Footnotes
378:4216Luke viii. 25.
378:4217Agnorant.
378:4218Et pari utrinque stupore discriminis fixum.
378:4219Josh. iii. 9-17.
378:4220This obscure passage is thus read by Oehler, from whom we have translated: “Lege extorri familiæ dirimendæ in transitu ejus Jordanis machæram fuisse, cujus impetum atque decursum plane et Jesus docuerat prophetis transmeantibus stare.” The machæram (“sword”) is a metaphor for the river. Rigaltius refers to Virgil’s figure, Æneid, viii. 62, 64, for a justification of the simile. Oehler has altered the reading from the “ex sortefamilæ,” etc., of the mss. to “extorrifamiliæ,” etc. The former reading would mean probably: “Read out of the story of the nation how that Jordan was as a sword to hinder their passage across its stream.” The sorte (or, as yet another variation has it, “et sortes,” “the accounts”) meant the national record, as we have it in the beginning of the book of Joshua. But the passage is almost hopelessly obscure.
379:4221Solis.
379:4222Istius.
379:4223Ps. xxix. 3.
379:4224Hab. iii. 10, according to the Septuagint.
379:4225Nah. i. 4.
379:4226See above, book iii. chap. xiii.
379:4227Luke viii. 30.
379:4228Atque ita ipsum esse.
379:4229Ps. xxiv. 8.
379:4230Luke viii. 28.
379:4231Agentem.
379:4232Conversaretur.
379:4233Substantiæ: including these demons.
379:4234Sed enim: the ἀλλὰ γὰρ of the Greek.
379:4235Aliquid.
379:4236Pusillitatibus.
379:4237Ego.
379:4238Luke viii. 43-46.
379:4239See above, book iii. chap. xxv.
379:4240Adæquatum: on a par with.
379:4241Lev. xv. 19.
379:4242A Marcionite hypothesis.
380:4243Luke viii. 48.
380:4244Ecquomodo legem ejus irrupit.
380:4245Primo.
380:4246Spurcitia.
380:4247Non temere.
380:4248In lege taxari.
380:4249Illa autem redundavit.
380:4250Distinxisse.
380:4251Isa. vii. 9.
380:4252Luke viii. 48.
380:4253Utique.
380:4254Epiphanius, in Hæres. xlii. Refut. 14, has the same remark.
380:4255Qua res vacua.
380:4256In allusion to the Marcionite hypothesis mentioned above.
Chapter XXI.—Christ’s Connection with the Creator Shown from Several Incidents in the Old Testament, Compared with St. Luke’s Narrative of the Mission of the Disciples. The Feeding of the Multitude. The Confession of St. Peter. Being Ashamed of Christ. This Shame is Only Possible of the True Christ. Marcionite Pretensions Absurd.
He sends forth His disciples to preach the kingdom of God. 4257 Does He here say of what God? He forbids their taking anything for their journey, by way of either food or raiment. Who would have given such a commandment as this, but He who feeds the ravens and clothes 4258 the flowers of the field? Who anciently enjoined for the treading ox an unmuzzled mouth, 4259 that he might be at liberty to gather his fodder from his labour, on the principle that the worker is worthy of his hire? 4260 Marcion may expunge such precepts, but no matter, provided the sense of them survives. But when He charges them to shake off the dust of their feet against such as should refuse to receive them, He also bids that this be done as a witness. Now no one bears witness except in a case which is decided by judicial process; and whoever orders inhuman conduct to be submitted to the trial by testimony, 4261 does really threaten as a judge. Again, that it was no new god which recommended 4262 by Christ, was clearly attested by the opinion of all men, because some maintained to Herod that Jesus was the Christ; others, that He was John; some, that He was Elias; and others, that He was one of the old prophets. 4263 Now, whosoever of all these He might have been, He certainly was not raised up for the purpose of announcing another god after His resurrection. He feeds the multitude in the desert place; 4264 this, you must know 4265 was after the manner of the Old Testament. 4266 Or else, 4267 if there was not the same grandeur, it follows that He is now inferior to the Creator. For He, not for one day, but during forty years, not on the inferior aliment of bread and fish, but with the manna of heaven, supported the lives 4268 of not five thousand, but of six hundred thousand human beings. However, such was the greatness of His miracle, that He willed the slender supply of food, not only to be enough, but even to prove superabundant; 4269 and herein He followed the ancient precedent. For in like manner, during the famine in Elijah’s time, the scanty and final meal of the widow of Sarepta was multiplied 4270 by the blessing of the prophet throughout the period of the famine. You have the third book of the Kings. 4271 If you also turn to the fourth book, you will discover all this conduct 4272 of Christ pursued by that man of God, who ordered ten 4273 barley loaves which had been given him to be distributed among the people; and when his servitor, after contrasting the large number of the persons with the small supply of the food, answered, “What, shall I set this before a hundred men?” he said again, “Give them, and they shall eat: for thus saith the Lord, They shall eat, and shall leave thereof, according to the word of the Lord.” 4274 O Christ, even in Thy novelties Thou art old! Accordingly, when Peter, who had been an eye-witness of the miracle, and had compared it with the ancient precedents, and had discovered in them prophetic intimations of what should one day come to pass, answered (as the mouthpiece of them all) the Lord’s inquiry, “Whom say ye that I am?” 4275 in the words, “Thou art the Christ,” he could not but have perceived that He was that Christ, beside whom he knew of none else in the Scriptures, and whom he was now surveying 4276 in His wonderful deeds. This conclusion He even Himself confirms by thus far bearing with it, nay, even enjoining silence respecting it. 4277 For if Peter was unable to acknowledge Him to be any other than the Creator’s Christ, while He commanded them “to tell no man that saying,” surely 4278 He was unwilling to have the conclusion promulged which Peter had drawn. No doubt of that, 4279 you say; but as Peter’s conclusion was a wrong one, therefore He was unwilling to have a lie disseminated. It was, however, a different reason which He assigned for the silence, even because “the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and scribes, and priests, and be slain, and be raised again the third day.” 4280 Now, inasmuch as these sufferings were actually foretold for the Creator’s Christ (as we shall fully show in the proper place 4281 ), so by this application of them to His own case 4282 does He prove that it is He Himself of whom they were predicted. At all events, even if they had not been predicted, the reason which He alleged for imposing silence (on the disciples) was such as made it clear enough that Peter had made no mistake, that reason being the necessity of His undergoing these sufferings. “Whosoever,” says He, “will save his life, shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.” 4283 Surely 4284 it is the Son of man 4285 who uttered this sentence. Look carefully, then, along with the king of Babylon, into his burning fiery furnace, and there you will discover one “like the Son of man” (for He was not yet really Son of man, because not yet born of man), even as early as then 4286 appointing issues such as these. He saved the lives of the three brethren, 4287 who had agreed to lose them for God’s sake; but He destroyed those of the Chaldæans, when they had preferred to save them by the means of their idolatry. Where is that novelty, which you pretend 4288 in a doctrine which possesses these ancient proofs? But all the predictions have been fulfilled 4289 concerning martyrdoms which were to happen, and were to receive the recompenses of their reward from God. “See,” says Isaiah, “how the righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart; and just men are taken away, and no man considereth.” 4290 When does this more frequently happen than in the persecution of His saints? This, indeed, is no ordinary matter, 4291 no common casualty of the law of nature; but it is that illustrious devotion, that fighting for the faith, wherein whosoever loses his life for God saves it, so that you may here again recognize the Judge who recompenses the evil gain of life with its destruction, and the good loss thereof with its salvation. It is, however, a jealous God whom He here presents to me; one who returns evil for evil. “For whosoever,” says He, “shall be ashamed of me, of him will I also be ashamed.” 4292 Now to none but my Christ can be assigned the occasion 4293 of such a shame as this. His whole course 4294 was so exposed to shame as to open a way for even the taunts of heretics, declaiming 4295 with all the bitterness in their power against the utter disgrace 4296 of His birth and bringing-up, and the unworthiness of His very flesh. 4297 But how can that Christ of yours be liable to a shame, which it is impossible for him to experience? Since he was never condensed 4298 into human flesh in the womb of a woman, although a virgin; never grew from human seed, although only after the law of corporeal substance, from the fluids 4299 of a woman; was never deemed flesh before shaped in the womb; never called fœtus 4300 after such shaping; was never delivered from a ten months’ writhing in the womb; 4301 was never shed forth upon the ground, amidst the sudden pains of parturition, with the unclean issue which flows at such a time through the sewerage of the body, forthwith to inaugurate the light 4302 of life with tears, and with that primal wound which severs the child from her who bears him; 4303 never received the copious ablution, nor the meditation of salt and honey; 4304 nor did he initiate a shroud with swaddling clothes; 4305 nor afterwards did he ever wallow 4306 in his own uncleanness, in his mother’s lap; nibbling at her breast; long an infant; gradually 4307 a boy; by slow degrees 4308 a man. 4309 But he was revealed 4310 from heaven, full-grown at once, at once complete; immediately Christ; simply spirit, and power, and god. But as withal he was not true, because not visible; therefore he was no object to be ashamed of from the curse of the cross, the real endurance 4311 of which he escaped, because wanting in bodily substance. Never, therefore, could he have said, “Whosoever shall be ashamed of me.” But as for our Christ, He could do no otherwise than make such a declaration; 4312 “made” by the Father “a little lower than the angels,” 4313 “a worm and no man, a reproach of men, and despised of the people;” 4314 seeing that it was His will that “with His stripes we should be healed,” 4315 that by His humiliation our salvation should be established. And justly did He humble Himself 4316 for His own creature man, for the image and likeness of Himself, and not of another, in order that man, since he had not felt ashamed when bowing down to a stone or a stock, might with similar courage give satisfaction to God for the shamelessness of his idolatry, by displaying an equal degree of shamelessness in his faith, in not being ashamed of Christ. Now, Marcion, which of these courses is better suited to your Christ, in respect of a meritorious shame? 4317 Plainly, you ought yourself to blush with shame for having given him a fictitious existence. 4318
Footnotes
380:4257Luke ix. 1-6.
380:4258Vestit.
380:4259Libertatem oris.
380:4260Deut. xxv. 4.
381:4261In testationem redigi.
381:4262Probatum.
381:4263Luke 9:7, 8.
381:4264Luke ix. 10-17.
381:4265Scilicet.
381:4266De pristino more.
381:4267Aut.
381:4268Protelavit.
381:4269Exuberare.
381:4270Redundaverant.
381:42711 Kings xvii. 7-16.
381:4272Ordinem.
381:4273I have no doubt that ten was the word written by our author; for some Greek copies read δέκα, and Ambrose in his Hexaëmeron, book vi. chap. ii., mentions the same number (Fr. Junius).
381:42742 Kings iv. 42-44.
381:4275Luke ix. 20.
381:4276Recensebat.
381:4277Luke ix. 21.
381:4278Utique.
381:4279Immo.
381:4280Luke ix. 22.
381:4281See below, chaps. xl.–xliii.
381:4282Sic quoque.
381:4283Luke ix. 24.
381:4284Certe.
381:4285Compare above, chap. x., towards the end.
381:4286Jam tunc.
381:4287Dan. 3:25, 26.
381:4288Ista.
381:4289Decucurrerunt.
382:4290Isa. 57:0, Isa. 1:0.
382:4291We have, by understanding res, treated these adjectives as nouns. Rigalt. applies them to the doctrina of the sentence just previous. Perhaps, however, “persecutione” is the noun.
382:4292Luke ix. 26.
382:4293Materia conveniat.
382:4294Ordo.
382:4295Perorantibus.
382:4296Fœditatem.
382:4297Ipsius etiam carnis indignitatem; because His flesh, being capable of suffering and subject to death, seemed to them unworthy of God. So Adv. Judæos, chap. xiv., he says: “Primo sordidis indutus est, id est carnis passibilis et mortalis indignitate.” Or His “indignity” may have been εἶδος οὐκ ἄξιον τυραννίδος, His “unkingly aspect” (as Origen expresses it, Contra Celsum, 6); His “form of a servant,” or slave, as St. Paul says. See also Tertullian’s De Patientia, iii. (Rigalt.)
382:4298Coagulatur. [Job x. 10.]
382:4299Ex feminæ humore.
382:4300Pecus. Julius Firmicus, iii. 1, uses the word in the same way: “Pecus intra viscera matris artuatim concisum a medicis proferetur.” [Jul. Firmicus Maternus, floruit circa, a.d. 340.]
382:4301Such is probably the meaning of “non decem mensium cruciatu deliberatus.” For such is the situation of the infant in the womb, that it seems to writhe (cruciari) all curved and contracted (Rigalt.). Latinius read delibratus instead of deliberatus, which means, “suspended or poised in the womb as in a scale.” This has my approbation. I would compare De Carne Christi, chap. iv. (Fr. Junius). Oehler reads deliberatus in the sense of liberatus.
382:4302Statim lucem lacrimis auspicatus.
382:4303Primo retinaculi sui vulnere: the cutting of the umbilical nerve. [Contrast Jer. Taylor, on the Nativity, Opp. I. p. 34.]
382:4304Nec sale ac melle medicatus. Of this application in the case of a recent childbirth we know nothing; it seems to have been meant for the skin. See Pliny, in his Hist. Nat. xxii. 25.
382:4305Nec pannis jam sepulturæ involucrum initiatus.
382:4306Volutatus per immunditias.
382:4307Vix.
382:4308Tarde.
382:4309Expositus.
382:4310i.e., he never passed through stages like these.
382:4311Veritate.
382:4312Debuit pronuntiasse.
382:4313Ps. viii. 6.
382:4314Ps. xxii. 6.
382:4315Isa. liii. 5.
382:4316Se deposuit.
382:4317Ad meritum confusionis.
382:4318Quod illum finxisti.
Chapter XXII.—The Same Conclusion Supported by the Transfiguration. Marcion Inconsistent in Associating with Christ in Glory Two Such Eminent Servants of the Creator as Moses and Elijah. St. Peter’s Ignorance Accounted for on Montanist Principle.
You ought to be very much ashamed of yourself on this account too, for permitting him to appear on the retired mountain in the company of Moses and Elias, 4319 whom he had come to destroy. This, to be sure, 4320 was what he wished to be understood as the meaning of that voice from heaven: “This is my beloved Son, hear Him” 4321 —Him, that is, not Moses or Elias any longer. The voice alone, therefore, was enough, without the display of Moses and Elias; for, by expressly mentioning whom they were to hear, he must have forbidden all 4322 others from being heard. Or else, did he mean that Isaiah and Jeremiah and the others whom he did not exhibit were to be heard, since he prohibited those whom he did display? Now, even if their presence was necessary, they surely should not be represented as conversing together, which is a sign of familiarity; nor as associated in glory with him, for this indicates respect and graciousness; but they should be shown in some slough 4323 as a sure token of their ruin, or even in that darkness of the Creator which Christ was sent to disperse, far removed from the glory of Him who was about to sever their words and writings from His gospel. This, then, is the way 4324 how he demonstrates them to be aliens, 4325 even by keeping them in his own company! This is how he shows they ought to be relinquished: he associates them with himself instead! This is how he destroys them: he irradiates them with his glory! How would their own Christ act? I suppose He would have imitated the frowardness (of heresy), 4326 and revealed them just as Marcion’s Christ was bound to do, or at least as having with Him any others rather than His own prophets! But what could so well befit the Creator’s Christ, as to manifest Him in the company of His own foreannouncers? 4327 —to let Him be seen with those to whom He had appeared in revelations?—to let Him be speaking with those who had spoken of Him?—to share His glory with those by whom He used to be called the Lord of glory; even with those chief servants of His, one of whom was once the moulder 4328 of His people, the other afterwards the reformer 4329 thereof; one the initiator of the Old Testament, the other the consummator 4330 of the New? Well therefore does Peter, when recognizing the companions of his Christ in their indissoluble connection with Him, suggest an expedient: “It is good for us to be here” (good: that evidently means to be where Moses and Elias are); “and let us make three tabernacles, one for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. But he knew not what he said.” 4331 How knew not? Was his ignorance the result of simple error? Or was it on the principle which we maintain 4332 in the cause of the new prophecy, 4333 that to grace ecstasy or rapture 4334 is incident. For when a man is rapt in the Spirit, especially when he beholds the glory of God, or when God speaks through him, he necessarily loses his sensation, 4335 because he is overshadowed with the power of God,—a point concerning which there is a question between us and the carnally-minded. 4336 Now, it is no difficult matter to prove the rapture 4337 of Peter. For how could he have known Moses and Elias, except (by being) in the Spirit? People could not have had their images, or statues, or likenesses; for that the law forbade. How, if it were not that he had seen them in the Spirit? And therefore, because it was in the Spirit that he had now spoken, and not in his natural senses, he could not know what he had said. But if, on the other hand, 4338 he was thus ignorant, because he erroneously supposed that (Jesus) was their Christ, it is then evident that Peter, when previously asked by Christ, “Whom they thought Him to be,” meant the Creator’s Christ, when he answered, “Thou art the Christ;” because if he had been then aware that He belonged to the rival god, he would not have made a mistake here. But if he was in error here because of his previous erroneous opinion, 4339 then you may be sure that up to that very day no new divinity had been revealed by Christ, and that Peter had so far made no mistake, because hitherto Christ had revealed nothing of the kind; and that Christ accordingly was not to be regarded as belonging to any other than the Creator, whose entire dispensation 4340 he, in fact, here described. He selects from His disciples three witnesses of the impending vision and voice. And this is just the way of the Creator. “In the mouth of three witnesses,” says He, “shall every word be established.” 4341 He withdraws to a mountain. In the nature of the place I see much meaning. For the Creator had originally formed His ancient people on a mountain both with visible glory and His voice. It was only right that the New Testament should be attested 4342 on such an elevated spot 4343 as that whereon the Old Testament had been composed; 4344 under a like covering of cloud also, which nobody will doubt, was condensed out of the Creator’s air. Unless, indeed, he 4345 had brought down his own clouds thither, because he had himself forced his way through the Creator’s heaven; 4346 or else it was only a precarious cloud, 4347 as it were, of the Creator which he used. On the present (as also on the former) 4348 occasion, therefore, the cloud was not silent; but there was the accustomed voice from heaven, and the Father’s testimony to the Son; precisely as in the first Psalm He had said, “Thou art my Son, today have I begotten thee.” 4349 By the mouth of Isaiah also He had asked concerning Him, “Who is there among you that feareth God? Let him hear the voice of His Son.” 4350 When therefore He here presents Him with the words, “This is my (beloved) Son,” this clause is of course understood, “whom I have promised.” For if He once promised, and then afterwards says, “This is He,” it is suitable conduct for one who accomplishes His purpose 4351 that He should utter His voice in proof of the promise which He had formerly made; but unsuitable in one who is amenable to the retort, Can you, indeed, have a right to say, “This is my son,” concerning whom you have given us no previous information, 4352 any more than you have favoured us with a revelation about your own prior existence? “Hear ye Him,” therefore, whom from the beginning (the Creator) had declared entitled to be heard in the name of a prophet, since it was as a prophet that He had to be regarded by the people. “A prophet,” says Moses, “shall the Lord your God raise up unto you, of your sons” (that is, of course, after a carnal descent 4353 ); “unto Him shall ye hearken, as unto me.” 4354 “Every one who will not hearken unto Him, his soul 4355 shall be cut off from amongst his people.” 4356 So also Isaiah: “Who is there among you that feareth God? Let him hear the voice of His Son.” 4357 This voice the Father was going Himself to recommend. For, says he, 4358 He establishes the words of His Son, when He says, “This is my beloved Son, hear ye Him.” Therefore, even if there be made a transfer of the obedient “hearing” from Moses and Elias to 4359 Christ, it is still not from another God, or to another Christ; but from 4360 the Creator to His Christ, in consequence of the departure of the old covenant and the supervening of the new. “Not an ambassador, nor an angel, but He Himself,” says Isaiah, “shall save them;” 4361 for it is He Himself who is now declaring and fulfilling the law and the prophets. The Father gave to the Son new disciples, 4362 after that Moses and Elias had been exhibited along with Him in the honour of His glory, and had then been dismissed as having fully discharged their duty and office, for the express purpose of affirming for Marcion’s information the fact that Moses and Elias had a share in even the glory of Christ. But we have the entire structure 4363 of this same vision in Habakkuk also, where the Spirit in the person of some 4364 of the apostles says, “O Lord, I have heard Thy speech, and was afraid.” What speech was this, other than the words of the voice from heaven, This is my beloved Son, hear ye Him? “I considered thy works, and was astonished.” When could this have better happened than when Peter, on seeing His glory, knew not what he was saying? “In the midst of the two Thou shalt be known”—even Moses and Elias. 4365 These likewise did Zechariah see under the figure of the two olive trees and olive branches. 4366 For these are they of whom he says, “They are the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth.” And again Habakkuk says, “His glory covered the heavens” (that is, with that cloud), “and His splendour shall be like the light—even the light, wherewith His very raiment glistened.” And if we would make mention of 4367 the promise to Moses, we shall find it accomplished here. For when Moses desired to see the Lord, saying, “If therefore I have found grace in Thy sight, manifest Thyself to me, that I may see Thee distinctly,” 4368 the sight which he desired to have was of that condition which he was to assume as man, and which as a prophet he knew was to occur. Respecting the face of God, however, he had already heard, “No man shall see me, and live.” “This thing,” said He, “which thou hast spoken, will I do unto thee.” Then Moses said, “Show me Thy glory.” And the Lord, with like reference to the future, replied, “I will pass before thee in my glory,” etc. Then at the last He says, “And then thou shalt see my back.” 4369 Not loins, or calves of the legs, did he want to behold, but the glory which was to be revealed in the latter days. 4370 He had promised that He would make Himself thus face to face visible to him, when He said to Aaron, “If there shall be a prophet among you, I will make myself known to him by vision, and by vision will I speak with him; but not so is my manner to Moses; with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently” (that is to say, in the form of man which He was to assume), “and not in dark speeches.” 4371 Now, although Marcion has denied 4372 that he is here represented as speaking with the Lord, but only as standing, yet, inasmuch as he stood “mouth to mouth,” he must also have stood “face to face” with him, to use his words, 4373 not far from him, in His very glory—not to say, 4374 in His presence. And with this glory he went away enlightened from Christ, just as he used to do from the Creator; as then to dazzle the eyes of the children of Israel, so now to smite those of the blinded Marcion, who has failed to see how this argument also makes against him.
Footnotes
383:4319Luke ix. 28-36.
383:4320Scilicet, in ironical allusion to a Marcionite opinion.
383:4321Luke ix. 35.
383:4322Quoscunque.
383:4323In sordibus aliquibus.
383:4324Sic.
383:4325To belong to another god.
383:4326Secundum perversitatem.
383:4327Prædicatores.
383:4328Informator, Moses, as having organized the nation.
383:4329Reformator, Elias, the great prophet.
383:4330It was a primitive opinion in the Church that Elijah was to come, with Enoch, at the end of the world. See De Anima, chap. xxxv. and l.; also Irenæus, De Hæres. v. 5. [Vol. I. 530.]
383:4331Luke ix. 33.
383:4332This Tertullian seems to have done in his treatise De Ecstasi, which is mentioned by St. Jerome—see his Catalogus Scriptt. Eccles. (in Tertulliano); and by Nicephorus, Hist. Eccles. iv. 22, 34. On this subject of ecstasy, Tertullian has some observations in De Anima, chap. xxi. and xlv. (Rigalt. and Oehler.)
383:4333[Elucidation VII.]
383:4334Amentiam.
383:4335Excidat sensu.
383:4336He calls those the carnally-minded (“psychicos”) who thought that ecstatic raptures and revelations had ceased in the church. The term arises from a perverse application of 1 Cor. ii. 14: ψυχικὸς δὲ ἄνθρωπος οὐ δέχεται τὰ τοῦ Πνεύματος τοῦ Θεοῦ. In opposition to the wild fanaticism of Montanus, into which Tertullian strangely fell, the Catholics believed that the true prophets, who were filled with the Spirit of God, discharged their prophetic functions with a quiet and tranquil mind. See the anonymous author, Contra Cataphrygas, in Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 17; Epiphanius, Hæres. 48. See also Routh, Rell. Sacræ, i. p. 100; and Bp. Kaye, On the Writings of Tertullian, edit. 3, pp. 27–36. (Munter’s Primord. Eccles. Afric. p. 138, quoted by Oehler.)
383:4337Amentiam.
383:4338Ceterum.
383:4339According to the hypothesis.
384:4340Totum ordinem, in the three periods represented by Moses, and Elijah, and Christ.
384:4341Compare Deut. 19:15, Luke 9:28.
384:4342Consignari.
384:4343In eo suggestu.
384:4344Conscriptum fuerat.
384:4345Marcion’s god.
384:4346Compare above, book i. chap. 15, and book iv. chap. 7.
384:4347Precario. This word is used in book v. chap. xii. to describe the transitoriness of the Creator’s paradise and world.
384:4348Nec nunc.
384:4349Ps. ii. 7.
384:4350Isa. l. 10, according to the Septuagint.
384:4351Ejus est exhibentis.
384:4352Non præmisisti. Oehler suggests promisisti, “have given us no promise.”
384:4353Censum: Some read sensum, “sense.”
384:4354Deut. xviii. 15.
384:4355Anima: life.
384:4356Deut. xviii. 19.
384:4357Isa. l. 10.
384:4358Tertullian, by introducing this statement with an “inquit,” seems to make a quotation of it; but it is only a comment on the actual quotations. Tertullian’s invariable object in this argument is to match some event or word pertaining to the Christ of the New Testament with some declaration of the Old Testament. In this instance the approving words of God upon the mount are in Heb. i. 5 applied to the Son, while in Ps. ii. 7 the Son applies them to Himself. Compare the Adversus Praxean, chap. xix. (Fr. Junius and Oehler). It is, however, more likely that Tertullian really means to quote Isa. xliv. 26, “that confirmeth the word of His servant,” which Tertullian reads, “Sistens verba filii sui,” the Septuagint being, Καὶ ἰστῶν ῥῆμα παιδὸς αὐτοῦ.
384:4359In Christo. In with an ablative is often used by our author for in with an accusative.
384:4360Or perhaps “by the Creator.”
384:4361Isa. lxiii. 9, according to the Septuagint; only he reads faciet for aorist ἔσωσεν.
384:4362A Marcionite position.
384:4363Habitum.
384:4364Interdum.
385:4365Hab. iii. 2, according to the Septuagint. St. Augustine similarly applied this passage, De Civit. Dei, ii. 32.
385:4366Zech. 4:3, 14.
385:4367Commemoremur: be reminded, or call to mind.
385:4368Cognoscenter: γνωστῶς, “so as to know Thee.”
385:4369See Ex. xxxiii. 13-23.
385:4370Posterioribus temporibus. [The awful ribaldry of Voltaire upon this glorious revelation is based upon the Vulgate reading of Exod. xxxiii. 23, needlessly transferred to our Version, but corrected by the late Revisers.]
385:4371Num. xii. 6-8.
385:4372Noluit.
385:4373It is difficult to see what this inquit means.
385:4374Nedum.
Chapter XXIII.—Impossible that Marcion’s Christ Should Reprove the Faithless Generation. Such Loving Consideration for Infants as the True Christ Was Apt to Shew, Also Impossible for the Other. On the Three Different Characters Confronted and Instructed by Christ in Samaria.
I take on myself the character 4375 of Israel. Let Marcion’s Christ stand forth, and exclaim, “O faithless generation! 4376 how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?” 4377 He will immediately have to submit to this remonstrance from me: “Whoever you are, O stranger, 4378 first tell us who you are, from whom you come, and what right you have over us. Thus far, all you possess 4379 belongs to the Creator. Of course, if you come from Him, and are acting for Him, we will bear your reproof. But if you come from some other god, I should wish you to tell us what you have ever committed to us belonging to yourself, 4380 which it was our duty to believe, seeing that you are upbraiding us with ‘faithlessness,’ who have never yet revealed to us your own self. How long ago 4381 did you begin to treat with us, that you should be complaining of the delay? On what points have you borne with us, that you should adduce 4382 your patience? Like Æsop’s ass, you are just come from the well, 4383 and are filling every place with your braying.” I assume, besides, 4384 the person of the disciple, against whom he has inveighed: 4385 “O perverse nation! how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?” This outburst of his I might, of course, retort upon him most justly in such words as these: “Whoever you are, O stranger, first tell us who you are, from whom you come, what right you have over us. Thus far, I suppose, you belong to the Creator, and so we have followed you, recognising in you all things which are His. Now, if you come from Him, we will bear your reproof. If, however, you are acting for another, prythee tell us what you have ever conferred upon us that is simply your own, which it had become our duty to believe, seeing that you reproach us with ‘faithlessness,’ although up to this moment you show us no credentials. How long since did you begin to plead with us, that you are charging us with delay? Wherein have you borne with us, that you should even boast of your patience? The ass has only just arrived from Æsop’s well, and he is already braying.” Now who would not thus have rebutted the unfairness of the rebuke, if he had supposed its author to belong to him who had had no right as yet to complain? Except that not even He 4386 would have inveighed against them, if He had not dwelt among them of old in the law and by the prophets, and with mighty deeds and many mercies, and had always experienced them to be “faithless.” But, behold, Christ takes 4387 infants, and teaches how all ought to be like them, if they ever wish to be greater. 4388 The Creator, on the contrary, 4389 let loose bears against children, in order to avenge His prophet Elisha, who had been mocked by them. 4390 This antithesis is impudent enough, since it throws together 4391 things so different as infants 4392 and children, 4393 —an age still innocent, and one already capable of discretion—able to mock, if not to blaspheme. As therefore God is a just God, He spared not impious children, exacting as He does honour for every time of life, and especially, of course, from youth. And as God is good, He so loves infants as to have blessed the midwives in Egypt, when they protected the infants of the Hebrews 4394 which were in peril from Pharaoh’s command. 4395 Christ therefore shares this kindness with the Creator. As indeed for Marcion’s god, who is an enemy to marriage, how can he possibly seem to be a lover of little children, which are simply the issue of marriage? He who hates the seed must needs also detest the fruit. Yea, he ought to be deemed more ruthless than the king of Egypt. 4396 For whereas Pharaoh forbade infants to be brought up, he will not allow them even to be born, depriving them of their ten months’ existence in the womb. And how much more credible it is, that kindness to little children should be attributed to Him who blessed matrimony for the procreation of mankind, and in such benediction included also the promise of connubial fruit itself, the first of which is that of infancy! 4397 The Creator, at the request of Elias, inflicts the blow 4398 of fire from heaven in the case of that false prophet (of Baalzebub). 4399 I recognise herein the severity of the Judge. And I, on the contrary, the severe rebuke 4400 of Christ on His disciples, when they were for inflicting 4401 a like visitation on that obscure village of the Samaritans. 4402 The heretic, too, may discover that this gentleness of Christ was promised by the selfsame severest Judge. “He shall not contend,” says He, “nor shall His voice be heard in the street; a bruised reed shall He not crush, and smoking flax shall He not quench.” 4403 Being of such a character, He was of course much the less disposed to burn men. For even at that time the Lord said to Elias, 4404 “He was not in the fire, but in the still small voice.” 4405 Well, but why does this most humane and merciful God reject the man who offers himself to Him as an inseparable companion? 4406 If it were from pride or from hypocrisy that he had said, “I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest,’ then, by judicially reproving an act of either pride or hypocrisy as worthy of rejection, He performed the office of a Judge. And, of course, him whom He rejected He condemned to the loss of not following the Saviour. 4407 For as He calls to salvation him whom He does not reject, or him whom He voluntarily invites, so does He consign to perdition him whom He rejects. When, however, He answers the man, who alleged as an excuse his father’s burial, “Let the dead bury their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of God,” 4408 He gave a clear confirmation to those two laws of the Creator—that in Leviticus, which concerns the sacerdotal office, and forbids the priests to be present at the funerals even of their parents. “The priest,” says He, “shall not enter where there is any dead person; 4409 and for his father he shall not be defiled” 4410 ; as well as that in Numbers, which relates to the (Nazarite) vow of separation; for there he who devotes himself to God, among other things, is bidden “not to come at any dead body,” not even of his father, or his mother, or his brother. 4411 Now it was, I suppose, for the Nazarite and the priestly office that He intended this man whom He had been inspiring 4412 to preach the kingdom of God. Or else, if it be not so, he must be pronounced impious enough who, without the intervention of any precept of the law, commanded that burials of parents should be neglected by their sons. When, indeed, in the third case before us, (Christ) forbids the man “to look back” who wanted first “to bid his family farewell,” He only follows out the rule 4413 of the Creator. For this (retrospection) He had been against their making, whom He had rescued out of Sodom. 4414
Footnotes
385:4375Personam: “I personate Israel.”
385:4376Genitura.
385:4377Luke ix. 41.
385:4378ἐπερχόμενε. The true Christ is ὁ ἐρχόμενος.
385:4379Totum apud te.
385:4380De tuo commisisti.
385:4381Quam olim.
385:4382Imputes.
385:4383This fable is not extant (Oehler).
385:4384Adhuc.
385:4385Insiliit.
386:4386Nisi quod nec ille. This ille, of course, means the Creator’s Christ.
386:4387Diligit: or, loves.
386:4388Luke 9:47, 48.
386:4389Autem.
386:43902 Kings 2:23, 24.
386:4391Committit.
386:4392Parvulos.
386:4393Pueros: [young lads].
386:4394Partus Hebræos.
386:4395Ex. ii. 15-21.
386:4396See a like comparison in book i. chap. xxix. p. 294.
386:4397Qui de infantia primus est: i.e., cujus qui de infantia, etc. [Elucidation VIII.]
386:4398Repræsentat plagam.
386:43992 Kings i. 9-12.
386:4400I translate after Oehler’s text, which is supported by the oldest authorities. Pamelius and Rigaltius, however, read “Christi lenitatem increpantis eandem animadversionem,” etc. (“On the contrary, I recognize the gentleness of Christ, who rebuked His disciples when they,” etc.) This reading is only conjectural, suggested by the “Christi lenitatem” of the context.
386:4401Destinantes.
386:4402Luke ix. 51-56.
386:4403Isa. 42:2, 3.
386:4404Compare De Patientia, chap. xv.
386:44051 Kings xix. 12.
386:4406Luke 9:57, 58.
386:4407Salutem: i.e., “Christ, who is our salvation” (Fr. Junius).
386:4408Luke 9:59, 60.
386:4409Animam defunctam.
386:4410Lev. xxi. 1, according to our author’s reading.
386:4411Num. 6:6, 7.
387:4412Imbuerat.
387:4413Sectam.
387:4414Gen. xix. 17.
Chapter XXIV.—On the Mission of the Seventy Disciples, and Christ’s Charge to Them. Precedents Drawn from the Old Testament. Absurdity of Supposing that Marcion’s Christ Could Have Given the Power of Treading on Serpents and Scorpions.
He chose also seventy other missionaries 4415 besides the twelve. Now why, if the twelve followed the number of the twelve fountains of Elim, 4416 should not the seventy correspond to the like number of the palms of that place? 4417 Whatever be the Antitheses of the comparison, it is a diversity in the causes, not in the powers, which has mainly produced them. But if one does not keep in view the diversity of the causes, 4418 he is very apt to infer a difference of powers. 4419 When the children of Israel went out of Egypt, the Creator brought them forth laden with their spoils of gold and silver vessels, and with loads besides of raiment and unleavened dough; 4420 whereas Christ commanded His disciples not to carry even a staff 4421 for their journey. The former were thrust forth into a desert, but the latter were sent into cities. Consider the difference presented in the occasions, 4422 and you will understand how it was one and the same power which arranged the mission 4423 of His people according to their poverty in the one case, and their plenty in the other. He cut down 4424 their supplies when they could be replenished through the cities, just as He had accumulated 4425 them when exposed to the scantiness of the desert. Even shoes He forbade them to carry. For it was He under whose very protection the people wore not out a shoe, 4426 even in the wilderness for the space of so many years. “No one,” says He, “shall ye salute by the way.” 4427 What a destroyer of the prophets, forsooth, is Christ, seeing it is from them that He received his precept also! When Elisha sent on his servant Gehazi before him to raise the Shunammite’s son from death, I rather think he gave him these instructions: 4428 “Gird up thy loins, and take my staff in thine hand, and go thy way: if thou meet any man, salute him not; 4429 and if any salute thee, answer him not again.” 4430 For what is a wayside blessing but a mutual salutation as men meet? So also the Lord commands: “Into whatsoever house they enter, let them say, Peace be to it.” 4431 Herein He follows the very same example. For Elisha enjoined upon his servant the same salutation when he met the Shunammite; he was to say to her: “Peace to thine husband, peace to thy child.” 4432 Such will be rather our Antitheses; they compare Christ with, instead of sundering Him from, the Creator. “The labourer is worthy of his hire.” 4433 Who could better pronounce such a sentence than the Judge? For to decide that the workman deserves his wages, is in itself a judicial act. There is no award which consists not in a process of judgment. The law of the Creator on this point also presents us with a corroboration, for He judges that labouring oxen are as labourers worthy of their hire: “Thou shalt not muzzle,” says He, “the ox when he treadeth out the corn.” 4434 Now, who is so good to man 4435 as He who is also merciful to cattle? Now, when Christ pronounced labourers to be worthy of their hire, He, in fact, exonerated from blame that precept of the Creator about depriving the Egyptians of their gold and silver vessels. 4436 For they who had built for the Egyptians their houses and cities, were surely workmen worthy of their hire, and were not instructed in a fraudulent act, but only set to claim compensation for their hire, which they were unable in any other way to exact from their masters. 4437 That the kingdom of God was neither new nor unheard of, He in this way affirmed, whilst at the same time He bids them announce that it was near at hand. 4438 Now it is that which was once far off, which can be properly said to have become near. If, however, a thing had never existed previous to its becoming near, it could never have been said to have approached, because it had never existed at a distance. Everything which is new and unknown is also sudden. 4439 Everything which is sudden, then, first receives the accident of time 4440 when it is announced, for it then first puts on appearance of form. 4441 Besides it will be impossible for a thing either to have been tardy 4442 all the while it remained unannounced, 4443 or to have approached 4444 from the time it shall begin to be announced.
He likewise adds, that they should say to such as would not receive them: “Notwithstanding be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.” 4445 If He does not enjoin this by way of a commination, the injunction is a most useless one. For what mattered it to them that the kingdom was at hand, unless its approach was accompanied with judgment?—even for the salvation of such as received the announcement thereof. How, if there can be a threat without its accomplishment, can you have in a threatening god, one that executes also, and in both, one that is a judicial being? 4446 So, again, He commands that the dust be shaken off against them, as a testimony,—the very particles of their ground which might cleave 4447 to the sandal, not to mention 4448 any other sort of communication with them. 4449 But if their churlishness 4450 and inhospitality were to receive no vengeance from Him, for what purpose does He premise a testimony, which surely forbodes some threats? Furthermore, when the Creator also, in the book of Deuteronomy, forbids the reception of the Ammonites and the Moabites into the church, 4451 because, when His people came from Egypt, they fraudulently withheld provisions from them with inhumanity and inhospitality, 4452 it will be manifest that the prohibition of intercourse descended to Christ from Him. The form of it which He uses—“He that despiseth you, despiseth me” 4453 —the Creator had also addressed to Moses: “Not against thee have they murmured, but against me.” 4454 Moses, indeed, was as much an apostle as the apostles were prophets. The authority of both offices will have to be equally divided, as it proceeds from one and the same Lord, (the God) of apostles and prophets. Who is He that shall bestow “the power of treading on serpents and scorpions?” 4455 Shall it be He who is the Lord of all living creatures or he who is not god over a single lizard? Happily the Creator has promised by Isaiah to give this power even to little children, of putting their hand in the cockatrice den and on the hole of the young asps without at all receiving hurt. 4456 And, indeed, we are aware (without doing violence to the literal sense of the passage, since even these noxious animals have actually been unable to do hurt where there has been faith) that under the figure of scorpions and serpents are portended evil spirits, whose very prince is described 4457 by the name of serpent, dragon, and every other most conspicuous beast in the power of the Creator. 4458 This power the Creator conferred first of all upon His Christ, even as the ninetieth Psalm says to Him: “Upon the asp and the basilisk shalt Thou tread; the lion and the dragon shalt Thou trample under foot.” 4459 So also Isaiah: “In that day the Lord God shall draw His sacred, great, and strong sword” (even His Christ) “against that dragon, that great and tortuous serpent; and He shall slay him in that day.” 4460 But when the same prophet says, “The way shall be called a clean and holy way; over it the unclean thing shall not pass, nor shall be there any unclean way; but the dispersed shall pass over it, and they shall not err therein; no lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon; it shall not be found there,” 4461 he points out the way of faith, by which we shall reach to God; and then to this way of faith he promises this utter crippling 4462 and subjugation of all noxious animals. Lastly, you may discover the suitable times of the promise, if you read what precedes the passage: “Be strong, ye weak hands and ye feeble knees: then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear; then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall be articulate.” 4463 When, therefore, He proclaimed the benefits of His cures, then also did He put the scorpions and the serpents under the feet of His saints—even He who had first received this power from the Father, in order to bestow it upon others and then manifested it forth conformably to the order of prophecy. 4464
Footnotes
387:4415Apostolos: Luke 10:0, Luke 1:0.
387:4416Compare above, book iv. chap. xiii. p. 364.
387:4417Exod. 15:27, Num. 33:9.
387:4418Causarum: “occasions” or circumstances.
387:4419Potestatum. In Marcionite terms, “The Gods of the Old and the New Testaments.”
387:4420Consparsionum. [Punic Latin.] Exod. 12:34, 35.
387:4421Virgam, Luke 10:4, Matt. 10:10.
387:4422Causarum offerentiam.
387:4423Expeditionem, with the sense also of “supplies” in the next clause.
387:4424Circumcidens.
387:4425Struxerat.
387:4426Deut. xxix. 5.
387:4427Luke x. 4.
387:4428See 2 Kings iv. 29.
387:4429Literally, “bless him not, i.e., salute him not.”
387:4430Literally, “answer him not, i.e., return not his salvation.”
387:4431Luke x. 5.
387:44322 Kings iv. 26. He reads the optative instead of the indicative.
387:4433Luke x. 7.
387:4434Deut. xxv. 4.
387:4435Compare above, book ii. chap. 17, p. 311.
387:4436See this argued at length above, in book ii. chap. 20, p. 313.
387:4437Dominatoribus.
387:4438Luke x. 9.
388:4439Subitum.
388:4440Accipit tempus.
388:4441Inducens speciem.
388:4442Tardasse.
388:4443The announcement (according to the definition) defining the beginning of its existence in time.
388:4444Appropinquasse.
388:4445Luke x. 11.
388:4446Et judicem in utroque.
388:4447Hærentia.
388:4448Nedum.
388:4449Luke x. 11.
388:4450Inhumanitas.
388:4451Ecclesiam. There is force in thus using Christian terms for Jewish ordinances, full as he is of the identity of the God of the old with Him of the new covenant.
388:4452Deut. xxiii. 3.
388:4453Luke x. 16.
388:4454Num. xiv. 27.
388:4455Luke x. 19.
388:4456Isa. 11:8, 9.
388:4457Deputetur.
388:4458Penes Creatorem.
388:4459Ps. xci. 13.
388:4460Isa. xxvii. 1, Sept.
388:4461Isa. 35:8, 9, Sept.
388:4462Evacuationem.
388:4463Isa. 35:3, 5, 6, Sept.
389:4464Secundum ordinem prædicationis.
Chapter XXV.—Christ Thanks the Father for Revealing to Babes What He Had Concealed from the Wise. This Concealment Judiciously Effected by the Creator. Other Points in St. Luke’s Chap. X. Shown to Be Only Possible to the Creator’s Christ.
Who shall be invoked as the Lord of heaven, that does not first show Himself 4465 to have been the maker thereof? For He says, “I thank thee, (O Father,) and own Thee, Lord of heaven, because those things which had been hidden from the wise and prudent, Thou has revealed unto babes.” 4466 What things are these? And whose? And by whom hidden? And by whom revealed? If it was by Marcion’s god that they were hidden and revealed, it was an extremely iniquitous proceeding; 4467 for nothing at all had he ever produced 4468 in which anything could have been hidden—no prophecies, no parables, no visions, no evidences 4469 of things, or words, or names, obscured by allegories and figures, or cloudy enigmas, but he had concealed the greatness even of himself, which he was with all his might revealing by his Christ. Now in what respect had the wise and prudent done wrong, 4470 that God should be hidden from them, when their wisdom and prudence had been insufficient to come to the knowledge of Him? No way had been provided by himself, 4471 by any declaration of his works, or any vestiges whereby they might become 4472 wise and prudent. However, if they had even failed in any duty towards a god whom they knew not, suppose him now at last to be known still they ought not to have found a jealous god in him who is introduced as unlike the Creator. Therefore, since he had neither provided any materials in which he could have hidden anything, nor had any offenders from whom he could have hidden himself: since, again, even if he had had any, he ought not to have hidden himself from them, he will not now be himself the revealer, who was not previously the concealer; so neither will any be the Lord of heaven nor the Father of Christ but He in whom all these attributes consistently meet. 4473 For He conceals by His preparatory apparatus of prophetic obscurity, the understanding of which is open to faith (for “if ye will not believe, ye shall not understand” 4474 ); and He had offenders in those wise and prudent ones who would not seek after God, although He was to be discovered in His so many and mighty works, 4475 or who rashly philosophized about Him, and thereby furnished to heretics their arts; 4476 and lastly, He is a jealous God. Accordingly, 4477 that which Christ thanks God for doing, He long ago 4478 announced by Isaiah: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent will I hide.” 4479 So in another passage He intimates both that He has concealed, and that He will also reveal: “I will give unto them treasures that have been hidden, and secret ones will I discover to them.” 4480 And again: “Who else shall scatter the tokens of ventriloquists, 4481 and the devices of those who divine out of their own heart; turning wise men backward, and making their counsels foolish?” 4482 Now, if He has designated His Christ as an enlightener of the Gentiles, saying, “I have set thee for a light of the Gentiles;” 4483 and if we understand these to be meant in the word babes 4484 —as having been once dwarfs in knowledge and infants in prudence, and even now also babes in their lowliness of faith—we shall of course more easily understand how He who had once hidden “these things,” and promised a revelation of them through Christ, was the same God as He who had now revealed them unto babes. Else, if it was Marcion’s god who revealed the things which had been formerly hidden by the Creator, it follows 4485 that he did the Creator’s work by setting forth His deeds. 4486 But he did it, say you, for His destruction, that he might refute them. 4487 Therefore he ought to have refuted them to those from whom the Creator had hidden them, even the wise and prudent. For if he had a kind intention in what he did, the gift of knowledge was due to those from whom the Creator had detained it, instead of the babes, to whom the Creator had grudged no gift. But after all, it is, I presume, the edification 4488 rather than the demolition 4489 of the law and the prophets which we have thus far found effected in Christ. “All things,” He says, “are delivered unto me of my Father.” 4490 You may believe Him, if He is the Christ of the Creator to whom all things belong; because the Creator has not delivered to a Son who is less than Himself all things, which He created by 4491 Him, that is to say, by His Word. If, on the contrary, he is the notorious stranger, 4492 what are the “all things” which have been delivered to him by the Father? Are they the Creator’s? Then the things which the Father delivered to the Son are good, and the Creator is therefore good, since all His “things” are good; whereas he 4493 is no longer good who has invaded another’s good (domains) to deliver it to his son, thus teaching robbery 4494 of another’s goods. Surely he must be a most mendacious being, who had no other means of enriching his son than by helping himself to another’s property! Or else, 4495 if nothing of the Creator’s has been delivered to him by the Father, by what right 4496 does he claim for himself (authority over) man? Or again, if man has been delivered to him, and man alone, then man is not “all things.” But Scripture clearly says that a transfer of all things has been made to the Son. If, however, you should interpret this “all” of the whole human race, that is, all nations, then the delivery of even these to the Son is within the purpose of the Creator: 4497 “I will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.” 4498 If, indeed, he has some things of his own, the whole of which he might give to his son, along with the man of the Creator, then show some one thing of them all, as a sample, that I may believe; lest I should have as much reason not to believe that all things belong to him, of whom I see nothing, as I have ground for believing that even the things which I see not are His, to whom belongs the universe, which I see. But “no man knoweth who the Father is, but the Son; and who the Son is, but the Father, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him.” 4499 And so it was an unknown god that Christ preached! And other heretics, too, prop themselves up by this passage; alleging in opposition to it that the Creator was known to all, both to Israel by familiar intercourse, and to the Gentiles by nature. Well, how is it He Himself testifies that He was not known to Israel? “But Israel doth not know me, and my people doth not consider me;” 4500 nor to the Gentiles: “For, behold,” says He, “of the nations I have no man.” 4501 Therefore He reckoned them “as the drop of a bucket,” 4502 while “Sion He left as a look-out 4503 in a vineyard.” 4504 See, then, whether there be not here a confirmation of the prophet’s word, when he rebukes that ignorance of man toward God which continued to the days of the Son of man. For it was on this account that he inserted the clause that the Father is known by him to whom the Son has revealed Him, because it was even He who was announced as set by the Father to be a light to the Gentiles, who of course required to be enlightened concerning God, as well as to Israel, even by imparting to it a fuller knowledge of God. Arguments, therefore, will be of no use for belief in the rival god which may be suitable 4505 for the Creator, because it is only such as are unfit for the Creator which will be able to advance belief in His rival. If you look also into the next words, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things which ye see, for I tell you that prophets have not seen the things which ye see,” 4506 you will find that they follow from the sense above, that no man indeed had come to the knowledge of God as he ought to have done, 4507 since even the prophets had not seen the things which were being seen under Christ. Now if He had not been my Christ, He would not have made any mention of the prophets in this passage. For what was there to wonder at, if they had not seen the things of a god who had been unknown to them, and was only revealed a long time after them? What blessedness, however, could theirs have been, who were then seeing what others were naturally 4508 unable to see, since it was of things which they had never predicted that they had not obtained the sight; 4509 if it were not because they might justly 4510 have seen the things pertaining to their God, which they had even predicted, but which they at the same time 4511 had not seen? This, however, will be the blessedness of others, even of such as were seeing the things which others had only foretold. We shall by and by show, nay, we have already shown, that in Christ those things were seen which had been foretold, but yet had been hidden from the very prophets who foretold them, in order that they might be hidden also from the wise and the prudent. In the true Gospel, a certain doctor of the law comes to the Lord and asks, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” In the heretical gospel life only is mentioned, without the attribute eternal; so that the lawyer seems to have consulted Christ simply about the life which the Creator in the law promises to prolong, 4512 and the Lord to have therefore answered him according to the law, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength,” 4513 since the question was concerning the conditions of mere life. But the lawyer of course knew very well in what way the life which the law meant 4514 was to be obtained, so that his question could have had no relation to the life whose rules he was himself in the habit of teaching. But seeing that even the dead were now raised by Christ, and being himself excited to the hope of an eternal life by these examples of a restored 4515 one, he would lose no more time in merely looking on (at the wonderful things which had made him) so high in hope. 4516 He therefore consulted him about the attainment of eternal life. Accordingly, the Lord, being Himself the same, 4517 and introducing no new precept other than that which relates above all others 4518 to (man’s) entire salvation, even including the present and the future life, 4519 places before him 4520 the very essence 4521 of the law—that he should in every possible way love the Lord his God. If, indeed, it were only about a lengthened life, such as is at the Creator’s disposal, that he inquired and Christ answered, and not about the eternal life, which is at the disposal of Marcion’s god, how is he to obtain the eternal one? Surely not in the same manner as the prolonged life. For in proportion to the difference of the reward must be supposed to be also the diversity of the services. Therefore your disciple, Marcion, 4522 will not obtain his eternal life in consequence of loving your God, in the same way as the man who loves the Creator will secure the lengthened life. But how happens it that, if He is to be loved who promises the prolonged life, He is not much more to be loved who offers the eternal life? Therefore both one and the other life will be at the disposal of one and the same Lord; because one and the same discipline is to be followed 4523 for one and the other life. What the Creator teaches to be loved, that must He necessarily maintain 4524 also by Christ, 4525 for that rule holds good here, which prescribes that greater things ought to be believed of Him who has first lesser proofs to show, than of him for whom no preceding smaller presumptions have secured a claim to be believed in things of higher import. It matters not 4526 then, whether the word eternal has been interpolated by us. 4527 It is enough for me, that the Christ who invited men to the eternal—not the lengthened—life, when consulted about the temporal life which he was destroying, did not choose to exhort the man rather to that eternal life which he was introducing. Pray, what would the Creator’s Christ have done, if He who had made man for loving the Creator did not belong to the Creator? I suppose He would have said that the Creator was not to be loved!
Footnotes
389:4465Ostenditur.
389:4466Luke x. 21.
389:4467Satis inique.
389:4468Præmiserat.
389:4469Argumenta.
389:4470Deliquerant.
389:4471On the Marcionite hypothesis.
389:4472Deducerentur.
389:4473In quem competunt omnia.
389:4474Isa. vii. 9.
389:4475Rom. i. 20-23.
389:4476Ingenia.
389:4477Denique.
389:4478Olim.
389:4479Isa. xxix. 14, Sept.
389:4480Isa. xlv. 3, Sept.
389:4481Ventriloquorum, Greek ἐγγαστριμύθων.
389:4482Isa. xliv. 25, Sept.
389:4483Isa. 42:6, Isa. 49:6.
389:4484Luke x. 21.
389:4485Ergo.
389:4486Res ejus edisserens.
389:4487Uti traduceret eas.
390:4488Constructionem.
390:4489Destructionem.
390:4490Luke x. 22.
390:4491Per.
390:4492ἐπερχόμενος ille; on which see above, chap. xxiii. p. 385.
390:4493Marcion’s god.
390:4494Alieno abstinere.
390:4495Aut si.
390:4496Ecquomodo.
390:4497Creatoris est.
390:4498Ps. ii. 8.
390:4499Luke x. 22.
390:4500Isa. i. 3.
390:4501This passage it is not easy to identify. [See Is. lxiii. 3.] The books point to Isa. lxv. 5, but there is there no trace of it.
390:4502Isa. xl. 15. [Compare Is. lxiii. 3. Sept.]
390:4503Speculam.
390:4504When the vintage was gathered, Isa. i. 8.
390:4505Quæ competere possunt.
390:4506Luke 10:23, 24.
390:4507Ut decuit.
390:4508Merito.
390:4509Repræsentationem.
390:4510Æque.
390:4511Tamen.
391:4512Exod. 20:12, Deut. 6:2.
391:4513Luke x. 27.
391:4514Legalem.
391:4515Recidivæ.
391:4516This is perhaps the meaning of “ne plus aliquid observationis exigeret sublimior spe.”
391:4517Nec alius.
391:4518Principaliter.
391:4519Et utramque vitam.
391:4520Ei opponit.
391:4521Caput.
391:4522Dei tui…Marcionites.
391:4523Captanda.
391:4524Præstet.
391:4525i.e., he must needs have it taught and recommended by Christ.
391:4526Viderit.
391:4527As Marcion pretended.
Chapter XXVI.—From St. Luke’s Eleventh Chapter Other Evidence that Christ Comes from the Creator. The Lord’s Prayer and Other Words of Christ. The Dumb Spirit and Christ’s Discourse on Occasion of the Expulsion. The Exclamation of the Woman in the Crowd.
When in a certain place he had been praying to that Father above, 4528 looking up with insolent and audacious eyes to the heaven of the Creator, by whom in His rough and cruel nature he might have been crushed with hail and lightning—just as it was by Him contrived that he was (afterwards) attached to a cross 4529 at Jerusalem—one of his disciples came to him and said, “Master, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.” This he said, forsooth, because he thought that different prayers were required for different gods! Now, he who had advanced such a conjecture as this should first show that another god had been proclaimed by Christ. For nobody would have wanted to know how to pray, before he had learned whom he was to pray to. If, however, he had already learned this, prove it. If you find nowhere any proof, let me tell you 4530 that it was to the Creator that he asked for instruction in prayer, to whom John’s disciples also used to pray. But, inasmuch as John had introduced some new order of prayer, this disciple had not improperly presumed to think that he ought also to ask of Christ whether they too must not (according to some special rule of their Master) pray, not indeed to another god, but in another manner. Christ accordingly 4531 would not have taught His disciple prayer before He had given him the knowledge of God Himself. Therefore what He actually taught was prayer to Him whom the disciple had already known. In short, you may discover in the import 4532 of the prayer what God is addressed therein. To whom can I say, “Father?” 4533 To him who had nothing to do with making me, from whom I do not derive my origin? Or to Him, who, by making and fashioning me, became my parent? 4534 Of whom can I ask for His Holy Spirit? Of him who gives not even the mundane spirit; 4535 or of Him “who maketh His angels spirits,” and whose Spirit it was which in the beginning hovered upon the waters. 4536 Whose kingdom shall I wish to come—his, of whom I never heard as the king of glory; or His, in whose hand are even the hearts of kings? Who shall give me my daily 4537 bread? Shall it be he who produces for me not a grain of millet-seed; 4538 or He who even from heaven gave to His people day by day the bread of angels? 4539 Who shall forgive me my trespasses? 4540 He who, by refusing to judge them, does not retain them; or He who, unless He forgives them, will retain them, even to His judgment? Who shall suffer us not to be led into temptation? He before whom the tempter will never be able to tremble; or He who from the beginning has beforehand condemned 4541 the angel tempter? If any one, with such a form, 4542 invokes another god and not the Creator, he does not pray; he only blasphemes. 4543 In like manner, from whom must I ask that I may receive? Of whom seek, that I may find? To whom knock, that it may be opened to me? 4544 Who has to give to him that asks, but He to whom all things belong, and whose am I also that am the asker? What, however, have I lost before that other god, that I should seek of him and find it. If it be wisdom and prudence, it is the Creator who has hidden them. Shall I resort to him, then, in quest of them? If it be health 4545 and life, they are at the disposal of the Creator. Nor must anything be sought and found anywhere else than there, where it is kept in secret that it may come to light. So, again, at no other door will I knock than at that out of which my privilege has reached me. 4546 In fine, if to receive, and to find, and to be admitted, is the fruit of labour and earnestness to him who has asked, and sought, and knocked, understand that these duties have been enjoined, and results promised, by the Creator. As for that most excellent god of yours, coming as he professes gratuitously to help man, who was not his (creature), 4547 he could not have imposed upon him any labour, or (endowed him with) any earnestness. For he would by this time cease to be the most excellent god, were he not spontaneously to give to every one who does not ask, and permit every one who seeks not to find, and open to every one who does not knock. The Creator, on the contrary, 4548 was able to proclaim these duties and rewards by Christ, in order that man, who by sinning had offended his God, might toil on (in his probation), and by his perseverance in asking might receive, and in seeking might find, and in knocking might enter. Accordingly, the preceding similitude 4549 represents the man who went at night and begged for the loaves, in the light of a friend and not a stranger, and makes him knock at a friend’s house and not at a stranger’s. But even if he has offended, man is more of a friend with the Creator than with the god of Marcion. At His door, therefore, does he knock to whom he had the right of access; whose gate he had found; whom he knew to possess bread; in bed now with His children, whom He had willed to be born. 4550 Even though the knocking is late in the day, it is yet the Creator’s time. To Him belongs the latest hour who owns an entire age 4551 and the end thereof. As for the new god, however, no one could have knocked at his door late, for he has hardly yet 4552 seen the light of morning. It is the Creator, who once shut the door to the Gentiles, which was then knocked at by the Jews, that both rises and gives, if not now to man as a friend, yet not as a stranger, but, as He says, “because of his importunity.” 4553 Importunate, however, the recent god could not have permitted any one to be in the short time (since his appearance). 4554 Him, therefore, whom you call the Creator recognise also as “Father.” It is even He who knows what His children require. For when they asked for bread, He gave them manna from heaven; and when they wanted flesh, He sent them abundance of quails—not a serpent for a fish, nor for an egg a scorpion. 4555 It will, however, appertain to Him not to give evil instead of good, who has both one and the other in His power. Marcion’s god, on the contrary, not having a scorpion, was unable to refuse to give what he did not possess; only He (could do so), who, having a scorpion, yet gives it not. In like manner, it is He who will give the Holy Spirit, at whose command 4556 is also the unholy spirit. When He cast out the “demon which was dumb” 4557 (and by a cure of this sort verified Isaiah), 4558 and having been charged with casting out demons by Beelzebub, He said, “If I by Beelzebub cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out?” 4559 By such a question what does He otherwise mean, than that He ejects the spirits by the same power by which their sons also did—that is, by the power of the Creator? For if you suppose the meaning to be, “If I by Beelzebub, etc., by whom your sons?”—as if He would reproach them with having the power of Beelzebub,—you are met at once by the preceding sentence, that “Satan cannot be divided against himself.” 4560 So that it was not by Beelzebub that even they were casting out demons, but (as we have said) by the power of the Creator; and that He might make this understood, He adds: “But if I with the finger of God cast out demons, is not the kingdom of God come near unto you?” 4561 For the magicians who stood before Pharaoh and resisted Moses called the power of the Creator “the finger of God.” 4562 It was the finger of God, because it was a sign 4563 that even a thing of weakness was yet abundant in strength. This Christ also showed, when, recalling to notice (and not obliterating) those ancient wonders which were really His own, 4564 He said that the power of God must be understood to be the finger of none other God than Him, under 4565 whom it had received this appellation. His kingdom, therefore, was come near to them, whose power was called His “finger.” Well, therefore, did He connect 4566 with the parable of “the strong man armed,” whom “a stronger man still overcame,” 4567 the prince of the demons, whom He had already called Beelzebub and Satan; signifying that it was he who was overcome by the finger of God, and not that the Creator had been subdued by another god. Besides, 4568 how could His kingdom be still standing, with its boundaries, and laws, and functions, whom, even if the whole world were left entire to Him, Marcion’s god could possibly seem to have overcome as “the stronger than He,” if it were not in consequence of His law that even Marcionites were constantly dying, by returning in their dissolution 4569 to the ground, and were so often admonished by even a scorpion, that the Creator had by no means been overcome? 4570 “A (certain) mother of the company exclaims, ‘Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the paps which Thou hast sucked;’ but the Lord said, ‘Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.’” 4571 Now He had in precisely similar terms rejected His mother or His brethren, whilst preferring those who heard and obeyed God. 4572 His mother, however, was not here present with Him. On that former occasion, therefore, He had not denied that He was her son by birth. 4573 On hearing this (salutation) the second time, He the second time transferred, as He had done before, 4574 the “blessedness” to His disciples from the womb and the paps of His mother, from whom, however, unless He had in her (a real mother) He could not have transferred it.
Footnotes
391:4528Luke xi. 1.
391:4529Suffigi.
391:4530Scito.
392:4531Proinde.
392:4532Sensum.
392:4533Luke xi. 2.
392:4534Generavit.
392:4535Mundialis spiritus: perhaps “the breath of life.”
392:4536Gen. i. 2.
392:4537Luke xi. 3.
392:4538Milium.
392:4539Ps. lxviii. 25.
392:4540Luke xi. 4.
392:4541Prædamnavit.
392:4542Hoc ordine.
392:4543Infamat.
392:4544Luke xi. 9.
392:4545Salutem: perhaps salvation.
392:4546Unde sum functus. This obscure clause may mean “the right of praying,” or “the right of access, and boldness to knock.”
392:4547Ad præstandum non suo homini.
392:4548Autem.
392:4549See Luke xi. 5-8.
392:4550A sarcastic allusion to the ante-nuptial error of Marcion, which he has exposed more than once (see book i. chap. xxix. and book iv. chap. xxiii. p. 386.).
392:4551Sæculum.
392:4552Tantum quod = vixdum (Oehler).
393:4553Luke xi. 8.
393:4554Tam cito.
393:4555Luke xi. 11-13.
393:4556Apud quem.
393:4557Luke xi. 14.
393:4558Isa. xxix. 18.
393:4559Luke xi. 19.
393:4560Luke xi. 18.
393:4561Luke xi. 20.
393:4562Ex. viii. 19.
393:4563Significaret.
393:4564Vetustatum scilicet suarum.
393:4565Apud.
393:4566Applicuit.
393:4567Luke 11:21, 22.
393:4568Ceterum.
393:4569Defluendo.
393:4570The scorpion here represents any class of the lowest animals, especially such as stung. The Marcionites impiously made it a reproach to the Creator, that He had formed such worthless and offensive creatures. Compare book i. chap. 17, note 5. p. 283.
393:4571Luke 11:27, 28.
393:4572See above, on Luke viii. 21.
393:4573Natura.
393:4574Proinde.
Chapter XXVII.—Christ’s Reprehension of the Pharisees Seeking a Sign. His Censure of Their Love of Outward Show Rather Than Inward Holiness. Scripture Abounds with Admonitions of a Similar Purport. Proofs of His Mission from the Creator.
I prefer elsewhere refuting 4575 the faults which the Marcionites find in the Creator. It is here enough that they are also found in Christ. 4576 Behold how unequal, inconsistent, and capricious he is! Teaching one thing and doing another, he enjoins “giving to every one that seeks;” and yet he himself refuses to give to those “who seek a sign.” 4577 For a vast age he hides his own light from men, and yet says that a candle must not be hidden, but affirms that it ought to be set upon a candlestick, that it may give light to all. 4578 He forbids cursing again, and cursing much more of course; and yet he heaps his woe upon the Pharisees and doctors of the law. 4579 Who so closely resembles my God as His own Christ? We have often already laid it down for certain, 4580 that He could not have been branded 4581 as the destroyer of the law if He had promulged another god. Therefore even the Pharisee, who invited Him to dinner in the passage before us, 4582 expressed some surprise 4583 in His presence that He had not washed before He sat down to meat, in accordance with the law, since it was the God of the law that He was proclaiming. 4584 Jesus also interpreted the law to him when He told him that they “made clean the outside of the cup and the platter, whereas their inward part was full of ravening and wickedness.” This He said, to signify that by the cleansing of vessels was to be understood before God the purification of men, inasmuch as it was about a man, and not about an unwashed vessel, that even this Pharisee had been treating in His presence. He therefore said: “You wash the outside of the cup,” that is, the flesh, “but you do not cleanse your inside part,” 4585 that is, the soul; adding: “Did not He that made the outside,” that is, the flesh, “also make the inward part,” that is to say, the soul?—by which assertion He expressly declared that to the same God belongs the cleansing of a man’s external and internal nature, both alike being in the power of Him who prefers mercy not only to man’s washing, 4586 but even to sacrifice. 4587 For He subjoins the command: “Give what ye possess as alms, and all things shall be clean unto you.” 4588 Even if another god could have enjoined mercy, he could not have done so previous to his becoming known. Furthermore, it is in this passage evident that they 4589 were not reproved concerning their God, but concerning a point of His instruction to them, when He prescribed to them figuratively the cleansing of their vessels, but really the works of merciful dispositions. In like manner, He upbraids them for tithing paltry herbs, 4590 but at the same time “passing over hospitality 4591 and the love of God.” 4592 The vocation and the love of what God, but Him by whose law of tithes they used to offer their rue and mint? For the whole point of the rebuke lay in this, that they cared about small matters in His service of course, to whom they failed to exhibit their weightier duties when He commanded them: “Thou shalt love with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, the Lord thy God, who hath called thee out of Egypt.” 4593 Besides, time enough had not yet passed to admit of Christ’s requiring so premature—nay, as yet so distasteful 4594 —a love towards a new and recent, not to say a hardly yet developed, 4595 deity. When, again, He upbraids those who caught at the uppermost places and the honour of public salutations, He only follows out the Creator’s course, 4596 who calls ambitious persons of this character “rulers of Sodom,” 4597 who forbids us “to put confidence even in princes,” 4598 and pronounces him to be altogether wretched who places his confidence in man. But whoever 4599 aims at high position, because he would glory in the officious attentions 4600 of other people, (in every such case,) inasmuch as He forbade such attentions (in the shape) of placing hope and confidence in man, He at the same time 4601 censured all who were ambitious of high positions. He also inveighs against the doctors of the law themselves, because they were “lading men with burdens grievous to be borne, which they did not venture to touch with even a finger of their own;” 4602 but not as if He made a mock of 4603 the burdens of the law with any feeling of detestation towards it. For how could He have felt aversion to the law, who used with so much earnestness to upbraid them for passing over its weightier matters, alms—giving, hospitality, 4604 and the love of God? Nor, indeed, was it only these great things (which He recognized), but even 4605 the tithes of rue and the cleansing of cups. But, in truth, He would rather have deemed them excusable for being unable to carry burdens which could not be borne. What, then, are the burdens which He censures? 4606 None but those which they were accumulating of their own accord, when they taught for commandments the doctrines of men; for the sake of private advantage joining house to house, so as to deprive their neighbour of his own; cajoling 4607 the people, loving gifts, pursuing rewards, robbing the poor of the rights of judgment, that they might have the widow for a prey and the fatherless for a spoil. 4608 Of these Isaiah also says, “Woe unto them that are strong in Jerusalem!” 4609 and again, “They that demand you shall rule over you.” 4610 And who did this more than the lawyers? 4611 Now, if these offended Christ, it was as belonging to Him that they offended Him. He would have aimed no blow at the teachers of an alien law. But why is a “woe” pronounced against them for “building the sepulchres of the prophets whom their fathers had killed?” 4612 They rather deserved praise, because by such an act of piety they seemed to show that they did not allow the deeds of their fathers. Was it not because (Christ) was jealous 4613 of such a disposition as the Marcionites denounce, 4614 visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the fourth generation? What “key,” indeed, was it which these lawyers had, 4615 but the interpretation of the law? Into the perception of this they neither entered themselves, even because they did not believe (for “unless ye believe, ye shall not understand”); nor did they permit others to enter, because they preferred to teach them for commandments even the doctrines of men. When, therefore, He reproached those who did not themselves enter in, and also shut the door against others, must He be regarded as a disparager of the law, or as a supporter of it? If a disparager, those who were hindering the law ought to have been pleased; if a supporter, He is no longer an enemy of the law. 4616 But all these imprecations He uttered in order to tarnish the Creator as a cruel Being, 4617 against whom such as offended were destined to have a “woe.” And who would not rather have feared to provoke a cruel Being, 4618 by withdrawing allegiance 4619 from Him? Therefore the more He represented the Creator to be an object of fear, the more earnestly would He teach that He ought to be served. Thus would it behove the Creator’s Christ to act.
Footnotes
393:4575Purgare.
393:4576From the Marcionite point of view.
394:4577Luke xi. 29.
394:4578Luke xi. 33.
394:4579Luke 6:28, Luke 11:37.
394:4580Fiximus.
394:4581Denotari.
394:4582Tunc.
394:4583Retractabat.
394:4584Circumferret.
394:4585Luke xi. 39.
394:4586Lavacro.
394:4587Matt. 9:13, Matt. 12:7, Hos. 8:6.
394:4588Luke xi. 41.
394:4589The Pharisees and lawyers.
394:4590Holuscula.
394:4591Marcion’s gospel had κλῆσιν (vocationem, perhaps a general word for hospitality) instead of κρίσιν, judgment,—a quality which M. did not allow in his god. See Epiphanius, Hæres. xlii., Schol. 26 (Oehler and Fr. Junius).
394:4592Luke xi. 42.
394:4593Deut. vi. 5.
394:4594Amaxam.
394:4595Nondum palam facto.
394:4596Sectam administrat.
394:4597Isa. i. 10.
394:4598Ps. cxviii. 9.
394:4599Quodsiquis.
394:4600Officiis.
394:4601Idem.
394:4602Luke xi. 46.
394:4603Suggillans.
394:4604Vocationem: Marcion’s κλῆσιν.
394:4605Nedum.
395:4606Taxat.
395:4607Clamantes.
395:4608See Isa. 5:5, 23, Isa. 10:2.
395:4609Isa. xxviii. 14.
395:4610The books point to Isa. 3:3, 4 for this; but there is only a slight similarity in the latter clause, even in the Septuagint.
395:4611Legis doctores: the νομικοί of the Gospels.
395:4612Luke xi. 47.
395:4613Zelotes.
395:4614Arguunt.
395:4615Luke xi. 52.
395:4616As Marcion held Him to be.
395:4617A Marcionite position.
395:4618Sævum.
395:4619Deficiendo.
Chapter XXVIII.—Examples from the Old Testament, Balaam, Moses, and Hezekiah, to Show How Completely the Instruction and Conduct of Christ 4620 Are in Keeping with the Will and Purpose of the Creator.
Justly, therefore, was the hypocrisy of the Pharisees displeasing to Him, loving God as they did with their lips, but not with their heart. “Beware,” He says to the disciples, “of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy,” not the proclamation of the Creator. The Son hates those who refused obedience 4621 to the Father; nor does He wish His disciples to show such a disposition towards Him—not (let it be observed) towards another god, against whom such hypocrisy indeed might have been admissible, as that which He wished to guard His disciples against. It is the example of the Pharisees which He forbids. It was in respect of Him against whom the Pharisees were sinning that (Christ) now forbade His disciples to offend. Since, then, He had censured their hypocrisy, which covered the secrets of the heart, and obscured with superficial offices the mysteries of unbelief, because (while holding the key of knowledge) it would neither enter in itself, nor permit others to enter in, He therefore adds, “There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed; neither hid, which shall not be known,” 4622 in order that no one should suppose that He was attempting the revelation and the recognition of an hitherto unknown and hidden god. When He remarks also on their murmurs and taunts, in saying of Him, “This man casteth out devils only through Beelzebub,” He means that all these imputations would come forth to the light of day, and be in the mouths of men in consequence of the promulgation of the Gospel. He then turns to His disciples with these words, “I say unto you, my friends, Be not afraid of them which can only kill the body, and after that have no more power over you.” 4623 They will, however, find Isaiah had already said, “See how the just man is taken away, and no man layeth it to heart.” 4624 “But I will show you whom ye shall fear: fear Him who, after He hath killed, hath power to cast into hell” (meaning, of course, the Creator); “yea, I say unto you, fear Him.” 4625 Now, it would here be enough for my purpose that He forbids offence being given to Him whom He orders to be feared; and that He orders Him to be respected 4626 whom He forbids to be offended; and that He who gives these commands belongs to that very God for whom He procures this fear, this absence of offence, and this respect. But this conclusion I can draw also from the following words: “For I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before God.” 4627 Now they who shall confess Christ will have to be slain 4628 before men, but they will have nothing more to suffer after they have been put to death by them. These therefore will be they whom He forewarns above not to be afraid of being only killed; and this forewarning He offers, in order that He might subjoin a clause on the necessity of confessing Him: “Every one that denieth me before men shall be denied before God” 4629 —by Him, of course, who would have confessed him, if he had only confessed God. Now, He who will confess the confessor is the very same God who will also deny the denier of Himself. Again, if it is the confessor who will have nothing to fear after his violent death, 4630 it is the denier to whom everything will become fearful after his natural death. Since, therefore, that which will have to be feared after death, even the punishment of hell, belongs to the Creator, the denier, too, belongs to the Creator. As with the denier, however, so with the confessor: if he should deny God, he will plainly have to suffer from God, although from men he had nothing more to suffer after they had put him to death. And so Christ is the Creator’s, because He shows that all those who deny Him ought to fear the Creator’s hell. After deterring His disciples from denial of Himself, He adds an admonition to fear blasphemy: “Whosoever shall speak against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him.” 4631 Now, if both the remission and the retention of sin savour of a judicial God, the Holy Ghost, who is not to be blasphemed, will belong to Him, who will not forgive the blasphemy; just as He who, in the preceding passage, was not to be denied, belonged to, Him who would, after He had killed, also cast into hell. Now, since it is Christ who averts blasphemy from the Creator, I am at a loss to know in what manner His adversary 4632 could have come. Else, if by these sayings He throws a black cloud of censure 4633 over the severity of Him who will not forgive blasphemy and will kill even to hell, it follows that the very spirit of that rival god may be blasphemed with impunity, and his Christ denied; and that there is no difference, in fact, between worshipping and despising him; but that, as there is no punishment for the contempt, so there is no reward for the worship, which men need expect. When “brought before magistrates,” and examined, He forbids them “to take thought how they shall answer;” “for,” says He, “the Holy Ghost shall teach you in that very hour what ye ought to say.” 4634 If such an injunction 4635 as this comes from the Creator, the precept will only be His by whom an example was previously given. The prophet Balaam, in Numbers, when sent forth by king Balak to curse Israel, with whom he was commencing war, was at the same moment 4636 filled with the Spirit. Instead of the curse which he was come to pronounce, he uttered the blessing which the Spirit at that very hour inspired him with; having previously declared to the king’s messengers, and then to the king himself, that he could only speak forth that which God should put into his mouth. 4637 The novel doctrines of the new Christ are such as the Creator’s servants initiated long before! But see how clear a difference there is between the example of Moses and of Christ. 4638 Moses voluntarily interferes with brothers 4639 who were quarrelling, and chides the offender: “Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?” He is, however, rejected by him: “Who made thee a prince or a judge over us?” 4640 Christ, on the contrary, when requested by a certain man to compose a strife between him and his brother about dividing an inheritance, refused His assistance, although in so honest a cause. Well, then, my Moses is better than your Christ, aiming as he did at the peace of brethren, and obviating their wrong. But of course the case must be different with Christ, for he is the Christ of the simply good and non-judicial god. “Who,” says he, “made me a judge over you?” 4641 No other word of excuse was he able to find, without using 4642 that with which the wicked, man and impious brother had rejected 4643 the defender of probity and piety! In short, he approved of the excuse, although a bad one, by his use of it; and of the act, although a bad one, by his refusal to make peace between brothers. Or rather, would He not show His resentment 4644 at the rejection of Moses with such a word? And therefore did He not wish in a similar case of contentious brothers, to confound them with the recollection of so harsh a word? Clearly so. For He had Himself been present in Moses, who heard such a rejection—even He, the Spirit of the Creator. 4645 I think that we have already, in another passage, 4646 sufficiently shown that the glory of riches is condemned by our God, “who putteth down the mighty from their throne, and exalts the poor from the dunghill.” 4647 From Him, therefore, will proceed the parable of the rich man, who flattered himself about the increase of his fields, and to Whom God said: “Thou fool, this night shall they require thy soul of thee; then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?” 4648 It was just in the like manner that the king Hezekiah heard from Isaiah the sad doom of his kingdom, when he gloried, before the envoys of Babylon, 4649 in his treasures and the deposits of his precious things. 4650
Footnotes
395:4620As narrated by St. Luke xii. 1-21.
395:4621Contumaces.
395:4622Luke xii. 2.
395:4623Luke xii. 4.
395:4624Isa. lvii. 1.
396:4625Luke xii. 5.
396:4626Demereri.
396:4627Luke xii. 8.
396:4628Occidi habebunt.
396:4629Luke xii. 9.
396:4630Post occisionem.
396:4631Luke xii. 10.
396:4632So full of blasphemy, as he is, against the Creator.
396:4633Infuscat.
396:4634Luke 12:11, 12.
396:4635Documentum.
396:4636Simul.
396:4637Num. xxii.-xxiv.
396:4638A Marcionite objection.
396:4639“Two men of the Hebrews.”—A.V.
396:4640Exod. 2:13, 14.
396:4641Luke 12:13, 14.
397:4642Ne uteretur.
397:4643Excusserat. Oehler interprets the word by temptaverat.
397:4644Nunquid indigne tulerit.
397:4645This is an instance of the title “Spirit” being applied to the divine nature of the Son. See Bp. Bull’s Def. Nic. Fid. (by the translator). [See note 13, p. 375, supra.]
397:4646Above, chap. xv. of this book, p. 369, supra.
397:4647Comp. 1 Sam. 2:8, Ps. 113:7, Luke 1:52.
397:4648Luke xii. 16-20.
397:4649Apud Persas.
397:4650Isa. xxxix.
Chapter XXIX.—Parallels from the Prophets to Illustrate Christ’s Teaching in the Rest of This Chapter of St. Luke. The Sterner Attributes of Christ, in His Judicial Capacity, Show Him to Have Come from the Creator. Incidental Rebukes of Marcion’s Doctrine of Celibacy, and of His Altering of the Text of the Gospel.
Who would be unwilling that we should distress ourselves 4651 about sustenance for our life, or clothing for our body, 4652 but He who has provided these things already for man; and who, therefore, while distributing them to us, prohibits all anxiety respecting them as an outrage 4653 against his liberality?—who has adapted the nature of “life” itself to a condition “better than meat,” and has fashioned the material of “the body,” so as to make it “more than raiment;” whose “ravens, too, neither sow nor reap, nor gather into storehouses, and are yet fed” by Himself; whose “lilies and grass also toil not, nor spin, and yet are clothed” by Him; whose “Solomon, moreover, was transcendent in glory, and yet was not arrayed like” the humble flower. 4654 Besides, nothing can be more abrupt than that one God should be distributing His bounty, while the other should bid us take no thought about (so kindly a) distribution—and that, too, with the intention of derogating (from his liberality). Whether, indeed, it is as depreciating the Creator that he does not wish such trifles to be thought of, concerning which neither the crows nor the lilies labour, because, forsooth, they come spontaneously to hand 4655 by reason of their very worthlessness, 4656 will appear a little further on. Meanwhile, how is it that He chides them as being “of little faith?” 4657 What faith? Does He mean that faith which they were as yet unable to manifest perfectly in a god who has hardly yet revealed, 4658 and whom they were in process of learning as well as they could; or that faith which they for this express reason owed to the Creator, because they believed that He was of His own will supplying these wants of the human race, and therefore took no thought about them? Now, when He adds, “For all these things do the nations of the world seek after,” 4659 even by their not believing in God as the Creator and Giver of all things, since He was unwilling that they should be like these nations, He therefore upbraided them as being defective of faith in the same God, in whom He remarked that the Gentiles were quite wanting in faith. When He further adds, “But your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things,” 4660 I would first ask, what Father Christ would have to be here understood? If He points to their own Creator, He also affirms Him to be good, who knows what His children have need of; but if He refers to that other god, how does he know that food and raiment are necessary to man, seeing that he has made no such provision for him? For if he had known the want, he would have made the provision. If, however, he knows what things man has need of, and yet has failed to supply them, he is in the failure guilty of either malignity or weakness. But when he confessed that these things are necessary to man, he really affirmed that they are good. For nothing that is evil is necessary. So that he will not be any longer a depreciator of the works and the indulgences of the Creator, that I may here complete the answer 4661 which I deferred giving above. Again, if it is another god who has foreseen man’s wants, and is supplying them, how is it that Marcion’s Christ himself promises them? 4662 Is he liberal with another’s property? 4663 “Seek ye,” says he, “the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you”—by himself, of course. But if by himself, what sort of being is he, who shall bestow the things of another? If by the Creator, whose all things are, then who 4664 is he that promises what belongs to another? If these things are “additions” to the kingdom, they must be placed in the second rank; 4665 and the second rank belongs to Him to whom the first also does; His are the food and raiment, whose is the kingdom. Thus to the Creator belongs the entire promise, the full reality 4666 of its parables, the perfect equalization 4667 of its similitudes; for these have respect to none other than Him to whom they have a parity of relation in every point. 4668 We are servants because we have a Lord in our God. We ought “to have our loins girded:” 4669 in other words, we are to be free from the embarrassments of a perplexed and much occupied life; “to have our lights burning,” 4670 that is, our minds kindled by faith, and resplendent with the works of truth. And thus “to wait for our Lord,” 4671 that is, Christ. Whence “returning?” If “from the wedding,” He is the Christ of the Creator, for the wedding is His. If He is not the Creator’s, not even Marcion himself would have gone to the wedding, although invited, for in his god he discovers one who hates the nuptial bed. The parable would therefore have failed in the person of the Lord, if He were not a Being to whom a wedding is consistent. In the next parable also he makes a flagrant mistake, when he assigns to the person of the Creator that “thief, whose hour, if the father of the family had only known, he would not have suffered his house to be broken through.” 4672 How can the Creator wear in any way the aspect of a thief, Lord as He is of all mankind? No one pilfers or plunders his own property, but he 4673 rather acts the part of one who swoops down on the things of another, and alienates man from his Lord. 4674 Again, when He indicates to us that the devil is “the thief,” whose hour at the very beginning of the world, if man had known, he would never have been broken in upon 4675 by him, He warns us “to be ready,” for this reason, because “we know not the hour when the Son of man shall come” 4676 —not as if He were Himself the thief, but rather as being the judge of those who prepared not themselves, and used no precaution against the thief. Since, then, He is the Son of man, I hold Him to be the Judge, and in the Judge I claim 4677 the Creator. If then in this passage he displays the Creator’s Christ under the title “Son of man,” that he may give us some presage 4678 of the thief, of the period of whose coming we are ignorant, you still have it ruled above, that no one is the thief of his own property; besides which, there is our principle also unimpaired 4679 —that in as far as He insists on the Creator as an object of fear, in so far does He belong to the Creator, and does the Creator’s work. When, therefore, Peter asked whether He had spoken the parable “unto them, or even to all,” 4680 He sets forth for them, and for all who should bear rule in the churches, the similitude of stewards. 4681 That steward who should treat his fellow-servants well in his Lord’s absence, would on his return be set as ruler over all his property; but he who should act otherwise should be severed, and have his portion with the unbelievers, when his lord should return on the day when he looked not for him, at the hour when he was not aware 4682 —even that Son of man, the Creator’s Christ, not a thief, but a Judge. He accordingly, in this passage, either presents to us the Lord as a Judge, and instructs us in His character, 4683 or else as the simply good god; if the latter, he now also affirms his judicial attribute, although the heretic refuses to admit it. For an attempt is made to modify this sense when it is applied to his god,—as if it were an act of serenity and mildness simply to sever the man off, and to assign him a portion with the unbelievers, under the idea that he was not summoned (before the judge), but only returned to his own state! As if this very process did not imply a judicial act! What folly! What will be the end of the severed ones? Will it not be the forfeiture of salvation, since their separation will be from those who shall attain salvation? What, again, will be the condition of the unbelievers? Will it not be damnation? Else, if these severed and unfaithful ones shall have nothing to suffer, there will, on the other hand, be nothing for the accepted and the believers to obtain. If, however, the accepted and the believers shall attain salvation, it must needs be that the rejected and the unbelieving should incur the opposite issue, even the loss of salvation. Now here is a judgment, and He who holds it out before us belongs to the Creator. Whom else than the God of retribution can I understand by Him who shall “beat His servants with stripes,” either “few or many,” and shall exact from them what He had committed to them? Whom is it suitable 4684 for me to obey, but Him who remunerates? Your Christ proclaims, “I am come to send fire on the earth.” 4685 That 4686 most lenient being, the lord who has no hell, not long before had restrained his disciples from demanding fire on the churlish village. Whereas He 4687 burnt up Sodom and Gomorrah with a tempest of fire. Of Him the psalmist sang, “A fire shall go out before Him, and burn up His enemies round about.” 4688 By Hoses He uttered the threat, “I will send a fire upon the cities of Judah;” 4689 and 4690 by Isaiah, “A fire has been kindled in mine anger.” He cannot lie. If it is not He who uttered His voice out of even the burning bush, it can be of no importance 4691 what fire you insist upon being understood. Even if it be but figurative fire, yet, from the very fact that he takes from my element illustrations for His own sense, He is mine, because He uses what is mine. The similitude of fire must belong to Him who owns the reality thereof. But He will Himself best explain the quality of that fire which He mentioned, when He goes on to say, “Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division.” 4692 It is written “a sword,” 4693 but Marcion makes an emendation 4694 of the word, just as if a division were not the work of the sword. He, therefore, who refused to give peace, intended also the fire of destruction. As is the combat, so is the burning. As is the sword, so is the flame. Neither is suitable for its lord. He says at last, “The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against the daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against the mother-in-law.” 4695 Since this battle among the relatives 4696 was sung by the prophet’s trumpet in the very words, I fear that Micah 4697 must have predicted it to Marcion’s Christ! On this account He pronounced them “hypocrites,” because they could “discern the face of the sky and the earth, but could not distinguish this time,” 4698 when of course He ought to have been recognised, fulfilling (as he was) all things which had been predicted concerning them, and teaching them so. But then who could know the times of him of whom he had no evidence to prove his existence? Justly also does He upbraid them for “not even of themselves judging what is right.” 4699 Of old does He command by Zechariah, “Execute the judgment of truth and peace;” 4700 by Jeremiah, “Execute judgment and righteousness;” 4701 by Isaiah, “Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow,” 4702 charging it as a fault upon the vine of Sorech, 4703 that when “He looked for righteousness therefrom, there was only a cry” 4704 (of oppression). The same God who had taught them to act as He commanded them, 4705 was now requiring that they should act of their own accord. 4706 He who had sown the precept, was now pressing to an abundant harvest from it. But how absurd, that he should now be commanding them to judge righteously, who was destroying God the righteous Judge! For the Judge, who commits to prison, and allows no release out of it without the payment of “the very last mite,” 4707 they treat of in the person of the Creator, with the view of disparaging Him. Which cavil, however, I deem it necessary to meet with the same answer. 4708 For as often as the Creator’s severity is paraded before us, so often is Christ (shown to be) His, to whom He urges submission by the motive of fear.
Footnotes
397:4651Agere curam: take thought.—A.V.
397:4652Luke xii. 22-28.
397:4653Æmulam.
397:4654Flosculo: see Luke xii. 24-27.
397:4655Ultro subjectis.
397:4656Pro sua vilitate.
397:4657Luke xii. 28.
397:4658Tantum quod revelato.
397:4659Luke xii. 30.
397:4660Luke xii. 30.
398:4661Expunxerim.
398:4662Luke xii. 31.
398:4663De alieno bonus.
398:4664Qualis.
398:4665Secundo gradu.
398:4666Status.
398:4667Peræquatio.
398:4668Cui per omnia pariaverint.
398:4669Luke xii. 35.
398:4670Luke xii. 35.
398:4671Luke xii. 36.
398:4672Luke xii. 39.
398:4673Sed ille potius.
398:4674A censure on Marcion’s Christ.
398:4675Suffossus.
398:4676Luke xi. 40.
398:4677Defendo.
398:4678Portendat.
398:4679Salvo.
398:4680Luke xii. 41.
398:4681Actorum.
398:4682Luke xii. 41-46.
398:4683Illi catechizat.
399:4684Decet.
399:4685Luke xii. 49.
399:4686Ille: Marcion’s Christ.
399:4687Iste: the Creator.
399:4688Ps. xcvii. 3.
399:4689Hos. viii. 14.
399:4690Vel: or, “if you please;” indicating some uncertainty in the quotation. The passage is more like Jer. xv. 14 than anything in Isaiah (see, however, Isa. 30:27, 30).
399:4691Viderit.
399:4692Luke xii. 51.
399:4693Pamelius supposes that Tertullian here refers to St. Matthew’s account, where the word is μάχαιραν, on the ground that the mss. and versions of St. Luke’s Gospel invariably read διαμερισμόν. According to Rigaltius, however, Tertullian means that sword is written in Marcion’s Gospel of Luke, as if the heretic had adulterated the passage. Tertullian no doubt professes to quote all along from the Gospel of Luke, according to Marcion’s reading.
399:4694St. Luke’s word being διαμερισμόν (division), not μάχαιραν (sword).
399:4695Luke xii. 53.
399:4696Parentes.
399:4697Mic. vii. 6.
399:4698Luke xii. 56.
399:4699Luke xii. 57.
399:4700Zech. viii. 16.
399:4701Jer. xxii. 3.
399:4702Isa. i. 17.
399:4703Tertullian calls by a proper name the vineyard which Isaiah (in his Isa. 5.) designates “the vineyard of the Lord of hosts,” and interprets to be “the house of Israel” (Isa. 5.7). The designation comes from Isa. 5.2, where the original clause ירשֹ והע[טָיִּוַ is translated in the Septuagint, Καὶ ἐφύτευσα ἄμπελον Σωρήκ. Tertullian is most frequently in close agreement with the LXX.
399:4704Isa. v. 7.
399:4705Ex præcepto.
399:4706Ex arbitrio.
399:4707Luke 12:58, 59.
399:4708Eodem gradu.
Chapter XXX.—Parables of the Mustard-Seed, and of the Leaven. Transition to the Solemn Exclusion Which Will Ensue When the Master of the House Has Shut the Door. This Judicial Exclusion Will Be Administered by Christ, Who is Shown Thereby to Possess the Attribute of the Creator.
When the question was again raised concerning a cure performed on the Sabbath-day, how did He discuss it: “Doth not each of you on the Sabbath loose his ass or his ox from the stall, and lead him away to watering?” 4709 When, therefore, He did a work according to the condition prescribed by the law, He affirmed, instead of breaking, the law, which commanded that no work should be done, except what might be done for any living being; 4710 and if for any one, then how much more for a human life? In the case of the parables, it is allowed that I 4711 everywhere require a congruity. “The kingdom of God,” says He, “is like a grain of mustard-seed which a man took and cast into his garden.” Who must be understood as meant by the man? Surely Christ, because (although Marcion’s) he was called “the Son of man.” He received from the Father the seed of the kingdom, that is, the word of the gospel, and sowed it in his garden—in the world, of course 4712 —in man at the present day, for instance. 4713 Now, whereas it is said, “in his garden,” but neither the world nor man is his property, but the Creator’s, therefore He who sowed seed in His own ground is shown to be the Creator. Else, if, to evade this snare, 4714 they should choose to transfer the person of the man from Christ to any person who receives the seed of the kingdom and sows it in the garden of his own heart, not even this meaning 4715 would suit any other than the Creator. For how happens it, if the kingdom belong to the most lenient god, that it is closely followed up by a fervent judgment, the severity of which brings weeping? 4716 With regard, indeed, to the following similitude, I have my fears lest it should somehow 4717 presage the kingdom of the rival god! For He compared it, not to the unleavened bread which the Creator is more familiar with, but to leaven. 4718 Now this is a capital conjecture for men who are begging for arguments. I must, however, on my side, dispel one fond conceit by another, 4719 and contend with even leaven is suitable for the kingdom of the Creator, because after it comes the oven, or, if you please, 4720 the furnace of hell. How often has He already displayed Himself as a Judge, and in the Judge the Creator? How often, indeed, has He repelled, and in the repulse condemned? In the present passage, for instance, He says, “When once the master of the house is risen up;” 4721 but in what sense except that in which Isaiah said, “When He ariseth to shake terribly the earth?” 4722 “And hath shut to the door,” thereby shutting out the wicked, of course; and when these knock, He will answer, “I know you not whence ye are;” and when they recount how “they have eaten and drunk in His presence,” He will further say to them, “Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 4723 But where? Outside, no doubt, when they shall have been excluded with the door shut on them by Him. There will therefore be punishment inflicted by Him who excludes for punishment, when they shall behold the righteous entering the kingdom of God, but themselves detained without. By whom detained outside? If by the Creator, who shall be within receiving the righteous into the kingdom? The good God. What, therefore, is the Creator about, 4724 that He should detain outside for punishment those whom His adversary shut out, when He ought rather to have kindly received them, if they must come into His hands, 4725 for the greater irritation of His rival? But when about to exclude the wicked, he must, of course, either be aware that the Creator would detain them for punishment, or not be aware. Consequently either the wicked will be detained by the Creator against the will of the excluder, in which case he will be inferior to the Creator, submitting to Him unwillingly; or else, if the process is carried out with his will, then he himself has judicially determined its execution; and then he who is the very originator of the Creator’s infamy, will not prove to be one whit better than the Creator. Now, if these ideas be incompatible with reason—of one being supposed to punish, and the other to liberate—then to one only power will appertain both the judgment and the kingdom and while they both belong to one, He who executeth judgment can be none else than the Christ of the Creator.
