscurity, waiting (I suppose) until Marcion be born. We now come to the most strenuously-plied argument of all those who call in question the Lord’s nativity. They say that He testifies Himself to His not having been born, when He asks, “Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?” 4196 In this manner heretics either wrest plain and simple words to any sense they choose by their conjectures, or else they violently resolve by a literal interpretation words which imply a conditional sense and are incapable of a simple solution, 4197 as in this passage. We, for our part, say in reply, first, that it could not possibly have been told Him that His mother and His brethren stood without, desiring to see Him, if He had had no mother and no brethren. They must have been known to him who announced them, either some time previously, or then at that very time, when they desired to see Him, or sent Him their message. To this our first position this answer is usually given by the other side. But suppose they sent Him the message for the purpose of tempting Him? Well, but the Scripture does not say so; and inasmuch as it is usual for it to indicate what is done in the way of temptation (“Behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted Him;” 4198 again, when inquiring about tribute, the Pharisees came to Him, tempting Him 4199 ), so, when it makes no mention of temptation, it does not admit the interpretation of temptation. However, although I do not allow this sense, I may as well ask, by way of a superfluous refutation, for the reasons of the alleged temptation, To what purpose could they have tempted Him by naming His mother and His brethren? If it was to ascertain whether He had been born or not—when was a question raised on this point, which they must resolve by tempting Him in this way? Who could doubt His having been born, when they 4200 saw Him before them a veritable man?—whom they had heard call Himself “Son of man?”—of whom they doubted whether He were God or Son of God, from seeing Him, as they did, in the perfect garb of human quality?—supposing Him rather to be a prophet, a great one indeed, 4201 but still one who had been born as man? Even if it had been necessary that He should thus be tried in the investigation of His birth, surely any other proof would have better answered the trial than that to be obtained from mentioning those relatives which it was quite possible for Him, in spite of His true nativity, not at that moment to have had. For tell me now, does a mother live on contemporaneously 4202 with her sons in every case? Have all sons brothers born for them? 4203 May a man rather not have fathers and sisters (living), or even no relatives at all? But there is historical proof 4204 that at this very time 4205 a census had been taken in Judæa by Sentius Saturninus, 4206 which might have satisfied their inquiry respecting the family and descent of Christ. Such a method of testing the point had therefore no consistency whatever in it and they “who were standing without” were really “His mother and His brethren.” It remains for us to examine His meaning when He resorts to non-literal 4207 words, saying “Who is my mother or my brethren?” It seems as if His language amounted to a denial of His family and His birth; but it arose actually from the absolute nature of the case, and the conditional sense in which His words were to be explained. 4208 He was justly indignant, that persons so very near to Him “stood without,” while strangers were within hanging on His words, especially as they wanted to call Him away from the solemn work He had in hand. He did not so much deny as disavow 4209 them. And therefore, when to the previous question, “Who is my mother, and who are my brethren? 4210 He added the answer “None but they who hear my words and do them,” He transferred the names of blood-relationship to others, whom He judged to be more closely related to Him by reason of their faith. Now no one transfers a thing except from him who possesses that which is transferred. If, therefore, He made them “His mother and His brethren” who were not so, how could He deny them these relationships who really had them? Surely only on the condition of their deserts, and not by any disavowal of His near relatives; teaching them by His own actual example, 4211 that “whosoever preferred father or mother or brethren to the Word of God, was not a disciple worthy of Him.” 4212 Besides, 4213 His admission of His mother and His brethren was the more express, from the fact of His unwillingness to acknowledge them. That He adopted others only confirmed those in their relationship to Him whom He refused because of their offence, and for whom He substituted the others, not as being truer relatives, but worthier ones. Finally, it was no great matter if He did prefer to kindred (that) faith which it 4214 did not possess. 4215
Footnotes
376:4184Isa. 32:9, 10. Quoted as usual, from the LXX.: Γυναῖκες πλούσιαι ἀνάστητε, καὶ ἀκούσατε τῆς φωνῆς μου· θυγατέρες ἐν ἐλπίδι εἰσακούσατε λόγους μου. ῾Ημέρας ἐνιαυτοῦ μνείαν ποιήσασθε ἐν ὀδύνῃ μετ᾽ ἐλπίδος.
376:4185Ostenderet.
376:4186Eloquii.
376:4187Pronunciatio.
376:4188Isa. vi. 9.
377:4189Luke viii. 8.
377:4190Luke viii. 18.
377:4191Pronuntiationi.
377:4192Sane: with a touch of irony.
377:4193Luke viii. 18.
377:4194Luke viii. 16.
377:4195Luke viii. 17.
377:4196Matt. xii. 48.
377:4197Rationales. “Quæ voces adhibita ratione sunt interpretandæ.”—Oehler.
377:4198Luke x. 25.
377:4199Luke xx. 20.
377:4200Singular in the original, but (to avoid confusion) here made plural.
377:4201In allusion to Luke vii. 16. See above, chap. xviii.
377:4202Advivit.
377:4203Adgenerantur.
378:4204Constat. [Jarvis, Introd. p. 204 and p. 536.]