Footnotes
400:4709Luke xiii. 15.
400:4710Omni animæ.
400:4711Recognoscor.
400:4712Utique.
400:4713Puta.
400:4714Laqueum.
400:4715Materia.
400:4716Lacrimosa austeritate, see Luke xiii. 28.
400:4717Forte.
400:4718Luke 13:20, 21.
400:4719Vanitatem vanitate.
400:4720Vel.
400:4721Luke xiii. 25.
400:4722Isa. ii. 19.
400:4723Luke xiii. 25-28.
400:4724Quid ergo illuc Creatori.
400:4725Si stique.
Chapter XXXI.—Christ’s Advice to Invite the Poor in Accordance with Isaiah. The Parable of the Great Supper a Pictorial Sketch of the Creator’s Own Dispensations of Mercy and Grace. The Rejections of the Invitation Paralleled by Quotations from the Old Testament. Marcion’s Christ Could Not Fulfil the Conditions Indicated in This Parable. The Absurdity of the Marcionite Interpretation.
What kind of persons does He bid should be invited to a dinner or a supper? 4726 Precisely such as he had pointed out by Isaiah: “Deal thy bread to the hungry man; and the beggars—even such as have no home—bring in to thine house,” 4727 because, no doubt, they are “unable to recompense” your act of humanity. Now, since Christ forbids the recompense to be expected now, but promises it “at the resurrection,” this is the very plan 4728 of the Creator, who dislikes those who love gifts and follow after reward. Consider also to which deity 4729 is better suited the parable of him who issued invitations: “A certain man made a great supper, and bade many.” 4730 The preparation for the supper is no doubt a figure of the abundant provision 4731 of eternal life. I first remark, that strangers, and persons unconnected by ties of relationship, are not usually invited to a supper; but that members of the household and family are more frequently the favoured guests. To the Creator, then, it belonged to give the invitation, to whom also appertained those who were to be invited—whether considered as men, through their descent from Adam, or as Jews, by reason of their fathers; not to him who possessed no claim to them either by nature or prerogative. My next remark is, 4732 if He issues the invitations who has prepared the supper, then, in this sense the supper is the Creator’s, who sent to warn the guests. These had been indeed previously invited by the fathers, but were to be admonished by the prophets. It certainly is not the feast of him who never sent a messenger to warn—who never did a thing before towards issuing an invitation, but came down himself on a sudden—only then 4733 beginning to be known, when already 4734 giving his invitation; only then inviting, when already compelling to his banquet; appointing one and the same hour both for the supper and the invitation. But when invited, they excuse themselves. 4735 And fairly enough, if the invitation came from the other god, because it was so sudden; if, however, the excuse was not a fair one, then the invitation was not a sudden one. Now, if the invitation was not a sudden one, it must have been given by the Creator—even by Him of old time, whose call they had at last refused. They first refused it when they said to Aaron, “Make us gods, which shall go before us;” 4736 and again, afterwards, when “they heard indeed with the ear, but did not understand” 4737 their calling of God. In a manner most germane 4738 to this parable, He said by Jeremiah: “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people; and ye shall walk in all my ways, which I have commanded you.” 4739 This is the invitation of God. “But,” says He, “they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear.” 4740 This is the refusal of the people. “They departed, and walked every one in the imagination of their evil heart.” 4741 “I have bought a field—and I have bought some oxen—and I have married a wife.” 4742 And still He urges them: “I have sent unto you all my servants the prophets, rising early even before daylight.” 4743 The Holy Spirit is here meant, the admonisher of the guests. “Yet my people hearkened not unto me, nor inclined their ear, but hardened their neck.” 4744 This was reported to the Master of the family. Then He was moved (He did well to be moved; for, as Marcion denies emotion to his god, He must be therefore my God), and commanded them to invite out of “the streets and lanes of the city.” 4745 Let us see whether this is not the same in purport as His words by Jeremiah: “Have I been a wilderness to the house of Israel, or a land left uncultivated?” 4746 That is to say: “Then have I none whom I may call to me; have I no place whence I may bring them?” “Since my people have said, We will come no more unto thee.” 4747 Therefore He sent out to call others, but from the same city. 4748 My third remark is this, 4749 that although the place abounded with people, He yet commanded that they gather men from the highways and the hedges. In other words, we are now gathered out of the Gentile strangers; with that jealous resentment, no doubt, which He expressed in Deuteronomy: “I will hide my face from them, and I will show them what shall happen in the last days 4750 (how that others shall possess their place); for they are a froward generation, children in whom is no faith. They have moved me to jealousy by that which is no god, and they have provoked me to anger with their idols; and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people: I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation” 4751 —even with us, whose hope the Jews still entertain. 4752 But this hope the Lord says they should not realize; 4753 “Sion being left as a cottage 4754 in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers,” 4755 since the nation rejected the latest invitation to Christ. (Now, I ask,) after going through all this course of the Creator’s dispensation and prophecies, what there is in it which can possibly be assigned to him who has done all his work at one hasty stroke, 4756 and possesses neither the Creator’s 4757 course nor His dispensation in harmony with the parable? Or, again in what will consist his first invitation, 4758 and what his admonition 4759 at the second stage? Some at first would surely decline; others afterwards must have accepted.” 4760 But now he comes to invite both parties promiscuously out of the city, 4761 out of the hedges, 4762 contrary to the drift 4763 of the parable. It is impossible for him now to condemn as scorners of his invitation 4764 those whom he has never yet invited, and whom he is approaching with so much earnestness. If, however, he condemns them beforehand as about to reject his call, then beforehand he also predicts 4765 the election of the Gentiles in their stead. Certainly 4766 he means to come the second time for the very purpose of preaching to the heathen. But even if he does mean to come again, I imagine it will not be with the intention of any longer inviting guests, but of giving to them their places. Meanwhile, you who interpret the call to this supper as an invitation to a heavenly banquet of spiritual satiety and pleasure, must remember that the earthly promises also of wine and oil and corn, and even of the city, are equally employed by the Creator as figures of spiritual things.
Footnotes
401:4726Luke xiv. 12-14.
401:4727Isa. lviii. 7.
401:4728Forma.
401:4729Cui parti.
401:4730Luke xiv. 16.
401:4731Saturitatem.
401:4732Dehinc.
401:4733Tantum quod…jam.
401:4734Tantum quod…jam.
401:4735Luke xiv. 18.
401:4736Ex. xxxii. 1.
401:4737Isa. vi. 10.
401:4738Pertinentissime.
401:4739Jer. vii. 23.
401:4740Jer. vii. 24.
401:4741Jer. xi. 8.
401:4742Luke xiv. 18-20.
401:4743Jer. 7:25, Jer. 25:4, Jer. 26:5, Jer. 35:15, Jer. 44:4.
401:4744Jer. vii. 26.
401:4745Luke xiv. 21.
401:4746Jer. ii. 31.
401:4747Jer. ii. 31.
401:4748Luke xiv. 23.
401:4749Dehinc.
402:4750ἐπ᾽ ἐσχάτων ἡμερῶν, Septuagint.
402:4751Deut. 32:20, 21.
402:4752Gerunt: although vainly at present (“jam vana in Judæis”—Oehler); Semler conjectures “gemunt, bewail.”
402:4753Gustaturos.
402:4754Specula, “a look-out;” σκηνή is the word in LXX.
402:4755Isa. i. 8.
402:4756Semel.
402:4757This is probably the meaning of a very involved sentence: “Quid ex hoc ordine secundum dispensationem et prædicationes Creatoris recensendo competit illi, cujus (“Creatoris”—Oehler) nec ordinem habet nec dispositionem ad parabolæ conspirationem qui totum opus semel facit?”
402:4758“By the fathers.” See above.
402:4759“By the prophets.” See also above.
402:4760An obscure sentence, which thus runs in the original: “Ante debent alii excusare, postea alii convenisse.”
402:4761The Jews.
402:4762The Gentiles.
402:4763Speculum.
402:4764Fastidiosos.
402:4765Portendit.
402:4766Plane: This is a Marcionite position (Oehler).
Chapter XXXII.—A Sort of Sorites, as the Logicians Call It, to Show that the Parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Drachma Have No Suitable Application to the Christ of Marcion.
Who sought after the lost sheep and the lost piece of silver? 4767 Was it not the loser? But who was the loser? Was it not he who once possessed 4768 them? Who, then, was that? Was it not he to whom they belonged? 4769 Since, then, man is the property of none other than the Creator, He possessed Him who owned him; He lost him who once possessed him; He sought him who lost him; He found him who sought him; He rejoiced who found him. Therefore the purport 4770 of neither parable has anything whatever to do with him 4771 to whom belongs neither the sheep nor the piece of silver, that is to say, man. For he lost him not, because he possessed him not; and he sought him not, because he lost him not; and he found him not, because he sought him not; and he rejoiced not, because he found him not. Therefore, to rejoice over the sinner’s repentance—that is, at the recovery of lost man—is the attribute of Him who long ago professed that He would rather that the sinner should repent and not die.
Footnotes
402:4767Luke xv. 1-10.
402:4768Habuit.
402:4769Cujus fuit: i.e., each of the things respectively.
402:4770Argumentum.
402:4771Vacat circa eum.
Chapter XXXIII.—The Marcionite Interpretation of God and Mammon Refuted. The Prophets Justify Christ’s Admonition Against Covetousness and Pride. John Baptist the Link Between the Old and the New Dispensations of the Creator. So Said Christ—But So Also Had Isaiah Said Long Before. One Only God, the Creator, by His Own Will Changed the Dispensations. No New God Had a Hand in the Change.
What the two masters are who, He says, cannot be served, 4772 on the ground that while one is pleased 4773 the other must needs be displeased, 4774 He Himself makes clear, when He mentions God and mammon. Then, if you have no interpreter by you, you may learn again from Himself what He would have understood by mammon. 4775 For when advising us to provide for ourselves the help of friends in worldly affairs, after the example of that steward who, when removed from his office, 4776 relieves his lord’s debtors by lessening their debts with a view to their recompensing him with their help, He said, “And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,” that is to say, of money, even as the steward had done. Now we are all of us aware that money is the instigator 4777 of unrighteousness, and the lord of the whole world. Therefore, when he saw the covetousness of the Pharisees doing servile worship 4778 to it, He hurled 4779 this sentence against them, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” 4780 Then the Pharisees, who were covetous of riches, derided Him, when they understood that by mammon He meant money. Let no one think that under the word mammon the Creator was meant, and that Christ called them off from the service of the Creator. What folly! Rather learn therefrom that one God was pointed out by Christ. For they were two masters whom He named, God and mammon—the Creator and money. You cannot indeed serve God—Him, of course whom they seemed to serve—and mammon to whom they preferred to devote themselves. 4781 If, however, he was giving himself out as another god, it would not be two masters, but three, that he had pointed out. For the Creator was a master, and much more of a master, to be sure, 4782 than mammon, and more to be adored, as being more truly our Master. Now, how was it likely that He who had called mammon a master, and had associated him with God, should say nothing of Him who was really the Master of even these, that is, the Creator? Or else, by this silence respecting Him did He concede that service might be rendered to Him, since it was to Himself alone and to mammon that He said service could not be (simultaneously) rendered? When, therefore, He lays down the position that God is one, since He would have been sure to mention 4783 the Creator if He were Himself a rival 4784 to Him, He did (virtually) name the Creator, when He refrained from insisting” 4785 that He was Master alone, without a rival god. Accordingly, this will throw light upon the sense in which it was said, “If ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?” 4786 “In the unrighteous mammon,” that is to say, in unrighteous riches, not in the Creator; for even Marcion allows Him to be righteous: “And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who will give to you that which is mine?” 4787 For whatever is unrighteous ought to be foreign to the servants of God. But in what way was the Creator foreign to the Pharisees, seeing that He was the proper God of the Jewish nation? Forasmuch then as the words, “Who will entrust to you the truer riches?” and, “Who will give you that which is mine?” are only suitable to the Creator and not to mammon, He could not have uttered them as alien to the Creator, and in the interest of the rival god. He could only seem to have spoken them in this sense, if, when remarking 4788 their unfaithfulness to the Creator and not to mammon, He had drawn some distinctions between the Creator (in his manner of mentioning Him) and the rival god—how that the latter would not commit his own truth to those who were unfaithful to the Creator. How then can he possibly seem to belong to another god, if He be not set forth, with the express intention of being separated 4789 from the very thing which is in question. But when the Pharisees “justified themselves before men,” 4790 and placed their hope of reward in man, He censured them in the sense in which the prophet Jeremiah said, “Cursed is the man that trusteth in man.” 4791 Since the prophet went on to say, “But the Lord knoweth your hearts,” 4792 he magnified the power of that God who declared Himself to be as a lamp, “searching the reins and the heart.” 4793 When He strikes at pride in the words: “That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God,” 4794 He recalls Isaiah: “For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is arrogant and lifted up, and they shall be brought low.” 4795 I can now make out why Marcion’s god was for so long an age concealed. He was, I suppose, waiting until he had learnt all these things from the Creator. He continued his pupillage up to the time of John, and then proceeded forthwith to announce the kingdom of God, saying: “The law and the prophets were until John; since that time the kingdom of God is proclaimed.” 4796 Just as if we also did not recognise in John a certain limit placed between the old dispensation and the new, at which Judaism ceased and Christianity began—without, however, supposing that it was by the power of another god that there came about a cessation 4797 of the law and the prophets and the commencement of that gospel in which is the kingdom of God, Christ Himself. For although, as we have shown, the Creator foretold that the old state of things would pass away and a new state would succeed, yet, inasmuch as John is shown to be both the forerunner and the preparer of the ways of that Lord who was to introduce the gospel and publish the kingdom of God, it follows from the very fact that John has come, that Christ must be that very Being who was to follow His harbinger John. So that, if the old course has ceased and the new has begun, with John intervening between them, there will be nothing wonderful in it, because it happens according to the purpose of the Creator; so that you may get a better proof for the kingdom of God from any quarter, however anomalous, 4798 than from the conceit that the law and the prophets ended in John, and a new state of things began after him. “More easily, therefore, may heaven and earth pass away—as also the law and the prophets—than that one tittle of the Lord’s words should fail.” 4799 “For,” as says Isaiah: “the word of our God shall stand for ever.” 4800 Since even then by Isaiah it was Christ, the Word and Spirit 4801 of the Creator, who prophetically described John as “the voice of one crying in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord,” 4802 and as about to come for the purpose of terminating thenceforth the course of the law and the prophets; by their fulfilment and not their extinction, and in order that the kingdom of God might be announced by Christ, He therefore purposely added the assurance that the elements would more easily pass away than His words fail; affirming, as He did, the further fact, that what He had said concerning John had not fallen to the ground.
Footnotes
402:4772Luke xvi. 13.
402:4773Defendi.
402:4774Offendi.
403:4775What in the Punic language is called Mammon, says Rigaltius, the Latins call lucrum, “gain or lucre.” See Augustine, Serm. xxxv. de Verbo domini. I would add Jerome, On the VI. of Matthew where he says: “In the Syriac tongue, riches are called mammon.” And Augustine, in another passage, book ii., On the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, says: “Riches in Hebrew are said to be called mammon. This is evidently a Punic word, for in that language the synonyme for gain (lucrum) is mammon.” Compare the same author on Ps. ciii. (Oehler).
403:4776Ab actu.
403:4777Auctorem.
403:4778Famulatam.
403:4779Ammentavit.
403:4780Luke xvi. 13.
403:4781Magis destinabantur: middle voice.
403:4782Utique.
403:4783Nominaturus.
403:4784Alius.
403:4785Quem non posuit.
403:4786Luke xvi. 11.
403:4787Meum: Luke xvi. 12, where, however, the word is τὸ ὑμέτερον, that which is your own.”
403:4788Notando.
403:4789Ad hoc ut seperatur.
403:4790Luke xvi. 15.
403:4791Jer. xvii. 5.
403:4792Jer. xvii. 10, in sense but not in letter.
403:4793Jer. xx. 12.
403:4794Luke xvi. 15.
403:4795Isa. ii. 12 (Sept).
404:4796Luke xvi. 16.
404:4797Sedatio: literally, “a setting to rest,” ἠρέμησις.
404:4798Ut undeunde magis probetur…regnum Dei.
404:4799Luke 16:17, Luke 21:23.
404:4800Isa. xl. 8.
404:4801See above, note on chap. xxviii., towards the end, on this designation of Christ’s divine nature.
404:4802Isa. xl. 3.
Chapter XXXIV.—Moses, Allowing Divorce, and Christ Prohibiting It, Explained. John Baptist and Herod. Marcion’s Attempt to Discover an Antithesis in the Parable of the Rich Man and the Poor Man in Hades Confuted. The Creator’s Appointment Manifested in Both States.
But Christ prohibits divorce, saying, “Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery; and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband, also committeth adultery.” 4803 In order to forbid divorce, He makes it unlawful to marry a woman that has been put away. Moses, however, permitted repudiation in Deuteronomy: “When a man hath taken a wife, and hath lived with her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found unchastity in her; then let him write her a bill of divorcement and give it in her hand, and send her away out of his house.” 4804 You see, therefore, that there is a difference between the law and the gospel—between Moses and Christ? 4805 To be sure there is! 4806 But then you have rejected that other gospel which witnesses to the same verity and the same Christ. 4807 There, while prohibiting divorce, He has given us a solution of this special question respecting it: “Moses,” says He, “because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to give a bill of divorcement; but from the beginning it was not so” 4808 —for this reason, indeed, because He who had “made them male and female” had likewise said, “They twain shall become one flesh; what therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” 4809 Now, by this answer of His (to the Pharisees), He both sanctioned the provision of Moses, who was His own (servant), and restored to its primitive purpose 4810 the institution of the Creator, whose Christ He was. Since, however, you are to be refuted out of the Scriptures which you have received, I will meet you on your own ground, as if your Christ were mine. When, therefore, He prohibited divorce, and yet at the same time represented 4811 the Father, even Him who united male and female, must He not have rather exculpated 4812 than abolished the enactment of Moses? But, observe, if this Christ be yours when he teaches contrary to Moses and the Creator, on the same principle must He be mine if I can show that His teaching is not contrary to them. I maintain, then, that there was a condition in the prohibition which He now made of divorce; the case supposed being, that a man put away his wife for the express purpose of 4813 marrying another. His words are: “Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery; and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband, also committeth adultery,” 4814 —“put away,” that is, for the reason wherefore a woman ought not to be dismissed, that another wife may be obtained. For he who marries a woman who is unlawfully put away is as much of an adulterer as the man who marries one who is un-divorced. Permanent is the marriage which is not rightly dissolved; to marry, 4815 therefore, whilst matrimony is undissolved, is to commit adultery. Since, therefore, His prohibition of divorce was a conditional one, He did not prohibit absolutely; and what He did not absolutely forbid, that He permitted on some occasions, 4816 when there is an absence of the cause why He gave His prohibition. In very deed 4817 His teaching is not contrary to Moses, whose precept He partially 4818 defends, I will not 4819 say confirms. If, however, you deny that divorce is in any way permitted by Christ, how is it that you on your side 4820 destroy marriage, not uniting man and woman, nor admitting to the sacrament of baptism and of the eucharist those who have been united in marriage anywhere else, 4821 unless they should agree together to repudiate the fruit of their marriage, and so the very Creator Himself? Well, then, what is a husband to do in your sect, 4822 if his wife commit adultery? Shall he keep her? But your own apostle, you know, 4823 does not permit “the members of Christ to be joined to a harlot.” 4824 Divorce, therefore, when justly deserved, 4825 has even in Christ a defender. So that Moses for the future must be considered as being confirmed by Him, since he prohibits divorce in the same sense as Christ does, if any unchastity should occur in the wife. For in the Gospel of Matthew he says, “Whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery.” 4826 He also is deemed equally guilty of adultery, who marries a woman put away by her husband. The Creator, however, except on account of adultery, does not put asunder what He Himself joined together, the same Moses in another passage enacting that he who had married after violence to a damsel, should thenceforth not have it in his power to put away his wife. 4827 Now, if a compulsory marriage contracted after violence shall be permanent, how much rather shall a voluntary one, the result of agreement! This has the sanction of the prophet: “Thou shalt not forsake the wife of thy youth.” 4828 Thus you have Christ following spontaneously the tracks of the Creator everywhere, both in permitting divorce and in forbidding it. You find Him also protecting marriage, in whatever direction you try to escape. He prohibits divorce when He will have the marriage inviolable; He permits divorce when the marriage is spotted with unfaithfulness. You should blush when you refuse to unite those whom even your Christ has united; and repeat the blush when you disunite them without the good reason why your Christ would have them separated. I have 4829 now to show whence the Lord derived this decision 4830 of His, and to what end He directed it. It will thus become more fully evident that His object was not the abolition of the Mosaic ordinance 4831 by any suddenly devised proposal of divorce; because it was not suddenly proposed, but had its root in the previously mentioned John. For John reproved Herod, because he had illegally married the wife of his deceased brother, who had a daughter by her (a union which the law permitted only on the one occasion of the brother dying childless, 4832 when it even prescribed such a marriage, in order that by his own brother, and from his own wife, 4833 seed might be reckoned to the deceased husband), 4834 and was in consequence cast into prison, and finally, by the same Herod, was even put to death. The Lord having therefore made mention of John, and of course of the occurrence of his death, hurled His censure 4835 against Herod in the form of unlawful marriages and of adultery, pronouncing as an adulterer even the man who married a woman that had been put away from her husband. This he said in order the more severely to load Herod with guilt, who had taken his brother’s wife, after she had been loosed from her husband not less by death than by divorce; who had been impelled thereto by his lust, not by the prescription of the (Levirate) law—for, as his brother had left a daughter, the marriage with the widow could not be lawful on that very account; 4836 and who, when the prophet asserted against him the law, had therefore put him to death. The remarks I have advanced on this case will be also of use to me in illustrating the subsequent parable of the rich man 4837 tormented in hell, and the poor man resting in Abraham’s bosom. 4838 For this passage, so far as its letter goes, comes before us abruptly; but if we regard its sense and purport, it naturally 4839 fits in with the mention of John wickedly slain, and of Herod, who had been condemned by him for his impious marriage. 4840 It sets forth in bold outline 4841 the end of both of them, the “torments” of Herod and the “comfort” of John, that even now Herod might hear that warning: “They have there Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.” 4842 Marcion, however, violently turns the passage to another end, and decides that both the torment and the comfort are retributions of the Creator reserved in the next life 4843 for those who have obeyed the law and the prophets; whilst he defines the heavenly bosom and harbour to belong to Christ and his own god. Our answer to this is, that the Scripture itself which dazzles 4844 his sight expressly distinguishes between Abraham’s bosom, where the poor man dwells, and the infernal place of torment. “Hell” (I take it) means one thing, and “Abraham’s bosom” another. “A great gulf” is said to separate those regions, and to hinder a passage from one to the other. Besides, the rich man could not have “lifted up his eyes,” 4845 and from a distance too, except to a superior height, and from the said distance all up through the vast immensity of height and depth. It must therefore be evident to every man of intelligence who has ever heard of the Elysian fields, that there is some determinate place called Abraham’s bosom, and that it is designed for the reception of the souls of Abraham’s children, even from among the Gentiles (since he is “the father of many nations,” which must be classed amongst his family), and of the same faith as that wherewithal he himself believed God, without the yoke of the law and the sign of circumcision. This region, therefore, I call Abraham’s bosom. Although it is not in heaven, it is yet higher than hell, 4846 and is appointed to afford an interval of rest to the souls of the righteous, until the consummation of all things shall complete the resurrection of all men with the “full recompense of their reward.” 4847 This consummation will then be manifested in heavenly promises, which Marcion, however, claims for his own god, just as if the Creator had never announced them. Amos, however, tells us of “those stories towards heaven” 4848 which Christ “builds”—of course for His people. There also is that everlasting abode of which Isaiah asks, “Who shall declare unto you the eternal place, but He (that is, of course, Christ) who walketh in righteousness, speaketh of the straight path, hateth injustice and iniquity?” 4849 Now, although this everlasting abode is promised, and the ascending stories (or steps) to heaven are built by the Creator, who further promises that the seed of Abraham shall be even as the stars of heaven, by virtue certainly of the heavenly promise, why may it not be possible, 4850 without any injury to that promise, that by Abraham’s bosom is meant some temporary receptacle of faithful souls, wherein is even now delineated an image of the future, and where is given some foresight of the glory 4851 of both judgments? If so, you have here, O heretics, during your present lifetime, a warning that Moses and the prophets declare one only God, the Creator, and His only Christ, and how that both awards of everlasting punishment and eternal salvation rest with Him, the one only God, who kills and who makes alive. Well, but the admonition, says Marcion, of our God from heaven has commanded us not to hear Moses and the prophets, but Christ; Hear Him is the command. 4852 This is true enough. For the apostles had by that time sufficiently heard Moses and the prophets, for they had followed Christ, being persuaded by Moses and the prophets. For even Peter would not have been able 4853 to say, “Thou art the Christ,” 4854 unless he had beforehand heard and believed Moses and the prophets, by whom alone Christ had been hitherto announced. Their faith, indeed, had deserved this confirmation by such a voice from heaven as should bid them hear Him, whom they had recognized as preaching peace, announcing glad tidings, promising an everlasting abode, building for them steps upwards into heaven. 4855 Down in hell, however, it was said concerning them: “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them!”—even those who did not believe them or at least did not sincerely 4856 believe that after death there were punishments for the arrogance of wealth and the glory of luxury, announced indeed by Moses and the prophets, but decreed by that God, who deposes princes from their thrones, and raiseth up the poor from dunghills. 4857 Since, therefore, it is quite consistent in the Creator to pronounce different sentences in the two directions of reward and punishment, we shall have to conclude that there is here no diversity of gods, 4858 but only a difference in the actual matters 4859 before us.
Footnotes
404:4803Luke xvi. 18.
404:4804Deut. xxiv. 1.
404:4805A Marcionite challenge.
404:4806Plane.
404:4807St. Matthew’s Gospel.
404:4808Matt. xix. 8.
404:4809Matt. 19:4, 6.
404:4810Direxit.
404:4811Gestans.
404:4812Excusaverit.
405:4813Ideo ut.
405:4814Luke xvi. 18.
405:4815Nubere. This verb is here used of both sexes, in a general sense.
405:4816Alias.
405:4817Etiam: first word of the sentence.
405:4818Alicubi.
405:4819Nondum.
405:4820Tu.
405:4821Alibi: i.e., than in the Marcionite connection.
405:4822Apud te.
405:4823Scilicet.
405:48241 Cor. vi. 15.
405:4825Justitia divortii.
405:4826Matt. v. 32.
405:4827Deut. 22:28, 29.
405:4828Mal. ii. 15.
405:4829Debeo.
405:4830Sententiam.
405:4831Literally, “Moses.”
405:4832Illiberis. [N.B. He supposes Philip to have been dead.]
405:4833Costa: literally, “rib” or “side.”
405:4834Deut. 25:5, 6.
405:4835Jaculatus est.
406:4836The condition being that the deceased brother should have left “no child” see (Deut. xxv. 5).
406:4837Ad subsequens argumentum divitis.
406:4838Luke xvi. 19-31.
406:4839Ipsum.
406:4840Suggillati Herodis male maritati.
406:4841Deformans.
406:4842Luke xvi. 29.
406:4843Apud inferos. [Note the origin of this doctrine.]
406:4844Revincente: perhaps “reproves his eyesight,” in the sense of refutation.
406:4845Luke xvi. 23.
406:4846Sublimiorem inferis. [Elucidation VIII.]
406:4847Compare Heb. 2:2, Heb. 10:35, Heb. 11:26.
406:4848Ascensum in cœlum: Sept. ἀνάβασιν εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν, Amos ix. 6. See on this passage the article Heaven in Kitto’s Cyclopædia (3d edit.), vol. ii. p. 245, where the present writer has discussed the probable meaning of the verse.
406:4849Isa. xxxiii. 14-16, according to the Septuagint, which has but slight resemblance to the Hebrew.
406:4850Cur non capiat.
406:4851Candida quædam prospiciatur: where candida is a noun substantive (see above, chap. vii. p. 353).
406:4852There seems to be here an allusion to Luke ix. 35.
406:4853Nec accepisset.
406:4854Luke ix. 20.
407:4855See Isa. 52:7, Isa. 33:14, Amos 9:6.
407:4856Omnino.
407:4857See 1 Sam. 2:6, Ps. 113:7, Luke 1:52.
407:4858Divinitatum; “divine powers.”
407:4859Ipsarum materiarum.
Chapter XXXV.—The Judicial Severity of Christ and the Tenderness of the Creator, Asserted in Contradiction to Marcion. The Cure of the Ten Lepers. Old Testament Analogies. The Kingdom of God Within You; This Teaching Similar to that of Moses. Christ, the Stone Rejected by the Builders. Indications of Severity in the Coming of Christ. Proofs that He is Not the Impassible Being Marcion Imagined.
Then, turning to His disciples, He says: “Woe unto him through whom offences come! It were better for him if he had not been born, or if a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones,” 4860 that is, one of His disciples. Judge, then, what the sort of punishment is which He so severely threatens. For it is no stranger who is to avenge the offence done to His disciples. Recognise also in Him the Judge, and one too, who expresses Himself on the safety of His followers with the same tenderness as that which the Creator long ago exhibited: “He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of my eye.” 4861 Such identity of care proceeds from one and the same Being. A trespassing brother He will have rebuked. 4862 If one failed in this duty of reproof, he in fact sinned, either because out of hatred he wished his brother to continue in sin, or else spared him from mistaken friendship, 4863 although possessing the injunction in Leviticus: “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart; thy neighbor thou shalt seriously rebuke, and on his account shalt not contract sin.” 4864 Nor is it to be wondered at, if He thus teaches who forbids your refusing to bring back even your brother’s cattle, if you find them astray in the road; much more should you bring back your erring brother to himself. He commands you to forgive your brother, should he trespass against you even “seven times.” 4865 But that surely, is a small matter; for with the Creator there is a larger grace, when He sets no limits to forgiveness, indefinitely charging you “not to bear any malice against your brother,” 4866 and to give not merely to him who asks, but even to him who does not ask. For His will is, not that you should forgive 4867 an offence, but forget it. The law about lepers had a profound meaning as respects 4868 the forms of the disease itself, and of the inspection by the high priest. 4869 The interpretation of this sense it will be our task to ascertain. Marcion’s labour, however, is to object to us the strictness 4870 of the law, with the view of maintaining that here also Christ is its enemy—forestalling 4871 its enactments even in His cure of the ten lepers. These He simply commanded to show themselves to the priest; “and as they went, He cleansed them” 4872 —without a touch, and without a word, by His silent power and simple will. Well, but what necessity was there for Christ, who had been once for all announced as the healer of our sicknesses and sins, and had proved Himself such by His acts, 4873 to busy Himself with inquiries 4874 into the qualities and details of cures; or for the Creator to be summoned to the scrutiny of the law in the person of Christ? If any part of this healing was effected by Him in a way different from the law, He yet Himself did it to perfection; for surely the Lord may by Himself, or by His Son, produce after one manner, and after another manner by His servants the prophets, those proofs of His power and might especially, which (as excelling in glory and strength, because they are His own acts) rightly enough leave in the distance behind them the works which are done by His servants. But enough has been already said on this point in a former passage. 4875 Now, although He said in a preceding chapter, 4876 that “there were many lepers in Israel in the days of Eliseus the prophet, and none of them was cleansed saving Naaman the Syrian,” yet of course the mere number proves nothing towards a difference in the gods, as tending to the abasement 4877 of the Creator in curing only one, and the pre-eminence of Him who healed ten. For who can doubt that many might have been cured by Him who cured one more easily than ten by him who had never healed one before? But His main purpose in this declaration was to strike at the unbelief or the pride of Israel, in that (although there were many lepers amongst them, and a prophet was not wanting to them) not one had been moved even by so conspicuous an example to betake himself to God who was working in His prophets. Forasmuch, then, as He was Himself the veritable 4878 High Priest of God the Father, He inspected them according to the hidden purport of the law, which signified that Christ was the true distinguisher and extinguisher of the defilements of mankind. However, what was obviously required by the law He commanded should be done: “Go,” said He, “show yourselves to the priests.” 4879 Yet why this, if He meant to cleanse them first? Was it as a despiser of the law, in order to prove to them that, having been cured already on the road, the law was now nothing to them, nor even the priests? Well, the matter must of course pass as it best may, 4880 if anybody supposes that Christ had such views as these! 4881 But there are certainly better interpretations to be found of the passage, and more deserving of belief: how that they were cleansed on this account, because 4882 they were obedient, and went as the law required, when they were commanded to go to the priests; and it is not to be believed that persons who observed the law could have found a cure from a god that was destroying the law. Why, however, did He not give such a command to the leper who first returned? 4883 Because Elisha did not in the case of Naaman the Syrian, and yet was not on that account less the Creator’s agent? This is a sufficient answer. But the believer knows that there is a profounder reason. Consider, therefore, the true motives. 4884 The miracle was performed in the district of Samaria, to which country also belonged one of the lepers. 4885 Samaria, however, had revolted from Israel, carrying with it the disaffected nine tribes, 4886 which, having been alienated 4887 by the prophet Ahijah, 4888 Jeroboam settled in Samaria. Besides, the Samaritans were always pleased with the mountains and the wells of their ancestors. Thus, in the Gospel of John, the woman of Samaria, when conversing with the Lord at the well, says, “No doubt 4889 Thou art greater,” etc.; and again, “Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; but ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” 4890 Accordingly, He who said, “Woe unto them that trust in the mountain of Samaria,” 4891 vouchsafing now to restore that very region, purposely requests the men “to go and show themselves to the priests,” because these were to be found only there where the temple was; submitting 4892 the Samaritan to the Jew, inasmuch as “salvation was of the Jews,” 4893 whether to the Israelite or the Samaritan. To the tribe of Judah, indeed, wholly appertained the promised Christ, 4894 in order that men might know that at Jerusalem were both the priests and the temple; that there also was the womb 4895 of religion, and its living fountain, not its mere “well.” 4896 Seeing, therefore, that they recognised 4897 the truth that at Jerusalem the law was to be fulfilled, He healed them, whose salvation was to come 4898 of faith 4899 without the ceremony of the law. Whence also, astonished that one only out of the ten was thankful for his release to the divine grace, He does not command him to offer a gift according to the law, because he had already paid his tribute of gratitude when “he glorified God”; 4900 for thus did the Lord will that the law’s requirement should be interpreted. And yet who was the God to whom the Samaritan gave thanks, because thus far not even had an Israelite heard of another god? Who else but He by whom all had hitherto been healed through Christ? And therefore it was said to him, “Thy faith hath made thee whole,” 4901 because he had discovered that it was his duty to render the true oblation to Almighty God—even thanksgiving—in His true temple, and before His true High Priest Jesus Christ. But it is impossible either that the Pharisees should seem to have inquired of the Lord about the coming of the kingdom of the rival god, when no other god has ever yet been announced by Christ; or that He should have answered them concerning the kingdom of any other god than Him of whom they were in the habit of asking Him. “The kingdom of God,” He says, “cometh not with observation; neither do they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” 4902 Now, who will not interpret the words “within you” to mean in your hand, within your power, if you hear, and do the commandment of God? If, however, the kingdom of God lies in His commandment, set before your mind Moses on the other side, according to our antitheses, and you will find the self-same view of the case. 4903 “The commandment is not a lofty one, 4904 neither is it far off from thee. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, ‘Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it?’ nor is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, ‘Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it?’ But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, and in thy hands, to do it.” 4905 This means, “Neither in this place nor that place is the kingdom of God; for, behold, it is within you.” 4906 And if the heretics, in their audacity, should contend that the Lord did not give an answer about His own kingdom, but only about the Creator’s kingdom, concerning which they had inquired, then the following words are against them. For He tells them that “the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected,” before His coming, 4907 at which His kingdom will be really 4908 revealed. In this statement He shows that it was His own kingdom which His answer to them had contemplated, and which was now awaiting His own sufferings and rejection. But having to be rejected and afterwards to be acknowledged, and taken up 4909 and glorified, He borrowed the very word “rejected” from the passage, where, under the figure of a stone, His twofold manifestation was celebrated by David—the first in rejection, the second in honour: “The stone,” says He, “which the builders rejected, is become the head-stone of the corner. This is the Lord’s doing.” 4910 Now it would be idle, if we believed that God had predicted the humiliation, or even the glory, of any Christ at all, that He could have signed His prophecy for any but Him whom He had foretold under the figure of a stone, and a rock, and a mountain. 4911 If, however, He speaks of His own coming, why does He compare it with the days of Noe and of Lot, 4912 which were dark and terrible—a mild and gentle God as He is? Why does He bid us “remember Lot’s wife,” 4913 who despised the Creator’s command, and was punished for her contempt, if He does not come with judgment to avenge the infraction of His precepts? If He really does punish, like the Creator, 4914 if He is my Judge, He ought not to have adduced examples for the purpose of instructing me from Him whom He yet destroys, that He 4915 might not seem to be my instructor. But if He does not even here speak of His own coming, but of the coming of the Hebrew Christ, 4916 let us still wait in expectation that He will vouchsafe to us some prophecy of His own advent; meanwhile we will continue to believe that He is none other than He whom He reminds us of in every passage.
Footnotes
407:4860Luke 17:1, 2.
407:4861Zech. ii. 8.
407:4862Luke xvii. 3.
407:4863Ex acceptione personæ. The Greek προσωποληψία, “respect of persons.”
407:4864Lev. xix. 17. The last clause in A.V. runs, “And not suffer sin upon him;” but the Sept gives this reading, καὶ οὐ λήψῃ δι᾽ αὐτὸν ἁμαρτίαν; nor need the Hebrew mean other than this. The prenominal particle וייֹע may be well rendered δι᾽ αὐτόι on his account.
407:4865Luke xvii. 4.
407:4866Lev. xix. 18.
407:4867Dones.
407:4868Erga: i.q. circa.
407:4869See Lev. 13:0, Lev. 14:0.
407:4870Morositatem.
407:4871Prævenientem.
407:4872Luke xvii. 11-19.
407:4873Or, perhaps, “had proved the prophecy true by His accomplishment of it.”
407:4874Retractari.
408:4875See above in chap. ix.
408:4876Præfatus est: see Luke iv. 27.
408:4877Destructionem.
408:4878Authenticus. “He was the true, the original Priest, of whom the priests under the Mosaic law were only copies” (Bp. Kaye, On the Writings of Tertullian, pp. 293, 294, and note 8).
408:4879Luke xvii. 14.
408:4880Et utique viderit.
408:4881Tam opiniosus.
408:4882Qua: “I should prefer quia” (Oehler).
408:4883Pristino leproso: but doubtful.
408:4884Causas.
408:4885Luke xvii. 17.
408:4886Schisma illud ex novem tribubus. There is another reading which substitutes the word decem. “It is, however, immaterial; either number will do roundly. If ‘ten’ be the number, it must be understood that the tenth is divided, accurately making nine and a half tribes. If ‘nine’ be read, the same amount is still made up, for Simeon was reckoned with Judah, and half of the tribe of Benjamin remained loyal” (Fr. Junius).
408:4887Avulsas.
408:48881 Kings 11:29, 1 Kings 12:15.
408:4889Næ.
408:4890John 4:12, 20.
408:4891Amos vi. 1.
408:4892Subiciens: or “subjecting.”
408:4893John iv. 22.
408:4894Tota promissio Christus.
408:4895Matricem.
408:4896Fontem non puteum salutis.
408:4897Agnovisse.
408:4898Justificandos.
408:4899Luke xvii. 19.
408:4900Luke xvii. 15.
409:4901Luke xvii. 19.
409:4902Luke 17:20, 21.
409:4903Una sententia.
409:4904Excelsum: Sept. ὑπέρογχος.
409:4905Deut. xxx. 11-13.
409:4906Luke xvii. 21.
409:4907Luke xvii. 25.
409:4908Substantialiter.
409:4909Assumi.
409:4910Ps. cxviii. 21.
409:4911See Isa. 8:14, 1 Cor. 10:4.
409:4912Luke xvii. 26-30.
409:4913Luke xvii. 32.
409:4914Ut ille.
409:4915Ille: emphatic.
409:4916That is, the Creator’s Christ from the Marcionite point of view.
Chapter XXXVI.—The Parables of the Importunate Widow, and of the Pharisee and the Publican. Christ’s Answer to the Rich Ruler, the Cure of the Blind Man. His Salutation—Son of David. All Proofs of Christ’s Relation to the Creator, Marcion’s Antithesis Between David and Christ Confuted.
When He recommends perseverance and earnestness in prayer, He sets before us the parable of the judge who was compelled to listen to the widow, owing to the earnestness and importunity of her requests. 4917 He show us that it is God the judge whom we must importune with prayer, and not Himself, if He is not Himself the judge. But He added, that “God would avenge His own elect.” 4918 Since, then, He who judges will also Himself be the avenger, He proved that the Creator is on that account the specially good God, 4919 whom He represented as the avenger of His own elect, who cry day and night to Him. And yet, when He introduces to our view the Creator’s temple, and describes two men worshipping therein with diverse feelings—the Pharisee in pride, the publican in humility—and shows us how they accordingly went down to their homes, one rejected, 4920 the other justified, 4921 He surely, by thus teaching us the proper discipline of prayer, has determined that that God must be prayed to from whom men were to receive this discipline of prayer—whether condemnatory of pride, or justifying in humility. 4922 I do not find from Christ any temple, any suppliants, any sentence (of approval or condemnation) belonging to any other god than the Creator. Him does He enjoin us to worship in humility, as the lifter-up of the humble, not in pride, because He brings down 4923 the proud. What other god has He manifested to me to receive my supplications? With what formula of worship, with what hope (shall I approach him?) I trow, none. For the prayer which He has taught us suits, as we have proved, 4924 none but the Creator. It is, of course, another matter if He does not wish to be prayed to, because He is the supremely and spontaneously good God! But who is this good God? There is, He says, “none but one.” 4925 It is not as if He had shown us that one of two gods was the supremely good; but He expressly asserts that there is one only good God, who is the only good, because He is the only God. Now, undoubtedly, 4926 He is the good God who “sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust, and maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good;” 4927 sustaining and nourishing and assisting even Marcionites themselves! When afterwards “a certain man asked him, ‘Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’” (Jesus) inquired whether he knew (that is, in other words, whether he kept) the commandments of the Creator, in order to testify 4928 that it was by the Creator’s precepts that eternal life is acquired. 4929 Then, when he affirmed that from his youth up he had kept all the principal commandments, (Jesus) said to him: “One thing thou yet lackest: sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 4930 Well now, Marcion, and all ye who are companions in misery, and associates in hatred 4931 with that heretic, what will you dare say to this? Did Christ rescind the forementioned commandments: “Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother?” Or did He both keep them, and then add 4932 what was wanting to them? This very precept, however, about giving to the poor, was very largely 4933 diffused through the pages of the law and the prophets. This vainglorious observer of the commandments was therefore convicted 4934 of holding money in much higher estimation (than charity). This verity of the gospel then stands unimpaired: “I am not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but rather to fulfil them.” 4935 He also dissipated other doubts, when He declared that the name of God and of the Good belonged to one and the same being, at whose disposal were also the everlasting life and the treasure in heaven and Himself too—whose commandments He both maintained and augmented with His own supplementary precepts. He may likewise be discovered in the following passage of Micah, saying: “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to be ready to follow the Lord thy God?” 4936 Now Christ is the man who tells us what is good, even the knowledge of the law. “Thou knowest,” says He, “the commandments.” “To do justly”—“Sell all that thou hast;” “to love mercy”—“Give to the poor:” “and to be ready to walk with God”—“And come,” says He, “follow me.” 4937 The Jewish nation was from its beginning so carefully divided into tribes and clans, and families and houses, that no man could very well have been ignorant of his descent—even from the recent assessments of Augustus, which were still probably extant at this time. 4938 But the Jesus of Marcion (although there could be no doubt of a person’s having been born, who was seen to be a man), as being unborn, could not, of course, have possessed any public testimonial 4939 of his descent, but was to be regarded as one of that obscure class of whom nothing was in any way known. Why then did the blind man, on hearing that He was passing by, exclaim, “Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me?” 4940 unless he was considered, in no uncertain manner, 4941 to be the Son of David (in other words, to belong to David’s family) through his mother and his brethren, who at some time or other had been made known to him by public notoriety? “Those, however, who went before rebuked the blind man, that he should hold his peace.” 4942 And properly enough; because he was very noisy, not because he was wrong about the son of David. Else you must show me, that those who rebuked him were aware that Jesus was not the Son of David, in order that they may be supposed to have had this reason for imposing silence on the blind man. But even if you could show me this, still (the blind man) would more readily have presumed that they were ignorant, than that the Lord could possibly have permitted an untrue exclamation about Himself. But the Lord “stood patient.” 4943 Yes; but not as confirming the error, for, on the contrary, He rather displayed the Creator. Surely He could not have first removed this man’s blindness, in order that he might afterwards cease to regard Him as the Son of David! However, 4944 that you may not slander 4945 His patience, nor fasten on Him any charge of dissimulation, nor deny Him to be the Son of David, He very pointedly confirmed the exclamation of the blind man—both by the actual gift of healing, and by bearing testimony to his faith: “Thy faith,” say Christ, “hath made thee whole.” 4946 What would you have the blind man’s faith to have been? That Jesus was descended from that (alien) god (of Marcion), to subvert the Creator and overthrow the law and the prophets? That He was not the destined offshoot from the root of Jesse, and the fruit of David’s loins, the restorer 4947 also of the blind? But I apprehend there were at that time no such stone-blind persons as Marcion, that an opinion like this could have constituted the faith of the blind man, and have induced him to confide in the mere name, 4948 of Jesus, the Son of David. He, who knew all this of Himself, 4949 and wished others to know it also, endowed the faith of this man—although it was already gifted with a better sight, and although it was in possession of the true light—with the external vision likewise, in order that we too might learn the rule of faith, and at the same time find its recompense. Whosoever wishes to see Jesus the Son of David must believe in Him; through the Virgin’s birth. 4950 He who will not believe this will not hear from Him the salutation, “Thy faith hath saved thee.” And so he will remain blind, falling into Antithesis after Antithesis, which mutually destroy each other, 4951 just as “the blind man leads the blind down into the ditch.” 4952 For (here is one of Marcion’s Antitheses): whereas David in old time, in the capture of Sion, was offended by the blind who opposed his admission (into the stronghold) 4953 —in which respect (I should rather say) that they were a type of people equally blind, 4954 who in after-times would not admit Christ to be the son of David—so, on the contrary, Christ succoured the blind man, to show by this act that He was not David’s son, and how different in disposition He was, kind to the blind, while David ordered them to be slain. 4955 If all this were so, why did Marcion allege that the blind man’s faith was of so worthless 4956 a stamp? The fact is, 4957 the Son of David so acted, 4958 that the Antithesis must lose its point by its own absurdity. 4959 Those persons who offended David were blind, and the man who now presents himself as a suppliant to David’s son is afflicted with the same infirmity. 4960 Therefore the Son of David was appeased with some sort of satisfaction by the blind man when He restored him to sight, and added His approval of the faith which had led him to believe the very truth, that he must win to his help 4961 the Son of David by earnest entreaty. But, after all, I suspect that it was the audacity (of the old Jebusites) which offended David, and not their malady.
Footnotes
409:4917Luke xviii. 1-8.
409:4918Luke 18:7, 8.
410:4919Meliorem Deum.
410:4920Reprobatum.
410:4921Luke xviii. 10-14.
410:4922Sive reprobatricem superbiæ, sive justificatricem humilitatis.
410:4923Destructorem.
410:4924See above, chap. xxvi. p. 392.
410:4925Luke xviii. 19.
410:4926Utique.
410:4927Matt. v. 45.
410:4928Ad contestandum.
410:4929Luke xviii. 18-20.
410:4930Luke 18:21, 22.
410:4931See above, chap. ix., near the beginning.
410:4932Adjecit quod deerat.
410:4933Ubique.
410:4934Traduceretur.
410:4935Matt. v. 17.
410:4936Mic. vi. 8. The last clause agrees with the Septuagint: καὶ ἕτοιμον εἶναι τοῦ πορεύεσθαι μετὰ Κυρίου Θεοῦ σου.
410:4937The clauses of Christ’s words, which are here adapted to Micah’s, are in every case broken with an inquit.
410:4938Tunc pendentibus: i.e., at the time mentioned in the story of the blind man.
410:4939Notitiam.
411:4940Luke xviii. 38.
411:4941Non temere.
411:4942Luke xviii. 39.
411:4943Luke xviii. 40.
411:4944Atquin.
411:4945Infameretis.
411:4946Luke xviii. 42.
411:4947Remunerator.
411:4948That is, in the sound only, and phantom of the word; an allusion to the Docetic absurdity of Marcion.
411:4949That is, that He was “Son of David,” etc.
411:4950Censum: that is, must believe Him born of her.
411:4951This, perhaps, is the meaning in a clause which is itself more antithetical than clear: “Ruens in antithesim, ruentem et ipsam antithesim.”
411:4952In book iii. chap. vii. (at the beginning), occurs the same proverb of Marcion and the Jews. See p. 327.
411:4953See 2 Sam. v. 6-8.
411:4954The Marcionites.
411:4955See 2 Sam. v. 8.
411:4956Fidei equidem pravæ: see preceding page, note 3.
411:4957Atquin.
411:4958Et hoc filius David: i.e., præstitit, “showed Himself good,” perhaps.
411:4959De suo retundendam. Instead of contrast, he shows the similarity of the cases.
411:4960Ejusdem carnis: i.e., infirmæ (Oehler).
411:4961Exorandum sibi.
Chapter XXXVII.—Christ and Zacchæus. The Salvation of the Body as Denied by Marcion. The Parable of the Ten Servants Entrusted with Ten Pounds. Christ a Judge, Who is to Administer the Will of the Austere Man, I.e. The Creator.
“Salvation comes to the house” of Zacchæus even. 4962 For what reason? Was it because he also believed that Christ came by Marcion? But the blind man’s cry was still sounding in the ears of all: “Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.” And “all the people gave praise unto God”—not Marcion’s, but David’s. Now, although Zacchæus was probably a Gentile, 4963 he yet from his intercourse with Jews had obtained a smattering 4964 of their Scriptures, and, more than this, had, without knowing it, fulfilled the precepts of Isaiah: “Deal thy bread,” said the prophet, “to the hungry, and bring the poor that are cast out into thine house.” 4965 This he did in the best possible way, by receiving the Lord, and entertaining Him in his house. “When thou seest the naked cover him.” 4966 This he promised to do, in an equally satisfactory way, when he offered the half of his goods for all works of mercy. 4967 So also “he loosened the bands of wickedness, undid the heavy burdens, let the oppressed go free, and broke every yoke,” 4968 when he said, “If I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.” 4969 Therefore the Lord said, “This day is salvation come to this house.” 4970 Thus did He give His testimony, that the precepts of the Creator spoken by the prophet tended to salvation. 4971 But when He adds, “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost,” 4972 my present contention is not whether He was come to save what was lost, to whom it had once belonged, and from whom what He came to save had fallen away; but I approach a different question. Man, there can be no doubt of it, is here the subject of consideration. Now, since he consists of two parts, 4973 body and soul, the point to be inquired into is, in which of these two man would seem to have been lost? If in his body, then it is his body, not his soul, which is lost. What, however, is lost, the Son of man saves. The body, 4974 therefore, has the salvation. If, (on the other hand,) it is in his soul that man is lost, salvation is designed for the lost soul; and the body which is not lost is safe. If, (to take the only other supposition,) man is wholly lost, in both his natures, then it necessarily follows that salvation is appointed for the entire man; and then the opinion of the heretics is shivered to pieces, 4975 who say that there is no salvation of the flesh. And this affords a confirmation that Christ belongs to the Creator, who followed the Creator in promising the salvation of the whole man. The parable also of the (ten) servants, who received their several recompenses according to the manner in which they had increased their lord’s money by trading 4976 proves Him to be a God of judgment—even a God who, in strict account, 4977 not only bestows honour, but also takes away what a man seems to have. 4978 Else, if it is the Creator whom He has here delineated as the “austere man,” who “takes up what he laid not down, and reaps what he did not sow,” 4979 my instructor even here is He, (whoever He may be,) to whom belongs the money He teaches me fruitfully to expend. 4980
Footnotes
412:4962Luke xix. 9.
412:4963The older reading, which we here follow, is: “Enimvero Zacchæus etsi allophylus fortasse,” etc. Oehler, however, points the passage thus: “Enimvero Zacchæus etsi allophylus, fortasse,” etc., removing the doubt, and making Zacchæus “of another race” than the Jewish, for certain. This is probably more than Tertullian meant to say.
412:4964Aliqua notitia afflatus.
412:4965Isa. lviii. 7.
412:4966In the same passage.
412:4967For the history of Zacchæus, see Luke xix. 1-10.
412:4968Isa. lviii. 6.
412:4969Luke xix. 8.
412:4970Luke xix. 9.
412:4971Salutaria esse.
412:4972Luke xix. 10.
412:4973Substantiis.
412:4974Caro: “the flesh,” here a synonym with the corpus of the previous clauses.
412:4975Elisa est.
412:4976Secundum rationem feneratæ.
412:4977Ex parte severitatis.
412:4978This phrase comes not from the present passage, but from Luke viii. 18, where the words are ὅ δοκεῖ ἔχειν; here the expression is ὅ ἔχει only.
412:4979Luke xix. 22.
412:4980The original of this obscure sentence is as follows: “Aut si et hic Creatorem finxerit austerum…..hic quoque me ille instruit eujus pecuniam ut fenerem edocet.
Chapter XXXVIII.—Christ’s Refutations of the Pharisees. Rendering Dues to Cæsar and to God. Next of the Sadducees, Respecting Marriage in the Resurrection. These Prove Him Not to Be Marcion’s But the Creator’s Christ. Marcion’s Tamperings in Order to Make Room for His Second God, Exposed and Confuted.
Christ knew “the baptism of John, whence it was.” 4981 Then why did He ask them, as if He knew not? He knew that the Pharisees would not give Him an answer; then why did He ask in vain? Was it that He might judge them out of their own mouth, or their own heart? Suppose you refer these points to an excuse of the Creator, or to His comparison with Christ; then consider what would have happened if the Pharisees had replied to His question. Suppose their answer to have been, that John’s baptism was “of men,” they would have been immediately stoned to death. 4982 Some Marcion, in rivalry to Marcion, would have stood up 4983 and said: O most excellent God; how different are his ways from the Creator’s! Knowing that men would rush down headlong over it, He placed them actually 4984 on the very precipice. For thus do men treat of the Creator respecting His law of the tree. 4985 But John’s baptism was “from heaven.” “Why, therefore,” asks Christ, “did ye not believe him?” 4986 He therefore who had wished men to believe John, purposing to censure 4987 them because they had not believed him, belonged to Him whose sacrament John was administering. But, at any rate, 4988 when He actually met their refusal to say what they thought, with such reprisals as, “Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things,” 4989 He returned evil for evil! “Render unto Cæsar the things which be Cæsar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s.” 4990 What will be “the things which are God’s?” Such things as are like Cæsar’s denarius—that is to say, His image and similitude. That, therefore, which he commands to be “rendered unto God,” the Creator, is man, who has been stamped with His image, likeness, name, and substance. 4991 Let Marcion’s god look after his own mint. 4992 Christ bids the denarius of man’s imprint to be rendered to His Cæsar, (His Cæsar I say,) not the Cæsar of a strange god. 4993 The truth, however, must be confessed, this god has not a denarius to call his own! In every question the just and proper rule is, that the meaning of the answer ought to be adapted to the proposed inquiry. But it is nothing short of madness to return an answer altogether different from the question submitted to you. God forbid, then, that we should expect from Christ 4994 conduct which would be unfit even to an ordinary man! The Sadducees, who said there was no resurrection, in a discussion on that subject, had proposed to the Lord a case of law touching a certain woman, who, in accordance with the legal prescription, had been married to seven brothers who had died one after the other. The question therefore was, to which husband must she be reckoned to belong in the resurrection? 4995 This, (observe,) was the gist of the inquiry, this was the sum and substance of the dispute. And to it Christ was obliged to return a direct answer. He had nobody to fear; that it should seem advisable 4996 for Him either to evade their questions, or to make them the occasion of indirectly mooting 4997 a subject which He was not in the habit of teaching publicly at any other time. He therefore gave His answer, that “the children of this world marry.” 4998 You see how pertinent it was to the case in point. Because the question concerned the next world, and He was going to declare that no one marries there, He opens the way by laying down the principles that here, where there is death, there is also marriage. “But they whom God shall account worthy of the possession of that world and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; forasmuch as they cannot die any more, since they become equal to the angels, being made the children of God and of the resurrection.” 4999 If, then, the meaning of the answer must not turn on any other point than on the proposed question, and since the question proposed is fully understood from this sense of the answer, 5000 then the Lord’s reply admits of no other interpretation than that by which the question is clearly understood. 5001 You have both the time in which marriage is permitted, and the time in which it is said to be unsuitable, laid before you, not on their own account, but in consequence of an inquiry about the resurrection. You have likewise a confirmation of the resurrection itself, and the whole question which the Sadducees mooted, who asked no question about another god, nor inquired about the proper law of marriage. Now, if you make Christ answer questions which were not submitted to Him, you, in fact, represent Him as having been unable to solve the points on which He was really consulted, and entrapped of course by the cunning of the Sadducees. I shall now proceed, by way of supererogation, 5002 and after the rule (I have laid down about questions and answers), 5003 to deal with the arguments which have any consistency in them. 5004 They procured then a copy of the Scripture, and made short work with its text, by reading it thus: 5005 “Those whom the god of that world shall account worthy.” They add the phrase “of that world” to the word “god,” whereby they make another god “the god of that world;” whereas the passage ought to be read thus: “Those whom God shall account worthy of the possession of that world” (removing the distinguishing phrase “of this world” to the end of the clause, 5006 in other words, “Those whom God shall account worthy of obtaining and rising to that world.” For the question submitted to Christ had nothing to do with the god, but only with the state, of that world. It was: “Whose wife should this woman be in that world after the resurrection?” 5007 They thus subvert His answer respecting the essential question of marriage, and apply His words, “The children of this world marry and are given in marriage,” as if they referred to the Creator’s men, and His permission to them to marry; whilst they themselves whom the god of that world—that is, the rival god—accounted worthy of the resurrection, do not marry even here, because they are not children of this world. But the fact is, that, having been consulted about marriage in that world, not in this present one, He had simply declared the non-existence of that to which the question related. They, indeed, who had caught the very force of His voice, and pronunciation, and expression, discovered no other sense than what had reference to the matter of the question. Accordingly, the Scribes exclaimed, “Master, Thou hast well said.” 5008 For He had affirmed the resurrection, by describing the form 5009 thereof in opposition to the opinion of the Sadducees. Now, He did not reject the attestation of those who had assumed His answer to bear this meaning. If, however, the Scribes thought Christ was David’s Son, whereas (David) himself calls Him Lord, 5010 what relation has this to Christ? David did not literally confute 5011 an error of the Scribes, yet David asserted the honour of Christ, when he more prominently affirmed that He was his Lord than his Son,—an attribute which was hardly suitable to the destroyer of the Creator. But how consistent is the interpretation on our side of the question! For He, who had been a little while ago invoked by the blind man as “the Son of David,” 5012 then made no remark on the subject, not having the Scribes in His presence; whereas He now purposely moots the point before them, and that of His own accord, 5013 in order that He might show Himself whom the blind man, following the doctrine of the Scribes, had simply declared to be the Son of David, to be also his Lord. He thus honoured the blind man’s faith which had acknowledged His Sonship to David; but at the same time He struck a blow at the tradition of the Scribes, which prevented them from knowing that He was also (David’s) Lord. Whatever had relation to the glory of the Creator’s Christ, no other would thus guard and maintain 5014 but Himself the Creator’s Christ.
Footnotes
412:4981Luke xx. 4.
412:4982Luke xx. 6.
412:4983Existeret.
413:4984Ipse.
413:4985“Of knowledge of good and evil.” The “law” thereof occurs in Gen. iii. 3.
413:4986Luke xx. 5.
413:4987Increpaturus.
413:4988Certe. [The word sacrament not technical here.]
413:4989Luke xx. 8.
413:4990Luke xx. 25.
413:4991Materia.
413:4992Monetam.
413:4993Non alieno.
413:4994Quo magis absit a Christo.
413:4995Luke xx. 27-33.
413:4996Ut videatur.
413:4997Subostendisse.
413:4998Luke xx. 34.
413:4999Luke 20:35, 36.
413:5000Surely Oehler’s responsio ought to be responsionis, as the older books have it.
413:5001Absolvitur.
413:5002Ex abundanti.
413:5003We have translated here, post præscriptionem, according to the more frequent sense of the word, præscriptio. But there is another meaning of the word, which is not unknown to our author, equivalent to our objection or demurrer, or (to quote Oehler’s definition) “clausula qua reus adversarii intentionem oppugnat—the form by which the defendant rebuts the plaintiff’s charge.” According to this sense, we read: “I shall now proceed…and after putting in a demurrer (or taking exception) against the tactics of my opponent.”
413:5004Cohærentes.
413:5005Decucurrerunt in legendo: or, “they ran through it, by thus reading.”
414:5006We have adapted, rather than translated, Tertullian’s words in this parenthesis. His words of course suit the order of the Latin, which differs from the English. The sentence in Latin is, “Quos autem dignatus est Deus illius ævi possessione et resurrectione a mortuis.” The phrase in question is illius ævi. Where shall it stand? The Marcionites placed it after “Deus” in government, but Tertullian (following the undoubted meaning of the sentence) says it depends on “possessione et resurrectione,” i.e., “worthy of the possession, etc., of that world.” To effect this construction, he says, “Ut facta hic distinctione post deum ad sequentia pertineat illius ævi;” i.e., he requests that a stop be placed after the word “deus,” whereby the phrase “illius ævi” will belong to the words which follow—“possessione et resurrectione a mortuis.”
414:5007Luke xx. 33.
414:5008Luke xx. 39.
414:5009Formam: “its conditions” or “process.”
414:5010Luke xx. 41-44.
414:5011Non obtundebat.
414:5012Luke xviii. 38.
414:5013Luke xx. 41.
414:5014Tueretur.
Chapter XXXIX.—Concerning Those Who Come in the Name of Christ. The Terrible Signs of His Coming. He Whose Coming is So Grandly Described Both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, is None Other Than the Christ of the Creator. This Proof Enhanced by the Parable of the Fig-Tree and All the Trees. Parallel Passages of Prophecy.
As touching the propriety of His names, it has already been seen 5015 that both of them 5016 are suitable to Him who was the first both to announce His Christ to mankind, and to give Him the further name 5017 of Jesus. The impudence, therefore, of Marcion’s Christ will be evident, when he says that many will come in his name, whereas this name does not at all belong to him, since he is not the Christ and Jesus of the Creator, to whom these names do properly appertain; and more especially when he prohibits those to be received whose very equal in imposture he is, inasmuch as he (equally with them 5018 ) comes in a name which belongs to another—unless it was his business to warn off from a mendaciously assumed name the disciples (of One) who, by reason of His name being properly given to Him, possessed also the verity thereof. But when “they shall by and by come and say, I am Christ,” 5019 they will be received by you, who have already received one altogether like them. 5020 Christ, however, comes in His own name. What will you do, then, when He Himself comes who is the very Proprietor of these names, the Creator’s Christ and Jesus? Will you reject Him? But how iniquitous, how unjust and disrespectful to the good God, that you should not receive Him who comes in His own name, when you have received another in His name! Now, let us see what are the signs which He ascribes to the times. “Wars,” I observe, “and kingdom against kingdom, and nation against nation, and pestilence, and famines, and earthquakes, and fearful sights, and great signs from heaven” 5021 —all which things are suitable for a severe and terrible God. Now, when He goes on to say that “all these things must needs come to pass,” 5022 what does He represent Himself to be? The Destroyer, or the Defender of the Creator? For He affirms that these appointments of His must fully come to pass; but surely as the good God, He would have frustrated rather than advanced events so sad and terrible, if they had not been His own (decrees). “But before all these,” He foretells that persecutions and sufferings were to come upon them, which indeed were “to turn for a testimony to them,” and for their salvation. 5023 Hear what is predicted in Zechariah: “The Lord of hosts 5024 shall protect them; and they shall devour them, and subdue them with sling-stones; and they shall drink their blood like wine, and they shall fill the bowls as it were of the altar. And the Lord shall save them in that day, even His people, like sheep; because as sacred stones they roll,” 5025 etc. And that you may not suppose that these predictions refer to such sufferings as await them from so many wars with strangers, 5026 consider the nature (of the sufferings). In a prophecy of wars which were to be waged with legitimate arms, no one would think of enumerating stones as weapons, which are better known in popular crowds and unarmed tumults. Nobody measures the copious streams of blood which flow in war by bowlfuls, nor limits it to what is shed upon a single altar. No one gives the name of sheep to those who fall in battle with arms in hand, and while repelling force with force, but only to those who are slain, yielding themselves up in their own place of duty and with patience, rather than fighting in self-defence. In short, as he says, “they roll as sacred stones,” and not like soldiers fight. Stones are they, even foundation stones, upon which we are ourselves edified—“built,” as St. Paul says, “upon the foundation of the apostles,” 5027 who, like “consecrated stones,” were rolled up and down exposed to the attack of all men. And therefore in this passage He forbids men “to meditate before what they answer” when brought before tribunals, 5028 even as once He suggested to Balaam the message which he had not thought of, 5029 nay, contrary to what he had thought; and promised “a mouth” to Moses, when he pleaded in excuse the slowness of his speech, 5030 and that wisdom which, by Isaiah, He showed to be irresistible: “One shall say, I am the Lord’s, and shall call himself by the name of Jacob, and another shall subscribe himself by the name of Israel.” 5031 Now, what plea is wiser and more irresistible than the simple and open 5032 confession made in a martyr’s cause, who “prevails with God”—which is what “Israel” means? 5033 Now, one cannot wonder that He forbade “premeditation,” who actually Himself received from the Father the ability of uttering words in season: “The Lord hath given to me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season (to him that is weary);” 5034 except that Marcion introduces to us a Christ who is not subject to the Father. That persecutions from one’s nearest friends are predicted, and calumny out of hatred to His name, 5035 I need not again refer to. But “by patience,” 5036 says He, “ye shall yourselves be saved.” 5037 Of this very patience the Psalm says, “The patient endurance of the just shall not perish for ever;” 5038 because it is said in another Psalm, “Precious (in the sight of the Lord) is the death of the just”—arising, no doubt, out of their patient endurance, so that Zechariah declares: “A crown shall be to them that endure.” 5039 But that you may not boldly contend that it was as announcers of another god that the apostles were persecuted by the Jews, remember that even the prophets suffered the same treatment of the Jews, and that they were not the heralds of any other god than the Creator. Then, having shown what was to be the period of the destruction, even “when Jerusalem should begin to be compassed with armies,” 5040 He described the signs of the end of all things: “portents in the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity—like the sea roaring—by reason of their expectation of the evils which are coming on the earth.” 5041
That “the very powers also of heaven have to be shaken,” 5042 you may find in Joel: “And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth—blood and fire, and pillars of smoke; the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come.” 5043 In Habakkuk also you have this statement: “With rivers shall the earth be cleaved; the nations shall see thee, and be in pangs. Thou shalt disperse the waters with thy step; the deep uttered its voice; the height of its fear was raised; 5044 the sun and the moon stood still in their course; into light shall thy coruscations go; and thy shield shall be (like) the glittering of the lightning’s flash; in thine anger thou shalt grind the earth, and shalt thresh the nations in thy wrath.” 5045 There is thus an agreement, I apprehend, between the sayings of the Lord and of the prophets touching the shaking of the earth, and the elements, and the nations thereof. But what does the Lord say afterwards? “And then shall they see the Son of man coming from the heavens with very great power. And when these things shall come to pass, ye shall look up, and raise your heads; for your redemption hath come near,” that is, at the time of the kingdom, of which the parable itself treats. 5046 “So likewise ye, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand.” 5047 This will be the great day of the Lord, and of the glorious coming of the Son of man from heaven, of which Daniel wrote: “Behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven,” 5048 etc. “And there was given unto Him the kingly power,” 5049 which (in the parable) “He went away into a far country to receive for Himself,” leaving money to His servants wherewithal to trade and get increase 5050 —even (that universal kingdom of) all nations, which in the Psalm the Father had promised to give to Him: Ask of me, and I will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance.” 5051 “And all that glory shall serve Him; His dominion shall be an everlasting one, which shall not be taken from Him, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed,” 5052 because in it “men shall not die, neither shall they marry, but be like the angels.” 5053 It is about the same advent of the Son of man and the benefits thereof that we read in Habakkuk: “Thou wentest forth for the salvation of Thy people, even to save Thine anointed ones,” 5054 —in other words, those who shall look up and lift their heads, being redeemed in the time of His kingdom. Since, therefore, these descriptions of the promises, on the one hand, agree together, as do also those of the great catastrophes, on the other—both in the predictions of the prophets and the declarations of the Lord, it will be impossible for you to interpose any distinction between them, as if the catastrophes could be referred to the Creator, as the terrible God, being such as the good god (of Marcion) ought not to permit, much less expect—whilst the promises should be ascribed to the good god, being such as the Creator, in His ignorance of the said god, could not have predicted. If, however, He did predict these promises as His own, since they differ in no respect from the promises of Christ, He will be a match in the freeness of His gifts with the good god himself; and evidently no more will have been promised by your Christ than by my Son of man. (If you examine) the whole passage of this Gospel Scripture, from the inquiry of the disciples 5055 down to the parable of the fig-tree 5056 you will find the sense in its connection suit in every point the Son of man, so that it consistently ascribes to Him both the sorrows and the joys, and the catastrophes and the promises; nor can you separate them from Him in either respect. For as much, then, as there is but one Son of man whose advent is placed between the two issues of catastrophe and promise, it must needs follow that to that one Son of man belong both the judgments upon the nations, and the prayers of the saints. He who thus comes in midway so as to be common to both issues, will terminate one of them by inflicting judgment on the nations at His coming; and will at the same time commence the other by fulfilling the prayers of His saints: so that if (on the one hand) you grant that the coming of the Son of man is (the advent) of my Christ, then, when you ascribe to Him the infliction of the judgments which precede His appearance, you are compelled also to assign to Him the blessings which issue from the same. If (on the other hand) you will have it that it is the coming of your Christ, then, when you ascribe to him the blessings which are to be the result of his advent, you are obliged to impute to him likewise the infliction of the evils which precede his appearance. For the evils which precede, and the blessings which immediately follow, the coming of the Son of man, are both alike indissolubly connected with that event. Consider, therefore, which of the two Christs you choose to place in the person of the Son of man, to whom you may refer the execution of the two dispensations. You make either the Creator a most beneficent God, or else your own god terrible in his nature! Reflect, in short, on the picture presented in the parable: “Behold the fig-tree, and all the trees; when they produce their fruit, men know that summer is at hand. So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is very near.” 5057 Now, if the fructification of the common trees 5058 be an antecedent sign of the approach of summer, so in like manner do the great conflicts of the world indicate the arrival of that kingdom which they precede. But every sign is His, to whom belong the thing of which it is the sign; and to everything is appointed its sign by Him to whom the thing belongs. If, therefore, these tribulations are the signs of the kingdom, just as the maturity of the trees is of the summer, it follows that the kingdom is the Creator’s to whom are ascribed the tribulations which are the signs of the kingdom. Since the beneficent Deity had premised that these things must needs come to pass, although so terrible and dreadful, as they had been predicted by the law and the prophets, therefore He did not destroy the law and the prophets, when He affirmed that what had been foretold therein must be certainly fulfilled. He further declares, “that heaven and earth shall not pass away till all things be fulfilled.” 5059 What things, pray, are these? Are they the things which the Creator made? Then the elements will tractably endure the accomplishment of their Maker’s dispensation. If, however, they emanate from your excellent god, I much doubt whether 5060 the heaven and earth will peaceably allow the completion of things which their Creator’s enemy has determined! If the Creator quietly submits to this, then He is no “jealous God.” But let heaven and earth pass away, since their Lord has so determined; only let His word remain for evermore! And so Isaiah predicted that it should. 5061 Let the disciples also be warned, “lest their hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and cares of this world; and so that day come upon them unawares, like a snare” 5062 —if indeed they should forget God amidst the abundance and occupation of the world. Like this will be found the admonition of Moses,—so that He who delivers from “the snare” of that day is none other than He who so long before addressed to men the same admonition. 5063 Some places there were in Jerusalem where to teach; other places outside Jerusalem whither to retire 5064 —“in the day-time He was teaching in the temple;” just as He had foretold by Hosea: “In my house did they find me, and there did I speak with them.” 5065 “But at night He went out to the Mount of Olives.” For thus had Zechariah pointed out: “And His feet shall stand in that day on the Mount of Olives.” 5066 Fit hours for an audience there also were. “Early in the morning” 5067 must they resort to Him, who (having said by Isaiah, “The Lord giveth me the tongue of the learned”) added, “He hath appointed me the morning, and hath also given me an ear to hear.” 5068 Now if this is to destroy the prophets, 5069 what will it be to fulfil them?
Footnotes
414:5015See above: book iii. chap. xv. and xvi. pp. 333, 334.
414:5016The illam here refers to the nominum proprietas, i.e., His title Christ and His name Jesus.
414:5017Transnominaret.
414:5018Proinde.
414:5019Luke xxi. 8.
414:5020Consimilem: of course Marcion’s Christ; the Marcionite being challenged in the “you.”
415:5021Luke xxi. 9-11.
415:5022Compare, in Luke 21:9, 22, 28, 31, 35.
415:5023Luke 21:12, 13.
415:5024Omnipotens: παντοκράτωρ (Sept.); of hosts—A.V.
415:5025Zech. 9:15, 16 (Septuagint).
415:5026Allophylis.
415:5027Eph. ii. 20.
415:5028Luke xxi. 12-14.
415:5029Num. xxii.-xxiv.
415:5030Ex. iv. 10-12.
415:5031Isa. xliv. 5.
415:5032Exserta.
415:5033See Gen. xxxii. 28.
415:5034Isa. l. 4.
415:5035Luke 21:16, 17.
415:5036Per tolerantiam: “endurance.”
415:5037Comp. Luke 21:19, Matt. 24:13.
415:5038Ps. ix. 18.
415:5039After the Septuagint he makes a plural appellative (“eis qui toleraverint,” LXX. τοῖς ὑπομένονσι) of the Hebrew םלֶח”לְ, which in A.V. and the Vulgate (and also Gesenius and Fuerst) is the dative of a proper name.
416:5040Luke xxi. 20.
416:5041Luke 21:25, 26.
416:5042Luke xxi. 26.
416:5043Joel 3:30, 31.
416:5044Elata: “fear was raised to its very highest.”
416:5045Hab. iii. 9-12 (Septuagint).
416:5046Luke 21:27, 28.
416:5047Luke xxi. 31.
416:5048Dan. vii. 13.
416:5049Dan. vii. 14.
416:5050Luke 19:12, 13, etc.
416:5051Ps. ii. 8.
416:5052Dan. vii. 14.
416:5053Luke 20:35, 36.
416:5054Hab. iii. 13.
416:5055In Luke xxi. 7.
416:5056Luke xxi. 33.
417:5057Luke xxi. 29-31.
417:5058Arbuscularum.
417:5059Luke xxi. 33.
417:5060Nescio an.
417:5061Isa. xl. 8.
417:5062Luke 21:34, 35. [Here follows a rich selection of parallels to Luke xxi. 34-38.]
417:5063Comp. Deut. viii. 12-14.
417:5064Luke xxi. 37.
417:5065Hosea xii. 4. One reading of the LXX. is, ἐν τῳ οἴκῳ μου εὕρεσάν με.
417:5066Zech. xiv. 4.
417:5067Luke xxi. 38.
417:5068Isa. l. 4.
417:5069Literally, “the prophecies.”
Chapter XL.—How the Steps in the Passion of the Saviour Were Predetermined in Prophecy. The Passover. The Treachery of Judas. The Institution of the Lord’s Supper. The Docetic Error of Marcion Confuted by the Body and the Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In like manner does He also know the very time it behoved Him to suffer, since the law prefigures His passion. Accordingly, of all the festal days of the Jews He chose the passover. 5070 In this Moses had declared that there was a sacred mystery: 5071 “It is the Lord’s passover.” 5072 How earnestly, therefore, does He manifest the bent of His soul: “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer.” 5073 What a destroyer of the law was this, who actually longed to keep its passover! Could it be that He was so fond of Jewish lamb? 5074 But was it not because He had to be “led like a lamb to the slaughter; and because, as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so was He not to open His mouth,” 5075 that He so profoundly wished to accomplish the symbol of His own redeeming blood? He might also have been betrayed by any stranger, did I not find that even here too He fulfilled a Psalm: “He who did eat bread with me hath lifted up 5076 his heel against me.” 5077 And without a price might He have been betrayed. For what need of a traitor was there in the case of one who offered Himself to the people openly, and might quite as easily have been captured by force as taken by treachery? This might no doubt have been well enough for another Christ, but would not have been suitable in One who was accomplishing prophecies. For it was written, “The righteous one did they sell for silver.” 5078 The very amount and the destination 5079 of the money, which on Judas’ remorse was recalled from its first purpose of a fee, 5080 and appropriated to the purchase of a potter’s field, as narrated in the Gospel of Matthew, were clearly foretold by Jeremiah: 5081 “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of Him who was valued 5082 and gave them for the potter’s field.” When He so earnestly expressed His desire to eat the passover, He considered it His own feast; for it would have been unworthy of God to desire to partake of what was not His own. Then, having taken the bread and given it to His disciples, He made it His own body, by saying, “This is my body,” 5083 that is, the figure of my body. A figure, however, there could not have been, unless there were first a veritable body. 5084 An empty thing, or phantom, is incapable of a figure. If, however, (as Marcion might say,) He pretended the bread was His body, because He lacked the truth of bodily substance, it follows that He must have given bread for us. It would contribute very well to the support of Marcion’s theory of a phantom body, 5085 that bread should have been crucified! But why call His body bread, and not rather (some other edible thing, say) a melon, 5086 which Marcion must have had in lieu of a heart! He did not understand how ancient was this figure of the body of Christ, who said Himself by Jeremiah: “I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter, and I knew not that 5087 they devised a device against me, saying, Let us cast the tree upon His bread,” 5088 which means, of course, the cross upon His body. And thus, casting light, as He always did, upon the ancient prophecies, 5089 He declared plainly enough what He meant by the bread, when He called the bread His own body. He likewise, when mentioning the cup and making the new testament to be sealed “in His blood,” 5090 affirms the reality of His body. For no blood can belong to a body which is not a body of flesh. If any sort of body were presented to our view, which is not one of flesh, not being fleshly, it would not possess blood. Thus, from the evidence of the flesh, we get a proof of the body, and a proof of the flesh from the evidence of the blood. In order, however, that you may discover how anciently wine is used as a figure for blood, turn to Isaiah, who asks, “Who is this that cometh from Edom, from Bosor with garments dyed in red, so glorious in His apparel, in the greatness of his might? Why are thy garments red, and thy raiment as his who cometh from the treading of the full winepress?” 5091 The prophetic Spirit contemplates the Lord as if He were already on His way to His passion, clad in His fleshly nature; and as He was to suffer therein, He represents the bleeding condition of His flesh under the metaphor of garments dyed in red, as if reddened in the treading and crushing process of the wine-press, from which the labourers descend reddened with the wine-juice, like men stained in blood. Much more clearly still does the book of Genesis foretell this, when (in the blessing of Judah, out of whose tribe Christ was to come according to the flesh) it even then delineated Christ in the person of that patriarch, 5092 saying, “He washed His garments in wine, and His clothes in the blood of grapes” 5093 —in His garments and clothes the prophecy pointed out his flesh, and His blood in the wine. Thus did He now consecrate His blood in wine, who then (by the patriarch) used the figure of wine to describe His blood.
Footnotes
417:5070Luke 22:0, Luke 1:0.
417:5071Sacramentum.
417:5072Lev. xxiii. 5.
417:5073Luke xxii. 15.
418:5074Vervecina Judaica. In this rough sarcasm we have of course our author’s contempt of Marcionism.
418:5075Isa. liii. 7.
418:5076Levabit: literally, “shall lift up,” etc.
418:5077Ps. xli. 9.
418:5078Amos ii. 6.
418:5079Exitum.
418:5080Revocati.
418:5081This passage more nearly resembles Zech. 11:12, 13 than anything in Jeremiah, although the transaction in Jer. xxxii. 7-15 is noted by the commentators, as referred to. Tertullian had good reason for mentioning Jeremiah and not Zechariah, because the apostle whom he refers to (Matt. xxvii. 3-10) had distinctly attributed the prophecy to Jeremiah (“Jeremy the prophet,” Matt. 27.9). This is not the place to do more than merely refer to the voluminous controversy which has arisen from the apostle’s mention of Jeremiah instead of Zechariah. It is enough to remark that Tertullian’s argument is unaffected by the discrepancy in the name of the particular prophet. On all hands the prophecy is admitted, and this at once satisfies our author’s argument. For the ms. evidence in favour of the unquestionably correct reading, τότε ἐπληρώθη τὸ ῥηθὲν διὰ ῾Ιερεμίου τοῦ προφήτου, κ.τ.λ., the reader is referred to Dr. Tregelles’ Critical Greek Testament, in loc.; only to the convincing amount of evidence collected by the very learned editor must now be added the subsequently obtained authority of Tischendorf’s Codex Sinaiticus.
418:5082Appretiati vel honorati. There is nothing in the original or the Septuagint to meet the second word honorati, which may refer to the “honorarium,” or “fee paid on admission to a post of honour,”—a term of Roman law, and referred to by Tertullian himself.
418:5083Luke xxii. 19. [See Jewell’s Challenge, p. 266, supra.]
418:5084Corpus veritatis: meant as a thrust against Marcion’s Docetism.
418:5085Ad vanitatem Marcionis. [Note 9, p. 289.]
418:5086Peponem. In his De Anima, c. xxxii., he uses this word in strong irony: “Cur non magis et pepo, tam insulsus.”
418:5087[This text, imperfectly quoted in the original, is filled out by Dr. Holmes.]
418:5088So the Septuagint in Jer. xi. 19, Ξύλον εἰς τὸν ἄρτον αὐτοῦ (A.V. “Let us destroy the tree with the fruit”). See above, book iii. chap. xix. p. 337.
418:5089Illuminator antiquitatum. This general phrase includes typical ordinances under the law, as well as the sayings of the prophets.
418:5090Luke xxii. 20.
418:5091Isa. lxiii. 1 (Sept. slightly altered).
419:5092In Juda.
419:5093Gen. xlix. 11.
Chapter XLI.—The Woe Pronounced on the Traitor a Judicial Act, Which Disproves Christ to Be Such as Marcion Would Have Him to Be. Christ’s Conduct Before the Council Explained. Christ Even Then Directs the Minds of His Judges to the Prophetic Evidences of His Own Mission. The Moral Responsibility of These Men Asserted.
“Woe,” says He, “to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed!” 5094 Now it is certain that in this woe must be understood the imprecation and threat of an angry and incensed Master, unless Judas was to escape with impunity after so vast a sin. If he were meant to escape with impunity, the “woe” was an idle word; if not, he was of course to be punished by Him against whom he had committed the sin of treachery. Now, if He knowingly permitted the man, whom He 5095 deliberately elected to be one of His companions, to plunge into so great a crime, you must no longer use an argument against the Creator in Adam’s case, which may now recoil on your own God: 5096 either that he was ignorant, and had no foresight to hinder the future sinner; 5097 or that he was unable to hinder him, even if he was ignorant; 5098 or else that he was unwilling, even if he had the foreknowledge and the ability; and so deserved the stigma of maliciousness, in having permitted the man of his own choice to perish in his sin. I advise you therefore (willingly) to acknowledge the Creator in that god of yours, rather than against your will to be assimilating your excellent god to Him. For in the case of Peter, 5099 too, he gives you proof that he is a jealous God, when he destined the apostle, after his presumptuous protestations of zeal, to a flat denial of him, rather than prevent his fall. 5100 The Christ of the prophets was destined, moreover, to be betrayed with a kiss, 5101 for He was the Son indeed of Him who was “honoured with the lips” by the people. 5102 When led before the council, He is asked whether He is the Christ. 5103 Of what Christ could the Jews have inquired 5104 but their own? Why, therefore, did He not, even at that moment, declare to them the rival (Christ)? You reply, In order that He might be able to suffer. In other words, that this most excellent god might plunge men into crime, whom he was still keeping in ignorance. But even if he had told them, he would yet have to suffer. For he said, “If I tell you, ye will not believe.” 5105 And refusing to believe, they would have continued to insist on his death. And would he not even more probably still have had to suffer, if had announced himself as sent by the rival god, and as being, therefore, the enemy of the Creator? It was not, then, in order that He might suffer, that He at that critical moment refrained from proclaiming 5106 Himself the other Christ, but because they wanted to extort a confession from His mouth, which they did not mean to believe even if He had given it to them, whereas it was their bounden duty to have acknowledged Him in consequence of His works, which were fulfilling their Scriptures. It was thus plainly His course to keep Himself at that moment unrevealed, 5107 because a spontaneous recognition was due to Him. But yet for all this, He with a solemn gesture 5108 says, “Hereafter shall the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power of God.” 5109 For it was on the authority of the prophecy of Daniel that He intimated to them that He was “the Son of man,” 5110 and of David’s Psalm, that He would “sit at the right hand of God.” 5111 Accordingly, after He had said this, and so suggested a comparison of the Scripture, a ray of light did seem to show them whom He would have them understand Him to be; for they say: “Art thou then the Son of God?” 5112 Of what God, but of Him whom alone they knew? Of what God but of Him whom they remembered in the Psalm as having said to His Son, “Sit Thou on my right hand?” Then He answered, “Ye say that I am;” 5113 as if He meant: It is ye who say this—not I. But at the same time He allowed Himself to be all that they had said, in this their second question. 5114 By what means, however, are you going to prove to us that they pronounced the sentence “Ergo tu filius Dei es” interrogatively, and not affirmatively? 5115 Just as, (on the one hand,) because He had shown them in an indirect manner, 5116 by passages of Scripture, that they ought to regard Him as the Son of God, they therefore meant their own words, “Thou art then the Son of God,” to be taken in a like (indirect) sense, 5117 as much as to say, “You do not wish to say this of yourself plainly,” 5118 so, (on the other hand,) He likewise answered them, “Ye say that I am,” in a sense equally free from doubt, even affirmatively; 5119 and so completely was His statement to this effect, that they insisted on accepting that sense which His statement indicated. 5120
Footnotes
419:5094Luke xxii. 22.
419:5095Ipse.
419:5096This is an argumentum ad hominem against Marcion for his cavil, which was considered above in book ii. chap. v.–viii. p. 300.
419:5097Obstitit peccaturo.
419:5098Si ignorabat. One would have expected “si non ignorabat,” like the “si sciebat” of the next step in the argument.
419:5099The original of this not very clear sentence is: “Nam et Petrum præsumptorie aliquid elocutum negationi potius destinando zeloten deum tibi ostendit.”
419:5100Luke 22:34, 54.
419:5101Luke xxii. 47-49.
419:5102Isa. xxix. 13.
419:5103Luke 22:66, 67.
419:5104Oehler’s admirable edition is also carefully printed for the most part, but surely his quæsisset must here be quæsissent.
419:5105Luke xxii. 67.
419:5106Supersedit ostendere.
419:5107i.e., not to answer that question of theirs. This seems to be the force of the perfect tense, “occultasse se.”
419:5108He makes Jesus stretch forth His hand, porrigens manum inquit.
419:5109Luke xxii. 69.
419:5110Dan. vii. 13.
419:5111Ps. cx. 1.
419:5112Luke xxii. 70.
420:5113Luke xxii. 70.
420:5114Or does he suppose that they repeated this same question twice? His words are, “dum rursus interrogant.”
420:5115Either, “Art thou,” or, “Thou art, then, the Son of God.”
420:5116Oblique.
420:5117Ut, quia…sic senserunt.
420:5118Aperte.
420:5119Æque ita et ille confirmative respondit.
420:5120Ut perseveraverint in eo quod pronuntiatio sapiebat.…See Luke xxii. 71.
Chapter XLII.—Other Incidents of the Passion Minutely Compared with Prophecy. Pilate and Herod. Barabbas Preferred to Jesus. Details of the Crucifixion. The Earthquake and the Mid-Day Darkness. All Wonderfully Foretold in the Scriptures of the Creator. Christ’s Giving Up the Ghost No Evidence of Marcion’s Docetic Opinions. In His Sepulture There is a Refutation Thereof.
For when He was brought before Pilate, they proceeded to urge Him with the serious charge 5121 , of declaring Himself to be Christ the King; 5122 that is, undoubtedly, as the Son of God, who was to sit at God’s right hand. They would, however, have burdened Him 5123 with some other title, if they had been uncertain whether He had called Himself the Son of God—if He had not pronounced the words, “Ye say that I am,” so as (to admit) that He was that which they said He was. Likewise, when Pirate asked Him, “Art thou Christ (the King)?” He answered, as He had before (to the Jewish council) 5124 “Thou sayest that I am” 5125 in order that He might not seem to have been driven by a fear of his power to give him a fuller answer. “And so the Lord hath stood on His trial.” 5126 And he placed His people on their trial. The Lord Himself comes to a trial with “the elders and rulers of the people,” as Isaiah predicted. 5127 And then He fulfilled all that had been written of His passion. At that time “the heathen raged, and the people imagined vain things; the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers gathered themselves together against the Lord and against His Christ.” 5128 The heathen were Pilate and the Romans; the people were the tribes of Israel; the kings were represented in Herod, and the rulers in the chief priests. When, indeed, He was sent to Herod gratuitously 5129 by Pilate, 5130 the words of Hosea were accomplished, for he had prophesied of Christ: “And they shall carry Him bound as a present to the king.” 5131 Herod was “exceeding glad” when he saw Jesus, but he heard not a word from Him. 5132 For, “as a lamb before the shearer is dumb, so He opened not His mouth,” 5133 because “the Lord had given to Him a disciplined tongue, that he might know how and when it behoved Him to speak” 5134 —even that “tongue which clove to His jaws,” as the Psalm 5135 said it should, through His not speaking. Then Barabbas, the most abandoned criminal, is released, as if he were the innocent man; while the most righteous Christ is delivered to be put to death, as if he were the murderer. 5136 Moreover two malefactors are crucified around Him, in order that He might be reckoned amongst the transgressors. 5137 Although His raiment was, without doubt, parted among the soldiers, and partly distributed by lot, yet Marcion has erased it all (from his Gospel), 5138 for he had his eye upon the Psalm: “They parted my garments amongst them, and cast lots upon my vesture.” 5139 You may as well take away the cross itself! But even then the Psalm is not silent concerning it: “They pierced my hands and my feet.” 5140 Indeed, the details of the whole event are therein read: “Dogs compassed me about; the assembly of the wicked enclosed me around. All that looked upon me laughed me to scorn; they did shoot out their lips and shake their heads, (saying,) He hoped in God, let Him deliver Him.” 5141 Of what use now is (your tampering with) the testimony of His garments? If you take it as a booty for your false Christ, still all the Psalm (compensates) the vesture of Christ. 5142 But, behold, the very elements are shaken. For their Lord was suffering. If, however, it was their enemy to whom all this injury was done, the heaven would have gleamed with light, the sun would have been even more radiant, and the day would have prolonged its course 5143 —gladly gazing at Marcion’s Christ suspended on his gibbet! These proofs 5144 would still have been suitable for me, even if they had not been the subject of prophecy. Isaiah says: “I will clothe the heavens with blackness.” 5145 This will be the day, concerning which Amos also writes: And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord, that the sun shall go down at noon and the earth shall be dark in the clear day.” 5146 (At noon) 5147 the veil of the temple was rent” 5148 by the escape of the cherubim, 5149 which “left the daughter of Sion as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers.” 5150 With what constancy has He also, in Psalm xxx., laboured to present to us the very Christ! He calls with a loud voice to the Father, “Into Thine hands I commend my spirit,” 5151 that even when dying He might expend His last breath in fulfilling the prophets. Having said this, He gave up the ghost.” 5152 Who? Did the spirit 5153 give itself up; or the flesh the spirit? But the spirit could not have breathed itself out. That which breathes is one thing, that which is breathed is another. If the spirit is breathed it must needs be breathed by another. If, however, there had been nothing there but spirit, it would be said to have departed rather than expired. 5154 What, however, breathes out spirit but the flesh, which both breathes the spirit whilst it has it, and breathes it out when it loses it? Indeed, if it was not flesh (upon the cross), but a phantom 5155 of flesh (and 5156 a phantom is but spirit, and 5157 so the spirit breathed its own self out, and departed as it did so), no doubt the phantom departed, when the spirit which was the phantom departed: and so the phantom and the spirit disappeared together, and were nowhere to be seen. 5158 Nothing therefore remained upon the cross, nothing hung there, after “the giving up of the ghost;” 5159 there was nothing to beg of Pilate, nothing to take down from the cross, nothing to wrap in the linen, nothing to lay in the new sepulchre. 5160 Still it was not nothing 5161 that was there. What was there, then? If a phantom Christ was yet there. If Christ had departed, He had taken away the phantom also. The only shift left to the impudence of the heretics, is to admit that what remained there was the phantom of a phantom! But what if Joseph knew that it was a body which he treated with so much piety? 5162 That same Joseph “who had not consented” with the Jews in their crime? 5163 The “happy man who walked not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of the scornful.” 5164
Footnotes
420:5121Onerare cœperunt.
420:5122“King Messiah;” λέγοντα ἑαυτὸν Χριστὸν βασιλέα εἶναι, Luke 23:1, 2.
420:5123Gravassent.
420:5124Proinde.
420:5125Luke xxiii. 3.
420:5126Constitutus est in judicio. The Septuagint is καταστήσεται εἰς κρίσιν, “shall stand on His trial.”
420:5127Isa. 3:13, 14 (Septuagint).
420:5128Ps. 2:1, 2.
420:5129Velut munus. This is a definition, in fact, of the xenium in the verse from Hosea. This ξένιον was the Roman lautia, “a state entertainment to distinguished foreigners in the city.”
420:5130Luke xxiii. 7.
420:5131Hos. x. 6 (Sept. ξένια τῷ βασιλεῖ).
420:5132Luke 23:8, 9.
420:5133Isa. liii. 7.
420:5134Isa. l. 4 (Sept.).
420:5135Ps. xxii. 15.
420:5136Luke xxiii. 25.
420:5137Comp. Luke 23:33, Isa. 53:12.
420:5138This remarkable suppression was made to escape the wonderful minuteness of the prophetic evidence to the details of Christ’s death.
420:5139Ps. xxii. 18.
420:5140Ps. xxii. 16.
421:5141Ps. 22:16, 7, 8.
421:5142We append the original of these obscure sentences: “Quo jam testimonium vestimentorum? Habe falsi tui prædam; totus psalmus vestimenta sunt Christi.” The general sense is apparent. If Marcion does suppress the details about Christ’s garments at the cross, to escape the inconvenient proof they afford that Christ is the object of prophecies, yet there are so many other points of agreement between this wonderful Psalm and St. Luke’s history of the crucifixion (not expunged, as it would seem, by the heretic), that they quite compensate for the loss of this passage about the garments (Oehler).
421:5143Comp. Josh. x. 13.
421:5144Argumenta.
421:5145Isa. l. 3.
421:5146Amos viii. 9.
421:5147Here you have the meaning of the sixth hour.
421:5148Luke xxiii. 45.
421:5149Ezek. 11:22, 23.
421:5150Isa. i. 8.
421:5151Comp. Luke 23:46, Ps. 31:5.
421:5152Luke xxiii. 46.
421:5153Spiritus: or “breath.”
421:5154Expirasse: considered actively, “breathed out,” in reference to the “expiravit” of the Luke 23.46 above.
421:5155A sharp rebuke of Marcion’s Docetism here follows.
421:5156Autem.
421:5157Autem.
421:5158Nusquam comparuit phantasma cum spiritu.
421:5159Post expirationem.
421:5160See these stages in Luke xxiii. 47-55.
421:5161Non nihil: “a something.”
421:5162This argument is also used by Epiphanius to prove the reality of Christ’s body, Hæres. xl. Confut. 74. The same writer also employs for the same purpose the incident of the women returning from the sepulchre, which Tertullian is going to adduce in his next chapter, Confut. 75 (Oehler).
421:5163Luke xxiii. 51.
421:5164Ps. i. 1.
Chapter XLIII.—Conclusions. Jesus as the Christ of the Creator Proved from the Events of the Last Chapter of St. Luke. The Pious Women at the Sepulchre. The Angels at the Resurrection. The Manifold Appearances of Christ After the Resurrection. His Mission of the Apostles Amongst All Nations. All Shown to Be in Accordance with the Wisdom of the Almighty Father, as Indicated in Prophecy. The Body of Christ After Death No Mere Phantom. Marcion’s Manipulation of the Gospel on This Point.
It was very meet that the man who buried the Lord should thus be noticed in prophecy, and thenceforth be “blessed;” 5165 since prophecy does not omit the (pious) office of the women who resorted before day-break to the sepulchre with the spices which they had prepared. 5166 For of this incident it is said by Hosea: “To seek my face they will watch till day-light, saying unto me, Come, and let us return to the Lord: for He hath taken away, and He will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will bind us up; after two days will He revive us: in the third day He will raise us up.” 5167 For who can refuse to believe that these words often revolved 5168 in the thought of those women between the sorrow of that desertion with which at present they seemed to themselves to have been smitten by the Lord, and the hope of the resurrection itself, by which they rightly supposed that all would be restored to them? But when “they found not the body (of the Lord Jesus),” 5169 “His sepulture was removed from the midst of them,” 5170 according to the prophecy of Isaiah. “Two angels however, appeared there.” 5171 For just so many honorary companions 5172 were required by the word of God, which usually prescribes “two witnesses.” 5173 Moreover, the women, returning from the sepulchre, and from this vision of the angels, were foreseen by Isaiah, when he says, “Come, ye women, who return from the vision;” 5174 that is, “come,” to report the resurrection of the Lord. It was well, however, that the unbelief of the disciples was so persistent, in order that to the last we might consistently maintain that Jesus revealed Himself to the disciples as none other than the Christ of the prophets. For as two of them were taking a walk, and when the Lord had joined their company, without its appearing that it was He, and whilst He dissembled His knowledge of what had just taken place, 5175 they say: “But we trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel,” 5176 —meaning their own, that is, the Creator’s Christ. So far had He been from declaring Himself to them as another Christ! They could not, however, deem Him to be the Christ of the Creator; nor, if He was so deemed by them, could He have tolerated this opinion concerning Himself, unless He were really He whom He was supposed to be. Otherwise He would actually be the author of error, and the prevaricator of truth, contrary to the character of the good God. But at no time even after His resurrection did He reveal Himself to them as any other than what, on their own showing, they had always thought Him to be. He pointedly 5177 reproached them: “O fools, and slow of heart in not believing that which He spake unto you.” 5178 By saying this, He proves that He does not belong to the rival god, but to the same God. For the same thing was said by the angels to the women: “Remember how He spake unto you when He was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of man must be delivered up, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” 5179 “Must be delivered up;” and why, except that it was so written by God the Creator? He therefore upbraided them, because they were offended solely at His passion, and because they doubted of the truth of the resurrection which had been reported to them by the women, whereby (they showed that) they had not believed Him to have been the very same as they had thought Him to be. Wishing, therefore, to be believed by them in this wise, He declared Himself to be just what they had deemed Him to be—the Creator’s Christ, the Redeemer of Israel. But as touching the reality of His body, what can be plainer? When they were doubting whether He were not a phantom—nay, were supposing that He was one—He says to them, “Why are ye troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See 5180 my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; for a spirit hath not bones, as ye see me have.” 5181 Now Marcion was unwilling to expunge from his Gospel some statements which even made against him—I suspect, on purpose, to have it in his power from the passages which he did not suppress, when he could have done so, either to deny that he had expunged anything, or else to justify his suppressions, if he made any. But he spares only such passages as he can subvert quite as well by explaining them away as by expunging them from the text. Thus, in the passage before us, he would have the words, “A spirit hath not bones, as ye see me have,” so transposed, as to mean, “A spirit, such as ye see me to be, hath not bones;” that is to say, it is not the nature of a spirit to have bones. But what need of so tortuous a construction, when He might have simply said, “A spirit hath not bones, even as you observe that I have not?” Why, moreover, does He offer His hands and His feet for their examination—limbs which consist of bones—if He had no bones? Why, too, does He add, “Know that it is I myself,” 5182 when they had before known Him to be corporeal? Else, if He were altogether a phantom, why did He upbraid them for supposing Him to be a phantom? But whilst they still believed not, He asked them for some meat, 5183 for the express purpose of showing them that He had teeth. 5184
And now, as I would venture to believe, 5185 we have accomplished our undertaking. We have set forth Jesus Christ as none other than the Christ of the Creator. Our proofs we have drawn from His doctrines, maxims, 5186 affections, feelings, miracles, sufferings, and even resurrection—as foretold by the prophets. 5187 Even to the last He taught us (the same truth of His mission), when He sent forth His apostles to preach His gospel “among all nations;” 5188 for He thus fulfilled the psalm: “Their sound is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.” 5189 Marcion, I pity you; your labour has been in vain. For the Jesus Christ who appears in your Gospel is mine.
Footnotes
421:5165The first word of the passage just applied to Joseph.
422:5166Luke xxiv. 1.
422:5167Hos. 5:15, Hos. 6:1, 2.
422:5168Volutata.
422:5169Luke xxiv. 3.
422:5170Isa. lvii. 2, according to the Septuagint, ἡ ταφὴ αὐτοῦ ἠρται ἐκ τοῦ μέσου.
422:5171Luke xxiv. 4.
422:5172Tot fere laterensibus.
422:5173Deut. 17:6, Deut. 19:15, Matt. 18:16, 2 Cor. 13:1.
422:5174Isa. xxvii. 11, according to the Septuagint, γυναῖκες ἐρχόμεναι ἀπὸ θέας, δεῦτε.
422:5175Luke xxiv. 13-19.
422:5176Luke xxiv. 21.
422:5177Plane.
422:5178Luke xxiv. 25.
422:5179Luke 24:6, 7.
422:5180Videte. The original is much stronger ψηλαφήσατέ με καὶ ἴδετε, “handle me, and see.” Two sentences thrown into one.
422:5181Luke xxiv. 37-39.
423:5182Luke xxiv. 39.
423:5183Luke xxiv. 41.
423:5184An additional proof that He was no phantom.
423:5185Ut opinor.
423:5186Sententiis.
423:5187Prophetarum.
423:5188Luke 24:47, Matt. 28:19.
423:5189Ps. xix. 4.
Dr. Holmes’ Note.
————————————
Dr. Holmes appends the following as a note to the Fourth Book. (See cap. vi. p. 351.)
The following statement, abridged from Dr. Lardner (The History of Heretics, chap. x. secs. 35–40), may be useful to the reader, in reference to the subject of the preceding Book:—Marcion received but eleven books of the New Testament, and these strangely curtailed and altered. He divided them into two parts, which he called τὸ Εὐαγγέλιον (the Gospel) and τὸ ᾽Αποστολικόν (the Apostolicon).
1. The former contained nothing more than a mutilated, and sometimes interpolated, edition of St. Luke; the name of that evangelist, however, he expunged from the beginning of his copy. Luke 1:0, Luke 2:0. he rejected entirely, and began at Luke 3.1, reading the opening verse thus: “In the xv. year of Tiberius Cæsar, God descended into Capernaum, a city of Galilee.”
2. According to Irenæus, Epiphanius, and Theodoret, he rejected the genealogy and baptism of Christ; whilst from Tertullian’s statement (chap. vii.) it seems likely that he connected what part of chap. iii.—Luke 3:1, 2—he chose to retain, with Luke 4.31, at a leap.
3. He further eliminated the history of the temptation. That part of Luke 4. which narrates Christ’s going into the synagogue at Nazareth and reading out of Isaiah he also rejected, and all afterwards to the end of Luke 4.30.
4. Epiphanius mentions sundry slight alterations in capp. v. 14, 24, vi. 5, 17. In Luke 8.19 he expunged ἡ μήτηρ αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἀδελφοὶ αὐτοῦ. From Tertullian’s remarks (chap. xix.), it would seem at first as if Marcion had added to his Gospel that answer of our Saviour which we find related by Matt. 12.48: “Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?” For he represents Marcion (as in De carne Christi, vii., he represents other heretics, who deny the nativity) as making use of these words for his favourite argument. But, after all, Marcion might use these words against those who allowed the authenticity of Matthew’s Gospel, without inserting them in his own Gospel; or else Tertullian might quote from memory, and think that to be in Luke which was only in Matthew—as he has done at least in three instances. (Lardner refers two of these instances to passages in chap. vii. of this Book iv., where Tertullian mentions, as erasures from Luke, what really are found in Matt. 5:17, Matt. 15:24. The third instance referred to by Lardner probably occurs at the end of chap. ix. of this same Book iv., where Tertullian again mistakes Matt. v. 17 for a passage of Luke, and charges Marcion with expunging it; curiously enough, the mistake recurs in chap. xii of the same Book.) In Luke x. 21 Marcion omitted the first πάτερ and the words καὶ τῆς γῆς, that he might not allow Christ to call His Father the Lord of earth, or of this world. The second πατήρ in this verse, not open to any inconvenience, he retained. In chap. xi. 29 he omitted the last words concerning the sign of the prophet Jonah; he also omitted all the Luke 11.30-32; in Luke 11.42 he read κλῆσιν, ‘calling,’ instead of κρίσιν ‘judgment.’ He rejected verses Luke 11.49-51, because the passage related to the prophets. He entirely omitted Luke 12.6; whilst in Luke 12.8 he read ἔμπροσθεν τοῦ Θεοῦ instead of ἔμπροσθεν τῶν ἀγγέλων τοῦ Θεοῦ. He seems to have left out all the Luke 12.28, and expunged ὑμῶν from Luke 12:30, 32, reading only ὁ πατήρ. In Luke 12.38, instead of the words ἐν τῇ δευτέρᾳ φυλακῇ, καὶ ἐν τῇ τρίτῃ φυλακῇ, he read ἐν τῇ ἑσπερινῇ φυλακῇ. In Luke 13. he omitted the Luke 13.1-5, whilst in the Luke 13.28 of the same chapter, where we read, “When ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and ye yourselves thrust out,” he read (by altering, adding, and transposing), “When ye shall see all the just in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves cast out, and bound without, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” He likewise excluded all the Luke 13.29-35. All Luke 15.11-31, in which is contained the parable of the prodigal son, he eliminated from his Gospel. In Luke 17.10 he left out all the words after λέγετε. He made many alterations in the story of the ten lepers; he left out part of Luke 17.12-14, reading thus: “There met Him ten lepers; and He sent them away, saying, Show yourselves to the priest;” after which he inserted a clause from Luke 4.27: “There were many lepers in the days of Eliseus the prophet, but none of them were cleansed, but Naaman the Syrian.” In Luke 18.19 he added the words ὁ πατήρ, and in Luke 18.20 altered οἶδας, thou knowest, into the first person. He entirely omitted Luke 18.31-33, in which our blessed Saviour declares that the things foretold by the prophets concerning His sufferings, and death, and resurrection, should all be fulfilled. He expunged nineteen verses out of chap. xix., from the Luke 19.27-47. In chap. xx. he omitted ten verses, from the Luke 20.8-18. He rejected also Luke 20.37-38, in which there is a reference to Moses. Marcion also erased of Luke 21.1-22, on account of this clause, “that all things which are written may be fulfilled;” Luke 20.16 was left out by him, so also Luke 20:35, 50 (and, adds Lardner, conjecturally, not herein following his authority Epiphanius, also Luke 20:38, 49). In Luke 23.2, after the words “perverting the nation,” Marcion added, “and destroying the law and the prophets;” and again, after “forbidding to give tribute unto Cæsar,” he added, “and perverting women and children.” He also erased Luke 23.43. In Luke 24. he omitted that part of the conference between our Saviour and the two disciples going to Emmaus, which related to the prediction of His sufferings, and which is contained in Luke 24.26-27. These two verses he omitted, and changed the words at the end of Luke 24.25, ἐλάλησαν οἱ προφῆται, into ἐλάλησα ὑμῖν. Such are the alterations, according to Epiphanius, which Marcion made in his Gospel from St. Luke. Tertullian says (in the 4th chapter of the preceding Book) that Marcion erased the passage which gives an account of the parting of the raiment of our Saviour among the soldiers. But the reason he assigns for the erasure—‘respiciens Psalmi prophetiam’—shows that in this, as well as in the few other instances which we have already named, where Tertullian has charged Marcion with so altering passages, his memory deceived him into mistaking Matthew for Luke, for the reference to the passage in the Psalm is only given by St. Matthew xxvii. 35.
5. On an impartial review of these alterations, some seem to be but slight; others might be nothing but various readings; but others, again, are undoubtedly designed perversions. There were, however, passages enough left unaltered and unexpunged by the Marcionites, to establish the reality of the flesh and blood of Christ, and to prove that the God of the Jews was the Father of Christ, and of perfect goodness as well as justice. Tertullian, indeed, observes (chap. xliii.) that “Marcion purposely avoided erasing all the passages which made against him, that he might with the greater confidence deny having erased any at all, or at least that what he had omitted was for very good reasons.”
6. To show the unauthorized and unwarrantable character of these alterations, omissions, additions, and corruptions, the Catholic Christians asserted that their copies of St. Luke’s Gospel were more ancient than Marcion’s (so Tertullian in chap. iii. and iv. of this Book iv.); and they maintained also the genuineness and integrity of the unadulterated Gospel, in opposition to that which had been curtailed and altered by him (chap. v.).
Elucidations.
————————————
I.
(Deadly Sins, cap. ix., p. 356.)
To maintain a modern and wholly uncatholic system of Penitence, the schoolmen invented a technical scheme of sins mortal and sins venial, which must not be read into the Fathers, who had no such technicalities in mind. By “deadly sins” they meant all such as St. John recognizes (1 John v. 16-17) and none other; that is to say sins of surprise and infirmity, sins having in them no malice or wilful disobedience, such as an impatient word, or a momentary neglect of duty. Should a dying man commit a deliberate sin and then expire, even after a life of love and obedience, who could fail to recognize the fearful nature of such an end? But, should his last word be one of infirmity and weakness, censurable but not involving wilful disobedience, surely we may consider it as provided for by the comfortable words—“there is a sin not unto death.” Yet “all unrighteousness is sin,” and the Fathers held that all sin should be repented of and confessed before God; because all sin when it is finished bringeth forth death.”
In St. Augustine’s time, when moral theology became systematized in the West, by his mighty genius and influence, the following were recognized degrees of guilt: (1.) Sins deserving excommunication. (2.) Sins requiring to be confessed to the brother offended in order to God’s forgiveness, and (3.) sins covered by God’s gracious covenant, when daily confessed in the Lord’s Prayer, in public, or in private. And this classification was professedly based on Holy Scripture. Thus: (1.) on the text—“To deliver such an one unto Satan, etc.” (1 Cor. v. 4-5). (2.) On the text—(Matt. xviii. 15), “Confess your sins one to another, brethren” (James v. 16), and (3.) on the text—(Matt. vi. 12) “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us.” This last St. Augustine 5190 regards as the “daily medication” of our ordinary life, habitual penitence and faith and the baptismal covenant being presupposed.
The modern Trent theology has vastly amplified the scholastic teachings and refinements, and the elevation of Liguori to the rank of a church-doctor has virtually made the whole system de fide with the Latins. The Easterns know nothing of this modern and uncatholic teaching, and it is important that the student of the Ante-Nicene Patrologia should be on his guard against the novel meanings which the Trent theology imposes upon orthodox (Nicene) language. The long ages during which Eastern orthodoxy has been obscured by the sufferings and consequent ignorance of the Greeks, have indeed tainted their doctrinal and practical system, but it still subsists in amazing contrast with Latin impurity. See, on the “indulgences,” of the latter, the “Orthodox Theology of Macarius, Bishop of Vinnitza,” Tom. II. p. 541, Paris, 1860.
II.
(Reservation of Baptism, cap. xi., note, p. 361.)
It is important, here, to observe the heretical origin of a sinful superstition which becomes conspicuous in the history of Constantine. If the church tolerated it in his case, it was doubtless in view of this extraordinary instance of one, who was a heathen still, at heart, becoming a guardian and protector of the persecuted Faithful. It is probable that he was regarded as a Cyrus or a Nebuchadnezzar whom God had raised up to protect and to deliver His people; who was to be honoured and obeyed as “God’s minister” (Rom. xiii. 4.) in so far, and for this purpose. The church was scrupulous and he was superstitious; it would have been difficult to discipline him and worse not to discipline him. Tacitly, therefore, he was treated as a catechumen, but was not formally admitted even to that class. He permitted Heathenism, and while he did so, how could he be received as a Christian? The Christian church never became responsible for his life and character, but strove to reform him and to prepare him for a true confession of Christ at some “convenient season.” In this, there seems to have been a great fault somewhere, chargeable perhaps to Eusebius or to some other Christian counsellor; but, when could any one say—“the emperor is sincere and humble and penitent and ought now to be received into the church.” It was a political conversion, and as such was accepted, and Constantine was a heathen till near his death. As to his final penitence and acceptance—“Forbear to judge.” 2 Kings x. 29-31. Concerning his baptism, see Eusebius, de Vita Const. iv. 61, see also, Mosheim’s elaborate and candid views of the whole subject: First Three Centuries, Vol. II. 460–471.
III.
(Peter, cap. xiii. p. 365.)
The great Gallican, Launoy, doctor of the Sorbonne, has proved that the Fathers understand the Rock to be Christ, while, only rarely, and that rhetorically, not dogmatically, St. Peter is called a stone or a rock; a usage to which neither Luther nor Calvin could object. Tertullian himself, when he speaks dogmatically, is in accord with other Fathers, and gives no countenance to the modern doctrine of Rome. See La Papauté, of the Abbé Guettée, pp. 42–61. It is important, also, to note that the primacy of St. Peter, more or less, whatever it may have been in the mind of the Fathers, was wholly personal, in their view. Of the fables which make it hereditary and a purtenance of Rome they knew nothing.
IV.
(Loans, cap. xvii. p. 372.)
The whole subject of usury, in what it consists, etc., deserves to receive more attention than it does in our times, when nominal Christians are steeped in the sin of money-traffic to the injury of neighbours, on a scale truly gigantic. God’s word clearly rebukes this sin. So does the Council of Nice. 5191 Now by what is the sin defined? Certainly by the spirit of the Gospel; but, is it also, by the letter? A sophistical casuistry which maintains the letter, and then sophisticates and refines so as to explain it all away, is the product of school divinity and of modern Jesuitry; but even the great Bossuet is its apologist. (See his Traité de l’Usure. opp. ix. p. 49, etc., ed. Paris, 1846.) But for an exhaustive review of the whole matter, I ask attention to Huet, Le Règne Social, etc. (Paris, 1853) pp. 334–345.
V.
(The Baptist, cap. xviii. p. 375.)
The interpretation of Tertullian, however, has the all-important merit (which Bacon and Hooker recognize as cardinal) of flowing from the Scripture without squeezing. (1.) Our Lord sent the message to John as a personal and tender assurance to him. (2.) The story illustrates the decrease of which the Baptist had spoken prophetically (John iii. 30.); and (3.) it sustains the great principle that Christ alone is without sin, this being the one fault recorded of the Baptist, otherwise a singular instance of sinlessness. The B. Virgin’s fault (gently reproved by the Lord, John ii. 4.), seems in like manner introduced on this principle of exhibiting the only sinless One, in His Divine perfections as without spot. So even Joseph and Moses (Psalm cvi. 33., and Gen. xlvii. 20.) are shewn “to be but men.” The policy of Joseph has indeed been extravagantly censured.
VI.
(Harshness, cap. xix., note 6., p. 378. Also, cap. xxvi. p. 393.)
Tertullian seems with reflect the early view of the church as to our Lord’s total abnegation of all filial relations with the Virgin, when He gave to her St. John, instead of Himself, on the Cross. For this purpose He had made him the beloved disciple and doubtless charged him with all the duties with which he was to be clothed. Thus He fulfilled the figurative law of His priesthood, as given by Moses, (Deut. xxxiii. 9.) and crucified himself, from the beginning, according to his own Law (Luke xiv. 26-27.) which he identifies with the Cross, here and also in Matt. x. 37-38. These then are the steps of His own holy example, illustrating His own precept, for doubtless, as “the Son of man,” His filial love was superlative and made the sacrifice the sharper: (1.) He taught Joseph that He had no earthly father, when he said—“Wist ye not that I must be in my Father’s house,” (Luke iii. 49., Revised); but, having established this fact, he then became “subject” to both his parents, till His public ministry began. (2.) At this time, He seems to have admonished His mother, that He could not recognize her authority any longer, (John ii. 4.) having now entered upon His work as the Son of God. (3.) Accordingly, He refused, thenceforth, to know her save only as one of His redeemed, excepting her in nothing from this common work for all the Human Race, (Matt. xii. 48) in the passage which Tertullian so forcibly expounds. (4.) Finally, when St. Mary draws near to the cross, apparently to claim the final recognition of the previous understanding (John ii. 4.) to which the Lord had referred her at Cana—He fulfils His last duty to her in giving her a son instead of Himself, and thereafter (5) recognizes her no more; not even in His messages after the Resurrection, nor when He met her with other disciples. He rewards her, instead, with the infinite love He bears to all His saints, and with the brightest rewards which are bestowed upon Faith. In this consists her superlative excellence and her conspicuous glory among the Redeemed (Luke i. 47-48.) in Christ’s account.
VII.
(Children, cap. xxiii. p. 386.)
In this beautiful testimony of our author to the sanctity of marriage, and the blessedness of its fruits, I see his austere spirit reflecting the spirit of Christ so tenderly and so faithfully, in the love of children, that I am warmly drawn to him. I cannot give him up to Montanism at this period of his life and labours. Surely, he was as yet merely persuaded that the prophetic charismata were not extinct, and that they had been received by his Phrygian friends, although he may still have regarded them as prophesying subject to all the infirmities which St. Paul attributes even to persons elevated by spiritual gifts. (1 Cor. xiv.) Why not recognize him in all his merits, until his open and senile lapse is complete?
VIII.
(Hades, cap. xxxiv. p. 406.)
Here again our author shews his unsettled view as to Sheol or Hades, on which see Kaye, pp. 247–250. Here he distinguishes between the Inferi and Abraham’s bosom; but (in B. iii. cap. 24.) he has already, more aptly, regarded the Inferi, or Hades, as the common receptacle of departed spirits, where a “great gulf” indeed, separates between the two classes.
A caricature may sometimes illustrate characteristic features more powerfully than a true portrait. The French call the highest gallery in theatres, paradis; and I have sometimes explained it by the fact that the modern drama originated in the monkish Mysteries, revived so profanely in our own day. To reconcile the poor to a bad place they gave it the name of Paradise, thus illustrating their Mediæval conceptions; for trickling down from Tertullian his vivid notions seem to have suffused all Western theology on this subject. Thus, then, one vast receptacle receives all the dead. The pit, as we very appropriately call it in English, answers to the place of lost spirits, where the rich man was in torments. Above, are ranged the family of Abraham reclining, as it were, in their father’s bosom, by turns. Far above, under skylights, (for the old Mysteries were celebrated in the day-time) is the Paradise, where the Martyrs see God, and are represented as “under the altar” of heaven itself. Now, abandoning our grotesque illustration, but using it for its topography, let us conceive of our own globe, as having a world-wide concavity such as they imagined, from literalizing the under-world of Sheol. In its depths is the Phylace (1 Peter iii. 19.) of “spirits in prison.” In a higher region repose the blessed spirits in “Abraham’s bosom.” Yet nearer to the ethereal vaults, are the martyrs in Paradise, looking out into heavenly worlds. The immensity of the scale does not interfere with the vision of spirits, nor with such communications as Abraham holds with his lost son in the history of Dives and Lazarus. Here indeed Science comes to our aid, for if the telephone permits such conversations while we are in the flesh, we may at least imagine that the subtile spirit can act in like manner, apart from such contrivances. Now, so far as Tertullian is consistent with himself, I think these explanations may clarify his words and references. The Eastern Theology is less inconsistent and bears the marks alike of Plato and of Origen. But of this hereafter. Of a place, such as the Mediæval Purgatory, affirmed as de fide by the Trent creed, the Fathers knew nothing at all. See Vol. II. p. 490, also 522, this Series.
Footnotes
425:5190Opp. Tom. vi. p. 228. Ed. Migne.
426:5191Calmet. Opp. i. 483 and Tom. x., p. 525.
Additional Note.
————————————
(Passage not easy to identify, p. 390, note 14.)
Easy enough, by the LXX. See Isaiah lxiii. 3. καὶ τῶν εθνῶν οὐκ ἔστιν ἀνὴρ μετ᾽ εμοῦ. The first verse, referring to Edom, leads our author to accentuate this point of Gentile ignorance.
Book V.
Wherein Tertullian proves, with respect to St. Paul’s epistles, what he had proved in the preceding book with respect to St. Luke’s gospel. Far from being at variance, they were in perfect unison with the writings of the Old Testament, and therefore testified that the Creator was the only God, and that the Lord Jesus was his Christ. As in the preceding books, Tertullian supports his argument with profound reasoning, and many happy illustrations of Holy Scripture.
————————————
Chapter I.—Introductory. The Apostle Paul Himself Not the Preacher of a New God. Called by Jesus Christ, Although After the Other Apostles, His Mission Was from the Creator. States How. The Argument, as in the Case of the Gospel, Confining Proofs to Such Portions of St. Paul’s Writings as Marcion Allowed.
There is nothing without a beginning but God alone. Now, inasmuch as the beginning occupies the first place in the condition of all things, so it must necessarily take precedence in the treatment of them, if a clear knowledge is to be arrived at concerning their condition; for you could not find the means of examining even the quality of anything, unless you were certain of its existence, and that after discovering its origin. 5192 Since therefore I am brought, in the course of my little work, to this point, 5193 I require to know of Marcion the origin of his apostle 5194 even—I, who am to some degree a new disciple, 5195 the follower of no other master; who at the same time 5196 can believe nothing, except that nothing ought to be believed hastily 5197 (and that I may further say is hastily believed, which is believed without any examination 5198 of its beginning); in short, I who have the best reason possible for bringing this inquiry to a most careful solution, 5199 since a man is affirmed to me to be an apostle whom I do not find mentioned in the Gospel in the catalogue 5200 of the apostles. Indeed, when I hear that this man was chosen by the Lord after He had attained His rest in heaven, I feel that a kind of improvidence is imputable to Christ, for not knowing before that this man was necessary to Him; and because He thought that he must be added to the apostolic body in the way of a fortuitous encounter 5201 rather than a deliberate selection; by necessity (so to speak), and not voluntary choice, although the members of the apostolate had been duly ordained, and were now dismissed to their several missions. Wherefore, O shipmaster of Pontus, 5202 if you have never taken on board your small craft 5203 any contraband goods or smuggler’s cargo, if you have never thrown overboard or tampered with a freight, you are still more careful and conscientious, I doubt not, in divine things; and so I should be glad if you would inform us under what bill of lading 5204 you admitted the Apostle Paul on board, who ticketed him, 5205 what owner forwarded him, 5206 who handed him to you, 5207 that so you may land him without any misgiving, 5208 lest he should turn out to belong to him, 5209 who can substantiate his claim to him by producing all his apostolic writings. 5210 He professes himself to be “an apostle”—to use his own, words—“not of men, nor by man, but by Jesus Christ.” 5211 Of course, any one may make a profession concerning himself; but his profession is only rendered valid by the authority of a second person. One man signs, another countersigns; 5212 one man appends his seal, another registers in the public records. 5213 No one is at once a proposer and a seconder to himself. Besides, you have read, no doubt, that “many shall come, saying, I am Christ.” 5214 Now if any one can pretend that he is Christ, how much more might a man profess to be an apostle of Christ! But still, for my own part, I appear 5215 in the character of a disciple and an inquirer; that so I may even thus 5216 both refute your belief, who have nothing to support it, and confound your shamelessness, who make claims without possessing the means of establishing them. Let there be a Christ, let there be an apostle, although of another god; but what matter? since they are only to draw their proofs out of the Testament of the Creator. Because even the book of Genesis so long ago promised me the Apostle Paul. For among the types and prophetic blessings which he pronounced over his sons, Jacob, when he turned his attention to Benjamin, exclaimed, “Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf; in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall impart nourishment.” 5217 He foresaw that Paul would arise out of the tribe of Benjamin, a voracious wolf, devouring his prey in the morning: in order words, in the early period of his life he would devastate the Lord’s sheep, as a persecutor of the churches; but in the evening he would give them nourishment, which means that in his declining years he would educate the fold of Christ, as the teacher of the Gentiles. Then, again, in Saul’s conduct towards David, exhibited first in violent persecution of him, and then in remorse and reparation, 5218 on his receiving from him good for evil, we have nothing else than an anticipation 5219 of Paul in Saul—belonging, too, as they did, to the same tribe—and of Jesus in David, from whom He descended according to the Virgin’s genealogy. 5220 Should you, however, disapprove of these types, 5221 the Acts of the Apostles, 5222 at all events, have handed down to me this career of Paul, which you must not refuse to accept. Thence I demonstrate that from a persecutor he became “an apostle, not of men, neither by man;” 5223 thence am I led to believe the Apostle himself; thence do I find reason for rejecting your defence of him, 5224 and for bearing fearlessly your taunt. “Then you deny the Apostle Paul.” I do not calumniate him whom I defend. 5225 I deny him, to compel you to the proof of him. I deny him, to convince you that he is mine. If you have regard to our belief you should admit the particulars which comprise it. If you challenge us to your belief, (pray) tell us what things constitute its basis. 5226 Either prove the truth of what you believe, or failing in your proof, (tell us) how you believe. Else what conduct is yours, 5227 believing in opposition to Him from whom alone comes the proof of that which you believe? Take now from my point of view 5228 the apostle, in the same manner as you have received the Christ—the apostle shown to be as much mine as the Christ is. And here, too, we will fight within the same lines, and challenge our adversary on the mere ground of a simple rule, 5229 that even an apostle who is said not to belong to the Creator—nay, is displayed as in actual hostility to the Creator—can be fairly regarded as teaching 5230 nothing, knowing nothing, wishing nothing in favour of the Creator whilst it would be a first principle with him to set forth 5231 another god with as much eagerness as he would use in withdrawing us from the law of the Creator. It is not at all likely that he would call men away from Judaism without showing them at the same time what was the god in whom he invited them to believe; because nobody could possibly pass from allegiance to the Creator without knowing to whom he had to cross over. For either Christ had already revealed another god—in which case the apostle’s testimony would also follow to the same effect, for fear of his not being else regarded 5232 as an apostle of the god whom Christ had revealed, and because of the impropriety of his being concealed by the apostle who had been already revealed by Christ—or Christ had made no such revelation concerning God; then there was all the greater need why the apostle should reveal a God who could now be made known by no one else, and who would undoubtedly be left without any belief at all, if he were revealed not even by an apostle. We have laid down this as our first principle, because we wish at once to profess that we shall pursue the same method here in the apostle’s case as we adopted before in Christ’s case, to prove that he proclaimed no new god; 5233 that is, we shall draw our evidence from the epistles of St. Paul himself. Now, the garbled form in which we have found the heretic’s Gospel will have already prepared us to expect to find 5234 the epistles also mutilated by him with like perverseness—and that even as respects their number. 5235
Footnotes
429:5192Cum cognoveris unde sit.
429:5193Materiam.
429:5194We have already more than once referred to Marcion’s preference for St. Paul. “The reason of the preference thus given to that apostle was his constant and strenuous opposition to the Judaizing Christians, who wished to reimpose the yoke of the Jewish ceremonies on the necks of their brethren. This opposition the Marcionites wished to construe into a direct denial of the authority of the Mosaic law. They contended also from St. Paul’s assertion, that he received his appointment to the apostolic office not from man, but from Christ, that he alone delivered the genuine doctrines of the gospel. This deference for St. Paul accounts also for Marcion’s accepting St. Luke’s Gospel as the only authentic one, as we saw in the last book of this treatise; it was because that evangelist had been the companion of St. Paul” (Bp. Kaye, On the Writings of Tertullian, 3d edition, pp. 474–475).
429:5195Novus aliqui discipulus.
429:5196Interim.
429:5197Temere.
429:5198Agnitione.
429:5199Ad sollicitudinem.
429:5200In albo.
429:5201Ex incursu: in allusion to St. Paul’s sudden conversion, Acts ix. 3-8. [On St. Paul’s Epistles, see p. 324, supra.]
430:5202Marcion is frequently called “Ponticus Nauclerus,” probably less on account of his own connection with a seafaring life, than that of his countrymen, who were great sailors. Comp. book. i. 18. (sub fin.) and book iii. 6. [pp. 284, 325.]
430:5203In acatos tuas.
430:5204Quo symbolo.
430:5205Quis illum tituli charactere percusserit.
430:5206Quis transmiserit tibi.
430:5207Quis imposuerit.
430:5208Constanter.
430:5209Ne illius probetur, i.e., to the Catholic, for Marcion did not admit all St. Paul’s epistles (Semler).
430:5210Omnia apostolatus ejus instrumenta.
430:5211Gal. i. 1.
430:5212Subscribit.
430:5213Actis refert.
430:5214Luke xxi. 8.
430:5215Conversor.
430:5216Jam hinc.
430:5217Gen. xlix. 27, Septuagint, the latter clause being καὶ εἰς τὸ ἑσπέρας δίδωσι τροφήν.
430:5218Satisfactio.
430:5219Non aliud portendebat quam.
430:5220Secundum Virginis censum.
430:5221Figurarum sacramenta.
430:5222Although St. Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles, Marcion does not seem to have admitted this book into his New Testament. “It is clearly excluded from his catalogue, as given by Epiphanius. The same thing appears from the more ancient authority of Tertullian, who begins his Book v. against Marcion with showing the absurdity of his conduct in rejecting the history and acts of the apostles, and yet receiving St. Paul as the chief of the apostles, whose name is never mentioned in the Gospel with the other apostles, especially since the account given by Paul himself in Gal. i.-ii. confirms the account which we have in the Acts. But the reason why he rejected this book is (as Tertullian says) very evident, since from it we can plainly show that the God of the Christians and the God of the Jews, or the Creator, was the same being and that Christ was sent by Him, and by no other” (Lardner’s Works, Hist. of Heretics, chap. x. sec. 41).
430:5223Gal. i. 1.
430:5224Inde te a defensione ejus expello.
430:5225An insinuation that Marcion’s defence of Paul was, in fact, a calumny of the apostle.
430:5226Præstruant eam.
430:5227Qualis es.
430:5228Habe nunc de meo.
431:5229In ipso gradu præscriptionis.
431:5230Oportere docere…sapere…velle.
431:5231Edicere.
431:5232Ne non haberetur.
431:5233Nullum alium deum circumlatum.
431:5234Præjudicasse debebit.
431:5235Marcion only received ten of St. Paul’s epistles, and these altered by himself.
Chapter II.—On the Epistle to the Galatians. The Abolition of the Ordinances of the Mosaic Law No Proof of Another God. The Divine Lawgiver, the Creator Himself, Was the Abrogator. The Apostle’s Doctrine in the First Chapter Shown to Accord with the Teaching of the Old Testament. The Acts of the Apostles Shown to Be Genuine Against Marcion. This Book Agrees with the Pauline Epistles.
The epistle which we also allow to be the most decisive 5236 against Judaism, is that wherein the apostle instructs the Galatians. For the abolition of the ancient law we fully admit, and hold that it actually proceeds from the dispensation of the Creator,—a point which we have already often treated in the course of our discussion, when we showed that the innovation was foretold by the prophets of our God. 5237 Now, if the Creator indeed promised that “the ancient things should pass away,” 5238 to be superseded by a new course of things which should arise, whilst Christ marks the period of the separation when He says, “The law and the prophets were until John” 5239 —thus making the Baptist the limit between the two dispensations of the old things then terminating—and the new things then beginning, the apostle cannot of course do otherwise, (coming as he does) in Christ, who was revealed after John, than invalidate “the old things” and confirm “the new,” and yet promote thereby the faith of no other god than the Creator, at whose instance 5240 it was foretold that the ancient things should pass away. Therefore both the abrogation of the law and the establishment of the gospel help my argument even in this epistle, wherein they both have reference to the fond assumption of the Galatians, which led them to suppose that faith in Christ (the Creator’s Christ, of course) was obligatory, but without annulling the law, because it still appeared to them a thing incredible that the law should be set aside by its own author. Again, 5241 if they had at all heard of any other god from the apostle, would they not have concluded at once, of themselves, that they must give up the law of that God whom they had left, in order to follow another? For what man would be long in learning, that he ought to pursue a new discipline, after he had taken up with a new god? Since, however, 5242 the same God was declared in the gospel which had always been so well known in the law, the only change being in the dispensation, 5243 the sole point of the question to be discussed was, whether the law of the Creator ought by the gospel to be excluded in the Christ of the Creator? Take away this point, and the controversy falls to the ground. Now, since they would all know of themselves, 5244 on the withdrawal of this point, that they must of course renounce all submission to the Creator by reason of their faith in another god, there could have been no call for the apostle to teach them so earnestly that which their own belief must have spontaneously suggested to them. Therefore the entire purport of this epistle is simply to show us that the supersession 5245 of the law comes from the appointment of the Creator—a point, which we shall still have to keep in mind. 5246 Since also he makes mention of no other god (and he could have found no other opportunity of doing so, more suitable than when his purpose was to set forth the reason for the abolition of the law—especially as the prescription of a new god would have afforded a singularly good and most sufficient reason), it is clear enough in what sense he writes, “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from Him who hath called you to His grace to another gospel” 5247 —He means) “another” as to the conduct it prescribes, not in respect of its worship; “another” as to the discipline it teaches, not in respect of its divinity; because it is the office of 5248 Christ’s gospel to call men from the law to grace, not from the Creator to another god. For nobody had induced them to apostatize from 5249 the Creator, that they should seem to “be removed to another gospel,” simply when they return again to the Creator. When he adds, too, the words, “which is not another,” 5250 he confirms the fact that the gospel which he maintains is the Creator’s. For the Creator Himself promises the gospel, when He says by Isaiah: “Get thee up into the high mountain, thou that bringest to Sion good tidings; lift up thy voice with strength, thou that bringest the gospel to Jerusalem.” 5251 Also when, with respect to the apostles personally, He says, “How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, that bring good tidings of good” 5252 —even proclaiming the gospel to the Gentiles, because He also says, “In His name shall the Gentiles trust;” 5253 that is, in the name of Christ, to whom He says, “I have given thee as a light of the Gentiles.” 5254 However, you will have it that it is the gospel of a new god which was then set forth by the apostle. So that there are two gospels for 5255 two gods; and the apostle made a great mistake when he said that “there is not another” gospel, 5256 since there is (on the hypothesis) 5257 another; and so he might have made a better defence of his gospel, by rather demonstrating this, than by insisting on its being but one. But perhaps, to avoid this difficulty, you will say that he therefore added just afterwards, “Though an angel from heaven preach any other gospel, let him be accursed,” 5258 because he was aware that the Creator was going to introduce a gospel! But you thus entangle yourself still more. For this is now the mesh in which you are caught. To affirm that there are two gospels, is not the part of a man who has already denied that there is another. His meaning, however, is clear, for he has mentioned himself first (in the anathema): “But though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel.” 5259 It is by way of an example that he has expressed himself. If even he himself might not preach any other gospel, then neither might an angel. He said “angel” in this way, that he might show how much more men ought not to be believed, when neither an angel nor an apostle ought to be; not that he meant to apply 5260 an angel to the gospel of the Creator. He then cursorily touches on his own conversion from a persecutor to an apostle—confirming thereby the Acts of the Apostles, 5261 in which book may be found the very subject 5262 of this epistle, how that certain persons interposed, and said that men ought to be circumcised, and that the law of Moses was to be observed; and how the apostles, when consulted, determined, by the authority of the Holy Ghost, that “a yoke should not be put upon men’s necks which their fathers even had not been able to bear.” 5263 Now, since the Acts of the Apostles thus agree with Paul, it becomes apparent why you reject them. It is because they declare no other God than the Creator, and prove Christ to belong to no other God than the Creator; whilst the promise of the Holy Ghost is shown to have been fulfilled in no other document than the Acts of the Apostles. Now, it is not very likely that these 5264 should be found in agreement with the apostle, on the one hand, when they described his career in accordance with his own statement; but should, on the other hand, be at variance with him when they announce the (attribute of) divinity in the Creator’s Christ—as if Paul did not follow 5265 the preaching of the apostles when he received from them the prescription 5266 of not teaching the Law. 5267
Footnotes
431:5236Principalem.
431:5237See above, in book i. chap. xx., also in book iv. chap. i.
431:5238Comp. Isa. 43:18, 19, Isa. 65:17, 2 Cor. 5:17.
431:5239Luke xvi. 16.
431:5240Apud quem.
431:5241Porro.
431:5242Immo quia.
431:5243Disciplina.
431:5244Ultro.
432:5245Discessionem.
432:5246Ut adhuc suggeremus.
432:5247Gal. 1:6, 7.
432:5248Deberet.
432:5249Moverat illos a.
432:5250Gal. i. 7.
432:5251Isa. xl. 9 (Septuagint).
432:5252Isa. lii. 7.
432:5253We have here an instance of the high authority of the Septuagint version. It comes from the Seventy: Καὶ ἐπὶ τῷ ὀνοματι αὐτοῦ ἔθνη ἐλπιοῦσιν (Isa. xlii. 4.) From this Tertullian, as usual, quoted it. But what is much more important, St. Matthew has adopted it; see Matt. 12.21. This beautiful promise of the Creator does not occur in its well-known form in the Hebrew original.
432:5254Isa. xlii. 6.
432:5255Apud: “administered by.”
432:5256Gal. i. 7.
432:5257Cum sit.
432:5258Gal. i. 8.
432:5259Gal. i. 8.
432:5260Referret.
432:5261A similar remark occurs in Præscript. Hæretic. c. xxiii. p. 253.
432:5262Ipsa materia.
432:5263See Gal. 1:11, Acts 15:5.
432:5264“The Acts of the Apostles” is always a plural phrase in Tertullian.
433:5265Ut non secutus sit.
433:5266Formam.
433:5267Dedocendæ legis; i.e., of Moses.
Chapter III.—St. Paul Quite in Accordance with St. Peter and Other Apostles of the Circumcision. His Censure of St. Peter Explained, and Rescued from Marcion’s Misapplication. The Strong Protests of This Epistle Against Judaizers. Yet Its Teaching is Shown to Be in Keeping with the Law and the Prophets. Marcion’s Tampering with St. Paul’s Writings Censured.
But with regard to the countenance 5268 of Peter and the rest of the apostles, he tells us 5269 that “fourteen years after he went up to Jerusalem,” in order to confer with them 5270 about the rule which he followed in his gospel, lest perchance he should all those years have been running, and be running still, in vain, (which would be the case,) of course, if his preaching of the gospel fell short of their method. 5271 So great had been his desire to be approved and supported by those whom you wish on all occasions 5272 to be understood as in alliance with Judaism! When indeed he says, that “neither was Titus circumcised,” 5273 he for the first time shows us that circumcision was the only question connected with the maintenance 5274 of the law, which had been as yet agitated by those whom he therefore calls “false brethren unawares brought in.” 5275 These persons went no further than to insist on a continuance of the law, retaining unquestionably a sincere belief in the Creator. They perverted the gospel in their teaching, not indeed by such a tampering with the Scripture 5276 as should enable them to expunge 5277 the Creator’s Christ, but by so retaining the ancient régime as not to exclude the Creator’s law. Therefore he says: “Because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ, that they might bring us into bondage, to whom we gave place by subjection not even for an hour.” 5278 Let us only attend to the clear 5279 sense and to the reason of the thing, and the perversion of the Scripture will be apparent. When he first says, “Neither Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised,” and then adds, “And that because of false brethren unawares brought in,” 5280 etc., he gives us an insight into his reason 5281 for acting in a clean contrary way, 5282 showing us wherefore he did that which he would neither have done nor shown to us, if that had not happened which induced him to act as he did. But then 5283 I want you to tell us whether they would have yielded to the subjection that was demanded, 5284 if these false brethren had not crept in to spy out their liberty? I apprehend not. They therefore gave way (in a partial concession), because there were persons whose weak faith required consideration. 5285 For their rudimentary belief, which was still in suspense about the observance of the law, deserved this concessive treatment, 5286 when even the apostle himself had some suspicion that he might have run, and be still running, in vain. 5287 Accordingly, the false brethren who were the spies of their Christian liberty must be thwarted in their efforts to bring it under the yoke of their own Judaism before that Paul discovered whether his labour had been in vain, before that those who preceded him in the apostolate gave him their right hands of fellowship, before that he entered on the office of preaching to the Gentiles, according to their arrangement with him. 5288 He therefore made some concession, as was necessary, for a time; and this was the reason why he had Timothy circumcised, 5289 and the Nazarites introduced into the temple, 5290 which incidents are described in the Acts. Their truth may be inferred from their agreement with the apostle’s own profession, how “to the Jews he became as a Jew, that he might gain the Jews, and to them that were under the law, as under the law,”—and so here with respect to those who come in secretly,—“and lastly, how he became all things to all men, that he might gain all.” 5291 Now, inasmuch as the circumstances require such an interpretation as this, no one will refuse to admit that Paul preached that God and that Christ whose law he was excluding all the while, however much he allowed it, owing to the times, but which he would have had summarily to abolish if he had published a new god. Rightly, then, did Peter and James and John give their right hand of fellowship to Paul, and agree on such a division of their work, as that Paul should go to the heathen, and themselves to the circumcision. 5292 Their agreement, also, “to remember the poor” 5293 was in complete conformity with the law of the Creator, which cherished the poor and needy, as has been shown in our observations on your Gospel. 5294 It is thus certain that the question was one which simply regarded the law, while at the same time it is apparent what portion of the law it was convenient to have observed. Paul, however, censures Peter for not walking straightforwardly according to the truth of the gospel. No doubt he blames him; but it was solely because of his inconsistency in the matter of “eating,” 5295 which he varied according to the sort of persons (whom he associated with) “fearing them which were of the circumcision,” 5296 but not on account of any perverse opinion touching another god. For if such a question had arisen, others also would have been “resisted face to face” by the man who had not even spared Peter on the comparatively small matter of his doubtful conversation. But what do the Marcionites wish to have believed (on the point)? For the rest, the apostle must (be permitted to) go on with his own statement, wherein he says that “a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith:” 5297 faith, however, in the same God to whom belongs the law also. For of course he would have bestowed no labour on severing faith from the law, when the difference of the god would, if there had only been any, have of itself produced such a severance. Justly, therefore, did he refuse to “build up again (the structure of the law) which he had overthrown.” 5298 The law, indeed, had to be overthrown, from the moment when John “cried in the wilderness, Prepare ye the ways of the Lord,” that valleys 5299 and hills and mountains may be filled up and levelled, and the crooked and the rough ways be made straight and smooth 5300 —in other words, that the difficulties of the law might be changed into the facilities of the gospel.
For he remembered that the time was come of which the Psalm spake, “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast off their yoke from us;” 5301 since the time when “the nations became tumultuous, and the people imagined vain counsels;” when “the kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against His Christ,” 5302 in order that thenceforward man might be justified by the liberty of faith, not by servitude to the law, 5303 “because the just shall live by his faith.” 5304 Now, although the prophet Habakkuk first said this, yet you have the apostle here confirming the prophets, even as Christ did. The object, therefore, of the faith whereby the just man shall live, will be that same God to whom likewise belongs the law, by doing which no man is justified. Since, then, there equally are found the curse in the law and the blessing in faith, you have both conditions set forth by 5305 the Creator: “Behold,” says He, “I have set before you a blessing and a curse.” 5306 You cannot establish a diversity of authors because there happens to be one of things; for the diversity is itself proposed by one and the same author. Why, however, “Christ was made a curse for us,” 5307 is declared by the apostle himself in a way which quite helps our side, as being the result of the Creator’s appointment. But yet it by no means follows, because the Creator said of old, “Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree,” 5308 that Christ belonged to another god, and on that account was accursed even then in the law. And how, indeed, could the Creator have cursed by anticipation one whom He knew not of? Why, however, may it not be more suitable for the Creator to have delivered His own Son to His own curse, than to have submitted Him to the malediction of that god of yours,—in behalf, too, of man, who is an alien to him? Now, if this appointment of the Creator respecting His Son appears to you to be a cruel one, it is equally so in the case of your own god; if, on the contrary, it be in accordance with reason in your god, it is equally so—nay, much more so—in mine. For it would be more credible that that God had provided blessing for man, through the curse of Christ, who formerly set both a blessing and a curse before man, than that he had done so, who, according to you, 5309 never at any time pronounced either. “We have received therefore, the promise of the Spirit,” as the apostle says, “through faith,” even that faith by which the just man lives, in accordance with the Creator’s purpose. 5310 What I say, then, is this, that that God is the object of faith who prefigured the grace of faith. But when he also adds, “For ye are all the children of faith,” 5311 it becomes clear that what the heretic’s industry erased was the mention of Abraham’s name; for by faith the apostle declares us to be “children of Abraham,” 5312 and after mentioning him he expressly called us “children of faith” also. But how are we children of faith? and of whose faith, if not Abraham’s? For since “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness;” 5313 since, also, he deserved for that reason to be called “the father of many nations,” whilst we, who are even more like him 5314 in believing in God, are thereby justified as Abraham was, and thereby also obtain life—since the just lives by his faith,—it therefore happens that, as he in the previous passage called us “sons of Abraham,” since he is in faith our (common) father, 5315 so here also he named us “children of faith,” for it was owing to his faith that it was promised that Abraham should be the father of (many) nations. As to the fact itself of his calling off faith from circumcision, did he not seek thereby to constitute us the children of Abraham, who had believed previous to his circumcision in the flesh? 5316 In short, 5317 faith in one of two gods cannot possibly admit us to the dispensation 5318 of the other, 5319 so that it should impute righteousness to those who believe in him, and make the just live through him, and declare the Gentiles to be his children through faith. Such a dispensation as this belongs wholly to Him through whose appointment it was already made known by the call of this self-same Abraham, as is conclusively shown 5320 by the natural meaning. 5321
Footnotes
433:5268Ad patrocinium.
433:5269Scribit often takes the place of inquit; naturally enough as referring to the epistles.
433:5270Gal. 2:1, 2.
433:5271Formam.
433:5272Si quando.
433:5273Gal. ii. 3.
433:5274Ex defensione.
433:5275Gal. ii. 4.
433:5276Interpolatione Scripturæ.
433:5277Qua effingerent.
433:5278Gal. 2:4, 5.
433:5279Ipsi.
433:5280Gal. 2:3, 4.
433:5281Incipit reddere rationem.
433:5282Contrarii utique facti. [Farrar, St. Paul, pp. 232 and 261.]
433:5283Denique.
433:5284See Conybeare and Howson, in loc.
433:5285Fuerunt propter quos crederetur.
433:5286The following statement will throw light upon the character of the two classes of Jewish professors of Christianity referred to by Tertullian: “A pharisaic section was sheltered in its bosom (of the church at Jerusalem), which continually strove to turn Christianity into a sect of Judaism. These men were restless agitators, animated by the bitterest sectarian spirit; and although they were numerically a small party, yet we know the power of the turbulent minority. But besides these Judaizing zealots, there was a large proportion of the Christians at Jerusalem, whose Christianity, though more sincere than that of those just mentioned, was yet very weak and imperfect…Many of them still only knew of a Christ after the flesh—a Saviour of Israel—a Jewish Messiah. Their minds were in a state of transition between the law and the gospel; and it was of great consequence not to shock their prejudices too rudely; lest they should be tempted to make shipwreck of their faith and renounce their Christianity altogether.” These were they whose prejudices required to be wisely consulted in things which did not touch the foundation of the gospel. (Conybeare and Howson’s St. Paul, People’s Edition, vol. ii. pp. 259, 260.)
433:5287Gal. ii. 2.
433:5288Ex censu eorum: see Gal. 2:9, 10.
433:5289Acts xvi. 3.
433:5290Acts xxi. 23-26.
434:52911 Cor. 9:20, 22.
434:5292Gal. ii. 9.
434:5293Gal. ii. 10.
434:5294See above, book iv. chap. xiv. p. 365.
434:5295Victus: see Gal. 2:12, 14.
434:5296Gal. ii. 12.
434:5297Gal. ii. 16.
434:5298Gal. ii. 18 (see Conybeare and Howson).
434:5299Rivi: the wadys of the East.
434:5300Luke 3:4, 5.
434:5301Ps. ii. 3.
434:5302Ps. 2:1, 2.
434:5303Gal. 2:16, Gal. 3:11.
434:5304Hab. ii. 4.
434:5305Apud.
434:5306Deut. xi. 26.
434:5307Gal. iii. 13.
434:5308The LXX. version of Deut. xxi. 23 is quoted by St. Paul in Gal. iii. 13.
435:5309Apud te.
435:5310According to the promise of a prophet of the Creator. See Hab. ii. 4.
435:5311Gal. iii. 26.
435:5312Gal. 3:7, 9, 29.
435:5313Gal. iii. 6.
435:5314Magis proinde: as sharing in the faith he had, “being yet uncircumcised.” See Rom. iv. 11.
435:5315Patris fidei.
435:5316In integritate carnis.
435:5317Denique.
435:5318Formam: “plan” or “arrangement.”
435:5319Alterius dei…dei alterius.
435:5320Revincatur.
435:5321Ipso sensu.
Chapter IV.—Another Instance of Marcion’s Tampering with St. Paul’s Text. The Fulness of Time, Announced by the Apostle, Foretold by the Prophets. Mosaic Rites Abrogated by the Creator Himself. Marcion’s Tricks About Abraham’s Name. The Creator, by His Christ, the Fountain of the Grace and the Liberty Which St. Paul Announced. Marcion’s Docetism Refuted.
“But,” says he, “I speak after the manner of men: when we were children, we were placed in bondage under the elements of the world.” 5322 This, however, was not said “after the manner of men.” For there is no figure 5323 here, but literal truth. For (with respect to the latter clause of this passage), what child (in the sense, that is, in which the Gentiles are children) is not in bondage to the elements of the world, which he looks up to 5324 in the light of a god? With regard, however, to the former clause, there was a figure (as the apostle wrote it); because after he had said, “I speak after the manner of men,” he adds), “Though it be but a man’s covenant, no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto.” 5325 For by the figure of the permanency of a human covenant he was defending the divine testament. “To Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed. He said not ‘to seeds,’ as of many; but as of one, ‘to thy seed,’ which is Christ.” 5326 Fie on 5327 Marcion’s sponge! But indeed it is superfluous to dwell on what he has erased, when he may be more effectually confuted from that which he has retained. 5328 “But when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son” 5329 —the God, of course, who is the Lord of that very succession of times which constitutes an age; who also ordained, as “signs” of time, suns and moons and constellations and stars; who furthermore both predetermined and predicted that the revelation of His Son should be postponed to the end of the times. 5330 “It shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain (of the house) of the Lord shall be manifested”; 5331 “and in the last days I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh” 5332 as Joel says. It was characteristic of Him (only) 5333 to wait patiently for the fulness of time, to whom belonged the end of time no less than the beginning. But as for that idle god, who has neither any work nor any prophecy, nor accordingly any time, to show for himself, what has he ever done to bring about the fulness of time, or to wait patiently its completion? If nothing, what an impotent state to have to wait for the Creator’s time, in servility to the Creator! But for what end did He send His Son? “To redeem them that were under the law,” 5334 in other words, to “make the crooked ways straight, and the rough places smooth,” as Isaiah says 5335 —in order that old things might pass away, and a new course begin, even “the new law out of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem,” 5336 and “that we might receive the adoption of sons,” 5337 that is, the Gentiles, who once were not sons. For He is to be “the light of the Gentiles,” and “in His name shall the Gentiles trust.” 5338 That we may have, therefore the assurance that we are the children of God, “He hath sent forth His Spirit into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” 5339 For “in the last days,” saith He, “I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh.” 5340
Now, from whom comes this grace, but from Him who proclaimed the promise thereof? Who is (our) Father, but He who is also our Maker? Therefore, after such affluence (of grace), they should not have returned “to weak and beggarly elements.” 5341 By the Romans, however, the rudiments of learning are wont to be called elements. He did not therefore seek, by any depreciation of the mundane elements, to turn them away from their god, although, when he said just before, “Howbeit, then, ye serve them which by nature are no gods,” 5342 he censured the error of that physical or natural superstition which holds the elements to be god; but at the God of those elements he aimed not in this censure. 5343 He tells us himself clearly enough what he means by “elements,” even the rudiments of the law: “Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years” 5344 —the sabbaths, I suppose, and “the preparations,” 5345 and the fasts, and the “high days.” 5346 For the cessation of even these, no less than of circumcision, was appointed by the Creator’s decrees, who had said by Isaiah, “Your new moons, and your sabbaths, and your high days I cannot bear; your fasting, and feasts, and ceremonies my soul hateth;” 5347 also by Amos, “I hate, I despise your feast-days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies;” 5348 and again by Hosea, “I will cause to cease all her mirth, and her feast-days, and her sabbaths, and her new moons, and all her solemn assemblies.” 5349 The institutions which He set up Himself, you ask, did He then destroy? Yes, rather than any other. Or if another destroyed them, he only helped on the purpose of the Creator, by removing what even He had condemned. But this is not the place to discuss the question why the Creator abolished His own laws. It is enough for us to have proved that He intended such an abolition, that so it may be affirmed that the apostle determined nothing to the prejudice of the Creator, since the abolition itself proceeds from the Creator. But as, in the case of thieves, something of the stolen goods is apt to drop by the way, as a clue to their detection; so, as it seems to me, it has happened to Marcion: the last mention of Abraham’s name he has left untouched (in the epistle), although no passage required his erasure more than this, even his partial alteration of the text. 5350 “For (it is written) that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond maid, the other by a free woman; but he who was of the bond maid was born after the flesh, but he of the free woman was by promise: which things are allegorized” 5351 (that is to say, they presaged something besides the literal history); “for these are the two covenants,” or the two exhibitions (of the divine plans), 5352 as we have found the word interpreted, “the one from the Mount Sinai,” in relation to the synagogue of the Jews, according to the law, “which gendereth to bondage”—“the other gendereth” (to liberty, being raised) above all principality, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but in that which is to come, “which is the mother of us all,” in which we have the promise of (Christ’s) holy church; by reason of which he adds in conclusion: “So then, brethren, we are not children of the bond woman, but of the free.” 5353 In this passage he has undoubtedly shown that Christianity had a noble birth, being sprung, as the mystery of the allegory indicates, from that son of Abraham who was born of the free woman; whereas from the son of the bond maid came the legal bondage of Judaism. Both dispensations, therefore, emanate from that same God by whom, 5354 as we have found, they were both sketched out beforehand. When he speaks of “the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free,” 5355 does not the very phrase indicate that He is the Liberator who was once the Master? For Galba himself never liberated slaves which were not his own, even when about to restore free men to their liberty. 5356 By Him, therefore, will liberty be bestowed, at whose command lay the enslaving power of the law. And very properly. It was not meet that those who had received liberty should be “entangled again with the yoke of bondage” 5357 —that is, of the law; now that the Psalm had its prophecy accomplished: “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us, since the rulers have gathered themselves together against the Lord and against His Christ.” 5358 All those, therefore, who had been delivered from the yoke of slavery he would earnestly have to obliterate the very mark of slavery—even circumcision, on the authority of the prophet’s prediction. He remembered how that Jeremiah had said, “Circumcise the foreskins of your heart;” 5359 as Moses likewise had enjoined, “Circumcise your hard hearts” 5360 —not the literal flesh. If, now, he were for excluding circumcision, as the messenger of a new god, why does he say that “in Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision?” 5361 For it was his duty to prefer the rival principle of that which he was abolishing, if he had a mission from the god who was the enemy of circumcision.
Furthermore, since both circumcision and uncircumcision were attributed to the same Deity, both lost their power 5362 in Christ, by reason of the excellency of faith—of that faith concerning which it had been written, “And in His name shall the Gentiles trust?” 5363 —of that faith “which,” he says “worketh by love.” 5364 By this saying he also shows that the Creator is the source of that grace. For whether he speaks of the love which is due to God, or that which is due to one’s neighbor—in either case, the Creator’s grace is meant: for it is He who enjoins the first in these words, “Thou shalt love God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength;” 5365 and also the second in another passage: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” 5366 “But he that troubleth you shall have to bear judgment.” 5367 From what God? From (Marcion’s) most excellent god? But he does not execute judgment. From the Creator? But neither will He condemn the maintainer of circumcision. Now, if none other but the Creator shall be found to execute judgment, it follows that only He, who has determined on the cessation of the law, shall be able to condemn the defenders of the law; and what, if he also affirms the law in that portion of it where it ought (to be permanent)? “For,” says he, “all the law is fulfilled in you by this: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’” 5368 If, indeed, he will have it that by the words “it is fulfilled” it is implied that the law no longer has to be fulfilled, then of course he does not mean that I should any more love my neighbour as myself, since this precept must have ceased together with the law. But no! we must evermore continue to observe this commandment. The Creator’s law, therefore, has received the approval of the rival god, who has, in fact, bestowed upon it not the sentence of a summary dismissal, 5369 but the favour of a compendious acceptance; 5370 the gist of it all being concentrated in this one precept! But this condensation of the law is, in fact, only possible to Him who is the Author of it. When, therefore, he says, “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ,” 5371 since this cannot be accomplished except a man love his neighbour as himself, it is evident that the precept, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (which, in fact, underlies the injunction, “Bear ye one another’s burdens”), is really “the law of Christ,” though literally the law of the Creator. Christ, therefore, is the Creator’s Christ, as Christ’s law is the Creator’s law. “Be not deceived, 5372 God is not mocked.” 5373 But Marcion’s god can be mocked; for he knows not how to be angry, or how to take vengeance. “For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” 5374 It is then the God of recompense and judgment who threatens 5375 this. “Let us not be weary in well-doing;” 5376 and “as we have opportunity, let us do good.” 5377 Deny now that the Creator has given a commandment to do good, and then a diversity of precept may argue a difference of gods. If, however, He also announces recompense, then from the same God must come the harvest both of death 5378 and of life. But “in due time we shall reap;” 5379 because in Ecclesiastes it is said, “For everything there will be a time.” 5380 Moreover, “the world is crucified unto me,” who am a servant of the Creator—“the world,” (I say,) but not the God who made the world—“and I unto the world,” 5381 not unto the God who made the world. The world, in the apostle’s sense, here means life and conversation according to worldly principles; it is in renouncing these that we and they are mutually crucified and mutually slain. He calls them “persecutors of Christ.” 5382 But when he adds, that “he bare in his body the scars 5383 of Christ”—since scars, of course, are accidents of body 5384 —he therefore expressed the truth, that the flesh of Christ is not putative, but real and substantial, 5385 the scars of which he represents as borne upon his body.
Footnotes
435:5322This apparent quotation is in fact a patching together of two sentences from Gal. 3:15, Gal. 4:3 (Fr. Junius). “If I may be allowed to guess from the manner in which Tertullian expresseth himself, I should imagine that Marcion erased the whole of chap. iii. after the word λέγω in Gal. 3.15-4.3. Then the words will be connected thus: ‘Brethren, I speak after the manner of men…when we were children we were in bondage under the elements of the world; but when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son.’ This is precisely what the argument of Tertullian requires, and they are the very words which he connects together” (Lardner, Hist. of Heretics, x. 43). Dr. Lardner, touching Marcion’s omissions in this chap. iii. of the Epistle to the Galatians, says: “He omitted Gal. 3.6-8, in order to get rid of the mention of Abraham, and of the gospel having been preached to him.” This he said after St. Jerome, and then adds: “He ought also to have omitted part of Gal. 3.9, σὺν τῷ πιστῷ ᾽Αβραάμ, which seems to have been the case, according to T.’s manner of stating the argument against him” (Works, History of Heretics, x. 43).
435:5323Exemplum.
435:5324Suspicit.
435:5325Gal. iii. 15. This, of course, is consistent in St. Paul’s argument. Marcion, however, by erasing all the intervening verses, and affixing the phrase “after the manner of men” to the plain assertion of Gal. iv. 3, reduces the whole statement to an absurdity.
435:5326Gal. iii. 16.
435:5327Erubescat.
435:5328So, instead of pursuing the contents of Gal. 3., he proceeds to such of Gal. 4. as Marcion reserved.
435:5329Gal. iv. 4.
436:5330In extremitatem temporum.
436:5331Isa. ii. 2 (Sept).
436:5332Joel iii. 28, as quoted by St. Peter, Acts ii. 17.
436:5333Ipsius.
436:5334Gal. iv. 5.
436:5335Isa. xl. 4.
436:5336Isa. ii. 3.
436:5337Gal. iv. 5.
436:5338Isa. 42:4, 6.
436:5339Gal. iv. 6.
436:5340Joel iii. 28, as given in Acts ii. 17.
436:5341Gal. iv. 9.
436:5342Gal. iv. 8.
436:5343Nec sic taxans.
436:5344Gal. iv. 10.
436:5345Cœnas puras: probably the παρασκευαί mentioned in John xix. 31.
436:5346See also John xix. 31.
436:5347Isa. 1:13, 14.
436:5348Amos v. 21.
436:5349Hos. ii. 11.
436:5350In other words, Marcion has indeed tampered with the passage, omitting some things; but (strange to say) he has left untouched the statement which, from his point of view, most required suppression.
436:5351Allegorica: on the importance of rendering ἀλληγορούμενα by this participle rather than by the noun “an allegory,” as in A.V., see Bp. Marsh’s Lectures on the Interpretation of the Bible, pp. 351–354.
437:5352Ostensiones: revelationes perhaps.
437:5353Gal. 4:21, 31.
437:5354Apud quem.
437:5355Gal. v. 1.
437:5356Tertullian, in his terse style, takes the case of the emperor, as the highest potentate, who, if any, might make free with his power. He seizes the moment when Galba was saluted emperor on Nero’s death, and was the means of delivering so many out of the hands of the tyrant, in order to sharpen the point of his illustration.
437:5357Gal. v. 1.
437:5358Ps. 2:3, 2.
437:5359Jer. iv. 4.
437:5360Deut. x. 16.
437:5361Gal. v. 6.
437:5362Utraque vacabat.
437:5363Isa. xlii. 4.
437:5364Gal. v. 6.
437:5365Deut. vi. 5.
437:5366Lev. xix. 18.
437:5367Gal. v. 10.
437:5368Gal. v. 14.
437:5369Dispendium.
437:5370Compendium: the terseness of the original cannot be preserved in the translation.
438:5371Gal. vi. 2.
438:5372Erratis: literally, “ye are deceived.”
438:5373Gal. vi. 7.
438:5374Gal. vi. 7.
438:5375Intentat.
438:5376Gal. vi. 9.
438:5377Gal. vi. 10.
438:5378Corruptionis.
438:5379Gal. vi. 9.
438:5380Eccles. iii. 17.
438:5381Gal. vi. 14.
438:5382See Gal. vi. 17, κόπους μοι μηδεὶς παρεχέτω, “let no one harass me.”
438:5383Stigmata: the scars not of circumcision, but of wounds suffered for His sake (Conybeare and Howson).
438:5384Corporalia.
438:5385Solidam.
Chapter V.—The First Epistle to the Corinthians. The Pauline Salutation of Grace and Peace Shown to Be Anti-Marcionite. The Cross of Christ Purposed by the Creator. Marcion Only Perpetuates the Offence and Foolishness of Christ’s Cross by His Impious Severance of the Gospel from the Creator. Analogies Between the Law and the Gospel in the Matter of Weak Things, and Foolish Things and Base Things.
My preliminary remarks 5386 on the preceding epistle called me away from treating of its superscription, 5387 for I was sure that another opportunity would occur for considering the matter, it being of constant recurrence, and in the same form too, in every epistle. The point, then, is, that it is not (the usual) health which the apostle prescribes for those to whom he writes, but “grace and peace.” 5388 I do not ask, indeed, what a destroyer of Judaism has to do with a formula which the Jews still use. For to this day they salute each other 5389 with the greeting of “peace,” and formerly in their Scriptures they did the same. But I understand him by his practice 5390 plainly enough to have corroborated the declaration of the Creator: “How beautiful are the feet of them that bring glad tidings of good, who preach the gospel of peace!” 5391 For the herald of good, that is, of God’s “grace” was well aware that along with it “peace” also was to be proclaimed. 5392 Now, when he announces these blessings as “from God the Father and the Lord Jesus,” 5393 he uses titles that are common to both, and which are also adapted to the mystery of our faith; 5394 and I suppose it to be impossible accurately to determine what God is declared to be the Father and the Lord Jesus, unless (we consider) which of their accruing attributes are more suited to them severally. 5395 First, then, I assert that none other than the Creator and Sustainer of both man and the universe can be acknowledged as Father and Lord; next, that to the Father also the title of Lord accrues by reason of His power, and that the Son too receives the same through the Father; then that “grace and peace” are not only His who had them published, but His likewise to whom offence had been given. For neither does grace exist, except after offence; nor peace, except after war. Now, both the people (of Israel) by their transgression of His laws, 5396 and the whole race of mankind by their neglect of natural duty, 5397 had both sinned and rebelled against the Creator. Marcion’s god, however, could not have been offended, both because he was unknown to everybody, and because he is incapable of being irritated. What grace, therefore, can be had of a god who has not been offended? What peace from one who has never experienced rebellion? “The cross of Christ,” he says, “is to them that perish foolishness; but unto such as shall obtain salvation, it is the power of God and the wisdom of God.” 5398 And then, that we may know from whence this comes, he adds: “For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.’” 5399 Now, since these are the Creator’s words, and since what pertains to the doctrine 5400 of the cross he accounts as foolishness, therefore both the cross, and also Christ by reason of the cross, will appertain to the Creator, by whom were predicted the incidents of the cross. But if 5401 the Creator, as an enemy, took away their wisdom in order that the cross of Christ, considered as his adversary, should be accounted foolishness, how by any possibility can the Creator have foretold anything about the cross of a Christ who is not His own, and of whom He knew nothing, when He published the prediction? But, again, how happens it, that in the system of a Lord 5402 who is so very good, and so profuse in mercy, some carry off salvation, when they believe the cross to be the wisdom and power of God, whilst others incur perdition, to whom the cross of Christ is accounted folly;—(how happens it, I repeat,) unless it is in the Creator’s dispensation to have punished both the people of Israel and the human race, for some great offence committed against Him, with the loss of wisdom and prudence? What follows will confirm this suggestion, when he asks, “Hath not God infatuated the wisdom of this world?” 5403 and when he adds the reason why: “For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God 5404 by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” 5405 But first a word about the expression “the world;” because in this passage particularly, 5406 the heretics expend a great deal of their subtlety in showing that by world is meant the lord of the world. We, however, understand the term to apply to any person that is in the world, by a simple idiom of human language, which often substitutes that which contains for that which is contained. “The circus shouted,” “The forum spoke,” and “The basilica murmured,” are well-known expressions, meaning that the people in these places did so. Since then the man, not the god, of the world 5407 in his wisdom knew not God, whom indeed he ought to have known (both the Jew by his knowledge of the Scriptures, and all the human race by their knowledge of God’s works), therefore that God, who was not acknowledged in His wisdom, resolved to smite men’s knowledge with His foolishness, by saving all those who believe in the folly of the preached cross. “Because the Jews require signs,” who ought to have already made up their minds about God, “and the Greeks seek after wisdom,” 5408 who rely upon their own wisdom, and not upon God’s. If, however, it was a new god that was being preached, what sin had the Jews committed, in seeking after signs to believe; or the Greeks, when they hunted after a wisdom which they would prefer to accept? Thus the very retribution which overtook both Jews and Greeks proves that God is both a jealous God and a Judge, inasmuch as He infatuated the world’s wisdom by an angry 5409 and a judicial retribution. Since, then, the causes 5410 are in the hands of Him who gave us the Scriptures which we use, it follows that the apostle, when treating of the Creator, (as Him whom both Jew and Gentile as yet have) not known, means undoubtedly to teach us, that the God who is to become known (in Christ) is the Creator. The very “stumbling-block” which he declares Christ to be “to the Jews,” 5411 points unmistakeably 5412 to the Creator’s prophecy respecting Him, when by Isaiah He says: “Behold I lay in Sion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence.” 5413 This rock or stone is Christ. 5414 This stumbling-stone Marcion retains still. 5415 Now, what is that “foolishness of God which is wiser than men,” but the cross and death of Christ? What is that “weakness of God which is stronger than men,” 5416 but the nativity and incarnation 5417 of God? If, however, Christ was not born of the Virgin, was not constituted of human flesh, and thereby really suffered neither death nor the cross, there was nothing in Him either of foolishness or weakness; nor is it any longer true, that “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise;” nor, again, hath “God chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty;” nor “the base things” and the least things “in the world, and things which are despised, which are even as nothing” (that is, things which really 5418 are not), “to bring to nothing things which are” (that is, which really are). 5419 For nothing in the dispensation of God is found to be mean, and ignoble, and contemptible. Such only occurs in man’s arrangement. The very Old Testament of the Creator 5420 itself, it is possible, no doubt, to charge with foolishness, and weakness, and dishonour and meanness, and contempt. What is more foolish and more weak than God’s requirement of bloody sacrifices and of savoury holocausts? What is weaker than the cleansing of vessels and of beds? 5421 What more dishonourable than the discoloration of the reddening skin? 5422 What so mean as the statute of retaliation? What so contemptible as the exception in meats and drinks? The whole of the Old Testament, the heretic, to the best of my belief, holds in derision. For God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound its wisdom. Marcion’s god has no such discipline, because he does not take after 5423 (the Creator) in the process of confusing opposites by their opposites, so that “no flesh shall glory; but, as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” 5424 In what Lord? Surely in Him who gave this precept. 5425 Unless, forsooth, the Creator enjoined us to glory in the god of Marcion.
Footnotes
438:5386Præstructio.
438:5387Titulo.
438:53881 Cor. i. 3.
438:5389Appellant.
438:5390Officio.
438:5391Isa. lii. 7.
438:5392Pacem quam præferendam.
438:53931 Cor. i. 3.
438:5394Competentibus nostro quoque sacramento.
438:5395Nisi ex accedentibus cui magis competant.
439:5396Disciplinæ.
439:5397Per naturæ dissimulationem. This Fr. Junius explains by τὴν φύσεως ἀφοσίωσιν, in the sense of “original sin” (ἀφοσιοῦσθαι seems to point to sin requiring expiation).
439:53981 Cor. i. 18.
439:53991 Cor. 1:19, Isa. 29:14.
439:5400Causam.
439:5401Aut si: introducing a Marcionite cavil.
439:5402Apud dominum.
439:54031 Cor. i. 20.
439:5404Boni duxit Deus, εὐδόκησεν ὁ Θεός.
439:54051 Cor. i. 21.
439:5406Hic vel maxime.
439:5407That is, “man who lives in the world, not God who made the world.”
439:54081 Cor. i. 22.
439:5409Æmula.
439:5410Causæ: the reasons of His retributive providence.
439:54111 Cor. i. 23.
439:5412Consignat.
439:5413Isa. viii. 14.
439:5414Isa. xxviii. 16.
439:5415“Etiam Marcion servat.” These words cannot mean, as they have been translated, that “Marcion even retains these words” of prophecy; for whenever Marcion fell in with any traces of this prophecy of Christ, he seems to have expunged them. In Luke ii. 34 holy Simeon referred to it, but Marcion rejected this chapter of the evangelist; and although he admitted much of chap. xx., it is remarkable that he erased the ten verses thereof from the end of the eighth to the end of the eighteenth. Now in vers. 17, 18, Marcion found the prophecy again referred to. See Epiphanius, Adv. Hæres. xlii. Schol. 55.
440:54161 Cor. i. 25.
440:5417Caro.
440:5418Vere.
440:54191 Cor. i. 27.
440:5420Apud Creatorem etiam vetera: (vetera, i.e.) “veteris testamenti institutiones” (Oehler).
440:5421Lev. xv. passim.
440:5422Lev. xiii. 2-6.
440:5423Æmulatur.
440:54241 Cor. 1:29, 31.
440:5425By Jer. 9:23, 24.
Chapter VI.—The Divine Way of Wisdom, and Greatness, and Might. God’s Hiding of Himself, and Subsequent Revelation. To Marcion’s God Such a Concealment and Manifestation Impossible. God’s Predestination. No Such Prior System of Intention Possible to a God Previously Unknown as Was Marcion’s. The Powers of the World Which Crucified Christ. St. Paul, as a Wise Master-Builder, Associated with Prophecy. Sundry Injunctions of the Apostle Parallel with the Teaching of the Old Testament.
By all these statements, therefore, does he show us what God he means, when he says, “We speak the wisdom of God among them that are perfect.” 5426 It is that God who has confounded the wisdom of the wise, who has brought to nought the understanding of the prudent, who has reduced to folly 5427 the world’s wisdom, by choosing its foolish things, and disposing them to the attainment of salvation. This wisdom, he says, once lay hidden in things that were foolish, weak, and lacking in honour; once also was latent under figures, allegories, and enigmatical types; but it was afterwards to be revealed in Christ, who was set “as a light to the Gentiles,” 5428 by the Creator who promised through the mouth of Isaiah that He would discover “the hidden treasures, which eye had not seen.” 5429 Now, that that god should have ever hidden anything who had never made a cover wherein to practise concealment, is in itself a wholly incredible idea. If he existed, concealment of himself was out of the question—to say nothing 5430 of any of his religious ordinances. 5431 The Creator, on the contrary, was as well known in Himself as His ordinances were. These, we know, were publicly instituted 5432 in Israel; but they lay overshadowed with latent meanings, in which the wisdom of God was concealed, 5433 to be brought to light by and by amongst “the perfect,” when the time should come, but “pre-ordained in the counsels of God before the ages.” 5434 But whose ages, if not the Creator’s? For because ages consist of times, and times are made up of days, and months, and years; since also days, and months, and years are measured by suns, and moons, and stars, which He ordained for this purpose (for “they shall be,” says He, “for signs of the months and the years”), 5435 it clearly follows that the ages belong to the Creator, and that nothing of what was fore-ordained before the ages can be said to be the property of any other being than Him who claims the ages also as His own. Else let Marcion show that the ages belong to his god. He must then also claim the world itself for him; for it is in it that the ages are reckoned, the vessel as it were 5436 of the times, as well as the signs thereof, or their order. But he has no such demonstration to show us. I go back therefore to the point, and ask him this question: Why did (his god) fore-ordain our glory before the ages of the Creator? I could understand his having predetermined it before the ages, if he had revealed it at the commencement of time. 5437 But when he does this almost at the very expiration of all the ages 5438 of the Creator, his predestination before the ages, and not rather within the ages, was in vain, because he did not mean to make any revelation of his purpose until the ages had almost run out their course. For it is wholly inconsistent in him to be so forward in planning purposes, who is so backward in revealing them.
In the Creator, however, the two courses were perfectly compatible—both the predestination before the ages and the revelation at the end thereof, because that which He both fore-ordained and revealed He also in the intermediate space of time announced by the pre-ministration of figures, and symbols, and allegories. But because (the apostle) subjoins, on the subject of our glory, that “none of the princes of this world knew it, for had they known it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory,” 5439 the heretic argues that the princes of this world crucified the Lord (that is, the Christ of the rival god) in order that this blow might even recoil 5440 on the Creator Himself. Any one, however, who has seen from what we have already said how our glory must be regarded as issuing from the Creator, will already have come to the conclusion that, inasmuch as the Creator settled it in His own secret purpose, it properly enough was unknown to all the princes 5441 and powers of the Creator, on the principle that servants are not permitted to know their masters’ plans, much less the fallen angels and the leader of transgression himself, the devil; for I should contend that these, on account of their fall, were greater strangers still to any knowledge of the Creator’s dispensations. But it is no longer open to me 5442 even to interpret the princes and powers of this world as the Creator’s, since the apostle imputes ignorance to them, whereas even the devil according to our Gospel recognised Jesus in the temptation, 5443 and, according to the record which is common to both (Marcionites and ourselves) the evil spirit knew that Jesus was the Holy One of God, and that Jesus was His name, and that He was come to destroy them. 5444 The parable also of the strong man armed, whom a stronger than he overcame and seized his goods, is admitted by Marcion to have reference to the Creator: 5445 therefore the Creator could not have been ignorant any longer of the God of glory, since He is overcome by him; 5446 nor could He have crucified him whom He was unable to cope with. The inevitable inference, therefore, as it seems to me, is that we must believe that the princes and powers of the Creator did knowingly crucify the God of glory in His Christ, with that desperation and excessive malice with which the most abandoned slaves do not even hesitate to slay their masters. For it is written in my Gospel 5447 that “Satan entered into Judas.” 5448 According to Marcion, however, the apostle in the passage under consideration 5449 does not allow the imputation of ignorance, with respect to the Lord of glory, to the powers of the Creator; because, indeed, he will have it that these are not meant by “the princes of this world.” But (the apostle) evidently 5450 did not speak of spiritual princes; so that he meant secular ones, those of the princely people, (chief in the divine dispensation, although) not, of course, amongst the nations of the world, and their rulers, and king Herod, and even Pilate, and, as represented by him, 5451 that power of Rome which was the greatest in the world, and then presided over by him. Thus the arguments of the other side are pulled down, and our own proofs are thereby built up. But you still maintain that our glory comes from your god, with whom it also lay in secret. Then why does your god employ the self-same Scripture 5452 which the apostle also relies on? What has your god to do at all with the sayings of the prophets? “Who hath discovered the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counsellor?” 5453 So says Isaiah. What has he also to do with illustrations from our God? For when (the apostle) calls himself “a wise master-builder,” 5454 we find that the Creator by Isaiah designates the teacher who sketches 5455 out the divine discipline by the same title, “I will take away from Judah the cunning artificer,” 5456 etc. And was it not Paul himself who was there foretold, destined “to be taken away from Judah”—that is, from Judaism—for the erection of Christianity, in order “to lay that only foundation, which is Christ?” 5457 Of this work the Creator also by the same prophet says, “Behold, I lay in Sion for a foundation a precious stone and honourable; and he that resteth thereon shall not be confounded.” 5458 Unless it be, that God professed Himself to be the builder up of an earthly work, that so He might not give any sign of His Christ, as destined to be the foundation of such as believe in Him, upon which every man should build at will the superstructure of either sound or worthless doctrine; forasmuch as it is the Creator’s function, when a man’s work shall be tried by fire, (or) when a reward shall be recompensed to him by fire; because it is by fire that the test is applied to the building which you erect upon the foundation which is laid by Him, that is, the foundation of His Christ. 5459 “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” 5460 Now, since man is the property, and the work, and the image and likeness of the Creator, having his flesh, formed by Him of the ground, and his soul of His afflatus, it follows that Marcion’s god wholly dwells in a temple which belongs to another, if so be we are not the Creator’s temple. But “if any man defile the temple of God, he shall be himself destroyed” 5461 —of course, by the God of the temple. 5462 If you threaten an avenger, you threaten us with the Creator. “Ye must become fools, that ye may be wise.” 5463 Wherefore? “Because the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” 5464 With what God? Even if the ancient Scriptures have contributed nothing in support of our view thus far, 5465 an excellent testimony turns up in what (the apostle) here adjoins: “For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness; and again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.” 5466 For in general we may conclude for certain that he could not possibly have cited the authority of that God whom he was bound to destroy, since he would not teach for Him. 5467 “Therefore,” says he, “let no man glory in man;” 5468 an injunction which is in accordance with the teaching of the Creator, “wretched is the man that trusteth in man;” 5469 again, “It is better to trust in the Lord than to confide in man;” 5470 and the same thing is said about glorying (in princes). 5471
Footnotes
440:54261 Cor. 2:6, 7.
440:5427Infatuavit.
440:5428Isa. xlii. 6.
440:5429Isa. xlv. 3 (Septuagint).
440:5430Nedum.
440:5431Sacramenta.
440:5432Palam decurrentia.
440:5433Delitescebat.
440:54341 Cor. ii. 7.
440:5435Gen. i. 14, inexactly quoted.
441:5436Quodammodo.
441:5437Introductione sæculi.
441:5438Pæne jam totis sæculis prodactis.
441:54391 Cor. ii. 8.
441:5440Ut et hoc recidat.
441:5441Virtutibus.
441:5442Sed jam nec mihi competit.
441:5443Matt. iv. 1-11.
441:5444Luke iv. 34.
441:5445In Creatoris accipitur apud Marcionem.
441:5446Considered, in the hypothesis, as Marcion’s god.
441:5447Apud me.
441:5448Luke xxii. 3.
441:54491 Cor. ii. 8.
441:5450Videtur.
441:5451Et quo.
441:5452Instrumento.
441:5453Isa. xl. 13.
441:54541 Cor. iii. 10.
441:5455Depalatorem.
442:5456So the A.V. of Isa. iii. 3; but the Septuagint and St. Paul use the self-same term, σοφὸς ἀρχιτέκτων.
442:54571 Cor. iii. 11.
442:5458Isa. xxviii. 16.
442:5459We add the original of this sentence: “Nisi si structorem se terreni operis Deus profitebatur, ut non de suo Christo significaret, qui futurus esset fundamentum credentium in eum, super quod prout quisque superstruxerit, dignam scilicet vel indignam doctrinam si opus ejus per ignem probabitur, si merces illi per ignem rependetur, creatoris est, quia per ignem judicatur vestra superædificatio, utique sui fundamenti, id est sui Christi.” Tertullian is arguing upon an hypothesis suggested by Marcion’s withdrawal of his Christ from everything “terrene.” Such a process as is described by St. Paul in this passage, 1 Cor. i. 12-15, must be left to the Creator and His Christ.
442:54601 Cor. iii. 16.
442:5461The text has vitiabitur, “shall be defiled.”
442:54621 Cor. iii. 17.
442:54631 Cor. iii. 18.
442:54641 Cor. iii. 19.
442:5465The older reading, “adhuc sensum pristina præjudicaverunt,” we have preferred to Oehler’s “ad hunc sensum,” etc.
442:54661 Cor. 3:19, 20, Job 5:13, Ps. 94:11.
442:5467Si non illi doceret.
442:54681 Cor. iii. 21.
442:5469Jer. xvii. 5.
442:5470Ps. cxviii. 8.
442:5471Ps. cxviii. 9.
Chapter VII.—St. Paul’s Phraseology Often Suggested by the Jewish Scriptures. Christ Our Passover—A Phrase Which Introduces Us to the Very Heart of the Ancient Dispensation. Christ’s True Corporeity. Married and Unmarried States. Meaning of the Time is Short. In His Exhortations and Doctrine, the Apostle Wholly Teaches According to the Mind and Purposes of the God of the Old Testament. Prohibition of Meats and Drinks Withdrawn by the Creator.
“And the hidden things of darkness He will Himself bring to light,” 5472 even by Christ; for He has promised Christ to be a Light, 5473 and Himself He has declared to be a lamp, “searching the hearts and reins.” 5474 From Him also shall “praise be had by every man,” 5475 from whom proceeds, as from a judge, the opposite also of praise. But here, at least, you say he interprets the world to be the God thereof, when he says: “We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.” 5476 For if by world he had meant the people thereof, he would not have afterwards specially mentioned “men.” To prevent, however, your using such an argument as this, the Holy Ghost has providentially explained the meaning of the passage thus: “We are made a spectacle to the world,” i.e. “both to angels,” who minister therein, “and to men,” who are the objects of their ministration. 5477 Of course, 5478 a man of the noble courage of our apostle (to say nothing of the Holy Ghost) was afraid, when writing to the children whom he had begotten in the gospel, to speak freely of the God of the world; for against Him he could not possibly seem to have a word to say, except only in a straightforward manner! 5479 I quite admit, that, according to the Creator’s law, 5480 the man was an offender “who had his father’s wife.” 5481 He followed, no doubt, 5482 the principles of natural and public law. When, however, he condemns the man “to be delivered unto Satan,” 5483 he becomes the herald of an avenging God. It does not matter 5484 that he also said, “For the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord,” 5485 since both in the destruction of the flesh and in the saving of the spirit there is, on His part, judicial process; and when he bade “the wicked person be put away from the midst of them,” 5486 he only mentioned what is a very frequently recurring sentence of the Creator. “Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened.” 5487 The unleavened bread was therefore, in the Creator’s ordinance, a figure of us (Christians). “For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.” 5488 But why is Christ our passover, if the passover be not a type of Christ, in the similitude of the blood which saves, and of the Lamb, which is Christ? 5489 Why does (the apostle) clothe us and Christ with symbols of the Creator’s solemn rites, unless they had relation to ourselves? When, again, he warns us against fornication, he reveals the resurrection of the flesh. “The body,” says he, “is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body,” 5490 just as the temple is for God, and God for the temple. A temple will therefore pass away 5491 with its god, and its god with the temple. You see, then, how that “He who raised up the Lord will also raise us up.” 5492 In the body will He raise us, because the body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And suitably does he add the question: “Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?” 5493 What has the heretic to say? That these members of Christ will not rise again, for they are no longer our own? “For,” he says, “ye are bought with a price.” 5494 A price! surely none at all was paid, since Christ was a phantom, nor had He any corporeal substance which He could pay for our bodies! But, in truth, Christ had wherewithal to redeem us; and since He has redeemed, at a great price, these bodies of ours, against which fornication must not be committed (because they are now members of Christ, and not our own), surely He will secure, on His own account, the safety of those whom He made His own at so much cost! Now, how shall we glorify, how shall we exalt, God in our body, 5495 which is doomed to perish? We must now encounter the subject of marriage, which Marcion, more continent 5496 than the apostle, prohibits. For the apostle, although preferring the grace of continence, 5497 yet permits the contraction of marriage and the enjoyment of it, 5498 and advises the continuance therein rather than the dissolution thereof. 5499 Christ plainly forbids divorce, Moses unquestionably permits it. 5500
Now, when Marcion wholly prohibits all carnal intercourse to the faithful (for we will say nothing 5501 about his catechumens), and when he prescribes repudiation of all engagements before marriage, whose teaching does he follow, that of Moses or of Christ? Even Christ, 5502 however, when He here commands “the wife not to depart from her husband, or if she depart, to remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband,” 5503 both permitted divorce, which indeed He never absolutely prohibited, and confirmed (the sanctity) of marriage, by first forbidding its dissolution; and, if separation had taken place, by wishing the nuptial bond to be resumed by reconciliation. But what reasons does (the apostle) allege for continence? Because “the time is short.” 5504 I had almost thought it was because in Christ there was another god! And yet He from whom emanates this shortness of the time, will also send what suits the said brevity. No one makes provision for the time which is another’s. You degrade your god, O Marcion, when you make him circumscribed at all by the Creator’s time. Assuredly also, when (the apostle) rules that marriage should be “only in the Lord,” 5505 that no Christian should intermarry with a heathen, he maintains a law of the Creator, who everywhere prohibits marriage with strangers. But when he says, “although there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth,” 5506 the meaning of his words is clear—not as if there were gods in reality, but as if there were some who are called gods, without being truly so. He introduces his discussion about meats offered to idols with a statement concerning idols (themselves): “We know that an idol is nothing in the world.” 5507 Marcion, however, does not say that the Creator is not God; so that the apostle can hardly be thought to have ranked the Creator amongst those who are called gods, without being so; since, even if they had been gods, “to us there is but one God, the Father.” 5508 Now, from whom do all things come to us, but from Him to whom all things belong? And pray, what things are these? You have them in a preceding part of the epistle: “All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come.” 5509 He makes the Creator, then the God of all things, from whom proceed both the world and life and death, which cannot possibly belong to the other god. From Him, therefore, amongst the “all things” comes also Christ. 5510 When he teaches that every man ought to live of his own industry, 5511 he begins with a copious induction of examples—of soldiers, and shepherds, and husbandmen. 5512 But he 5513 wanted divine authority. What was the use, however, of adducing the Creator’s, which he was destroying? It was vain to do so; for his god had no such authority! (The apostle) says: “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn,” 5514 and adds: “Doth God take care of oxen?” Yes, of oxen, for the sake of men! For, says he, “it is written for our sakes.” 5515 Thus he showed that the law had a symbolic reference to ourselves, and that it gives its sanction in favour of those who live of the gospel. (He showed) also, that those who preach the gospel are on this account sent by no other god but Him to whom belongs the law, which made provision for them, when he says: “For our sakes was this written.” 5516 Still he declined to use this power which the law gave him, because he preferred working without any restraint. 5517 Of this he boasted, and suffered no man to rob him of such glory 5518 —certainly with no view of destroying the law, which he proved that another man might use. For behold Marcion, in his blindness, stumbled at the rock whereof our fathers drank in the wilderness. For since “that rock was Christ,” 5519 it was, of course, the Creator’s, to whom also belonged the people. But why resort to the figure of a sacred sign given by an extraneous god? 5520 Was it to teach the very truth, that ancient things prefigured the Christ who was to be educed 5521 out of them? For, being about to take a cursory view of what befell the people (of Israel) he begins with saying: “Now these things happened as examples for us.” 5522 Now, tell me, were these examples given by the Creator to men belonging to a rival god? Or did one god borrow examples from another, and a hostile one too? He withdraws me to himself in alarm 5523 from Him from whom he transfers my allegiance. Will his antagonist make me better disposed to him? Should I now commit the same sins as the people, shall I have to suffer the same penalties, or not? 5524 But if not the same, how vainly does he propose to me terrors which I shall not have to endure! From whom, again, shall I have to endure them? If from the Creator, What evils does it appertain to Him to inflict? And how will it happen that, jealous God as He is, He shall punish the man who offends His rival, instead of rather encouraging 5525 him. If, however, from the other god—but he knows not how to punish. So that the whole declaration of the apostle lacks a reasonable basis, if it is not meant to relate to the Creator’s discipline. But the fact is, the apostle’s conclusion corresponds to the beginning: “Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples; and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” 5526 What a Creator! how prescient already, and considerate in warning Christians who belong to another god! Whenever cavils occur the like to those which have been already dealt with, I pass them by; certain others I despatch briefly. A great argument for another god is the permission to eat of all kinds of meats, contrary to the law. 5527 Just as if we did not ourselves allow that the burdensome ordinances of the law were abrogated—but by Him who imposed them, who also promised the new condition of things. 5528 The same, therefore, who prohibited meats, also restored the use of them, just as He had indeed allowed them from the beginning. If, however, some strange god had come to destroy our God, his foremost prohibition would certainly have been, that his own votaries should abstain from supporting their lives on the resources of his adversary.