378:4205Nunc: i.e., when Christ was told of His mother and brethren.
378:4206“C. Sentius Saturninus, a consular, held this census of the whole empire as principal augur, because Augustus determined to impart the sanction of religion to his institution. The agent through whom Saturninus carried out the census in Judæa was the governor Cyrenius, according to Luke, chap. ii.”—Fr. Junius. Tertullian mentions Sentius Saturninus again in De Pallio, i. Tertullian’s statement in the text has weighed with Sanclemente and others, who suppose that Saturninus was governor of Judæa at the time of our Lord’s birth, which they place in 747 a.u.c. “It is evident, however,” says Wieseler, “that this argument is far from decisive; for the New Testament itself supplies far better aids for determining this question than the discordant ecclesiastical traditions—different fathers giving different dates, which might be appealed to with equal justice; while Tertullian is even inconsistent with himself, since in his treatise Adv. Jud. viii., he gives 751 a.u.c. as the year of our Lord’s birth” (Wieseler’s Chronological Synopsis by Venables, p. 99, note 2). This Sentius Saturninus filled the office of governor of Syria, 744–748. For the elaborate argument of Aug. W. Zumpt, by which he defends St. Luke’s chronology, and goes far to prove that Publius Sulpicius Quirinus (or “Cyrenius”) was actually the governor of Syria at the time of the Lord’s birth, the reader may be referred to a careful abridgment by the translator of Wieseler’s work, pp. 129–135.
378:4207Non simpliciter. St. Mark rather than St. Luke is quoted in this interrogative sentence.
378:4208Ex condicione rationali. See Oehler’s note, just above, on the word “rationales.”
378:4209Abdicavit: Rigalt thinks this is harsh, and reminds us that at the cross the Lord had not cast away his Mother. [Elucidation VI.]
378:4210This is literally from Matt. 12.48.
378:4211In semetipso.
378:4212Matt. x. 37.
378:4213Ceterum.
378:4214i.e., the kindred. [N.B. He includes the Mother!]
378:4215We have translated Oehler’s text of this passage: “Denique nihil magnum, si fidem sanguini, quam non habebat.” For once we venture to differ from that admirable editor (and that although he is supported in his view by Fr. Junius), and prefer the reading of the mss. and the other editions: “Denique nihil magnum, si fidem sanguini, quem non habebat.” To which we would give an ironical turn, usual to Tertullian, “After all, it is not to be wondered at if He preferred faith to flesh and blood, which he did not himself possess!”—in allusion to Marcion’s Docetic opinion of Christ.
Chapter XX.—Comparison of Christ’s Power Over Winds and Waves with Moses’ Command of the Waters of the Red Sea and the Jordan. Christ’s Power Over Unclean Spirits. The Case of the Legion. The Cure of the Issue of Blood. The Mosaic Uncleanness on This Point Explained.
But “what manner of man is this? for He commandeth even the winds and water!” 4216 Of course He is the new master and proprietor of the elements, now that the Creator is deposed, and excluded from their possession! Nothing of the kind. But the elements own 4217 their own Maker, just as they had been accustomed to obey His servants also. Examine well the Exodus, Marcion; look at the rod of Moses, as it waves His command to the Red Sea, ampler than all the lakes of Judæa. How the sea yawns from its very depths, then fixes itself in two solidified masses, and so, out of the interval between them, 4218 makes a way for the people to pass dry-shod across; again does the same rod vibrate, the sea returns in its strength, and in the concourse of its waters the chivalry of Egypt is engulphed! To that consummation the very winds subserved! Read, too, how that the Jordan was as a sword, to hinder the emigrant nation in their passage across its stream; how that its waters from above stood still, and its current below wholly ceased to run at the bidding of Joshua, 4219 when his priests began to pass over! 4220 What will you say to this? If it be your Christ that is meant above, he will not be more potent than the servants of the Creator. But I should have been content with the examples I have adduced without addition, 4221 if a prediction of His present passage on the sea had not preceded Christ’s coming. As psalm is, in fact, accomplished by this 4222 crossing over the lake. “The Lord,” says the psalmist, “is upon many waters.” 4223 When He disperses its waves, Habakkuk’s words are fulfilled, where he says, “Scattering the waters in His passage.” 4224 When at His rebuke the sea is calmed, Nahum is also verified: He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry,” 4225 including the winds indeed, whereby it was disquieted. With what evidence would you have my Christ vindicated? Shall it come from the examples, or from the prophecies, of the Creator? You suppose that He is predicted as a military and armed warrior, 4226 instead of one who in a figurative and allegorical sense was to wage a spiritual warfare against spiritual enemies, in spiritual campaigns, and with spiritual weapons: come now, when in one man alone you discover a multitude of demons calling itself Legion, 4227 of course comprised of spirits, you should learn that Christ also must be understood to be an exterminator of spiritual foes, who wields spiritual arms and fights in spiritual strife; and that it was none other than He, 4228 who now had to contend with even a legion of demons. Therefore it is of such a war as this that the Psalm may evidently have spoken: “The Lord is strong, The Lord is mighty in battle.” 