Footnotes
442:54721 Cor. iv. 5.
442:5473Isa. xlii. 6.
442:5474Ps. vii. 9.
442:54751 Cor. iv. 5.
442:54761 Cor. iv. 9.
442:5477Our author’s version is no doubt right. The Greek does not admit the co-ordinate, triple conjunction of the A.V.: Θέατρον ἐγενήθημεν τῷ κόσμῳ—καὶ ἀγγέλοις καὶ ἀνθρώποις.
442:5478Nimirum: introducing a strong ironical sentence against Marcion’s conceit.
443:5479Nisi exserte.
443:5480Lev. xviii. 8.
443:54811 Cor. v. 1.
443:5482Secutus sit.
443:54831 Cor. v. 5.
443:5484Viderit.
443:54851 Cor. v. 5.
443:54861 Cor. v. 13.
443:54871 Cor. v. 7.
443:54881 Cor. v. 7.
443:5489Ex. xii.
443:54901 Cor. vi. 13.
443:5491Peribit.
443:54921 Cor. vi. 14.
443:54931 Cor. vi. 15.
443:54941 Cor. vi. 20.
443:54951 Cor. vi. 20.
443:5496Constantior: ironically predicated.
443:54971 Cor. 7:7, 8.
443:54981 Cor. 7:9, 13, 14.
443:54991 Cor. vii. 27.
443:5500One of Marcion’s Antitheses.
443:5501Viderint.
443:5502Et Christus: Pamelius and Rigaltius here read “Christi apostolus.” Oehler defends the text as the author’s phrase suggested (as Fr. Junius says) by the preceding words, “Moses or Christ.” To which we may add, that in this particular place St. Paul mentions his injunction as Christ’s especially, οὐκ ἐγὼ, αλλ᾽ ὁ Κύριος, 1 Cor. vii. 10.
443:55031 Cor. 7:10, 11.
443:55041 Cor. vii. 29.
443:55051 Cor. vii. 39.
444:55061 Cor. viii. 5.
444:55071 Cor. viii. 4.
444:55081 Cor. viii. 6.
444:55091 Cor. 3:21, 22.
444:55101 Cor. iii. 23.
444:55111 Cor. ix. 13.
444:55121 Cor. ix. 7.
444:5513He turns to Marcion’s god.
444:55141 Cor. 9:9, Deut. 25:4.
444:55151 Cor. xi. 10.
444:5516Comp. 1 Cor. 9:13, 14, Deut. 18:1, 2.
444:5517Gratis.
444:55181 Cor. ix. 15.
444:55191 Cor. x. 4.
444:5520Figuram extranei sacramenti.
444:5521Recensendum.
444:55221 Cor. x. 6.
444:5523Me terret sibi.
444:55241 Cor. x. 7-10.
444:5525Magis quam foveat.
444:55261 Cor. x. 11.
444:55271 Cor. x. 25-27.
445:5528Novationem.
Chapter VIII.—Man the Image of the Creator, and Christ the Head of the Man. Spiritual Gifts. The Sevenfold Spirit Described by Isaiah. The Apostle and the Prophet Compared. Marcion Challenged to Produce Anything Like These Gifts of the Spirit Foretold in Prophecy in His God.
“The head of every man is Christ.” 5529 What Christ, if He is not the author of man? The head he has here put for authority; now “authority” will accrue to none else than the “author.” Of what man indeed is He the head? Surely of him concerning whom he adds soon afterwards: “The man ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image of God.” 5530 Since then he is the image of the Creator (for He, when looking on Christ His Word, who was to become man, said, “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness” 5531 ), how can I possibly have another head but Him whose image I am? For if I am the image of the Creator there is no room in me for another head. But wherefore “ought the woman to have power over her head, because of the angels?” 5532 If it is because “she was created for the man,” 5533 and taken out of the man, according to the Creator’s purpose, then in this way too has the apostle maintained the discipline of that God from whose institution he explains the reasons of His discipline. He adds: “Because of the angels.” 5534 What angels? In other words, whose angels? If he means the fallen angels of the Creator, 5535 there is great propriety in his meaning. It is right that that face which was a snare to them should wear some mark of a humble guise and obscured beauty. If, however, the angels of the rival god are referred to, what fear is there for them? for not even Marcion’s disciples, (to say nothing of his angels,) have any desire for women. We have often shown before now, that the apostle classes heresies as evil 5536 among “works of the flesh,” and that he would have those persons accounted estimable 5537 who shun heresies as an evil thing. In like manner, when treating of the gospel, 5538 we have proved from the sacrament of the bread and the cup 5539 the verity of the Lord’s body and blood in opposition to Marcion’s phantom; whilst throughout almost the whole of my work it has been contended that all mention of judicial attributes points conclusively to the Creator as to a God who judges. Now, on the subject of “spiritual gifts,” 5540 I have to remark that these also were promised by the Creator through Christ; and I think that we may derive from this a very just conclusion that the bestowal of a gift is not the work of a god other than Him who is proved to have given the promise. Here is a prophecy of Isaiah: “There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a flower 5541 shall spring up from his root; and upon Him shall rest the Spirit of the Lord.” After which he enumerates the special gifts of the same: “The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of religion. 5542 And with the fear of the Lord 5543 shall the Spirit fill Him.” 5544 In this figure of a flower he shows that Christ was to arise out of the rod which sprang from the stem of Jesse; in other words, from the virgin of the race of David, the son of Jesse. In this Christ the whole substantia of the Spirit would have to rest, not meaning that it would be as it were some subsequent acquisition accruing to Him who was always, even before His incarnation, the Spirit of God; 5545 so that you cannot argue from this that the prophecy has reference to that Christ who (as mere man of the race only of David) was to obtain the Spirit of his God. (The prophet says,) on the contrary, that from the time when (the true Christ) should appear in the flesh as the flower predicted, 5546 rising from the root of Jesse, there would have to rest upon Him the entire operation of the Spirit of grace, which, so far as the Jews were concerned, would cease and come to an end. This result the case itself shows; for after this time the Spirit of the Creator never breathed amongst them. From Judah were taken away “the wise man, and the cunning artificer, and the counsellor, and the prophet;” 5547 that so it might prove true that “the law and the prophets were until John.” 5548 Now hear how he declared that by Christ Himself, when returned to heaven, these spiritual gifts were to be sent: “He ascended up on high,” that is, into heaven; “He led captivity captive,” meaning death or slavery of man; “He gave gifts to the sons of men,” 5549 that is, the gratuities, which we call charismata. He says specifically “sons of men,” 5550 and not men promiscuously; thus exhibiting to us those who were the children of men truly so called, choice men, apostles. “For,” says he, “I have begotten you through the gospel;” 5551 and “Ye are my children, of whom I travail again in birth.” 5552 Now was absolutely fulfilled that promise of the Spirit which was given by the word of Joel: “In the last days will I pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh, and their sons and their daughters shall prophesy; and upon my servants and upon my handmaids will I pour out of my Spirit.” 5553 Since, then, the Creator promised the gift of His Spirit in the latter days; and since Christ has in these last days appeared as the dispenser of spiritual gifts (as the apostle says, “When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son;” 5554 and again, “This I say, brethren, that the time is short” 5555 ), it evidently follows in connection with this prediction of the last days, that this gift of the Spirit belongs to Him who is the Christ of the predicters. Now compare the Spirit’s specific graces, as they are described by the apostle, and promised by the prophet Isaiah. “To one is given,” says he, “by the Spirit the word of wisdom;” this we see at once is what Isaiah declared to be “the spirit of wisdom.” “To another, the word of knowledge;” this will be “the (prophet’s) spirit of understanding and counsel.” “To another, faith by the same Spirit;” this will be “the spirit of religion and the fear of the Lord.” “To another, the gifts of healing, and to another the working of miracles;” this will be “the spirit of might.” “To another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another divers kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues;” this will be “the spirit of knowledge.” 5556 See how the apostle agrees with the prophet both in making the distribution of the one Spirit, and in interpreting His special graces. This, too, I may confidently say: he who has likened the unity of our body throughout its manifold and divers members to the compacting together of the various gifts of the Spirit, 5557 shows also that there is but one Lord of the human body and of the Holy Spirit. This Spirit, (according to the apostle’s showing,) 5558 meant not 5559 that the service 5560 of these gifts should be in the body, 5561 nor did He place them in the human body); and on the subject of the superiority of love 5562 above all these gifts, He even taught the apostle that it was the chief commandment, 5563 just as Christ has shown it to be: “Thou shalt love the Lord with all thine heart and soul, 5564 with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thine own self.” 5565 When he mentions the fact that “it is written in the law,” 5566 how that the Creator would speak with other tongues and other lips, whilst confirming indeed the gift of tongues by such a mention, he yet cannot be thought to have affirmed that the gift was that of another god by his reference to the Creator’s prediction. 5567 In precisely the same manner, 5568 when enjoining on women silence in the church, that they speak not for the mere sake 5569 of learning 5570 (although that even they have the right of prophesying, he has already shown 5571 when he covers the woman that prophesies with a veil), he goes to the law for his sanction that woman should be under obedience. 5572 Now this law, let me say once for all, he ought to have made no other acquaintance with, than to destroy it. But that we may now leave the subject of spiritual gifts, facts themselves will be enough to prove which of us acts rashly in claiming them for his God, and whether it is possible that they are opposed to our side, even if 5573 the Creator promised them for His Christ who is not yet revealed, as being destined only for the Jews, to have their operations in His time, in His Christ, and among His people. Let Marcion then exhibit, as gifts of his god, some prophets, such as have not spoken by human sense, but with the Spirit of God, such as have both predicted things to come, and have made manifest 5574 the secrets of the heart; 5575 let him produce a psalm, a vision, a prayer 5576 —only let it be by the Spirit, 5577 in an ecstasy, that is, in a rapture, 5578 whenever an interpretation of tongues has occurred to him; let him show to me also, that any woman of boastful tongue 5579 in his community has ever prophesied from amongst those specially holy sisters of his. Now all these signs (of spiritual gifts) are forthcoming from my side without any difficulty, and they agree, too, with the rules, and the dispensations, and the instructions of the Creator; therefore without doubt the Christ, and the Spirit, and the apostle, belong severally 5580 to my God. Here, then, is my frank avowal for any one who cares to require it.
Footnotes
445:55291 Cor. xi. 3.
445:55301 Cor. xi. 7.
445:5531Gen. i. 26.
445:55321 Cor. xi. 10.
445:55331 Cor. xi. 9.
445:55341 Cor. xi. 10.
445:5535See more concerning these in chap. xviii. of this book. Comp. Gen. vi. 1-4.
445:55361 Cor. 11:18, 19.
445:5537Probabiles: “approved.”
445:5538See above, in book iv. chap. xl.
445:5539Luke 22:15, 1 Cor. 11:23.
445:55401 Cor. xii. 1.
445:5541Flos: Sept. ἂνθος.
445:5542Religionis: Sept. εὐσεβείας.
445:5543Timor Dei: Sept. φόβος Θεοῦ.
445:5544Isa. xi. 1-3.
445:5545We have more than once shown that by Tertullian and other ancient fathers, the divine nature of Christ was frequently designated “Spirit.”
445:5546Floruisset in carne.
446:5547See Isa. 3:2, 3.
446:5548Luke xvi. 16.
446:55491 Cor. 12:4, Eph. 4:8, Ps. 68:18.
446:5550He argues from his own reading, filiis hominum.
446:55511 Cor. iv. 15.
446:5552Gal. iv. 19.
446:5553Joel 2:28, 29, applied by St. Peter, Acts 2:17, 18.
446:5554Gal. iv. 4.
446:55551 Cor. vii. 29. [The verse filled out by the translator.]
446:5556Comp. 1 Cor. 12:8, Isa. 11:1.
446:55571 Cor. 12:12, Eph. 4:16.
446:5558This seems to be the force of the subjunctive verb noluerit.
446:5559Noluerit.
446:5560Meritum.
446:5561They are spiritual gifts, not endowments of body.
446:5562De dilectione præferenda.
446:5563Compare 1 Cor. 12:31, 1 Cor. 13:1, 13.
446:5564Totis præcordiis.
446:5565Luke x. 27.
446:5566“Here, as in John 10:34, John 12:34, John 15:25, ‘the law’ is used for the Old Testament generally, instead of being, as usual, confined to the Pentateuch. The passage is from Isa. xxviii. 11.” (Dean Stanley, On the Corinthians, in loc.).
446:55671 Cor. xiv. 21.
446:5568Æque.
446:5569Duntaxat gratia.
446:55701 Cor. 14:34, 35.
446:55711 Cor. 11:5, 6. [See Kaye, p. 228.]
446:55721 Cor. 14:34, Gen. 3:16 is referred to.
446:5573Et si: These words introduce the Marcionite theory.
447:5574Traduxerint.
447:55751 Cor. xiv. 25.
447:55761 Cor. xiv. 26.
447:5577Duntaxat spiritalem: These words refer to the previous ones, “not spoken by human sense, but with the Spirit of God.” [Of course here is a touch of his fanaticism; but, he bases it on (1 Cor. xiv.) a mere question of fact: had these charismata ceased?]
447:5578Amentia.
447:5579Magnidicam.
447:5580Erit.
Chapter IX.—The Doctrine of the Resurrection. The Body Will Rise Again. Christ’s Judicial Character. Jewish Perversions of Prophecy Exposed and Confuted. Messianic Psalms Vindicated. Jewish and Rationalistic Interpretations on This Point Similar. Jesus—Not Hezekiah or Solomon—The Subject of These Prophecies in the Psalms. None But He is the Christ of the Old and the New Testaments.
Meanwhile the Marcionite will exhibit nothing of this kind; he is by this time afraid to say which side has the better right to a Christ who is not yet revealed. Just as my Christ is to be expected, 5581 who was predicted from the beginning, so his Christ therefore has no existence, as not having been announced from the beginning. Ours is a better faith, which believes in a future Christ, than the heretic’s, which has none at all to believe in. Touching the resurrection of the dead, 5582 let us first inquire how some persons then denied it. No doubt in the same way in which it is even now denied, since the resurrection of the flesh has at all times men to deny it. But many wise men claim for the soul a divine nature, and are confident of its undying destiny, and even the multitude worship the dead 5583 in the presumption which they boldly entertain that their souls survive. As for our bodies, however, it is manifest that they perish either at once by fire or the wild beasts, 5584 or even when most carefully kept by length of time. When, therefore, the apostle refutes those who deny the resurrection of the flesh, he indeed defends, in opposition to them, the precise matter of their denial, that is, the resurrection of the body. You have the whole answer wrapped up in this. 5585 All the rest is superfluous. Now in this very point, which is called the resurrection of the dead, it is requisite that the proper force of the words should be accurately maintained. 5586 The word dead expresses simply what has lost the vital principle, 5587 by means of which it used to live. Now the body is that which loses life, and as the result of losing it becomes dead. To the body, therefore, the term dead is only suitable. Moreover, as resurrection accrues to what is dead, and dead is a term applicable only to a body, therefore the body alone has a resurrection incidental to it. So again the word Resurrection, or (rising again), embraces only that which has fallen down. “To rise,” indeed, can be predicated of that which has never fallen down, but had already been always lying down. But “to rise again” is predicable only of that which has fallen down; because it is by rising again, in consequence of its having fallen down, that it is said to have re-risen. 5588 For the syllable RE always implies iteration (or happening again). We say, therefore, that the body falls to the ground by death, as indeed facts themselves show, in accordance with the law of God. For to the body it was said, (“Till thou return to the ground, for out of it wast thou taken; for) dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” 5589 That, therefore, which came from the ground shall return to the ground. Now that falls down which returns to the ground; and that rises again which falls down. “Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection.” 5590 Here in the word man, who consists of bodily substance, as we have often shown already, is presented to me the body of Christ. But if we are all so made alive in Christ, as we die in Adam, it follows of necessity that we are made alive in Christ as a bodily substance, since we died in Adam as a bodily substance. The similarity, indeed, is not complete, unless our revival 5591 in Christ concur in identity of substance with our mortality 5592 in Adam. But at this point 5593 (the apostle) has made a parenthetical statement 5594 concerning Christ, which, bearing as it does on our present discussion, must not pass unnoticed. For the resurrection of the body will receive all the better proof, in proportion as I shall succeed in showing that Christ belongs to that God who is believed to have provided this resurrection of the flesh in His dispensation. When he says, “For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet,” 5595 we can see at once 5596 from this statement that he speaks of a God of vengeance, and therefore of Him who made the following promise to Christ: “Sit Thou at my right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool. The rod of Thy strength shall the Lord send forth from Sion, and He shall rule along with Thee in the midst of Thine enemies.” 5597 It is necessary for me to lay claim to those Scriptures which the Jews endeavour to deprive us of, and to show that they sustain my view. Now they say that this Psalm 5598 was a chant in honour of Hezekiah, 5599 because “he went up to the house of the Lord,” 5600 and God turned back and removed his enemies. Therefore, (as they further hold,) those other words, “Before the morning star did I beget thee from the womb,” 5601 are applicable to Hezekiah, and to the birth of Hezekiah. We on our side 5602 have published Gospels (to the credibility of which we have to thank 5603 them 5604 for having given some confirmation, indeed, already in so great a subject 5605 ); and these declare that the Lord was born at night, that so it might be “before the morning star,” as is evident both from the star especially, and from the testimony of the angel, who at night announced to the shepherds that Christ had at that moment been born, 5606 and again from the place of the birth, for it is towards night that persons arrive at the (eastern) “inn.” Perhaps, too, there was a mystic purpose in Christ’s being born at night, destined, as He was, to be the light of the truth amidst the dark shadows of ignorance. Nor, again, would God have said, “I have begotten Thee,” except to His true Son. For although He says of all the people (Israel), “I have begotten 5607 children,” 5608 yet He added not “from the womb.” Now, why should He have added so superfluously this phrase “from the womb” (as if there could be any doubt about any one’s having been born from the womb), unless the Holy Ghost had wished the words to be with especial care 5609 understood of Christ? “I have begotten Thee from the womb,” that is to say, from a womb only, without a man’s seed, making it a condition of a fleshly body 5610 that it should come out of a womb. What is here added (in the Psalm), “Thou art a priest for ever,” 5611 relates to (Christ) Himself. Hezekiah was no priest; and even if he had been one, he would not have been a priest for ever. “After the order,” says He, “of Melchizedek.” Now what had Hezekiah to do with Melchizedek, the priest of the most high God, and him uncircumcised too, who blessed the circumcised Abraham, after receiving from him the offering of tithes? To Christ, however, “the order of Melchizedek” will be very suitable; for Christ is the proper and legitimate High Priest of God. He is the Pontiff of the priesthood of the uncircumcision, constituted such, even then, for the Gentiles, by whom He was to be more fully received, although at His last coming He will favour with His acceptance and blessing the circumcision also, even the race of Abraham, which by and by is to acknowledge Him. Well, then, there is also another Psalm, which begins with these words: “Give Thy judgments, O God, to the King,” that is, to Christ who was to come as King, “and Thy righteousness unto the King’s son,” 5612 that is, to Christ’s people; for His sons are they who are born again in Him. But it will here be said that this Psalm has reference to Solomon. However, will not those portions of the Psalm which apply to Christ alone, be enough to teach us that all the rest, too, relates to Christ, and not to Solomon? “He shall come down,” says He, “like rain upon a fleece, 5613 and like dropping showers upon the earth,” 5614 describing His descent from heaven to the flesh as gentle and unobserved. 5615 Solomon, however, if he had indeed any descent at all, came not down like a shower, because he descended not from heaven. But I will set before you more literal points. 5616 “He shall have dominion,” says the Psalmist, “from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.” 5617 To Christ alone was this given; whilst Solomon reigned over only the moderately-sized kingdom of Judah. “Yea, all kings shall fall down before Him.” Whom, indeed, shall they all thus worship, except Christ? “All nations shall serve Him.” 5618 To whom shall all thus do homage, but Christ? “His name shall endure for ever.” Whose name has this eternity of fame, but Christ’s? “Longer than the sun shall His name remain,” for longer than the sun shall be the Word of God, even Christ. “And in Him shall all nations be blessed.” 5619 In Solomon was no nation blessed; in Christ every nation. And what if the Psalm proves Him to be even God? “They shall call Him blessed.” 5620 (On what ground?) Because blessed is the Lord God of Israel, who only doeth wonderful things.” 5621 “Blessed also is His glorious name, and with His glory shall all the earth be filled.” 5622 On the contrary, Solomon (as I make bold to affirm) lost even the glory which he had from God, seduced by his love of women even into idolatry. And thus, the statement which occurs in about the middle of this Psalm, “His enemies shall lick the dust” 5623 (of course, as having been, (to use the apostle’s phrase,) “put under His feet” 5624 ), will bear upon the very object which I had in view, when I both introduced the Psalm, and insisted on my opinion of its sense,—namely, that I might demonstrate both the glory of His kingdom and the subjection of His enemies in pursuance of the Creator’s own plans, with the view of laying down 5625 this conclusion, that none but He can be believed to be the Christ of the Creator.
Footnotes
447:5581He here argues, as it will be readily observed, from the Marcionite theory alluded to, near the end of the last chapter.
447:55821 Cor. xv. 12.
447:5583See his treatise, De Resur. Carnis, chap. i. (Oehler).
447:5584An allusion to the deaths of martyrs.
447:5585Compendio.
447:5586Defendi.
447:5587Animam.
447:5588The reader will readily see how the English fails to complete the illustration with the ease of the Latin, “surgere,” “iterum surgere,” “resurgere.”
447:5589Gen. iii. 19. [“Was not said unto the Soul”—says our own Longfellow, in corresponding words.]
447:55901 Cor. xv. 21.
447:5591Vivificatio.
448:5592Mortificatio.
448:5593Adhuc.
448:5594Interposuit aliquid.
448:55951 Cor. 15:25, 27.
448:5596Jam quidem.
448:5597Ps. 110:1, 2, Ps. 8:6.
448:5598Ps. cx.
448:5599In Ezechiam cecinisse.
448:56002 Kings xix. 14; but the words are, “quia is sederit ad dexteram templi,” a sentence which occurs neither in the LXX. nor the original.
448:5601Tertullian, as usual, argues from the Septuagint, which in the latter clause of Ps. cx. 3 has ἐκ γαστρὸς πρὸ ἑωσφόρου ἐγέννησά σε; and so the Vulgate version has it. This Psalm has been variously applied by the Jews. Raschi (or Rabbi Sol. Jarchi) thinks it is most suitable to Abraham, and possibly to David, in which latter view D. Kimchi agrees with him. Others find in Solomon the best application; but more frequently is Hezekiah thought to be the subject of the Psalm, as Tertullian observes. Justin Martyr (in Dial. cum Tryph.) also notices this application of the Psalm. But Tertullian in the next sentence appears to recognize the sounder opinion of the older Jews, who saw in this Ps. cx. a prediction of Messiah. This opinion occurs in the Jerusalem Talmud, in the tract Berachoth, 5. Amongst the more recent Jews who also hold the sounder view, may be mentioned Rabbi Saadias Gaon, on Dan. vii. 13, and R. Moses Hadarsan [singularly enough quoted by Raschi in another part of his commentary (Gen. xxxv. 8)], with others who are mentioned by Wetstein, On the New Testament, Matt. xxii. 44. Modern Jews, such as Moses Mendelsohn, reject the Messianic sense; and they are followed by the commentators of the Rationalist school amongst ourselves and in Germany. J. Olshausen, after Hitzig, comes down in his interpretation of the Psalm as late as the Maccabees, and sees a suitable accomplishment of its words in the honours heaped upon Jonathan by Alexander son of Antiochus Epiphanes (see 1 Macc. x. 20). For the refutation of so inadequate a commentary, the reader is referred to Delitzch on Ps. cx. The variations of opinion, however, in this school, are as remarkable as the fluctuations of the Jewish writers. The latest work on the Psalms which has appeared amongst us (Psalms, chronologically arranged, by four Friends), after Ewald, places the accomplishment of Ps. cx. in what may be allowed to have been its occasion—David’s victories over the neighboring heathen.
448:5602Nos.
448:5603Debemus.
448:5604Istos: that is, the Jews (Rigalt.).
448:5605Utique jam in tanto opere.
448:5606Natum esse quum maxime.
448:5607Generavi: Sept. ἐγέννησα.
448:5608Isa. i. 2.
448:5609Curiosius.
448:5610Deputans carni: a note against Docetism.
448:5611Ps. cx. 4.
448:5612Ps. lxxii. 1.
449:5613Super vellus: so Sept. ἐπὶ πόκον.
449:5614Ps. lxxii. 6.
449:5615Similarly the Rabbis Saadias Gaon and Hadarsan, above mentioned in our note, beautifully applied to Messiah’s placid birth, “without a human father,” the figures of Ps. cx. 3, “womb of the morning,” “dew of thy birth.”
449:5616Simpliciora.
449:5617Ps. lxx. 8.
449:5618Ps. lxx. 11.
449:5619Ps. lxx. 17.
449:5620Ps. lxx. 17.
449:5621Ps. lxx. 18.
449:5622Ps. lxx. 19.
449:5623Ps. lxx. 9.
449:56241 Cor. 15:25, 27.
449:5625Consecuturus.
Chapter X.—Doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body, Continued. How are the Dead Raised? and with What Body Do They Come? These Questions Answered in Such a Sense as to Maintain the Truth of the Raised Body, Against Marcion. Christ as the Second Adam Connected with the Creator of the First Man. Let Us Bear the Image of the Heavenly. The Triumph Over Death in Accordance with the Prophets. Hosea and St. Paul Compared.
Let us now return to the resurrection, to the defence of which against heretics of all sorts we have given indeed sufficient attention in another work of ours. 5626 But we will not be wanting (in some defence of the doctrine) even here, in consideration of such persons as are ignorant of that little treatise. “What,” asks he, “shall they do who are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not?” 5627 Now, never mind 5628 that practice, (whatever it may have been.) The Februarian lustrations 5629 will perhaps 5630 answer him (quite as well), by praying for the dead. 5631 Do not then suppose that the apostle here indicates some new god as the author and advocate of this (baptism for the dead. His only aim in alluding to it was) that he might all the more firmly insist upon the resurrection of the body, in proportion as they who were vainly baptized for the dead resorted to the practice from their belief of such a resurrection. We have the apostle in another passage defining “but one baptism.” 5632 To be “baptized for the dead” therefore means, in fact, to be baptized for the body; 5633 for, as we have shown, it is the body which becomes dead. What, then, shall they do who are baptized for the body, 5634 if the body 5635 rises not again? We stand, then, on firm ground (when we say) that 5636 the next question which the apostle has discussed equally relates to the body. But “some man will say, ‘How are the dead raised up? With what body do they come?’” 5637 Having established the doctrine of the resurrection which was denied, it was natural 5638 to discuss what would be the sort of body (in the resurrection), of which no one had an idea. On this point we have other opponents with whom to engage. For Marcion does not in any wise admit the resurrection of the flesh, and it is only the salvation of the soul which he promises; consequently the question which he raises is not concerning the sort of body, but the very substance thereof. Notwithstanding, 5639 he is most plainly refuted even from what the apostle advances respecting the quality of the body, in answer to those who ask, “How are the dead raised up? with what body do they come?” For as he treated of the sort of body, he of course ipso facto proclaimed in the argument that it was a body which would rise again. Indeed, since he proposes as his examples “wheat grain, or some other grain, to which God giveth a body, such as it hath pleased Him;” 5640 since also he says, that “to every seed is its own body;” 5641 that, consequently, 5642 “there is one kind of flesh of men, whilst there is another of beasts, and (another) of birds; that there are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial; and that there is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars” 5643 —does he not therefore intimate that there is to be 5644 a resurrection of the flesh or body, which he illustrates by fleshly and corporeal samples? Does he not also guarantee that the resurrection shall be accomplished by that God from whom proceed all the (creatures which have served him for) examples? “So also,” says he, “is the resurrection of the dead.” 5645 How? Just as the grain, which is sown a body, springs up a body. This sowing of the body he called the dissolving thereof in the ground, “because it is sown in corruption,” (but “is raised) to honour and power.” 5646 Now, just as in the case of the grain, so here: to Him will belong the work in the revival of the body, who ordered the process in the dissolution thereof. If, however, you remove the body from the resurrection which you submitted to the dissolution, what becomes of the diversity in the issue? Likewise, “although it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” 5647 Now, although the natural principle of life 5648 and the spirit have each a body proper to itself, so that the “natural body” may fairly be taken 5649 to signify the soul, 5650 and “the spiritual body” the spirit, yet that is no reason for supposing 5651 the apostle to say that the soul is to become spirit in the resurrection, but that the body (which, as being born along with the soul, and as retaining its life by means of the soul, 5652 admits of being called animal (or natural 5653 ) will become spiritual, since it rises through the Spirit to an eternal life. In short, since it is not the soul, but the flesh which is “sown in corruption,” when it turns to decay in the ground, it follows that (after such dissolution) the soul is no longer the natural body, but the flesh, which was the natural body, (is the subject of the future change), forasmuch as of a natural body it is made a spiritual body, as he says further down, “That was not first which is spiritual.” 5654 For to this effect he just before remarked of Christ Himself: “The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” 5655 Our heretic, however, in the excess of his folly, being unwilling that the statement should remain in this shape, altered “last Adam” into “last Lord;” 5656 because he feared, of course, that if he allowed the Lord to be the last (or second) Adam, we should contend that Christ, being the second Adam, must needs belong to that God who owned also the first Adam. But the falsification is transparent. For why is there a first Adam, unless it be that there is also a second Adam? For things are not classed together unless they be severally alike, and have an identity of either name, or substance, or origin. 5657 Now, although among things which are even individually diverse, one must be first and another last, yet they must have one author. If, however, the author be a different one, he himself indeed may be called the last. But the thing which he introduces is the first, and that only can be the last, which is like this first in nature. 5658 It is, however, not like the first in nature, when it is not the work of the same author. In like manner (the heretic) will be refuted also with the word “man: ” “The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.” 5659 Now, since the first was a man, how can there be a second, unless he is a man also? Or, else, if the second is “Lord,” was the first “Lord” also? 5660 It is, however, quite enough for me, that in his Gospel he admits the Son of man to be both Christ and Man; so that he will not be able to deny Him (in this passage), in the “Adam” and the “man” (of the apostle). What follows will also be too much for him. For when the apostle says, “As is the earthy,” that is, man, “such also are they that are earthy”—men again, of course; “therefore as is the heavenly,” meaning the Man, from heaven, “such are the men also that are heavenly.” 5661 For he could not possibly have opposed to earthly men any heavenly beings that were not men also; his object being the more accurately to distinguish their state and expectation by using this name in common for them both. For in respect of their present state and their future expectation he calls men earthly and heavenly, still reserving their parity of name, according as they are reckoned (as to their ultimate condition 5662 ) in Adam or in Christ. Therefore, when exhorting them to cherish the hope of heaven, he says: “As we have borne the image of the earthy, so let us also bear the image of the heavenly,” 5663 —language which relates not to any condition of resurrection life, but to the rule of the present time. He says, Let us bear, as a precept; not We shall bear, in the sense of a promise—wishing us to walk even as he himself was walking, and to put off the likeness of the earthly, that is, of the old man, in the works of the flesh. For what are this next words? “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” 5664 He means the works of the flesh and blood, which, in his Epistle to the Galatians, deprive men of the kingdom of God. 5665 In other passages also he is accustomed to put the natural condition instead of the works that are done therein, as when he says, that “they who are in the flesh cannot please God.” 5666 Now, when shall we be able to please God except whilst we are in this flesh? There is, I imagine, no other time wherein a man can work. If, however, whilst we are even naturally living in the flesh, we yet eschew the deeds of the flesh, then we shall not be in the flesh; since, although we are not absent from the substance of the flesh, we are notwithstanding strangers to the sin thereof. Now, since in the word flesh we are enjoined to put off, not the substance, but the works of the flesh, therefore in the use of the same word the kingdom of God is denied to the works of the flesh, not to the substance thereof. For not that is condemned in which evil is done, but only the evil which is done in it. To administer poison is a crime, but the cup in which it is given is not guilty. So the body is the vessel of the works of the flesh, whilst the soul which is within it mixes the poison of a wicked act. How then is it, that the soul, which is the real author of the works of the flesh, shall attain to 5667 the kingdom of God, after the deeds done in the body have been atoned for, whilst the body, which was nothing but (the soul’s) ministering agent, must remain in condemnation? Is the cup to be punished, but the poisoner to escape? Not that we indeed claim the kingdom of God for the flesh: all we do is, to assert a resurrection for the substance thereof, as the gate of the kingdom through which it is entered. But the resurrection is one thing, and the kingdom is another. The resurrection is first, and afterwards the kingdom. We say, therefore, that the flesh rises again, but that when changed it obtains the kingdom. “For the dead shall be raised incorruptible,” even those who had been corruptible when their bodies fell into decay; “and we shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. 5668 For this corruptible”—and as he spake, the apostle seemingly pointed to his own flesh—“must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality,” 5669 in order, indeed, that it may be rendered a fit substance for the kingdom of God. “For we shall be like the angels.” 5670 This will be the perfect change of our flesh—only after its resurrection. 5671 Now if, on the contrary, 5672 there is to be no flesh, how then shall it put on incorruption and immortality? Having then become something else by its change, it will obtain the kingdom of God, no longer the (old) flesh and blood, but the body which God shall have given it. Rightly then does the apostle declare, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;” 5673 for this (honour) does he ascribe to the changed condition 5674 which ensues on the resurrection. Since, therefore, shall then be accomplished the word which was written by the Creator, “O death, where is thy victory”—or thy struggle? 5675 “O death, where is thy sting?” 5676 —written, I say, by the Creator, for He wrote them by His prophet 5677 —to Him will belong the gift, that is, the kingdom, who proclaimed the word which is to be accomplished in the kingdom. And to none other God does he tell us that “thanks” are due, for having enabled us to achieve “the victory” even over death, than to Him from whom he received the very expression 5678 of the exulting and triumphant challenge to the mortal foe.
Footnotes
449:5626He refers to his De Resurrect. Carnis. See chap. xlviii.
449:56271 Cor. xv. 29.
449:5628Viderit.
449:5629Kalendæ Februariæ. The great expiation or lustration, celebrated at Rome in the month which received its name from the festival, is described by Ovid, Fasti, book ii., lines 19–28, and 267–452, in which latter passage the same feast is called Lupercalia. Of course as the rites were held on the 15th of the month, the word kalendæ here has not its more usual meaning (Paley’s edition of the Fasti, pp. 52–76). Oehler refers also to Macrobius, Saturn. i. 13; Cicero, De Legibus, ii. 21; Plutarch, Numa, p. 132. He well remarks (note in loc.), that Tertullian, by intimating that the heathen rites of the Februa will afford quite as satisfactory an answer to the apostle’s question, as the Christian superstition alluded to, not only means no authorization of the said superstition for himself, but expresses his belief that St. Paul’s only object was to gather some evidence for the great doctrine of the resurrection from the faith which underlay the practice alluded to. In this respect, however, the heathen festival would afford a much less pointed illustration; for though it was indeed a lustration for the dead, περὶ νεκρῶν, and had for its object their happiness and welfare, it went no further than a vague notion of an indefinite immortality, and it touched not the recovery of the body. There is therefore force in Tertullian’s si forte.
449:5630Si forte.
449:5631τῷ εὔχεσθαι ὑπὲρ τῶν νεκρῶν (Rigalt.).
449:5632Eph. iv. 5.
449:5633Pro corporibus.
450:5634Eph. iv. 5.
450:5635Corpora.
450:5636Ut, with the subjunctive verb induxerit.
450:56371 Cor. xv. 35.
450:5638Consequens erat.
450:5639Porro.
450:56401 Cor. 15:37, 38.
450:56411 Cor. xv. 38.
450:5642Ut.
450:56431 Cor. xv. 39-41.
450:5644Portendit.
450:56451 Cor. xv. 42.
450:56461 Cor. 15:42, 43.
450:56471 Cor. xv. 44.
450:5648Anima: we will call it soul in the context.
450:5649Possit videri.
450:5650Animam.
450:5651Non ideo.
450:5652Animam.
450:5653Animale. The terseness of his argument, by his use of the same radical terms Anima and Animale, is lost in the English. [See Cap. 15 infra. Also, Kaye p. 180. St. Augustine seems to tolerate our author’s views of a corporal spirit in his treatise de Hæresibus.]
450:56541 Cor. xv. 46.
450:56551 Cor. xv. 45.
450:5656ὁ ἔσχατος ᾽Αδάμ into ὁ ἔσχατος Κύριος.
450:5657Vel auctoris.
451:5658Par.
451:56591 Cor. xv. 47.
451:5660Marcion seems to have changed man into Lord, or rather to have omitted the ἄνθρωπος of the second clause, letting the verse run thus: ὁ πρῶτος ἄνθρωπος ἐκ γῆς χοϊκὁς, ὁ δεύτερος Κύριος ἐξ οὐρανοῦ. Anything to cut off all connection with the Creator.
451:5661The οἱ ἐπουράνιοι, the “de cœlo homines,” of this 1 Cor. 15.48 are Christ’s risen people; comp. Phil. 3:20, 21 (Alford).
451:5662Secundum exitum.
451:56631 Cor. xv. 49. T. argues from the reading φορέσωμεν (instead of φορέσομεν), which indeed was read by many of the fathers, and (what is still more important) is found in the Codex Sinaiticus. We add the critical note of Dean Alford on this reading: “ACDFKL rel latt copt goth, Theodotus, Basil, Cæsarius, Cyril, Macarius, Methodius (who prefixes ἕνα), Chrysostom, Epiphanius, Ps. Athanasius, Damascene, Irenæus (int), Tertullian, Cyprian, Hilary, Jerome.” Alford retains the usual φορέσομεν, on the strength chiefly of the Codex Vaticanus.
451:56641 Cor. xv. 50.
451:5665Gal. v. 19-21.
451:5666Rom. viii. 8.
451:5667Merebitur.
451:56681 Cor. xv. 52.
451:56691 Cor. xv. 53.
451:5670Matt. 22:30, Luke 20:36.
452:5671Sed resuscitatæ.
452:5672Aut si.
452:56731 Cor. xv. 50.
452:5674Demutationi.
452:5675Suggested by the ἰσχυσας of Sept. in Isa. xxv. 8.
452:56761 Cor. xv. 55.
452:5677Isa. 25:8, Hos. 13:14.
452:5678The Septuagint version of the passage in Hosea is, ποῦ ἡ δίκη σου, θάνατε; ποῦ τὸ κέντνον σου, ᾅδη, which is very like the form of the apostrophe in 1 Cor. xv. 55.
Chapter XI.—The Second Epistle to the Corinthians. The Creator the Father of Mercies. Shown to Be Such in the Old Testament, and Also in Christ. The Newness of the New Testament. The Veil of Obdurate Blindness Upon Israel, Not Reprehensible on Marcion’s Principles. The Jews Guilty in Rejecting the Christ of the Creator. Satan, the God of This World. The Treasure in Earthen Vessels Explained Against Marcion. The Creator’s Relation to These Vessels, I.e. Our Bodies.
If, owing to the fault of human error, the word God has become a common name (since in the world there are said and believed to be “gods many” 5679 ), yet “the blessed God,” (who is “the Father) of our Lord Jesus Christ,” 5680 will be understood to be no other God than the Creator, who both blessed all things (that He had made), as you find in Genesis, 5681 and is Himself “blessed by all things,” as Daniel tells us. 5682 Now, if the title of Father may be claimed for (Marcion’s) sterile god, how much more for the Creator? To none other than Him is it suitable, who is also “the Father of mercies,” 5683 and (in the prophets) has been described as “full of compassion, and gracious, and plenteous in mercy.” 5684 In Jonah you find the signal act of His mercy, which He showed to the praying Ninevites. 5685 How inflexible was He at the tears of Hezekiah! 5686 How ready to forgive Ahab, the husband of Jezebel, the blood of Naboth, when he deprecated His anger. 5687 How prompt in pardoning David on his confession of his sin 5688 —preferring, indeed, the sinner’s repentance to his death, of course because of His gracious attribute of mercy. 5689 Now, if Marcion’s god has exhibited or proclaimed any such thing as this, I will allow him to be “the Father of mercies.” Since, however, he ascribes to him this title only from the time he has been revealed, as if he were the father of mercies from the time only when he began to liberate the human race, then we on our side, too, 5690 adopt the same precise date of his alleged revelation; but it is that we may deny him! It is then not competent to him to ascribe any quality to his god, whom indeed he only promulged by the fact of such an ascription; for only if it were previously evident that his god had an existence, could he be permitted to ascribe an attribute to him. The ascribed attribute is only an accident; but accidents 5691 are preceded by the statement of the thing itself of which they are predicated, especially when another claims the attribute which is ascribed to him who has not been previously shown to exist. Our denial of his existence will be all the more peremptory, because of the fact that the attribute which is alleged in proof of it belongs to that God who has been already revealed. Therefore “the New Testament” will appertain to none other than Him who promised it—if not “its letter, yet its spirit;” 5692 and herein will lie its newness. Indeed, He who had engraved its letter in stones is the same as He who had said of its spirit, “I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh.” 5693 Even if “the letter killeth, yet the Spirit giveth life;” 5694 and both belong to Him who says: “I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal.” 5695 We have already made good the Creator’s claim to this twofold character of judgment and goodness 5696 —“killing in the letter” through the law, and “quickening in the Spirit” through the Gospel. Now these attributes, however different they be, cannot possibly make two gods; for they have already (in the prevenient dispensation of the Old Testament) been found to meet in One. 5697 He alludes to Moses’ veil, covered with which “his face could not be stedfastly seen by the children of Israel.” 5698 Since he did this to maintain the superiority of the glory of the New Testament, which is permanent in its glory, over that of the Old, “which was to be done away,” 5699 this fact gives support to my belief which exalts the Gospel above the law and you must look well to it that it does not even more than this. For only there is superiority possible where was previously the thing over which superiority can be affirmed. But then he says, “But their minds were blinded” 5700 —of the world; certainly not the Creator’s mind, but the minds of the people which are in the world. 5701 Of Israel he says, Even unto this day the same veil is upon their heart;” 5702 showing that the veil which was on the face of Moses was a figure of the veil which is on the heart of the nation still; because even now Moses is not seen by them in heart, just as he was not then seen by them in eye. But what concern has Paul with the veil which still obscures Moses from their view, if the Christ of the Creator, whom Moses predicted, is not yet come? How are the hearts of the Jews represented as still covered and veiled, if the predictions of Moses relating to Christ, in whom it was their duty to believe through him, are as yet unfulfilled? What had the apostle of a strange Christ to complain of, if the Jews failed in understanding the mysterious announcements of their own God, unless the veil which was upon their hearts had reference to that blindness which concealed from their eyes the Christ of Moses? Then, again, the words which follow, But when it shall turn to the Lord, the evil shall be taken away,” 5703 properly refer to the Jew, over whose gaze Moses’ veil is spread, to the effect that, when he is turned to the faith of Christ, he will understand how Moses spoke of Christ. But how shall the veil of the Creator be taken away by the Christ of another god, whose mysteries the Creator could not possibly have veiled—unknown mysteries, as they were of an unknown god? So he says that “we now with open face” (meaning the candour of the heart, which in the Jews had been covered with a veil), “beholding Christ, are changed into the same image, from that glory” (wherewith Moses was transfigured as by the glory of the Lord) “to another glory.” 5704 By thus setting forth the glory which illumined the person of Moses from his interview with God, and the veil which concealed the same from the infirmity of the people, and by superinducing thereupon the revelation and the glory of the Spirit in the person of Christ—“even as,” to use his words, “by the Spirit of the Lord” 5705 —he testifies that the whole Mosaic system 5706 was a figure of Christ, of whom the Jews indeed were ignorant, but who is known to us Christians. We are quite aware that some passages are open to ambiguity, from the way in which they are read, or else from their punctuation, when there is room for these two causes of ambiguity. The latter method has been adopted by Marcion, by reading the passage which follows, “in whom the God of this world,” 5707 as if it described the Creator as the God of this world, in order that he may, by these words, imply that there is another God for the other world. We, however, say that the passage ought to be punctuated with a comma after God, to this effect: “In whom God hath blinded the eyes of the unbelievers of this world.” 5708 “In whom” means the Jewish unbelievers, from some of whom the gospel is still hidden under Moses’ veil. Now it is these whom God had threatened for “loving Him indeed with the lip, whilst their heart was far from Him,” 5709 in these angry words: “Ye shall hear with your ears, and not understand; and see with your eyes, but not perceive;” 5710 and, “If ye will not believe, ye shall not understand;” 5711 and again, “I will take away the wisdom of their wise men, and bring to nought 5712 the understanding of their prudent ones.” But these words, of course, He did not pronounce against them for concealing the gospel of the unknown God. At any rate, if there is a God of this world, 5713 He blinds the heart of the unbelievers of this world, because they have not of their own accord recognised His Christ, who ought to be understood from His Scriptures. 5714 Content with my advantage, I can willingly refrain from noticing to any greater length 5715 this point of ambiguous punctuation, so as not to give my adversary any advantage, 5716 indeed, I might have wholly omitted the discussion. A simpler answer I shall find ready to hand in interpreting “the god of this world” of the devil, who once said, as the prophet describes him: “I will be like the Most High; I will exalt my throne in the clouds.” 5717 The whole superstition, indeed, of this world has got into his hands, 5718 so that he blinds effectually the hearts of unbelievers, and of none more than the apostate Marcion’s. Now he did not observe how much this clause of the sentence made against him: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to (give) the light of the knowledge (of His glory) in the face of (Jesus) Christ.” 5719 Now who was it that said; “Let there be light?” 5720 And who was it that said to Christ concerning giving light to the world: “I have set Thee as a light to the Gentiles” 5721 —to them, that is, “who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death?” 5722 (None else, surely, than He), to whom the Spirit in the Psalm answers, in His foresight of the future, saying, “The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, hath been displayed upon us.” 5723 Now the countenance (or person 5724 ) of the Lord here is Christ. Wherefore the apostle said above: “Christ, who is the image of God.” 5725 Since Christ, then, is the person of the Creator, who said, “Let there be light,” it follows that Christ and the apostles, and the gospel, and the veil, and Moses—nay, the whole of the dispensations—belong to the God who is the Creator of this world, according to the testimony of the clause (above adverted to), and certainly not to him who never said, “Let there be light.” I here pass over discussion about another epistle, which we hold to have been written to the Ephesians, but the heretics to the Laodiceans. In it he tells 5726 them to remember, that at the time when they were Gentiles they were without Christ, aliens from (the commonwealth of) Israel, without intercourse, without the covenants and any hope of promise, nay, without God, even in his own world, 5727 as the Creator thereof. Since therefore he said, that the Gentiles were without God, whilst their god was the devil, not the Creator, it is clear that he must be understood to be the lord of this world, whom the Gentiles received as their god—not the Creator, of whom they were in ignorance. But how does it happen, that “the treasure which we have in these earthen vessels of ours” 5728 should not be regarded as belonging to the God who owns the vessels? Now since God’s glory is, that so great a treasure is contained in earthen vessels, and since these earthen vessels are of the Creator’s make, it follows that the glory is the Creator’s; nay, since these vessels of His smack so much of the excellency of the power of God, that power itself must be His also! Indeed, all these things have been consigned to the said “earthen vessels” for the very purpose that His excellence might be manifested forth. Henceforth, then, the rival god will have no claim to the glory, and consequently none to the power. Rather, dishonour and weakness will accrue to him, because the earthen vessels with which he had nothing to do have received all the excellency! Well, then, if it be in these very earthen vessels that he tells us we have to endure so great sufferings, 5729 in which we bear about with us the very dying of God, 5730 (Marcion’s) god is really ungrateful and unjust, if he does not mean to restore this same substance of ours at the resurrection, wherein so much has been endured in loyalty to him, in which Christ’s very death is borne about, wherein too the excellency of his power is treasured. 5731 For he gives prominence to the statement, “That the life also of Christ may be manifested in our body,” 5732 as a contrast to the preceding, that His death is borne about in our body. Now of what life of Christ does he here speak? Of that which we are now living? Then how is it, that in the words which follow he exhorts us not to the things which are seen and are temporal, but to those which are not seen and are eternal 5733 —in other words, not to the present, but to the future? But if it be of the future life of Christ that he speaks, intimating that it is to be made manifest in our body, 5734 then he has clearly predicted the resurrection of the flesh. 5735 He says, too, that “our outward man perishes,” 5736 not meaning by an eternal perdition after death, but by labours and sufferings, in reference to which he previously said, “For which cause we will not faint.” 5737 Now, when he adds of “the inward man” also, that it “is renewed day by day,” he demonstrates both issues here—the wasting away of the body by the wear and tear 5738 of its trials, and the renewal of the soul 5739 by its contemplation of the promises.
Footnotes
452:56791 Cor. viii. 5.
452:56802 Cor. i. 3.
452:5681Gen. i. 22.
452:5682Dan. 2:19, 20, Dan. 3:28, 29, Dan. 4:34, 37.
452:56832 Cor. i. 3.
452:5684Ps. 86:15, Ps. 12:4, Ps. 45:8, Jonah 4:2.
452:5685Jonah iii. 8.
452:56862 Kings 20:3, 5.
452:56871 Kings 21:27, 29.
452:56882 Sam. xii. 13.
452:5689Ezek. xxxiii. 11.
452:5690Atquin et nos.
452:5691The Contingent qualities in logic.
452:56922 Cor. iii. 6.
452:5693Joel ii. 28.
452:56942 Cor. iii. 6.
453:5695Deut. xxxii. 39.
453:5696See above in book ii. [cap. xi. p. 306.]
453:5697Apud unum recenseri prævenerunt.
453:56982 Cor. 3:7, 13.
453:56992 Cor. 3:7, 8.
453:5700Obtunsi: “blunted,” 2 Cor. iii. 14.
453:5701He seems to have read the clause as applying to the world, but St. Paul certainly refers only to the obdurate Jews. The text is: “Sed obtunsi sunt sensus mundi.
453:57022 Cor. iii. 15.
453:57032 Cor. iii. 16.
453:57042 Cor. iii. 18.
453:57052 Cor. iii. 18, but T.’s reading is “tanquam a domino spirituum” (“even as by the Lord of the Spirits,” probably the sevenfold Spirit.). The original is, καθάπερ ἀπὸ Κυρίου Πνεύματος, “by the Lord the Spirit.”
453:5706Moysi ordinem totum.
453:57072 Cor. iv. 4.
453:5708He would stop off the phrase τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου from ὁ Θεὸς, and remove it to the end of the sentence as a qualification of τῶν ἀπίστων. He adds another interpretation just afterwards, which, we need not say, is both more consistent with the sense of the passage and with the consensus of Christian writers of all ages, although “it is historically curious” (as Dean Alford has remarked) “that Irenæus [Hæres. iv. 48, Origen, Tertullian (v. 11, contra Marcion)], Chrysostom, Œcumenius, Theodoret, Theophylact, all repudiate, in their zeal against the Manichæans, the grammatical rendering, and take τῶν ἀπίστων τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου together” (Greek Testament, in loc.). [I have corrected Alford’s reference to Tertullian which he makes B. iv. 11.]
453:5709Isa. xxix. 13.
453:5710Isa. vi. 10 (only adapted).
453:5711Isa. vii. 9, Sept.
454:5712Sept. κρὐψω, “will hide.”
454:5713Said concessively, in reference to M.’s position above mentioned.
454:5714Marcion’s “God of this world” being the God of the Old Testament.
454:5715Hactenus: pro non amplius (Oehler) tractasse.
454:5716“A fuller criticism on this slight matter might give his opponent the advantage, as apparently betraying a penury of weightier and more certain arguments” (Oehler).
454:5717Isa. xiv. 14.
454:5718Mancipata est illi.
454:57192 Cor. iv. 6.
454:5720Gen. i. 3.
454:5721Isa. xlix. 6 (Sept. quoted in Acts xiii. 47).
454:5722Isa. 9:2, Matt. 4:16.
454:5723Ps. iv. 7 (Sept.).
454:5724Persona: the πρόσωπον of the Septuagint.
454:57252 Cor. iv. 4.
454:5726Ait.
454:5727Eph. ii. 12.
454:57282 Cor. iv. 7.
454:57292 Cor. iv. 8-12.
454:5730Oehler, after Fr. Junius, defends the reading “mortificationem dei,” instead of Domini, in reference to Marcion, who seems to have so corrupted the reading.
454:57312 Cor. iv. 10.
454:57322 Cor. iv. 10.
455:57332 Cor. iv. 16-18.
455:57342 Cor. iv. 11.
455:57352 Cor. iv. 14.
455:57362 Cor. iv. 16.
455:57372 Cor. iv. 16.
455:5738Vexatione.
455:5739Animi.
Chapter XII.—The Eternal Home in Heaven. Beautiful Exposition by Tertullian of the Apostle’s Consolatory Teaching Against the Fear of Death, So Apt to Arise Under Anti-Christian Oppression. The Judgment-Seat of Christ—The Idea, Anti-Marcionite. Paradise. Judicial Characteristics of Christ Which are Inconsistent with the Heretical Views About Him; The Apostle’s Sharpness, or Severity, Shows Him to Be a Fit Preacher of the Creator’s Christ.
As to the house of this our earthly dwelling-place, when he says that “we have an eternal home in heaven, not made with hands,” 5740 he by no means would imply that, because it was built by the Creator’s hand, it must perish in a perpetual dissolution after death. 5741 He treats of this subject in order to offer consolation against the fear of death and the dread of this very dissolution, as is even more manifest from what follows, when he adds, that “in this tabernacle of our earthly body we do groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with the vesture which is from heaven, 5742 if so be, that having been unclothed, 5743 we shall not be found naked;” in other words, shall regain that of which we have been divested, even our body. And again he says: “We that are in this tabernacle do groan, not as if we were oppressed 5744 with an unwillingness to be unclothed, but (we wish) to be clothed upon.” 5745 He here says expressly, what he touched but lightly 5746 in his first epistle, where he wrote:) “The dead shall be raised incorruptible (meaning those who had undergone mortality), “and we shall be changed” (whom God shall find to be yet in the flesh). 5747 Both those shall be raised incorruptible, because they shall regain their body—and that a renewed one, from which shall come their incorruptibility; and these also shall, in the crisis of the last moment, and from their instantaneous death, whilst encountering the oppressions of anti-christ, undergo a change, obtaining therein not so much a divestiture of body as “a clothing upon” with the vesture which is from heaven. 5748 So that whilst these shall put on over their (changed) body this, heavenly raiment, the dead also shall for their part 5749 recover their body, over which they too have a supervesture to put on, even the incorruption of heaven; 5750 because of these it was that he said: “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” 5751 The one put on this (heavenly) apparel, 5752 when they recover their bodies; the others put it on as a supervesture, 5753 when they indeed hardly lose them (in the suddenness of their change). It was accordingly not without good reason that he described them as “not wishing indeed to be unclothed,” but (rather as wanting) “to be clothed upon;” 5754 in other words, as wishing not to undergo death, but to be surprised into life, 5755 “that this moral (body) might be swallowed up of life,” 5756 by being rescued from death in the supervesture of its changed state. This is why he shows us how much better it is for us not to be sorry, if we should be surprised by death, and tells us that we even hold of God “the earnest of His Spirit” 5757 (pledged as it were thereby to have “the clothing upon,” which is the object of our hope), and that “so long as we are in the flesh, we are absent from the Lord;” 5758 moreover, that we ought on this account to prefer 5759 “rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord,” 5760 and so to be ready to meet even death with joy. In this view it is that he informs us how “we must all appear before the judgement-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according as he hath done either good or bad.” 5761 Since, however, there is then to be a retribution according to men’s merits, how will any be able to reckon with 5762 God? But by mentioning both the judgment-seat and the distinction between works good and bad, he sets before us a Judge who is to award both sentences, 5763 and has thereby affirmed that all will have to be present at the tribunal in their bodies. For it will be impossible to pass sentence except on the body, for what has been done in the body. God would be unjust, if any one were not punished or else rewarded in that very condition, 5764 wherein the merit was itself achieved. “If therefore any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new;” 5765 and so is accomplished the prophecy of Isaiah. 5766 When also he (in a later passage) enjoins us “to cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and blood” 5767 (since this substance enters not the kingdom of God 5768 ); when, again, he “espouses the church as a chaste virgin to Christ,” 5769 a spouse to a spouse in very deed, 5770 an image cannot be combined and compared with what is opposed to the real nature of the thing (with which it is compared). So when he designates “false apostles, deceitful workers transforming themselves” into likenesses of himself, 5771 of course by their hypocrisy, he charges them with the guilt of disorderly conversation, rather than of false doctrine. 5772 The contrariety, therefore, was one of conduct, not of gods. 5773 If “Satan himself, too, is transformed into an angel of light,” 5774 such an assertion must not be used to the prejudice of the Creator. The Creator is not an angel, but God. Into a god of light, and not an angel of light, must Satan then have been said to be transformed, if he did not mean to call him “the angel,” which both we and Marcion know him to be. On Paradise is the title of a treatise of ours, in which is discussed all that the subject admits of. 5775 I shall here simply wonder, in connection with this matter, whether a god who has no dispensation of any kind on earth could possibly have a paradise to call his own—without perchance availing himself of the paradise of the Creator, to use it as he does His world—much in the character of a mendicant. 5776 And yet of the removal of a man from earth to heaven we have an instance afforded us by the Creator in Elijah. 5777 But what will excite my surprise still more is the case (next supposed by Marcion), that a God so good and gracious, and so averse to blows and cruelty, should have suborned the angel Satan—not his own either, but the Creator’s—“to buffet” the apostle, 5778 and then to have refused his request, when thrice entreated to liberate him! It would seem, therefore, that Marcion’s god imitates the Creator’s conduct, who is an enemy to the proud, even “putting down the mighty from their seats.” 5779 Is he then the same God as He who gave Satan power over the person of Job that his “strength might be made perfect in weakness?” 5780 How is it that the censurer of the Galatians 5781 still retains the very formula of the law: “In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established?” 5782 How again is it that he threatens sinners “that he will not spare” them 5783 —he, the preacher of a most gentle god? Yea, he even declares that “the Lord hath given to him the power of using sharpness in their presence!” 5784 Deny now, O heretic, (at your cost,) that your god is an object to be feared, when his apostle was for making himself so formidable!
Footnotes
455:57402 Cor. v. 1.
455:5741As Marcion would have men believe.
455:57422 Cor. 5:2, 3.
455:5743Despoliati.
455:5744Gravemur.
455:57452 Cor. v. 4.
455:5746Strinxit.
455:57471 Cor. xv. 52.
455:5748Superinduti magis quod de cœlo quam exuti corpus.
455:5749Utique et mortui.
455:5750De cœlo.
455:57511 Cor. xv. 53.
455:5752Induunt.
455:5753Superinduunt.
455:57542 Cor. v. 4.
455:5755Vita præveniri.
455:57562 Cor. v. 4; and see his treatise, De Resurrect. Carnis, cap. xlii.
455:57572 Cor. v. 5.
455:57582 Cor. v. 6.
455:5759Boni ducere.
455:57602 Cor. v. 8.
456:57612 Cor. v. 10.
456:5762Deputari cum.
456:57632 Cor. v. 10.
456:5764Per id, per quod, i.e., corpus.
456:57652 Cor. v. 17.
456:5766Isa. xliii. 19.
456:5767His reading of 2 Cor. vii. 1.
456:57681 Cor. xv. 50.
456:57692 Cor. xi. 2.
456:5770Utique ut sponsam sponso.
456:57712 Cor. xi. 13.
456:5772Prædicationis adulteratæ.
456:5773A reference to Marcion’s other god of the New Testament, of which he tortured the epistles (and this passage among them) to produce the evidence.
456:57742 Cor. xi. 14.
456:5775Patitur. The work here referred to is not extant; it is, however, referred to in the De Anima, c. lv.
456:5776Precario; “that which one must beg for.” See, however, above, book iv. chap. xxii. p. 384, note 8, for a different turn to this word.
456:57772 Kings ii. 11.
456:57782 Cor. 12:7, 8.
456:57791 Sam. 2:7, 8, Ps. 47:6, Luke 1:52.
456:5780Job 1:12, 2 Cor. 12:9.
456:5781Gal. i. 6-9.
456:57822 Cor. xiii. 1.
456:57832 Cor. xiii. 2.
456:57842 Cor. xiii. 10.
Chapter XIII.—The Epistle to the Romans. St. Paul Cannot Help Using Phrases Which Bespeak the Justice of God, Even When He is Eulogizing the Mercies of the Gospel. Marcion Particularly Hard in Mutilation of This Epistle. Yet Our Author Argues on Common Ground. The Judgment at Last Will Be in Accordance with the Gospel. The Justified by Faith Exhorted to Have Peace with God. The Administration of the Old and the New Dispensations in One and the Same Hand.
Since my little work is approaching its termination, 5785 I must treat but briefly the points which still occur, whilst those which have so often turned up must be put aside. I regret still to have to contend about the law—after I have so often proved that its replacement (by the gospel) 5786 affords no argument for another god, predicted as it was indeed in Christ, and in the Creator’s own plans 5787 ordained for His Christ. (But I must revert to that discussion) so far as (the apostle leads me, for) this very epistle looks very much as if it abrogated 5788 the law. We have, however, often shown before now that God is declared by the apostle to be a Judge; and that in the Judge is implied an Avenger; and in the Avenger, the Creator. And so in the passage where he says: “I am not ashamed of the gospel (of Christ): for it is the power of god unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek; for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith,” 5789 he undoubtedly ascribes both the gospel and salvation to Him whom (in accordance with our heretic’s own distinction) I have called the just God, not the good one. It is He who removes (men) from confidence in the law to faith in the gospel—that is to say, 5790 His own law and His own gospel. When, again, he declares that “the wrath (of God) is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness,” 5791 (I ask) the wrath of what God? Of the Creator certainly. The truth, therefore, will be His, whose is also the wrath, which has to be revealed to avenge the truth. Likewise, when adding, “We are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth,” 5792 he both vindicated that wrath from which comes this judgment for the truth, and at the same time afforded another proof that the truth emanates from the same God whose wrath he attested, by witnessing to His judgment. Marcion’s averment is quite a different matter, that 5793 the Creator in anger avenges Himself on the truth of the rival god which had been detained in unrighteousness. But what serious gaps Marcion has made in this epistle especially, by withdrawing whole passages at his will, will be clear from the unmutilated text of our own copy. 5794 It is enough for my purpose to accept in evidence of its truth what he has seen fit to leave unerased, strange instances as they are also of his negligence and blindness. If, then, God will judge the secrets of men—both of those who have sinned in the law, and of those who have sinned without law (inasmuch as they who know not the law yet do by nature the things contained in the law) 5795 —surely the God who shall judge is He to whom belong both the law, and that nature which is the rule 5796 to them who know not the law. But how will He conduct this judgment? “According to my gospel,” says (the apostle), “by (Jesus) Christ.” 5797 So that both the gospel and Christ must be His, to whom appertain the law and the nature which are to be vindicated by the gospel and Christ—even at that judgment of God which, as he previously said, was to be according to truth. 5798 The wrath, therefore, which is to vindicate truth, can only be revealed from heaven by the God of wrath; 5799 so that this sentence, which is quite in accordance with that previous one wherein the judgment is declared to be the Creator’s, 5800 cannot possibly be ascribed to another god who is not a judge, and is incapable of wrath. It is only consistent in Him amongst whose attributes are found the judgment and the wrath of which I am speaking, and to whom of necessity must also appertain the media whereby these attributes are to be carried into effect, even the gospel and Christ. Hence his invective against the transgressors of the law, who teach that men should not steal, and yet practise theft themselves. 5801 (This invective he utters) in perfect homage 5802 to the law of God, not as if he meant to censure the Creator Himself with having commanded 5803 a fraud to be practised against the Egyptians to get their gold and silver at the very time when He was forbidding men to steal, 5804 —adopting such methods as they are apt (shamelessly) to charge upon Him in other particulars also. Are we then to suppose 5805 that the apostle abstained through fear from openly calumniating God, from whom notwithstanding He did not hesitate to withdraw men? Well, but he had gone so far in his censure of the Jews, as to point against them the denunciation of the prophet, “Through you the name of God is blasphemed (among the Gentiles).” 5806 But how absurd, that he should himself blaspheme Him for blaspheming whom he upbraids them as evil-doers! He prefers even circumcision of heart to neglect of it in the flesh. Now it is quite within the purpose of the God of the law that circumcision should be that of the heart, not in the flesh; in the spirit, and not in the letter. 5807 Since this is the circumcision recommended by Jeremiah: “Circumcise (yourselves to the Lord, and take away) the foreskins of your heart;” 5808 and even of Moses: “Circumcise, therefore, the hardness of your heart,” 5809 —the Spirit which circumcises the heart will proceed from Him who prescribed the letter also which clips 5810 the flesh; and “the Jew which is one inwardly” will be a subject of the self-same God as he also is who is “a Jew outwardly;” 5811 because the apostle would have preferred not to have mentioned a Jew at all, unless he were a servant of the God of the Jews. It was once 5812 the law; now it is “the righteousness of God which is by the faith of (Jesus) Christ.” 5813 What means this distinction? Has your god been subserving the interests of the Creator’s dispensation, by affording time to Him and to His law? Is the “Now” in the hands of Him to whom belonged the “Then”? Surely, then, the law was His, whose is now the righteousness of God. It is a distinction of dispensations, not of gods. He enjoins those who are justified by faith in Christ and not by the law to have peace with God. 5814 With what God? Him whose enemies we have never, in any dispensation, 5815 been? Or Him against whom we have rebelled, both in relation to His written law and His law of nature? Now, as peace is only possible towards Him with whom there once was war, we shall be both justified by Him, and to Him also will belong the Christ, in whom we are justified by faith, and through whom alone God’s 5816 enemies can ever be reduced to peace. “Moreover,” says he, “the law entered, that the offence might abound.” 5817 And wherefore this? “In order,” he says, “that (where sin abounded), grace might much more abound.” 5818 Whose grace, if not of that God from whom also came the law? Unless it be, forsooth, that 5819 the Creator intercalated His law for the mere purpose of 5820 producing some employment for the grace of a rival god, an enemy to Himself (I had almost said, a god unknown to Him), “that as sin had” in His own dispensation 5821 “reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto (eternal) life by Jesus Christ,” 5822 His own antagonist! For this (I suppose it was, that) the law of the Creator had “concluded all under sin,” 5823 and had brought in “all the world as guilty (before God),” and had “stopped every mouth,” 5824 so that none could glory through it, in order that grace might be maintained to the glory of the Christ, not of the Creator, but of Marcion! I may here anticipate a remark about the substance of Christ, in the prospect of a question which will now turn up. For he says that “we are dead to the law.” 5825 It may be contended that Christ’s body is indeed a body, but not exactly 5826 flesh. Now, whatever may be the substance, since he mentions “the body of Christ,” 5827 whom he immediately after states to have been “raised from the dead,” 5828 none other body can be understood than that of the flesh, 5829 in respect of which the law was called (the law) of death. 5830 But, behold, he bears testimony to the law, and excuses it on the ground of sin: “What shall we say, therefore? Is the law sin? God forbid.” 5831 Fie on you, Marcion. “God forbid!” (See how) the apostle recoils from all impeachment of the law. I, however, have no acquaintance with sin except through the law. 5832 But how high an encomium of the law (do we obtain) from this fact, that by it there comes to light the latent presence of sin! 5833 It was not the law, therefore, which led me astray, but “sin, taking occasion by the commandment.” 5834 Why then do you, (O Marcion,) impute to the God of the law what His apostle dares not impute even to the law itself? Nay, he adds a climax: “The law is holy, and its commandment just and good.” 5835 Now if he thus reverences the Creator’s law, I am at a loss to know how he can destroy the Creator Himself. Who can draw a distinction, and say that there are two gods, one just and the other good, when He ought to be believed to be both one and the other, whose commandment is both “just and good?” Then, again, when affirming the law to be “spiritual” 5836 he thereby implies that it is prophetic, and that it is figurative. Now from even this circumstance I am bound to conclude that Christ was predicted by the law but figuratively, so that indeed He could not be recognised by all the Jews.
Footnotes
457:5785Profligatur.
457:5786Concessionem.
457:5787Apud Creatorem.
457:5788Excludere.
457:5789Rom. 1:16, 17.
457:5790Utique.
457:5791Rom. i. 18.
457:5792Rom. ii. 2.
457:5793Aliud est si.
457:5794Nostri instrumenti.
457:5795Rom. ii. 12-16.
457:5796Instar legis: “which is as good as a law to them,” etc.
457:5797Rom. ii. 16.
457:5798Rom. ii. 2.
457:5799Rom. i. 18.
457:5800See the remarks on Rom. 1:16, 17 above.
457:5801Rom. ii. 21.
457:5802Ut homo.
457:5803Ex. iii. 22.
457:5804Ex. xx. 15; see above, book iv. chap. xxiv. p. 387.
457:5805Scilicet verebatur.
457:5806Rom. ii. 24.
458:5807Rom. ii. 29.
458:5808Jer. iv. 4.
458:5809Deut. x. 16 (Sept.).
458:5810Metens.
458:5811Rom. ii. 28.
458:5812Tunc.
458:5813Rom. 3:21, 22.
458:5814Tertullian, by the word “enjoins” (monet), seems to have read the passage in Rom. v. 1 in the hortatory sense with ἔχωμεν, “let us have peace with God.” If so, his authority must be added to that exceedingly strong ms. authority which Dean Alford (Greek Test. in loc.) regrets to find overpowering the received reading of ἔχομεν, “we have,” etc. We subjoin Alford’s critical note in support of the ἔχωμεν, which (with Lachmann) he yet admits into his more recent text: “AB (originally) CDKLfh (originally) m 17 latt (including F-lat); of the versions the older Syriac (Peschito) (and Copt;of the fathers, Chrysostom, Cyril, Theodoret, Damascene, Thephylact, Œcumenius, Rufinus, Pelagius, Orosius, Augustine, Cassiodorus,” before whom I would insert Tertullian, and the Codex Sinaiticus, in its original state; although, like its great rival in authority, the Codex Vaticanus, it afterwards received the reading ἔχομεν. These second readings of these mss., and the later Syriac (Philoxenian), with Epiphanius, Didymus, and Sedulius, are the almost only authorities quoted for the received text. [Dr. H. over-estimates the “rival” Codices.]
458:5815Nusquam.
458:5816Ejus.
458:5817Rom. v. 20.
458:5818Rom. v. 20.
458:5819Nisi si: an ironical particle.
458:5820Ideo ut.
458:5821Apud ipsum.
458:5822Rom. v. 21.
458:5823Gal. iii. 22.
458:5824Rom. iii. 19.
458:5825Rom. 7:4, Gal. 2:19. This (although a quotation) is here a Marcionite argument; but there is no need to suppose, with Pamelius, that Marcion tampers with Rom. vi. 2. Oehler also supposes that this is the passage quoted. But no doubt it is a correct quotation from the seventh chapter, as we have indicated.
458:5826Statim (or, perhaps, in respect of the derivation), “firmly” or “stedfastly.”
458:5827Ejus.
458:5828Rom. vii. 4.
458:5829In this argument Tertullian applies with good effect the terms “flesh” and “body,” making the first [which he elsewhere calls the “terrena materia” of our nature (ad Uxor. i. 4)] the proof of the reality of the second, in opposition to Marcion’s Docetic error. “Σὰρξ is not = σῶμα, but as in John i. 14, the material of which man is in the body compounded” (Alford).
458:5830Compare the Rom. 7:4, Rom. 8:2, 3.
458:5831Rom. vii. 7.
458:5832This, which is really the second clause of Rom. vii. 7, seems to be here put as a Marcionite argument of disparagement to the law.
459:5833Per quam liquuit delictum latere: a playful paradox, in the manner of our author, between liquere and latere.
459:5834Rom. vii. 8.
459:5835Rom. vii. 13.
459:5836Rom. vii. 14.
Chapter XIV.—The Divine Power Shown in Christ’s Incarnation. Meaning of St. Paul’s Phrase. Likeness of Sinful Flesh. No Docetism in It. Resurrection of Our Real Bodies. A Wide Chasm Made in the Epistle by Marcion’s Erasure. When the Jews are Upbraided by the Apostle for Their Misconduct to God; Inasmuch as that God Was the Creator, a Proof is in Fact Given that St. Paul’s God Was the Creator. The Precepts at the End of the Epistle, Which Marcion Allowed, Shown to Be in Exact Accordance with the Creator’s Scriptures.
If the Father “sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh,” 5837 it must not therefore be said that the flesh which He seemed to have was but a phantom. For he in a previous verse ascribed sin to the flesh, and made it out to be “the law of sin dwelling in his members,” and “warring against the law of the mind.” 5838 On this account, therefore, (does he mean to say that) the Son was sent in the likeness of sinful flesh, that He might redeem this sinful flesh by a like substance, even a fleshly one, which bare a resemblance to sinful flesh, although it was itself free from sin. Now this will be the very perfection of divine power to effect the salvation (of man) in a nature like his own. 5839 For it would be no great matter if the Spirit of God remedied the flesh; but when a flesh, which is the very copy 5840 of the sinning substance—itself flesh also—only without sin, (effects the remedy, then doubtless it is a great thing). The likeness, therefore, will have reference to the quality 5841 of the sinfulness, and not to any falsity 5842 of the substance. Because he would not have added the attribute “sinful,” 5843 if he meant the “likeness” to be so predicated of the substance as to deny the verity thereof; in that case he would only have used the word “flesh,” and omitted the “sinful.” But inasmuch as he has put the two together, and said “sinful flesh,” (or “flesh of sin,”) 5844 he has both affirmed the substance, that is, the flesh and referred the likeness to the fault of the substance, that is, to its sin. But even suppose 5845 that the likeness was predicated of the substance, the truth of the said substance will not be thereby denied. Why then call the true substance like? Because it is indeed true, only not of a seed of like condition 5846 with our own; but true still, as being of a nature 5847 not really unlike ours. 5848 And again, in contrary things there is no likeness. Thus the likeness of flesh would not be called spirit, because flesh is not susceptible of any likeness to spirit; but it would be called phantom, if it seemed to be that which it really was not. It is, however, called likeness, since it is what it seems to be. Now it is (what it seems to be), because it is on a par with the other thing (with which it is compared). 5849 But a phantom, which is merely such and nothing else, 5850 is not a likeness. The apostle, however, himself here comes to our aid; for, while explaining in what sense he would not have us “live in the flesh,” although in the flesh—even by not living in the works of the flesh 5851 —he shows that when he wrote the words, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” 5852 it was not with the view of condemning the substance (of the flesh), but the works thereof; and because it is possible for these not to be committed by us whilst we are still in the flesh, they will therefore be properly chargeable, 5853 not on the substance of the flesh, but on its conduct. Likewise, if “the body indeed is dead because of sin” (from which statement we see that not the death of the soul is meant, but that of the body), “but the spirit is life because of righteousness,” 5854 it follows that this life accrues to that which incurred death because of sin, that is, as we have just seen, the body. Now the body 5855 is only restored to him who had lost it; so that the resurrection of the dead implies the resurrection of their bodies. He accordingly subjoins: “He that raised up Christ from the dead, shall also quicken your mortal bodies.” 5856 In these words he both affirmed the resurrection of the flesh (without which nothing can rightly be called 5857 body, nor can anything be properly regarded as mortal), and proved the bodily substance of Christ; inasmuch as our own mortal bodies will be quickened in precisely the same way as He was raised; and that was in no other way than in the body. I have here a very wide gulf of expunged Scripture to leap across; 5858 however, I alight on the place where the apostle bears record of Israel “that they have a zeal of God”—their own God, of course—“but not according to knowledge. For,” says he, “being ignorant of (the righteousness of) God, and going about to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God; for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.” 5859 Hereupon we shall be confronted with an argument of the heretic, that the Jews were ignorant of the superior God, 5860 since, in opposition to him, they set up their own righteousness—that is, the righteousness of their law—not receiving Christ, the end (or finisher) of the law. But how then is it that he bears testimony to their zeal for their own God, if it is not in respect of the same God that he upbraids them for their ignorance? They were affected indeed with zeal for God, but it was not an intelligent zeal: they were, in fact, ignorant of Him, because they were ignorant of His dispensations by Christ, who was to bring about the consummation of the law; and in this way did they maintain their own righteousness in opposition to Him. But so does the Creator Himself testify to their ignorance concerning Him: “Israel hath not known me; my people have not understood me;” 5861 and as to their preferring the establishment of their own righteousness, (the Creator again describes them as) “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men;” 5862 moreover, as “having gathered themselves together against the Lord and against His Christ” 5863 —from ignorance of Him, of course. Now nothing can be expounded of another god which is applicable to the Creator; otherwise the apostle would not have been just in reproaching the Jews with ignorance in respect of a god of whom they knew nothing. For where had been their sin, if they only maintained the righteousness of their own God against one of whom they were ignorant? But he exclaims: “O the depth of the riches and the wisdom of God; how unsearchable also are His ways!” 5864 Whence this outburst of feeling? Surely from the recollection of the Scriptures, which he had been previously turning over, as well as from his contemplation of the mysteries which he had been setting forth above, in relation to the faith of Christ coming from the law. 5865 If Marcion had an object in his erasures, 5866 why does his apostle utter such an exclamation, because his god has no riches for him to contemplate? So poor and indigent was he, that he created nothing, predicted nothing—in short, possessed nothing; for it was into the world of another God that he descended. The truth is, the Creator’s resources and riches, which once had been hidden, were now disclosed. For so had He promised: “I will give to them treasures which have been hidden, and which men have not seen will I open to them.” 5867 Hence, then, came the exclamation, “O the depth of the riches and the wisdom of God!” For His treasures were now opening out. This is the purport of what Isaiah said, and of (the apostle’s own) subsequent quotation of the self-same passage, of the prophet: “Who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor? Who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed to him again?” 5868 Now, (Marcion,) since you have expunged so much from the Scriptures, why did you retain these words, as if they too were not the Creator’s words? But come now, let us see without mistake 5869 the precepts of your new god: “Abhor that which is evil, and cleave to that which is good.” 5870 Well, is the precept different in the Creator’s teaching? “Take away the evil from you, depart from it, and be doing good.” 5871 Then again: “Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love.” 5872 Now is not this of the same import as: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self?” 5873 (Again, your apostle says:) “Rejoicing in hope;” 5874 that is, of God. So says the Creator’s Psalmist: “It is better to hope in the Lord, than to hope even in princes.” 5875 “Patient in tribulation.” 5876 You have (this in) the Psalm: “The Lord hear thee in the day of tribulation.” 5877 “Bless, and curse not,” 5878 (says your apostle.) But what better teacher of this will you find than Him who created all things, and blessed them? “Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits.” 5879 For against such a disposition Isaiah pronounces a woe. 5880 “Recompense to no man evil for evil.” 5881 (Like unto which is the Creator’s precept:) “Thou shalt not remember thy brother’s evil against thee.” 5882 (Again:) “Avenge not yourselves;” 5883 for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.” 5884 “Live peaceably with all men.” 5885 The retaliation of the law, therefore, permitted not retribution for an injury; it rather repressed any attempt thereat by the fear of a recompense. Very properly, then, did he sum up the entire teaching of the Creator in this precept of His: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” 5886 Now, if this is the recapitulation of the law from the very law itself, I am at a loss to know who is the God of the law. I fear He must be Marcion’s god (after all). 5887 If also the gospel of Christ is fulfilled in this same precept, but not the Creator’s Christ, what is the use of our contending any longer whether Christ did or did not say, “I am not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil it?” 5888 In vain has (our man of) Pontus laboured to deny this statement. 5889 If the gospel has not fulfilled the law, then all I can say is, 5890 the law has fulfilled the gospel. But it is well that in a later verse he threatens us with “the judgment-seat of Christ,”—the Judge, of course, and the Avenger, and therefore the Creator’s (Christ). This Creator, too, however much he may preach up another god, he certainly sets forth for us as a Being to be served, 5891 if he holds Him thus up as an object to be feared.
Footnotes
459:5837Rom. viii. 3.
459:5838Sensus νοός in Rom. vii. 23.
459:5839Pari.
459:5840Consimilis.
459:5841Titulum.
459:5842Mendacium.
459:5843This vindication of these terms of the apostle from Docetism is important. The word which our A.V. has translated sinful is a stronger term in the original. It is not the adjective ἁμαρτωλοῦ, but the substantive ἁμαρτίας, amounting to “flesh of sin,” i.e. (as Dean Alford interprets it) “the flesh whose attribute and character is sin.” “The words ἐν ὁμοιώματι σαρκὸς ἁμαρτίας, De Wette observes, appear almost to border on Docetism, but in reality contain a perfectly true and consistent sentiment; σὰρξ ἁμαρτίας; is flesh, or human nature, possessed with sin.…The likeness, predicated in Rom. viii. 3, must be referred not only to σάρξ, but also to the epithet τῆς ἁμαρτίας” (Greek Testament, in loc.).
459:5844Carnis peccati.
459:5845Puta nunc.
459:5846Statu.
459:5847Censu: perhaps “birth.” This word, which originally means the censor’s registration, is by our author often used for origo and natura, because in the registers were inserted the birthdays and the parents’ names (Oehler).
459:5848It is better that we should give the original of this sentence. Its structure is characteristically difficult, although the general sense, as Oehler suggests, is clear enough: “Quia vera quidem, sed non ex semine de statu simili (similis, Latinius and Junius and Semler), sed vera de censu non vero dissimili (dissimilis, the older reading and Semler’s).” We add the note of Fr. Junius: “The meaning is, that Christ’s flesh is true indeed, in what they call the identity of its substance, although not of its origin (ortus) and qualities—not of its original, because not of a (father’s) seed, as in the case of ourselves; not of qualities, because these have not in Him the like condition which they have in us.”
459:5849Dum alterius par est.
459:5850Qua hoc tantum est.
460:5851See Rom. viii. 5-13.
460:58521 Cor. xv. 50.
460:5853Non ad reatum substantiæ sed ad conversationis pertinebunt.
460:5854Rom. viii. 10.
460:5855Understand “corpus” (Oehler).
460:5856Rom. viii. 11.
460:5857Dici capit: capit, like the Greek ἐνδέχεται, means, “is capable or susceptible;” often so in Tertullian.
460:5858We do not know from either Tertullian or Epiphanius what mutilations Marcion made in this epistle. This particular gap did not extend further than from Rom. 8.11-10.2. “However, we are informed by Origen (or rather Rufinus in his edition of Origen’s commentary on this epistle, on Rom. 14.23) that Marcion omitted the last two chapters as spurious, ending this epistle of his Apostolicon with the Rom. 14.23. It is also observable that Tertullian quotes no passage from Rom. 15:0, Rom. 16:0. in his confutation of Marcion from this epistle” (Lardner).
460:5859Rom. x. 2-4.
460:5860The god of the New Testament, according to Marcion.
460:5861Isa. i. 3.
460:5862Isa. xxix. 13 (Sept.)
460:5863Ps. ii. 2.
460:5864Rom. xi. 33.
460:5865In fidem Christi ex lege venientem. By “the law” he means the Old Testament in general, and probably refers to Rom. x. 17.
460:5866Rigaltius (after Fulvius Ursinus) read “non erasit,” but with insufficient authority; besides, the context shows that he was referring to the large erasure which he had already mentioned, so that the non is inadmissible. Marcion must, of course, be understood to have retained Rom. xi. 33; hence the argument in this sentence.
460:5867Isa. xlv. 3.
461:5868Isa. xl. 13, quoted (according to the Sept.) by the apostle in Rom. 11:34, 35.
461:5869Plane: ironically.
461:5870Rom. xii. 9.
461:5871Ps. xxxiv. 14.
461:5872Rom. xii. 10.
461:5873Lev. xix. 18.
461:5874Rom. xii. 12.
461:5875Ps. cxviii. 9.
461:5876Rom. xii. 12.
461:5877Ps. xx. 1.
461:5878Rom. xii. 12.
461:5879Rom. xii. 16.
461:5880Isa. v. 21.
461:5881Rom. xii. 17.
461:5882Lev. 19:17, 18.
461:5883Rom. xii. 19.
461:5884Rom. 12:19, Deut. 32:25.
461:5885Rom. xii. 18.
461:5886Rom. xiii. 9.
461:5887Ironically said. He has been quoting all along from Marcion’s text of St. Paul, turning its testimony against Marcion.
461:5888Matt. v. 17.
461:5889For although he rejected St. Matthew’s Gospel, which contains the statement, he retained St. Paul’s epistle, from which the statement is clearly proved.
461:5890Ecce.
461:5891Promerendum.
Chapter XV.—The First Epistle to the Thessalonians. The Shorter Epistles Pungent in Sense and Very Valuable. St. Paul Upbraids the Jews for the Death First of Their Prophets and Then of Christ. This a Presumption that Both Christ and the Prophets Pertained to the Same God. The Law of Nature, Which is in Fact the Creator’s Discipline, and the Gospel of Christ Both Enjoin Chastity. The Resurrection Provided for in the Old Testament by Christ. Man’s Compound Nature.
I shall not be sorry to bestow attention on the shorter epistles also. Even in brief works there is much pungency. 5892 The Jews had slain their prophets. 5893 I may ask, What has this to do with the apostle of the rival god, one so amiable withal, who could hardly be said to condemn even the failings of his own people; and who, moreover, has himself some hand in making away with the same prophets whom he is destroying? What injury did Israel commit against him in slaying those whom he too has reprobated, since he was the first to pass a hostile sentence on them? But Israel sinned against their own God. He upbraided their iniquity to whom the injured God pertains; and certainly he is anything but the adversary of the injured Deity. Else he would not have burdened them with the charge of killing even the Lord, in the words, “Who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets,” although (the pronoun) their own be an addition of the heretics. 5894 Now, what was there so very acrimonious 5895 in their killing Christ the proclaimer of the new god, after they had put to death also the prophets of their own god? The fact, however, of their having slain the Lord and His servants, is put as a case of climax. 5896 Now, if it were the Christ of one god and the prophets of another god whom they slew, he would certainly have placed the impious crimes on the same level, instead of mentioning them in the way of a climax; but they did not admit of being put on the same level: the climax, therefore, was only possible 5897 by the sin having been in fact committed against one and the same Lord in the two respective circumstances. 5898 To one and the same Lord, then, belonged Christ and the prophets. What that “sanctification of ours” is, which he declares to be “the will of God,” you may discover from the opposite conduct which he forbids. That we should “abstain from fornication,” not from marriage; that every one “should know how to possess his vessel in honour.” 5899 In what way? “Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles.” 5900 Concupiscence, however, is not ascribed to marriage even among the Gentiles, but to extravagant, unnatural, and enormous sins. 5901 The law of nature 5902 is opposed to luxury as well as to grossness and uncleanness; 5903 it does not forbid connubial intercourse, but concupiscence; and it takes care of 5904 our vessel by the honourable estate of matrimony. This passage (of the apostle) I would treat in such a way as to maintain the superiority of the other and higher sanctity, preferring continence and virginity to marriage, but by no means prohibiting the latter. For my hostility is directed against 5905 those who are for destroying the God of marriage, not those who follow after chastity. He says that those who “remain unto the coming of Christ,” along with “the dead in Christ, shall rise first,” being “caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” 5906 I find it was in their foresight of all this, that the heavenly intelligences gazed with admiration on “the Jerusalem which is above,” 5907 and by the mouth of Isaiah said long ago: “Who are these that fly as clouds, and as doves with their young ones, unto me?” 5908 Now, as Christ has prepared for us this ascension into heaven, He must be the Christ of whom Amos 5909 spoke: “It is He who builds His ascent up to the heavens,” 5910 even for Himself and His people. Now, from whom shall I expect (the fulfilment of) all this, except from Him whom I have heard give the promise thereof? What “spirit” does he forbid us to “quench,” and what “prophesyings” to “despise?” 5911 Not the Creator’s spirit, nor the Creator’s prophesyings, Marcion of course replies. For he has already quenched and despised the thing which he destroys, and is unable to forbid what he has despised. 5912 It is then incumbent on Marcion now to display in his church that spirit of his god which must not be quenched, and the prophesyings which must not be despised. And since he has made such a display as he thinks fit, let him know that we shall challenge it whatever it may be to the rule 5913 of the grace and power of the Spirit and the prophets—namely, to foretell the future, to reveal the secrets of the heart, and to explain mysteries. And when he shall have failed to produce and give proof of any such criterion, we will then on our side bring out both the Spirit and the prophecies of the Creator, which utter predictions according to His will. Thus it will be clearly seen of what the apostle spoke, even of those things which were to happen in the church of his God; and as long as He endures, so long also does His Spirit work, and so long are His promises repeated. 5914 Come now, you who deny the salvation of the flesh, and who, whenever there occurs the specific mention of body in a case of this sort, 5915 interpret it as meaning anything rather than the substance of the flesh, (tell me) how is it that the apostle has given certain distinct names to all (our faculties), and has comprised them all in one prayer for their safety, desiring that our “spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord and Saviour (Jesus) Christ?” 5916 Now he has here propounded the soul and the body as two several and distinct things. 5917 For although the soul has a kind of body of a quality of its own, 5918 just as the spirit has, yet as the soul and the body are distinctly named, the soul has its own peculiar appellation, not requiring the common designation of body. This is left for “the flesh,” which having no proper name (in this passage), necessarily makes use of the common designation. Indeed, I see no other substance in man, after spirit and soul, to which the term body can be applied except “the flesh.” This, therefore, I understand to be meant by the word “body”—as often as the latter is not specifically named. Much more do I so understand it in the present passage, where the flesh 5919 is expressly called by the name “body.”
Footnotes
461:5892Sapor. We have here a characteristic touch of his diligent and also intrepid spirit. Epiphanius says this short epistle “was so entirely corrupted by Marcion, that he had himself selected nothing from it whereon to found any refutations of him or of his doctrine.” Tertullian, however, was of a different mind; for he has made it evident, that though there were alterations made by Marcion, yet sufficient was left untouched by him to show the absurdity of his opinions. Epiphanius and Tertullian entertained, respectively, similar opinions of Marcion’s treatment of the second epistle, which the latter discusses in the next chapter (Larder).
461:58931 Thess. ii. 15.
462:5894All the best mss., including the Codices Alex., Vat., and Sinait., omit the ἰδίους, as do Tertullian and Origen. Marcion has Chrysostom and the received text, followed by our A.V., with him.
462:5895Amarum.
462:5896Status exaggerationis.
462:5897Ergo exaggerari non potuit nisi.
462:5898Ex utroque titulo.
462:58991 Thess. 4:3, 4.
462:59001 Thess. iv. 5.
462:5901Portentuosis.
462:5902The rule of Gentile life.
462:5903We have here followed Oehler’s reading, which is more intelligible than the four or five others given by him.
462:5904Tractet.
462:5905Retundo.
462:59061 Thess. iv. 15-17.
462:5907Gal. iv. 26.
462:5908Isa. lx. 8.
462:5909Oehler and Fr. Junius here read Amos, but all the other readings give Hosea; but see above, book iii. chap. xxiv., where Amos was read by all.
462:5910Amos ix. 6.
462:59111 Thess. 5:19, 20.
462:5912Nihil fecit. This is precisely St. Paul’s ἐξουθενεῖν, “to annihilate” (A.V. “despise”), in 1 Thess. v. 20.
462:5913Formam.
462:5914Celebratur.
462:5915Si quando corpus in hujus modi prænominatur.
463:59161 Thess. v. 23. For a like application of this passage, see also our author’s treatise, De Resurrect. Carnis, cap. xlvii. [Elucidation I.]
463:5917It is remarkable that our author quotes this text of the three principles, in defence only of two of them. But he was strongly opposed to the idea of any absolute division between the soul and the spirit. A distinction between these united parts, he might, under limitations, have admitted; but all idea of an actual separation and division he opposed and denied. See his De Anima, cap. x. St. Augustine more fully still maintained a similar opinion. See also his De Anima, iv. 32. Bp. Ellicott, in his interesting sermon On the Threefold Nature of Man, has given these references, and also a sketch of patristic opinion of this subject. The early fathers, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alex., Origen, as well as Didymus of Alex., Gregory Nyssen., and Basil, held distinctly the threefold nature. Our own divines, as is natural, are also divided in views. Bp. Bull, Hammond, and Jackson hold the trichotomy, as a triple nature is called; others, like Bp. Butler, deny the possibility of dividing our immaterial nature into two parts. This variation of opinion seems to have still representatives among our most recent commentators: while Dean Alford holds the triplicity of our nature literally with St. Paul, Archdeacon Wordsworth seems to agree with Bp. Butler in regarding soul and spirit as component parts of one principle. See also Bp. Ellicott’s Destiny of the Creature, sermon v. and notes.
463:5918On this paradox, that souls are corporeal, see his treatise De Anima, v., and following chapters (Oehler). [See also cap. x. supra.]
463:5919Quæ = caro.
Chapter XVI.—The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. An Absurd Erasure of Marcion; Its Object Transparent. The Final Judgment on the Heathen as Well as the Jews Could Not Be Administered by Marcion’s Christ. The Man of Sin—What? Inconsistency of Marcion’s View. The Antichrist. The Great Events of the Last Apostasy Within the Providence and Intention of the Creator, Whose are All Things from the Beginning. Similarity of the Pauline Precepts with Those of the Creator.
We are obliged from time to time to recur to certain topics in order to affirm truths which are connected with them. We repeat then here, that as the Lord is by the apostle proclaimed 5920 as the awarder of both weal and woe, 5921 He must be either the Creator, or (as Marcion would be loth to admit) One like the Creator—“with whom it is a righteous thing to recompense tribulation to them who afflict us, and to ourselves, who are afflicted, rest, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed as coming from heaven with the angels of His might and in flaming fire.” 5922 The heretic, however, has erased the flaming fire, no doubt that he might extinguish all traces herein of our own God. But the folly of the obliteration is clearly seen. For as the apostle declares that the Lord will come “to take vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel, who,” he says, “shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power” 5923 —it follows that, as He comes to inflict punishment, He must require “the flaming fire.” Thus on this consideration too we must, notwithstanding Marcion’s opposition, conclude that Christ belongs to a God who kindles the flames 5924 (of vengeance), and therefore to the Creator, inasmuch as He takes vengeance on such as know not the Lord, that is, on the heathen. For he has mentioned separately “those who obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,” 5925 whether they be sinners among Christians or among Jews. Now, to inflict punishment on the heathen, who very likely have never heard of the Gospel, is not the function of that God who is naturally unknown, and who is revealed nowhere else than in the Gospel, and therefore cannot be known by all men. 5926 The Creator, however, ought to be known even by (the light of) nature, for He may be understood from His works, and may thereby become the object of a more widely spread knowledge. To Him, therefore, does it appertain to punish such as know not God, for none ought to be ignorant of Him. In the (apostle’s) phrase, “From the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power,” 5927 he uses the words of Isaiah who for the express reason makes the self-same Lord “arise to shake terribly the earth.” 5928 Well, but who is the man of sin, the son of perdition,” who must first be revealed before the Lord comes; “who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; who is to sit in the temple of God, and boast himself as being God?” 5929 According indeed to our view, he is Antichrist; as it is taught us in both the ancient and the new prophecies, 5930 and especially by the Apostle John, who says that “already many false prophets are gone out into the world,” the fore-runners of Antichrist, who deny that Christ is come in the flesh, 5931 and do not acknowledge 5932 Jesus (to be the Christ), meaning in God the Creator. According, however, to Marcion’s view, it is really hard to know whether He might not be (after all) the Creator’s Christ; because according to him He is not yet come. But whichsoever of the two it is, I want to know why he comes “in all power, and with lying signs and wonders?” 5933 “Because,” he says, “they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved; for which cause God shall send them an instinct of delusion 5934 (to believe a lie), that they all might be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” 5935 If therefore he be Antichrist, (as we hold), and comes according to the Creator’s purpose, it must be God the Creator who sends him to fasten in their error those who did not believe the truth, that they might be saved; His likewise must be the truth and the salvation, who avenges (the contempt of) them by sending error as their substitute 5936 —that is, the Creator, to whom that very wrath is a fitting attribute, which deceives with a lie those who are not captivated with truth. If, however, he is not Antichrist, as we suppose (him to be) then He is the Christ of the Creator, as Marcion will have it. In this case how happens it that he 5937 can suborn the Creator’s Christ to avenge his truth? But should he after all agree with us, that Antichrist is here meant, I must then likewise ask how it is that he finds Satan, an angel of the Creator, necessary to his purpose? Why, too, should Antichrist be slain by Him, whilst commissioned by the Creator to execute the function 5938 of inspiring men with their love of untruth? In short, it is incontestable that the emissary, 5939 and the truth, and the salvation belong to Him to whom also appertain the wrath, and the jealousy, 5940 and “the sending of the strong delusion,” 5941 on those who despise and mock, as well as upon those who are ignorant of Him; and therefore even Marcion will now have to come down a step, and concede to us that his god is “a jealous god.” (This being then an unquestionable position, I ask) which God has the greater right to be angry? He, as I suppose, who from the beginning of all things has given to man, as primary witnesses for the knowledge of Himself, nature in her (manifold) works, kindly providences, plagues, 5942 and indications (of His divinity), 5943 but who in spite of all this evidence has not been acknowledged; or he who has been brought out to view 5944 once for all in one only copy of the gospel—and even that without any sure authority—which actually makes no secret of proclaiming another god? Now He who has the right of inflicting the vengeance, has also sole claim to that which occasions 5945 the vengeance, I mean the Gospel; (in other words,) both the truth and (its accompanying) salvation. The charge, that “if any would not work, neither should he eat,” 5946 is in strict accordance with the precept of Him who ordered that “the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn should not be muzzled.” 5947
Footnotes
463:5920Circumferri.
463:5921Utriusque meriti: “of both the eternal sentences.”
463:59222 Thess. i. 6-8.
463:59232 Thess. 1:8, 9.
463:5924Crematoris Dei.
463:59252 Thess. i. 8.
463:5926Non omnibus scibilis.
463:59272 Thess. i. 9.
463:5928Isa. ii. 19. The whole verse is to the point.
464:59292 Thess. 2:3, 4.
464:5930The prophets of the Old and the New Testament.
464:59311 John iv. 1-3.
464:5932Solventes Jesum. This expression receives some explanation from the Vulgate version of 1 John iv. 3: “Et omnis spiritus qui solvit Jesum Christum ex Deo non est.” From Irenæus, Vol. I., 443 (Harvey, ii. 89), we learn that the Gnostics divided Jesus from Christ: “Alterum quidem Jesum intelligunt, alterum autem Christum,”—an error which was met in the clause of the creed expressing faith in “One Lord Jesus Christ.” Grabe, after Socrates, Hist. Eccles. vii. 32, says that the oldest mss. of St. John’s epistle read πᾶν πνεῦμα ὅ λύει τὸν ᾽Ιησοῦν. If so, Tertullian must be regarded as combining the two readings, viz., that which we find in the received text and this just quoted. Thus Grabe. It would be better to say that T. read John 4.2 as we have it, only omitting ᾽Ιησοῦν; and in John 4.3 read the old lection to which Socrates refers instead of πᾶν πνεῦμα ὅ μὴ ὁμολογεὶ.
464:59332 Thess. ii. 9.
464:5934Instinctum fallaciæ.
464:59352 Thess. ii. 10-12.
464:5936Summissu erroris.
464:5937Marcion, or rather his Christ, who on the hypothesis absurdly employs the Creator’s Christ on the flagrantly inconsistent mission of avenging his truth, i.e. Marcionism.
464:5938Habens fungi…Creatori.
464:5939Angelum: the Antichrist sent by the Creator.
464:5940Æmulatio.
464:59412 Thess. ii. 11.
464:5942Plagis: “heavy strokes,” in opposition to the previous “beneficiis.”
464:5943Prædicationibus: see Rom. i. 20.
464:5944Productus est.
464:5945Materia.
464:59462 Thess. iii. 10.
464:5947Deut. xxv. 4.
Chapter XVII.—The Epistle to the Laodiceans. The Proper Designation is to the Ephesians. Recapitulation of All Things in Christ from the Beginning of the Creation. No Room for Marcion’s Christ Here. Numerous Parallels Between This Epistle and Passages in the Old Testament. The Prince of the Power of the Air, and the God of This World—Who? Creation and Regeneration the Work of One God. How Christ Has Made the Law Obsolete. A Vain Erasure of Marcion’s. The Apostles as Well as the Prophets from the Creator.
We have it on the true tradition 5948 of the Church, that this epistle was sent to the Ephesians, not to the Laodiceans. Marcion, however, was very desirous of giving it the new title (of Laodicean), 5949 as if he were extremely accurate in investigating such a point. But of what consequence are the titles, since in writing to a certain church the apostle did in fact write to all? It is certain that, whoever they were to whom he wrote, 5950 he declared Him to be God in Christ with whom all things agree which are predicted. 5951 Now, to what god will most suitably belong all those things which relate to “that good pleasure, which God hath purposed in the mystery of His will, that in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might recapitulate” (if I may so say, according to the exact meaning of the Greek word 5952 ) “all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth,” 5953 but to Him whose are all things from their beginning, yea the beginning itself too; from whom issue the times and the dispensation of the fulness of times, according to which all things up to the very first are gathered up in Christ? What beginning, however, has the other god; that is to say, how can anything proceed from him, who has no work to show? And if there be no beginning, how can there be times? If no times, what fulness of times can there be? And if no fulness, what dispensation? Indeed, what has he ever done on earth, that any long dispensation of times to be fulfilled can be put to his account, for the accomplishment of all things in Christ, even of things in heaven? Nor can we possibly suppose that any things whatever have been at any time done in heaven by any other God than Him by whom, as all men allow, all things have been done on earth. Now, if it is impossible for all these things from the beginning to be reckoned to any other God than the Creator, who will believe that an alien god has recapitulated them in an alien Christ, instead of their own proper Author in His own Christ? If, again, they belong to the Creator, they must needs be separate from the other god; and if separate, then opposed to him. But then how can opposites be gathered together into him by whom they are in short destroyed? Again, what Christ do the following words announce, when the apostle says: “That we should be to the praise of His glory, who first trusted in Christ?” 5954 Now who could have first trusted—i.e. previously trusted 5955 —in God, before His advent, except the Jews to whom Christ was previously announced, from the beginning? He who was thus foretold, was also foretrusted. Hence the apostle refers the statement to himself, that is, to the Jews, in order that he may draw a distinction with respect to the Gentiles, (when he goes on to say:) “In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel (of your salvation); in whom ye believed, and were sealed with His Holy Spirit of promise.” 5956 Of what promise? That which was made through Joel: “In the last days will I pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh,” 5957 that is, on all nations. Therefore the Spirit and the Gospel will be found in the Christ, who was foretrusted, because foretold. Again, “the Father of glory” 5958 is He whose Christ, when ascending to heaven, is celebrated as “the King of Glory” in the Psalm: “Who is this King of Glory? the Lord of Hosts, He is the King of Glory.” 5959 From Him also is besought “the spirit of wisdom,” 5960 at whose disposal is enumerated that sevenfold distribution of the spirit of grace by Isaiah. 5961 He likewise will grant “the enlightenment of the eyes of the understanding,” 5962 who has also enriched our natural eyes with light; to whom, moreover, the blindness of the people is offensive: “And who is blind, but my servants?…yea, the servants of God have become blind.” 5963 In His gift, too, are “the riches (of the glory) of His inheritance in the saints,” 5964 who promised such an inheritance in the call of the Gentiles: “Ask of me, and I will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance.” 5965 It was He who “wrought in Christ His mighty power, by raising Him from the dead, and setting Him at His own right hand, and putting all things under His feet” 5966 —even the same who said: “Sit Thou on my right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.” 5967 For in another passage the Spirit says to the Father concerning the Son: “Thou hast put all things under His feet.” 5968 Now, if from all these facts which are found in the Creator there is yet to be deduced 5969 another god and another Christ, let us go in quest of the Creator. I suppose, forsooth, 5970 we find Him, when he speaks of such as “were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein they had walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, who worketh in the children of disobedience.” 5971 But Marcion must not here interpret the world as meaning the God of the world. 5972 For a creature bears no resemblance to the Creator; the thing made, none to its Maker; the world, none to God. He, moreover, who is the Prince of the power of the ages must not be thought to be called the prince of the power of the air; for He who is chief over the higher powers derives no title from the lower powers, although these, too, may be ascribed to Him. Nor, again, can He possibly seem to be the instigator 5973 of that unbelief which He Himself had rather to endure at the hand of the Jews and the Gentiles alike. We may therefore simply conclude that 5974 these designations are unsuited to the Creator. There is another being to whom they are more applicable—and the apostle knew very well who that was. Who then is he? Undoubtedly he who has raised up “children of disobedience” against the Creator Himself ever since he took possession of that “air” of His; even as the prophet makes him say: “I will set my throne above the stars;…I will go up above the clouds; I will be like the Most High.” 5975 This must mean the devil, whom in another passage (since such will they there have the apostle’s meaning to be) we shall recognize in the appellation the god of this world. 5976 For he has filled the whole world with the lying pretence of his own divinity. To be sure, 5977 if he had not existed, we might then possibly have applied these descriptions to the Creator. But the apostle, too, had lived in Judaism; and when he parenthetically observed of the sins (of that period of his life), “in which also we all had our conversation in times past,” 5978 he must not be understood to indicate that the Creator was the lord of sinful men, and the prince of this air; but as meaning that in his Judaism he had been one of the children of disobedience, having the devil as his instigator—when he persecuted the church and the Christ of the Creator. Therefore he says: “We also were the children of wrath,” but “by nature.” 5979 Let the heretic, however, not contend that, because the Creator called the Jews children, therefore the Creator is the lord of wrath. 5980 For when (the apostle) says, “We were by nature the children of wrath,” inasmuch as the Jews were not the Creator’s children by nature, but by the election of their fathers, he (must have) referred their being children of wrath to nature, and not to the Creator, adding this at last, “even as others,” 5981 who, of course, were not children of God. It is manifest that sins, and lusts of the flesh, and unbelief, and anger, are ascribed to the common nature of all mankind, the devil however leading that nature astray, 5982 which he has already infected with the implanted germ of sin. “We,” says he, “are His workmanship, created in Christ.” 5983 It is one thing to make (as a workman), another thing to create. But he assigns both to One. Man is the workmanship of the Creator. He therefore who made man (at first), created him also in Christ. As touching the substance of nature, He “made” him; as touching the work of grace, He “created” him. Look also at what follows in connection with these words: “Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by that which has the name of circumcision in the flesh made by the hand—that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, 5984 having no hope, and without God in the world.” 5985 Now, without what God and without what Christ were these Gentiles? Surely, without Him to whom the commonwealth 5986 of Israel belonged, and the covenants and the promise. “But now in Christ,” says he, “ye who were sometimes far off are made nigh by His blood.” 5987 From whom were they far off before? From the (privileges) whereof he speaks above, even from the Christ of the Creator, from the commonwealth of Israel, from the covenants, from the hope of the promise, from God Himself. Since this is the case, the Gentiles are consequently now in Christ made nigh to these (blessings), from which they were once far off. But if we are in Christ brought so very nigh to the commonwealth of Israel, which comprises the religion of the divine Creator, and to the covenants and to the promise, yea to their very God Himself, it is quite ridiculous (to suppose that) the Christ of the other god has brought us to this proximity to the Creator from afar. The apostle had in mind that it had been predicted concerning the call of the Gentiles from their distant alienation in words like these: “They who were far off from me have come to my righteousness.” 5988 For the Creator’s righteousness no less than His peace was announced in Christ, as we have often shown already. Therefore he says: “He is our peace, who hath made both one” 5989 —that is, the Jewish nation and the Gentile world. What is near, and what was far off now that “the middle wall has been broken down” of their “enmity,” (are made one) “in His flesh.” 5990 But Marcion erased the pronoun His, that he might make the enmity refer to flesh, as if (the apostle spoke) of a carnal enmity, instead of the enmity which was a rival to Christ. 5991 And thus you have (as I have said elsewhere) exhibited the stupidity of Pontus, rather than the adroitness of a Marrucinian, 5992 for you here deny him flesh to whom in the verse above you allowed blood! Since, however, He has made the law obsolete 5993 by His own precepts, even by Himself fulfilling the law (for superfluous is, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” when He says, “Thou shalt not look on a woman to lust after her;” superfluous also is, “Thou shalt do no murder,” when He says, “Thou shalt not speak evil of thy neighbour,”) it is impossible to make an adversary of the law out of one who so completely promotes it. 5994 “For to create 5995 in Himself of twain,” for He who had made is also the same who creates (just as we have found it stated above: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus”), 5996 “one new man, making peace” (really new, and really man—no phantom—but new, and newly born of a virgin by the Spirit of God), “that He might reconcile both unto God” 5997 (even the God whom both races had offended—both Jew and Gentile), “in one body,” says he, “having in it slain the enmity by the cross.” 5998 Thus we find from this passage also, that there was in Christ a fleshly body, such as was able to endure the cross. “When, therefore, He came and preached peace to them that were near and to them which were afar off,” we both obtained “access to the Father,” being “now no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (even of Him from whom, as we have shown above, we were aliens, and placed far off), “built upon the foundation of the apostles” 5999 —(the apostle added), “and the prophets;” these words, however, the heretic erased, forgetting that the Lord had set in His Church not only apostles, but prophets also. He feared, no doubt, that our building was to stand in Christ upon the foundation of the ancient prophets, 6000 since the apostle himself never fails to build us up everywhere with (the words of) the prophets. For whence did he learn to call Christ “the chief corner-stone,” 6001 but from the figure given him in the Psalm: “The stone which the builders rejected is become the head (stone) of the corner?” 6002
Footnotes
464:5948Veritati.
465:5949Titulum interpolare gestiit: or, “of corrupting its title.”
465:5950Certe tamen.
465:5951For a discussion on the title of this epistle in a succinct shape, the reader is referred to Dean Alford’s Gr. Test. vol. iii. Prolegomena, chap. ii. sec. 2.
465:5952ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι, “to sum up into a head.”
465:5953Eph. 1:9, 10.
465:5954Eph. i. 12.
465:5955He explains “præsperasse by ante sperasse.”
465:5956Eph. i. 13.
465:5957Joel ii. 28.
465:5958Eph. ii. 17.
465:5959Ps. xxiv. 10.
465:5960Eph. i. 17.
465:5961Isa. xi. 2.
465:5962Eph. i. 18.
465:5963Isa. xlii. 19 (Sept.).
465:5964Eph. i. 18.
465:5965Ps. ii. 8.
465:5966Eph. i. 19-22.
465:5967Ps. cx. 1.
465:5968Ps. viii. 7.
465:5969Infertur.
465:5970Plane.
466:5971Eph. 2:1, 2.
466:5972Deo mundi: i.e. the God who made the world.
466:5973Operator: in reference to the expression in Eph. 2.2, “who now worketh,” etc.
466:5974Sufficit igitur si.
466:5975Isa. 14:13, 14. An inexact quotation from the Septuagint.
466:5976On this and another meaning given to the phrase in 2 Cor. iv. 4, see above, chap. xi.
466:5977Plane: an ironical particle here.
466:5978Eph. ii. 3.
466:5979Eph. ii. 3.
466:5980In Marcion’s sense.
466:5981Eph. ii. 3.
466:5982Captante.
466:5983Eph. ii. 10.
466:5984Literally, “the covenants and their promise.”
466:5985Eph. 2:11, 12.
466:5986Conversatio: rather, “intercourse with Israel.”
466:5987Eph. ii. 13.
467:5988This is rather an allusion to, than a quotation of, Isa. 46:12, 13.
467:5989Eph. ii. 14.
467:5990Eph. ii. 15.
467:5991“The law of commandments contained in ordinances.”
467:5992He expresses the proverbial adage very tersely, “non Marrucine, sed Pontice.”
467:5993Vacuam fecit.
467:5994Ex adjutore.
467:5995Conderet: “create,” to keep up the distinction between this and facere, “to make.”
467:5996Eph. ii. 10.
467:5997Eph. ii. 15-16.
467:5998Eph. ii. 16.
467:5999Eph. ii. 17-20.
467:6000“Because, if our building as Christians rested in part upon that foundation, our God, and the God of the Jews must be the same, which Marcion denied” (Lardner).
467:6001Eph. ii. 20.
467:6002Ps. cxviii. 22.
Chapter XVIII.—Another Foolish Erasure of Marcion’s Exposed. Certain Figurative Expressions of the Apostle, Suggested by the Language of the Old Testament. Collation of Many Passages of This Epistle, with Precepts and Statements in the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and the Prophets. All Alike Teach Us the Will and Purpose of the Creator.
As our heretic is so fond of his pruning-knife, I do not wonder when syllables are expunged by his hand, seeing that entire pages are usually the matter on which he practises his effacing process. The apostle declares that to himself, “less than the least of all saints, was the grace given” of enlightening all men as to “what was the fellowship of the mystery, which during the ages had been hid in God, who created all things.” 6003 The heretic erased the preposition in, and made the clause run thus: (“what is the fellowship of the mystery) which hath for ages been hidden from the God who created all things.” 6004 The falsification, however, is flagrantly 6005 absurd. For the apostle goes on to infer (from his own statement): “in order that unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might become known through the church the manifold wisdom of God.” 6006 Whose principalities and powers does he mean? If the Creator’s, how does it come to pass that such a God as He could have meant His wisdom to be displayed to the principalities and powers, but not to Himself? For surely no principalities could possibly have understood anything without their sovereign Lord. Or if (the apostle) did not mention God in this passage, on the ground that He (as their chief) is Himself reckoned among these (principalities), then he would have plainly said that the mystery had been hidden from the principalities and powers of Him who had created all things, including Him amongst them. But if he states that it was hidden from them, he must needs be understood 6007 as having meant that it was manifest to Him. From God, therefore, the mystery was not hidden; but it was hidden in God, the Creator of all things, from His principalities and powers. For “who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counsellor?” 6008 Caught in this trap, the heretic probably changed the passage, with the view of saying that his god wished to make known to his principalities and powers the fellowship of his own mystery, of which God, who created all things, had been ignorant. But what was the use of his obtruding this ignorance of the Creator, who was a stranger to the superior god, 6009 and far enough removed from him, when even his own servants had known nothing about him? To the Creator, however, the future was well known. Then why was not that also known to Him, which had to be revealed beneath His heaven, and on His earth? From this, therefore, there arises a confirmation of what we have already laid down. For since the Creator was sure to know, some time or other, that hidden mystery of the superior god, even on the supposition that the true reading was (as Marcion has it)—“hidden from the God who created all things”—he ought then to have expressed the conclusion thus: “in order that the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to Him, and then to the principalities and powers of God, whosoever He might be, with whom the Creator was destined to share their knowledge.” So palpable is the erasure in this passage, when thus read, consistently with its own true bearing. I, on my part, now wish to engage with you in a discussion on the allegorical expressions of the apostle. What figures of speech could the novel god have found in the prophets (fit for himself)? “He led captivity captive,” says the apostle. 6010 With what arms? In what conflicts? From the devastation of what country? From the overthrow of what city? What women, what children, what princes did the Conqueror throw into chains? For when by David Christ is sung as “girded with His sword upon His thigh,” 6011 or by Isaiah as “taking away the spoils of Samaria and the power of Damascus,” 6012 you make Him out to be 6013 really and truly a warrior confest to the eye. 6014 Learn then now, that His is a spiritual armour and warfare, since you have already discovered that the captivity is spiritual, in order that you may further learn that this also belongs to Him, even because the apostle derived the mention of the captivity from the same prophets as suggested to him his precepts likewise: “Putting away lying,” (says he,) “speak every man truth with his neighbour;” 6015 and again, using the very words in which the Psalm 6016 expresses his meaning, (he says,) “Be ye angry, and sin not;” 6017 “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” 6018 “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness;” 6019 for (in the Psalm it is written,) “With the holy man thou shalt be holy, and with the perverse thou shalt be perverse;” 6020 and, “Thou shalt put away evil from among you.” 6021 Again, “Go ye out from the midst of them; touch not the unclean thing; separate yourselves, ye that bear the vessels of the Lord.” 6022 (The apostle says further:) “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess,” 6023 —a precept which is suggested by the passage (of the prophet), where the seducers of the consecrated (Nazarites) to drunkenness are rebuked: “Ye gave wine to my holy ones to drink.” 6024 This prohibition from drink was given also to the high priest Aaron and his sons, “when they went into the holy place.” 6025 The command, to “sing to the Lord with psalms and hymns,” 6026 comes suitably from him who knew that those who “drank wine with drums and psalteries” were blamed by God. 6027 Now, when I find to what God belong these precepts, whether in their germ or their development, I have no difficulty in knowing to whom the apostle also belongs. But he declares that “wives ought to be in subjection to their husbands:” 6028 what reason does he give for this? “Because,” says he, “the husband is the head of the wife.” 6029 Pray tell me, Marcion, does your god build up the authority of his law on the work of the Creator? This, however, is a comparative trifle; for he actually derives from the same source the condition of his Christ and his Church; for he says: “even as Christ is the head of the Church;” 6030 and again, in like manner: “He who loveth his wife, loveth his own flesh, even as Christ loved the Church.” 6031 You see how your Christ and your Church are put in comparison with the work of the Creator. How much honour is given to the flesh in the name of the church! “No man,” says the apostle, “ever yet hated his own flesh” (except, of course, Marcion alone), “but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord doth the Church.” 6032 But you are the only man that hates his flesh, for you rob it of its resurrection. It will be only right that you should hate the Church also, because it is loved by Christ on the same principle. 6033 Yea, Christ loved the flesh even as the Church. For no man will love the picture of his wife without taking care of it, and honouring it and crowning it. The likeness partakes with the reality in the privileged honour. I shall now endeavour, from my point of view, 6034 to prove that the same God is (the God) of the man 6035 and of Christ, of the woman and of the Church, of the flesh and the spirit, by the apostle’s help who applies the Creator’s injunction, and adds even a comment on it: “For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, (and shall be joined unto his wife), and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery.” 6036 In passing, 6037 (I would say that) it is enough for me that the works of the Creator are great mysteries 6038 in the estimation of the apostle, although they are so vilely esteemed by the heretics. “But I am speaking,” says he, “of Christ and the Church.” 6039 This he says in explanation of the mystery, not for its disruption. He shows us that the mystery was prefigured by Him who is also the author of the mystery. Now what is Marcion’s opinion? The Creator could not possibly have furnished figures to an unknown god, or, if a known one, an adversary to Himself. The superior god, in fact, ought to have borrowed nothing from the inferior; he was bound rather to annihilate Him. “Children should obey their parents.” 6040 Now, although Marcion has erased (the next clause), “which is the first commandment with promise,” 6041 still the law says plainly, “Honour thy father and thy mother.” 6042 Again, (the apostle writes:) “Parents, bring up your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.” 6043 For you have heard how it was said to them of old time: “Ye shall relate these things to your children; and your children in like manner to their children.” 6044 Of what use are two gods to me, when the discipline is but one? If there must be two, I mean to follow Him who was the first to teach the lesson. But as our struggle lies against “the rulers of this world,” 6045 what a host of Creator Gods there must be! 6046 For why should I not insist upon this point here, that he ought to have mentioned but one “ruler of this world,” if he meant only the Creator to be the being to whom belonged all the powers which he previously mentioned? Again, when in the preceding verse he bids us “put on the whole armour of God, that we may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil,” 6047 does he not show that all the things which he mentions after the devil’s name really belong to the devil—“the principalities and the powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world,” 6048 which we also ascribe to the devil’s authority? Else, if “the devil” means the Creator, who will be the devil in the Creator’s dispensation? 6049 As there are two gods, must there also be two devils, and a plurality of powers and rulers of this world? But how is the Creator both a devil and a god at the same time, when the devil is not at once both god and devil? For either they are both of them gods, if both of them are devils; or else He who is God is not also devil, as neither is he god who is the devil. I want to know indeed by what perversion 6050 the word devil is at all applicable to the Creator. Perhaps he perverted some purpose of the superior god—conduct such as He experienced Himself from the archangel, who lied indeed for the purpose. For He did not forbid (our first parents) a taste of the miserable tree, 6051 from any apprehension that they would become gods; His prohibition was meant to prevent their dying after the transgression. But “the spiritual wickedness” 6052 did not signify the Creator, because of the apostle’s additional description, “in heavenly places;” 6053 for the apostle was quite aware that “spiritual wickedness” had been at work in heavenly places, when angels were entrapped into sin by the daughters of men. 6054 But how happened it that (the apostle) resorted to ambiguous descriptions, and I know not what obscure enigmas, for the purpose of disparaging 6055 the Creator, when he displayed to the Church such constancy and plainness of speech in “making known the mystery of the gospel for which he was an ambassador in bonds,” owing to his liberty in preaching—and actually requested (the Ephesians) to pray to God that this “open-mouthed utterance” might be continued to him? 6056
Footnotes
467:6003Eph. 3:8, 9.
467:6004The passage of St. Paul, as Tertullian expresses it, “Quæ dispensatio sacramenti occulti ab ævis in Deo, qui omnia condidit.” According to Marcion’s alteration, the latter part runs, “Occulti ab ævis Deo, qui omnia condidit.” The original is, Τίς ἡ οἰκονομία τοῦ μυστηρίου τοῦ ἀποκεκρυμμένου ἀπὸ τῶν αἰώνων ἐν τῷ Θεῷ (compare Col. iii. 3) τῷ τὰ πάντα κτίσαντι. Marcion’s removal of the ἐν has no warrant of ms. authority; it upsets St. Paul’s doctrine, as attested in other passages, and destroys the grammatical structure.
467:6005Emicat.
467:6006Eph. iii. 10.
468:6007Debebat.
468:6008Isa. xl. 13.
468:6009Marcion’s god, of course.
468:6010Eph. 4:8, Ps. 68:19.
468:6011Ps. xlv. 3.
468:6012Isa. viii. 4.
468:6013Extundis.
468:6014See above, book iii. chap. xiii. and xiv. p. 332.
468:6015Eph. iv. 25.
468:6016Ps. iv. 4.
468:6017Eph. iv. 26.
468:6018Eph. iv. 26.
468:6019Eph. v. 11.
468:6020Ps. xviii. 26.
468:6021Deut. 21:21, 1 Cor. 5:13.
468:6022Isa. 52:11, 2 Cor. 6:17.
468:6023Eph. v. 18.
468:6024Amos ii. 12.
468:6025Lev. x. 9.
468:6026Eph. v. 19.
468:6027Isa. 5:11, 12.
469:6028Eph. 5:22, 24.
469:6029Eph. v. 23.
469:6030Eph. v. 23.
469:6031Eph. 5:25, 28.
469:6032Eph. v. 29.
469:6033Proinde.
469:6034Ego.
469:6035Masculi.
469:6036Eph. 5:31, 32.
469:6037Inter ista.
469:6038Magna sacramenta.
469:6039Eph. v. 32.
469:6040Eph. vi. 1.
469:6041Eph. vi. 2. “He did this (says Lardner) in order that the Mosaic law might not be thought to be thus established.”
469:6042Ex. xx. 12.
469:6043Eph. vi. 4.
469:6044Ex. x. 2.
469:6045Eph. vi. 12.
469:6046An ironical allusion to Marcion’s interpretation, which he has considered in a former chapter, of the title God of this world.
469:6047Eph. vi. 11.
469:6048Eph. vi. 12.
469:6049Apud Creatorem.
469:6050Ex qua delatura.
469:6051Illius arbusculæ.
470:6052Spiritalia nequitiæ: “wicked spirits.”
470:6053Eph. vi. 12.
470:6054Gen. vi. 1-4. See also Tertullian, De Idol. 9; De Habit. Mul. 2; De Cultu Femin. 10; De Vel. Virg. 7; Apolog. 22. See also Augustin, De Civit. Dei. xv. 23.
470:6055Ut taxaret. Of course he alludes to Marcion’s absurd exposition of the Eph. 6.12, in applying St. Paul’s description of wicked spirits to the Creator.
470:6056Eph. 6:19, 20.
Chapter XIX.—The Epistle to the Colossians. Time the Criterion of Truth and Heresy. Application of the Canon. The Image of the Invisible God Explained. Pre-Existence of Our Christ in the Creator’s Ancient Dispensations. What is Included in the Fulness of Christ. The Epicurean Character of Marcion’s God. The Catholic Truth in Opposition Thereto. The Law is to Christ What the Shadow is to the Substance.
I am accustomed in my prescription against all heresies, to fix my compendious criterion 6057 (of truth) in the testimony of time; claiming priority therein as our rule, and alleging lateness to be the characteristic of every heresy. This shall now be proved even by the apostle, when he says: “For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel; which is come unto you, as it is unto all the world.” 6058 For if, even at that time, the tradition of the gospel had spread everywhere, how much more now! Now, if it is our gospel which has spread everywhere, rather than any heretical gospel, much less Marcion’s, which only dates from the reign of Antoninus, 6059 then ours will be the gospel of the apostles. But should Marcion’s gospel succeed in filling the whole world, it would not even in that case be entitled to the character of apostolic. For this quality, it will be evident, can only belong to that gospel which was the first to fill the world; in other words, to the gospel of that God who of old declared this of its promulgation: “Their sound is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.” 6060 He calls Christ “the image of the invisible God.” 6061 We in like manner say that the Father of Christ is invisible, for we know that it was the Son who was seen in ancient times (whenever any appearance was vouchsafed to men in the name of God) as the image of (the Father) Himself. He must not be regarded, however, as making any difference between a visible and an invisible God; because long before he wrote this we find a description of our God to this effect: “No man can see the Lord, and live.” 6062 If Christ is not “the first-begotten before every creature,” 6063 as that “Word of God by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made;” 6064 if “all things were” not “in Him created, whether in heaven or on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, or principalities, or powers;” if “all things were” not “created by Him and for Him” (for these truths Marcion ought not to allow concerning Him), then the apostle could not have so positively laid it down, that “He is before all.” 6065 For how is He before all, if He is not before all things? 6066 How, again, is He before all things, if He is not “the first-born of every creature”—if He is not the Word of the Creator? 6067 Now how will he be proved to have been before all things, who appeared after all things? Who can tell whether he had a prior existence, when he has found no proof that he had any existence at all? In what way also could it have “pleased (the Father) that in Him should all fulness dwell?” 6068 For, to begin with, what fulness is that which is not comprised of the constituents which Marcion has removed from it,—even those that were “created in Christ, whether in heaven or on earth,” whether angels or men? which is not made of the things that are visible and invisible? which consists not of thrones and dominions and principalities and powers? If, on the other hand, 6069 our false apostles and Judaizing gospellers 6070 have introduced all these things out of their own stores, and Marcion has applied them to constitute the fulness of his own god, (this hypothesis, absurd though it be, alone would justify him;) for how, on any other supposition, 6071 could the rival and the destroyer of the Creator have been willing that His fulness should dwell in his Christ? To whom, again, does He “reconcile all things by Himself, making peace by the blood of His cross,” 6072 but to Him whom those very things had altogether 6073 offended, against whom they had rebelled by transgression, (but) to whom they had at last returned? 6074 Conciliated they might have been to a strange god; but reconciled they could not possibly have been to any other than their own God. Accordingly, ourselves “who were sometime alienated and enemies in our mind by wicked works” 6075 does He reconcile to the Creator, against whom we had committed offence—worshipping the creature to the prejudice of the Creator. As, however, he says elsewhere, 6076 that the Church is the body of Christ, so here also (the apostle) declares that he “fills up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in his flesh for His body’s sake, which is the Church.” 6077 But you must not on this account suppose that on every mention of His body the term is only a metaphor, instead of meaning real flesh. For he says above that we are “reconciled in His body through death;” 6078 meaning, of course, that He died in that body wherein death was possible through the flesh: (therefore he adds,) not through the Church 6079 (per ecclesiam), but expressly for the sake of the Church (proper ecclesiam), exchanging body for body—one of flesh for a spiritual one. When, again, he warns them to “beware of subtle words and philosophy,” as being “a vain deceit,” such as is “after the rudiments of the world” (not understanding thereby the mundane fabric of sky and earth, but worldly learning, and “the tradition of men,” subtle in their speech and their philosophy), 6080 it would be tedious, and the proper subject of a separate work, to show how in this sentence (of the apostle’s) all heresies are condemned, on the ground of their consisting of the resources of subtle speech and the rules of philosophy. But (once for all) let Marcion know that the principle term of his creed comes from the school of Epicurus, implying that the Lord is stupid and indifferent; 6081 wherefore he refuses to say that He is an object to be feared. Moreover, from the porch of the Stoics he brings out matter, and places it on a par with the Divine Creator. 6082 He also denies the resurrection of the flesh,—a truth which none of the schools of philosophy agreed together to hold. 6083 But how remote is our (Catholic) verity from the artifices of this heretic, when it dreads to arouse the anger of God, and firmly believes that He produced all things out of nothing, and promises to us a restoration from the grave of the same flesh (that died) and holds without a blush that Christ was born of the virgin’s womb! At this, philosophers, and heretics, and the very heathen, laugh and jeer. For “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise” 6084 —that God, no doubt, who in reference to this very dispensation of His threatened long before that He would “destroy the wisdom of the wise.” 6085 Thanks to this simplicity of truth, so opposed to the subtlety and vain deceit of philosophy, we cannot possibly have any relish for such perverse opinions. Then, if God “quickens us together with Christ, forgiving us our trespasses,” 6086 we cannot suppose that sins are forgiven by Him against whom, as having been all along unknown, they could not have been committed. Now tell me, Marcion, what is your opinion of the apostle’s language, when he says, “Let no man judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath, which is a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ?” 6087 We do not now treat of the law, further than (to remark) that the apostle here teaches clearly how it has been abolished, even by passing from shadow to substance—that is, from figurative types to the reality, which is Christ. The shadow, therefore, is His to whom belongs the body also; in other words, the law is His, and so is Christ. If you separate the law and Christ, assigning one to one god and the other to another, it is the same as if you were to attempt to separate the shadow from the body of which it is the shadow. Manifestly Christ has relation to the law, if the body has to its shadow. But when he blames those who alleged visions of angels as their authority for saying that men must abstain from meats—“you must not touch, you must not taste”—in a voluntary humility, (at the same time) “vainly puffed up in the fleshly mind, and not holding the Head,” 6088 (the apostle) does not in these terms attack the law or Moses, as if it was at the suggestion of superstitious angels that he had enacted his prohibition of sundry aliments. For Moses had evidently received the law from God. When, therefore, he speaks of their “following the commandments and doctrines of men,” 6089 he refers to the conduct of those persons who “held not the Head,” even Him in whom all things are gathered together; 6090 for they are all recalled to Christ, and concentrated in Him as their initiating principle 6091 —even the meats and drinks which were indifferent in their nature. All the rest of his precepts, 6092 as we have shown sufficiently, when treating of them as they occurred in another epistle, 6093 emanated from the Creator, who, while predicting that “old things were to pass away,” and that He would “make all things new,” 6094 commanded men “to break up fresh ground for themselves,” 6095 and thereby taught them even then to put off the old man and put on the new.
Footnotes
470:6057Compendium figere.
470:6058Col. 1:5, 6.
470:6059Antoniniani Marcionis: see above in book i. chap. xix.
470:6060Ps. xix. 4.
470:6061Col. i. 15.
470:6062Ex. xxxiii. 20.
470:6063Col. i. 15. Our author’s “primogenitus conditionis” is St. Paul’s πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως, for the meaning of which see Bp. Ellicott, in loc.
470:6064John i. 3.
470:6065Ante omnes.
470:6066Ante amina.
470:6067Creatoris is our author’s word.
470:6068Col. i. 19.
470:6069Aut si.
470:6070Evangelizatores.
471:6071Ceterum quale.
471:6072Col. i. 20.
471:6073“Una ipsa” is Oehler’s reading instead of universa.
471:6074Cujus novissime fuerant.
471:6075Col. i. 21.
471:6076Eph. i. 23.
471:6077Col. i. 24.
471:6078Col. i. 22.
471:6079As if only in a metaphorical body, in which sense the Church is “His body.”
471:6080Col. ii. 8.
471:6081“Dominum inferens hebetem;” with which may be compared Cicero (De Divin. ii. 50, 103): “Videsne Epicurum quem hebetem et rudem dicere solent Stoici…qui negat, quidquam deos nec alieni curare, nec sui.” The otiose and inert character of the god of Epicurus is referred to by Tertullian not unfrequently; see above, in book iv. chap. xv.; Apolog. 47, and Ad Nationes, ii. 2; whilst in De Anima, 3, he characterizes the philosophy of Epicurus by a similar term: “Prout aut Platonis honor, aut Zenonis vigor, aut Aristotelis tenor, aut Epicuri stupor, aut Heracliti mæror, aut Empedoclis furor persuaserunt.”
471:6082The Stoical dogma of the eternity of matter and its equality with God was also held by Hermogenes; see his Adv. Hermogenem, c. 4, “Materiam parem Deo infert.”
471:6083Pliny, Nat. Hist. vii. 55, refers to the peculiar opinion of Democritus on this subject (Fr. Junius).
471:60841 Cor. i. 27.
471:6085Isa. 29:14, 1 Cor. 1:19, Jer. 8:9, Job 5:12, 13.
471:6086Col. ii. 13.
471:6087Col. 2:16, 17.
472:6088Col. 2:18, 19, 21.
472:6089Col. ii. 22.
472:6090Recensentur: Eph. i. 10.
472:6091Initium.
472:6092Contained in Vol. iii. and iv.
472:6093In the Epistle to the Laodiceans or Ephesians; see his remarks in the preceding chapter of this book v.
472:6094Isa. 43:18, 19, Isa. 65:17, 2 Cor. 5:17.
472:6095Jer. iv. 3. This and the passage of Isaiah just quoted are also cited together above, book iv. chap. i. and ii. p. 345.
Chapter XX.—The Epistle to the Philippians. The Variances Amongst the Preachers of Christ No Argument that There Was More Than One Only Christ. St. Paul’s Phrases—Form of a Servant, Likeness, and Fashion of a Man—No Sanction of Docetism. No Antithesis (Such as Marcion Alleged) in the God of Judaism and the God of the Gospel Deducible from Certain Contrasts Mentioned in This Epistle. A Parallel with a Passage in Genesis. The Resurrection of the Body, and the Change Thereof.
When (the apostle) mentions the several motives of those who were preaching the gospel, how that some, “waxing confident by his bonds, were more fearless in speaking the word,” while others “preached Christ even out of envy and strife, and again others out of good-will,” many also “out of love,” and certain “out of contention,” and some “in rivalry to himself,” 6096 he had a favourable opportunity, no doubt, 6097 of taxing what they preached with a diversity of doctrine, as if it were no less than this which caused so great a variance in their tempers. But while he exposes these tempers as the sole cause of the diversity, he avoids inculpating the regular mysteries of the faith, 6098 and affirms that there is, notwithstanding, but one Christ and His one God, whatever motives men had in preaching Him. Therefore, says he, it matters not to me “whether it be in pretence or in truth that Christ is preached,” 6099 because one Christ alone was announced, whether in their “pretentious” or their “truthful” faith. For it was to the faithfulness of their preaching that he applied the word truth, not to the rightness of the rule itself, because there was indeed but one rule; whereas the conduct of the preachers varied: in some of them it was true, i.e. single-minded, while in others it was sophisticated with over-much learning. This being the case, it is manifest that that Christ was the subject of their preaching who was always the theme of the prophets. Now, if it were a completely different Christ that was being introduced by the apostle, the novelty of the thing would have produced a diversity (in belief.). For there would not have been wanting, in spite of the novel teaching, 6100 men to interpret the preached gospel of the Creator’s Christ, since the majority of persons everywhere now-a-days are of our way of thinking, rather than on the heretical side. So that the apostle would not in such a passage as the present one have refrained from remarking and censuring the diversity. Since, however, there is no blame of a diversity, there is no proof of a novelty. Of course 6101 the Marcionites suppose that they have the apostle on their side in the following passage in the matter of Christ’s substance—that in Him there was nothing but a phantom of flesh. For he says of Christ, that, “being in the form of God, He thought it not robbery to be equal with God; 6102 but emptied 6103 Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant,” not the reality, “and was made in the likeness of man,” not a man, “and was found in fashion as a man,” 6104 not in his substance, that is to say, his flesh; just as if to a substance there did not accrue both form and likeness and fashion. It is well for us that in another passage (the apostle) calls Christ “the image of the invisible God.” 6105 For will it not follow with equal force from that passage, that Christ is not truly God, because the apostle places Him in the image of God, if, (as Marcion contends,) He is not truly man because of His having taken on Him the form or image of a man? For in both cases the true substance will have to be excluded, if image (or “fashion”) and likeness and form shall be claimed for a phantom. But since he is truly God, as the Son of the Father, in His fashion and image, He has been already by the force of this conclusion determined to be truly man, as the Son of man, “found in the fashion” and image “of a man.” For when he propounded 6106 Him as thus “found” in the manner 6107 of a man, he in fact affirmed Him to be most certainly human. For what is found, manifestly possesses existence. Therefore, as He was found to be God by His mighty power, so was He found to be man by reason of His flesh, because the apostle could not have pronounced Him to have “become obedient unto death,” 6108 if He had not been constituted of a mortal substance. Still more plainly does this appear from the apostle’s additional words, “even the death of the cross.” 6109 For he could hardly mean this to be a climax 6110 to the human suffering, to extol the virtue 6111 of His obedience, if he had known it all to be the imaginary process of a phantom, which rather eluded the cross than experienced it, and which displayed no virtue 6112 in the suffering, but only illusion. But “those things which he had once accounted gain,” and which he enumerates in the preceding verse—“trust in the flesh,” the sign of “circumcision,” his origin as “an Hebrew of the Hebrews,” his descent from “the tribe of Benjamin,” his dignity in the honours of the Pharisee 6113 —he now reckons to be only “loss” to himself; 6114 (in other words,) it was not the God of the Jews, but their stupid obduracy, which he repudiates. These are also the things “which he counts but dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ” 6115 (but by no means for the rejection of God the Creator); “whilst he has not his own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through Him,” i.e. Christ, “the righteousness which is of God.” 6116 Then, say you, according to this distinction the law did not proceed from the God of Christ. Subtle enough! But here is something still more subtle for you. For when (the apostle) says, “Not (the righteousness) which is of the law, but that which is through Him,” he would not have used the phrase through Him of any other than Him to whom the law belonged. “Our conversation,” says he, “is in heaven.” 6117 I here recognise the Creator’s ancient promise to Abraham: “I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven.” 6118 Therefore “one star differeth from another star in glory.” 6119 If, again, Christ in His advent from heaven “shall change the body of our humiliation, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body,” 6120 it follows that this body of ours shall rise again, which is now in a state of humiliation in its sufferings and according to the law of mortality drops into the ground. But how shall it be changed, if it shall have no real existence? If, however, this is only said of those who shall be found in the flesh 6121 at the advent of God, and who shall have to be changed,” 6122 what shall they do who will rise first? They will have no substance from which to undergo a change. But he says (elsewhere), “We shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord (in the air).” 6123 Then, if we are to be caught up alone with them, surely we shall likewise be changed together with them.
Footnotes
472:6096Phil. i. 14-17.
472:6097Utique.
472:6098Regulas sacramentorum.
472:6099Phil. i. 18.
472:6100Nihilominus.
472:6101Plane.
472:6102Compare the treatise, De Resur. Carnis, c. vi. (Oehler).
472:6103Exhausit ἐκένωσε.
472:6104Phil. 2:6, 7.
473:6105Col. i. 15.
473:6106Posuit.
473:6107Inventum ratione.
473:6108Phil. ii. 8.
473:6109Phil. ii. 8.
473:6110Non enim exaggeraret.
473:6111Virtutem: perhaps the power.
473:6112See the preceding note.
473:6113Candidæ pharisaeæ: see Phil. iii. 4-6.
473:6114Phil. iii. 7.
473:6115Phil. iii. 8.
473:6116Phil. iii. 9.
473:6117Phil. iii. 20.
473:6118Gen. xxii. 17.
473:61191 Cor. xv. 41.
473:6120Phil. iii. 21. [I have adhered to the original Greek, by a trifling verbal change, because Tertullian’s argument requires it.]
473:61211 Cor. 15:51, 52.
473:6122Deputari, which is an old reading, should certainly be demutari, and so say the best authorities. Oehler reads the former, but contends for the latter.
473:61231 Thess. 4:16, 17.
Chapter XXI.—The Epistle to Philemon. This Epistle Not Mutilated. Marcion’s Inconsistency in Accepting This, and Rejecting Three Other Epistles Addressed to Individuals. Conclusions. Tertullian Vindicates the Symmetry and Deliberate Purpose of His Work Against Marcion.
To this epistle alone did its brevity avail to protect it against the falsifying hands of Marcion. I wonder, however, when he received (into his Apostolicon) this letter which was written but to one man, that he rejected the two epistles to Timothy and the one to Titus, which all treat of ecclesiastical discipline. His aim, was, I suppose, to carry out his interpolating process even to the number of (St. Paul’s) epistles. And now, reader, 6124 I beg you to remember that we have here adduced proofs out of the apostle, in support of the subjects which we previously 6125 had to handle, and that we have now brought to a close 6126 the topics which we deferred to this (portion of our) work. (This favour I request of you,) that you may not think that any repetition here has been superfluous, for we have only fulfilled our former engagement to you; nor look with suspicion on any postponement there, where we merely set forth the essential points (of the argument). 6127 If you carefully examine the entire work, you will acquit us of either having been redundant here, or diffident there, in your own honest judgment. 6128
Footnotes
474:6124Inspector: perhaps critic.
474:6125Retro: in the former portions of this treatise.
474:6126Expunxerimus.
474:6127Qua eruimus ipsa ista.
474:6128[Elucidation II.]
Elucidations.
————————————
I.
(Soul and Spirit, cap. xv. and notes 1 and 2, p. 463.)
Dr. Holmes, in the learned note which follows, affords me a valuable addition to my scanty remarks on this subject in former volumes. See (Vol. I. pp. 387, 532,) references to the great work of Professor Delitzsch, in notes on Irenæus. In Vol. II. p. 102, I have also mentioned M. Heard’s work, on the Tripartite Nature of Man. With reference to the disagreement of the learned on this great matter, let me ask is it not less real than apparent? The dichotomy to which Tertullian objected, and the trichotomy which Dr. Holmes makes a name of “the triple nature,” are terms which rather suggest a process of “dividing asunder of soul and spirit,” and which involve an ambiguity that confuses the inquiry. Now, while the gravest objections may be imagined, or even demonstrated, against a process which seems to destroy the unity and individuality of a Man, does not every theologian accept the analytical formula of the apostle and recognize the bodily, the animal and the spiritual in the life of man? If so is there not fundamental agreement as to 1 Thess. v. 23, and difference only, relatively, as to functions and processes, or as to the way in which truth on these three points ought to be stated? On this subject there are good remarks in the Speaker’s Commentary on the text aforesaid, but the exhaustive work of Delitzsch deserves study.
Man’s whole nature in Christ, seems to be sanctified by the Holy Spirit’s suffusion of man’s spirit; this rules and governs the psychic nature and through it the body.
II.
(The entire work, cap. xxi. p. 474.)
He who has followed Tertullian through the mazes in which Marcion, in spite of shifts and turnings innumerable, has been hunted down, and defeated, must recognize the great work performed by this author in behalf of Christian Orthodoxy. It seems to have been the plan of Christ’s watchful care over His Church, that, in the earliest stages of its existence the enemy should be allowed to display his utmost malice and to bring out all his forces against Truth. Thus, before the meeting of Church-councils the language of faith had grown up, and clear views and precise statements of doctrine had been committed to the idioms of human thought. But, the labours of Tertullian are not confined to these diverse purposes. With all the faults of his acute and forensic mind, how powerfully he illuminates the Scriptures and glorifies them as containing the whole system of the Faith. How rich are his quotations, and how penetrating his conceptions of their uses. Besides all this, what an introduction he gives us to the modes of thought which were becoming familiar in the West, and which were convening the Latin tongue to new uses, and making it capable of expressing Augustine’s mind and so of creating new domains of Learning among the nations of Europe.
If I have treated tenderly the reputation of this great Master, in my notes upon his Marcion, it is with a twofold purpose. (1.) It seems to me due to truth that his name should be less associated with his deplorable lapse than with his long and faithful services to the Church, and (2.) that the student should thus follow his career with a pleasure and with a confidence the lack of which perpetually annoys us when we give the first place to the Montanist and not to the Catholic. Let this be our spirit in accompanying him into his fresh campaigns against “the grievous wolves” foreseen by St. Paul with tears. Acts 20:29, 30.
But as our Author invokes a careful examination of his “entire work,” let the student recur to Irenæus (Vol. I. p. 352, etc.) and observe how formidable, from the beginning, was the irreligion of Marcion. His doctrines did truly “eat like a canker,” assailing the Scriptures by mutilations and corruptions of the text itself. No marvel that Tertullian shows him no quarter, though we must often regret the forensic violence of his retort. As to the Dualism which, through Marcion, thus threatened the first article of the Creed, consult the valuable remarks of the Encyc. Britannica, (“Mithras”). Mithras became known to the Romans circa b.c. 70, and his worship flourished under Trajan and his successors. An able writer remarks that it was natural “Dualism should develop itself out of primitive Zoroastrianism. The human mind has ever been struck with a certain antagonism of which it has sought to discover the cause. Evil seems most easily accounted for by the supposition of an evil Person; and the continuance of an equal struggle, without advantage to either side, seems to imply the equality of that evil Person with the author of all good. Thus Dualism had its birth. Many came to believe in the existence of two co-eternal and co-equal Persons, one good and the other evil, between whom there has been from all eternity a perpetual conflict, and between whom the same conflict must continue to rage through all coming time.”
III.
Against Hermogenes.
Containing an Argument Against His Opinion that Matter is Eternal.
[Translated by Dr. Holmes.]
————————————
Chapter I.—The Opinions of Hermogenes, by the Prescriptive Rule of Antiquity Shown to Be Heretical. Not Derived from Christianity, But from Heathen Philosophy. Some of the Tenets Mentioned.
We are accustomed, for the purpose of shortening argument, 6129 to lay down the rule against heretics of the lateness of their date. 6130 For in as far as by our rule, priority is given to the truth, which also foretold that there would be heresies, in so far must all later opinions be prejudged as heresies, being such as were, by the more ancient rule of truth, predicted as (one day) to happen. Now, the doctrine of Hermogenes has this 6131 taint of novelty. He is, in short, 6132 a man living in the world at the present time; by his very nature a heretic, and turbulent withal, who mistakes loquacity for eloquence, and supposes impudence to be firmness, and judges it to be the duty of a good conscience to speak ill of individuals. 6133 Moreover, he despises God’s law in his painting, 6134 maintaining repeated marriages, 6135 alleges the law of God in defence of lust, 6136 and yet despises it in respect of his art. 6137 He falsifies by a twofold process—with his cautery and his pen. 6138 He is a thorough adulterer, both doctrinally and carnally, since he is rank indeed with the contagion of your marriage-hacks, 6139 and has also failed in cleaving to the rule of faith as much as the apostle’s own Hermogenes. 6140 However, never mind the man, when it is his doctrine which I question. He does not appear to acknowledge any other Christ as Lord, 6141 though he holds Him in a different way; but by this difference in his faith he really makes Him another being,—nay, he takes from Him everything which is God, since he will not have it that He made all things of nothing. For, turning away from Christians to the philosophers, from the Church to the Academy and the Porch, he learned there from the Stoics how to place Matter (on the same level) with the Lord, just as if it too had existed ever both unborn and unmade, having no beginning at all nor end, out of which, according to him, 6142 the Lord afterwards created all things.
Footnotes
477:6129Compendii gratia. [The reference here to the De Præscript. forbids us to date this tract earlier than 207 a.d. Of this Hermogenes, we only know that he was probably a Carthaginian, a painter, and of a versatile and clever mind.]
477:6130This is the criterion prescribed in the Præscript. Hæret.xxxi. xxxiv., and often applied by Tertullian. See our Anti-Marcion, pp. 272, 345, 470, and passim.
477:6131The tam novella is a relative phrase, referring to the fore-mentioned rule.
477:6132Denique.
477:6133Maldicere singuiis.
477:6134Probably by painting idols (Rigalt.; and so Neander).
477:6135It is uncertain whether Tertullian means to charge Hermogenes with defending polygamy, or only second marriages, in the phrase nubit assidue. Probably the latter, which was offensive to the rigorous Tertullian; and so Neander puts it.
477:6136Quoting Gen. i. 28, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Rigalt.).
477:6137Disregarding the law when it forbids the representation of idols. (Rigalt.).
477:6138Et cauterio et stilo. The former instrument was used by the encaustic painters for burning in the wax colours into the ground of their pictures (Westropp’s Handbook of Archæology, p. 219). Tertullian charges Hermogenes with using his encaustic art to the injury of the scriptures, by practically violating their precepts in his artistic works; and with using his pen (stilus) in corrupting the doctrine thereof by his heresy.
477:6139By the nubentium contagium, Tertullian, in his Montanist rigour, censures those who married more than once.
477:61402 Tim. i. 15.
477:6141Thus differing from Marcion.
477:6142The force of the subjunctive, ex qua fecerit.
Chapter II.—Hermogenes, After a Perverse Induction from Mere Heretical Assumptions, Concludes that God Created All Things Out of Pre-Existing Matter.
Our very bad painter has coloured this his primary shade absolutely without any light, with such arguments as these: He begins with laying down the premiss, 6143 that the Lord made all things either out of Himself, or out of nothing, or out of something; in order that, after he has shown that it was impossible for Him to have made them either out of Himself or out of nothing, he might thence affirm the residuary proposition that He made them out of something, and therefore that that something was Matter. He could not have made all things, he says, of Himself; because whatever things the Lord made of Himself would have been parts of Himself; but 6144 He is not dissoluble into parts, 6145 because, being the Lord, He is indivisible, and unchangeable, and always the same. Besides, if He had made anything out of Himself, it would have been something of Himself. Everything, however, both which was made and which He made must be accounted imperfect, because it was made of a part, and He made it of a part; or if, again, it was a whole which He made, who is a whole Himself, He must in that case have been at once both a whole, and yet not a whole; because it behoved Him to be a whole, that He might produce Himself, 6146 and yet not a whole, that He might be produced out of Himself. 6147 But this is a most difficult position. For if He were in existence, He could not be made, for He was in existence already; if, however, he were not in existence He could not make, because He was a nonentity. He maintains, moreover, that He who always exists, does not come into existence, 6148 but exists for ever and ever. He accordingly concludes that He made nothing out of Himself, since He never passed into such a condition 6149 as made it possible for Him to make anything out of Himself. In like manner, he contends that He could not have made all things out of nothing—thus: He defines the Lord as a being who is good, nay, very good, who must will to make things as good and excellent as He is Himself; indeed it were impossible for Him either to will or to make anything which was not good, nay, very good itself. Therefore all things ought to have been made good and excellent by Him, after His own condition. Experience shows, 6150 however, that things which are even evil were made by Him: not, of course, of His own will and pleasure; because, if it had been of His own will and pleasure, He would be sure to have made nothing unfitting or unworthy of Himself. That, therefore, which He made not of His own will must be understood to have been made from the fault of something, and that is from Matter, without a doubt.
Footnotes
477:6143Præstruens.
478:6144Porro.
478:6145In partes non devenire.
478:6146Ut faceret semetipsum.
478:6147Ut fieret de semetipso.
478:6148Non fieri.
478:6149Non ejus fieret conditionis.
478:6150Inveniri.
Chapter III.—An Argument of Hermogenes. The Answer: While God is a Title Eternally Applicable to the Divine Being, Lord and Father are Only Relative Appellations, Not Eternally Applicable. An Inconsistency in the Argument of Hermogenes Pointed Out.
He adds also another point: that as God was always God, there was never a time when God was not also Lord. But 6151 it was in no way possible for Him to be regarded as always Lord, in the same manner as He had been always God, if there had not been always, in the previous eternity, 6152 a something of which He could be regarded as evermore the Lord. So he concludes 6153 that God always had Matter co-existent with Himself as the Lord thereof. Now, this tissue 6154 of his I shall at once hasten to pull abroad. I have been willing to set it out in form to this length, for the information of those who are unacquainted with the subject, that they may know that his other arguments likewise need only be 6155 understood to be refuted. We affirm, then, that the name of God always existed with Himself and in Himself—but not eternally so the Lord. Because the condition of the one is not the same as that of the other. God is the designation of the substance itself, that is, of the Divinity; but Lord is (the name) not of substance, but of power. I maintain that the substance existed always with its own name, which is God; the title Lord was afterwards added, as the indication indeed 6156 of something accruing. For from the moment when those things began to exist, over which the power of a Lord was to act, God, by the accession of that power, both became Lord and received the name thereof. Because God is in like manner a Father, and He is also a Judge; but He has not always been Father and Judge, merely on the ground of His having always been God. For He could not have been the Father previous to the Son, nor a Judge previous to sin. There was, however, a time when neither sin existed with Him, nor the Son; the former of which was to constitute the Lord a Judge, and the latter a Father. In this way He was not Lord previous to those things of which He was to be the Lord. But He was only to become Lord at some future time: just as He became the Father by the Son, and a Judge by sin, so also did He become Lord by means of those things which He had made, in order that they might serve Him. Do I seem to you to be weaving arguments, 6157 Hermogenes? How neatly does Scripture lend us its aid, 6158 when it applies the two titles to Him with a distinction, and reveals them each at its proper time! For (the title) God, indeed, which always belonged to Him, it names at the very first: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth;” 6159 and as long as He continued making, one after the other, those things of which He was to be the Lord, it merely mentions God. “And God said,” “and God made,” “and God saw;” 6160 but nowhere do we yet find the Lord. But when He completed the whole creation, and especially man himself, who was destined to understand His sovereignty in a way of special propriety, He then is designated 6161 Lord. Then also the Scripture added the name Lord: “And the Lord God, Deus Dominus, took the man, whom He had formed;” 6162 “And the Lord God commanded Adam.” 6163 Thenceforth He, who was previously God only, is the Lord, from the time of His having something of which He might be the Lord. For to Himself He was always God, but to all things was He only then God, when He became also Lord. Therefore, in as far as (Hermogenes) shall suppose that Matter was eternal, on the ground that the Lord was eternal, in so far will it be evident that nothing existed, because it is plain that the Lord as such did not always exist. Now I mean also, on my own part, 6164 to add a remark for the sake of ignorant persons, of whom Hermogenes is an extreme instance, 6165 and actually to retort against him his own arguments. 6166 For when he denies that Matter was born or made, I find that, even on these terms, the title Lord is unsuitable to God in respect of Matter, because it must have been free, 6167 when by not having a beginning it had not an author. The fact of its past existence it owed to no one, so that it could be a subject to no one. Therefore ever since God exercised His power over it, by creating (all things) out of Matter, although it had all along experienced God as its Lord, yet Matter does, after all, demonstrate that God did not exist in the relation of Lord to it, 6168 although all the while He was really so. 6169
Footnotes
478:6151Porro.
478:6152Retro.
478:6153Itaque.
478:6154Conjecturam.
478:6155Tam…quam.
478:6156Scilicet.
478:6157Argumentari: in the sense of argutari.
478:6158Naviter nobis patrocinatur.
479:6159Gen. i. 1.
479:6160Gen. i. 3, etc.
479:6161Cognominatur: as if by way of surname, Deus Dominus.
479:6162Gen. ii. 15.
479:6163Gen. ii. 16.
479:6164Et ego.
479:6165Extrema linea. Rhenanus sees in this phrase a slur against Hermogenes, who was an artist. Tertullian, I suppose, meant that Hermogenes was extremely ignorant.
479:6166Experimenta.
479:6167Libera: and so not a possible subject for the Lordship of God.
479:6168Matter having, by the hypothesis, been independent of God, and so incapable of giving Him any title to Lordship.
479:6169Fuit hoc utique. In Hermogenes’ own opinion, which is thus shown to have been contradictory to itself, and so absurd.
Chapter IV.—Hermogenes Gives Divine Attributes to Matter, and So Makes Two Gods.
At this point, then, I shall begin to treat of Matter, how that, (according to Hermogenes,) 6170 God compares it with Himself as equally unborn, equally unmade, equally eternal, set forth as being without a beginning, without an end. For what other estimate 6171 of God is there than eternity? What other condition has eternity than to have ever existed, and to exist yet for evermore by virtue of its privilege of having neither beginning nor end? Now, since this is the property of God, it will belong to God alone, whose property it is—of course 6172 on this ground, that if it can be ascribed to any other being, it will no longer be the property of God, but will belong, along with Him, to that being also to which it is ascribed. For “although there be that are called gods” in name, “whether in heaven or in earth, yet to us there is but one God the Father, of whom are all things;” 6173 whence the greater reason why, in our view, 6174 that which is the property 6175 of God ought to be regarded as pertaining to God alone, and why (as I have already said) that should cease to be such a property, when it is shared by another being. Now, since He is God, it must necessarily be a unique mark of this quality, 6176 that it be confined to One. Else, what will be unique and singular, if that is not which has nothing equal to it? What will be principal, if that is not which is above all things, before all things, and from which all things proceed? By possessing these He is God alone, and by His sole possession of them He is One. If another also shared in the possession, there would then be as many gods as there were possessors of these attributes of God. Hermogenes, therefore, introduces two gods: he introduces Matter as God’s equal. God, however, must be One, because that is God which is supreme; but nothing else can be supreme than that which is unique; and that cannot possibly be unique which has anything equal to it; and Matter will be equal with God when it is held to be 6177 eternal.
Footnotes
479:6170Quod, with the subjunctive comparet.
479:6171Census.
479:6172Scilicet.
479:61731 Cor. viii. 5.
479:6174Apud nos.
479:6175The property of being eternal.
479:6176Unicum sit necesse est.
479:6177Censetur.
Chapter V.—Hermogenes Coquets with His Own Argument, as If Rather Afraid of It. After Investing Matter with Divine Qualities, He Tries to Make It Somehow Inferior to God.
But God is God, and Matter is Matter. As if a mere difference in their names prevented equality, 6178 when an identity of condition is claimed for them! Grant that their nature is different; assume, too, that their form is not identical,—what matters it so long as their absolute state have but one mode? 6179 God is unborn; is not Matter also unborn? God ever exists; is not Matter, too, ever existent? Both are without beginning; both are without end; both are the authors of the universe—both He who created it, and the Matter of which He made it. For it is impossible that Matter should not be regarded as the author 6180 of all things, when the universe is composed of it. What answer will he give? Will he say that Matter is not then comparable with God as soon as 6181 it has something belonging to God; since, by not having total (divinity), it cannot correspond to the whole extent of the comparison? But what more has he reserved for God, that he should not seem to have accorded to Matter the full amount of the Deity? 6182 He says in reply, that even though this is the prerogative of Matter, both the authority and the substance of God must remain intact, by virtue of which He is regarded as the sole and prime Author, as well as the Lord of all things. Truth, however, maintains the unity of God in such a way as to insist that whatever belongs to God Himself belongs to Him alone. For so will it belong to Himself if it belong to Him alone; and therefore it will be impossible that another god should be admitted, when it is permitted to no other being to possess anything of God. Well, then, you say, we ourselves at that rate possess nothing of God. But indeed we do, and shall continue to do—only it is from Him that we receive it, and not from ourselves. For we shall be even gods, if we, shall deserve to be among those of whom He declared, “I have said, Ye are gods,” 6183 and, “God standeth in the congregation of the gods.” 6184 But this comes of His own grace, not from any property in us, because it is He alone who can make gods. The property of Matter, however, he 6185 makes to be that which it has in common with God. Otherwise, if it received from God the property which belongs to God,—I mean its attribute 6186 of eternity—one might then even suppose that it both possesses an attribute in common with God, and yet at the same time is not God. But what inconsistency is it for him 6187 to allow that there is a conjoint possession of an attribute with God, and also to wish that what he does not refuse to Matter should be, after all, the exclusive privilege of God!
Footnotes
479:6178Comparationi.
480:6179Ratio.
480:6180Auctrix.
480:6181Statim si.
480:6182Totum Dei.
480:6183Ps. lxxxii. 6.
480:6184Psa. 82.1.
480:6185Hermogenes.
480:6186Ordinem: or course.
480:6187Quale autem est: “how comes it to pass that.”
Chapter VI.—The Shifts to Which Hermogenes is Reduced, Who Deifies Matter, and Yet is Unwilling to Hold Him Equal with the Divine Creator.
He declares that God’s attribute is still safe to Him, of being the only God, and the First, and the Author of all things, and the Lord of all things, and being incomparable to any—qualities which he straightway ascribes to Matter also. He is God, to be sure. God shall also attest the same; but He has also sworn sometimes by Himself, that there is no other God like Him. 6188 Hermogenes, however, will make Him a liar. For Matter will be such a God as He—being unmade, unborn, without beginning, and without end. God will say, “I am the first!” 6189 Yet how is He the first, when Matter is co-eternal with Him? Between co-eternals and contemporaries there is no sequence of rank. 6190 Is then, Matter also the first? “I,” says the Lord, “have stretched out the heavens alone.” 6191 But indeed He was not alone, when that likewise stretched them out, of which He made the expanse. When he asserts the position that Matter was eternal, without any encroachment on the condition of God, let him see to it that we do not in ridicule turn the tables on him, that God similarly was eternal without any encroachment on the condition of Matter—the condition of Both being still common to Them. The position, therefore, remains unimpugned 6192 both in the case of Matter, that it did itself exist, only along with God; and that God existed alone, but with Matter. It also was first with God, as God, too, was first with it; it, however, is not comparable with God, as God, too, is not to be compared with it; with God also it was the Author (of all things), and with God their Sovereign. In this way he proposes that God has something, and yet not the whole, of Matter. For Him, accordingly, Hermogenes has reserved nothing which he had not equally conferred on Matter, so that it is not Matter which is compared with God, but rather God who is compared with Matter. Now, inasmuch as those qualities which we claim as peculiar to God—to have always existed, without a beginning, without an end, and to have been the First, and Alone, and the Author of all things—are also compatible to Matter, I want to know what property Matter possesses different and alien from God, and hereby special to itself, by reason of which it is incapable of being compared with God? That Being, in which occur 6193 all the properties of God, is sufficiently predetermined without any further comparison.
Footnotes
480:6188Isa. xlv. 23.
480:6189Isa. 41:4, Isa. 44:6, Isa. 48:12.
480:6190Ordo.
480:6191Isa. xliv. 24.
480:6192Salvum ergo erit.
481:6193Recensentur.
Chapter VII.—Hermogenes Held to His Theory in Order that Its Absurdity May Be Exposed on His Own Principles.
When he contends that matter is less than God, and inferior to Him, and therefore diverse from Him, and for the same reason not a fit subject of comparison with Him, who is a greater and superior Being, I meet him with this prescription, that what is eternal and unborn is incapable of any diminution and inferiority, because it is simply this which makes even God to be as great as He is, inferior and subject to none—nay, greater and higher than all. For, just as all things which are born, or which come to an end, and are therefore not eternal, do, by reason of their exposure at once to an end and a beginning, admit of qualities which are repugnant to God—I mean diminution and inferiority, because they are born and made—so likewise God, for this very reason, is unsusceptible of these accidents, because He is absolutely unborn, 6194 and also unmade. And yet such also is the condition of Matter. 6195 Therefore, of the two Beings which are eternal, as being unborn and unmade—God and Matter—by reason of the identical mode of their common condition (both of them equally possessing that which admits neither of diminution nor subjection—that is, the attribute of eternity), we affirm that neither of them is less or greater than the other, neither of them is inferior or superior to the other; but that they both stand on a par in greatness, on a par in sublimity, and on the same level of that complete and perfect felicity of which eternity is reckoned to consist. Now we must not resemble the heathen in our opinions; for they, when constrained to acknowledge God, insist on having other deities below Him. The Divinity, however, has no degrees, because it is unique; and if it shall be found in Matter—as being equally unborn and unmade and eternal—it must be resident in both alike, 6196 because in no case can it be inferior to itself. In what way, then, will Hermogenes have the courage to draw distinctions; and thus to subject matter to God, an eternal to the Eternal, an unborn to the Unborn, an author to the Author? seeing that it dares to say, I also am the first; I too am before all things; and I am that from which all things proceed; equal we have been, together we have been—both alike without beginning, without end; both alike without an Author, without a God. 6197 What God, then, is He who subjects me to a contemporaneous, co-eternal power? If it be He who is called God, then I myself, too, have my own (divine) name. Either I am God, or He is Matter, because we both are that which neither of us is. Do you suppose, therefore, that he 6198 has not made Matter equal with God, although, forsooth, he pretends it to be inferior to Him?
Footnotes
481:6194Nec natus omnino.
481:6195Of course, according to Hermogenes, whom Tertullian refutes with an argumentum ad hominem.
481:6196Aderit utrobique.
481:6197That is, having no God superior to themselves.
481:6198Hermogenes.
Chapter VIII.—On His Own Principles, Hermogenes Makes Matter, on the Whole, Superior to God.
Nay more, 6199 he even prefers Matter to God, and rather subjects God to it, when he will have it that God made all things out of Matter. For if He drew His resources from it 6200 for the creation of the world, Matter is already found to be the superior, inasmuch as it furnished Him with the means of effecting His works; and God is thereby clearly subjected to Matter, of which the substance was indispensable to Him. For there is no one but requires that which he makes use of; 6201 no one but is subject to the thing which he requires, for the very purpose of being able to make use of it. So, again, there is no one who, from using what belongs to another, is not inferior to him of whose property he makes use; and there is no one who imparts 6202 of his own for another’s use, who is not in this respect superior to him to whose use he lends his property. On this principle, 6203 Matter itself, no doubt, 6204 was not in want of God, but rather lent itself to God, who was in want of it—rich and abundant and liberal as it was—to one who was, I suppose, too small, and too weak, and too unskilful, to form what He willed out of nothing. A grand service, verily, 6205 did it confer on God in giving Him means at the present time whereby He might be known to be God, and be called Almighty—only that He is no longer Almighty, since He is not powerful enough for this, to produce all things out of nothing. To be sure, 6206 Matter bestowed somewhat on itself also—even to get its own self acknowledged with God as God’s co-equal, nay more, as His helper; only there is this drawback, that Hermogenes is the only man that has found out this fact, besides the philosophers—those patriarchs of all heresy. 6207 For the prophets knew nothing about it, nor the apostles thus far, nor, I suppose, even Christ.
Footnotes
481:6199Atquin etiam.
481:6200Ex illa usus est.
481:6201De cujus utitur.
481:6202Præstat.
481:6203Itaque.
481:6204Quidem.
481:6205Revera.
481:6206Sane.
482:6207They are so deemed in the de Præscript. Hæret. c. vii.
Chapter IX.—Sundry Inevitable But Intolerable Conclusions from the Principles of Hermogenes.
He cannot say that it was as its Lord that God employed Matter for His creative works, for He could not have been the Lord of a substance which was co-equal with Himself. Well, but perhaps it was a title derived from the will of another, 6208 which he enjoyed—a precarious holding, and not a lordship, 6209 and that to such a degree, that 6210 although Matter was evil, He yet endured to make use of an evil substance, owing, of course, to the restraint of His own limited power, 6211 which made Him impotent to create out of nothing, not in consequence of His power; for if, as God, He had at all possessed power over Matter which He knew to be evil, He would first have converted it into good—as its Lord and the good God—that so He might have a good thing to make use of, instead of a bad one. But being undoubtedly good, only not the Lord withal, He, by using such power 6212 as He possessed, showed the necessity He was under of yielding to the condition of Matter, which He would have amended if He had been its Lord. Now this is the answer which must be given to Hermogenes when he maintains that it was by virtue of His Lordship that God used Matter—even of His non-possession of any right to it, on the ground, of course, of His not having Himself made it. Evil then, on your terms, 6213 must proceed from God Himself, since He is—I will not say the Author of evil, because He did not form it, but—the permitter thereof, as having dominion over it. 6214 If indeed Matter shall prove not even to belong to God at all, as being evil, it follows, 6215 that when He made use of what belonged to another, He used it either on a precarious title 6216 because He was in need of it, or else by violent possession because He was stronger than it. For by three methods is the property of others obtained,—by right, by permission, by violence; in other words, by lordship, by a title derived from the will of another, 6217 by force. Now, as lordship is out of the question, Hermogenes must choose which (of the other methods) is suitable to God. Did He, then, make all things out of Matter, by permission, or by force? But, in truth, would not God have more wisely determined that nothing at all should be created, than that it should be created by the mere sufferance of another, or by violence, and that, too, with 6218 a substance which was evil?
Footnotes
482:6208We have rather paraphrased the word “precario”—“obtained by prayer.” [See p. 456.]
482:6209Domino: opposed to “precario.”
482:6210Ideo…ut.
482:6211Mediocritatis.
482:6212Tali: i.e. potestate.
482:6213Jam ergo: introducing an argumentum ad hominem against Hermogenes.
482:6214Quia dominator.
482:6215Ergo.
482:6216Aut precario: “as having begged for it.”
482:6217Precario: See above, note 2, p. 482.
482:6218De is often in Tertullian the sign of an instrumental noun.
Chapter X.—To What Straits Hermogenes Absurdly Reduces the Divine Being. He Does Nothing Short of Making Him the Author of Evil.
Even if Matter had been the perfection of good, 6219 would it not have been equally indecorous in Him to have thought of the property of another, however good, (to effect His purpose by the help of it)? It was, therefore, absurd enough for Him, in the interest of His own glory, to have created the world in such a way as to betray His own obligation to a substance which belonged to another—and that even not good. Was He then, asks (Hermogenes), to make all things out of nothing, that so evil things themselves might be attributed to His will? Great, in all conscience, 6220 must be the blindness of our heretics which leaves them to argue in such a way that they either insist on the belief of another God supremely good, on the ground of their thinking the Creator to be the author of evil, or else they set up Matter with the Creator, in order that they may derive evil from Matter, not from the Creator. And yet there is absolutely no god at all that is free from such a doubtful plight, so as to be able to avoid the appearance even of being the author of evil, whosoever he is that—I will not say, indeed, has made, but still—has permitted evil to be made by some author or other, and from some source or other. Hermogenes, therefore, ought to be told 6221 at once, although we postpone to another place our distinction concerning the mode of evil, 6222 that even he has effected no result by this device of his. 6223 For observe how God is found to be, if not the Author of, yet at any rate the conniver at, 6224 evil, inasmuch as He, with all His extreme goodness, endured evil in Matter before He created the world, although, as being good, and the enemy of evil, He ought to have corrected it. For He either was able to correct it, but was unwilling; or else was willing, but being a weak God, was not able. If He was able and yet unwilling, He was Himself evil, as having favoured evil; and thus He now opens Himself to the charge of evil, because even if He did not create it yet still, since it would not be existing if He had been against its existence, He must Himself have then caused it to exist, when He refused to will its non-existence. And what is more shameful than this? When He willed that to be which He was Himself unwilling to create, He acted in fact against His very self, 6225 inasmuch as He was both willing that that should exist which He was unwilling to make, and unwilling to make that which He was willing should exist. As if what He willed was good, and at the same time what he refused to be the Maker of was evil. What He judged to be evil by not creating it, He also proclaimed to be good by permitting it to exist. By bearing with evil as a good instead of rather extirpating it, He proved Himself to be the promoter thereof; criminally, 6226 if through His own will—disgracefully, if through necessity. God must either be the servant of evil or the friend thereof, since He held converse with evil in Matter—nay, more, effected His works out of the evil thereof.
Footnotes
482:6219Optima.
482:6220Bona fide.
482:6221Audiat.
482:6222De mali ratione.
482:6223Hac sua injectione. See our Anti-Marcion, iv. i., for this word, p. 345.
482:6224Assentator. Fr. Junius suggests “adsectator” of the stronger meaning “promoter;” nor does Oehler object.
483:6225Adversum semetipsum.
483:6226Male: in reference to His alleged complicity with evil.
Chapter XI.—Hermogenes Makes Great Efforts to Remove Evil from God to Matter. How He Fails to Do This Consistently with His Own Argument.
But, after all, 6227 by what proofs does Hermogenes persuade us that Matter is evil? For it will be impossible for him not to call that evil to which he imputes evil. Now we lay down this principle, 6228 that what is eternal cannot possibly admit of diminution and subjection, so as to be considered inferior to another co-eternal Being. So that we now affirm that evil is not even compatible with it, 6229 since it is incapable of subjection, from the fact that it cannot in any wise be subject to any, because it is eternal. But inasmuch as, on other grounds, 6230 it is evident what is eternal as God is the highest good, whereby also He alone is good—as being eternal, and therefore good—as being God, how can evil be inherent in Matter, which (since it is eternal) must needs be believed to be the highest good? Else if that which is eternal prove to be also capable of evil, this (evil) will be able to be also believed of God to His prejudice; 6231 so that it is without adequate reason that he has been so anxious 6232 to remove evil from God; since evil must be compatible with an eternal Being, even by being made compatible with Matter, as Hermogenes makes it. But, as the argument now stands, 6233 since what is eternal can be deemed evil, the evil must prove to be invincible and insuperable, as being eternal; and in that case 6234 it will be in vain that we labour “to put away evil from the midst of us;” 6235 in that case, moreover, God vainly gives us such a command and precept; nay more, in vain has God appointed any judgment at all, when He means, indeed, 6236 to inflict punishment with injustice. But if, on the other hand, there is to be an end of evil, when the chief thereof, the devil, shall “go away into the fire which God hath prepared for him and his angels” 6237 —having been first “cast into the bottomless pit;” 6238 when likewise “the manifestation of the children of God” 6239 shall have “delivered the creature” 6240 from evil, which had been “made subject to vanity;” 6241 when the cattle restored in the innocence and integrity of their nature 6242 shall be at peace 6243 with the beasts of the field, when also little children shall play with serpents; 6244 when the Father shall have put beneath the feet of His Son His enemies, 6245 as being the workers of evil,—if in this way an end is compatible with evil, it must follow of necessity that a beginning is also compatible with it; and Matter will turn out to have a beginning, by virtue of its having also an end. For whatever things are set to the account of evil, 6246 have a compatibility with the condition of evil.
Footnotes
483:6227Et tamen.
483:6228Definimus.
483:6229Competere illi.
483:6230Alias.
483:6231Et in Deum credi.
483:6232Gestivit.
483:6233Jam vero.
483:6234Tum.
483:62351 Cor. v. 13.
483:6236Utique: with a touch of irony, in the argumentum ad hominem.
483:6237Matt. xxv. 41.
483:6238Rev. xx. 3.
483:6239Rom. viii. 19.
483:6240Rom. viii. 21.
483:6241Rom. viii. 20.
483:6242Conditionis: “creation.”
483:6243Condixerint.
483:6244Isa. xi. 6.
483:6245Ps. cx. 1.
483:6246Male deputantur.
Chapter XII.—The Mode of Controversy Changed. The Premisses of Hermogenes Accepted, in Order to Show into What Confusion They Lead Him.
Come now, let us suppose Matter to be evil, nay, very evil, by nature of course, just as we believe God to be good, even very good, in like manner by nature. Now nature must be regarded as sure and fixed, just as persistently fixed in evil in the case of Matter, as immoveable and unchangeable in good in the case of God. Because, as is evident, 6247 if nature admits of change from evil to good in Matter, it can be changed from good to evil in God. Here some man will say, Then will “children not be raised up to Abraham from the stones?” 6248 Will “generations of vipers not bring forth the fruit of repentance?” 6249 And “children of wrath” fail to become sons of peace, if nature be unchangeable? Your reference to such examples as these, my friend, 6250 is a thoughtless 6251 one. For things which owe their existence to birth such as stones and vipers and human beings—are not apposite to the case of Matter, which is unborn; since their nature, by possessing a beginning, may have also a termination. But bear in mind 6252 that Matter has once for all been determined to be eternal, as being unmade, unborn, and therefore supposably of an unchangeable and incorruptible nature; and this from the very opinion of Hermogenes himself, which he alleges against us when he denies that God was able to make (anything) of Himself, on the ground that what is eternal is incapable of change, because it would lose—so the opinion runs 6253 —what it once was, in becoming by the change that which it was not, if it were not eternal. But as for the Lord, who is also eternal, (he maintained) that He could not be anything else than what He always is. Well, then, I will adopt this definite opinion of his, and by means thereof refute him. I blame Matter with a like censure, because out of it, evil though it be—nay, very evil—good things have been created, nay, “very good” ones: “And God saw that they were good, and God blessed them” 6254 —because, of course, of their very great goodness; certainly not because they were evil, or very evil. Change is therefore admissible in Matter; and this being the case, it has lost its condition of eternity; in short, 6255 its beauty is decayed in death. 6256 Eternity, however, cannot be lost, because it cannot be eternity, except by reason of its immunity from loss. For the same reason also it is incapable of change, inasmuch as, since it is eternity, it can by no means be changed.
Footnotes
484:6247Scilicet.
484:6248Matt. iii. 9.
484:6249Matt. 3:7, 8.
484:6250O homo.
484:6251Temere.
484:6252Tene.
484:6253Scilicet.
484:6254Gen. 1:21, 22.
484:6255Denique.
484:6256That is, of course, by its own natural law.
Chapter XIII.—Another Ground of Hermogenes that Matter Has Some Good in It. Its Absurdity.
Here the question will arise How creatures were made good out of it, 6257 which were formed without any change at all? 6258 How occurs the seed of what is good, nay, very good, in that which is evil, nay, very evil? Surely a good tree does not produce evil fruit, 6259 since there is no God who is not good; nor does an evil tree yield good fruit, since there is not Matter except what is very evil. Or if we were to grant him that there is some germ of good in it, then there will be no longer a uniform nature (pervading it), that is to say, one which is evil throughout; but instead thereof (we now encounter) a double nature, partly good and partly evil; and again the question will arise, whether, in a subject which is good and evil, there could possibly have been found a harmony for light and darkness, for sweet and bitter? So again, if qualities so utterly diverse as good and evil have been able to unite together, 6260 and have imparted to Matter a double nature, productive of both kinds of fruit, then no longer will absolutely 6261 good things be imputable to God, just as evil things are not ascribed to Him, but both qualities will appertain to Matter, since they are derived from the property of Matter. At this rate, we shall owe to God neither gratitude for good things, nor grudge 6262 for evil ones, because He has produced no work of His own proper character. 6263 From which circumstance will arise the clear proof that He has been subservient to Matter.
Footnotes
484:6257Matter.
484:6258i.e. in their nature, Matter being evil, and they good, on the hypothesis.
484:6259Matt. vii. 18.
484:6260Concurrisse.
484:6261Ipsa.
484:6262Invidiam.
484:6263Ingenio.
Chapter XIV.—Tertullian Pushes His Opponent into a Dilemma.
Now, if it be also argued, that although Matter may have afforded Him the opportunity, it was still His own will which led Him to the creation of good creatures, as having detected 6264 what was good in matter—although this, too, be a discreditable supposition 6265 —yet, at any rate, when He produces evil likewise out of the same (Matter), He is a servant to Matter, since, of course, 6266 it is not of His own accord that He produces this too, having nothing else that He can do than to effect creation out of an evil stock 6267 —unwillingly, no doubt, as being good; of necessity, too, as being unwilling; and as an act of servitude, because from necessity. Which, then, is the worthier thought, that He created evil things of necessity, or of His own accord? Because it was indeed of necessity that He created them, if out of Matter; of His own accord, if out of nothing. For you are now labouring in vain when you try to avoid making God the Author of evil things; because, since He made all things of Matter, they will have to be ascribed to Himself, who made them, just because 6268 He made them. Plainly the interest of the question, whence He made all things, identifies itself with (the question), whether He made all things out of nothing; and it matters not whence He made all things, so that He made all things thence, whence most glory accrued to Him. 6269 Now, more glory accrued to Him from a creation of His own will than from one of necessity; in other words, from a creation out of nothing, than from one out of Matter. It is more worthy to believe that God is free, even as the Author of evil, than that He is a slave. Power, whatever it be, is more suited to Him than infirmity. 6270 If we thus even admit that matter had nothing good in it, but that the Lord produced whatever good He did produce of His own power, then some other questions will with equal reason arise. First, since there was no good at all in Matter, it is clear that good was not made of Matter, on the express ground indeed that Matter did not possess it. Next, if good was not made of Matter, it must then have been made of God; if not of God, then it must have been made of nothing.—For this is the alternative, on Hermogenes’ own showing. 6271
Footnotes
484:6264Nactus.
484:6265Turpe.
484:6266Utique.
484:6267Ex malo.
485:6268Proinde quatenus.
485:6269We subjoin the original of this sentence: “Plane sic interest unde fecerit ac si de nihilo fecisset, nec interest uned fecerit, ut inde fecerit unde eum magis decuit.”
485:6270Pusillitas.
485:6271Secundum Hermogenis dispositionem.
Chapter XV.—The Truth, that God Made All Things from Nothing, Rescued from the Opponent’s Flounderings.
Now, if good was neither produced out of matter, since it was not in it, evil as it was, nor out of God, since, according to the position of Hermogenes, nothing could have been produced out of god, it will be found that good was created out of nothing, inasmuch as it was formed of none—neither of Matter nor of God. And if good was formed out of nothing, why not evil too? Nay, if anything was formed out of nothing, why not all things? Unless indeed it be that the divine might was insufficient for the production of all things, though it produced a something out of nothing. Or else if good proceeded from evil matter, since it issued neither from nothing nor from God, it will follow that it must have proceeded from the conversion of Matter contrary to that unchangeable attribute which has been claimed for it, as an eternal being. 6272 Thus, in regard to the source whence good derived its existence, Hermogenes will now have to deny the possibility of such. But still it is necessary that (good) should proceed from some one of those sources from which he has denied the very possibility of its having been derived. Now if evil be denied to be of nothing for the purpose of denying it to be the work of God, from whose will there would be too much appearance of its being derived, and be alleged to proceed from Matter, that it may be the property of that very thing of whose substance it is assumed to be made, even here also, as I have said, God will have to be regarded as the Author of evil; because, whereas it had been His duty 6273 to produce all good things out of Matter, or rather good things simply, by His identical attribute of power and will, He did yet not only not produce all good things, but even (some) evil things—of course, either willing that the evil should exist if He was able to cause their non-existence, or not being strong enough to effect that all things should be good, if being desirous of that result, He failed in the accomplishment thereof; since there can be no difference whether it were by weakness or by will, that the Lord proved to be the Author of evil. Else what was the reason that, after creating good things, as if Himself good, He should have also produced evil things, as if He failed in His goodness, since He did not confine Himself to the production of things which were simply consistent with Himself? What necessity was there, after the production of His proper work, for His troubling Himself about Matter also by producing evil likewise, in order to secure His being alone acknowledged as good from His good, and at the same time 6274 to prevent Matter being regarded as evil from (created) evil? Good would have flourished much better if evil had not blown upon it. For Hermogenes himself explodes the arguments of sundry persons who contend that evil things were necessary to impart lustre to the good, which must be understood from their contrasts. This, therefore, was not the ground for the production of evil; but if some other reason must be sought for the introduction thereof, why could it not have been introduced even from nothing, 6275 since the very same reason would exculpate the Lord from the reproach of being thought the author of evil, which now excuses the existence of evil things, when He produces them out of Matter? And if there is this excuse, then the question is completely 6276 shut up in a corner, where they are unwilling to find it, who, without examining into the reason itself of evil, or distinguishing how they should either attribute it to God or separate it from God, do in fact expose God to many most unworthy calumnies. 6277
Footnotes
485:6272Contra denegatam æterni conversationem. Literally, “Contrary to that convertibility of an eternal nature which has been denied (by Hermogenes) to be possible.” It will be obvious why we have, in connection with the preceding clause preferred the equivalent rendering of our text. For the denial of Hermogenes, which Tertullian refers to, see above, chap. xii. p. 484.
485:6273Debuisset protulisse.
485:6274This clumsy expedient to save the character of both God and Matter was one of the weaknesses of Hermogenes’ system.
486:6275Cur non et ex nihilo potuerit induci?
486:6276Ubique et undique.
486:6277Destructionibus. “Ruin of character” is the true idea of this strong term.
Chapter XVI.—A Series of Dilemmas. They Show that Hermogenes Cannot Escape from the Orthodox Conclusion.
On the very threshold, 6278 then, of this doctrine, 6279 which I shall probably have to treat of elsewhere, I distinctly lay it down as my position, that both good and evil must be ascribed either to God, who made them out of Matter; or to Matter itself, out of which He made them; or both one and the other to both of them together, 6280 because they are bound together—both He who created, and that out of which He created; or (lastly) one to One and the other to the Other, 6281 because after Matter and God there is not a third. Now if both should prove to belong to God, God evidently will be the author of evil; but God, as being good, cannot be the author of evil. Again, if both are ascribed to Matter, Matter will evidently be the very mother of good, 6282 but inasmuch as Matter is wholly evil, it cannot be the mother of good. But if both one and the other should be thought to belong to Both together, then in this case also Matter will be comparable with God; and both will be equal, being on equal terms allied to evil as well as to good. Matter, however, ought not to be compared with God, in order that it may not make two gods. If, (lastly,) one be ascribed to One, and the other to the Other—that is to say, let the good be God’s, and the evil belong to Matter—then, on the one hand, evil must not be ascribed to God, nor, on the other hand, good to Matter. And God, moreover, by making both good things and evil things out of Matter, creates them along with it. This being the case, I cannot tell how Hermogenes 6283 is to escape from my conclusion; for he supposes that God cannot be the author of evil, in what way soever He created evil out of Matter, whether it was of His own will, or of necessity, or from the reason (of the case). If, however, He is the author of evil, who was the actual Creator, Matter being simply associated with Him by reason of its furnishing Him with substance, 6284 you now do away with the cause 6285 of your introducing Matter. For it is not the less true, that it is by means of Matter that God shows Himself the author of evil, although Matter has been assumed by you expressly to prevent God’s seeming to be the author of evil. Matter being therefore excluded, since the cause of it is excluded, it remains that God without doubt, must have made all things out of nothing. Whether evil things were amongst them we shall see, when it shall be made clear what are evil things, and whether those things are evil which you at present deem to be so. For it is more worthy of God that He produced even these of His own will, by producing them out of nothing, than from the predetermination of another, 6286 (which must have been the case) if He had produced them out of Matter. It is liberty, not necessity, which suits the character of God. I would much rather that He should have even willed to create evil of Himself, than that He should have lacked ability to hinder its creation.
Footnotes
486:6278Præstructione. The notion is of the foundation of an edifice: here ="preliminary remarks” (see our Anti-Marcion, v. 5, p. 438).
486:6279Articuli.
486:6280Utrumque utrique.
486:6281Alterum alteri.
486:6282Boni matrix.
486:6283The usual reading is “Hermogenes.” Rigaltius, however, reads “Hermogenis,” of which Oehler approves; so as to make Tertullian say, “I cannot tell how I can avoid the opinion of Hermogenes, who,” etc. etc.
486:6284Per substantiæ suggestum.
486:6285Excusas jam causam. Hermogenes held that Matter was eternal, to exclude God from the authorship of evil. This causa of Matter he was now illogically evading. Excusare = ex, causa, “to cancel the cause.”
486:6286De præjudicio alieno.
Chapter XVII.—The Truth of God’s Work in Creation. You Cannot Depart in the Least from It, Without Landing Yourself in an Absurdity.
This rule is required by the nature of the One-only God, 6287 who is One-only in no other way than as the sole God; and in no other way sole, than as having nothing else (co-existent) with Him. So also He will be first, because all things are after Him; and all things are after Him, because all things are by Him; and all things are by Him, because they are of nothing: so that reason coincides with the Scripture, which says: “Who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor? or with whom took He counsel? or who hath shown to Him the way of wisdom and knowledge? Who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed to him again?” 6288 Surely none! Because there was present with Him no power, no material, no nature which belonged to any other than Himself. But if it was with some (portion of Matter) 6289 that He effected His creation, He must have received from that (Matter) itself both the design and the treatment of its order as being “the way of wisdom and knowledge.” For He had to operate conformably with the quality of the thing, and according to the nature of Matter, not according to His own will in consequence of which He must have made 6290 even evil things suitably to the nature not of Himself, but of Matter.
Footnotes
486:6287Unici Dei.
487:6288Rom. 11:34, 35, Isa. 40:14.
487:6289De aliquo.
487:6290Adeo ut fecerit.
Chapter XVIII.—An Eulogy on the Wisdom and Word of God, by Which God Made All Things of Nothing.
If any material was necessary to God in the creation of the world, as Hermogenes supposed, God had a far nobler and more suitable one in His own wisdom 6291 —one which was not to be gauged by the writings of 6292 philosophers, but to be learnt from the words or prophets. This alone, indeed, knew the mind of the Lord. For “who knoweth the things of God, and the things in God, but the Spirit, which is in Him?” 6293 Now His wisdom is that Spirit. This was His counsellor, the very way of His wisdom and knowledge. 6294 Of this He made all things, making them through It, and making them with It. “When He prepared the heavens,” so says (the Scripture 6295 ), “I was present with Him; and when He strengthened above the winds the lofty clouds, and when He secured the fountains 6296 which are under the heaven, I was present, compacting these things 6297 along with Him. I was He 6298 in whom He took delight; moreover, I daily rejoiced in His presence: for He rejoiced when He had finished the world, and amongst the sons of men did He show forth His pleasure.” 6299 Now, who would not rather approve of 6300 this as the fountain and origin of all things—of this as, in very deed, the Matter of all Matter, not liable to any end, 6301 not diverse in condition, not restless in motion, not ungraceful in form, but natural, and proper, and duly proportioned, and beautiful, such truly as even God might well have required, who requires His own and not another’s? Indeed, as soon as He perceived It to be necessary for His creation of the world, He immediately creates It, and generates It in Himself. “The Lord,” says the Scripture, “possessed 6302 me, the beginning of His ways for the creation of His works. Before the worlds He founded me; before He made the earth, before the mountains were settled in their places; moreover, before the hills He generated me, and prior to the depths was I begotten.” 6303 Let Hermogenes then confess that the very Wisdom of God is declared to be born and created, for the especial reason that we should not suppose that there is any other being than God alone who is unbegotten and uncreated. For if that, which from its being inherent in the Lord 6304 was of Him and in Him, was yet not without a beginning,—I mean 6305 His wisdom, which was then born and created, when in the thought of God It began to assume motion 6306 for the arrangement of His creative works,—how much more impossible 6307 is it that anything should have been without a beginning which was extrinsic to the Lord! 6308 But if this same Wisdom is the Word of God, in the capacity 6309 of Wisdom, and (as being He) without whom nothing was made, just as also (nothing) was set in order without Wisdom, how can it be that anything, except the Father, should be older, and on this account indeed nobler, than the Son of God, the only-begotten and first-begotten Word? Not to say that 6310 what is unbegotten is stronger than that which is born, and what is not made more powerful than that which is made. Because that which did not require a Maker to give it existence, will be much more elevated in rank than that which had an author to bring it into being. On this principle, then, 6311 if evil is indeed unbegotten, whilst the Son of God is begotten (“for,” says God, “my heart hath emitted my most excellent Word” 6312 ), I am not quite sure that evil may not be introduced by good, the stronger by the weak, in the same way as the unbegotten is by the begotten. Therefore on this ground Hermogenes puts Matter even before God, by putting it before the Son. Because the Son is the Word, and “the Word is God,” 6313 and “I and my Father are one.” 6314 But after all, perhaps, 6315 the Son will patiently enough submit to having that preferred before Him which (by Hermogenes), is made equal to the Father!