4229 For with the last enemy death did He fight, and through the trophy of the cross He triumphed. Now of what God did the Legion testify that Jesus was the Son? 4230 No doubt, of that God whose torments and abyss they knew and dreaded. It seems impossible for them to have remained up to this time in ignorance of what the power of the recent and unknown god was working in the world, because it is very unlikely that the Creator was ignorant thereof. For if He had been at any time ignorant that there was another god above Himself, He had by this time at all events discovered that there was one at work 4231 below His heaven. Now, what their Lord had discovered had by this time become notorious to His entire family within the same world and the same circuit of heaven, in which the strange deity dwelt and acted. 4232 As therefore both the Creator and His creatures 4233 must have had knowledge of him, if he had been in existence, so, inasmuch as he had no existence, the demons really knew none other than the Christ of their own God. They do not ask of the strange god, what they recollected they must beg of the Creator—not to be plunged into the Creator’s abyss. They at last had their request granted. On what ground? Because they had lied? Because they had proclaimed Him to be the Son of a ruthless God? And what sort of god will that be who helped the lying, and upheld his detractors? However, no need of this thought, for, 4234 inasmuch as they had not lied, inasmuch as they had acknowledged that the God of the abyss was also their God, so did He actually Himself affirm that He was the same whom these demons acknowledged—Jesus, the Judge and Son of the avenging God. Now, behold an inkling 4235 of the Creator’s failings 4236 and infirmities in Christ; for I on my side 4237 mean to impute to Him ignorance. Allow me some indulgence in my effort against the heretic. Jesus is touched by the woman who had an issue of blood, 4238 He knew not by whom. “Who touched me?” He asks, when His disciples alleged an excuse. He even persists in His assertion of ignorance: “Somebody hath touched me,” He says, and advances some proof: “For I perceive that virtue is gone out of me.” What says our heretic? Could Christ have known the person? And why did He speak as if He were ignorant? Why? Surely it was to challenge her faith, and to try her fear. Precisely as He had once questioned Adam, as if in ignorance: Adam, where art thou?” 4239 Thus you have both the Creator excused in the same way as Christ, and Christ acting similarly to 4240 the Creator. But in this case He acted as an adversary of the law; and therefore, as the law forbids contact with a woman with an issue, 4241 He desired not only that this woman should touch Him, but that He should heal her. 4242 Here, then, is a God who is not merciful by nature, but in hostility! Yet, if we find that such was the merit of this woman’s faith, that He said unto her, Thy faith hath saved thee,” 4243 what are you, that you should detect an hostility to the law in that act, which the Lord Himself shows us to have been done as a reward of faith? But will you have it that this faith of the woman consisted in the contempt which she had acquired for the law? Who can suppose, that a woman who had been. hitherto unconscious of any God, uninitiated as yet in any new law, should violently infringe that law by which she was up to this time bound? On what faith, indeed, was such an infringement hazarded? In what God believing? Whom despising? The Creator? Her touch at least was an act of faith. And if of faith in the Creator, how could she have violated His law, 4244 when she was ignorant of any other God? Whatever her infringement of the law amounted to, it proceeded from and was proportionate to her faith in the Creator. But how can these two things be compatible? That she violated the law, and violated it in faith, which ought to have restrained her from such violation? I will tell you how her faith was this above all: 4245 it made her believe that her God preferred mercy even to sacrifice; she was certain that her God was working in Christ; she touched Him, therefore, nor as a holy man simply, nor as a prophet, whom she knew to be capable of contamination by reason of his human nature, but as very God, whom she assumed to be beyond all possibility of pollution by any uncleanness. 4246 She therefore, not without reason, 4247 interpreted for herself the law, as meaning that such things as are susceptible of defilement become defiled, but not so God, whom she knew for certain to be in Christ. But she recollected this also, that what came under the prohibition of the law 4248 was that ordinary and usual issue of blood which proceeds from natural functions every month, and in childbirth, not that which was the result of disordered health. Her case, however, was one of long abounding 4249 ill health, for which she knew that the succour of God’s mercy was needed, and not the natural relief of time. And thus she may evidently be regarded as having discerned 4250 the law, instead of breaking it. This will prove to be the faith which was to confer intelligence likewise. “If ye will not believe,” says (the prophet), “ye shall not understand.” 4251 When Christ approved of the faith of this woman, which simply rested in the Creator, He declared by His answer to her, 4252 that He was Himself the divine object of the faith of which He approved. Nor can I overlook the fact that His garment, by being touched, demonstrated also the truth of His body; for of course” 4253 it was a body, and not a phantom, which the garment clothed. 4254 This indeed is not our point now; but the remark has a natural bearing on the question we are discussing. For if it were not a veritable body, but only a fantastic one, it could not for certain have received contamination, as being an unsubstantial thing. 4255 He therefore, who, by reason of this vacuity of his substance, was incapable of contamination, how could he possibly have desired this touch? 4256 As an adversary of the law, his conduct was deceitful, for he was not susceptible of a real pollution.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. III, part 1 of 2. . Hermetic Cloud, https://hermeticcloud.com/library/ante-nicene-fathers-vol-iii-part-1/. Public-domain text reproduced in full; markup only.