Footnotes
487:6291Sophiam suam scilicet.
487:6292Apud.
487:62931 Cor. ii. 11.
487:6294Isa. xl. 14.
487:6295Or the “inquit” may indicate the very words of “Wisdom.”
487:6296Fontes. Although Oehler prefers Junius’ reading “montes,” he yet retains “fontes,” because Tertullian (in ch. xxxii. below) has the unmistakable reading “fontes” in a like connection.
487:6297Compingens.
487:6298Ad quem: the expression is masculine.
487:6299Prov. viii. 27-31.
487:6300Commendet.
487:6301“Non fini subditam” is Oehler’s better reading than the old “sibi subditam.”
487:6302Condidit: created.
487:6303See Prov. viii.
487:6304Intra Dominum.
487:6305Scilicet.
487:6306Cœpti agitari.
487:6307Multo magis non capit.
487:6308Extra Dominum.
487:6309Sensu.
487:6310Nedum.
487:6311Proinde.
487:6312On this version of Ps. xlv. 1., and its application by Tertullian, see our Anti-Marcion (p. 299, note 5).
488:6313John i. 1.
488:6314John x. 30.
488:6315Nisi quod.
Chapter XIX.—An Appeal to the History of Creation. True Meaning of the Term Beginning, Which the Heretic Curiously Wrests to an Absurd Sense.
But I shall appeal to the original document 6316 of Moses, by help of which they on the other side vainly endeavour to prop up their conjectures, with the view, of course, of appearing to have the support of that authority which is indispensable in such an inquiry. They have found their opportunity, as is usual with heretics, in wresting the plain meaning of certain words. For instance the very beginning, 6317 when God made the heaven and the earth, they will construe as if it meant something substantial and embodied, 6318 to be regarded as Matter. We, however, insist on the proper signification of every word, and say that principium means beginning,—being a term which is suitable to represent things which begin to exist. For nothing which has come into being is without a beginning, nor can this its commencement be at any other moment than when it begins to have existence. Thus principium or beginning, is simply a term of inception, not the name of a substance. Now, inasmuch as the heaven and the earth are the principal works of God, and since, by His making them first, He constituted them in an especial manner the beginning of His creation, before all things else, with good reason does the Scripture preface (its record of creation) with the words, “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth;” 6319 just as it would have said, “At last God made the heaven and the earth,” if God had created these after all the rest. Now, if the beginning is a substance, the end must also be material. No doubt, a substantial thing 6320 may be the beginning of some other thing which may be formed out of it; thus the clay is the beginning of the vessel, and the seed is the beginning of the plant. But when we employ the word beginning in this sense of origin, and not in that of order, we do not omit to mention also the name of that particular thing which we regard as the origin of the other. On the other hand, 6321 if we were to make such a statement as this, for example, “In the beginning the potter made a basin or a water-jug,” the word beginning will not here indicate a material substance (for I have not mentioned the clay, which is the beginning in this sense, but only the order of the work, meaning that the potter made the basin and the jug first, before anything else—intending afterwards to make the rest. It is, then, to the order of the works that the word beginning has reference, not to the origin of their substances. I might also explain this word beginning in another way, which would not, however, be inapposite. 6322 The Greek term for beginning, which is ἀρχή, admits the sense not only of priority of order, but of power as well; whence princes and magistrates are called ἀρχοντες. Therefore in this sense too, beginning may be taken for princely authority and power. It was, indeed, in His transcendent authority and power, that God made the heaven and the earth.
Footnotes
488:6316Originale instrumentum: which may mean “the document which treats of the origin of all things.”
488:6317Principium.
488:6318Corpulentum.
488:6319Gen. i. 1.
488:6320Substantivum aliquid.
488:6321De cetero.
488:6322Non ab re tamen.
Chapter XX.—Meaning of the Phrase—In the Beginning. Tertullian Connects It with the Wisdom of God, and Elicits from It the Truth that the Creation Was Not Out of Pre-Existent Matter.
But in proof that the Greek word means nothing else than beginning, and that beginning admits of no other sense than the initial one, we have that (Being) 6323 even acknowledging such a beginning, who says: “The Lord possessed 6324 me, the beginning of His ways for the creation of His works.” 6325 For since all things were made by the Wisdom of God, it follows that, when God made both the heaven and the earth in principio—that is to say, in the beginning—He made them in His Wisdom. If, indeed, beginning had a material signification, the Scripture would not have informed us that God made so and so in principio, at the beginning, but rather ex principio, of the beginning; for He would not have created in, but of, matter. When Wisdom, however, was referred to, it was quite right to say, in the beginning. For it was in Wisdom that He made all things at first, because by meditating and arranging His plans therein, 6326 He had in fact already done (the work of creation); and if He had even intended to create out of matter, He would yet have effected His creation when He previously meditated on it and arranged it in His Wisdom, since It 6327 was in fact the beginning of His ways: this meditation and arrangement being the primal operation of Wisdom, opening as it does the way to the works by the act of meditation and thought. 6328 This authority of Scripture I claim for myself even from this circumstance, that whilst it shows me the God who created, and the works He created, it does not in like manner reveal to me the source from which He created. For since in every operation there are three principal things, He who makes, and that which is made, and that of which it is made, there must be three names mentioned in a correct narrative of the operation—the person of the maker the sort of thing which is made, 6329 and the material of which it is formed. If the material is not mentioned, while the work and the maker of the work are both mentioned, it is manifest that He made the work out of nothing. For if He had had anything to operate upon, it would have been mentioned as well as (the other two particulars). 6330 In conclusion, I will apply the Gospel as a supplementary testimony to the Old Testament. Now in this there is all the greater reason why there should be shown the material (if there were any) out of which God made all things, inasmuch as it is therein plainly revealed by whom He made all things. “In the beginning was the Word” 6331 —that is, the same beginning, of course, in which God made the heaven and the earth 6332 —“and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by Him, and without Him nothing was made.” 6333 Now, since we have here clearly told us who the Maker was, that is, God, and what He made, even all things, and through whom He made them, even His Word, would not the order of the narrative have required that the source out of which all things were made by God through the Word should likewise be declared, if they had been in fact made out of anything? What, therefore, did not exist, the Scripture was unable to mention; and by not mentioning it, it has given us a clear proof that there was no such thing: for if there had been, the Scripture would have mentioned it.
Footnotes
488:6323Illam…quæ.
488:6324Condidit: “created.”
488:6325Prov. viii. 22.
488:6326In qua: in Wisdom.
489:6327Wisdom.
489:6328De cogitatu.
489:6329Species facti.
489:6330Proinde.
489:6331John i. 1.
489:6332Gen. i. 1.
489:6333John i. 1-3.
Chapter XXI.—A Retort of Heresy Answered. That Scripture Should in So Many Words Tell Us that the World Was Made of Nothing is Superfluous.
But, you will say to me, if you determine that all things were made of nothing, on the ground that it is not told us that anything was made out of pre-existent Matter, take care that it be not contended on the opposite side, that on the same ground all things were made out of Matter, because it is not likewise expressly said that anything was made out of nothing. Some arguments may, of course, 6334 be thus retorted easily enough; but it does not follow that they are on that account fairly admissible, where there is a diversity in the cause. For I maintain that, even if the Scripture has not expressly declared that all things were made out of nothing—just as it abstains (from saying that they were formed) out of Matter—there was no such pressing need for expressly indicating the creation of all things out of nothing, as there was of their creation out of Matter, if that had been their origin. Because, in the case of what is made out of nothing, the very fact of its not being indicated that it was made of any particular thing shows that it was made of nothing; and there is no danger of its being supposed that it was made of anything, when there is no indication at all of what it was made of. In the case, however, of that which is made out of something, unless the very fact be plainly declared, that it was made out of something, there will be danger, until 6335 it is shown of what it was made, first of its appearing to be made of nothing, because it is not said of what it was made; and then, should it be of such a nature 6336 as to have the appearance of having certainly been made of something, there will be a similar risk of its seeming to have been made of a far different material from the proper one, so long as there is an absence of statement of what it was made of. Then, if God had been unable to make all things of nothing, the Scripture could not possibly have added that He had made all things of nothing: (there could have been no room for such a statement,) but it must by all means have informed us that He had made all things out of Matter, since Matter must have been the source; because the one case was quite to be understood, 6337 if it were not actually stated, whereas the other case would be left in doubt unless it were stated.
Footnotes
489:6334Plane.
489:6335Dum ostenditur: which Oehler and Rigalt. construe as “donec ostendatur.” One reading has “dum non ostenditur,” “so long as it is not shown.”
489:6336Ea conditione.
489:6337In totum habebat intelligi.
Chapter XXII.—This Conclusion Confirmed by the Usage of Holy Scripture in Its History of the Creation. Hermogenes in Danger of the Woe Pronounced Against Adding to Scripture.
And to such a degree has the Holy Ghost made this the rule of His Scripture, that whenever anything is made out of anything, He mentions both the thing that is made and the thing of which it is made. “Let the earth,” says He, “bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, after its kind. And it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after its kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after its kind.” 6338 And again: “And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that have life, and fowl that may fly above the earth through the firmament of heaven. And it was so. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind.” 6339 Again afterwards: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beasts of the earth after their kind.” 6340 If therefore God, when producing other things out of things which had been already made, indicates them by the prophet, and tells us what He has produced from such and such a source 6341 (although we might ourselves suppose them to be derived from some source or other, short of nothing; 6342 since there had already been created certain things, from which they might easily seem to have been made); if the Holy Ghost took upon Himself so great a concern for our instruction, that we might know from what everything was produced, 6343 would He not in like manner have kept us well informed about both the heaven and the earth, by indicating to us what it was that He made them of, if their original consisted of any material substance, so that the more He seemed to have made them of nothing, the less in fact was there as yet made, from which He could appear to have made them? Therefore, just as He shows us the original out of which He drew such things as were derived from a given source, so also with regard to those things of which He does not point out whence He produced them, He confirms (by that silence our assertion) that they were produced out of nothing. “In the beginning,” then, “God made the heaven and the earth.” 6344 I revere 6345 the fulness of His Scripture, in which He manifests to me both the Creator and the creation. In the gospel, moreover, I discover a Minister and Witness of the Creator, even His Word. 6346 But whether all things were made out of any underlying Matter, I have as yet failed anywhere to find. Where such a statement is written, Hermogenes’ shop 6347 must tell us. If it is nowhere written, then let it fear the woe which impends on all who add to or take away from the written word. 6348
Footnotes
490:6338Gen. 1:11, 12.
490:6339Gen. 1:20, 21.
490:6340Gen. 1.24.
490:6341Quid unde protulerit: properly a double question ="what was produced, and whence?”
490:6342Unde unde…dumne.
490:6343Quid unde processerit: properly a double question ="what was produced, and whence?”
490:6344Gen. i. 1.
490:6345Adoro: reverently admire.
490:6346John i. 3.
490:6347Officina.
490:6348Rev. 22:18, 19.
Chapter XXIII.—Hermogenes Pursued to Another Passage of Scripture. The Absurdity of His Interpretation Exposed.
But he draws an argument from the following words, where it is written: “And the earth was without form, and void.” 6349 For he resolves 6350 the word earth into Matter, because that which is made out of it is the earth. And to the word was he gives the same direction, as if it pointed to what had always existed unbegotten and unmade. It was without form, moreover, and void, because he will have Matter to have existed shapeless and confused, and without the finish of a maker’s hand. 6351 Now these opinions of his I will refute singly; but first I wish to say to him, by way of general answer: We are of opinion that Matter is pointed at in these terms. But yet does the Scripture intimate that, because Matter was in existence before all, anything of like condition 6352 was even formed out of it? Nothing of the kind. Matter might have had existence, if it so pleased—or rather if Hermogenes so pleased. It might, I say, have existed, and yet God might not have made anything out of it, either as it was unsuitable to Him to have required the aid of anything, or at least because He is not shown to have made anything out of Matter. Its existence must therefore be without a cause, you will say. Oh, no! certainly 6353 not without cause. For even if the world were not made out of it, yet a heresy has been hatched there from; and a specially impudent one too, because it is not Matter which has produced the heresy, but the heresy has rather made Matter itself.
Footnotes
490:6349Gen. i. 2.
490:6350Redigit in.
490:6351Inconditam: we have combined the two senses of the word.
490:6352Tale aliquid.
490:6353Plane: ironical.
Chapter XXIV.—Earth Does Not Mean Matter as Hermogenes Would Have It.
I now return to the several points 6354 by means of which he thought that Matter was signified. And first I will inquire about the terms. For we read only of one of them, Earth; the other, namely Matter, we do not meet with. I ask, then, since Matter is not mentioned in Scripture, how the term earth can be applied to it, which marks a substance of another kind? There is all the greater need why mention should also have been made of Matter, if this has acquired the further sense of Earth, in order that I may be sure that Earth is one and the same name as Matter, and so not claim the designation for merely one substance, as the proper name thereof, and by which it is better known; or else be unable (if I should feel the inclination), to apply it to some particular species of Matter, instead, indeed, 6355 of making it the common term 6356 of all Matter. For when a proper name does not exist for that thing to which a common term is ascribed, the less apparent 6357 is the object to which it may be ascribed, the more capable will it be of being applied to any other object whatever. Therefore, even supposing that Hermogenes could show us the name 6358 Matter, he is bound to prove to us further, that the same object has the surname 6359 Earth, in order that he may claim for it both designations alike.
Footnotes
490:6354Articulos.
491:6355Nec utique.
491:6356Communicare.
491:6357We have construed Oehler’s reading: “Quanto non comparet” (i.e., by a frequent ellipse of Tertullian, “quanto magis non comparet”). Fr. Junius, however, suspects that instead of “quanto” we should read “quando”: this would produce the sense, “since it is not apparent to what object it may be ascribed,” etc.
491:6358Nominatam.
491:6359Cognominatam.
Chapter XXV.—The Assumption that There are Two Earths Mentioned in the History of the Creation, Refuted.
He accordingly maintains that there are two earths set before us in the passage in question: one, which God made in the beginning; the other being the Matter of which God made the world, and concerning which it is said, “And the earth was without form, and void.” 6360 Of course, if I were to ask, to which of the two earths the name earth is best suited, 6361 I shall be told that the earth which was made derived the appellation from that of which it was made, on the ground that it is more likely that the offspring should get its name from the original, than the original from the offspring. This being the case, another question presents itself to us, whether it is right and proper that this earth which God made should have derived its name from that out of which He made it? For I find from Hermogenes and the rest of the Materialist heretics, 6362 that while the one earth was indeed “without form, and void,” this one of ours obtained from God in an equal degree 6363 both form, and beauty, and symmetry; and therefore that the earth which was created was a different thing from that out of which it was created. Now, having become a different thing, it could not possibly have shared with the other in its name, after it had declined from its condition. If earth was the proper name of the (original) Matter, this world of ours, which is not Matter, because it has become another thing, is unfit to bear the name of earth, seeing that that name belongs to something else, and is a stranger to its nature. But (you will tell me) Matter which has undergone creation, that is, our earth, had with its original a community of name no less than of kind. By no means. For although the pitcher is formed out of the clay, I shall no longer call it clay, but a pitcher; so likewise, although electrum 6364 is compounded of gold and silver, I shall yet not call it either gold or silver, but electrum. When there is a departure from the nature of any thing, there is likewise a relinquishment of its name—with a propriety which is alike demanded by the designation and the condition. How great a change indeed from the condition of that earth, which is Matter, has come over this earth of ours, is plain even from the fact that the latter has received this testimony to its goodness in Genesis, “And God saw that it was good;” 6365 while the former, according to Hermogenes, is regarded as the origin and cause of all evils. Lastly, if the one is Earth because the other is, why also is the one not Matter as the other is? Indeed, by this rule both the heaven and all creatures ought to have had the names of Earth and Matter, since they all consist of Matter. I have said enough touching the designation Earth, by which he will have it that Matter is understood. This, as everybody knows, is the name of one of the elements; for so we are taught by nature first, and afterwards by Scripture, except it be that credence must be given to that Silenus who talked so confidently in the presence of king Midas of another world, according to the account of Theopompus. But the same author informs us that there are also several gods.
Footnotes
491:6360Gen. i. 2.
491:6361Quæ cui nomen terræ accommodare debeat. This is literally a double question, asking about the fitness of the name, and to which earth it is best adapted.
491:6362He means those who have gone wrong on the eternity of matter.
491:6363Proinde.
491:6364A mixed metal, of the colour of amber.
491:6365Gen. i. 31.
Chapter XXVI.—The Method Observed in the History of the Creation, in Reply to the Perverse Interpretation of Hermogenes.
We, however, have but one God, and but one earth too, which in the beginning God made. 6366 The Scripture, which at its very outset proposes to run through the order thereof tells us as its first information that it was created; it next proceeds to set forth what sort of earth it was. 6367 In like manner with respect to the heaven, it informs us first of its creation—“In the beginning God made the heaven:” 6368 it then goes on to introduce its arrangement; how that God both separated “the water which was below the firmament from that which was above the firmament,” 6369 and called the firmament heaven, 6370 —the very thing He had created in the beginning. Similarly it (afterwards) treats of man: “And God created man, in the image of God made He him.” 6371 It next reveals how He made him: “And (the Lord) God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” 6372 Now this is undoubtedly 6373 the correct and fitting mode for the narrative. First comes a prefatory statement, then follow the details in full; 6374 first the subject is named, then it is described. 6375 How absurd is the other view of the account, 6376 when even before he 6377 had premised any mention of his subject, i.e. Matter, without even giving us its name, he all on a sudden promulged its form and condition, describing to us its quality before mentioning its existence,—pointing out the figure of the thing formed, but concealing its name! But how much more credible is our opinion, which holds that Scripture has only subjoined the arrangement of the subject after it has first duly described its formation and mentioned its name! Indeed, how full and complete 6378 is the meaning of these words: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth; but 6379 the earth was without form, and void,” 6380 —the very same earth, no doubt, which God made, and of which the Scripture had been speaking at that very moment. 6381 For that very “but” 6382 is inserted into the narrative like a clasp, 6383 (in its function) of a conjunctive particle, to connect the two sentences indissolubly together: “But the earth.” This word carries back the mind to that earth of which mention had just been made, and binds the sense thereunto. 6384 Take away this “but,” and the tie is loosened; so much so that the passage, “But the earth was without form, and void,” may then seem to have been meant for any other earth.
Footnotes
492:6366Gen. i. 1.
492:6367Qualitatem ejus: unless this means “how He made it,” like the “qualiter fecerit” below.
492:6368Gen. i. 1.
492:6369Gen. i. 7.
492:6370Gen. 1.8.
492:6371Gen. i. 27.
492:6372Gen. ii. 7.
492:6373Utique.
492:6374Prosequi.
492:6375Primo præfari, postea prosequi; nominare, deinde describere. This properly is an abstract statement, given with Tertullian’s usual terseness: “First you should (‘decet’) give your preface, then follow up with details: first name your subject, then describe it.”
492:6376Alioquin.
492:6377Hermogenes, whose view of the narrative is criticised.
492:6378Integer.
492:6379Autem.
492:6380Gen. 1:1, 2.
492:6381Cum maxime edixerat.
492:6382The “autem” of the note just before this.
492:6383Fibula.
492:6384Alligat sensum.
Chapter XXVII.—Some Hair-Splitting Use of Words in Which His Opponent Had Indulged.
But you next praise your eyebrows, and toss back your head, and beckon with your finger, in characteristic disdain, 6385 and say: There is the was, looking as if it pointed to an eternal existence,—making its subject, of course, unbegotten and unmade, and on that account worthy of being supposed to be Matter. Well now, for my own part, I shall resort to no affected protestation, 6386 but simply reply that “was” may be predicated of everything—even of a thing which has been created, which was born, which once was not, and which is not your Matter. For of everything which has being, from whatever source it has it, whether it has it by a beginning or without a beginning, the word “was” will be predicated from the very fact that it exists. To whatever thing the first tense 6387 of the verb is applicable for definition, to the same will be suitable the later form 6388 of the verb, when it has to descend to relation. “Est” (it is) forms the essential part 6389 of a definition, “erat” (it was) of a relation. Such are the trifles and subtleties of heretics, who wrest and bring into question the simple meaning of the commonest words. A grand question it is, to be sure, 6390 whether “the earth was,” which was made! The real point of discussion is, whether “being without form, and void,” is a state which is more suitable to that which was created, or to that of which it was created, so that the predicate (was) may appertain to the same thing to which the subject (that which was) also belongs. 6391
Footnotes
492:6385Implied in the emphatic tu.
492:6386Sine u lo lenocinio pronunciationis.
492:6387Prima positio: the first inflection perhaps, i.e. the present tense.
492:6388Declinatio: the past tense.
492:6389Caput.
492:6390Scilicet.
492:6391This seems to be the meaning of the obscure passage, “Ut ejusdem sit Erat cujus et quod erat.”
Chapter XXVIII.—A Curious Inconsistency in Hermogenes Exposed. Certain Expressions in The History of Creation Vindicated in The True Sense.
But we shall show not only that this condition 6392 agreed with this earth of ours, but that it did not agree with that other (insisted on by Hermogenes). For, inasmuch as pure Matter was thus subsistent with God, 6393 without the interposition indeed of any element at all (because as yet there existed nothing but itself and God), it could not of course have been invisible. Because, although Hermogenes contends that darkness was inherent in the substance of Matter, a position which we shall have to meet in its proper place, 6394 yet darkness is visible even to a human being (for the very fact that there is the darkness is an evident one), much more is it so to God. If indeed it 6395 had been invisible, its quality would not have been by any means discoverable. How, then, did Hermogenes find out 6396 that that substance was “without form,” and confused and disordered, which, as being invisible, was not palpable to his senses? If this mystery was revealed to him by God, he ought to give us his proof. I want to know also, whether (the substance in question) could have been described as “void.” That certainly is “void” which is imperfect. Equally certain is it, that nothing can be imperfect but that which is made; it is imperfect when it is not fully made. 6397 Certainly, you admit. Matter, therefore, which was not made at all, could not have been imperfect; and what was not imperfect was not “void.” Having no beginning, because it was not made, it was also unsusceptible of any void-condition. 6398 For this void-condition is an accident of beginning. The earth, on the contrary, which was made, was deservedly called “void.” For as soon as it was made, it had the condition of being imperfect, previous to its completion.
Footnotes
492:6392Habitum.
493:6393Deo subjacebat.
493:6394See below, ch. xxx. p. 494.
493:6395Matter.
493:6396“Compertus est” is here a deponent verb.
493:6397Minus factum.
493:6398Rudimento. Tertullian uses the word “rudis” (unformed) for the scriptural term (“void”); of this word “rudimentum” is the abstract.
Chapter XXIX.—The Gradual Development of Cosmical Order Out of Chaos in the Creation, Beautifully Stated.
God, indeed, consummated all His works in a due order; at first He paled them out, 6399 as it were, in their unformed elements, and then He arranged them 6400 in their finished beauty. For He did not all at once inundate light with the splendour of the sun, nor all at once temper darkness with the moon’s assuaging ray. 6401 The heaven He did not all at once bedeck 6402 with constellations and stars, nor did He at once fill the seas with their teeming monsters. 6403 The earth itself He did not endow with its varied fruitfulness all at once; but at first He bestowed upon it being, and then He filled it, that it might not be made in vain. 6404 For thus says Isaiah: “He created it not in vain; He formed it to be inhabited.” 6405 Therefore after it was made, and while awaiting its perfect state, 6406 it was “without form, and void:” “void” indeed, from the very fact that it was without form (as being not yet perfect to the sight, and at the same time unfurnished as yet with its other qualities); 6407 and “without form,” because it was still covered with waters, as if with the rampart of its fecundating moisture, 6408 by which is produced our flesh, in a form allied with its own. For to this purport does David say: 6409 “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and all that dwell therein: He hath founded it upon the seas, and on the streams hath He established it.” 6410 It was when the waters were withdrawn into their hollow abysses that the dry land became conspicuous, 6411 which was hitherto covered with its watery envelope. Then it forthwith becomes “visible,” 6412 God saying, “Let the water be gathered together into one mass, 6413 and let the dry land appear.” 6414 “Appear,” says He, not “be made.” It had been already made, only in its invisible condition it was then waiting 6415 to appear. “Dry,” because it was about to become such by its severance from the moisture, but yet “land.” “And God called the dry land Earth,” 6416 not Matter. And so, when it afterwards attains its perfection, it ceases to be accounted void, when God declares, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed after its kind, and according to its likeness, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit, whose seed is in itself, after its kind.” 6417 Again: “Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, after their kind.” 6418 Thus the divine Scripture accomplished its full order. For to that, which it had at first described as “without form (invisible) and void,” it gave both visibility and completion. Now no other Matter was “without form (invisible) and void.” Henceforth, then, Matter will have to be visible and complete. So that I must 6419 see Matter, since it has become visible. I must likewise recognize it as a completed thing, so as to be able to gather from it the herb bearing seed, and the tree yielding fruit, and that living creatures, made out of it, may minister to my need. Matter, however, is nowhere, 6420 but the Earth is here, confessed to my view. I see it, I enjoy it, ever since it ceased to be “without form (invisible), and void.” Concerning it most certainly did Isaiah speak when he said, “Thus saith the Lord that created the heavens, He was the God that formed the earth, and made it.” 6421 The same earth for certain did He form, which He also made. Now how did He form 6422 it? Of course by saying, “Let the dry land appear.” 6423 Why does He command it to appear, if it were not previously invisible? His purpose was also, that He might thus prevent His having made it in vain, by rendering it visible, and so fit for use. And thus, throughout, proofs arise to us that this earth which we inhabit is the very same which was both created and formed 6424 by God, and that none other was “Without form, and void,” than that which had been created and formed. It therefore follows that the sentence, “Now the earth was without form, and void,” applies to that same earth which God mentioned separately along with the heaven. 6425
Footnotes
493:6399Depalans.
493:6400Dedicans: “disposed” them.
493:6401Solatio lunæ: a beautiful expression!
493:6402Significavit.
493:6403Belluis.
493:6404In vacuum: void.
493:6405Isa. xlv. 18.
493:6406Futura etiam perfecta.
493:6407De reliquo nondum instructa.
493:6408Genitalis humoris.
493:6409Canit: “sing,” as the Psalmist.
493:6410Ps. xxiv. 1.
493:6411Emicantior.
493:6412“Visibilis” is here the opposite of the term “invisibilis,” which Tertullian uses for the Scripture phrase “without form.”
493:6413In congregatione una.
493:6414Gen. i. 9.
493:6415Sustinebat: i.e. expectabat (Oehler).
493:6416Gen. i. 10.
493:6417Gen. 1.11.
493:6418Gen. 1.24.
494:6419Volo.
494:6420He means, of course, the theoretic “Matter” of Hermogenes.
494:6421Isa. xlv. 18.
494:6422Demonstravit: “make it visible.” Tertullian here all along makes form and visibility synonymous.
494:6423Gen. i. 9.
494:6424Ostensam: “manifested” (see note 10, p. 96.)
494:6425Cum cælo separavit: Gen. i. 1.
Chapter XXX.—Another Passage in the Sacred History of the Creation, Released from the Mishandling of Hermogenes.
The following words will in like manner apparently corroborate the conjecture of Hermogenes, “And darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water;” 6426 as if these blended 6427 substances, presented us with arguments for his massive pile of Matter. 6428 Now, so discriminating an enumeration of certain and distinct elements (as we have in this passage), which severally designates “darkness,” “the deep,” “the Spirit of God,” “the waters,” forbids the inference that anything confused or (from such confusion) uncertain is meant. Still more, when He ascribed to them their own places, 6429 “darkness on the face of the deep,” “the Spirit upon the face of the waters,” He repudiated all confusion in the substances; and by demonstrating their separate position, 6430 He demonstrated also their distinction. Most absurd, indeed, would it be that Matter, which is introduced to our view as “without form,” should have its “formless” condition maintained by so many words indicative of form, 6431 without any intimation of what that confused body 6432 is, which must of course be supposed to be unique, 6433 since it is without form. 6434 For that which is without form is uniform; but even 6435 that which is without form, when it is blended together 6436 from various component parts, 6437 must necessarily have one outward appearance; 6438 and it has not any appearance, until it has the one appearance (which comes) from many parts combined. 6439 Now Matter either had those specific parts 6440 within itself, from the words indicative of which it had to be understood—I mean “darkness,” and “the deep,” and “the Spirit,” and “the waters”—or it had them not. If it had them, how is it introduced as being “without form?” 6441 If it had them not, how does it become known? 6442
Footnotes
494:6426Gen. i. 2.
494:6427Confusæ.
494:6428Massalis illius molis.
494:6429Situs.
494:6430Dispositionem.
494:6431Tot formarum vocabulis.
494:6432Corpus confusionis.
494:6433Unicum.
494:6434Informe.
494:6435Autem.
494:6436Confusum.
494:6437Ex varietate.
494:6438Unam speciem.
494:6439Unam ex multis speciem.
494:6440Istas species.
494:6441Non habens formas.
494:6442Agnoscitur.
Chapter XXXI.—A Further Vindication of the Scripture Narrative of the Creation, Against a Futile View of Hermogenes.
But this circumstance, too, will be caught at, that Scripture meant to indicate of the heaven only, and this earth of yours, 6443 that God made it in the beginning, while nothing of the kind is said of the above-mentioned specific parts; 6444 and therefore that these, which are not described as having been made, appertain to unformed Matter. To this point 6445 also we must give an answer. Holy Scripture would be sufficiently explicit, if it had declared that the heaven and the earth, as the very highest works of creation, were made by God, possessing of course their own special appurtenances, 6446 which might be understood to be implied in these highest works themselves. Now the appurtenances of the heaven and the earth, made then in the beginning, were the darkness and the deep, and the spirit, and the waters. For the depth and the darkness underlay the earth. Since the deep was under the earth, and the darkness was over the deep, undoubtedly both the darkness and the deep were under the earth. Below the heaven, too, lay the spirit 6447 and the waters. For since the waters were over the earth, which they covered, whilst the spirit was over the waters, both the spirit and the waters were alike over the earth. Now that which is over the earth, is of course under the heaven. And even as the earth brooded over the deep and the darkness, so also did the heaven brood over the spirit and the waters, and embrace them. Nor, indeed, is there any novelty in mentioning only that which contains, as pertaining to the whole, 6448 and understanding that which is contained as included in it, in its character of a portion. 6449 Suppose now I should say the city built a theatre and a circus, but the stage 6450 was of such and such a kind, and the statues were on the canal, and the obelisk was reared above them all, would it follow that, because I did not distinctly state that these specific things 6451 were made by the city, they were therefore not made by it along with the circus and the theatre? Did I not, indeed, refrain from specially mentioning the formation of these particular things because they were implied in the things which I had already said were made, and might be understood to be inherent in the things in which they were contained? But this example may be an idle one as being derived from a human circumstance; I will take another, which has the authority of Scripture itself. It says that “God made man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” 6452 Now, although it here mentions the nostrils, 6453 it does not say that they were made by God; so again it speaks of skin 6454 and bones, and flesh and eyes, and sweat and blood, in subsequent passages, 6455 and yet it never intimated that they had been created by God. What will Hermogenes have to answer? That the human limbs must belong to Matter, because they are not specially mentioned as objects of creation? Or are they included in the formation of man? In like manner, the deep and the darkness, and the spirit and the waters, were as members of the heaven and the earth. For in the bodies the limbs were made, in the bodies the limbs too were mentioned. No element but what is a member of that element in which it is contained. But all elements are contained in the heaven and the earth.
Footnotes
494:6443Ista: the earth, which has been the subject of contention.
494:6444Speciebus.
494:6445Scrupulo: doubt or difficulty.
494:6446Suggestus: “Hoc est, apparatus, ornatus” (Oehler).
495:6447It will be observed that Tertullian applies the spiritus to the wind as a creature.
495:6448Qua summale.
495:6449Qua portionale.
495:6450Scena.
495:6451Has species.
495:6452Gen. ii. 7.
495:6453Both in the quotation and here, Tertullian read “faciem” where we read “nostrils.”
495:6454Cutem: another reading has “costam,” rib.
495:6455See Gen. 2:21, 23, Gen. 3:5, 19, Gen. 4:10.
Chapter XXXII.—The Account of the Creation in Genesis a General One, Corroborated, However, by Many Other Passages of the Old Testament, Which Give Account of Specific Creations. Further Cavillings Confuted.
This is the answer I should give in defence of the Scripture before us, for seeming here to set forth 6456 the formation of the heaven and the earth, as if (they were) the sole bodies made. It could not but know that there were those who would at once in the bodies understand their several members also, and therefore it employed this concise mode of speech. But, at the same time, it foresaw that there would be stupid and crafty men, who, after paltering with the virtual meaning, 6457 would require for the several members a word descriptive of their formation too. It is therefore because of such persons, that Scripture in other passages teaches us of the creation of the individual parts. You have Wisdom saying, “But before the depths was I brought forth,” 6458 in order that you may believe that the depths were also “brought forth”—that is, created—just as we create sons also, though we “bring them forth.” It matters not whether the depth was made or born, so that a beginning be accorded to it, which however would not be, if it were subjoined 6459 to matter. Of darkness, indeed, the Lord Himself by Isaiah says, “I formed the light, and I created darkness.” 6460 Of the wind 6461 also Amos says, “He that strengtheneth the thunder 6462 , and createth the wind, and declareth His Christ 6463 unto men;” 6464 thus showing that that wind was created which was reckoned with the formation of the earth, which was wafted over the waters, balancing and refreshing and animating all things: not (as some suppose) meaning God Himself by the spirit, 6465 on the ground that “God is a Spirit,” 6466 because the waters would not be able to bear up their Lord; but He speaks of that spirit of which the winds consist, as He says by Isaiah, “Because my spirit went forth from me, and I made every blast.” 6467 In like manner the same Wisdom says of the waters, “Also when He made the fountains strong, things which 6468 are under the sky, I was fashioning 6469 them along with Him.” 6470 Now, when we prove that these particular things were created by God, although they are only mentioned in Genesis, without any intimation of their having been made, we shall perhaps receive from the other side the reply, that these were made, it is true, 6471 but out of Matter, since the very statement of Moses, “And darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters,” 6472 refers to Matter, as indeed do all those other Scriptures here and there, 6473 which demonstrate that the separate parts were made out of Matter. It must follow, then, 6474 that as earth consisted of earth, so also depth consisted of depth, and darkness of darkness, and the wind and waters of wind and waters. And, as we said above, 6475 Matter could not have been without form, since it had specific parts, which were formed out of it—although as separate things 6476 —unless, indeed, they were not separate, but were the very same with those out of which they came. For it is really impossible that those specific things, which are set forth under the same names, should have been diverse; because in that case 6477 the operation of God might seem to be useless, 6478 if it made things which existed already; since that alone would be a creation, 6479 when things came into being, which had not been (previously) made. Therefore, to conclude, either Moses then pointed to Matter when he wrote the words: “And darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters;” or else, inasmuch as these specific parts of creation are afterwards shown in other passages to have been made by God, they ought to have been with equal explicitness 6480 shown to have been made out of the Matter which, according to you, Moses had previously mentioned; 6481 or else, finally, if Moses pointed to those specific parts, and not to Matter, I want to know where Matter has been pointed out at all.
Footnotes
495:6456Quatenus hic commendare videtur.
495:6457Dissimulato tacito intellectu.
495:6458Prov. viii. 24.
495:6459Subjecta.
495:6460Isa. xlv. 7.
495:6461De spiritu. This shows that Tertullian took the spirit of Gen. i. 2 in the inferior sense.
495:6462So also the Septuagint.
495:6463So also the Septuagint.
495:6464Amos iv. 13.
495:6465The “wind.”
495:6466John iv. 24.
495:6467Flatum: “breath;” so LXX. of Isa. lvii. 16.
496:6468Fontes, quæ.
496:6469Modulans.
496:6470Prov. viii. 28.
496:6471Plane.
496:6472Gen. i. 2.
496:6473In disperso.
496:6474Ergo: Tertullian’s answer.
496:6475Ch. xxx., towards the end.
496:6476Ut et aliæ.
496:6477Jam.
496:6478Otiosa.
496:6479Generatio: creation in the highest sense of matter issuing from the maker. Another reading has “generosiora essent,” for our “generatio sola esset,” meaning that, “those things would be nobler which had not been made,” which is obviously quite opposed to Tertullian’s argument.
496:6480Æque.
496:6481Præmiserat.
Chapter XXXIII.—Statement of the True Doctrine Concerning Matter. Its Relation to God’s Creation of the World.
But although Hermogenes finds it amongst his own colourable pretences 6482 (for it was not in his power to discover it in the Scriptures of God), it is enough for us, both that it is certain that all things were made by God, and that there is no certainty whatever that they were made out of Matter. And even if Matter had previously existed, we must have believed that it had been really made by God, since we maintained (no less) when we held the rule of faith to be, 6483 that nothing except God was uncreated. 6484 Up to this point there is room for controversy, until Matter is brought to the test of the Scriptures, and fails to make good its case. 6485 The conclusion of the whole is this: I find that there was nothing made, except out of nothing; because that which I find was made, I know did not once exist. Whatever 6486 was made out of something, has its origin in something made: for instance, out of the ground was made the grass, and the fruit, and the cattle, and the form of man himself; so from the waters were produced the animals which swim and fly. The original fabrics 6487 out of which such creatures were produced I may call their materials, 6488 but then even these were created by God.
Footnotes
496:6482Colores. See our “Anti-Marcion,” p. 217, Edin., where the word pretension should stand instead of precedent.
496:6483Præscribentes.
496:6484Innatum: see above, note 12.
496:6485Donec ad Scripturas provocata deficiat exibitio materiæ.
496:6486Etiamsi quid.
496:6487Origines.
496:6488Materias. There is a point in this use of the plural of the controverted term materia.
Chapter XXXIV.—A Presumption that All Things Were Created by God Out of Nothing Afforded by the Ultimate Reduction of All Things to Nothing. Scriptures Proving This Reduction Vindicated from Hermogenes’ Charge of Being Merely Figurative.
Besides, 6489 the belief that everything was made from nothing will be impressed upon us by that ultimate dispensation of God which will bring back all things to nothing. For “the very heaven shall be rolled together as a scroll;” 6490 nay, it shall come to nothing along with the earth itself, with which it was made in the beginning. “Heaven and earth shall pass away,” 6491 says He. “The first heaven and the first earth passed away,” 6492 “and there was found no place for them,” 6493 because, of course, that which comes to an end loses locality. In like manner David says, “The heavens, the works of Thine hands, shall themselves perish. For even as a vesture shall He change them, and they shall be changed.” 6494 Now to be changed is to fall from that primitive state which they lose whilst undergoing the change. “And the stars too shall fall from heaven, even as a fig-tree casteth her green figs 6495 when she is shaken of a mighty wind.” 6496 “The mountains shall melt like wax at the presence of the Lord;” 6497 that is, “when He riseth to shake terribly the earth.” 6498 “But I will dry up the pools;” 6499 and “they shall seek water, and they shall find none.” 6500 Even “the sea shall be no more.” 6501 Now if any person should go so far as to suppose that all these passages ought to be spiritually interpreted, he will yet be unable to deprive them of the true accomplishment of those issues which must come to pass just as they have been written. For all figures of speech necessarily arise out of real things, not out of chimerical ones; because nothing is capable of imparting anything of its own for a similitude, except it actually be that very thing which it imparts in the similitude. I return therefore to the principle 6502 which defines that all things which have come from nothing shall return at last to nothing. For God would not have made any perishable thing out of what was eternal, that is to say, out of Matter; neither out of greater things would He have created inferior ones, to whose character it would be more agreeable to produce greater things out of inferior ones,—in other words, what is eternal out of what is perishable. This is the promise He makes even to our flesh, and it has been His will to deposit within us this pledge of His own virtue and power, in order that we may believe that He has actually 6503 awakened the universe out of nothing, as if it had been steeped in death, 6504 in the sense, of course, of its previous non-existence for the purpose of its coming into existence. 6505
Footnotes
496:6489Ceterum.
496:6490Isa. 34:4, Matt. 24:29, 2 Pet. 3:10, Rev. 6:14.
496:6491Matt. xxiv. 35.
496:6492Rev. xxi. 1.
496:6493Rev. xx. 11.
497:6494Ps. 2:25, 26.
497:6495Acerba sua “grossos suos” (Rigalt.). So our marginal reading.
497:6496Rev. vi. 13.
497:6497Ps. xcvii. 5.
497:6498Isa. ii. 19.
497:6499Isa. xlii. 15.
497:6500Isa. xli. 17.
497:6501Etiam mare hactenus, Rev. xxi. 1.
497:6502Causam.
497:6503Etiam.
497:6504Emortuam.
497:6505In hoc, ut esset. Contrasted with the “non erat” of the previous sentence, this must be the meaning, as if it were “ut fieret.”
Chapter XXXV.—Contradictory Propositions Advanced by Hermogenes Respecting Matter and Its Qualities.
As regards all other points touching Matter, although there is no necessity why we should treat of them (for our first point was the manifest proof of its existence), we must for all that pursue our discussion just as if it did exist, in order that its non-existence may be the more apparent, when these other points concerning it prove inconsistent with each other, and in order at the same time that Hermogenes may acknowledge his own contradictory positions. Matter, says he, at first sight seems to us to be incorporeal; but when examined by the light of right reason, it is found to be neither corporeal nor incorporeal. What is this right reason of yours, 6506 which declares nothing right, that is, nothing certain? For, if I mistake not, everything must of necessity be either corporeal or incorporeal (although I may for the moment 6507 allow that there is a certain incorporeality in even substantial things, 6508 although their very substance is the body of particular things); at all events, after the corporeal and the incorporeal there is no third state. But if it be contended 6509 that there is a third state discovered by this right reason of Hermogenes, which makes Matter neither corporeal nor incorporeal, (I ask,) Where is it? what sort of thing is it? what is it called? what is its description? what is it understood to be? This only has his reason declared, that Matter is neither corporeal nor incorporeal.
Footnotes
497:6506Ista.
497:6507Interim.
497:6508De substantiis duntaxat.
497:6509Age nunc sit: “But grant that there is this third state.”
Chapter XXXVI.—Other Absurd Theories Respecting Matter and Its Incidents Exposed in an Ironical Strain. Motion in Matter. Hermogenes’ Conceits Respecting It.
But see what a contradiction he next advances 6510 (or perhaps some other reason 6511 occurs to him), when he declares that Matter partly corporeal and partly incorporeal. Then must Matter be considered (to embrace) both conditions, in order that it may not have either? For it will be corporeal, and incorporeal in spite of 6512 the declaration of that antithesis, 6513 which is plainly above giving any reason for its opinion, just as that “other reason” also was. Now, by the corporeal part of Matter, he means that of which bodies are created; but by the incorporeal part of Matter, he means its uncreated 6514 motion. If, says he, Matter were simply a body, there would appear to be in it nothing incorporeal, that is, (no) motion; if, on the other hand, it had been wholly incorporeal no body could be formed out of it. What a peculiarly right 6515 reason have we here! Only if you make your sketches as right as you make your reason, Hermogenes, no painter would be more stupid 6516 than yourself. For who is going to allow you to reckon motion as a moiety of Matter, seeing that it is not a substantial thing, because it is not corporeal, but an accident (if indeed it be even that) of a substance and a body? Just as action 6517 is, and impulsion, just as a slip is, or a fall, so is motion. When anything moves even of itself, its motion is the result of impulse; 6518 but certainly it is no part of its substance in your sense, 6519 when you make motion the incorporeal part of matter. All things, indeed, 6520 have motion—either of themselves as animals, or of others as inanimate things; but yet we should not say that either a man or a stone was both corporeal and incorporeal because they had both a body and motion: we should say rather that all things have one form of simple 6521 corporeality, which is the essential quality 6522 of substance. If any incorporeal incidents accrue to them, as actions, or passions, or functions, 6523 or desires, we do not reckon these parts as of the things. How then does he contrive to assign an integral portion of Matter to motion, which does not pertain to substance, but to a certain condition 6524 of substance? Is not this incontrovertible? 6525 Suppose you had taken it into your head 6526 to represent matter as immoveable, would then the immobility seem to you to be a moiety of its form? Certainly not. Neither, in like manner, could motion. But I shall be at liberty to speak of motion elsewhere. 6527
Footnotes
497:6510Subicit.
497:6511Other than “the right reason” above named.
497:6512Adversus.
497:6513The original, “Adversus renuntiationem reciprocationis illius,” is an obscure expression. Oehler, who gives this reading in his edition, after the editio princeps, renders the term “reciprocationis” by the phrase “negative conversion” of the proposition that Matter is corporeal and incorporeal (q.d. “Matter is neither corporeal nor incorporeal”). Instead, however, of the reading “reciprocationis,” Oehler would gladly read “rectæ rationis,” after most of the editions. He thinks that this allusion to “the right reason,” of which Hermogenes boasted, and of which the absurd conclusion is exposed in the context, very well suits the sarcastic style of Tertullian. If this, the general reading, be adopted, we must render the whole clause this: “For it will be corporeal and incorporeal, in spite of the declaration of that right reason (of Hermogenes), which is plainly enough above giving any reason,” etc. etc.
498:6514Inconditum. See above ch. xviii., in the middle. Notwithstanding the absurdity of Hermogenes idea, it is impossible to translate this word irregular as it has been proposed to do by Genoude.
498:6515Rectior.
498:6516Bardior.
498:6517Actus: being driven.
498:6518Actus ejus est motus.
498:6519Sicut tu.
498:6520Denique.
498:6521Solius.
498:6522Res.
498:6523Officia.
498:6524Habitum.
498:6525Quid enim?
498:6526Si placuisset tibi.
498:6527See below, ch. xli., p. 500.
Chapter XXXVII.—Ironical Dilemmas Respecting Matter, and Sundry Moral Qualities Fancifully Attributed to It.
I see now that you are coming back again to that reason, which has been in the habit of declaring to you nothing in the way of certainty. For just as you introduce to our notice Matter as being neither corporeal nor incorporeal, so you allege of it that it is neither good nor evil; and you say, whilst arguing further on it in the same strain: “If it were good, seeing that it had ever been so, it would not require the arrangement of itself by God; 6528 if it were naturally evil, it would not have admitted of a change 6529 for the better, nor would God have ever applied to such a nature any attempt at arrangement of it, for His labour would have been in vain.” Such are your words, which it would have been well if you had remembered in other passages also, so as to have avoided any contradiction of them. As, however, we have already treated to some extent of this ambiguity of good and evil touching Matter, I will now reply to the only proposition and argument of yours which we have before us. I shall not stop to repeat my opinion, that it was your bounden duty to have said for certain that Matter was either good or bad, or in some third condition; but (I must observe) that you have not here even kept to the statement which you chose to make before. Indeed, you retract what you declared—that Matter is neither good nor evil; because you imply that it is evil when you say, “If it were good, it would not require to be set in order by God;” so again, when you add, “If it were naturally evil, it would not admit of any change for the better,” you seem to intimate 6530 that it is good. And so you attribute to it a close relation 6531 to good and evil, although you declared it neither good nor evil. With a view, however, to refute the argument whereby you thought you were going to clinch your proposition, I here contend: If Matter had always been good, why should it not have still wanted a change for the better? Does that which is good never desire, never wish, never feel able to advance, so as to change its good for a better? And in like manner, if Matter had been by nature evil, why might it not have been changed by God as the more powerful Being, as able to convert the nature of stones into children of Abraham? 6532 Surely by such means you not only compare the Lord with Matter, but you even put Him below 6533 it, since you affirm that 6534 the nature of Matter could not possibly be brought under control by Him, and trained to something better. But although you are here disinclined to allow that Matter is by nature evil, yet in another passage you will deny having made such an admission. 6535
Footnotes
498:6528Compositionem Dei.
498:6529Non accepisset translationem.
498:6530Subostendis.
498:6531Affinem.
498:6532Matt. iii. 9.
498:6533Subicis.
498:6534This is the force of the subjunctive verb.
499:6535Te confessum.
Chapter XXXIII.—Other Speculations of Hermogenes, About Matter and Some of Its Adjuncts, Shown to Be Absurd. For Instance, Its Alleged Infinity.
My observations touching the site 6536 of Matter, as also concerning its mode 6537 have one and the same object in view—to meet and refute your perverse positions. You put Matter below God, and thus, of course, you assign a place to it below God. Therefore Matter is local. 6538 Now, if it is local, it is within locality; if within locality, it is bounded 6539 by the place within which it is; if it is bounded, it has an outline, 6540 which (painter as you are in your special vocation) you know is the boundary to every object susceptible of outline. Matter, therefore, cannot be infinite, which, since it is in space, is bounded by space; and being thus determinable by space, it is susceptible of an outline. You, however, make it infinite, when you say: “It is on this account infinite, because it is always existent.” And if any of your disciples should choose to meet us by declaring your meaning to be that Matter is infinite in time, not in its corporeal mass, 6541 still what follows will show that (you mean) corporeal infinity to be an attribute of Matter, that it is in respect of bulk immense and uncircumscribed. “Wherefore,” say you, “it is not fabricated as a whole, but in its parts.” 6542 In bulk, therefore, is it infinite, not in time. And you contradict yourself 6543 when you make Matter infinite in bulk, and at the same time ascribe place to it, including it within space and local outline. But yet at the same time I cannot tell why God should not have entirely formed it, 6544 unless it be because He was either impotent or envious. I want therefore to know the moiety of that which was not wholly formed (by God), in order that I may understand what kind of thing the entirety was. It was only right that God should have made it known as a model of antiquity, 6545 to set off the glory of His work.
Footnotes
499:6536De situ.
499:6537Oehler here restores the reading “quod et de modo,” instead of “de motu,” for which Pamelius contends. Oehler has the mss. on his side, and Fr. Junius, who interprets “modo” here to mean “mass or quantity.” Pamelius wishes to suit the passage to the preceding context (see ch. xxxvi.); Junius thinks it is meant rather to refer to what follows, by which it is confirmed.
499:6538In loco.
499:6539Determinatur.
499:6540Lineam extremam.
499:6541Modo corporis: or “bulk.”
499:6542Nec tota fabricatur, sed partes ejus. This perhaps means: “It is not its entirety, but its parts, which are used in creation.”
499:6543Obduceris: here a verb of the middle voice.
499:6544In reference to the opinion above mentioned, “Matter is not fabricated as whole, but in parts.”
499:6545Ut exemplarium antiquitatis.
Chapter XXXIX.—These Latter Speculations Shown to Be Contradictory to the First Principles Respecting Matter, Formerly Laid Down by Hermogenes.
Well, now, since it seems to you to be the correcter thing, 6546 let Matter be circumscribed 6547 by means of changes and displacements; let it also be capable of comprehension, since (as you say) it is used as material by God, 6548 on the ground of its being convertible, mutable, and separable. For its changes, you say, show it to be inseparable. And here you have swerved from your own lines 6549 which you prescribed respecting the person of God when you laid down the rule that God made it not out of His own self, because it was not possible for Him to become divided 6550 seeing that He is eternal and abiding for ever, and therefore unchangeable and indivisible. Since Matter too is estimated by the same eternity, having neither beginning nor end, it will be unsusceptible of division, of change, for the same reason that God also is. Since it is associated with Him in the joint possession of eternity, it must needs share with Him also the powers, the laws, and the conditions of eternity. In like manner, when you say, “All things simultaneously throughout the universe 6551 possess portions of it, 6552 that so the whole may be ascertained from 6553 its parts,” you of course mean to indicate those parts which were produced out of it, and which are now visible to us. How then is this possession (of Matter) by all things throughout the universe effected—that is, of course, from the very beginning 6554 —when the things which are now visible to us are different in their condition 6555 from what they were in the beginning?
Footnotes
499:6546Rectius.
499:6547Definitiva.
499:6548Ut quæ fabricatur, inquis, a Deo.
499:6549Lineis. Tertullian often refers to Hermogenes’ profession of painting.
499:6550In partes venire.
499:6551Omnia ex omnibus.
499:6552i.e. of Matter.
499:6553Dinoscatur ex.
499:6554Utique ex pristinis.
499:6555Aliter habeant.
Chapter XL.—Shapeless Matter an Incongruous Origin for God’s Beautiful Cosmos. Hermogenes Does Not Mend His Argument by Supposing that Only a Portion of Matter Was Used in the Creation.
You say that Matter was reformed for the better 6556 —from a worse condition, of course; and thus you would make the better a copy of the worse. Everything was in confusion, but now it is reduced to order; and would you also say, that out of order, disorder is produced? No one thing is the exact mirror 6557 of another thing; that is to say, it is not its co-equal. Nobody ever found himself in a barber’s looking-glass look like an ass 6558 instead of a man; unless it be he who supposes that unformed and shapeless Matter answers to Matter which is now arranged and beautified in the fabric of the world. What is there now that is without form in the world, what was there once that was formed 6559 in Matter, that the world is the mirror of Matter? Since the world is known among the Greeks by a term denoting ornament, 6560 how can it present the image of unadorned 6561 Matter, in such a way that you can say the whole is known by its parts? To that whole will certainly belong even the portion which has not yet become formed; and you have already declared that the whole of Matter was not used as material in the creation. 6562 It follows, then, that this rude, and confused, and unarranged portion cannot be recognized in the polished, and distinct and well-arranged parts of creation, which indeed can hardly with propriety be called parts of Matter, since they have quitted 6563 its condition, by being separated from it in the transformation they have undergone.
Footnotes
499:6556In melius reformatam.
500:6557Speculum.
500:6558Mulus.
500:6559Speciatum: εἰδοποιηθέν, “arranged in specific forms.”
500:6560Κόσμος.
500:6561Inornatæ: unfurnished with forms of beauty.
500:6562Non totam eam fabricatam.
500:6563Recesserunt a forma ejus.
Chapter XLI.—Sundry Quotations from Hermogenes. Now Uncertain and Vague are His Speculations Respecting Motion in Matter, and the Material Qualities of Good and Evil.
I come back to the point of motion, 6564 that I may show how slippery you are at every step. Motion in Matter was disordered, and confused, and turbulent. This is why you apply to it the comparison of a boiler of hot water surging over. Now how is it, that in another passage another sort of motion is affirmed by you? For when you want to represent Matter as neither good nor evil, you say: “Matter, which is the substratum (of creation) 6565 possessing as it does motion in an equable impulse, 6566 tends in no very great degree either to good or to evil.” Now if it had this equable impulse, it could not be turbulent, nor be like the boiling water of the caldron; it would rather be even and regular, oscillating indeed of its own accord between good and evil, but yet not prone or tending to either side. It would swing, as the phrase is, in a just and exact balance. Now this is not unrest; this is not turbulence or inconstancy; 6567 but rather the regularity, and evenness, and exactitude of a motion, inclining to neither side. If it oscillated this way and that way, and inclined rather to one particular side, it would plainly in that case merit the reproach of unevenness, and inequality, and turbulence. Moreover, although the motion of Matter was not prone either to good or to evil, it would still, of course, oscillate between good and evil; so that from this circumstance too it is obvious that Matter is contained within certain limits, 6568 because its motion, while prone to neither good nor evil, since it had no natural bent either way, oscillated from either between both, and therefore was contained within the limits of the two. But you, in fact, place both good and evil in a local habitation, 6569 when you assert that motion in Matter inclined to neither of them. For Matter which was local, 6570 when inclining neither hither nor thither, inclined not to the places in which good and evil were. But when you assign locality to good and evil, you make them corporeal by making them local, since those things which have local space must needs first have bodily substance. In fact, 6571 incorporeal things could not have any locality of their own except in a body, when they have access to a body. 6572 But when Matter inclined not to good and evil, it was as corporeal or local essences that it did not incline to them. You err, therefore, when you will have it that good and evil are substances. For you make substances of the things to which you assign locality; 6573 but you assign locality when you keep motion in Matter poised equally distant from both sides. 6574
Footnotes
500:6564From which he has digressed since ch. xxxvi., p. 497.
500:6565Subjacens materia.
500:6566Æqualis momenti motum.
500:6567Passivitas.
500:6568Determinabilem.
500:6569In loco facis: “you localise.”
500:6570In loco.
500:6571Denique.
500:6572Cum corpori accedunt: or, “when they are added to a body.”
500:6573Loca: “places;” one to each.
500:6574Cum ab utraque regione suspendis: equally far from good and evil.
Chapter XLII.—Further Exposure of Inconsistencies in the Opinions of Hermogenes Respecting the Divine Qualities of Matter.
You have thrown out all your views loosely and at random, 6575 in order that it might not be apparent, by too close a proximity, how contrary they are to one another. I, however, mean to gather them together and compare them. You allege that motion in Matter is without regularity, 6576 and you go on to say that Matter aims at a shapeless condition, and then, in another passage, that it desires to be set in order by God. Does that, then, which affects to be without form, want to be put into shape? Or does that which wants to be put into shape, affect to be without form? You are unwilling that God should seem to be equal to Matter; and then again you say that it has a common condition 6577 with God. “For it is impossible,” you say, “if it has nothing in common with God, that it can be set in order by Him.” But if it had anything in common with God, it did not want to be set in order, 6578 being, forsooth, a part of the Deity through a community of condition; or else even God was susceptible of being set in order 6579 by Matter, by His having Himself something in common with it. And now you herein subject God to necessity, since there was in Matter something on account of which He gave it form. You make it, however, a common attribute of both of them, that they set themselves in motion by themselves, and that they are ever in motion. What less do you ascribe to Matter than to God? There will be found all through a fellowship of divinity in this freedom and perpetuity of motion.
Only in God motion is regular, 6580 in Matter irregular. 6581 In both, however, there is equally the attribute of Deity—both alike having free and eternal motion. At the same time, you assign more to Matter, to which belonged the privilege of thus moving itself in a way not allowed to God.
Footnotes
500:6575Dispersisti omnia.
501:6576Inconditum.
501:6577“Communionem.”
501:6578Ornari: “to be adorned.”
501:6579Ornari: “to be adorned.”
501:6580Composite.
501:6581Incondite.
Chapter XLIII.—Other Discrepancies Exposed and Refuted Respecting the Evil in Matter Being Changed to Good.
On the subject of motion I would make this further remark. Following the simile of the boiling caldron, you say that motion in Matter, before it was regulated, was confused, 6582 restless, incomprehensible by reason of excess in the commotion. 6583 Then again you go on to say, “But it waited for the regulation 6584 of God, and kept its irregular motion incomprehensible, owing to the tardiness of its irregular motion.” Just before you ascribe commotion, here tardiness, to motion. Now observe how many slips you make respecting the nature of Matter. In a former passage 6585 you say, “If Matter were naturally evil, it would not have admitted of a change for the better; nor would God have ever applied to it any attempt at arrangement, for His labour would have been in vain.” You therefore concluded your two opinions, that Matter was not by nature evil, and that its nature was incapable of being changed by God; and then, forgetting them, you afterwards drew this inference: “But when it received adjustment from God, and was reduced to order, 6586 it relinquished its nature.” Now, inasmuch as it was transformed to good, it was of course transformed from evil; and if by God’s setting it in order it relinquished 6587 the nature of evil, it follows that its nature came to an end; 6588 now its nature was evil before the adjustment, but after the transformation it might have relinquished that nature.
Footnotes
501:6582Concretus.
501:6583Certaminis.
501:6584Compositionem: “arrangement.”
501:6585See above, ch. xxxvii. p. 498.
501:6586Ornata.
501:6587Cessavit a.
501:6588Cessavit.
Chapter XLIV.—Curious Views Respecting God’s Method of Working with Matter Exposed. Discrepancies in the Heretic’s Opinion About God’s Local Relation to Matter.
But it remains that I should show also how you make God work. You are plainly enough at variance with the philosophers; but neither are you in accord with the prophets. The Stoics maintain that God pervaded Matter, just as honey the honeycomb. You, however, affirm that it is not by pervading Matter that God makes the world, but simply by appearing, and approaching it, just as beauty affects 6589 a thing by simply appearing, and a loadstone by approaching it. Now what similarity is there in God forming the world, and beauty wounding a soul, or a magnet attracting iron? For even if God appeared to Matter, He yet did not wound it, as beauty does the soul; if, again, He approached it, He yet did not cohere to it, as the magnet does to the iron. Suppose, however, that your examples are suitable ones. Then, of course, 6590 it was by appearing and approaching to Matter that God made the world, and He made it when He appeared and when He approached to it. Therefore, since He had not made it before then, 6591 He had neither appeared nor approached to it. Now, by whom can it be believed that God had not appeared to Matter—of the same nature as it even was owing to its eternity? Or that He had been at a distance from it—even He whom we believe to be existent everywhere, and everywhere apparent; whose praises all things chant, even inanimate things and things incorporeal, according to (the prophet) Daniel? 6592 How immense the place, where God kept Himself so far aloof from Matter as to have neither appeared nor approached to it before the creation of the world! I suppose He journeyed to it from a long distance, as soon as He wished to appear and approach to it.
Footnotes
501:6589Facit quid decor.
501:6590Certe.
501:6591Retro.
502:6592Dan. iii. 21.
Chapter XLV.—Conclusion. Contrast Between the Statements of Hermogenes and the Testimony of Holy Scripture Respecting the Creation. Creation Out of Nothing, Not Out of Matter.
But it is not thus that the prophets and the apostles have told us that the world was made by God merely appearing and approaching Matter. They did not even mention any Matter, but (said) that Wisdom was first set up, the beginning of His ways, for His works. 6593 Then that the Word was produced, “through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made.” 6594 Indeed, “by the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all their hosts by the breath of His mouth.” 6595 He is the Lord’s right hand, 6596 indeed His two hands, by which He worked and constructed the universe. “For,” says He, “the heavens are the works of Thine hands,” 6597 wherewith “He hath meted out the heaven, and the earth with a span.” 6598 Do not be willing so to cover God with flattery, as to contend that He produced by His mere appearance and simple approach so many vast substances, instead of rather forming them by His own energies. For this is proved by Jeremiah when he says, “God hath made the earth by His power, He hath established the world by His wisdom, and hath stretched out the heaven by His understanding.” 6599 These are the energies by the stress of which He made this universe. 6600 His glory is greater if He laboured. At length on the seventh day He rested from His works. Both one and the other were after His manner. If, on the contrary, 6601 He made this world simply by appearing and approaching it, did He, on the completion of His work, cease to appear and approach it any more. Nay rather, 6602 God began to appear more conspicuously and to be everywhere accessible 6603 from the time when the world was made. You see, therefore, how all things consist by the operation of that God who “made the earth by His power, who established the world by His wisdom, and stretched out the heaven by His understanding;” not appearing merely, nor approaching, but applying the almighty efforts of His mind, His wisdom, His power, His understanding, His word, His Spirit, His might. Now these things were not necessary to Him, if He had been perfect by simply appearing and approaching. They are, however, His “invisible things,” which, according to the apostle, “are from the creation of the world clearly seen by the things that are made;” 6604 they are no parts of a nondescript 6605 Matter, but they are the sensible 6606 evidences of Himself. “For who hath known the mind of the Lord,” 6607 of which (the apostle) exclaims: “O the depth of the riches both of His wisdom and knowledge! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!” 6608 Now what clearer truth do these words indicate, than that all things were made out of nothing? They are incapable of being found out or investigated, except by God alone. Otherwise, if they were traceable or discoverable in Matter, they would be capable of investigation. Therefore, in as far as it has become evident that Matter had no prior existence (even from this circumstance, that it is impossible 6609 for it to have had such an existence as is assigned to it), in so far is it proved that all things were made by God out of nothing. It must be admitted, however, 6610 that Hermogenes, by describing for Matter a condition like his own—irregular, confused, turbulent, of a doubtful and precipate and fervid impulse—has displayed a specimen of his own art, and painted his own portrait.
Footnotes
502:6593Prov. 8:22, 23.
502:6594John i. 3.
502:6595Spiritu Ipsius: “by His Spirit.” See Ps. xxxiii. 6.
502:6596Isa. xlviii. 13.
502:6597Ps. cii. 25.
502:6598Isa. 40:12, Isa. 48:13.
502:6599Jer. li. 15.
502:6600Ps. lxiv. 7.
502:6601Aut si.
502:6602Atquin.
502:6603Ubique conveniri.
502:6604Rom. i. 20.
502:6605Nescio quæ.
502:6606Sensualia.
502:6607Rom. xi. 34.
502:6608Rom. 11.33.
502:6609Nec competat.
502:6610Nisi quod.
IV.
Against the Valentinians.
In Which the Author Gives a Concise Account of, Together with Sundry Caustic Animadversions on, the Very Fantastic Theology of the Sect. This Treatise is Professedly Taken from the Writings of Justin, Miltiades, Irenæus, and Proculus.
[Translated by Dr. Roberts.]
————————————
Chapter I.—Introductory. Tertullian Compares the Heresy to the Old Eleusinian Mysteries. Both Systems Alike in Preferring Concealment of Error and Sin to Proclamation of Truth and Virtue.
The Valentinians, who are no doubt a very large body of heretics—comprising as they do so many apostates from the truth, who have a propensity for fables, and no discipline to deter them (therefrom) care for nothing so much as to obscure 6611 what they preach, if indeed they (can be said to) preach who obscure their doctrine. The officiousness with which they guard their doctrine is an officiousness which betrays their guilt. 6612 Their disgrace is proclaimed in the very earnestness with which they maintain their religious system. Now, in the case of those Eleusinian mysteries, which are the very heresy of Athenian superstition, it is their secrecy that is their disgrace. Accordingly, they previously beset all access to their body with tormenting conditions; 6613 and they require a long initiation before they enrol (their members), 6614 even instruction during five years for their perfect disciples, 6615 in order that they may mould 6616 their opinions by this suspension of full knowledge, and apparently raise the dignity of their mysteries in proportion to the craving for them which they have previously created. Then follows the duty of silence. Carefully is that guarded, which is so long in finding. All the divinity, however, lies in their secret recesses: 6617 there are revealed at last all the aspirations of the fully initiated, 6618 the entire mystery of the sealed tongue, the symbol of virility. But this allegorical representation, 6619 under the pretext of nature’s reverend name, obscures a real sacrilege by help of an arbitrary symbol, 6620 and by empty images obviates 6621 the reproach of falsehood! 6622 In like manner, the heretics who are now the object of our remarks, 6623 the Valentinians, have formed Eleusinian dissipations 6624 of their own, consecrated by a profound silence, having nothing of the heavenly in them but their mystery. 6625 By the help of the sacred names and titles and arguments of true religion, they have fabricated the vainest and foulest figment for men’s pliant liking, 6626 out of the affluent suggestions of Holy Scripture, since from its many springs many errors may well emanate. If you propose to them inquiries sincere and honest, they answer you with stern 6627 look and contracted brow, and say, “The subject is profound.” If you try them with subtle questions, with the ambiguities of their double tongue, they affirm a community of faith (with yourself). If you intimate to them that you understand their opinions, they insist on knowing nothing themselves. If you come to a close engagement with them they destroy your own fond hope of a victory over them by a self-immolation. 6628 Not even to their own disciples do they commit a secret before they have made sure of them. They have the knack of persuading men before instructing them; although truth persuades by teaching, but does not teach by first persuading.
Footnotes
503:6611Occultant. [This tract may be assigned to any date not earlier than a.d. 207. Of this Valentinus, see cap. iv. infra, and de Præscript. capp. 29, 30, supra.]
503:6612We are far from certain whether we have caught the sense of the original, which we add, that the reader may judge for himself, and at the same time observe the terseness of our author: “Custodiæ officium conscientiæ officium est, confusio prædicatur, dum religio asseveratur.”
503:6613Et aditum prius cruciant.
503:6614Antequam consignant.
503:6615Epoptas: see Suidas, s.v. ᾽Επόπται.
503:6616Ædificent.
503:6617Adytis.
503:6618Epoptarum.
503:6619Dispositio.
503:6620Patrocinio coactæ figuræ.
503:6621Excusat.
503:6622“Quid enim aliud est simulachrum nisi falsum?” (Rigalt.)
503:6623Quos nunc destinamus.
503:6624Lenocinia.
503:6625Taciturnitate.
503:6626Facili caritati. Oehler, after Fr. Junius, gives, however, this phrase a subjective turn thus: “by affecting a charity which is easy to them, costing nothing.”
503:6627Concreto.
504:6628Sua cæde.
Chapter II.—These Heretics Brand the Christians as Simple Persons. The Charge Accepted, and Simplicity Eulogized Out of the Scriptures.
For this reason we are branded 6629 by them as simple, and as being merely so, without being wise also; as if indeed wisdom were compelled to be wanting in simplicity, whereas the Lord unites them both: “Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and simple as doves.” 6630 Now if we, on our parts, be accounted foolish because we are simple, does it then follow that they are not simple because they are wise? Most perverse, however, are they who are not simple, even as they are most foolish who are not wise. And yet, (if I must choose) I should prefer taking 6631 the latter condition for the lesser fault; since it is perhaps better to have a wisdom which falls short in quantity, than that which is bad in quality 6632 —better to be in error than to mislead. Besides, the face of the Lord 6633 is patiently waited for by those who “seek Him in simplicity of heart,” as says the very Wisdom—not of Valentinus, but—of Solomon. 6634 Then, again, infants have borne 6635 by their blood a testimony to Christ. (Would you say) that it was children who shouted “Crucify Him”? 6636 They were neither children nor infants; in other words, they were not simple. The apostle, too, bids us to “become children again” towards God, 6637 “to be as children in malice” by our simplicity, yet as being also “wise in our practical faculties.” 6638 At the same time, with respect to the order of development in Wisdom, I have admitted 6639 that it flows from simplicity. In brief, “the dove” has usually served to figure Christ; “the serpent,” to tempt Him. The one even from the first has been the harbinger of divine peace; the other from the beginning has been the despoiler of the divine image. Accordingly, simplicity alone 6640 will be more easily able to know and to declare God, whereas wisdom alone will rather do Him violence, 6641 and betray Him.
Footnotes
504:6629Notamur.
504:6630Matt. x. 16.
504:6631In the original the phrase is put passively: “malim eam partem meliori sumi vitio.”
504:6632How terse is the original! minus sapere quam pejus.
504:6633Facies Dei.
504:6634Wisd. of Sol. i. 1.
504:6635Litaverunt: “consecrated.”
504:6636Tertullian’s words are rather suggestive of sense than of syntax: “Pueros vocem qui crucem clamant?”
504:6637Secundum Deum: “according to God’s will.”
504:66381 Cor. xiv. 20, where Tertullian renders the ταῖς φρεσί (A.V. “understanding”) by “sensibus.”
504:6639Dedi.
504:6640i.e., without wisdom.
504:6641Concutere.
Chapter III.—The Folly of This Heresy. It Dissects and Mutilates the Deity. Contrasted with the Simple Wisdom of True Religion. To Expose the Absurdities of the Valentinian System is to Destroy It.
Let, then, the serpent hide himself as much as he is able, and let him wrest 6642 all his wisdom in the labyrinths of his obscurities; let him dwell deep down in the ground; let him worm himself into secret holes; let him unroll his length through his sinuous joints; 6643 let him tortuously crawl, though not all at once, 6644 beast as he is that skulks the light. Of our dove, however, how simple is the very home!—always in high and open places, and facing the light! As the symbol of the Holy Spirit, it loves the (radiant) East, that figure of Christ. 6645 Nothing causes truth a blush, except only being hidden, because no man will be ashamed to give ear thereto. No man will be ashamed to recognise Him as God whom nature has already commended to him, whom he already perceives in all His works, 6646 —Him indeed who is simply, for this reason, imperfectly known; because man has not thought of Him as only one, because he has named Him in a plurality (of gods), and adored Him in other forms. Yet, 6647 to induce oneself to turn from this multitude of deities to another crowd, 6648 to remove from a familiar authority to an unknown one, to wrench oneself from what is manifest to what is hidden, is to offend faith on the very threshold. Now, even suppose that you are initiated into the entire fable, will it not occur to you that you have heard something very like it from your fond nurse 6649 when you were a baby, amongst the lullabies she sang to you 6650 about the towers of Lamia, and the horns of the sun? 6651 Let, however, any man approach the subject from a knowledge of the faith which he has otherwise learned, as soon as he finds so many names of Æons, so many marriages, so many offsprings, so many exits, so many issues, felicities and infelicities of a dispersed and mutilated Deity, will that man hesitate at once to pronounce that these are “the fables and endless genealogies” which the inspired apostle 6652 by anticipation condemned, whilst these seeds of heresy were even then shooting forth? Deservedly, therefore, must they be regarded as wanting in simplicity, and as merely prudent, who produce such fables not without difficulty, and defend them only indirectly, who at the same time do not thoroughly instruct those whom they teach. This, of course, shows their astuteness, if their lessons are disgraceful; their unkindness, if they are honourable. As for us, however, who are the simple folk, we know all about it. In short, this is the very first weapon with which we are armed for our encounter; it unmasks 6653 and brings to view 6654 the whole of their depraved system. 6655 And in this we have the first augury of our victory; because even merely to point out that which is concealed with so great an outlay of artifice, 6656 is to destroy it.
Footnotes
504:6642Torqueat.
504:6643Per anfractus.
504:6644Nec semel totus.
504:6645By this remark it would seem that Tertullian read sundry passages in his Latin Bible similarly to the subsequent Vulgate version. For instance, in Zech. vi. 12, the prophet’s words וֹמשְׁ המַצ” שׁיאִ־הנּ”הִ (“Behold the Man, whose name is the Branch”), are rendered in the Vulgate, “Ecce Vir Oriens nomen ejus.” Similarly in Zech. iii. 8, “Servum meum adducam Orientem.” (Compare Luke i. 78, where the ᾽Ανατολὴ ἐξ ὕψ·ους (“the day-spring from on high”) is in the same version “Oriens ex alto.”)
504:6646Or, perhaps, “whom it (nature) feels in all its works.”
504:6647Alioquin.
504:6648Alloquin a turba eorum et aliam frequentiam suadere: which perhaps is best rendered, “But from one rabble of gods to frame and teach men to believe in another set,” etc.
504:6649A nutricula.
505:6650Inter somni difficultates.
505:6651These were child’s stories at Carthage in Tertullian’s days.
505:6652Apostoli spiritus: see 1 Tim. i. 4.
505:6653Detectorem.
505:6654Designatorem.
505:6655Totius conscientiæ illorum.
505:6656Tanto impendio.
Chapter IV.—The Heresy Traceable to Valentinus, an Able But Restless Man. Many Schismatical Leaders of the School Mentioned. Only One of Them Shows Respect to the Man Whose Name Designates the Entire School.
We know, I say, most fully their actual origin, and we are quite aware why we call them Valentinians, although they affect to disavow their name. They have departed, it is true, 6657 from their founder, yet is their origin by no means destroyed; and even if it chance to be changed, the very change bears testimony to the fact. Valentinus had expected to become a bishop, because he was an able man both in genius and eloquence. Being indignant, however, that another obtained the dignity by reason of a claim which confessorship 6658 had given him, he broke with the church of the true faith. Just like those (restless) spirits which, when roused by ambition, are usually inflamed with the desire of revenge, he applied himself with all his might 6659 to exterminate the truth; and finding the clue 6660 of a certain old opinion, he marked out a path for himself with the subtlety of a serpent. Ptolemæus afterwards entered on the same path, by distinguishing the names and the numbers of the Ænons into personal substances, which, however, he kept apart from God. Valentinus had included these in the very essence of the Deity, as senses and affections of motion. Sundry bypaths were then struck off therefrom, by Heraclean and Secundus and the magician Marcus. Theotimus worked hard about “the images of the law.” Valentinus, however, was as yet nowhere, and still the Valentinians derive their name from Valentinus. Axionicus at Antioch is the only man who at the present time does honour 6661 to the memory of Valentinus, by keeping his rules 6662 to the full. But this heresy is permitted to fashion itself into as many various shapes as a courtezan, who usually changes and adjusts her dress every day. And why not? When they review that spiritual seed of theirs in every man after this fashion, whenever they have hit upon any novelty, they forthwith call their presumption a revelation, their own perverse ingenuity a spiritual gift; but (they deny all) unity, admitting only diversity. 6663 And thus we clearly see that, setting aside their customary dissimulation, most of them are in a divided state, being ready to say (and that sincerely) of certain points of their belief, “This is not so;” and, “I take this in a different sense;” and, “I do not admit that.” By this variety, indeed, innovation is stamped on the very face of their rules; besides which, it wears all the colourable features of ignorant conceits. 6664
Footnotes
505:6657Enim.
505:6658Martyrii.
505:6659Conversus.
505:6660Semitam.
505:6661Consolatur.
505:6662Regularum: the particulars of his system. [Here comes in the word, borrowed from heresy, which shaped Monasticism in after times and created the regular orders.]
505:6663Nec unitatem, sed diversitatem: scil. appellant.
505:6664Colores ignorantiarum.
Chapter V.—Many Eminent Christian Writers Have Carefully and Fully Refuted the Heresy. These the Author Makes His Own Guides.
My own path, however, lies along the original tenets 6665 of their chief teachers, not with the self-appointed leaders of their promiscuous 6666 followers. Nor shall we hear it said of us from any quarter, that we have of our own mind fashioned our own materials, since these have been already produced, both in respect of the opinions and their refutations, in carefully written volumes, by so many eminently holy and excellent men, not only those who have lived before us, but those also who were contemporary with the heresiarchs themselves: for instance Justin, philosopher and martyr; 6667 Miltiades, the sophist 6668 of the churches; Irenæus, that very exact inquirer into all doctrines; 6669 our own Proculus, the model 6670 of chaste old age and Christian eloquence. All these it would be my desire closely to follow in every work of faith, even as in this particular one. Now if there are no heresies at all but what those who refute them are supposed to have fabricated, then the apostle who predicted them 6671 must have been guilty of falsehood. If, however, there are heresies, they can be no other than those which are the subject of discussion. No writer can be supposed to have so much time on his hands 6672 as to fabricate materials which are already in his possession.
Footnotes
505:6665Archetypis.
505:6666Passivorum.
506:6667[See Vol. I. pp. 171, 182, this series].
506:6668In a good sense, from the elegance of his style.
506:6669[See Vol. I. p. 326, of this series. Tertullian appropriates the work of Irenæus, (B. i.) against the Gnostics without further ceremony: translation excepted.]
506:6670Dignitas. [Of this Proculus see Kaye, p. 55.]
506:66711 Cor. xi. 19.
506:6672Otiosus.
Chapter VI.—Although Writing in Latin He Proposes to Retain the Greek Names of the Valentinian Emanations of Deity. Not to Discuss the Heresy But Only to Expose It. This with the Raillery Which Its Absurdity Merits.
In order then, that no one may be blinded by so many outlandish 6673 names, collected together, and adjusted at pleasure, 6674 and of doubtful import, I mean in this little work, wherein we merely undertake to propound this (heretical) mystery, to explain in what manner we are to use them. Now the rendering of some of these names from the Greek so as to produce an equally obvious sense of the word, is by no means an easy process: in the case of some others, the genders are not suitable; while others, again, are more familiarly known in their Greek form. For the most part, therefore, we shall use the Greek names; their meanings will be seen on the margins of the pages. Nor will the Greek be unaccompanied with the Latin equivalents; only these will be marked in lines above, for the purpose of explaining 6675 the personal names, rendered necessary by the ambiguities of such of them as admit some different meaning. But although I must postpone all discussion, and be content at present with the mere exposition (of the heresy), still, wherever any scandalous feature shall seem to require a castigation, it must be attacked 6676 by all means, if only with a passing thrust. 6677 Let the reader regard it as the skirmish before the battle. It will be my drift to show how to wound 6678 rather than to inflict deep gashes. If in any instance mirth be excited, this will be quite as much as the subject deserves. There are many things which deserve refutation in such a way as to have no gravity expended on them. Vain and silly topics are met with especial fitness by laughter. Even the truth may indulge in ridicule, because it is jubilant; it may play with its enemies, because it is fearless. 6679 Only we must take care that its laughter be not unseemly, and so itself be laughed at; but wherever its mirth is decent, there it is a duty to indulge it. And so at last I enter on my task.
Footnotes
506:6673Tam peregrinis.
506:6674Compactis.
506:6675Ut signum hoc sit.
506:6676Or stormed perhaps; expugnatio is the word.
506:6677Delibatione transfunctoria.
506:6678Ostendam vulnera.
506:6679Secura.
Chapter VII.—The First Eight Emanations, or Æons, Called the Ogdoad, are the Fountain of All the Others. Their Names and Descent Recorded.
Beginning with Ennius, 6680 the Roman poet, he simply spoke of “the spacious saloons 6681 of heaven,”—either on account of their elevated site, or because in Homer he had read about Jupiter banqueting therein. As for our heretics, however, it is marvellous what storeys upon storeys 6682 and what heights upon heights, they have hung up, raised and spread out as a dwelling for each several god of theirs. Even our Creator has had arranged for Him the saloons of Ennius in the fashion of private rooms, 6683 with chamber piled upon chamber, and assigned to each god by just as many staircases as there were heresies. The universe, in fact, has been turned into “rooms to let.” 6684 Such storeys of the heavens you would imagine to be detached tenements in some happy isle of the blessed, 6685 I know not where. There the god even of the Valentinians has his dwelling in the attics. They call him indeed, as to his essence, Αἰῶν τέλειος (Perfect Æon), but in respect of his personality, Προαρχή (Before the Beginning), ῾Η ᾽Αρχή (The Beginning), and sometimes Bythos (Depth), 6686 a name which is most unfit for one who dwells in the heights above! They describe him as unbegotten, immense, infinite, invisible, and eternal; as if, when they described him to be such as we know that he ought to be, they straightway prove him to be a being who may be said to have had such an existence even before all things else. I indeed insist upon 6687 it that he is such a being; and there is nothing which I detect in beings of this sort more obvious, than that they who are said to have been before all things—things, too, not their own—are found to be behind all things. Let it, however, be granted that this Bythos of theirs existed in the infinite ages of the past in the greatest and profoundest repose, in the extreme rest of a placid and, if I may use the expression, stupid divinity, such as Epicurus has enjoined upon us. And yet, although they would have him be alone, they assign to him a second person in himself and with himself, Ennoea (Thought), which they also call both Charis (Grace) and Sige (Silence). Other things, as it happened, conduced in this most agreeable repose to remind him of the need of by and by producing out of himself the beginning of all things. This he deposits in lieu of seed in the genital region, as it were, of the womb of his Sige. Instantaneous conception is the result: Sige becomes pregnant, and is delivered, of course in silence; and her offspring is Nus (Mind), very like his father and his equal in every respect. In short, he alone is capable of comprehending the measureless and incomprehensible greatness of his father. Accordingly he is even called the Father himself, and the Beginning of all things, and, with great propriety, Monogenes (The Only-begotten). And yet not with absolute propriety, since he is not born alone. For along with him a female also proceeded, whose name was Veritas 6688 (Truth). But how much more suitably might Monogenes be called Protogenes (First begotten), since he was begotten first! Thus Bythos and Sige, Nus and Veritas, are alleged to be the first fourfold team 6689 of the Valentinian set (of gods) 6690 the parent stock and origin of them all. For immediately when 6691 Nus received the function of a procreation of his own, he too produces out of himself Sermo (the Word) and Vita (the Life). If this latter existed not previously, of course she existed not in Bythos. And a pretty absurdity would it be, if Life existed not in God! However, this offspring also produces fruit, having for its mission the initiation of the universe and the formation of the entire Pleroma: it procreates Homo (Man) and Ecclesia (the Church). Thus you have an Ogdoad, a double Tetra, out of the conjunctions of males and females—the cells 6692 (so to speak) of the primordial Æons, the fraternal nuptials of the Valentinian gods, the simple originals 6693 of heretical sanctity and majesty, a rabble 6694 —shall I say of criminals 6695 or of deities? 6696 —at any rate, the fountain of all ulterior fecundity.
Footnotes
506:6680Primus omnium.
506:6681Cœnacula: dining halls.
506:6682Supernitates supernitatum.
506:6683Ædicularum.
506:6684Meritorium.
506:6685This is perhaps a fair rendering of “Insulam Feliculam credas tanta tabulata cœlorum, nescio ubi.” “Insula” is sometimes “a detached house.” It is difficult to say what “Felicula” is; it seems to be a diminutive of Felix. It occurs in Arrian’s Epictetica as the name of a slave.
506:6686We follow Tertullian’s mode of designation all through. He, for the most part, gives the Greek names in Roman letters, but not quite always.
507:6687Expostulo: “I postulate as a first principle.”
507:6688Tertullian is responsible for this Latin word amongst the Greek names. The strange mixture occurs often.
507:6689Quadriga.
507:6690Factionis.
507:6691Ibidem simul.
507:6692Cellas.
507:6693Census.
507:6694Turbam.
507:6695Criminum.
507:6696Numinum.
Chapter VIII.—The Names and Descent of Other Æons; First Half a Score, Then Two More, and Ultimately a Dozen Besides. These Thirty Constitute the Pleroma. But Why Be So Capricious as to Stop at Thirty?
For, behold, when the second Tetrad—Sermo and Vita, Homo and Ecclesia 6697 —had borne fruit to the Father’s glory, having an intense desire of themselves to present to the Father something similar of their own, they bring other issue into being 6698 —conjugal of course, as the others were 6699 —by the union of the twofold nature. On the one hand, Sermo and Vita pour out at a birth a half-score of Æons; on the other hand, Homo and Ecclesia produce a couple more, so furnishing an equipoise to their parents, since this pair with the other ten make up just as many as they did themselves procreate. I now give the names of the half-score whom I have mentioned: Bythios (Profound) and Mixis (Mixture), Ageratos (Never old) and Henosis (Union), Autophyes (Essential nature) and Hedone (Pleasure), Acinetos (Immoveable) and Syncrasis (Commixture,) Monogenes (Only-begotten) and Macaria (Happiness). On the other hand, these will make up the number twelve (to which I have also referred): Paracletus (Comforter) and Pistis (Faith), Patricas (Paternal) and Elpis (Hope), Metricos (Maternal) and Agape (Love), Ainos (Praise) 6700 and Synesis (Intelligence), Ecclesiasticus (Son of Ecclesia) and Macariotes (Blessedness), Theletus 6701 (Perfect) and Sophia (Wisdom). I cannot help 6702 here quoting from a like example what may serve to show the import of these names. In the schools of Carthage there was once a certain Latin rhetorician, an excessively cool fellow, 6703 whose name was Phosphorus. He was personating a man of valour, and wound up 6704 with saying, “I come to you, excellent citizens, from battle, with victory for myself, with happiness for you, full of honour, covered with glory, the favourite of fortune, the greatest of men, decked with triumph.” And forthwith his scholars begin to shout for the school of Phosphorus, φεῦ 6705 (ah!). Are you a believer in 6706 Fortunata, and Hedone, and Acinetus, and Theletus? Then shout out your φεῦ for the school of Ptolemy. 6707 This must be that mystery of the Pleroma, the fulness of the thirty-fold divinity. Let us see what special attributes 6708 belong to these numbers—four, and eight, and twelve. Meanwhile with the number thirty all fecundity ceases. The generating force and power and desire of the Æons is spent. 6709 As if there were not still left some strong rennet for curdling numbers. 6710 As if no other names were to be got out of the page’s hall! 6711 For why are there not sets of fifty and of a hundred procreated? Why, too, are there no comrades and boon companions 6712 named for them?
Footnotes
507:6697We everywhere give Tertullian’s own names, whether of Greek form or Latin. On their first occurrence we also give their English sense.
507:6698Ebulliunt.
507:6699Proinde conjugales.
507:6700Of this name there are two forms—Αἶνος (Praise) and ᾽Αεινοῦς (Eternal Mind).
507:6701Or Τελετός (Teletus). Another form of this Æon’s name is Φιλητός (Philetus = Beloved). Oehler always reads Theletus.
507:6702Cogor.
508:6703Frigidissimus.
508:6704Cum virum fortem peroraret…inquit.
508:6705Tertullian’s joke lies in the equivocal sense of this cry, which may mean either admiration and joy, or grief and rage.
508:6706Audisti: interrogatively.
508:6707See above, chap. iv. p. 505.
508:6708Privilegia.
508:6709Castrata.
508:6710Tanta numerorum coagula.
508:6711The pædagogium was either the place where boys were trained as pages (often for lewd purposes), or else the boy himself of such a character.
508:6712Oehler reads, “hetæri (ἑταῖροι) et syntrophi.” Another reading, supported by Rigaltius, is “sterceiæ,” instead of the former word, which gives a very contemptuous sense, suitable to Tertullian’s irony.
Chapter IX.—Other Capricious Features in the System. The Æons Unequal in Attributes. The Superiority of Nus; The Vagaries of Sophia Restrained by Horos. Grand Titles Borne by This Last Power.
But, further, there is an “acceptance 6713 of persons,” inasmuch as Nus alone among them all enjoys the knowledge of the immeasurable Father, joyous and exulting, while they of course pine in sorrow. To be sure, Nus, so far as in him lay, both wished and tried to impart to the others also all that he had learnt about the greatness and incomprehensibility of the Father; but his mother, Sige, interposed—she who (you must know) imposes silence even on her own beloved heretics; 6714 although they affirm that this is done at the will of the Father, who will have all to be inflamed with a longing after himself. Thus, while they are tormenting themselves with these internal desires, while they are burning with the secret longing to know the Father, the crime is almost accomplished. For of the twelve Æons which Homo and Ecclesia had produced, the youngest by birth (never mind the solecism, since Sophia (Wisdom) is her name), unable to restrain herself, breaks away without the society of her husband Theletus, in quest of the Father and contracts that kind of sin which had indeed arisen amongst the others who were conversant with Nus but had flowed on to this Æon, 6715 that is, to Sophia; as is usual with maladies which, after arising in one part of the body, spread abroad their infection to some other limb. The fact is, 6716 under a pretence of love to the Father, she was overcome with a desire to rival Nus, who alone rejoiced in the knowledge of the Father. 6717 But when Sophia, straining after impossible aims, was disappointed of her hope, she is both overcome with difficulty, and racked with affection. Thus she was all but swallowed up by reason of the charm and toil (of her research), 6718 and dissolved into the remnant of his substance; 6719 nor would there have been any other alternative for her than perdition, if she had not by good luck fallen in with Horus (Limit). He too had considerable power. He is the foundation of the great 6720 universe, and, externally, the guardian thereof. To him they give the additional names of Crux (Cross), and Lytrotes (Redeemer,) and Carpistes (Emancipator). 6721 When Sophia was thus rescued from danger, and tardily persuaded, she relinquished further research after the Father, found repose, and laid aside all her excitement, 6722 or Enthymesis (Desire,) along with the passion which had come over her.
Footnotes
508:6713Exceptio.
508:6714Tertullian has, above, remarked on the silent and secret practices of the Valentinians: see chap. i. p. 503.
508:6715In hunc derivaret.
508:6716Sed enim.
508:6717De Patre.
508:6718Præ vi dulcedinis et laboris.
508:6719It is not easy to say what is the meaning of the words, “Et in reliquam substantiam dissolvi.” Rigaltius renders them: “So that whatever substance was left to her was being dissolved.” This seems to be forcing the sentence unnaturally. Irenæus (according to the Latin translator) says: “Resolutum in universam substantiam,” “Resolved into his (the Father’s) general substance,” i. 2, 2. [Vol. I. p. 317.]
508:6720Illius.
508:6721So Grabe; but Reaper, according to Neander.
508:6722Animationem.
Chapter X.—Another Account of the Strange Aberrations of Sophia, and the Restraining Services of Horus. Sophia Was Not Herself, After All, Ejected from the Pleroma, But Only Her Enthymesis.
But some dreamers have given another account of the aberration 6723 and recovery of Sophia. After her vain endeavours, and the disappointment of her hope, she was, I suppose, disfigured with paleness and emaciation, and that neglect of her beauty which was natural to one who 6724 was deploring the denial of the Father,—an affliction which was no less painful than his loss. Then, in the midst of all this sorrow, she by herself alone, without any conjugal help, conceived and bare a female offspring. Does this excite your surprise? Well, even the hen has the power of being able to bring forth by her own energy. 6725 They say, too, that among vultures there are only females, which become parents alone. At any rate, she was another without aid from a male, and she began at last to be afraid that her end was even at hand. She was all in doubt about the treatment 6726 of her case, and took pains at self-concealment. Remedies could nowhere be found. For where, then, should we have tragedies and comedies, from which to borrow the process of exposing what has been born without connubial modesty? While the thing is in this evil plight, she raises her eyes, and turns them to the Father. Having, however, striven in vain, as her strength was failing her, she falls to praying. Her entire kindred also supplicates in her behalf, and especially Nus. Why not? What was the cause of so vast an evil? Yet not a single casualty 6727 befell Sophia without its effect. All her sorrows operate. Inasmuch as all that conflict of hers contributes to the origin of Matter. Her ignorance, her fear, her distress, become substances. Hereupon the Father by and by, being moved, produces in his own image, with a view to these circumstances 6728 the Horos whom we have mentioned above; (and this he does) by means of Monogenes Nus, a male-female (Æon), because there is this variation of statement about the Father’s 6729 sex. They also go on to tell us that Horos is likewise called Metagogius, that is, “a conductor about,” as well as Horothetes (Setter of Limits). By his assistance they declare that Sophia was checked in her illicit courses, and purified from all evils, and henceforth strengthened (in virtue), and restored to the conjugal state: (they add) that she indeed remained within the bounds 6730 of the Pleroma, but that her Enthymesis, with the accruing 6731 Passion, was banished by Horos, and crucified and cast out from the Pleroma,—even as they say, Malum foras! (Evil, avaunt!) Still, that was a spiritual essence, as being the natural impulse of an Æon, although without form or shape, inasmuch as it had apprehended nothing, and therefore was pronounced to be an infirm and feminine fruit. 6732
Footnotes
508:6723Exitum.
509:6724Uti quæ.
509:6725Comp. Aristotle, Hist. Anim. vi. 2; Pliny, H. N. x. 58, 60.
509:6726Ratione.
509:6727Exitus.
509:6728In hæc: in relation to the case of Sophia.
509:6729Above, in chap. viii. we were told that Nus, who was so much like the Father, was himself called “Father.”
509:6730In censu.
509:6731Appendicem.
509:6732Literally, “infirm fruit and a female,” i.e. “had not shared in any male influence, but was a purely female production.” See our Irenæus, i. 4. [Vol. I. p. 321.]
Chapter XI.—The Profane Account Given of the Origin of Christ and the Holy Ghost Sternly Rebuked. An Absurdity Respecting the Attainment of the Knowledge of God Ably Exposed.
Accordingly, after the banishment of the Enthymesis, and the return of her mother Sophia to her husband, the (illustrious) Monogenes, the Nus, 6733 released indeed from all care and concern of the Father, in order that he might consolidate all things, and defend and at last fix the Pleroma, and so prevent any concussion of the kind again, once more 6734 emits a new couple 6735 (blasphemously named). I should suppose the coupling of two males to be a very shameful thing, or else the one 6736 must be a female, and so the male is discredited 6737 by the female. One divinity is assigned in the case of all these, to procure a complete adjustment among the Æons. Even from this fellowship in a common duty two schools actually arise, two chairs, 6738 and, to some extent, 6739 the inauguration of a division in the doctrine of Valentinus. It was the function of Christ to instruct the Æons in the nature of their conjugal relations 6740 (you see what the whole thing was, of course!), and how to form some guess about the unbegotten, 6741 and to give them the capacity of generating within themselves the knowledge of the Father; it being impossible to catch the idea of him, or comprehend him, or, in short, even to enjoy any perception of him, either by the eye or the ear, except through Monogenes (the Only-begotten). Well, I will even grant them what they allege about knowing the Father, so that they do not refuse us (the attainment of) the same. I would rather point out what is perverse in their doctrine, how they were taught that the incomprehensible part of the Father was the cause of their own perpetuity, 6742 whilst that which might be comprehended of him was the reason 6743 of their generation and formation. Now by these several positions 6744 the tenet, I suppose, is insinuated, that it is expedient for God not to be apprehended, on the very ground that the incomprehensibility of His character is the cause of perpetuity; whereas what in Him is comprehensible is productive, not of perpetuity, but rather of conditions which lack perpetuity—namely, nativity and formation. The Son, indeed, they made capable of comprehending the Father. The manner in which He is comprehended, the recently produced Christ fully taught them. To the Holy Spirit, however, belonged the special gifts, whereby they, having been all set on a complete par in respect of their earnestness to learn, should be enabled to offer up their thanksgiving, and be introduced to a true tranquillity.
Footnotes
509:6733Ille nus.
509:6734Iterum: above.
509:6735Copulationem: The profane reference is to Christ and the Spirit.
509:6736[A shocking reference to the Spirit which I modify to one of the Divine Persons.]
509:6737Vulneratur.
509:6738Cathedræ.
509:6739Quædam.
509:6740Conjugiorum.
509:6741Innati conjectationem.
509:6742Perpetuitatis: i.e. “what was unchangeable in their condition and nature.”
510:6743Rationem: perhaps “the means.”
510:6744Hac dispositione.
Chapter XII.—The Strange Jumble of the Pleroma. The Frantic Delight of the Members Thereof. Their Joint Contribution of Parts Set Forth with Humorous Irony.
Thus they are all on the self-same footing in respect of form and knowledge, all of them having become what each of them severally is; none being a different being, because they are all what the others are. 6745 They are all turned into 6746 Nuses, into Homos, into Theletuses; 6747 and so in the case of the females, into Siges, into Zoes, into Ecclesias, into Fortunatas, so that Ovid would have blotted out his own Metamorphoses if he had only known our larger one in the present day. Straightway they were reformed and thoroughly established, and being composed to rest from the truth, they celebrate the Father in a chorus 6748 of praise in the exuberance of their joy. The Father himself also revelled 6749 in the glad feeling; of course, because his children and grandchildren sang so well. And why should he not revel in absolute delight? Was not the Pleroma freed (from all danger)? What ship’s captain 6750 fails to rejoice even with indecent frolic? Every day we observe the uproarious ebullitions of sailors’ joys. 6751 Therefore, as sailors always exult over the reckoning they pay in common, so do these Æons enjoy a similar pleasure, one as they now all are in form, and, as I may add, 6752 in feeling too. With the concurrence of even their new brethren and masters, 6753 they contribute into one common stock the best and most beautiful thing with which they are severally adorned. Vainly, as I suppose. For if they were all one by reason by the above-mentioned thorough equalization, there was no room for the process of a common reckoning, 6754 which for the most part consists of a pleasing variety. They all contributed the one good thing, which they all were. There would be, in all probability, a formal procedure 6755 in the mode or in the form of the very equalization in question. Accordingly, out of the donation which they contributed 6756 to the honour and glory of the Father, they jointly fashion 6757 the most beautiful constellation of the Pleroma, and its perfect fruit, Jesus. Him they also surname 6758 Soter (Saviour) and Christ, and Sermo (Word) after his ancestors; 6759 and lastly Omnia (All Things), as formed from a universally culled nosegay, 6760 like the jay of Æsop, the Pandora of Hesiod, the bowl 6761 of Accius, the honey-cake of Nestor, the miscellany of Ptolemy. How much nearer the mark, if these idle title-mongers had called him Pancarpian, after certain Athenian customs. 6762 By way of adding external honour also to their wonderful puppet, they produce for him a bodyguard of angels of like nature. If this be their mutual condition, it may be all right; if, however, they are consubstantial with Soter (for I have discovered how doubtfully the case is stated), where will be his eminence when surrounded by attendants who are co-equal with himself?
Footnotes
510:6745Nemo aliud quia alteri omnes.
510:6746Refunduntur.
510:6747The reader will, of course, see that we give a familiar English plural to these names, as better expressing Tertullian’s irony.
510:6748Concinunt.
510:6749Diffundebatur.
510:6750Nauclerus: “pilot.”
510:6751Tertullian lived in a seaport at Carthage.
510:6752Nedum.
510:6753Christ and the Holy Spirit, [i.e. blasphemously.]
510:6754Symbolæ ratio.
510:6755Ratio.
510:6756Ex ære collaticio. In reference to the common symbola, Tertullian adds the proverbial formula, “quod aiunt” (as they say).
510:6757Compingunt.
510:6758Cognominant.
510:6759De patritus. Irenæus’ word here is πατρωνυμικῶς (“patronymice”).
510:6760Ex omnium defloratione.
510:6761Patina.
510:6762Alluding to the olive-branch, ornamented with all sorts of fruits (compare our “Christmas tree”), which was carried about by boys in Athens on a certain festival (White and Riddle).
Chapter XIII.—First Part of the Subject, Touching the Constitution of the Pleroma, Briefly Recapitulated. Transition to the Other Part, Which is Like a Play Outside the Curtain.
In this series, then, is contained the first emanation of Æons, who are alike born, and are married, and produce offspring: there are the most dangerous fortunes of Sophia in her ardent longing for the Father, the most seasonable help of Horos, the expiation of her Enthymesis and accruing Passion, the instruction of Christ and the Holy Spirit, their tutelar reform of the Æons, the piebald ornamentation of Soter, the consubstantial retinue 6763 of the angels. All that remains, according to you, is the fall of the curtain and the clapping of hands. 6764 What remains in my opinion, however, is, that you should hear and take heed. At all events, these things are said to have been played out within the company of the Pleroma, the first scene of the tragedy. The rest of the play, however, is beyond the curtain—I mean outside of the Pleroma. And yet if it be such within the bosom of the Father, within the embrace of the guardian Horos, what must it be outside, in free space, 6765 where God did not exist?
Footnotes
511:6763Comparaticium antistatum. The latter word Oehler explains, “ante ipsum stantes;” the former, “quia genus eorum comparari poterat substantiæ Soteris” (so Rigaltus).
511:6764The reader will see how obviously this is meant in Tertullian’s “Quod superest, inquis, vos valete et plaudite.” This is the well-known allusion to the end of the play in the old Roman theatre. See Quintilian, vi. 1, 52; comp. Horace, A. P. 155. Tertullian’s own parody to this formula, immediately after, is: “Immo quod superest, inquam, vos audite et proficite.
511:6765In libero: which may be, however, “beyond the control of Horos.”
Chapter XIV.—The Adventures of Achamoth Outside the Pleroma. The Mission of Christ in Pursuit of Her. Her Longing for Christ. Horos’ Hostility to Her. Her Continued Suffering.
For Enthymesis, or rather Achamoth—because by this inexplicable 6766 name alone must she be henceforth designated—when in company with the vicious Passion, her inseparable companion, she was expelled to places devoid of that light which is the substance of the Pleroma, even to the void and empty region of Epicurus, she becomes wretched also because of the place of her banishment. She is indeed without either form or feature, even an untimely and abortive production. Whilst she is in this plight, 6767 Christ descends from 6768 the heights, conducted by Horos, in order to impart form to the abortion, out of his own energies, the form of substance only, but not of knowledge also. Still she is left with some property. She has restored to her the odour of immortality, in order that she might, under its influence, be overcome with the desire of better things than belonged to her present plight. 6769 Having accomplished His merciful mission, not without the assistance of the Holy Spirit, Christ returns to the Pleroma. It is usual out of an abundance of things 6770 for names to be also forthcoming. Enthymesis came from action; 6771 whence Achamoth came is still a question; Sophia emanates from the Father, the Holy Spirit from an angel. She entertains a regret for Christ immediately after she had discovered her desertion by him. Therefore she hurried forth herself, in quest of the light of Him Whom she did not at all discover, as He operated in an invisible manner; for how else would she make search for His light, which was as unknown to her as He was Himself? Try, however, she did, and perhaps would have found Him, had not the self-same Horos, who had met her mother so opportunely, fallen in with the daughter quite as unseasonably, so as to exclaim at her Iao! just as we hear the cry “Porro Quirites” (“Out of the way, Romans!”), or else Fidem Cæsaris!” (“By the faith of Cæsar!”), whence (as they will have it) the name Iao comes to be found is the Scriptures. 6772 Being thus hindered from proceeding further, and being unable to surmount 6773 the Cross, that is to say, Horos, because she had not yet practised herself in the part of Catullus’ Laureolus, 6774 and given over, as it were, to that passion of hers in a manifold and complicated mesh, she began to be afflicted with every impulse thereof, with sorrow,—because she had not accomplished her enterprise, with fear,—lest she should lose her life, even as she had lost the light, with consternation, and then with ignorance. But not as her mother (did she suffer this), for she was an Æon. Hers, however, was a worse suffering, considering her condition; for another tide of emotion still overwhelmed her, even of conversion to the Christ, by Whom she had been restored to life, and had been directed 6775 to this very conversion.
Footnotes
511:6766Ininterpretabili.
511:6767Tertullian’s “Dum ita rerum habet” is a copy of the Greek οὕτω τῶν πραγμάτων ἔχουσο.
511:6768Deflectitur a.
511:6769Casus sui.
511:6770Rerum ex liberalitatibus.
511:6771De actia fuit. [See Vol. I. pp. 320, 321.]
511:6772It is not necessary, with Rigaltius, to make a difficulty about this, when we remember that Tertullian only refers to a silly conceit of the Valentinians touching the origin of the sacred name.
511:6773Or does “nec habens supervolare crucem” mean “being unable to elude the cross?” As if Tertullian meant, in his raillery, to say, that Achamoth had not the skill of the player who played the part of Laureolus. Although so often suspended on the gibbet, he had of course as often escaped the real penalty.
511:6774A notorious robber, the hero of a play by Lutatius Catullus, who is said to have been crucified.
511:6775Temperata.
Chapter XV.—Strange Account of the Origin of Matter, from the Various Affections of Achamoth. The Waters from Her Tears; Light from Her Smile.
Well, now, the Pythagoreans may learn, the Stoics may know, Plato himself (may discover), whence Matter, which they will have to be unborn, derived both its origin and substance for all this pile of the world—(a mystery) which not even the renowned 6776 Mercurius Trismegistus, master (as he was) of all physical philosophy, thought out. 6777 You have just heard of “Conversion,” one element in the “Passion” (we have so often mentioned). Out of this the whole life of the world, 6778 and even that of the Demiurge himself, our God, is said to have had its being. Again, you have heard of “sorrow” and “fear.” From these all other created things 6779 took their beginning. For from her 6780 tears flowed the entire mass of waters. From this circumstance one may form an idea of the calamity 6781 which she encountered, so vast were the kinds of the tears wherewith she overflowed. She had salt tear-drops, she had bitter, and sweet, and warm, and cold, and bituminous, and ferruginous, and sulphurous, and even 6782 poisonous, so that the Nonacris exuded therefrom which killed Alexander; and the river of the Lyncestæ 6783 flowed from the same source, which produces drunkenness; and the Salmacis 6784 was derived from the same source, which renders men effeminate. The rains of heaven Achamoth whimpered forth, 6785 and we on our part are anxiously employed in saving up in our cisterns the very wails and tears of another. In like manner, from the “consternation” and “alarm” (of which we have also heard), bodily elements were derived. And yet amidst so many circumstances of solitude, in this vast prospect of destitution, she occasionally smiled at the recollection of the sight of Christ, and from this smile of joy light flashed forth. How great was this beneficence of Providence, which induced her to smile, and all that we might not linger for ever in the dark! Nor need you feel astonished how 6786 from her joy so splendid an element 6787 could have beamed upon the world, when from her sadness even so necessary a provision 6788 flowed forth for man. O illuminating smile! O irrigating tear! And yet it might now have acted as some alleviation amidst the horror of her situation; for she might have shaken off all the obscurity thereof as often as she had a mind to smile, even not to be obliged to turn suppliant to those who had deserted her. 6789
Footnotes
511:6776Ille.
512:6777Recogitavit.
512:6778“Omnis anima hujus mundi” may, however, mean “every living soul.” So Bp. Kaye, On Tertullian, p. 487.
512:6779Cetera.
512:6780Achamoth’s.
512:6781Exitum.
512:6782Utique.
512:6783These two rivers, with their peculiar qualities, are mentioned by Pliny, H. N. ii. 103; [and the latter by Milton against Salmasius.]
512:6784Ovid. Metam. iv. 286.
512:6785Pipiavit.
512:6786Qui.
512:6787As light.
512:6788Instrumentum: water is meant.
512:6789Christ and the Holy Spirit. Oehler.
Chapter XVI.—Achamoth Purified from All Impurities of Her Passion by the Paraclete, Acting Through Soter, Who Out of the Above-Mentioned Impurities Arranges Matter, Separating Its Evil from the Better Qualities.
She, too, resorts to prayers, after the manner of her mother. But Christ, Who now felt a dislike to quit the Pleroma, appoints the Paraclete as his deputy. To her, therefore, he despatches Soter, 6790 (who must be the same as Jesus, to whom the Father imparted the supreme power over the whole body of the Æons, by subjecting them all to him, so that “by him,” as the apostle says, “all things were created” 6791 ), with a retinue and cortege of contemporary angels, and (as one may suppose) with the dozen fasces. Hereupon Achamoth, being quite struck with the pomp of his approach, immediately covered herself with a veil, moved at first with a dutiful feeling of veneration and modesty; but afterwards she surveys him calmly, and his prolific equipage. 6792 With such energies as she had derived from the contemplation, she meets him with the salutation, Κύριε, χαῖρε (“Hail, Lord”)! Upon this, I suppose, he receives her, confirms and conforms her in knowledge, as well as cleanses 6793 her from all the outrages of Passion, without, however, utterly severing them, with an indiscriminateness like that which had happened in the casualties which befell her mother. For such vices as had become inveterate and confirmed by practice he throws together; and when he had consolidated them in one mass, he fixes them in a separate body, so as to compose the corporeal condition of Matter, extracting out of her inherent, incorporeal passion such an aptitude of nature 6794 as might qualify it to attain to a reciprocity of bodily substances, 6795 which should emulate one another, so that a twofold condition of the substances might be arranged; one full of evil through its faults, the other susceptible of passion from conversion. This will prove to be Matter, which has set us in battle array against Hermogenes, and all others who presume to teach that God made all things out of Matter, not out of nothing.
Footnotes
512:6790Saviour: another title of their Paraclete.
512:6791Col. i. 16.
512:6792Fructiferumque suggestum.
512:6793Expumicat.
512:6794Habilitatem atque naturam. We have treated this as a “hendiadys.”
512:6795Æquiparantias corpulentiarum.
Chapter XVII.—Achamoth in Love with the Angels. A Protest Against the Lascivious Features of Valentinianism. Achamoth Becomes the Mother of Three Natures.
Then Achamoth, delivered at length from all her evils, wonderful to tell 6796 goes on and bears fruit with greater results. For warmed with the joy of so great an escape from her unhappy condition, and at the same time heated with the actual contemplation of the angelic luminaries (one is ashamed) to use such language, (but there is no other way of expressing one’s meaning), she during the emotion somehow became personally inflamed with desire 6797 towards them, and at once grew pregnant with a spiritual conception, at the very image of which the violence of her joyous transport, and the delight of her prurient excitement had imbibed and impressed upon her. She at length gave birth to an offspring, and then there arose a leash of natures, 6798 from a triad of causes,—one material, arising from her passion; another animal, arising from her conversion; the third spiritual, which had its origin in her imagination.
Footnotes
512:6796Ecce.
513:6797Subavit et ipsa.
513:6798Trinitas generum.
Chapter XVIII.—Blasphemous Opinion Concerning the Origin of the Demiurge, Supposed to Be the Creator of the Universe.
Having become a better proficient 6799 in practical conduct by the authority which, we may well suppose, 6800 accrued to her from her three children, she determined to impart form to each of the natures. The spiritual one however, she was unable to touch, inasmuch as she was herself spiritual. For a participation in the same nature has, to a very great extent, 6801 disqualified like and consubstantial beings from having superior power over one another. Therefore 6802 she applies herself solely to the animal nature, adducing the instructions of Soter 6803 (for her guidance). And first of all (she does) what cannot be described and read, and heard of, without an intense horror at the blasphemy thereof: she produces this God of ours, the God of all except of the heretics, the Father and Creator 6804 and King of all things, which are inferior to him. For from him do they proceed. If, however, they proceed from him, and not rather from Achamoth, or if only secretly from her, without his perceiving her, he was impelled to all that he did, even like a puppet 6805 which is moved from the outside. In fact, it was owing to this very ambiguity about the personal agency in the works which were done, that they coined for him the mixed name of (Motherly Father), 6806 whilst his other appellations were distinctly assigned according to the conditions and positions of his works: so that they call him Father in relation to the animal substances to which they give the place of honour 6807 on his right hand; whereas, in respect of the material substances which they banish 6808 to his left hand, they name him Demiurgus; whilst his title King designates his authority over both classes, nay over the universe. 6809
Footnotes
513:6799Exercitior.
513:6800Scilicet.
513:6801Fere.
513:6802Eo animo.
513:6803See above, chap. xvi. p. 512.
513:6804Demiurgum.
513:6805Et velut sigillario. “Sigillarium est νευρόσπαστον,” Oehler.
513:6806The Father acting through and proceeding from his Mother.
513:6807Commendant.
513:6808Delegant.
513:6809Communiter in universitatem.
Chapter XIX.—Palpable Absurdities and Contradictions in the System Respecting Achamoth and the Demiurge.
And yet there is not any agreement between the propriety of the names and that of the works, from which all the names are suggested; since all of them ought to have borne the name of her by whom the things were done, unless after all 6810 it turn out that they were not made by her. For, although they say that Achamoth devised these forms in honour of the Æons, they yet 6811 transfer this work to Soter as its author, when they say that he 6812 operated through her, so far as to give her the very image of the invisible and unknown Father—that is, the image which was unknown and invisible to the Demiurge; whilst he 6813 formed this same Demiurge in imitation 6814 of Nus the son of Propator; 6815 and whilst the archangels, who were the work of the Demiurge, resembled the other Æons. Now, when I hear of such images of the three, I ask, do you not wish me to laugh at these pictures of their most extravagant painter? At the female Achamoth, a picture of the Father? At the Demiurge, ignorant of his mother, much more so of his father? At the picture of Nus, ignorant of his father too, and the ministering angels, facsimiles of their lords? This is painting a mule from an ass, and sketching Ptolemy from Valentinus.
Footnotes
513:6810Jam.
513:6811Rursus.
513:6812This is the force of the “qui” with the subjunctive verb.
513:6813Soter.
513:6814Effingeret.
513:6815There seems to be a relative gradation meant among these extra-Pleroma beings, as there was among the Æons of the Pleroma; and, further, a relation between the two sets of beings—Achamoth bearing a relation to Propator, the Demiurge to Nus, etc.
Chapter XX—The Demiurge Works Away at Creation, as the Drudge of His Mother Achamoth, in Ignorance All the While of the Nature of His Occupation.
The Demiurge therefore, placed as he was without the limits of the Pleroma in the ignominious solitude of his eternal exile, founded a new empire—this world (of ours)—by clearing away the confusion and distinguishing the difference between the two substances which severally constituted it, 6816 the animal and the material. Out of incorporeal (elements) he constructs bodies, heavy, light, erect 6817 and stooping, celestial and terrene. He then completes the sevenfold stages of heaven itself, with his own throne above all. Whence he had the additional name of Sabbatum from the hebdomadal nature of his abode; his mother Achamoth, too, had the title Ogdoada, after the precedent of the primeval Ogdoad. 6818 These heavens, however, they consider to be intelligent, 6819 and sometimes they make angels of them, as indeed they do of the Demiurge himself; as also (they call) Paradise the fourth archangel, because they fix it above the third heaven, of the power of which Adam partook, when he sojourned there amidst its fleecy clouds 6820 and shrubs. 6821 Ptolemy remembered perfectly well the prattle of his boyhood, 6822 that apples grew in the sea, and fishes on the tree; after the same fashion, he assumed that nut-trees flourished in the skies. The Demiurge does his work in ignorance, and therefore perhaps he is unaware that trees ought to be planted only on the ground. His mother, of course, knew all about it: how is it, then, that she did not suggest the fact, since she was actually executing her own operation? But whilst building up so vast an edifice for her son by means of those works, which proclaim him at once to be father, god and, king before the conceits of the Valentinians, why she refused to let them be known to even him, 6823 is a question which I shall ask afterwards.
Footnotes
514:6816Duplicis substantiæ illius disclusæ.
514:6817Sublimantia.
514:6818Ogdoadis primogenitalis: what Irenæus calls “the first-begotten and primary Ogdoad of the Pleroma” (See our Irenæus, Vol. I.; also above, chap. vii. p. 506.)
514:6819Noëros.
514:6820Nubeculas.
514:6821Arbusculas.
514:6822Puerilium dicibulorum.
514:6823Sibi here must refer to the secondary agent of the sentence.
Chapter XXI.—The Vanity as Well as Ignorance of the Demiurge. Absurd Results from So Imperfect a Condition.
Meanwhile you must believe 6824 that Sophia has the surnames of earth and of Mother—“Mother-Earth,” of course—and (what may excite your laughter still more heartily) even Holy Spirit. In this way they have conferred all honour on that female, I suppose even a beard, not to say other things. Besides, 6825 the Demiurge had so little mastery over things, 6826 on the score, 6827 you must know, 6828 of his inability to approach spiritual essences, (constituted as he was) of animal elements, that, imagining himself to be the only being, he uttered this soliloquy: “I am God, and beside me there is none else.” 6829 But for all that, he at least was aware that he had not himself existed before. He understood, therefore, that he had been created, and that there must be a creator of a creature of some sort or other. How happens it, then, that he seemed to himself to be the only being, notwithstanding his uncertainty, and although he had, at any rate, some suspicion of the existence of some creator?
Footnotes
514:6824Tenendum.
514:6825Alioquin.
514:6826Adeo rerum non erat compos.
514:6827Censu.
514:6828Scilicet.
514:6829Isa. 45:5, Isa. 46:9.
Chapter XXII.—Origin of the Devil, in the Criminal Excess of the Sorrow of Achamoth. The Devil, Called Also Munditenens, Actually Wiser Than the Demiurge, Although His Work.
The odium felt amongst them 6830 against the devil is the more excusable, 6831 even because the peculiarly sordid character of his origin justifies it. 6832 For he is supposed by them to have had his origin in that criminal excess 6833 of her 6834 sorrow, from which they also derive the birth of the angels, and demons, and all the wicked spirits. Yet they affirm that the devil is the work of the Demiurge, and they call him Munditenens 6835 (Ruler of the World), and maintain that, as he is of a spiritual nature, he has a better knowledge of the things above than the Demiurge, an animal being. He deserves from them the pre-eminence which all heresies provide him with.
Footnotes
514:6830Infamia apud illos.
514:6831Tolerabilior.
514:6832Capit: “capax est,” nimirum “infamiæ” (Fr. Junius).
514:6833Ex nequitia.
514:6834Achamoth’s.
514:6835Irenæus’ word is Κοσμοκράτωρ; see also Eph. vi. 12.
Chapter XXIII.—The Relative Positions of the Pleroma. The Region of Achamoth, and the Creation of the Demiurge. The Addition of Fire to the Various Elements and Bodies of Nature.
Their most eminent powers, moreover, they confine within the following limits, as in a citadel. In the most elevated of all summits presides the tricenary Pleroma, 6836 Horos marking off its boundary line. Beneath it, Achamoth occupies the intermediate space for her abode, 6837 treading down her son. For under her comes the Demiurge in his own Hebdomad, or rather the Devil, sojourning in this world in common with ourselves, formed, as has been said above, of the same elements and the same body, out of the most profitable calamities of Sophia; inasmuch as, (if it had not been for these,) our spirit would have had no space for inhaling and ejecting 6838 air—that delicate vest of all corporeal creatures, that revealer of all colours, that instrument of the seasons—if the sadness of Sophia had not filtered it, just as her fear did the animal existence, and her conversion the Demiurge himself. Into all these elements and bodies fire was fanned. Now, since they have not as yet explained to us the original sensation of this 6839 in Sophia, I will on my own responsibility 6840 conjecture that its spark was struck out of the delicate emotions 6841 of her (feverish grief). For you may be quite sure that, amidst all her vexations, she must have had a good deal of fever. 6842
Footnotes
514:6836Above, in chap. viii., he has mentioned the Pleroma as “the fulness of the thirtyfold divinity.”
514:6837Metatur.
515:6838Reciprocandi.
515:6839Fire.
515:6840Ego.
515:6841Motiunculis.
515:6842Febricitasse.
Chapter XXIV.—The Formation of Man by the Demiurge. Human Flesh Not Made of the Ground, But of a Nondescript Philosophic Substance.
Such being their conceits respecting God, or, if you like, 6843 the gods, of what sort are their figments concerning man? For, after he had made the world, the Demiurge turns his hands to man, and chooses for him as his substance not any portion of “the dry land,” as they say, of which alone we have any knowledge (although it was, at that time, not yet dried by the waters becoming separated from the earthy residuum, and only afterwards became dry), but of the invisible substance of that matter, which philosophy indeed dreams of, from its fluid and fusible composition, the origin of which I am unable to imagine, because it exists nowhere. Now, since fluidity and fusibility are qualities of liquid matter, and since everything liquid flowed from Sophia’s tears, we must, as a necessary conclusion, believe that muddy earth is constituted of Sophia’s eye-rheums and viscid discharges, 6844 which are just as much the dregs of tears as mud is the sediment of waters. Thus does the Demiurge mould man as a potter does his clay, and animates him with his own breath. Made after his image and likeness, he will therefore be both material and animal. A fourfold being! For in respect of his “image,” he must be deemed clayey, 6845 that is to say, material, although the Demiurge is not composed of matter; but as to his “likeness,” he is animal, for such, too, is the Demiurge. You have two (of his constituent elements). Moreover, a coating of flesh was, as they allege, afterwards placed over the clayey substratum, and it is this tunic of skin which is susceptible of sensation.
Footnotes
515:6843Vel.
515:6844Ex pituitis et gramis.
515:6845Choicus.
Chapter XXV.—An Extravagant Way of Accounting for the Communication of the Spiritual Nature to Man. It Was Furtively Managed by Achamoth, Through the Unconscious Agency of Her Son.
In Achamoth, moreover, there was inherent a certain property of a spiritual germ, of her mother Sophia’s substance; and Achamoth herself had carefully severed off (the same quality), and implanted it in her son the Demiurge, although he was actually unconscious of it. It is for you to imagine 6846 the industry of this clandestine arrangement. For to this end had she deposited and concealed (this germ), that, whenever the Demiurge came to impart life to Adam by his inbreathing, he might at the same time draw off from the vital principle 6847 the spiritual seed, and, as by a pipe, inject it into the clayey nature; in order that, being then fecundated in the material body as in a womb, and having fully grown there, it might be found fit for one day receiving the perfect Word. 6848 When, therefore, the Demiurge commits to Adam the transmission of his own vital principle, 6849 the spiritual man lay hid, although inserted by his breath, and at the same time introduced into the body, because the Demiurge knew no more about his mother’s seed than about herself. To this seed they give the name of Ecclesia (the Church), the mirror of the church above, and the perfection 6850 of man; tracing this perfection from Achamoth, just as they do the animal nature from the Demiurge, the clayey material of the body (they derive) from the primordial substance, 6851 the flesh from Matter. So that you have a new Geryon here, only a fourfold (rather than a threefold) monster.
Footnotes
515:6846Accipe.
515:6847Anima derivaret.
515:6848Sermoni perfecto.
515:6849Traducem animæ suæ.
515:6850Censum.
515:6851Or, the substance of ᾽Αρχή.
Chapter XXVI.—The Three Several Natures—The Material, the Animal, and the Spiritual, and Their Several Destinations. The Strange Valentinian Opinion About the Structure of Soter’s Nature.
In like manner they assign to each of them a separate end. 6852 To the material, that is to say the carnal (nature), which they also call “the left-handed,” they assign undoubted destruction; to the animal (nature), which they also call “the right-handed,” a doubtful issue, inasmuch as it oscillates between the material and the spiritual, and is sure to fall at last on the side to which it has mainly gravitated. As regards the spiritual, however, (they say) that it enters into the formation of the animal, in order that it may be educated in company with it and be disciplined by repeated intercourse with it. For the animal (nature) was in want of training even by the senses: for this purpose, accordingly, was the whole structure of the world provided; for this purpose also did Soter (the Saviour) present Himself in the world—even for the salvation of the animal (nature). By yet another arrangement they will have it that He, in some prodigious way, 6853 clothed Himself with the primary portions 6854 of those substances, the whole of which He was going to restore to salvation; in such wise that He assumed the spiritual nature from Achamoth, whilst He derived the animal (being), Christ, afterwards from the Demiurge; His corporal substance, however, which was constructed of an animal nature (only with wonderful and indescribable skill), He wore for a dispensational purpose, in order that He might, in spite of His own unwillingness, 6855 be capable of meeting persons, and of being seen and touched by them, and even of dying. But there was nothing material assumed by Him, inasmuch as that was incapable of salvation. As if He could possibly have been more required by any others than by those who were in want of salvation! And all this, in order that by severing the condition of our flesh from Christ they may also deprive it of the hope of salvation!
Footnotes
515:6852Exitum.
516:6853Monstruosum illum.
516:6854Prosicias induisse. Irenæus says, “Assumed the first-fruits,” τὰς ἀπαρχάς.
516:6855Ingratis.
Chapter XXVII.—The Christ of the Demiurge, Sent into the World by the Virgin. Not of Her. He Found in Her, Not a Mother, But Only a Passage or Channel. Jesus Descended Upon Christ, at His Baptism, Like a Dove; But, Being Incapable of Suffering, He Left Christ to Die on the Cross Alone.
I now adduce 6856 (what they say) concerning Christ, upon whom some of them engraft Jesus with so much licence, that they foist into Him a spiritual seed together with an animal inflatus. Indeed, I will not undertake to describe 6857 these incongruous crammings, 6858 which they have contrived in relation both to their men and their gods. Even the Demiurge has a Christ of His own—His natural Son. An animal, in short, produced by Himself, proclaimed by the prophets—His position being one which must be decided by prepositions; in other words, He was produced by means of a virgin, rather than of a virgin! On the ground that, having descended into the virgin rather in the manner of a passage through her than of a birth by her, He came into existence through her, not of her—not experiencing a mother in her, but nothing more than a way. Upon this same Christ, therefore (so they say), Jesus descended in the sacrament of baptism, in the likeness of a dove. Moreover, there was even in Christ accruing from Achamoth the condiment of a spiritual seed, in order of course to prevent the corruption of all the other stuffing. 6859 For after the precedent of the principal Tetrad, they guard him with four substances—the spiritual one of Achamoth, the animal one of the Demiurge, the corporeal one, which cannot be described, and that of Soter, or, in other phrase, the columbine. 6860 As for Soter (Jesus), he remained in Christ to the last, impassible, incapable of injury, incapable of apprehension. By and by, when it came to a question of capture, he departed from him during the examination before Pilate. In like manner, his mother’s seed did not admit of being injured, being equally exempt from all manner of outrage, 6861 and being undiscovered even by the Demiurge himself. The animal and carnal Christ, however, does suffer after the fashion 6862 of the superior Christ, who, for the purpose of producing Achamoth, had been stretched upon the cross, that is, Horos, in a substantial though not a cognizable 6863 form. In this manner do they reduce all things to mere images—Christians themselves being indeed nothing but imaginary beings!
Footnotes
516:6856Reddo.
516:6857Nescio quæ.
516:6858Fartilia.
516:6859Farsura.
516:6860That which descended like a dove.
516:6861Æque insubditivam.
516:6862In delineationem.
516:6863Agnitionali.
Chapter XXVIII.—The Demiurge Cured of His Ignorance by the Saviour’s Advent, from Whom He Hears of the Great Future in Store for Himself.
Meanwhile the Demiurge, being still ignorant of everything, although he will actually have to make some announcement himself by the prophets, but is quite incapable of even this part of his duty (because they divide authority over the prophets 6864 between Achamoth, the Seed, and the Demiurge), no sooner heard of the advent of Soter (Saviour) than he runs to him with haste and joy, with all his might, like the centurion in the Gospel. 6865 And being enlightened by him on all points, he learns from him also of his own prospect how that he is to succeed to his mother’s place. Being thenceforth free from all care, he carries on the administration of this world, mainly under the plea of protecting the church, for as long a time as may be necessary and proper.
Footnotes
516:6864Prophetiale patrocinium.
517:6865Matt. 8:5, 6.
Chapter XXIX.—The Three Natures Again Adverted to. They are All Exemplified Amongst Men. For Instance, by Cain, and Abel, and Seth.
I will now collect from different sources, by way of conclusion, what they affirm concerning the dispensation 6866 of the whole human race. Having at first stated their views as to man’s threefold nature—which was, however, united in one 6867 in the case of Adam—they then proceed after him to divide it (into three) with their especial characteristics, finding opportunity for such distinction in the posterity of Adam himself, in which occurs a threefold division as to moral differences. Cain and Abel, and Seth, who were in a certain sense the sources of the human race, become the fountain-heads of just as many qualities 6868 of nature and essential character. 6869 The material nature, 6870 which had become reprobate for salvation, they assign to Cain; the animal nature, which was poised between divergent hopes, they find 6871 in Abel; the spiritual, preordained for certain salvation, they store up 6872 in Seth. In this way also they make a twofold distinction among souls, as to their property of good and evil—according to the material condition derived from Cain, or the animal from Abel. Men’s spiritual state they derive over and above the other conditions, 6873 from Seth adventitiously, 6874 not in the way of nature, but of grace, 6875 in such wise that Achamoth infuses it 6876 among superior beings like rain 6877 into good souls, that is, those who are enrolled in the animal class. Whereas the material class—in other words, those which are bad souls—they say, never receive the blessings of salvation; 6878 for that nature they have pronounced to be incapable of any change or reform in its natural condition. 6879 This grain, then, of spiritual seed is modest and very small when cast from her hand, but under her instruction 6880 increases and advances into full conviction, as we have already said; 6881 and the souls, on this very account, so much excelled all others, that the Demiurge, even then in his ignorance, held them in great esteem. For it was from their list that he had been accustomed to select men for kings and for priests; and these even now, if they have once attained to a full and complete knowledge of these foolish conceits of theirs, 6882 since they are already naturalized in the fraternal bond of the spiritual state, will obtain a sure salvation, nay, one which is on all accounts their due.
Footnotes
517:6866De dispositione.
517:6867Inunitam.
517:6868Argumenta.
517:6869Essentiæ.
517:6870Choicum: “the clayey.” Having the doubtful issues, which arise from freedom of the will (Oehler).
517:6871Recondunt: or, “discover.”
517:6872Recondunt: or, “discover.”
517:6873Superducunt.
517:6874De obvenientia.
517:6875Indulgentiam.
517:6876The “quos” here relates to “spiritalem statum,” but expressing the sense rather than the grammatical propriety, refers to the plural idea of “good souls” (Oehler).
517:6877Depluat.
517:6878Salutaria.
517:6879We have tried to retain the emphatic repetition, “inreformabilem naturæ naturam.”
517:6880Eruditu hujus.
517:6881Above, in ch. xxv. p. 515.
517:6882Istarum næniarum.
Chapter XXX.—The Lax and Dangerous Views of This Sect Respecting Good Works. That These are Unnecessary to the Spiritual Man.
For this reason it is that they neither regard works 6883 as necessary for themselves, nor do they observe any of the calls of duty, eluding even the necessity of martyrdom on any pretence which may suit their pleasure. For this rule, (they say), is enjoined upon the animal seed, in order that the salvation, which we do not possess by any privilege of our state, 6884 we may work out by right 6885 of our conduct. Upon us, who are of an imperfect nature, 6886 is imprinted the mark of this (animal) seed, because we are reckoned as sprung from the loves of Theletus, 6887 and consequently as an abortion, just as their mother was. But woe to us indeed, should we in any point transgress the yoke of discipline, should we grow dull in the works of holiness and justice, should we desire to make our confession anywhere else, I know not where, and not before the powers of this world at the tribunals of the chief magistrates! 6888 As for them, however, they may prove their nobility by the dissoluteness 6889 of their life and their diligence 6890 in sin, since Achamoth fawns on them as her own; for she, too, found sin no unprofitable pursuit. Now it is held amongst them, that, for the purpose of honouring the celestial marriages, 6891 it is necessary to contemplate and celebrate the mystery always by cleaving to a companion, that, is to a woman; otherwise (they account any man) degenerate, and a bastard 6892 to the truth, who spends his life in the world without loving a woman or uniting himself to her. Then what is to become of the eunuchs whom we see amongst them?
Footnotes
517:6883Operationes: the doing of (good) works.”
517:6884As, forsooth, we should in the spiritual state.
517:6885Suffragio.
517:6886Being animal, not spiritual.
517:6887See above. ch. ix. x. p. 508.
517:6888See Scorpiace, ch. x. infra.
517:6889Passivitate.
517:6890“Diligentia” may mean “proclivity” (Rigalt.).
518:6891Of the Æons.
518:6892Nec legitimum: “not a lawful son.”
Chapter XXXI.—At the Last Day Great Changes Take Place Amongst the Æons as Well as Among Men. How Achamoth and the Demiurge are Affected Then. Irony on the Subject.
It remains that we say something about the end of the world, 6893 and the dispensing of reward. As soon as Achamoth has completed the full harvest of her seed, and has then proceeded to gather it into her garner, or, after it has been taken to the mill and ground to flour, has hidden it in the kneading-trough with yeast until the whole be leavened, then shall the end speedily come. 6894 Then, to begin with, Achamoth herself removes from the middle region, 6895 from the second stage to the highest, since she is restored to the Pleroma: she is immediately received by that paragon of perfection 6896 Soter, as her spouse of course, and they two afterwards consummate 6897 new nuptials. This must be the spouse of the Scripture, 6898 the Pleroma of espousals (for you might suppose that the Julian laws 6899 were interposing, since there are these migrations from place to place). In like manner, the Demiurge, too, will then change the scene of his abode from the celestial Hebdomad 6900 to the higher regions, to his mother’s now vacant saloon 6901 —by this time knowing her, without however seeing her. (A happy coincidence!) For if he had caught a glance of her, he would have preferred never to have known her.
Footnotes
518:6893De consummatione.
518:6894Urgebit.
518:6895See above, ch. xxiii. p. 514.
518:6896Compacticius ille.
518:6897Fient.
518:6898Query, the Holy Scriptures, or the writings of the Valentinians?
518:6899Very severe against adultery, and even against celibacy.
518:6900In ch. xx. this “scenam de Hebdomade cælesti” is called “cælorum septemplicem scenam” ="the sevenfold stage of heaven.”
518:6901Cœnaculum. See above, ch. vii. p. 506.
Chapter XXXII.—Indignant Irony Exposing the Valentinian Fable About the Judicial Treatment of Mankind at the Last Judgment. The Immorality of the Doctrine.
As for the human race, its end will be to the following effect:—To all which bear the earthy 6902 and material mark there accrues an entire destruction, because “all flesh is grass,” 6903 and amongst these is the soul of mortal man, except when it has found salvation by faith. The souls of just men, that is to say, our souls, will be conveyed to the Demiurge in the abodes of the middle region. We are duly thankful; we shall be content to be classed with our god, in whom lies our own origin. 6904 Into the palace of the Pleroma nothing of the animal nature is admitted—nothing but the spiritual swarm of Valentinus. There, then, the first process is the despoiling of men themselves, that is, men within the Pleroma. 6905 Now this despoiling consists of the putting off of the souls in which they appear to be clothed, which they will give back to their Demiurge as they had obtained 6906 them from him. They will then become wholly intellectual spirits—impalpable, 6907 invisible 6908 —and in this state will be readmitted invisibly to the Pleroma—stealthily, if the case admits of the idea. 6909 What then? They will be dispersed amongst the angels, the attendants on Soter. As sons, do you suppose? Not at all. As servants, then? No, not even so. Well, as phantoms? Would that it were nothing more! Then in what capacity, if you are ashamed to tell us? In the capacity of brides. Then will they end 6910 their Sabine rapes with the sanction of wedlock. This will be the guerdon of the spiritual, this the recompense of their faith! Such fables have their use. Although but a Marcus or a Gaius, 6911 full-grown in this flesh of ours, with a beard and such like proofs (of virility,) it may be a stern husband, a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather (never mind what, in fact, if only a male), you may perhaps in the bridal-chamber of the Pleroma—I have already said so tacitly 6912 —even become the parent by an angel of some Æon of high numerical rank. 6913 For the right celebration of these nuptials, instead of the torch and veil, I suppose that secret fire is then to burst forth, which, after devastating the whole existence of things, will itself also be reduced to nothing at last, after everything has been reduced to ashes; and so their fable too will be ended. 6914 But I, too, am no doubt a rash man, in having exposed so great a mystery in so derisive a way: I ought to be afraid that Achamoth, who did not choose to make herself known even to her own son, would turn mad, that Theletus would be enraged, that Fortune 6915 would be irritated. But I am yet a liege-man of the Demiurge. I have to return after death to the place where there is no more giving in marriage, where I have to be clothed upon rather than to be despoiled,—where, even if I am despoiled of my sex, I am classed with angels—not a male angel, nor a female one. There will be no one to do aught against me, nor will they then find any male energy in me.
Footnotes
518:6902Choicæ: “clayey.”
518:6903Isa. xl. 6.
518:6904See above, in ch. xxiv. p. 515.
518:6905Interiores.
518:6906Averterant.
518:6907Neque detentui obnoxii.
518:6908Neque conspectui obnoxii.
518:6909Si ita est: or, “since such is the fact.”
518:6910Claudent.
518:6911But slaves, in fact.
518:6912This parenthetic clause, “tacendo jam dixi,” perhaps means, “I say this with shame,” “I would rather not have to say it.”
518:6913The common reading is, “Onesimum Æonem,” an Æon called Onesimus, in supposed allusion to Philemon’s Onesimus. But this is too far-fetched. Oehler discovers in “Onesimum” the corruption of some higher number ending in “esimum.”
518:6914This is Oehler’s idea of “et nulla jam fabula.” Rigaltius, however, gives a good sense to this clause: “All will come true at last; there will be no fable.”
519:6915The same as Macariotes, in ch. viii. above, p. 507.
Chapter XXXIII.—These Remaining Chapters an Appendix to the Main Work. In This Chapter Tertullian Notices a Difference Among Sundry Followers of Ptolemy, a Disciple of Valentinus.
I shall now at last produce, by way of finale, 6916 after so long a story, those points which, not to interrupt the course of it, and by the interruption distract the reader’s attention, I have preferred reserving to this place. They have been variously advanced by those who have improved on 6917 the doctrines of Ptolemy. For there have been in his school “disciples above their master,” who have attributed to their Bythus two wives—Cogitatio (Thought) and Voluntas (Will). For Cogitatio alone was not sufficient wherewith to produce any offspring, although from the two wives procreation was most easy to him. The former bore him Monogenes (Only-Begotten) and Veritas (Truth). Veritas was a female after the likeness of Cogitatio; Monogenes a male bearing a resemblance to Voluntas. For it is the strength of Voluntas which procures the masculine nature, 6918 inasmuch as she affords efficiency to Cogitatio.
Footnotes
519:6916Velut epicitharisma.
519:6917Emendatoribus.
519:6918Censum.
Chapter XXXIV.—Other Varying Opinions Among the Valentinians Respecting the Deity, Characteristic Raillery.
Others of purer mind, mindful of the honour of the Deity, have, for the purpose of freeing him from the discredit of even single wedlock, preferred assigning no sex whatever to Bythus; and therefore very likely they talk of “this deity” in the neuter gender rather than “this god.” Others again, on the other hand, speak of him as both masculine and feminine, so that the worthy chronicler Fenestella must not suppose that an hermaphrodite was only to be found among the good people of Luna.
Chapter XXXV.—Yet More Discrepancies. Just Now the Sex of Bythus Was an Object of Dispute; Now His Rank Comes in Question. Absurd Substitutes for Bythus Criticised by Tertullian.
There are some who do not claim the first place for Bythus, but only a lower one. They put their Ogdoad in the foremost rank; itself, however, derived from a Tetrad, but under different names. For they put Pro-arche (Before the Beginning) first, Anennœtos (Inconceivable) second, Arrhetos (Indescribable) third, Aoratos (Invisible) fourth. Then after Pro-arche they say Arche (Beginning) came forth and occupied the first and the fifth place; from Anennœtos came Acataleptos (Incomprehensible) in the second and the sixth place; from Arrhetos came Anonomastos (Nameless) in the third and the seventh place; from Aoratos 6919 came Agennetos (Unbegotten) in the fourth and the eight place. Now by what method he arranges this, that each of these Æons should be born in two places, and that, too, at such intervals, I prefer to be ignorant of than to be informed. For what can be right in a system which is propounded with such absurd particulars?
Footnotes
519:6919Tertullian, however, here gives the Latin synonyme, Invisibilis.
Chapter XXXVI.—Less Reprehensible Theories in the Heresy. Bad is the Best of Valentinianism.
How much more sensible are they who, rejecting all this tiresome nonsense, have refused to believe that any one Æon has descended from another by steps like these, which are really neither more nor less Gemonian; 6920 but that on a given signal 6921 the eight-fold emanation, of which we have heard, 6922 issued all at once from the Father and His Ennœa (Thought), 6923 —that it is, in fact, from His mere motion that they gain their designations. When, as they say, He thought of producing offspring, He on that account gained the name of Father. After producing, because the issue which He produced was true, He received the name of Truth. When He wanted Himself to be manifested, He on that account was announced as Man. Those, moreover, whom He preconceived in His thought when He produced them, were then designated the Church. As man, He uttered His Word; and so this Word is His first-begotten Son, and to the Word was added Life. And by this process the first Ogdoad was completed. However, the whole of this tiresome story is utterly poor and weak.
Footnotes
519:6920The “Gemonian steps” on the Aventine led to the Tiber, to which the bodies of executed criminals were dragged by hooks, to be cast into the river.
519:6921Mappa, quod aiunt, missa: a proverbial expression.
519:6922Istam.
519:6923See above, ch. vii. p. 506.
Chapter XXXVII.—Other Turgid and Ridiculous Theories About the Origin of the Æons and Creation, Stated and Condemned.
Now listen to some other buffooneries 6924 of a master who is a great swell among them, 6925 and who has pronounced his dicta with an even priestly authority. They run thus: There comes, says he, before all things Pro-arche, the inconceivable, and indescribable, and nameless, which I for my own part call Monotes (Solitude). With this was associated another power, to which also I give the name of Henotes (Unity). Now, inasmuch as Monotes and Henotes—that is to say, Solitude and Union—were only one being, they produced, and yet not in the way of production, 6926 the intellectual, innascible, invisible beginning of all things, which human language 6927 has called Monad (Solitude). 6928 This has inherent in itself a consubstantial force, which it calls Unity 6929 These powers, accordingly, Solitude or Solitariness, and Unity, or Union, propagated all the other emanations of Æons. 6930 Wonderful distinction, to be sure! Whatever change Union and Unity may undergo, Solitariness and Solitude is profoundly supreme. Whatever designation you give the power, it is one and the same.
Footnotes
520:6924Oehler gives good reasons for the reading “ingenia circulatoria,” instead of the various readings of other editors.
520:6925Insignioris apud eos magistri.
520:6926Non proferentes. Another reading is “non proserentes” (not generating).
520:6927Sermo.
520:6928Or, solitariness.
520:6929Or, Union.
520:6930Compare our Irenæus, I. 2, 3. [Vol. I. p. 316.]
Chapter XXXVIII.—Diversity in the Opinions of Secundus, as Compared with the General Doctrine of Valentinus.
Secundus is a trifle more human, as he is briefer: he divides the Ogdoad into a pair of Tetrads, a right hand one and a left hand one, one light and the other darkness. Only he is unwilling to derive the power which apostatized and fell away 6931 from any one of the Æons, but from the fruits which issued from their substance.
Footnotes
520:6931Achamoth.
Chapter XXXIX.—Their Diversity of Sentiment Affects the Very Central Doctrine of Christianity, Even the Person and Character of the Lord Jesus. This Diversity Vitiates Every Gnostic School.
Now, concerning even the Lord Jesus, into how great a diversity of opinion are they divided! One party form Him of the blossoms of all the Æons. 6932 Another party will have it that He is made up only of those ten whom the Word and the Life 6933 produced; 6934 from which circumstance the titles of the Word and the Life were suitably transferred to Him. Others, again, that He rather sprang from the twelve, the offspring of Man and the Church, 6935 and therefore, they say, He was designated “Son of man.” Others, moreover, maintain that He was formed by Christ and the Holy Spirit, who have to provide for the establishment of the universe, 6936 and that He inherits by right His Father’s appellation. Some there are who have imagined that another origin must be found for the title “Son of man;” for they have had the presumption to call the Father Himself Man, by reason of the profound mystery of this title: so that what can you hope for more ample concerning faith in that God, with whom you are now yourself on a par? Such conceits are constantly cropping out 6937 amongst them, from the redundance of their mother’s seed. 6938 And so it happens that the doctrines which have grown up amongst the Valentinians have already extended their rank growth to the woods of the Gnostics.
Footnotes
520:6932See above, ch. xii. p. 510.
520:6933The Æons Sermo and Vita.
520:6934See above, ch. vii. p. 506.
520:6935See above, ch. viii. p. 507.
520:6936See above, ch. xiv. p. 511.
520:6937Superfruticant.
520:6938Archamoth is referred to.
V.
On the Flesh of Christ. 6939
This was written by our author in confutation of certain heretics who denied the reality of Christ’s flesh, or at least its identity with human flesh—fearing that, if they admitted the reality of Christ’s flesh, they must also admit his resurrection in the flesh; and, consequently, the resurrection of the human body after death.
[Translated by Dr. Holmes.]
————————————
Chapter I.—The General Purport of This Work. The Heretics, Marcion, Apelles, and Valentinus, Wishing to Impugn the Doctrine of the Resurrection, Deprive Christ of All Capacity for Such a Change by Denying His Flesh.
They who are so anxious to shake that belief in the resurrection which was firmly settled 6940 before the appearance of our modern Sadducees, 6941 as even to deny that the expectation thereof has any relation whatever to the flesh, have great cause for besetting the flesh of Christ also with doubtful questions, as if it either had no existence at all, or possessed a nature altogether different from human flesh. For they cannot but be apprehensive that, if it be once determined that Christ’s flesh was human, a presumption would immediately arise in opposition to them, that that flesh must by all means rise again, which has already risen in Christ. Therefore we shall have to guard our belief in the resurrection 6942 from the same armoury, whence they get their weapons of destruction. Let us examine our Lord’s bodily substance, for about His spiritual nature all are agreed. 6943 It is His flesh that is in question. Its verity and quality are the points in dispute. Did it ever exist? whence was it derived? and of what kind was it? If we succeed in demonstrating it, we shall lay down a law for our own resurrection. Marcion, in order that he might deny the flesh of Christ, denied also His nativity, or else he denied His flesh in order that he might deny His nativity; because, of course, he was afraid that His nativity and His flesh bore mutual testimony to each other’s reality, since there is no nativity without flesh, and no flesh without nativity. As if indeed, under the prompting of that licence which is ever the same in all heresy, he too might not very well have either denied the nativity, although admitting the flesh,—like Apelles, who was first a disciple of his, and afterwards an apostate,—or, while admitting both the flesh and the nativity, have interpreted them in a different sense, as did Valentinus, who resembled Apelles both in his discipleship and desertion of Marcion. At all events, he who represented the flesh of Christ to be imaginary was equally able to pass off His nativity as a phantom; so that the virgin’s conception, and pregnancy, and child-bearing, and then the whole course 6944 of her infant too, would have to be regarded as putative. 6945 These facts pertaining to the nativity of Christ would escape the notice of the same eyes and the same senses as failed to grasp the full idea 6946 of His flesh.
Footnotes
521:6939In his work On the Resurrection of the Flesh (chap. ii.), Tertullian refers to this tract, and calls it “De Carne Domini adversus quatuor hæreses”: the four heresies being those of Marcion, Apelles, Basilides, and Valentinus. Pamelius, indeed, designates the tract by this fuller title instead of the usual one, “De Carne Christi.” [This tract contains references to works written while our author was Montanistic, but it contains no positive Montanism. It should not be dated earlier than a.d. 207.]
521:6940Moratam.
521:6941The allusion is to Matt. xxii. 23; comp. De Præscr. Hæret. 33 (Fr. Junius).
521:6942Tertullian’s phrase is “carnis vota”—the future prospects of the flesh.
521:6943Certum est.
521:6944Ordo.
521:6945Τῷ δοκεῖν haberentur. This term gave name to the Docetic errors.
521:6946Opinio.
Chapter II.—Marcion, Who Would Blot Out the Record of Christ’s Nativity, is Rebuked for So Startling a Heresy.
Clearly enough is the nativity announced by Gabriel. 6947 But what has he to do with the Creator’s angel? 6948 The conception in the virgin’s womb is also set plainly before us. But what concern has he with the Creator’s prophet, Isaiah? 6949 He 6950 will not brook delay, since suddenly (without any prophetic announcement) did he bring down Christ from heaven. 6951 “Away,” says he, “with that eternal plaguey taxing of Cæsar, and the scanty inn, and the squalid swaddling-clothes, and the hard stable. 6952 We do not care a jot for 6953 that multitude of the heavenly host which praised their Lord at night. 6954 Let the shepherds take better care of their flock, 6955 and let the wise men spare their legs so long a journey; 6956 let them keep their gold to themselves. 6957 Let Herod, too, mend his manners, so that Jeremy may not glory over him. 6958 Spare also the babe from circumcision, that he may escape the pain thereof; nor let him be brought into the temple, lest he burden his parents with the expense of the offering; 6959 nor let him be handed to Simeon, lest the old man be saddened at the point of death. 6960 Let that old woman also hold her tongue, lest she should bewitch the child.” 6961 After such a fashion as this, I suppose you have had, O Marcion, the hardihood of blotting out the original records (of the history) of Christ, that His flesh may lose the proofs of its reality. But, prithee, on what grounds (do you do this)? Show me your authority. If you are a prophet, foretell us a thing; if you are an apostle, open your message in public; if a follower of apostles, 6962 side with apostles in thought; if you are only a (private) Christian, believe what has been handed down to us: if, however, you are nothing of all this, then (as I have the best reason to say) cease to live. 6963 For indeed you are already dead, since you are no Christian, because you do not believe that which by being believed makes men Christian,—nay, you are the more dead, the more you are not a Christian; having fallen away, after you had been one, by rejecting 6964 what you formerly believed, even as you yourself acknowledge in a certain letter of yours, and as your followers do not deny, whilst our (brethren) can prove it. 6965 Rejecting, therefore, what you once believed, you have completed the act of rejection, by now no longer believing: the fact, however, of your having ceased to believe has not made your rejection of the faith right and proper; nay, rather, 6966 by your act of rejection you prove that what you believed previous to the said act was of a different character. 6967 What you believed to be of a different character, had been handed down just as you believed it. Now 6968 that which had been handed down was true, inasmuch as it had been transmitted by those whose duty it was to hand it down. Therefore, when rejecting that which had been handed down, you rejected that which was true. You had no authority for what you did. However, we have already in another treatise availed ourselves more fully of these prescriptive rules against all heresies. Our repetition of them hereafter that large (treatise) is superfluous, 6969 when we ask the reason why you have formed the opinion that Christ was not born.
Footnotes
522:6947Luke i. 26-38.
522:6948This is said in opposition to Marcion, who held the Creator’s angel, and everything else pertaining to him, to be evil.
522:6949A reference to Isa. vii. 14.
522:6950Marcion.
522:6951See also our Anti-Marcion, iv. 7.
522:6952Luke ii. 1-7.
522:6953Viderit.
522:6954Luke ii. 13.
522:6955Luke ii. 8.
522:6956Matt. ii. 1.
522:6957Matt. ii. 11.
522:6958Matt. 2:16, Jer. 31:15.
522:6959Luke ii. 22-24.
522:6960Luke ii. 25-35.
522:6961Luke ii. 36-38.
522:6962Apostolicus.
522:6963Morere.
522:6964Rescindendo.
522:6965Compare our Anti-Marcion, i. 1, iv. 4 and de Præscr. Hær. c. xxx.
522:6966Atquin.
522:6967Aliter fuisse.
522:6968Porro.
522:6969Ex abundanti. [Dr. Holmes, in this sentence actually uses the word lengthy, for which I have said large.]
Chapter III.—Christ’s Nativity Both Possible and Becoming. The Heretical Opinion of Christ’s Apparent Flesh Deceptive and Dishonourable to God, Even on Marcion’s Principles.
Since 6970 you think that this lay within the competency of your own arbitrary choice, you must needs have supposed that being born 6971 was either impossible for God, or unbecoming to Him. With God, however, nothing is impossible but what He does not will. Let us consider, then, whether He willed to be born (for if He had the will, He also had the power, and was born). I put the argument very briefly. If God had willed not to be born, it matters not why, He would not have presented Himself in the likeness of man. Now who, when he sees a man, would deny that he had been born? What God therefore willed not to be, He would in no wise have willed the seeming to be. When a thing is distasteful, the very notion 6972 of it is scouted; because it makes no difference whether a thing exist or do not exist, if, when it does not exist, it is yet assumed to exist. It is of course of the greatest importance that there should be nothing false (or pretended) attributed to that which really does not exist. 6973 But, say you, His own consciousness (of the truth of His nature) was enough for Him. If any supposed that He had been born, because they saw Him as a man, that was their concern. 6974 Yet with how much more dignity and consistency would He have sustained the human character on the supposition that He was truly born; for if He were not born, He could not have undertaken the said character without injury to that consciousness of His which you on your side attribute to His confidence of being able to sustain, although not born, the character of having been born even against! His own consciousness! 6975 Why, I want to know, 6976 was it of so much importance, that Christ should, when perfectly aware what He really was, exhibit Himself as being that which He was not? You cannot express any apprehension that, 6977 if He had been born and truly clothed Himself with man’s nature, He would have ceased to be God, losing what He was, while becoming what He was not. For God is in no danger of losing His own state and condition. But, say you, I deny that God was truly changed to man in such wise as to be born and endued with a body of flesh, on this ground, that a being who is without end is also of necessity incapable of change. For being changed into something else puts an end to the former state. Change, therefore, is not possible to a Being who cannot come to an end. Without doubt, the nature of things which are subject to change is regulated by this law, that they have no permanence in the state which is undergoing change in them, and that they come to an end from thus wanting permanence, whilst they lose that in the process of change which they previously were. But nothing is equal with God; His nature is different 6978 from the condition of all things. If, then, the things which differ from God, and from which God differs, lose what existence they had whilst they are undergoing change, wherein will consist the difference of the Divine Being from all other things except in His possessing the contrary faculty of theirs,—in other words, that God can be changed into all conditions, and yet continue just as He is? On any other supposition, He would be on the same level with those things which, when changed, lose the existence they had before; whose equal, of course, He is not in any other respect, as He certainly is not in the changeful issues 6979 of their nature. You have sometimes read and believed that the Creator’s angels have been changed into human form, and have even borne about so veritable a body, that Abraham even washed their feet, 6980 and Lot was rescued from the Sodomites by their hands; 6981 an angel, moreover, wrestled with a man so strenuously with his body, that the latter desired to be let loose, so tightly was he held. 6982 Has it, then, been permitted to angels, which are inferior to God, after they have been changed into human bodily form, 6983 nevertheless to remain angels? and will you deprive God, their superior, of this faculty, as if Christ could not continue to be God, after His real assumption of the nature of man? Or else, did those angels appear as phantoms of flesh? You will not, however, have the courage to say this; for if it be so held in your belief, that the Creator’s angels are in the same condition as Christ, then Christ will belong to the same God as those angels do, who are like Christ in their condition. If you had not purposely rejected in some instances, and corrupted in others, the Scriptures which are opposed to your opinion, you would have been confuted in this matter by the Gospel of John, when it declares that the Spirit descended in the body 6984 of a dove, and sat upon the Lord. 6985 When the said Spirit was in this condition, He was as truly a dove as He was also a spirit; nor did He destroy His own proper substance by the assumption of an extraneous substance. But you ask what becomes of the dove’s body, after the return of the Spirit back to heaven, and similarly in the case of the angels. Their withdrawal was effected in the same manner as their appearance had been. If you had seen how their production out of nothing had been effected, you would have known also the process of their return to nothing. If the initial step was out of sight, so was also the final one. Still there was solidity in their bodily substance, whatever may have been the force by which the body became visible. What is written cannot but have been.
Footnotes
522:6970Quatenus.
522:6971Nativitatem.
522:6972Opinio.
523:6973If Christ’s flesh was not real, the pretence of it was wholly wrong.
523:6974Viderint homines.
523:6975It did not much matter (according to the view which Tertullian attributes to Marcion) if God did practise deception in affecting the assumption of a humanity which He knew to be unreal. Men took it to be real, and that answered every purpose. God knew better: and He was moreover, strong enough to obviate all inconveniences of the deception by His unfaltering fortitude, etc. All this, however, seemed to Tertullian to be simply damaging and perilous to the character of God, even from Marcion’s own point of view.
523:6976Edoce.
523:6977Non potes dicere ne, etc.
523:6978Distat.
523:6979In exitu conversionis.
523:6980Gen. xviii.
523:6981Gen. xix.
523:6982Gen. xxxii.
523:6983See below in chap. vi. and in the Anti-Marcion, iii. 9.
523:6984Corpore.
523:6985Matt. iii. 16.
Chapter IV.—God’s Honour in the Incarnation of His Son Vindicated. Marcion’s Disparagement of Human Flesh Inconsistent as Well as Impious. Christ Has Cleansed the Flesh. The Foolishness of God is Most Wise.
Since, therefore, you do not reject the assumption of a body 6986 as impossible or as hazardous to the character of God, it remains for you to repudiate and censure it as unworthy of Him. Come now, beginning from the nativity itself, declaim 6987 against the uncleanness of the generative elements within the womb, the filthy concretion of fluid and blood, of the growth of the flesh for nine months long out of that very mire. Describe the womb as it enlarges 6988 from day to day, heavy, troublesome, restless even in sleep, changeful in its feelings of dislike and desire. Inveigh now likewise against the shame itself of a woman in travail 6989 which, however, ought rather to be honoured in consideration of that peril, or to be held sacred 6990 in respect of (the mystery of) nature. Of course you are horrified also at the infant, which is shed into life with the embarrassments which accompany it from the womb; 6991 you likewise, of course, loathe it even after it is washed, when it is dressed out in its swaddling-clothes, graced with repeated anointing, 6992 smiled on with nurse’s fawns. This reverend course of nature, 6993 you, O Marcion, (are pleased to) spit upon; and yet, in what way were you born? You detest a human being at his birth; then after what fashion do you love anybody? Yourself, of course, you had no love of, when you departed from the Church and the faith of Christ. But never mind, 6994 if you are not on good terms with yourself, or even if you were born in a way different from other people. Christ, at any rate, has loved even that man who was condensed in his mother’s womb amidst all its uncleannesses, even that man who was brought into life out of the said womb, even that man who was nursed amidst the nurse’s simpers. 6995 For his sake He came down (from heaven), for his sake He preached, for his sake “He humbled Himself even unto death—the death of the cross.” 6996 He loved, of course, the being whom He redeemed at so great a cost. If Christ is the Creator’s Son, it was with justice that He loved His own (creature); if He comes from another god, His love was excessive, since He redeemed a being who belonged to another. Well, then, loving man He loved his nativity also, and his flesh as well. Nothing can be loved apart from that through which whatever exists has its existence. Either take away nativity, and then show us your man; or else withdraw the flesh, and then present to our view the being whom God has redeemed—since it is these very conditions 6997 which constitute the man whom God has redeemed. And are you for turning these conditions into occasions of blushing to the very creature whom He has redeemed, (censuring them), too, as unworthy of Him who certainly would not have redeemed them had He not loved them? Our birth He reforms from death by a second birth from heaven; 6998 our flesh He restores from every harassing malady; when leprous, He cleanses it of the stain; when blind, He rekindles its light; when palsied, He renews its strength; when possessed with devils, He exorcises it; when dead, He reanimates it,—then shall we blush to own it? If, to be sure, 6999 He had chosen to be born of a mere animal, and were to preach the kingdom of heaven invested with the body of a beast either wild or tame, your censure (I imagine) would have instantly met Him with this demurrer: “This is disgraceful for God, and this is unworthy of the Son of God, and simply foolish.” For no other reason than because one thus judges. It is of course foolish, if we are to judge God by our own conceptions. But, Marcion, consider well this Scripture, if indeed you have not erased it: “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world, to confound the wise.” 7000 Now what are those foolish things? Are they the conversion of men to the worship of the true God, the rejection of error, the whole training in righteousness, chastity, mercy, patience, and innocence? These things certainly are not “foolish.” Inquire again, then, of what things he spoke, and when you imagine that you have discovered what they are will you find anything to be so “foolish” as believing in a God that has been born, and that of a virgin, and of a fleshly nature too, who wallowed in all the before-mentioned humiliations of nature? But some one may say, “These are not the foolish things; they must be other things which God has chosen to confound the wisdom of the world.” And yet, according to the world’s wisdom, it is more easy to believe that Jupiter became a bull or a swan, if we listen to Marcion, than that Christ really became a man.
Footnotes
524:6986Corporationem.
524:6987Compare similar passages in the Anti-Marcion, iii. 1 and iv. 21.
524:6988Insolescentem.
524:6989Enitentis.
524:6990Religiosum.
524:6991Cum suis impedimentis profusum.
524:6992Unctionibus formatur.
524:6993Hanc venerationem naturæ. Compare Tertullian’s phrase, “Illa sanctissima et reverenda opera naturæ,” in the Anti-Marcion, iii. 11.
524:6994Videris.
524:6995Per ludibria nutritum. Compare the phrase just before, “smiled on with nurse’s fawns”—“blanditiis deridetur.” Oehler, however, compares the phrase with Tertullian’s expression (“puerperii spurcos, anxios, ludicros exitus,”) in the Anti-Marcion, iv. 21.
524:6996Phil. ii. 8.
524:6997Hæc: i.e. man’s nativity and his flesh.
524:6998Literally, “by a heavenly regeneration.”
524:6999Revera. [I cannot let the words which follow, stand in the text; they are sufficiently rendered.]
524:70001 Cor. i. 27.
Chapter V.—Christ Truly Lived and Died in Human Flesh. Incidents of His Human Life on Earth, and Refutation of Marcion’s Docetic Parody of the Same.
There are, to be sure, other things also quite as foolish (as the birth of Christ), which have reference to the humiliations and sufferings of God. Or else, let them call a crucified God “wisdom.” But Marcion will apply the knife 7001 to this doctrine also, and even with greater reason. For which is more unworthy of God, which is more likely to raise a blush of shame, that God should be born, or that He should die? that He should bear the flesh, or the cross? be circumcised, or be crucified? be cradled, or be coffined? 7002 be laid in a manger, or in a tomb? Talk of “wisdom!” You will show more of that if you refuse to believe this also. But, after all, you will not be “wise” unless you become a “fool” to the world, by believing “the foolish things of God.” Have you, then, cut away 7003 all sufferings from Christ, on the ground that, as a mere phantom, He was incapable of experiencing them? We have said above that He might possibly have undergone the unreal mockeries 7004 of an imaginary birth and infancy. But answer me at once, you that murder truth: Was not God really crucified? And, having been really crucified, did He not really die? And, having indeed really died, did He not really rise again? Falsely did Paul 7005 “determine to know nothing amongst us but Jesus and Him crucified;” 7006 falsely has he impressed upon us that He was buried; falsely inculcated that He rose again. False, therefore, is our faith also. And all that we hope for from Christ will be a phantom. O thou most infamous of men, who acquittest of all guilt 7007 the murderers of God! For nothing did Christ suffer from them, if He really suffered nothing at all. Spare the whole world’s one only hope, thou who art destroying the indispensable dishonour of our faith. 7008 Whatsoever is unworthy of God, is of gain to me. I am safe, if I am not ashamed of my Lord. “Whosoever,” says He, “shall be ashamed of me, of him will I also be ashamed.” 7009 Other matters for shame find I none which can prove me to be shameless in a good sense, and foolish in a happy one, by my own contempt of shame. The Son of God was crucified; I am not ashamed because men must needs be ashamed of it. And the Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd. 7010 And He was buried, and rose again; the fact is certain, because it is impossible. But how will all this be true in Him, if He was not Himself true—if He really had not in Himself that which might be crucified, might die, might be buried, and might rise again? I mean this flesh suffused with blood, built up with bones, interwoven with nerves, entwined with veins, a flesh which knew how to be born, and how to die, human without doubt, as born of a human being. It will therefore be mortal in Christ, because Christ is man and the Son of man. Else why is Christ man and the Son of man, if he has nothing of man, and nothing from man? Unless it be either that man is anything else than flesh, or man’s flesh comes from any other source than man, or Mary is anything else than a human being, or Marcion’s man is as Marcion’s god. 7011 Otherwise Christ could not be described as being man without flesh, nor the Son of man without any human parent; just as He is not God without the Spirit of God, nor the Son of God without having God for His father. Thus the nature 7012 of the two substances displayed Him as man and God,—in one respect born, in the other unborn; in one respect fleshly, in the other spiritual; in one sense weak, in the other exceeding strong; in one sense dying, in the other living. This property of the two states—the divine and the human—is distinctly asserted 7013 with equal truth of both natures alike, with the same belief both in respect of the Spirit 7014 and of the flesh. The powers of the Spirit, 7015 proved Him to be God, His sufferings attested the flesh of man. If His powers were not without the Spirit 7016 in like manner, were not His sufferings without the flesh. If His flesh with its sufferings was fictitious, for the same reason was the Spirit false with all its powers. Wherefore halve 7017 Christ with a lie? He was wholly the truth. Believe me, He chose rather to be born, than in any part to pretend—and that indeed to His own detriment—that He was bearing about a flesh hardened without bones, solid without muscles, bloody without blood, clothed without the tunic of skin, 7018 hungry without appetite, eating without teeth, speaking without a tongue, so that His word was a phantom to the ears through an imaginary voice. A phantom, too, it was of course after the resurrection, when, showing His hands and His feet for the disciples to examine, He said, “Behold and see that it is I myself, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have;” 7019 without doubt, hands, and feet, and bones are not what a spirit possesses, but only the flesh. How do you interpret this statement, Marcion, you who tell us that Jesus comes only from the most excellent God, who is both simple and good? See how He rather cheats, and deceives, and juggles the eyes of all, and the senses of all, as well as their access to and contact with Him! You ought rather to have brought Christ down, not from heaven, but from some troop of mountebanks, not as God besides man, but simply as a man, a magician; not as the High Priest of our salvation, but as the conjurer in a show; not as the raiser of the dead, but as the misleader 7020 of the living,—except that, if He were a magician, He must have had a nativity!
Footnotes
525:7001Aufer, Marcion. Literally, “Destroy this also, O Marcion.”
525:7002Educari an sepeliri.
525:7003Recidisti.
525:7004Vacua ludibria.
525:7005Paul was of great authority in Marcion’s school.
525:70061 Cor. ii. 2.
525:7007Excusas.
525:7008The humiliation which God endured, so indispensable a part of the Christian faith.
525:7009Matt. 10:33, Mark 8:38, Luke 9:26.
525:7010Ineptum.
525:7011That is, imaginary and unreal.
525:7012Census: “the origin.”
525:7013Dispuncta est.
525:7014This term is almost a technical designation of the divine nature of Christ in Tertullian. (See our translation of the Anti-Marcion, p. 247, note 7, Edin.)
525:7015This term is almost a technical designation of the divine nature of Christ in Tertullian. (See our translation of the Anti-Marcion, p. 247, note 7, Edin.)
525:7016This term is almost a technical designation of the divine nature of Christ in Tertullian. (See our translation of the Anti-Marcion, p. 247, note 7, Edin.)
525:7017Dimidias.
526:7018See his Adv. Valentin, chap. 25.
526:7019Luke xxiv. 39.
526:7020Avocatorem.
Chapter VI.—The Doctrine of Apelles Refuted, that Christ’s Body Was of Sidereal Substance, Not Born. Nativity and Mortality are Correlative Circumstances, and in Christ’s Case His Death Proves His Birth.
But certain disciples 7021 of the heretic of Pontus, compelled to be wiser than their teacher, concede to Christ real flesh, without effect, however, on 7022 their denial of His nativity. He might have had, they say, a flesh which was not at all born. So we have found our way “out of a frying-pan,” as the proverb runs, “into the fire,” 7023 —from Marcion to Apelles. This man having first fallen from the principles of Marcion into (intercourse with) a woman, in the flesh, and afterwards shipwrecked himself, in the spirit, on the virgin Philumene, 7024 proceeded from that time 7025 to preach that the body of Christ was of solid flesh, but without having been born. To this angel, indeed, of Philumene, the apostle will reply in tones like those in which he even then predicted him, saying, “Although an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” 7026 To the arguments, however, which have been indicated just above, we have now to show our resistance. They allow that Christ really had a body. Whence was the material of it, if not from the same sort of thing as 7027 that in which He appeared? Whence came His body, if His body were not flesh? Whence came His flesh, if it were not born? Inasmuch as that which is born must undergo this nativity in order to become flesh. He borrowed, they say, His flesh from the stars, and from the substances of the higher world. And they assert it for a certain principle, that a body without nativity is nothing to be astonished at, because it has been submitted to angels to appear even amongst ourselves in the flesh without the intervention of the womb. We admit, of course, that such facts have been related. But then, how comes it to pass that a faith which holds to a different rule borrows materials for its own arguments from the faith which it impugns? What has it to do with Moses, who has rejected the God of Moses? Since the God is a different one, everything belonging to him must be different also. But let the heretics always use the Scriptures of that God whose world they also enjoy. The fact will certainly recoil on them as a witness to judge them, that they maintain their own blasphemies from examples derived from Him. 7028 But it is an easy task for the truth to prevail without raising any such demurrer against them. When, therefore, they set forth the flesh of Christ after the pattern of the angels, declaring it to be not born, and yet flesh for all that, I should wish them to compare the causes, both in Christ’s case and that of the angels, wherefore they came in the flesh. Never did any angel descend for the purpose of being crucified, of tasting death, and of rising again from the dead. Now, since there never was such a reason for angels becoming embodied, you have the cause why they assumed flesh without undergoing birth. They had not come to die, therefore they also (came not) to be born. Christ, however, having been sent to die, had necessarily to be also born, that He might be capable of death; for nothing is in the habit of dying but that which is born. Between nativity and mortality there is a mutual contrast. The law 7029 which makes us die is the cause of our being born. Now, since Christ died owing to the condition which undergoes death, but that undergoes death which is also born, the consequence was—nay, it was an antecedent necessity—that He must have been born also, 7030 by reason of the condition which undergoes birth; because He had to die in obedience to that very condition which, because it begins with birth, ends in death. 7031 It was not fitting for Him not to be born under the pretence 7032 that it was fitting for Him to die. But the Lord Himself at that very time appeared to Abraham amongst those angels without being born, and yet in the flesh without doubt, in virtue of the before-mentioned diversity of cause. You, however, cannot admit this, since you do not receive that Christ, who was even then rehearsing 7033 how to converse with, and liberate, and judge the human race, in the habit of a flesh which as yet was not born, because it did not yet mean to die until both its nativity and mortality were previously (by prophecy) announced. Let them, then, prove to us that those angels derived their flesh from the stars. If they do not prove it because it is not written, neither will the flesh of Christ get its origin therefrom, for which they borrowed the precedent of the angels. It is plain that the angels bore a flesh which was not naturally their own; their nature being of a spiritual substance, although in some sense peculiar to themselves, corporeal; and yet they could be transfigured into human shape, and for the time be able to appear and have intercourse with men. Since, therefore, it has not been told us whence they obtained their flesh, it remains for us not to doubt in our minds that a property of angelic power is this, to assume to themselves bodily shape out of no material substance. How much more, you say, is it (within their competence to take a body) out of some material substance? That is true enough. But there is no evidence of this, because Scripture says nothing. Then, again, 7034 how should they who are able to form themselves into that which by nature they are not, be unable to do this out of no material substance? If they become that which they are not, why cannot they so become out of that which is not? But that which has not existence when it comes into existence, is made out of nothing. This is why it is unnecessary either to inquire or to demonstrate what has subsequently become of their 7035 bodies. What came out of nothing, came to nothing. They, who were able to convert themselves into flesh have it in their power to convert nothing itself into flesh. It is a greater thing to change a nature than to make matter. But even if it were necessary to suppose that angels derived their flesh from some material substance, it is surely more credible that it was from some earthly matter than from any kind of celestial substances, since it was composed of so palpably terrene a quality that it fed on earthly ailments. Suppose that even now a celestial flesh 7036 had fed on earthly aliments, although it was not itself earthly, in the same way that earthly flesh actually fed on celestial aliments, although it had nothing of the celestial nature (for we read of manna having been food for the people: “Man,” says the Psalmist, “did eat angels’ bread,” 7037 ) yet this does not once infringe the separate condition of the Lord’s flesh, because of His different destination. For One who was to be truly a man, even unto death, it was necessary that He should be clothed with that flesh to which death belongs. Now that flesh to which death belongs is preceded by birth.
Footnotes
526:7021He has Appelles mainly in view.
526:7022Sine præjudicio tamen. “Without prejudice to their denial, etc.”
526:7023The Roman version of the proverb is “out of the lime-kiln into the coal-furnace.”
526:7024See Tertullian, de Præscr. Hæret. c. xxx.
526:7025Ab eo: or, “from that event of the carnal contact.” A good reading, found in most of the old books, is ab ea, that is, Philumene.
526:7026Gal. i. 8.
526:7027Ex ea qualitate in qua.
526:7028Ipsius: the Creator.
527:7029Forma.
527:7030Æque.
527:7031Quod, quia nascitur, moritur.
527:7032Pro.
527:7033Ediscebat. Compare a fine passage of Tertullian on this subject in our Anti-Marcion, note 10, p. 112, Edin.
527:7034Ceterum.
527:7035The angels’.
527:7036Sidera. Drawn, as they thought, from the stars.
527:7037Ps. lxxviii. 24.
Chapter VII.—Explanation of the Lord’s Question About His Mother and His Brethren. Answer to the Cavils of Apelles and Marcion, Who Support Their Denial of Christ’s Nativity by It.
But whenever a dispute arises about the nativity, all who reject it as creating a presumption in favour of the reality of Christ’s flesh, wilfully deny that God Himself was born, on the ground that He asked, “Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?” 7038 Let, therefore, Apelles hear what was our answer to Marcion in that little work, in which we challenged his own (favourite) gospel to the proof, even that the material circumstances of that remark (of the Lord’s) should be considered. 7039 First of all, nobody would have told Him that His mother and brethren were standing outside, if he were not certain both that He had a mother and brethren, and that they were the very persons whom he was then announcing,—who had either been known to him before, or were then and there discovered by him; although heretics 7040 have removed this passage from the gospel, because those who were admiring His doctrine said that His supposed father, Joseph the carpenter, and His mother Mary, and His brethren, and His sisters, were very well known to them. But it was with the view of tempting Him, that they had mentioned to Him a mother and brethren which He did not possess. The Scripture says nothing of this, although it is not in other instances silent when anything was done against Him by way of temptation. “Behold,” it says, “a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted Him.” 7041 And in another passage: “The Pharisees also came unto Him, tempting Him.” Who 7042 was to prevent its being in this place also indicated that this was done with the view of tempting Him? I do not admit what you advance of your own apart from Scripture. Then there ought to be suggested 7043 some occasion 7044 for the temptation. What could they have thought to be in Him which required temptation? The question, to be sure, whether He had been born or not? For if this point were denied in His answer, it might come out on the announcement of a temptation. And yet no temptation, when aiming at the discovery of the point which prompts the temptation by its doubtfulness, falls upon one so abruptly, as not to be preceded by the question which compels the temptation whilst raising the doubt. Now, since the nativity of Christ had never come into question, how can you contend that they meant by their temptation to inquire about a point on which they had never raised a doubt? Besides, 7045 if He had to be tempted about His birth, this of course was not the proper way of doing it,—by announcing those persons who, even on the supposition of His birth, might possibly not have been in existence. We have all been born, and yet all of us have not either brothers or mother. He might with more probability have had even a father than a mother, and uncles more likely than brothers. Thus is the temptation about His birth unsuitable, for it might have been contrived without any mention of either His mother or His brethren. It is clearly more credible that, being certain that He had both a mother and brothers, they tested His divinity rather than His nativity, whether, when within, He knew what was without; being tried by the untrue announcement of the presence of persons who were not present. But the artifice of a temptation might have been thwarted thus: it might have happened that He knew that those whom they were announcing to be “standing without,” were in fact absent by the stress either of sickness, or of business, or a journey which He was at the time aware of. No one tempts (another) in a way in which he knows that he may have himself to bear the shame of the temptation. There being, then, no suitable occasion for a temptation, the announcement that His mother and His brethren had actually turned up 7046 recovers its naturalness. But there is some ground for thinking that Christ’s answer denies His mother and brethren for the present, as even Apelles might learn. “The Lord’s brethren had not yet believed in Him.” 7047 So is it contained in the Gospel which was published before Marcion’s time; whilst there is at the same time a want of evidence of His mother’s adherence to Him, although the Marthas and the other Marys were in constant attendance on Him. In this very passage indeed, their unbelief is evident. Jesus was teaching the way of life, preaching the kingdom of God and actively engaged in healing infirmities of body and soul; but all the while, whilst strangers were intent on Him, His very nearest relatives were absent. By and by they turn up, and keep outside; but they do not go in, because, forsooth, they set small store 7048 on that which was doing within; nor do they even wait, 7049 as if they had something which they could contribute more necessary than that which He was so earnestly doing; but they prefer to interrupt Him, and wish to call Him away from His great work. Now, I ask you, Apelles, or will you Marcion, please (to tell me), if you happened to be at a stage play, or had laid a wager 7050 on a foot race or a chariot race, and were called away by such a message, would you not have exclaimed, “What are mother and brothers to me?” 7051 And did not Christ, whilst preaching and manifesting God, fulfilling the law and the prophets, and scattering the darkness of the long preceding age, justly employ this same form of words, in order to strike the unbelief of those who stood outside, or to shake off the importunity of those who would call Him away from His work? If, however, He had meant to deny His own nativity, He would have found place, time, and means for expressing Himself very differently, 7052 and not in words which might be uttered by one who had both a mother and brothers. When denying one’s parents in indignation, one does not deny their existence, but censures their faults. Besides, He gave others the preference; and since He shows their title to this favour—even because they listened to the word (of God)—He points out in what sense He denied His mother and His brethren. For in whatever sense He adopted as His own those who adhered to Him, in that did He deny as His 7053 those who kept aloof from Him. Christ also is wont to do to the utmost that which He enjoins on others. How strange, then, would it certainly 7054 have been, if, while he was teaching others not to esteem mother, or father, or brothers, as highly as the word of God, He were Himself to leave the word of God as soon as His mother and brethren were announced to Him! He denied His parents, then, in the sense in which He has taught us to deny ours—for God’s work. But there is also another view of the case: in the abjured mother there is a figure of the synagogue, as well as of the Jews in the unbelieving brethren. In their person Israel remained outside, whilst the new disciples who kept close to Christ within, hearing and believing, represented the Church, which He called mother in a preferable sense and a worthier brotherhood, with the repudiation of the carnal relationship. It was in just the same sense, indeed, that He also replied to that exclamation (of a certain woman), not denying His mother’s “womb and paps,” but designating those as more “blessed who hear the word of God.” 7055
Footnotes
527:7038Matt. 12:48, Luke 8:20, 21.
527:7039See our Anti-Marcion, iv. 19.
527:7040Literally, “heresies.”
528:7041Luke x. 25.
528:7042Literally, “nobody prevented its being, etc.”
528:7043Subesse.
528:7044Materia.
528:7045Eo adicimus etiam.
528:7046Supervenissent.
528:7047John vii. 5.
528:7048Non computantes scilicet.
528:7049Nec sustinent saltem.
528:7050Contendens: “videlicet sponsionibus” (Oehler)
528:7051Literally, “Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?”—Christ’s own words.
528:7052The alius is a genitive, and must be taken with sermonis.
529:7053Abnegavit: “repudiated.”
529:7054Force of the indicative quale erat.
529:7055Luke 11:27, 28. See also our Anti-Marcion, p. 292, Edin.
Chapter VIII.—Apelles and His Followers, Displeased with Our Earthly Bodies, Attributed to Christ a Body of a Purer Sort. How Christ Was Heavenly Even in His Earthly Flesh.
These passages alone, in which Apelles and Marcion seem to place their chief reliance when interpreted according to the truth of the entire uncorrupted gospel, ought to have been sufficient for proving the human flesh of Christ by a defence of His birth. But since Apelles’ precious set 7056 lay a very great stress on the shameful condition 7057 of the flesh, which they will have to have been furnished with souls tampered with by the fiery author of evil, 7058 and so unworthy of Christ; and because they on that account suppose that a sidereal substance is suitable for Him, I am bound to refute them on their own ground. They mention a certain angel of great renown as having created this world of ours, and as having, after the creation, repented of his work. This indeed we have treated of in a passage by itself; for we have written a little work in opposition to them, on the question whether one who had the spirit, and will, and power of Christ for such operations, could have done anything which required repentance, since they describe the said angel by the figure of “the lost sheep.” The world, then, must be a wrong thing, 7059 according to the evidence of its Creator’s repentance; for all repentance is the admission of fault, nor has it indeed any existence except through fault. Now, if the world 7060 is a fault, as is the body, such must be its parts—faulty too; so in like manner must be the heaven and its celestial (contents), and everything which is conceived and produced out of it. And “a corrupt tree must needs bring forth evil fruit.” 7061 The flesh of Christ, therefore, if composed of celestial elements, consists of faulty materials, sinful by reason of its sinful origin; 7062 so that it must be a part of that substance which they disdain to clothe Christ with, because of its sinfulness,—in other words, our own. Then, as there is no difference in the point of ignominy, let them either devise for Christ some substance of a purer stamp, since they are displeased with our own, or else let them recognise this too, than which even a heavenly substance could not have been better. We read in so many words: 7063 “The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.” 7064 This passage, however, has nothing to do with any difference of substance; it only contrasts with the once 7065 “earthy” substance of the flesh of the first man, Adam, the “heavenly” substance of the spirit of the second man, Christ. And so entirely does the passage refer the celestial man to the spirit and not to the flesh, that those whom it compares to Him evidently become celestial—by the Spirit, of course—even in this “earthy flesh.” Now, since Christ is heavenly even in regard to the flesh, they could not be compared to Him, who are not heavenly in reference to their flesh. 7066 If, then, they who become heavenly, as Christ also was, carry about an “earthy” substance of flesh, the conclusion which is affirmed by this fact is, that Christ Himself also was heavenly, but in an “earthy” flesh, even as they are who are put on a level with Him. 7067
Footnotes
529:7056Isti Apelleiaci.
529:7057Ignominiam.
529:7058Ab igneo illo præside mali: see Tertullian’s de Anima. xxiii.; de Resur. Carn. v.; Adv. Omnes Hæres. vi.
529:7059Peccatum.
529:7060Mundus is here the universe or entire creation.
529:7061Matt. vii. 17.
529:7062Censu.
529:7063Plane.
529:70641 Cor. xv. 47.
529:7065Retro.
529:7066Secundum carnem.
529:7067Ei adæquantur.
Chapter IX.—Christ’s Flesh Perfectly Natural, Like Our Own. None of the Supernatural Features Which the Heretics Ascribed to It Discoverable, on a Careful View.
We have thus far gone on the principle, that nothing which is derived from some other thing, however different it may be from that from which it is derived, is so different as not to suggest the source from which it comes. No material substance is without the witness of its own original, however great a change into new properties it may have undergone. There is this very body of ours, the formation of which out of the dust of the ground is a truth which has found its way into Gentile fables; it certainly testifies its own origin from the two elements of earth and water,—from the former by its flesh, from the latter by its blood. Now, although there is a difference in the appearance of qualities (in other words, that which proceeds from something else is in development 7068 different), yet, after all, what is blood but red fluid? what is flesh but earth in an especial 7069 form? Consider the respective qualities,—of the muscles as clods; of the bones as stones; the mammillary glands as a kind of pebbles. Look upon the close junctions of the nerves as propagations of roots, and the branching courses of the veins as winding rivulets, and the down (which covers us) as moss, and the hair as grass, and the very treasures of marrow within our bones as ores 7070 of flesh. All these marks of the earthy origin were in Christ; and it is they which obscured Him as the Son of God, for He was looked on as man, for no other reason whatever than because He existed in the corporeal substance of a man. Or else, show us some celestial substance in Him purloined from the Bear, and the Pleiades, and the Hyades. Well, then, the characteristics which we have enumerated are so many proofs that His was an earthy flesh, as ours is; but anything new or anything strange I do not discover. Indeed it was from His words and actions only, from His teaching and miracles solely, that men, though amazed, owned Christ to be man. 7071 But if there had been in Him any new kind of flesh miraculously obtained (from the stars), it would have been certainly well known. 7072 As the case stood, however, it was actually the ordinary 7073 condition of His terrene flesh which made all things else about Him wonderful, as when they said, “Whence hath this man this wisdom and these mighty works?” 7074 Thus spake even they who despised His outward form. His body did not reach even to human beauty, to say nothing of heavenly glory. 7075 Had the prophets given us no information whatever concerning His ignoble appearance, His very sufferings and the very contumely He endured bespeak it all. The sufferings attested His human flesh, the contumely proved its abject condition. Would any man have dared to touch even with his little finger, the body of Christ, if it had been of an unusual nature; 7076 or to smear His face with spitting, if it had not invited it 7077 (by its abjectness)? Why talk of a heavenly flesh, when you have no grounds to offer us for your celestial theory? 7078 Why deny it to be earthy, when you have the best of reasons for knowing it to be earthy? He hungered under the devil’s temptation; He thirsted with the woman of Samaria; He wept over Lazarus; He trembles at death (for “the flesh,” as He says, “is weak” 7079 ); at last, He pours out His blood. These, I suppose, are celestial marks? But how, I ask, could He have incurred contempt and suffering in the way I have described, if there had beamed forth in that flesh of His aught of celestial excellence? From this, therefore, we have a convincing proof that in it there was nothing of heaven, because it must be capable of contempt and suffering.
Footnotes
530:7068Fit.
530:7069Sua.
530:7070Metalla.
530:7071Christum hominem obstupescebant.
530:7072Notaretur.
530:7073Non mira.
530:7074Matt. xiii. 54.
530:7075Compare Isa. liii. 2. See also our Anti-Marcion, p. 153, Edin.
530:7076Novum: made of the stars.
530:7077Merentem.
530:7078Literally, “why do you suppose it to be celestial.”
530:7079Matt. xxvi. 41.
Chapter X.—Another Class of Heretics Refuted. They Alleged that Christ’s Flesh Was of a Finer Texture, Animalis, Composed of Soul.
I now turn to another class, who are equally wise in their own conceit. They affirm that the flesh of Christ is composed of soul, 7080 that His soul became flesh, so that His flesh is soul; and as His flesh is of soul, so is His soul of flesh. But here, again, I must have some reasons. If, in order to save the soul, Christ took a soul within Himself, because it could not be saved except by Him having it within Himself, I see no reason why, in clothing Himself with flesh, He should have made that flesh one of soul, 7081 as if He could not have saved the soul in any other way than by making flesh of it. For while He saves our souls, which are not only not of flesh, 7082 but are even distinct from flesh, how much more able was He to secure salvation to that soul which He took Himself, when it was also not of flesh? Again, since they assume it as a main tenet, 7083 that Christ came forth not to deliver the flesh, but only our soul, how absurd it is, in the first place, that, meaning to save only the soul, He yet made it into just that sort of bodily substance which He had no intention of saving! And, secondly, if He had undertaken to deliver our souls by means of that which He carried, He ought, in that soul which He carried to have carried our soul, one (that is) of the same condition as ours; and whatever is the condition of our soul in its secret nature, it is certainly not one of flesh. However, it was not our soul which He saved, if His own was of flesh; for ours is not of flesh. Now, if He did not save our soul on the ground, that it was a soul of flesh which He saved, He is nothing to us, because He has not saved our soul. Nor indeed did it need salvation, for it was not our soul really, since it was, on the supposition, 7084 a soul of flesh. But yet it is evident that it has been saved. Of flesh, therefore, it was not composed, and it was ours; for it was our soul that was saved, since that was in peril of damnation. We therefore now conclude that as in Christ the soul was not of flesh, so neither could His flesh have possibly been composed of soul.
Footnotes
530:7080Animalem: “etherialized; of a finer form, differing from gross, earthy matter” (Neander).
530:7081Animalem.
530:7082Non carneas.
531:7083Præsumant.
531:7084Scilicet.
Chapter XI.—The Opposite Extravagance Exposed. That is Christ with a Soul Composed of Flesh—Corporeal, Though Invisible. Christ’s Soul, Like Ours, Distinct from Flesh, Though Clothed in It.
But we meet another argument of theirs, when we raise the question why Christ, in assuming a flesh composed of soul, should seem to have had a soul that was made of flesh? For God, they say, desired to make the soul visible to men, by enduing it with a bodily nature, although it was before invisible; of its own nature, indeed, it was incapable of seeing anything, even its own self, by reason of the obstacle of this flesh, so that it was even a matter of doubt whether it was born or not. The soul, therefore (they further say), was made corporeal in Christ, in order that we might see it when undergoing birth, and death, and (what is more) resurrection. But yet, how was this possible, that by means of the flesh the soul should demonstrate itself 7085 to itself or to us, when it could not possibly be ascertained that it would offer this mode of exhibiting itself by the flesh, until the thing came into existence to which it was unknown, 7086 that is to say, the flesh? It received darkness, forsooth, in order to be able to shine! Now, 7087 let us first turn our attention to this point, whether it was requisite that the soul should exhibit itself in the manner contended for; 7088 and next consider whether their previous position be 7089 that the soul is wholly invisible (inquiring further) whether this invisibility is the result of its incorporeality, or whether it actually possesses some sort of body peculiar to itself. And yet, although they say that it is invisible, they determine it to be corporeal, but having somewhat that is invisible. For if it has nothing invisible how can it be said to be invisible? But even its existence is an impossibility, unless it has that which is instrumental to its existence. 7090 Since, however, it exists, it must needs have a something through which it exists. If it has this something, it must be its body. Everything which exists is a bodily existence sui generis. Nothing lacks bodily existence but that which is non-existent. If, then, the soul has an invisible body, He who had proposed to make it 7091 visible would certainly have done His work better 7092 if He had made that part of it which was accounted invisible, visible; because then there would have been no untruth or weakness in the case, and neither of these flaws is suitable to God. (But as the case stands in the hypothesis) there is untruth, since He has set forth the soul as being a different thing from what it really is; and there is weakness, since He was unable to make it appear 7093 to be that which it is. No one who wishes to exhibit a man covers him with a veil 7094 or a mask. This, however, is precisely what has been done to the soul, if it has been clothed with a covering belonging to something else, by being converted into flesh. But even if the soul is, on their hypothesis, supposed 7095 to be incorporeal, so that the soul, whatever it is, should by some mysterious force of the reason 7096 be quite unknown, only not be a body, then in that case it were not beyond the power of God—indeed it would be more consistent with His plan—if He displayed 7097 the soul in some new sort of body, different from that which we all have in common, one of which we should have quite a different notion, 7098 (being spared the idea that) 7099 He had set His mind on 7100 making, without an adequate cause, a visible soul instead of 7101 an invisible one—a fit incentive, no doubt, for such questions as they start, 7102 by their maintenance of a human flesh for it. 7103 Christ, however, could not have appeared among men except as a man. Restore, therefore, to Christ, His faith; believe that He who willed to walk the earth as a man exhibited even a soul of a thoroughly human condition, not making it of flesh, but clothing it with flesh.
Footnotes
531:7085Demonstraretur: or, “should become apparent.”
531:7086Cui latebat.
531:7087Denique.
531:7088Isto modo.
531:7089An retro allegent.
531:7090Per quod sit.
531:7091Eam: the soul.
531:7092Dignius: i.e., “in a manner more worthy of Himself.”
531:7093Demonstrare.
531:7094Cassidem.
531:7095Deputetur.
531:7096Aliqua vi rationis: or, “by some power of its own condition.”
531:7097Demonstrare.
531:7098Notitiæ.
532:7099Ne.
532:7100Gestisset.
532:7101Ex.
532:7102Istis.
532:7103In illam: perhaps “in it,” as if an ablative case, not an unusual construction in Tertullian.
Chapter XII.—The True Functions of the Soul. Christ Assumed It in His Perfect Human Nature, Not to Reveal and Explain It, But to Save It. Its Resurrection with the Body Assured by Christ.
Well, now, let it be granted that the soul is made apparent by the flesh, 7104 on the assumption that it was evidently necessary 7105 that it should be made apparent in some way or other, that is, as being incognizable to itself and to us: there is still an absurd distinction in this hypothesis, which implies that we are ourselves separate from our soul, when all that we are is soul. Indeed, 7106 without the soul we are nothing; there is not even the name of a human being, only that of a carcase. If, then, we are ignorant of the soul, it is in fact the soul that is ignorant of itself. Thus the only remaining question left for us to look into is, whether the soul was in this matter so ignorant of itself that it became known in any way it could. 7107 The soul, in my opinion, 7108 is sensual. 7109 Nothing, therefore, pertaining to the soul is unconnected with sense, 7110 nothing pertaining to sense is unconnected with the soul. 7111 And if I may use the expression for the sake of emphasis, I would say, “Animœ anima sensus est”—“Sense is the soul’s very soul.” Now, since it is the soul that imparts the faculty of perception 7112 to all (that have sense), and since it is itself that perceives the very senses, not to say properties, of them all, how is it likely that it did not itself receive sense as its own natural constitution? Whence is it to know what is necessary for itself under given circumstances, from the very necessity of natural causes, if it knows not its own property, and what is necessary for it? To recognise this indeed is within the competence of every soul; it has, I mean, a practical knowledge of itself, without which knowledge of itself no soul could possibly have exercised its own functions. 7113 I suppose, too, that it is especially suitable that man, the only rational animal, should have been furnished with such a soul as would make him the rational animal, itself being pre-eminently rational. Now, how can that soul which makes man a rational animal be itself rational if it be itself ignorant of its rationality, being ignorant of its own very self? So far, however, is it from being ignorant, that it knows its own Author, its own Master, and its own condition. Before it learns anything about God, it names the name of God. Before it acquires any knowledge of His judgment, it professes to commend itself to God. There is nothing one oftener hears of than that there is no hope after death; and yet what imprecations or deprecations does not the soul use according as the man dies after a well or ill spent life! These reflections are more fully pursued in a short treatise which we have written, “On the Testimony of the Soul.” 7114 Besides, if the soul was ignorant of itself from the beginning, there is nothing it could 7115 have learnt of Christ except its own quality. 7116 It was not its own form that it learnt of Christ, but its salvation. For this cause did the Son of God descend and take on Him a soul, not that the soul might discover itself in Christ, but Christ in itself. For its salvation is endangered, not by its being ignorant of itself, but of the word of God. “The life,” says He, “was manifested,” 7117 not the soul. And again, “I am come to save the soul.” He did not say, “to explain” 7118 it. We could not know, of course, 7119 that the soul, although an invisible essence, is born and dies, unless it were exhibited corporeally. We certainly were ignorant that it was to rise again with the flesh. This is the truth which it will be found was manifested by Christ. But even this He did not manifest in Himself in a different way than in some Lazarus, whose flesh was no more composed of soul 7120 than his soul was of flesh. 7121 What further knowledge, therefore, have we received of the structure 7122 of the soul which we were ignorant of before? What invisible part was there belonging to it which wanted to be made visible by the flesh?
Footnotes
532:7104Ostensa sit.
532:7105Si constiterit.
532:7106Denique.
532:7107Quoquo modo.
532:7108Opinor.
532:7109Sensualis: endowed with sense.
532:7110Nihil animale sine sensu.
532:7111Nihil sensuale sine anima.
532:7112We should have been glad of a shorter phrase for sentire (“to use sense”), had the whole course of the passage permitted it.
532:7113Se ministrare.
532:7114See especially chap. iv. supra.
532:7115Debuerat.
532:7116Nisi qualis esset.
532:71171 John i. 2.
532:7118Ostendere; see Luke ix. 56.
532:7119Nimirum.
532:7120Animalis.
532:7121Carnalis.
532:7122Dispositione.
Chapter XIII.—Christ’s Human Nature. The Flesh and the Soul Both Fully and Unconfusedly Contained in It.
The soul became flesh that the soul might become visible. 7123 Well, then, did the flesh likewise become soul that the flesh might be manifested? 7124 If the soul is flesh, it is no longer soul, but flesh. If the flesh is soul, it is no longer flesh, but soul. Where, then, there is flesh, and where there is soul, it has become both one and the other. 7125 Now, if they are neither in particular, although they become both one and the other, it is, to say the least, very absurd, that we should understand the soul when we name the flesh, and when we indicate the soul, explain ourselves as meaning the flesh. All things will be in danger of being taken in a sense different from their own proper sense, and, whilst taken in that different sense, of losing their proper one, if they are called by a name which differs from their natural designation. Fidelity in names secures the safe appreciation of properties. When these properties undergo a change, they are considered to possess such qualities as their names indicate. Baked clay, for instance, receives the name of brick. 7126 It retains not the name which designated its former state, 7127 because it has no longer a share in that state. Therefore, also, the soul of Christ having become flesh, 7128 cannot be anything else than that which it has become nor can it be any longer that which it once was, having become indeed 7129 something else. And since we have just had recourse to an illustration, we will put it to further use. Our pitcher, then, which was formed of the clay, is one body, and has one name indicative, of course, of that one body; nor can the pitcher be also called clay, because what it once was, it is no longer. Now that which is no longer (what it was) is also not an inseparable property. 7130 And the soul is not an inseparable property. Since, therefore, it has become flesh, the soul is a uniform solid body; it is also a wholly incomplex being, 7131 and an indivisible substance. But in Christ we find the soul and the flesh expressed in simple unfigurative 7132 terms; that is to say, the soul is called soul, and the flesh, flesh; nowhere is the soul termed flesh, or the flesh, soul; and yet they ought to have been thus (confusedly) named if such had been their condition. The fact, however, is that even by Christ Himself each substance has been separately mentioned by itself, conformably of course, to the distinction which exists between the properties of both, the soul by itself, and the flesh by itself. “My soul,” says He, “is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death;” 7133 and “the bread that I will give is my flesh, (which I will give) for the life 7134 of the world.” 7135 Now, if the soul had been flesh, there would have only been in Christ the soul composed of flesh, or else the flesh composed of soul. 7136 Since, however, He keeps the species distinct, the flesh and the soul, He shows them to be two. If two, then they are no longer one; if not one, then the soul is not composed of flesh, nor the flesh of soul. For the soul-flesh, or the flesh-soul, is but one; unless indeed He even had some other soul apart from that which was flesh, and bare about another flesh besides that which was soul. But since He had but one flesh and one soul,—that “soul which was sorrowful, even unto death,” and that flesh which was the “bread given for the life of the world,”—the number is unimpaired 7137 of two substances distinct in kind, thus excluding the unique species of the flesh-comprised soul.
Footnotes
533:7123Ostenderetur: or, “that it might prove itself soul.”
533:7124Or, “that it might show itself flesh.”
533:7125Alterutrum: “no matter which.”
533:7126Testæ: a pitcher, perhaps.
533:7127Generis.
533:7128Tertullian quotes his opponent’s opinion here.
533:7129Silicet: in reference to the alleged doctrine.
533:7130Non adhæret.
533:7131Singularitas tota.
533:7132Nudis.
533:7133Matt. xxvi. 38. Tertullian’s quotation is put interrogatively.
533:7134“The salvation” (salute) is Tertullian’s word.
533:7135John vi. 51.
533:7136Above, beginning of chap. x.
533:7137Salvus.
Chapter XIV.—Christ Took Not on Him an Angelic Nature, But the Human. It Was Men, Not Angels, Whom He Came to Save.
But Christ, they say, bare 7138 (the nature of) an angel. For what reason? The same which induced Him to become man? Christ, then, was actuated by the motive which led Him to take human nature. Man’s salvation was the motive, the restoration of that which had perished. Man had perished; his recovery had become necessary. No such cause, however, existed for Christ’s taking on Him the nature of angels. For although there is assigned to angels also perdition in “the fire prepared for the devil and his angels,” 7139 yet a restoration is never promised to them. No charge about the salvation of angels did Christ ever receive from the Father; and that which the Father neither promised nor commanded, Christ could not have undertaken. For what object, therefore, did He bear the angelic nature, if it were not (that He might have it) as a powerful helper 7140 wherewithal to execute the salvation of man? The Son of God, in sooth, was not competent alone to deliver man, whom a solitary and single serpent had overthrown! There is, then, no longer but one God, but one Saviour, if there be two to contrive salvation, and one of them in need of the other. But was it His object indeed to deliver man by an angel? Why, then, come down to do that which He was about to expedite with an angel’s help? If by an angel’s aid, why come Himself also? If He meant to do all by Himself, why have an angel too? He has been, it is true, called “the Angel of great counsel,” that is, a messenger, by a term expressive of official function, not of nature. For He had to announce to the world the mighty purpose of the Father, even that which ordained the restoration of man. But He is not on this account to be regarded as an angel, as a Gabriel or a Michael. For the Lord of the Vineyard sends even His Son to the labourers to require fruit, as well as His servants. Yet the Son will not therefore be counted as one of the servants because He undertook the office of a servant. I may, then, more easily say, if such an expression is to be hazarded, 7141 that the Son is actually an angel, that is, a messenger, from the Father, than that there is an angel in the Son. Forasmuch, however, as it has been declared concerning the Son Himself, “Thou hast made Him a little lower than the angels” 7142 how will it appear that He put on the nature of angels if He was made lower than the angels, having become man, with flesh and soul as the Son of man? As “the Spirit 7143 of God,” however, and “the Power of the Highest,” 7144 can He be regarded as lower than the angels,—He who is verily God, and the Son of God? Well, but as bearing human nature, He is so far made inferior to the angels; but as bearing angelic nature, He to the same degree loses that inferiority. This opinion will be very suitable for Ebion, 7145 who holds Jesus to be a mere man, and nothing more than a descendant of David, and not also the Son of God; although He is, to be sure, 7146 in one respect more glorious than the prophets, inasmuch as he declares that there was an angel in Him, just as there was in Zechariah. Only it was never said by Christ, “And the angel, which spake within me, said unto me.” 7147 Neither, indeed, was ever used by Christ that familiar phrase of all the prophets, “Thus saith the Lord.” For He was Himself the Lord, who openly spake by His own authority, prefacing His words with the formula, “Verily, verily, I say unto you.” What need is there of further argument? Hear what Isaiah says in emphatic words, “It was no angel, nor deputy, but the Lord Himself who saved them.” 7148
Footnotes
533:7138Gestavit.
533:7139Matt. xxv. 41.
533:7140Satellitem.
534:7141Si forte.
534:7142Ps. viii. 5.
534:7143For this designation of the divine nature in Christ, see our Anti-Marcion, p. 247, note 7, Edin.
534:7144Luke i. 35.
534:7145Hebioni.
534:7146Plane.
534:7147Zech. i. 14.
534:7148Isa. lxiii. 9.
Chapter XV.—The Valentinian Figment of Christ’s Flesh Being of a Spiritual Nature, Examined and Refuted Out of Scripture.
Valentinus, indeed, on the strength of his heretical system, might consistently devise a spiritual flesh for Christ. Any one who refused to believe that that flesh was human might pretend it to be anything he liked, forasmuch as (and this remark is applicable to all heretics), if it was not human, and was not born of man, I do not see of what substance Christ Himself spoke when He called Himself man and the Son of man, saying: “But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth;” 7149 and “The Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath-day.” 7150 For it is of Him that Isaiah writes: “A man of suffering, and acquainted with the bearing of weakness;” 7151 and Jeremiah: “He is a man, and who hath known Him?” 7152 and Daniel: “Upon the clouds (He came) as the Son of man.” 7153 The Apostle Paul likewise says: “The man Christ Jesus is the one Mediator between God and man.” 7154 Also Peter, in the Acts of the Apostles, speaks of Him as verily human (when he says), “Jesus Christ was a man approved of God among you.” 7155 These passages alone ought to suffice as a prescriptive 7156 testimony in proof that Christ had human flesh derived from man, and not spiritual, and that His flesh was not composed of soul, 7157 nor of stellar substance, and that it was not an imaginary flesh; (and no doubt they would be sufficient) if heretics could only divest themselves of all their contentious warmth and artifice. For, as I have read in some writer of Valentinus’ wretched faction, 7158 they refuse at the outset to believe that a human and earthly substance was created 7159 for Christ, lest the Lord should be regarded as inferior to the angels, who are not formed of earthly flesh; whence, too, it would be necessary that, if His flesh were like ours, it should be similarly born, not of the Spirit, nor of God, but of the will of man. Why, moreover, should it be born, not of corruptible [seed], but of incorruptible? Why, again, since His flesh has both risen and returned to heaven, is not ours, being like His, also taken up at once? Or else, why does not His flesh, since it is like ours, return in like manner to the ground, and suffer dissolution? Such objections even the heathen used constantly to bandy about. 7160 Was the Son of God reduced to such a depth of degradation? Again, if He rose again as a precedent for our hope, how is it that nothing like it has been thought desirable (to happen) to ourselves? 7161 Such views are not improper for heathens and they are fit and natural for the heretics too. For, indeed, what difference is there between them, except it be that the heathen, in not believing, do believe; while the heretics, in believing, do not believe? Then, again, they read: “Thou madest Him a little less than angels;” 7162 and they deny the lower nature of that Christ who declares Himself to be, “not a man, but a worm;” 7163 who also had “no form nor comeliness, but His form was ignoble, despised more than all men, a man in suffering, and acquainted with the bearing of weakness.” 7164 Here they discover a human being mingled with a divine one and so they deny the manhood. They believe that He died, and maintain that a being which has died was born of an incorruptible substance; 7165 as if, forsooth, corruptibility 7166 were something else than death! But our flesh, too, ought immediately to have risen again. Wait a while. Christ has not yet subdued His enemies, so as to be able to triumph over them in company with His friends.
Footnotes
534:7149John viii. 40.
534:7150Matt. xii. 8.
534:7151Isa. liii. 3, Sept.
534:7152Jer. xvii. 9, Sept.
534:7153Dan. vii. 13.
534:71541 Tim. ii. 5.
534:7155Acts ii. 22.
534:7156Vice præscriptionis.
534:7157Animalis.
534:7158Factiuncula.
534:7159Informatam.
535:7160Volutabant: see Lactantius, iv. 22.
535:7161De nobis probatum est: or, perhaps, “has been proved to have happened in our own case.”
535:7162Ps. viii. 6, Sept.
535:7163Ps. xxii. 6.
535:7164Isa. liii. 3, Sept.
535:7165Ex incorruptela.
535:7166Corruptela.
Chapter XVI.—Christ’s Flesh in Nature, the Same as Ours, Only Sinless. The Difference Between Carnem Peccati and Peccatum Carnis: It is the Latter Which Christ Abolished. The Flesh of the First Adam, No Less Than that of the Second Adam, Not Received from Human Seed, Although as Entirely Human as Our Own, Which is Derived from It.
The famous Alexander, 7167 too, instigated by his love of disputation in the true fashion of heretical temper, has made himself conspicuous against us; he will have us say that Christ put on flesh of an earthly origin, 7168 in order that He might in His own person abolish sinful flesh. 7169 Now, even if we did assert this as our opinion, we should be able to defend it in such a way as completely to avoid the extravagant folly which he ascribes to us in making us suppose that the very flesh of Christ was in Himself abolished as being sinful; because we mention our belief (in public), 7170 that it is sitting at the right hand of the Father in heaven; and we further declare that it will come again from thence in all the pomp 7171 of the Father’s glory: it is therefore just as impossible for us to say that it is abolished, as it is for us to maintain that it is sinful, and so made void, since in it there has been no fault. We maintain, moreover, that what has been abolished in Christ is not carnem peccati, “sinful flesh,” but peccatum carnis, “sin in the flesh,”—not the material thing, but its condition; 7172 not the substance, but its flaw; 7173 and (this we aver) on the authority of the apostle, who says, “He abolished sin in the flesh.” 7174 Now in another sentence he says that Christ was “in the likeness of sinful flesh,” 7175 not, however, as if He had taken on Him “the likeness of the flesh,” in the sense of a semblance of body instead of its reality; but he means us to understand likeness to the flesh which sinned, 7176 because the flesh of Christ, which committed no sin itself, resembled that which had sinned,—resembled it in its nature, but not in the corruption it received from Adam; whence we also affirm that there was in Christ the same flesh as that whose nature in man is sinful. In the flesh, therefore, we say that sin has been abolished, because in Christ that same flesh is maintained without sin, which in man was not maintained without sin. Now, it would not contribute to the purpose of Christ’s abolishing sin in the flesh, if He did not abolish it in that flesh in which was the nature of sin, nor (would it conduce) to His glory. For surely it would have been no strange thing if He had removed the stain of sin in some better flesh, and one which should possess a different, even a sinless, nature! Then, you say, if He took our flesh, Christ’s was a sinful one. Do not, however, fetter with mystery a sense which is quite intelligible. For in putting on our flesh, He made it His own; in making it His own, He made it sinless. A word of caution, however, must be addressed to all who refuse to believe that our flesh was in Christ on the ground that it came not of the seed of a human father, 7177 let them remember that Adam himself received this flesh of ours without the seed of a human father. As earth was converted into this flesh of ours without the seed of a human father, so also was it quite possible for the Son of God to take to Himself 7178 the substance of the selfsame flesh, without a human father’s agency. 7179
Footnotes
535:7167Although Tertullian dignifies him with an ille, we have no particulars of this man. [It may be that this is an epithet, rather than a name, given to some enemy of truth like Alexander the “Coppersmith” (2 Tim. iv. 14) or like that (1 Tim. i. 20), blasphemer, whose character suits the case.]
535:7168Census.
535:7169So Bp. Kaye renders “carnem peccati.” [See his valuable note, p. 253.]
535:7170We take the meminerimus to refer “to the Creed.”
535:7171Suggestu.
535:7172Naturam.
535:7173Culpam.
535:7174“Tertullian, referring to St. Paul, says of Christ: ‘Evacuavit peccatum in carne;’ alluding, as I suppose, to Romans viii. 3. But the corresponding Greek in the printed editions is κατέκρινε τὴν ἁμαρτίαν ἐν τῇ σαρκί (‘He condemned sin in the flesh’). Had Tertullian a different reading in his Greek mss., or did he confound Rom. 8:3, Rom. 6:6, ἵνα καταργηθῇ τὸ σῶμα τὴς ἁμαρτίας (‘that the body of sin might be destroyed’)? Jerome translates the Greek καταργέω by ‘evacuo,’ c. xvi. See Adv. Marcionem, ver. 14. Dr. Neander has pointed out two passages in which Tertullian has ‘damnavit or damnaverit delinquentiam in carne.’ See de Res. Carnis. 46; de Pudicitiâ. 17.”—Bp. Kaye.
535:7175Also in Rom. viii. 3.
535:7176Peccatricis carnis.
536:7177Viri.
536:7178Transire in: “to pass into.”
536:7179Sine coagulo.
Chapter XVII.—The Similarity of Circumstances Between the First and the Second Adam, as to the Derivation of Their Flesh. An Analogy Also Pleasantly Traced Between Eve and the Virgin Mary.
But, leaving Alexander with his syllogisms, which he so perversely applies in his discussions, as well as with the hymns of Valentinus, which, with consummate assurance, he interpolates as the production of some respectable 7180 author, let us confine our inquiry to a single point—Whether Christ received flesh from the virgin?—that we may thus arrive at a certain proof that His flesh was human, if He derived its substance from His mother’s womb, although we are at once furnished with clear evidences of the human character of His flesh, from its name and description as that of a man, and from the nature of its constitution, and from the system of its sensations, and from its suffering of death. Now, it will first be necessary to show what previous reason there was for the Son of God’s being born of a virgin. He who was going to consecrate a new order of birth, must Himself be born after a novel fashion, concerning which Isaiah foretold how that the Lord Himself would give the sign. What, then, is the sign? “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.” 7181 Accordingly, a virgin did conceive and bear “Emmanuel, God with us.” 7182 This is the new nativity; a man is born in God. And in this man God was born, taking the flesh of an ancient race, without the help, however, of the ancient seed, in order that He might reform it with a new seed, that is, in a spiritual manner, and cleanse it by the re-moval of all its ancient stains. But the whole of this new birth was prefigured, as was the case in all other instances, in ancient type, the Lord being born as man by a dispensation in which a virgin was the medium. The earth was still in a virgin state, reduced as yet by no human labour, with no seed as yet cast into its furrows, when, as we are told, God made man out of it into a living soul. 7183 As, then, the first Adam is thus introduced to us, it is a just inference that the second Adam likewise, as the apostle has told us, was formed by God into a quickening spirit out of the ground,—in other words, out of a flesh which was unstained as yet by any human generation. But that I may lose no opportunity of supporting my argument from the name of Adam, why is Christ called Adam by the apostle, unless it be that, as man, He was of that earthly origin? And even reason here maintains the same conclusion, because it was by just the contrary 7184 operation that God recovered His own image and likeness, of which He had been robbed by the devil. For it was while Eve was yet a virgin, that the ensnaring word had crept into her ear which was to build the edifice of death. Into a virgin’s soul, in like manner, must be introduced that Word of God which was to raise the fabric of life; so that what had been reduced to ruin by this sex, might by the selfsame sex be recovered to salvation. As Eve had believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel. 7185 The delinquency which the one occasioned by believing, the other by believing effaced. But (it will be said) Eve did not at the devil’s word conceive in her womb. Well, she at all events conceived; for the devil’s word afterwards became as seed to her that she should conceive as an outcast, and bring forth in sorrow. Indeed she gave birth to a fratricidal devil; whilst Mary, on the contrary, bare one who was one day to secure salvation to Israel, His own brother after the flesh, and the murderer of Himself. God therefore sent down into the virgin’s womb His Word, as the good Brother, who should blot out the memory of the evil brother. Hence it was necessary that Christ should come forth for the salvation of man, in that condition of flesh into which man had entered ever since his condemnation.
Footnotes
536:7180Idonei.
536:7181Isa. vii. 14.
536:7182Matt. i. 23.
536:7183Gen. ii. 7.
536:7184Æmula.
536:7185Literally, “Gabriel.”
Chapter XVIII.—The Mystery of the Assumption of Our Perfect Human Nature by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. He is Here Called, as Often Elsewhere, the Spirit.
Now, that we may give a simpler answer, it was not fit that the Son of God should be born of a human father’s seed, lest, if He were wholly the Son of a man, He should fail to be also the Son of God, and have nothing more than “a Solomon” or “a Jonas,” 7186 —as Ebion 7187 thought we ought to believe concerning Him. In order, therefore, that He who was already the Son of God—of God the Father’s seed, that is to say, the Spirit—might also be the Son of man, He only wanted to assume flesh, of the flesh of man 7188 without the seed of a man; 7189 for the seed of a man was unnecessary 7190 for One who had the seed of God. As, then, before His birth of the virgin, He was able to have God for His Father without a human mother, so likewise, after He was born of the virgin, He was able to have a woman for His mother without a human father. He is thus man with God, in short, since He is man’s flesh with God’s Spirit 7191 —flesh (I say) without seed from man, Spirit with seed from God. For as much, then, as the dispensation of God’s purpose 7192 concerning His Son required that He should be born 7193 of a virgin, why should He not have received of the virgin the body which He bore from the virgin? Because, (forsooth) it is something else which He took from God, for “the Word” say they, “was made flesh.” 7194 Now this very statement plainly shows what it was that was made flesh; nor can it possibly be that 7195 anything else than the Word was made flesh. Now, whether it was of the flesh that the Word was made flesh, or whether it was so made of the (divine) seed itself, the Scripture must tell us. As, however, the Scripture is silent about everything except what it was that was made (flesh), and says nothing of that from which it was so made, it must be held to suggest that from something else, and not from itself, was the Word made flesh. And if not from itself, but from something else, from what can we more suitably suppose that the Word became flesh than from that flesh in which it submitted to the dispensation? 7196 And (we have a proof of the same conclusion in the fact) that the Lord Himself sententiously and distinctly pronounced, “that which is born of the flesh is flesh,” 7197 even because it is born of the flesh. But if He here spoke of a human being simply, and not of Himself, (as you maintain) then you must deny absolutely that Christ is man, and must maintain that human nature was not suitable to Him. And then He adds, “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit,” 7198 because God is a Spirit, and He was born of God. Now this description is certainly even more applicable to Him than it is to those who believe in Him. But if this passage indeed apply to Him, then why does not the preceding one also? For you cannot divide their relation, and adapt this to Him, and the previous clause to all other men, especially as you do not deny that Christ possesses the two substances, both of the flesh and of the Spirit. Besides, as He was in possession both of flesh and of Spirit, He cannot possibly, when speaking of the condition of the two substances which He Himself bears, be supposed to have determined that the Spirit indeed was His own, but that the flesh was not His own. Forasmuch, therefore, as He is of the Spirit He is God the Spirit, and is born of God; just as He is also born of the flesh of man, being generated in the flesh as man. 7199
Footnotes
537:7186Matt. 12:41, 42.
537:7187De Hebionis opinione.
537:7188Hominis.
537:7189Viri.
537:7190Vacabat.
537:7191As we have often observed, the term Spiritus is used by Tertullian to express the Divine Nature in Christ. Anti-Marcion, p. 375, note 13.
537:7192Dispositio rationis.
537:7193Proferendum.
537:7194John i. 14.
537:7195Nec periclitatus quasi.
537:7196Literally, “in which it became flesh.”
537:7197John iii. 6.
537:7198John iii. 6.
537:7199[A very perspicuous statement of the Incarnation is set forth in this chapter.]
Chapter XIX.—Christ, as to His Divine Nature, as the Word of God, Became Flesh, Not by Carnal Conception, Nor by the Will of the Flesh and of Man, But by the Will of God. Christ’s Divine Nature, of Its Own Accord, Descended into the Virgin’s Womb.
What, then, is the meaning of this passage, “Born 7200 not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God?” 7201 I shall make more use of this passage after I have confuted those who have tampered with it. They maintain that it was written thus (in the plural) 7202 “Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God,” as if designating those who were before mentioned as “believing in His name,” in order to point out the existence of that mysterious seed of the elect and spiritual which they appropriate to themselves. 7203 But how can this be, when all who believe in the name of the Lord are, by reason of the common principle of the human race, born of blood, and of the will of the flesh, and of man, as indeed is Valentinus himself? The expression is in the singular number, as referring to the Lord, “He was born of God.” And very properly, because Christ is the Word of God, and with the Word the Spirit of God, and by the Spirit the Power of God, and whatsoever else appertains to God. As flesh, however, He is not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of man, because it was by the will of God that the Word was made flesh. To the flesh, indeed, and not to the Word, accrues the denial of the nativity which is natural to us all as men, 7204 because it was as flesh that He had thus to be born, and not as the Word. Now, whilst the passage actually denies that He was born of the will of the flesh, how is it that it did not also deny (that He was born) of the substance of the flesh? For it did not disavow the substance of the flesh when it denied His being “born of blood” but only the matter of the seed, which, as all know, is the warm blood as convected by ebullition 7205 into the coagulum of the woman’s blood. In the cheese, it is from the coagulation that the milky substance acquires that consistency, 7206 which is condensed by infusing the rennet. 7207 We thus understand that what is denied is the Lord’s birth after sexual intercourse (as is suggested by the phrase, “the will of man and of the flesh”), not His nativity from a woman’s womb. Why, too, is it insisted on with such an accumulation of emphasis that He was not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor (of the will) of man, if it were not that His flesh was such that no man could have any doubt on the point of its being born from sexual intercourse? Again, although denying His birth from such cohabitation, the passage did not deny that He was born of real flesh; it rather affirmed this, by the very fact that it did not deny His birth in the flesh in the same way that it denied His birth from sexual intercourse. Pray, tell me, why the Spirit of God 7208 descended into a woman’s womb at all, if He did not do so for the purpose of partaking of flesh from the womb. For He could have become spiritual flesh 7209 without such a process,—much more simply, indeed, without the womb than in it. He had no reason for enclosing Himself within one, if He was to bear forth nothing from it. Not without reason, however, did He descend into a womb. Therefore He received (flesh) therefrom; else, if He received nothing therefrom, His descent into it would have been without a reason, especially if He meant to become flesh of that sort which was not derived from a womb, that is to say, a spiritual one. 7210
Footnotes
537:7200Tertullian reads this in the singular number, “natus est.”
537:7201John i. 13.
537:7202We need not say that the mass of critical authority is against Tertullian, and with his opponents, in their reading of this passage.
537:7203He refers to the Valentinians. See our translation of this tract against them, chap. xxv., etc., p. 515, supra.
538:7204Formalis nostræ nativitatis.
538:7205Despumatione.
538:7206Vis.
538:7207Medicando. [This is based on Job x. 10, a favourite passage with the Fathers in expounding the generative process.]
538:7208i.e., The Son of God.
538:7209Which is all that the heretics assign to Him.
538:7210Such as Valentinus ascribed to Him. See above, c. xv. p. 511.
Chapter XX.—Christ Born of a Virgin, of Her Substance. The Physiological Facts of His Real and Exact Birth of a Human Mother, as Suggested by Certain Passages of Scripture.
But to what shifts you resort, in your attempt to rob the syllable ex (of) 7211 of its proper force as a preposition, and to substitute another for it in a sense not found throughout the Holy Scriptures! You say that He was born through 7212 a virgin, not of 7213 a virgin, and in a womb, not of a womb, because the angel in the dream said to Joseph, “That which is born in her” (not of her) “is of the Holy Ghost.” 7214 But the fact is, if he had meant “of her,” he must have said “in her;” for that which was of her, was also in her. The angel’s expression, therefore, “in her,” has precisely the same meaning as the phrase “of her.” It is, however, a fortunate circumstance that Matthew also, when tracing down the Lord’s descent from Abraham to Mary, says, “Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Christ.” 7215 But Paul, too, silences these critics 7216 when he says, “God sent forth His Son, made of a woman.” 7217 Does he mean through a woman, or in a woman? Nay more, for the sake of greater emphasis, he uses the word “made” rather than born, although the use of the latter expression would have been simpler. But by saying “made,” he not only confirmed the statement, “The Word was made flesh,” 7218 but he also asserted the reality of the flesh which was made of a virgin. We shall have also the support of the Psalms on this point, not the “Psalms” indeed of Valentinus the apostate, and heretic, and Platonist, but the Psalms of David, the most illustrious saint and well-known prophet. He sings to us of Christ, and through his voice Christ indeed also sang concerning Himself. Hear, then, Christ the Lord speaking to God the Father: “Thou art He that didst draw 7219 me out of my mother’s womb.” 7220 Here is the first point. “Thou art my hope from my mother’s breasts; upon Thee have I been cast from the womb.” 7221 Here is another point. “Thou art my God from my mother’s belly.” 7222 Here is a third point. Now let us carefully attend to the sense of these passages. “Thou didst draw me,” He says, “out of the womb.” Now what is it which is drawn, if it be not that which adheres, that which is firmly fastened to anything from which it is drawn in order to be sundered? If He clove not to the womb, how could He have been drawn from it? If He who clove thereto was drawn from it, how could He have adhered to it, if it were not that, all the while He was in the womb, He was tied to it, as to His origin, 7223 by the umbilical cord, which communicated growth to Him from the matrix? Even when one strange matter amalgamates with another, it becomes so entirely incorporated 7224 with that with which it amalgamates, that when it is drawn off from it, it carries with it some part of the body from which it is torn, as if in consequence of the severance of the union and growth which the constituent pieces had communicated to each other. But what were His “mother’s breasts” which He mentions? No doubt they were those which He sucked. Midwives, and doctors, and naturalists, can tell us, from the nature of women’s breasts, whether they usually flow at any other time than when the womb is affected with pregnancy, when the veins convey therefrom the blood of the lower parts 7225 to the mamilla, and in the act of transference convert the secretion into the nutritious 7226 substance of milk. Whence it comes to pass that during the period of lactation the monthly issues are suspended. But if the Word was made flesh of Himself without any communication with a womb, no mother’s womb operating upon Him with its usual function and support, how could the lacteal fountain have been conveyed (from the womb) to the breasts, since (the womb) can only effect the change by actual possession of the proper substance? But it could not possibly have had blood for transformation into milk, unless it possessed the causes of blood also, that is to say, the severance (by birth) 7227 of its own flesh from the mother’s womb. Now it is easy to see what was the novelty of Christ’s being born of a virgin. It was simply this, that (He was born) of a virgin in the real manner which we have indicated, in order that our regeneration might have virginal purity,—spiritually cleansed from all pollutions through Christ, who was Himself a virgin, even in the flesh, in that He was born of a virgin’s flesh.
Footnotes
538:7211Indicating the material or ingredient, “out of.”
538:7212Per.
538:7213Ex.
538:7214Matt. i. 20.
538:7215Matt. i. 16.
538:7216Grammaticis.
538:7217Gal. iv. 4.
538:7218John i. 14.
538:7219Avulsisti.
539:7220Ps. xxii. 9.
539:7221Ps. 22:9, 10.
539:7222Psa. 22.10.
539:7223i.e. of His flesh.
539:7224Concarnatus et convisceratus: “united in flesh and internal structure.”
539:7225Sentinam illam inferni sanguinis.
539:7226Lactiorem.
539:7227Avulsionem.
Chapter XXI.—The Word of God Did Not Become Flesh Except in the Virgin’s Womb and of Her Substance. Through His Mother He is Descended from Her Great Ancestor David. He is Described Both in the Old and in the New Testament as “The Fruit of David’s Loins.”
Whereas, then, they contend that the novelty (of Christ’s birth) consisted in this, that as the Word of God became flesh without the seed of a human father, so there should be no flesh of the virgin mother (assisting in the transaction), why should not the novelty rather be confined to this, that His flesh, although not born of seed, should yet have proceeded from flesh? I should like to go more closely into this discussion. “Behold,” says he, “a virgin shall conceive in the womb.” 7228 Conceive what? I ask. The Word of God, of course, and not the seed of man, and in order, certainly, to bring forth a son. “For,” says he, “she shall bring forth a son.” 7229 Therefore, as the act of conception was her own, 7230 so also what she brought forth was her own, also, although the cause of conception 7231 was not. If, on the other hand, the Word became flesh of Himself, then He both conceived and brought forth Himself, and the prophecy is stultified. For in that case a virgin did not conceive, and did not bring forth; since whatever she brought forth from the conception of the Word, is not her own flesh. But is this the only statement of prophecy which will be frustrated? 7232 Will not the angel’s announcement also be subverted, that the virgin should “conceive in her womb and bring forth a son?” 7233 And will not in fact every scripture which declares that Christ had a mother? For how could she have been His mother, unless He had been in her womb? But then He received nothing from her womb which could make her a mother in whose womb He had been. 7234 Such a name as this 7235 a strange flesh ought not to assume. No flesh can speak of a mother’s womb but that which is itself the offspring of that womb; nor can any be the offspring of the said womb if it owe its birth solely to itself. Therefore even Elisabeth must be silent although she is carrying in her womb the prophetic babe, which was already conscious of his Lord, and is, moreover, filled with the Holy Ghost. 7236 For without reason does she say, “and whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” 7237 If it was not as her son, but only as a stranger that Mary carried Jesus in her womb, how is it she says, “Blessed is the fruit of thy womb”? 7238 What is this fruit of the womb, which received not its germ from the womb, which had not its root in the womb, which belongs not to her whose is the womb, and which is no doubt the real fruit of the womb—even Christ? Now, since He is the blossom of the stem which sprouts from the root of Jesse; since, moreover, the root of Jesse is the family of David, and the stem of the root is Mary descended from David, and the blossom of the stem is Mary’s son, who is called Jesus Christ, will not He also be the fruit? For the blossom is the fruit, because through the blossom and from the blossom every product advances from its rudimental condition 7239 to perfect fruit. What then? They, deny to the fruit its blossom, and to the blossom its stem, and to the stem its root; so that the root fails to secure 7240 for itself, by means of the stem, that special product which comes from the stem, even the blossom and the fruit; for every step indeed in a genealogy is traced from the latest up to the first, so that it is now a well-known fact that the flesh of Christ is inseparable, 7241 not merely from Mary, but also from David through Mary, and from Jesse through David. “This fruit,” therefore, “of David’s loins,” that is to say, of his posterity in the flesh, God swears to him that “He will raise up to sit upon his throne.” 7242 If “of David’s loins,” how much rather is He of Mary’s loins, by virtue of whom He is in “the loins of David?”
Footnotes
539:7228Isa. 7:14, Matt. 1:23.
539:7229See the same passages.
539:7230Ipsius.
539:7231Quod concepit: or, “what she conceived.”
539:7232Evacuabitur.
539:7233Luke i. 31.
539:7234An objection.
539:7235The rejoinder.
540:7236Luke i. 41.
540:7237Luke 1.43.
540:7238Luke 1.42.
540:7239Eruditur.
540:7240Quominus vindicet.
540:7241Adhærere.
540:7242Ps. 132:11, Acts 2:30.
Chapter XXII.—Holy Scripture in the New Testament, Even in Its Very First Verse, Testifies to Christ’s True Flesh. In Virtue of Which He is Incorporated in the Human Stock of David, and Abraham, and Adam.
They may, then, obliterate the testimony of the devils which proclaimed Jesus the son of David; but whatever unworthiness there be in this testimony, that of the apostles they will never be able to efface. There is, first of all, Matthew, that most faithful chronicler 7243 of the Gospel, because the companion of the Lord; for no other reason in the world than to show us clearly the fleshly original 7244 of Christ, he thus begins his Gospel: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” 7245 With a nature issuing from such fountal sources, and an order gradually descending to the birth of Christ, what else have we here described than the very flesh of Abraham and of David conveying itself down, step after step, to the very virgin, and at last introducing Christ,—nay, producing Christ Himself of the virgin? Then, again, there is Paul, who was at once both a disciple, and a master, and a witness of the selfsame Gospel; as an apostle of the same Christ, also, he affirms that Christ “was made of the seed of David, according to the flesh,” 7246 —which, therefore, was His own likewise. Christ’s flesh, then, is of David’s seed. Since He is of the seed of David in consequence of Mary’s flesh, He is therefore of Mary’s flesh because of the seed of David. In what way so ever you torture the statement, He is either of the flesh of Mary because of the seed of David, or He is of the seed of David because of the flesh of Mary. The whole discussion is terminated by the same apostle, when he declares Christ to be “the seed of Abraham.” And if of Abraham, how much more, to be sure, of David, as a more recent progenitor! For, unfolding the promised blessing upon all nations in the person 7247 of Abraham, “And in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed,” he adds, “He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.” 7248 When we read and believe these things, what sort of flesh ought we, and can we, acknowledge in Christ? Surely none other than Abraham’s, since Christ is “the seed of Abraham;” none other than Jesse’s, since Christ is the blossom of “the stem of Jesse;” none other than David’s, since Christ is “the fruit of David’s loins;” none other than Mary’s, since Christ came from Mary’s womb; and, higher still, none other than Adam’s, since Christ is “the second Adam.” The consequence, therefore, is that they must either maintain, that those (ancestors) had a spiritual flesh, that so there might be derived to Christ the same condition of substance, or else allow that the flesh of Christ was not a spiritual one, since it is not traced from the origin 7249 of a spiritual stock.
Footnotes
540:7243Commentator.
540:7244Originis carnalis: i.e. “origin of the flesh of.”
540:7245Matt. i. 1.
540:7246Rom. 1:3, 2 Tim. 2:8.
540:7247In nomine: or, “for the sake of.”
540:7248Gal. 3:8, 16.
540:7249Censetur.
Chapter XXIII.—Simeon’s “Sign that Should Be Contradicted,” Applied to the Heretical Gainsaying of the True Birth of Christ. One of the Heretics’ Paradoxes Turned in Support of Catholic Truth.
We acknowledge, however, that the prophetic declaration of Simeon is fulfilled, which he spoke over the recently-born Saviour: 7250 “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign that shall be spoken against.” 7251 The sign (here meant) is that of the birth of Christ, according to Isaiah: “Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign: behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.” 7252 We discover, then, what the sign is which is to be spoken against—the conception and the parturition of the Virgin Mary, concerning which these sophists 7253 say: “She a virgin and yet not a virgin bare, and yet did not bear;” just as if such language, if indeed it must be uttered, would not be more suitable even for ourselves to use! For “she bare,” because she produced offspring of her own flesh and “yet she did not bear,” since she produced Him not from a husband’s seed; she was “a virgin,” so far as (abstinence) from a husband went, and “yet not a virgin,” as regards her bearing a child. There is not, however, that parity of reasoning which the heretics affect: in other words it does not follow that for the reason “she did not bear,” 7254 she who was “not a virgin” was “yet a virgin,” even because she became a mother without any fruit of her own womb. But with us there is no equivocation, nothing twisted into a double sense. 7255 Light is light; and darkness, darkness; yea is yea; and nay, nay; “whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.” 7256 She who bare (really) bare; and although she was a virgin when she conceived, she was a wife 7257 when she brought forth her son. Now, as a wife, she was under the very law of “opening the womb,” 7258 wherein it was quite immaterial whether the birth of the male was by virtue of a husband’s co-operation or not; 7259 it was the same sex 7260 that opened her womb. Indeed, hers is the womb on account of which it is written of others also: “Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord.” 7261 For who is really holy but the Son of God? Who properly opened the womb but He who opened a closed one? 7262 But it is marriage which opens the womb in all cases. The virgin’s womb, therefore, was especially 7263 opened, because it was especially closed. Indeed 7264 she ought rather to be called not a virgin than a virgin, becoming a mother at a leap, as it were, before she was a wife. And what must be said more on this point? Since it was in this sense that the apostle declared that the Son of God was born not of a virgin, but “of a woman,” he in that statement recognised the condition of the “opened womb” which ensues in marriage. 7265 We read in Ezekiel of “a heifer 7266 which brought forth, and still did not bring forth.” Now, see whether it was not in view of your own future contentions about the womb of Mary, that even then the Holy Ghost set His mark upon you in this passage; otherwise 7267 He would not, contrary to His usual simplicity of style (in this prophet), have uttered a sentence of such doubtful import, especially when Isaiah says, “She shall conceive and bear a son.” 7268
Footnotes
541:7250Literally, “Lord.”
541:7251Luke ii. 34.
541:7252Isa. vii. 14.
541:7253Academici isti: “this school of theirs.”
541:7254i.e. “Because she produced not her son from her husband’s seed.”
541:7255Defensionem.
541:7256Matt. v. 37.
541:7257Nupsit.
541:7258Nupsit ipsa patefacti corporis lege.
541:7259De vi masculi admissi an emissi.
541:7260i.e. “The male.”
541:7261Exod. 13:2, Luke 2:23.
541:7262Clausam: i.e. a virgin’s.
541:7263Magis.
541:7264Utique.
541:7265Nuptialem passionem.
541:7266Epiphanius (Hær. xxx. 30) quotes from the apocryphal Ezekiel this passage: Τέξεται ἡ δάμαλις, καὶ ἐροῦσιν—οὐ τέτοκεν. So Clem. Alex. Stromata, vii. Oehler.
541:7267Ceterum.
541:7268Isa. vii. 14.
Chapter XXIV.—Divine Strictures on Various Heretics Descried in Various Passages of Prophetical Scripture. Those Who Assail the True Doctrine of the One Lord Jesus Christ, Both God and Man, Thus Condemned.
For when Isaiah hurls denunciation against our very heretics, especially in his “Woe to them that call evil good, and put darkness for light,” 7269 he of course sets his mark upon those amongst you 7270 who preserve not in the words they employ the light of their true significance, (by taking care) that the soul should mean only that which is so called, and the flesh simply that which is confest to our view, and God none other than the One who is preached. 7271 Having thus Marcion in his prophetic view, he says, “I am God, and there is none else; there is no God beside me.” 7272 And when in another passage he says, in like manner, “Before me there was no God,” 7273 he strikes at those inexplicable genealogies of the Valentinian Æons. Again, there is an answer to Ebion in the Scripture: “Born, 7274 not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” In like manner, in the passage, “If even an angel of heaven preach unto you any other gospel than that which we have preached unto you, let him be anathema,” 7275 he calls attention to the artful influence of Philumene, 7276 the virgin friend of Apelles. Surely he is antichrist who denies that Christ has come in the flesh. 7277 By declaring that His flesh is simply and absolutely true, and taken in the plain sense of its own nature, the Scripture aims a blow at all who make distinctions in it. 7278 In the same way, also, when it defines the very Christ to be but one, it shakes the fancies of those who exhibit a multiform Christ, who make Christ to be one being and Jesus another,—representing one as escaping out of the midst of the crowds, and the other as detained by them; one as appearing on a solitary mountain to three companions, clothed with glory in a cloud, the other as an ordinary man holding intercourse with all, 7279 one as magnanimous, but the other as timid; lastly, one as suffering death, the other as risen again, by means of which event they maintain a resurrection of their own also, only in another flesh. Happily, however, He who suffered “will come again from heaven,” 7280 and by all shall He be seen, who rose again from the dead. They too who crucified Him shall see and acknowledge Him; that is to say, His very flesh, against which they spent their fury, and without which it would be impossible for Himself either to exist or to be seen; so that they must blush with shame who affirm that His flesh sits in heaven void of sensation, like a sheath only, Christ being withdrawn from it; as well as those who (maintain) that His flesh and soul are just the same thing, 7281 or else that His soul is all that exists, 7282 but that His flesh no longer lives.
Footnotes
541:7269Isa. v. 20.
541:7270Istos.
541:7271Prædicatur.
541:7272Isa. xlv. 5.
541:7273Isa. xlvi. 9.
541:7274John i. 13. Tertullian’s quotation is, as usual, in the singular, “natus.”
542:7275Gal. i. 8.
542:7276Comp. de Præscr. Hæret. c. xxx. p. 257, supra.
542:72771 John iv. 3.
542:7278Disceptatores ejus.
542:7279Ceteris passivum.
542:7280Acts i. 11.
542:7281Tantundem.
542:7282Tantummodo.
Chapter XXV.—Conclusion. This Treatise Forms a Preface to the Other Work, “On the Resurrection of the Flesh,” Proving the Reality of the Flesh Which Was Truly Born, and Died, and Rose Again.
But let this suffice on our present subject; for I think that by this time proof enough has been adduced of the flesh in Christ having both been born of the virgin, and being human in its nature. And this discussion alone might have been sufficient, without encountering the isolated opinions which have been raised from different quarters. We have, however, challenged these opinions to the test, both of the arguments which sustain them, and of the Scriptures which are appealed to, and this we have done ex abundanti; so that we have, by showing what the flesh of Christ was, and whence it was derived, also predetermined the question, against all objectors, of what that flesh was not. The resurrection, however, of our own flesh will have to be maintained in another little treatise, and so bring to a close this present one, which serves as a general preface, and which will pave the way for the approaching subject now that it is plain what kind of body that was which rose again in Christ.
Elucidations.
————————————
I.
(In the body of a dove, cap. iii. p. 523.)
The learned John Scott, in his invaluable work The Christian Life, 7283 identifies the glory shed upon the Saviour at his baptism, with that mentioned by Ezek. 43.2 and adds: “In this same glorious splendor was Christ arrayed first at his Baptism and afterward at his Transfiguration.…By the Holy Ghost’s descending like a Dove, it is not necessary we should understand his descending in the shape or form of a Dove, but that in some glorious form, or appearance, he descended in the same manner as a Dove descends.…Came down from above just as a dove with his wings spread forth is observed to do, and lighted upon our Saviour’s head.” I quote this as the opinion of one of the most learned and orthodox of divines, but not as my own, for I cannot reconcile it, as he strives to do, with St. Luke iii. 22. Compare Justin Martyr, vol. i. p. 243, and note 6, this series. Grotius observes, says Dr. Scott, that in the apocryphal Gospel of the Nazarenes, it is said that at the Baptism of our Lord “a great light shone round about the place.”
II.
(His mother and His brethren, cap. vii. p. 527.)
It is not possible that the author of this chapter had ever conceived of the Blessed Virgin otherwise than as “Blessed among women,” indeed, but enjoying no especial prerogative as the mother of our Lord. He speaks of “denying her” and “putting her away” after He began His Ministry, as He requires His ministers to do, after His example. How extraordinary this language—“the repudiation of carnal relationship.” According to our author, never charged with heresy on this point, the high rewards of the holy Mary, in the world to come will be those due to her faith, not to the blessing of “her breasts and of her womb.” Christ designates those as “more blessed,” who hear His word and keep it. This the Blessed Virgin did pre-eminently, and herein was her own greater blessedness; that is, (our author shews) her crown of glory depends chiefly, like that of other saints, on her faith and works, not on her mere Maternity.
Footnotes
542:7283I quote the Ed. London, 1739, Vol. V., p. 249.
VI.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh.
The heretics against whom this work is directed, were the same who maintained that the demiurge, or the god who created this world and gave the Mosaic dispensation, was opposed to the supreme God. Hence they attached an idea of inherent corruption and worthlessness to all his works—amongst the rest, to the flesh or body of man; affirming that it could not rise again, and that the soul alone was capable of inheriting immortality. 7284
[Translated by Dr. Holmes.]
————————————
Chapter I.—The Doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body Brought to Light by the Gospel. The Faintest Glimpses of Something Like It Occasionally Met with in Heathenism. Inconsistencies of Pagan Teaching.
The resurrection of the dead is the Christian’s trust. 7285 By it we are believers. To the belief of this (article of the faith) truth compels us—that truth which God reveals, but the crowd derides, which supposes that nothing will survive after death. And yet they do honour 7286 to their dead, and that too in the most expensive way according to their bequest, and with the daintiest banquets which the seasons can produce, 7287 on the presumption that those whom they declare to be incapable of all perception still retain an appetite. 7288 But (let the crowd deride): I on my side must deride it still more, especially when it burns up its dead with harshest inhumanity, only to pamper them immediately afterwards with gluttonous satiety, using the selfsame fires to honour them and to insult them. What piety is that which mocks its victims with cruelty? Is it sacrifice or insult (which the crowd offers), when it burns its offerings to those it has already burnt? 7289 But the wise, too, join with the vulgar crowd in their opinion sometimes. There is nothing after death, according to the school of Epicurus. After death all things come to an end, even death itself, says Seneca to like effect. It is satisfactory, however, that the no less important philosophy of Pythagoras and Empedocles, and the Plantonists, take the contrary view, and declare the soul to be immortal; affirming, moreover, in a way which most nearly approaches (to our own doctrine), 7290 that the soul actually returns into bodies, although not the same bodies, and not even those of human beings invariably: thus Euphorbus is supposed to have passed into Phythagoras, and Homer into a peacock. They firmly pronounced the soul’s renewal 7291 to be in a body, 7292 (deeming it) more tolerable to change the quality (of the corporeal state) than to deny it wholly: they at least knocked at the door of truth, although they entered not. Thus the world, with all its errors, does not ignore the resurrection of the dead.
Footnotes
545:7284See Bp. Kaye, On Tertullian, p. 256. A full examination of the tenets of these Gnostic heretics occurs in our author’s Treatise against Marcion. An able review of Tertullian’s line of thought in this work on the resurrection occurs in Neander’s Antignostikus, Bohn’s translation, ii. 478–486. [There is a decisive ebullition of Montanistic fanaticism in cap. xi., and in the second chapter there is a reference to the De Carne Christi. Date this treatise circa a.d. 208.]
545:7285Fiducia.
545:7286Parentant.
545:7287Pro temporibus esculentorum.
545:7288Etiam desiderar.
545:7289Cum crematis cremat.
545:7290Adhuc proxime: “Christianæ scilicet doctrinæ.” Oehler.
545:7291Recidivatum.
545:7292Corporalem.
Chapter II.—The Jewish Sadducees a Link Between the Pagan Philosophers and the Heretics on This Doctrine. Its Fundamental Importance Asserted. The Soul Fares Better Than the Body, in Heretical Estimation, as to Its Future State. Its Extinction, However, Was Held by One Lucan.
Since there is even within the confines of God’s Church 7293 a sect which is more nearly allied to the Epicureans than to the prophets, an opportunity is afforded us of knowing 7294 what estimate Christ forms of the (said sect, even the) Sadducees. For to Christ was it reserved to lay bare everything which before was concealed: to impart certainty to doubtful points; to accomplish those of which men had had but a foretaste; to give present reality to the objects of prophecy; and to furnish not only by Himself, but actually in Himself, certain proofs of the resurrection of the dead. It is, however, against other Sadducees that we have now to prepare ourselves, but still partakers of their doctrine. For instance, they allow a moiety of the resurrection; that is, simply of the soul, despising the flesh, just as they also do the Lord of the flesh Himself. No other persons, indeed, refuse to concede to the substance of the body its recovery from death, 7295 heretical inventors of a second deity. Driven then, as they are, to give a different dispensation to Christ, so that He may not be accounted as belonging to the Creator, they have achieved their first error in the article of His very flesh; contending with Marcion and Basilides that it possessed no reality; or else holding, after the heretical tenets of Valentinus, and according to Apelles, that it had qualities peculiar to itself. And so it follows that they shut out from all recovery from death that substance of which they say that Christ did not partake, confidently assuming that it furnishes the strongest presumption against the resurrection, since the flesh is already risen in Christ. Hence it is that we have ourselves previously issued our volume On the flesh of Christ; in which we both furnish proofs of its reality, 7296 in opposition to the idea of its being a vain phantom; and claim for it a human nature without any peculiarity of condition—such a nature as has marked out Christ to be both man and the Son of man. For when we prove Him to be invested with the flesh and in a bodily condition, we at the same time refute heresy, by establishing the rule that no other being than the Creator must be believed to be God, since we show that Christ, in whom God is plainly discerned, is precisely of such a nature as the Creator promised that He should be. Being thus refuted touching God as the Creator, and Christ as the Redeemer of the flesh, they will at once be defeated also on the resurrection of the flesh. No procedure, indeed, can be more reasonable. And we affirm that controversy with heretics should in most cases be conducted in this way. For due method requires that conclusions should always be drawn from the most important premises, in order that there be a prior agreement on the essential point, by means of which the particular question under review may be said to have been determined. Hence it is that the heretics, from their conscious weakness, never conduct discussion in an orderly manner. They are well aware how hard is their task in insinuating the existence of a second god, to the disparagement of the Creator of the world, who is known to all men naturally by the testimony of His works, who is before all others in the mysteries 7297 of His being, and is especially manifested in the prophets; 7298 then, under the pretence of considering a more urgent inquiry, namely man’s own salvation—a question which transcends all others in its importance—they begin with doubts about the resurrection; for there is greater difficulty in believing the resurrection of the flesh than the oneness of the Deity. In this way, after they have deprived the discussion of the advantages of its logical order, and have embarrassed it with doubtful insinuations 7299 in disparagement of the flesh, they gradually draw their argument to the reception of a second god after destroying and changing the very ground of our hopes. For when once a man is fallen or removed from the sure hope which he had placed in the Creator, he is easily led away to the object of a different hope, whom however of his own accord he can hardly help suspecting. Now it is by a discrepancy in the promises that a difference of gods is insinuated. How many do we thus see drawn into the net vanquished on the resurrection of the flesh, before they could carry their point on the oneness of the Deity! In respect, then, of the heretics, we have shown with what weapons we ought to meet them. And indeed we have already encountered them in treatises severally directed against them: on the one only God and His Christ, in our work against Marcion, 7300 on the Lord’s flesh, in our book against the four heresies, 7301 for the special purpose of opening the way to the present inquiry: so that we have now only to discuss the resurrection of the flesh, (treating it) just as if it were uncertain in regard to ourselves also, that is, in the system of the Creator. 7302 Because many persons are uneducated; still more are of faltering faith, and several are weak-minded: these will have to be instructed, directed, strengthened, inasmuch as the very oneness of the Godhead will be defended along with the maintenance of our doctrine. 7303 For if the resurrection of the flesh be denied, that prime article of the faith is shaken; if it be asserted, that is established. There is no need, I suppose, to treat of the soul’s safety; for nearly all the heretics, in whatever way they conceive of it, certainly refrain from denying that. We may ignore a certain Lucan, 7304 who does not spare even this part of our nature, which he follows Aristotle in reducing to dissolution, and substitutes some other thing in lieu of it. Some third nature it is which, according to him, is to rise again, neither soul nor flesh; in other words, not man, but a bear perhaps—for instance, Lucan himself. 7305 Even he 7306 has received from us a copious notice in our book on the entire condition of the soul, 7307 the especial immortality of which we there maintain, whilst we also both acknowledge the dissolution of the flesh alone, and emphatically assert its restitution. Into the body of that work were collected whatever points we elsewhere had to reserve from the pressure of incidental causes. For as it is my custom to touch some questions but lightly on their first occurrence, so I am obliged also to postpone the consideration of them, until the outline can be filled in with complete detail, and the deferred points be taken up on their own merits.
Footnotes
546:7293Apud Deum.
546:7294Sciemus.
546:7295Salutem.
546:7296Eam solidam.
546:7297In sacramentis.
546:7298In prædicationibus: “in the declarations of the prophets.”
546:7299Scrupulis.
546:7300See books ii. and iii. of our Anti-Marcion.
547:7301He means the De Carne Christi.
547:7302Tanquam penes nos quoque incerta, id est penes Creatorem. This obscure clause is very variously read. One reading, approved by Fr. Junius, has: “Tanquam penes nos incertum, dum sit quoque certum penes Creatorem,” q.d., “As a subject full of uncertainty as respects ourselves, although of an opposite character in relation to the Creator;” whatever that may mean.
547:7303Hoc latere.
547:7304Compare Adv. Omnes Hæreses, c. vi.
547:7305Varro’s words help us to understand this rough joke: “Ursi Lucana origo,” etc. (De Ling. Lat. v. 100.)
547:7306Iste: rather his subject than his person.
547:7307i.e. the De Anima.
Chapter III.—Some Truths Held Even by the Heathen. They Were, However, More Often Wrong Both in Religious Opinions and in Moral Practice. The Heathen Not to Be Followed in Their Ignorance of the Christian Mystery. The Heretics Perversely Prone to Follow Them.
One may no doubt be wise in the things of God, even from one’s natural powers, but only in witness to the truth, not in maintenance of error; (only) when one acts in accordance with, not in opposition to, the divine dispensation. For some things are known even by nature: the immortality of the soul, for instance, is held by many; the knowledge of our God is possessed by all. I may use, therefore, the opinion of a Plato, when he declares, “Every soul is immortal.” I may use also the conscience of a nation, when it attests the God of gods. I may, in like manner, use all the other intelligences of our common nature, when they pronounce God to be a judge. “God sees,” (say they); and, “I commend you to God.” 7308 But when they say, “What has undergone death is dead,” and, “Enjoy life whilst you live,” and, “After death all things come to an end, even death itself;” then I must remember both that “the heart of man is ashes,” 7309 according to the estimate of God, and that the very “Wisdom of the world is foolishness,” (as the inspired word) pronounces it to be. 7310 Then, if even the heretic seek refuge in the depraved thoughts of the vulgar, or the imaginations of the world, I must say to him: Part company with the heathen, O heretic! for although you are all agreed in imagining a God, yet while you do so in the name of Christ, so long as you deem yourself a Christian, you are a different man from a heathen: give him back his own views of things, since he does not himself learn from yours. Why lean upon a blind guide, if you have eyes of your own? Why be clothed by one who is naked, if you have put on Christ? Why use the shield of another, when the apostle gives you armour of your own? It would be better for him to learn from you to acknowledge the resurrection of the flesh, than for you from him to deny it; because if Christians must needs deny it, it would be sufficient if they did so from their own knowledge, without any instruction from the ignorant multitude. He, therefore, will not be a Christian who shall deny this doctrine which is confessed by Christians; denying it, moreover, on grounds which are adopted by a man who is not a Christian. Take away, indeed, from the heretics the wisdom which they share with the heathen, and let them support their inquiries from the Scriptures alone: they will then be unable to keep their ground. For that which commends men’s common sense is its very simplicity, and its participation in the same feelings, and its community of opinions; and it is deemed to be all the more trustworthy, inasmuch as its definitive statements are naked and open, and known to all. Divine reason, on the contrary, lies in the very pith and marrow of things, not on the surface, and very often is at variance with appearances.
Footnotes
547:7308Compare the De Test. Anim. ii., and De Anim. xlii.
547:7309Isa. xliv. 20.
547:73101 Cor. 1:20, 1 Cor. 3:19.
Chapter IV.—Heathens and Heretics Alike in Their Vilification of the Flesh and Its Functions, the Ordinary Cavils Against the Final Restitution of So Weak and Ignoble a Substance.
Hence it is that heretics start at once from this point, 7311 from which they sketch the first draft of their dogmas, and afterwards add the details, being well aware how easily men’s minds are caught by its influence, (and actuated) by that community of human sentiment which is so favourable to their designs. Is there anything else that you can hear of from the heretic, as also from the heathen, earlier in time or greater in extent? Is not (their burden) from the beginning and everywhere an invective against the flesh—against its origin, against its substance, against the casualties and the invariable end which await it; unclean from its first formation of the dregs of the ground, uncleaner afterwards from the mire of its own seminal transmission; worthless, 7312 weak, covered with guilt, laden with misery, full of trouble; and after all this record of its degradation, dropping into its original earth and the appellation of a corpse, and destined to dwindle away even from this 7313 loathsome name into none henceforth at all—into the very death of all designation? Now you are a shrewd man, no doubt: will you then persuade yourself, that after this flesh has been withdrawn from sight, and touch, and memory, it can never be rehabilitated from corruption to integrity, from a shattered to a solid state, from an empty to a full condition, from nothing at all to something—the devouring fires, and the waters of the sea, and the maws of beasts, and the crops of birds and the stomachs of fishes, and time’s own great paunch 7314 itself of course yielding it all up again? Shall the same flesh which has fallen to decay be so expected to recover, as that the lame, and the one-eyed, and the blind, and the leper, and the palsied shall come back again, although there can be no pleasure in returning to their old condition? Or shall they be whole, and so have to fear exposure to such sufferings? What, in that case, (must we say) of the consequences of resuming the flesh? Will it again be subject to all its present wants, especially meats and drinks? Shall we have with our lungs to float (in air or water), 7315 and suffer pain in our bowels, and with organs of shame to feel no shame, and with all our limbs to toil and labour? Must there again be ulcers, and wounds, and fever, and gout, and once more the wishing to die? Of course these will be the longings incident on the recovery of the flesh, only the repetition of desires to escape out of it. Well now, we have (stated) all this in very subdued and delicate phrases, as suited to the character of our style; but (would you know) how great a licence of unseemly language these men actually use, you must test them in their conferences, whether they be heathens or heretics.
Footnotes
548:7311Of the resurrection of the body.
548:7312Frivolæ.
548:7313Isto.
548:7314Gula.
548:7315Natandum pulmonibus.
Chapter V.—Some Considerations in Reply Eulogistic of the Flesh. It Was Created by God. The Body of Man Was, in Fact, Previous to His Soul.
Inasmuch as all uneducated men, therefore, still form their opinions after these common-sense views, and as the falterers and the weak-minded have a renewal of their perplexities occasioned by the selfsame views; and as the first battering-ram which is directed against ourselves is that which shatters the condition of the flesh, we must on our side necessarily so manage our defences, as to guard, first of all, the condition of the flesh, their disparagement of it being repulsed by our own eulogy. The heretics, therefore, challenged us to use our rhetoric no less than our philosophy. Respecting, then, this frail and poor, worthless body, which they do not indeed hesitate to call evil, even if it had been the work of angels, as Menander and Marcus are pleased to think, or the formation of some fiery being, an angel, as Apelles teaches, it would be quite enough for securing respect for the body, that it had the support and protection of even a secondary deity. The angels, we know, rank next to God. Now, whatever be the supreme God of each heretic, I should not unfairly derive the dignity of the flesh likewise from Him to whom was present the will for its production. For, of course, if He had not willed its production, He would have prohibited it, when He knew it was in progress. It follows, then, that even on their principle the flesh is equally the work of God. There is no work but belongs to Him who has permitted it to exist. It is indeed a happy circumstance, that most of their doctrines, including even the harshest, accord to our God the entire formation of man. How mighty He is, you know full well who believe that He is the only God. Let, then, the flesh begin to give you pleasure, since the Creator thereof is so great. But, you say, even the world is the work of God, and yet “the fashion of this world passeth away,” 7316 as the apostle himself testifies; nor must it be predetermined that the world will be restored, simply because it is the work of God. And surely if the universe, after its ruin, is not to be formed again, why should a portion of it be? You are right, if a portion is on an equality with the whole. But we maintain that there is a difference. In the first place, because all things were made by the Word of God, and without Him was nothing made. 7317 Now the flesh, too, had its existence from the Word of God, because of the principle, 7318 that here should be nothing without that Word. “Let us make man,” 7319 said He, before He created him, and added, “with our hand,” for the sake of his pre-eminence, that so he might not be compared with the rest of creation. 7320 And “God,” says (the Scripture), “formed man.” 7321 There is undoubtedly a great difference in the procedure, springing of course from the nature of the case. For the creatures which were made were inferior to him for whom they were made; and they were made for man, to whom they were afterwards made subject by God. Rightly, therefore, had the creatures which were thus intended for subjection, come forth into being at the bidding and command and sole power of the divine voice; whilst man, on the contrary, destined to be their lord, was formed by God Himself, to the intent that he might be able to exercise his mastery, being created by the Master the Lord Himself. Remember, too, that man is properly called flesh, which had a prior occupation in man’s designation: “And God formed man the clay of the ground.” 7322 He now became man, who was hitherto clay. “And He breathed upon his face the breath of life, and man (that is, the clay) became a living soul; and God placed the man whom He had formed in the garden.” 7323 So that man was clay at first, and only afterwards man entire. I wish to impress this on your attention, with a view to your knowing, that whatever God has at all purposed or promised to man, is due not to the soul simply, but to the flesh also; if not arising out of any community in their origin, yet at all events by the privilege possessed by the latter in its name. 7324
Footnotes
549:73161 Cor. vii. 31.
549:7317John i. 3.
549:7318Formam.
549:7319Gen. i. 26.
549:7320Universitati.
549:7321Gen. i. 27.
549:7322Limum de terra: Gen. ii. 7.
549:7323Gen. 2:7, 8.
549:7324It having just been said that flesh was man’s prior designation.
Chapter VI.—Not the Lowliness of the Material, But the Dignity and Skill of the Maker, Must Be Remembered, in Gauging the Excellence of the Flesh. Christ Partook of Our Flesh.
Let me therefore pursue the subject before me—if I can but succeed in vindicating for the flesh as much as was conferred on it by Him who made it, glorying as it even then was, because that poor paltry material, clay, found its way into the hands of God, whatever these were, happy enough at merely being touched by them. But why this glorying? Was it that, 7325 without any further labour, the clay had instantly assumed its form at the touch of God? The truth is, 7326 a great matter was in progress, out of which the creature under consideration 7327 was being fashioned. So often then does it receive honour, as often as it experiences the hands of God, when it is touched by them, and pulled, and drawn out, and moulded into shape. Imagine God wholly employed and absorbed in it—in His hand, His eye, His labour, His purpose, His wisdom, His providence, and above all, in His love, which was dictating the lineaments (of this creature). For, whatever was the form and expression which was then given to the clay (by the Creator) Christ was in His thoughts as one day to become man, because the Word, too, was to be both clay and flesh, even as the earth was then. For so did the Father previously say to the Son: “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.” 7328 And God made man, that is to say, the creature which He moulded and fashioned; after the image of God (in other words, of Christ) did He make him. And the Word was God also, who being 7329 in the image of God, “thought it not robbery to be equal to God.” 7330 Thus, that clay which was even then putting on the image of Christ, who was to come in the flesh, was not only the work, but also the pledge and surety, of God. To what purpose is it to bandy about the name earth, as that of a sordid and grovelling element, with the view of tarnishing the origin of the flesh, when, even if any other material had been available for forming man, it would be requisite that the dignity of the Maker should be taken into consideration, who even by His selection of His material deemed it, and by His management made it, worthy? The hand of Phidias forms the Olympian Jupiter of ivory; worship is given to the statue, and it is no longer regarded as a god formed out of a most silly animal, but as the world’s supreme Deity—not because of the bulk of the elephant, but on account of the renown of Phidias. Could not therefore the living God, the true God, purge away by His own operation whatever vileness might have accrued to His material, and heal it of all infirmity? Or must this remain to show how much more nobly man could fabricate a god, than God could form a man? Now, although the clay is offensive (for its poorness), it is now something else. What I possess is flesh, not earth, even although of the flesh it is said: “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” 7331 In these words there is the mention of the origin, not a recalling of the substance. The privilege has been granted to the flesh to be nobler than its origin, and to have happiness aggrandized by the change wrought in it. Now, even gold is earth, because of the earth; but it remains earth no longer after it becomes gold, but is a far different substance, more splendid and more noble, though coming from a source which is comparatively faded and obscure. In like manner, it was quite allowable for God that He should clear the gold of our flesh from all the taints, as you deem them, of its native clay, by purging the original substance of its dross.
Footnotes
549:7325Quid enim si.
549:7326Adeo.
549:7327Ista.
549:7328Gen. i. 26.
549:7329Constitutus.
549:7330Phil. ii. 6.
550:7331Gen. iii. 19. [“Earth thou art, etc.” in text.]
Chapter VII.—The Earthy Material of Which Flesh is Created Wonderfully Improved by God’s Manipulation. By the Addition of the Soul in Man’s Constitution It Became the Chief Work in the Creation.
But perhaps the dignity of the flesh may seem to be diminished, because it has not been actually manipulated by the hand of God, as the clay was at first. Now, when God handled the clay for the express purpose of the growth of flesh out of it afterwards, it was for the flesh that He took all the trouble. But I want you, moreover, to know at what time and in what manner the flesh flourished into beauty out of its clay. For it cannot be, as some will have it, that those “coats of skins” 7332 which Adam and Eve put on when they were stripped of paradise, were really themselves the forming of the flesh out of clay, 7333 because long before that Adam had already recognised the flesh which was in the woman as the propagation of his own substance (“This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh” 7334 ), and the very taking of the woman out of the man was supplemented with flesh; but it ought, I should suppose, to have been made good with clay, if Adam was still clay. The clay, therefore, was obliterated and absorbed into flesh. When did this happen? At the time that man became a living soul by the inbreathing of God—by the breath indeed which was capable of hardening clay into another substance, as into some earthenware, so now into flesh. In the same way the potter, too, has it in his power, by tempering the blast of his fire, to modify his clayey material into a stiffer one, and to mould one form after another more beautiful than the original substance, and now possessing both a kind and name of its own. For although the Scripture says, “Shall the clay say to the potter?” 7335 that is, Shall man contend with God? although the apostle speaks of “earthen vessels” 7336 he refers to man, who was originally clay. And the vessel is the flesh, because this was made of clay by the breath of the divine afflatus; and it was afterwards clothed with “the coats of skins,” that is, with the cutaneous covering which was placed over it. So truly is this the fact, that if you withdraw the skin, you lay bare the flesh. Thus, that which becomes a spoil when stripped off, was a vestment as long as it remained laid over. Hence the apostle, when he call circumcision “a putting off (or spoliation) of the flesh,” 7337 affirmed the skin to be a coat or tunic. Now this being the case, you have both the clay made glorious by the hand of God, and the flesh more glorious still by His breathing upon it, by virtue of which the flesh not only laid aside its clayey rudiments, but also took on itself the ornaments of the soul. You surely are not more careful than God, that you indeed should refuse to mount the gems of Scythia and India and the pearls of the Red Sea in lead, or brass, or iron, or even in silver, but should set them in the most precious and most highly-wrought gold; or, again, that you should provide for your finest wines and most costly unguents the most fitting vessels; or, on the same principle, should find for your swords of finished temper scabbards of equal worth; whilst God must consign to some vilest sheath the shadow of His own soul, the breath of His own Spirit, the operation of His own mouth, and by so ignominious a consignment secure, of course, its condemnation. Well, then, has He placed, or rather inserted and commingled, it with the flesh? Yes; and so intimate is the union, that it may be deemed to be uncertain whether the flesh bears about the soul, or the soul the flesh; or whether the flesh acts as apparitor to the soul, or the soul to the flesh. It is, however, more credible that the soul has service rendered to it, 7338 and has the mastery, 7339 as being more proximate in character to God. 7340 This circumstance even redounds to the glory of the flesh, inasmuch as it both contains an essence nearest to God’s, and renders itself a partaker of (the soul’s) actual sovereignty. For what enjoyment of nature is there, what produce of the world, what relish of the elements, which is not imparted to the soul by means of the body? How can it be otherwise? Is it not by its means that the soul is supported by the entire apparatus of the senses—the sight, the hearing, the taste, the smell, the touch? Is it not by its means that it has a sprinkling of the divine power, there being nothing which it does not effect by its faculty of speech, even when it is only tacitly indicated? And speech is the result of a fleshly organ. The arts come through the flesh; through the flesh also effect is given to the mind’s pursuits and powers; all work, too, and business and offices of life, are accomplished by the flesh; and so utterly are the living acts of the soul the work of the flesh, that for the soul to cease to do living acts, would be nothing else than sundering itself from the flesh. So also the very act of dying is a function of the flesh, even as the process of life is. Now, if all things are subject to the soul through the flesh, their subjection is equally due to the flesh. That which is the means and agent of your enjoyment, must needs be also the partaker and sharer of your enjoyment. So that the flesh, which is accounted the minister and servant of the soul, turns out to be also its associate and co-heir. And if all this in temporal things, why not also in things eternal?
Footnotes
550:7332Gen. iii. 31.
550:7333A Valentinian notion.
550:7334Gen. ii. 23.
550:7335Rom. ix. 20.
550:73362 Cor. vi. 7.
550:7337Col. ii. 11.
551:7338Invehi.
551:7339Dominari.
551:7340John iv. 24.
Chapter VIII.—Christianity, by Its Provision for the Flesh, Has Put on It the Greatest Honour. The Privileges of Our Religion in Closest Connection with Our Flesh. Which Also Bears a Large Share in the Duties and Sacrifices of Religion.
Now such remarks have I wished to advance in defence of the flesh, from a general view of the condition of our human nature. Let us now consider its special relation to Christianity, and see how vast a privilege before God has been conferred on this poor and worthless substance. It would suffice to say, indeed, that there is not a soul that can at all procure salvation, except it believe whilst it is in the flesh, so true is it that the flesh is the very condition on which salvation hinges. And since the soul is, in consequence of its salvation, chosen to the service of God, it is the flesh which actually renders it capable of such service. The flesh, indeed, is washed, in order that the soul may be cleansed; the flesh is anointed, that the soul may be consecrated; the flesh is signed (with the cross), that the soul too may be fortified; the flesh is shadowed with the imposition of hands, that the soul also maybe illuminated by the Spirit; the flesh feeds on the body and blood of Christ, that the soul likewise may fatten on its God. They cannot then be separated in their recompense, when they are united in their service. Those sacrifices, moreover, which are acceptable to God—I mean conflicts of the soul, fastings, and abstinences, and the humiliations which are annexed to such duty—it is the flesh which performs again and again 7341 to its own especial suffering. Virginity, likewise, and widowhood, and the modest restraint in secret on the marriage-bed, and the one only adoption 7342 of it, are fragrant offerings to God paid out of the good services of the flesh. Come, tell me what is your opinion of the flesh, when it has to contend for the name of Christ, dragged out to public view, and exposed to the hatred of all men; when it pines in prisons under the cruellest privation of light, in banishment from the world, amidst squalor, filth, and noisome food, without freedom even in sleep, for it is bound on its very pallet and mangled in its bed of straw; when at length before the public view it is racked by every kind of torture that can be devised, and when finally it is spent beneath its agonies, struggling to render its last turn for Christ by dying for Him—upon His own cross many times, not to say by still more atrocious devices of torment. Most blessed, truly, and most glorious, must be the flesh which can repay its Master Christ so vast a debt, and so completely, that the only obligation remaining due to Him is, that it should cease by death to owe Him more—all the more bound even then in gratitude, because (for ever) set free.
Footnotes
551:7341Instaurat.
551:7342Una notitia ejus = monogamia.
Chapter IX.—God’s Love for the Flesh of Man, as Developed in the Grace of Christ Towards It. The Flesh the Best Means of Displaying the Bounty and Power of God.
To recapitulate, then: Shall that very flesh, which the Divine Creator formed with His own hands in the image of God; which He animated with His own afflatus, after the likeness of His own vital vigour; which He set over all the works of His hand, to dwell amongst, to enjoy, and to rule them; which He clothed with His sacraments and His instructions; whose purity He loves, whose mortifications He approves; whose sufferings for Himself He deems precious;—(shall that flesh, I say), so often brought near to God, not rise again? God forbid, God forbid, (I repeat), that He should abandon to everlasting destruction the labour of His own hands, the care of His own thoughts, the receptacle of His own Spirit, 7343 the queen of His creation, the inheritor of His own liberality, the priestess of His religion, the champion of His testimony, the sister of His Christ! We know by experience the goodness of God; from His Christ we learn that He is the only God, and the very good. Now, as He requires from us love to our neighbour after love to Himself, 7344 so He will Himself do that which He has commanded. He will love the flesh which is, so very closely and in so many ways, His neighbour—(He will love it), although infirm, since His strength is made perfect in weakness; 7345 although disordered, since “they that are whole need not the physician, but they that are sick;” 7346 although not honourable, since “we bestow more abundant honour upon the less honourable members;” 7347 although ruined, since He says, “I am come to save that which was lost;” 7348 although sinful, since He says, “I desire rather the salvation of the sinner than his death;” 7349 although condemned, for says He, “I shall wound, and also heal.” 7350 Why reproach the flesh with those conditions which wait for God, which hope in God, which receive honour from God, which He succours? I venture to declare, that if such casualties as these had never befallen the flesh, the bounty, the grace, the mercy, (and indeed) all the beneficent power of God, would have had no opportunity to work. 7351
Footnotes
552:7343Afflatus.
552:7344Matt. xxii. 37-40.
552:73452 Cor. xii. 9.
552:7346Luke v. 31.
552:73471 Cor. xii. 23.
552:7348Luke xix. 10.
552:7349Ezek. xviii. 23.
552:7350Deut. xxxii. 39.
552:7351Vacuisset.
Chapter X.—Holy Scripture Magnifies the Flesh, as to Its Nature and Its Prospects.
You hold to the scriptures in which the flesh is disparaged; receive also those in which it is ennobled. You read whatever passage abases it; direct your eyes also to that which elevates it. “All flesh is grass.” 7352 Well, but Isaiah was not content to say only this; but he also declared, “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.” 7353 They notice God when He says in Genesis, “My Spirit shall not remain among these men, because they are flesh;” 7354 but then He is also heard saying by Joel, “I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh.” 7355 Even the apostle ought not to be known for any one statement in which he is wont to reproach the flesh. For although he says that “in his flesh dwelleth no good thing;” 7356 although he affirms that “they who are in the flesh cannot please God,” 7357 because “the flesh lusteth against the Spirit;” 7358 yet in these and similar assertions which he makes, it is not the substance of the flesh, but its actions, which are censured. Moreover, we shall elsewhere 7359 take occasion to remark, that no reproaches can fairly be cast upon the flesh, without tending also to the castigation of the soul, which compels the flesh to do its bidding. However, let me meanwhile add that in the same passage Paul “carries about in his body the marks of the Lord Jesus;” 7360 he also forbids our body to be profaned, as being “the temple of God;” 7361 he makes our bodies “the members of Christ;” 7362 and he exhorts us to exalt and “glorify God in our body.” 7363 If, therefore, the humiliations of the flesh thrust off its resurrection, why shall not its high prerogatives rather avail to bring it about?—since it better suits the character of God to restore to salvation what for a while He rejected, than to surrender to perdition what He once approved.
Footnotes
552:7352Isa. xl. 7.
552:7353Isa. xl. 5.
552:7354Gen. vi. 3, Sept.
552:7355Joel iii. 1.
552:7356Rom. viii. 18.
552:7357Rom. viii. 8.
552:7358Gal. v. 17.
552:7359Below, in ch. xvi.
552:7360Gal. vi. 17.
552:73611 Cor. iii. 16.
552:73621 Cor. vi. 15.
552:73631 Cor. 6.20.
Chapter XI.—The Power of God Fully Competent to Effect the Resurrection of the Flesh.
Thus far touching my eulogy of the flesh, in opposition to its enemies, who are, notwithstanding, its greatest friends also; for there is nobody who lives so much in accordance with the flesh as they who deny the resurrection of the flesh, inasmuch as they despise all its discipline, while they disbelieve its punishment. It is a shrewd saying which the Paraclete utters concerning these persons by the mouth of the prophetess Prisca: “They are carnal, 7364 and yet they hate the flesh.” Since, then, the flesh has the best guarantee that could possibly accrue for securing to it the recompense of salvation, ought we not also to consider well the power, and might, and competency 7365 of God Himself, whether He be so great as to be able to rebuild and restore the edifice of the flesh, which had become dilapidated and blocked up, 7366 and in every possible way dislocated?—whether He has promulgated in the public domains of nature any analogies to convince us of His power in this respect, lest any should happen to be still thirsting for the knowledge of God, when faith in Him must rest on no other basis than the belief that He is able to do all things? You have, no doubt amongst your philosophers men who maintain that this world is without a beginning or a maker. It is, however, much more true, that nearly all the heresies allow it an origin and a maker, and ascribe its creation to our God. Firmly believe, therefore, that He produced it wholly out of nothing, and then you have found the knowledge of God, by believing that He possesses such mighty power. But some persons are too weak to believe all this at first, owing to their views about Matter. They will rather have it, after the philosophers, that the universe was in the beginning made by God out of underlying matter. Now, even if this opinion could be held in truth, since He must be acknowledged to have produced in His reformation of matter far different substances and far different forms from those which Matter itself possessed, I should maintain, with no less persistence, that He produced these things out of nothing, since they absolutely had no existence at all previous to His production of them. Now, where is the difference between a thing’s being produced out of nothing or out of something, if so be that what existed not comes into being, when even to have had no existence is tantamount to having been nothing? The contrary is likewise true; for having once existed amounts to having been something. If, however, there is a difference, both alternatives support my position. For if God produced all things whatever out of nothing, He will be able to draw forth from nothing even the flesh which had fallen into nothing; or if He moulded other things out of matter, He will be able to call forth the flesh too from somewhere else, into whatever abyss it may have been engulphed. And surely He is most competent to re-create who created, inasmuch as it is a far greater work to have produced than to have reproduced, to have imparted a beginning, than to have maintained a continuance. On this principle, you may be quite sure that the restoration of the flesh is easier than its first formation.
Footnotes
552:7364Carnes. [To explain the state of mind in which this sentence is written, let the reader kindly turn back to Vol. II. p. 4, the paragraph, “As Eusebius informs us, etc.”]
552:7365Licentiam.
553:7366Oehler explains “devoratum” by “interceptum.”
Chapter XII.—Some Analogies in Nature Which Corroborate the Resurrection of the Flesh.
Consider now those very analogies of the divine power (to which we have just alluded). Day dies into night, and is buried everywhere in darkness. The glory of the world is obscured in the shadow of death; its entire substance is tarnished with blackness; all things become sordid, silent, stupid; everywhere business ceases, and occupations rest. And so over the loss of the light there is mourning. But yet it again revives, with its own beauty, its own dowry, is own sun, the same as ever, whole and entire, over all the world, slaying its own death, night—opening its own sepulchre, the darkness—coming forth the heir to itself, until the night also revives—it, too, accompanied with a retinue of its own. For the stellar rays are rekindled, which had been quenched in the morning glow; the distant groups of the constellations are again brought back to view, which the day’s temporary interval had removed out of sight. Readorned also are the mirrors of the moon, which her monthly course had worn away. Winters and summers return, as do the spring-tide and autumn, with their resources, their routines, their fruits. Forasmuch as earth receives its instruction from heaven to clothe the trees which had been stripped, to colour the flowers afresh, to spread the grass again, to reproduce the seed which had been consumed, and not to reproduce them until consumed. Wondrous method! from a defrauder to be a preserver, in order to restore, it takes away; in order to guard, it destroys; that it may make whole, it injures; and that it may enlarge, it first lessens. (This process) indeed, renders back to us richer and fuller blessings than it deprived us of—by a destruction which is profit, by an injury which is advantage, and by a loss which is gain. In a word, I would say, all creation is instinct with renewal. Whatever you may chance upon, has already existed; whatever you have lost, returns again without fail. All things return to their former state, after having gone out of sight; all things begin after they have ended; they come to an end for the very purpose of coming into existence again. Nothing perishes but with a view to salvation. The whole, therefore, of this revolving order of things bears witness to the resurrection of the dead. In His works did God write it, before He wrote it in the Scriptures; He proclaimed it in His mighty deeds earlier than in His inspired words. He first sent Nature to you as a teacher, meaning to send Prophecy also as a supplemental instructor, that, being Nature’s disciple, you may more easily believe Prophecy, and without hesitation accept (its testimony) when you come to hear what you have seen already on every side; nor doubt that God, whom you have discovered to be the restorer of all things, is likewise the reviver of the flesh. And surely, as all things rise again for man, for whose use they have been provided—but not for man except for his flesh also—how happens it that (the flesh) itself can perish utterly, because of which and for the service of which nothing comes to nought?
Chapter XIII.—From Our Author’s View of a Verse in the Ninety-Second Psalm, the Phœnix is Made a Symbol of the Resurrection of Our Bodies.
If, however, all nature but faintly figures our resurrection; if creation affords no sign precisely like it, inasmuch as its several phenomena can hardly be said to die so much as to come to an end, nor again be deemed to be reanimated, but only re-formed; then take a most complete and unassailable symbol of our hope, for it shall be an animated being, and subject alike to life and death. I refer to the bird which is peculiar to the East, famous for its singularity, marvelous from its posthumous life, which renews its life in a voluntary death; its dying day is its birthday, for on it it departs and returns; once more a phœnix where just now there was none; once more himself, but just now out of existence; another, yet the same. What can be more express and more significant for our subject; or to what other thing can such a phenomenon bear witness? God even in His own Scripture says: “The righteous shall flourish like the phœnix;” 7367 that is, shall flourish or revive, from death, from the grave—to teach you to believe that a bodily substance may be recovered even from the fire. Our Lord has declared that we are “better than many sparrows:” 7368 well, if not better than many a phœnix too, it were no great thing. But must men die once for all, while birds in Arabia are sure of a resurrection?
Footnotes
554:7367Δίκαιος ὡς φοίνιξ ἀνθήσει, Sept. Ps. xcii. 12.—“like a palm tree” (A.V.). We have here a characteristic way of Tertullian’s quoting a scripture which has even the least bearing on his subject. [See Vol. I. (this series) p. 12, and same volume, p. viii.]
554:7368Matt. x. 33.
Chapter XIV.—A Sufficient Cause for the Resurrection of the Flesh Occurs in the Future Judgment of Man. It Will Take Cognisance of the Works of the Body No Less Than of the Soul.
Such, then, being the outlines of the divine energies which God has displayed as much in the parables of nature as in His spoken word, let us now approach His very edicts and decrees, since this is the division which we mainly adopt in our subject-matter. We began with the dignity of the flesh, whether it were of such a nature that when once destroyed it was capable of being restored. Then we pursued an inquiry touching the power of God, whether it was sufficiently great to be habitually able to confer this restoration on a thing which had been destroyed. Now, if we have proved these two points, I should like you to inquire into the (question of) cause, whether it be one of sufficient weight to claim the resurrection of the flesh as necessary and as conformable in every way to reason; because there underlies this demurrer: the flesh may be quite capable of being restored, and the Deity be perfectly able to effect the restoration, but a cause for such recovery must needs pre-exist. Admit then a sufficient one, you who learn of a God who is both supremely good as well as just 7369 —supremely good from His own (character), just in consequence of ours. For if man had never sinned, he would simply and solely have known God in His superlative goodness, from the attribute of His nature. But now he experiences Him to be a just God also, from the necessity of a cause; still, however, retaining under this very circumstance His excellent goodness, at the same time that He is also just. For, by both succouring the good and punishing the evil, He displays His justice, and at the same time makes both processes contribute proofs of His goodness, whilst on the one hand He deals vengeance, and on the other dispenses reward. But with Marcion 7370 you will have the opportunity of more fully learning whether this be the whole character of God. Meanwhile, so perfect is our (God), that He is rightly Judge, because He is the Lord; rightly the Lord, because the Creator; rightly the Creator, because He is God. Whence it happens that that heretic, whose name I know not, holds that He properly is not a Judge, since He is not Lord; properly not Lord, since He is not the Creator. And so I am at a loss to know how He is God, who is neither the Creator, which God is; nor the Lord, which the Creator is. Inasmuch, then, as it is most suitable for the great Being who is God, and Lord, and Creator to summon man to a judgment on this very question, whether he has taken care or not to acknowledge and honour his Lord and Creator, this is just such a judgment as the resurrection shall achieve. The entire cause, then, or rather necessity of the resurrection, will be this, namely, that arrangement of the final judgment which shall be most suitable to God. Now, in effecting this arrangement, you must consider whether the divine censure superintends a judicial examination of the two natures of man—both his soul and his flesh. For that which is a suitable object to be judged, is also a competent one to be raised. Our position is, that the judgment of God must be believed first of all to be plenary, and then absolute, so as to be final, and therefore irrevocable; to be also righteous, not bearing less heavily on any particular part; to be moreover worthy of God, being complete and definite, in keeping with His great patience. Thus it follows that the fulness and perfection of the judgment consists simply in representing the interests of the entire human being. Now, since the entire man consists of the union of the two natures, he must therefore appear in both, as it is right that he should be judged in his entirety; nor, of course, did he pass through life except in his entire state. As therefore he lived, so also must he be judged, because he has to be judged concerning the way in which he lived. For life is the cause of judgment, and it must undergo investigation in as many natures as it possessed when it discharged its vital functions.
Footnotes
554:7369He refers to Marcion.
554:7370He here refers his reader to what he has written against Marcion, especially in his books i. and ii.
Chapter XV.—As the Flesh is a Partaker with the Soul in All Human Conduct, So Will It Be in the Recompense of Eternity.
Come now, let our opponents sever the connection of the flesh with the soul in the affairs of life, that they may be emboldened to sunder it also in the recompense of life. Let them deny their association in acts, that they may be fairly able to deny also their participation in rewards. The flesh ought not to have any share in the sentence, if it had none in the cause of it. Let the soul alone be called back, if it alone went away. But (nothing of the kind ever happened); for the soul alone no more departed from life, than it ran through alone the course from which it departed—I mean this present life. Indeed, the soul alone is so far from conducting (the affairs of) life, that we do not withdraw from community with the flesh even our thoughts, however isolated they be, however unprecipitated into act by means of the flesh; since whatever is done in man’s heart is done by the soul in the flesh, and with the flesh, and through the flesh. The Lord Himself, in short, when rebuking our thoughts, includes in His censures this aspect of the flesh, (man’s heart), the citadel of the soul: “Why think ye evil in your hearts?” 7371 and again: “Whosoever looketh on a woman, to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart.” 7372 So that even the thought, without operation and without effect, is an act of the flesh. But if you allow that the faculty which rules the senses, and which they call Hegemonikon, 7373 has its sanctuary in the brain, or in the interval between the eyebrows, or wheresoever the philosophers are pleased to locate it, the flesh will still be the thinking place of the soul. The soul is never without the flesh, as long as it is in the flesh. There is nothing which the flesh does not transact in company with the soul, when without it it does not exist. Consider carefully, too, whether the thoughts are not administered by the flesh, since it is through the flesh that they are distinguished and known externally. Let the soul only meditate some design, the face gives the indication—the face being the mirror of all our intentions. They may deny all combination in acts, but they cannot gainsay their co-operation in thoughts. Still they enumerate the sins of the flesh; surely, then, for its sinful conduct it must be consigned to punishment. But we, moreover, allege against them the virtues of the flesh; surely also for its virtuous conduct it deserves a future reward. Again, as it is the soul which acts and impels us in all we do, so it is the function of the flesh to render obedience. Now we are not permitted to suppose that God is either unjust or idle. Unjust, (however He would be,) were He to exclude from reward the flesh which is associated in good works; and idle, were He to exempt it from punishment, when it has been an accomplice in evil deeds: whereas human judgment is deemed to be the more perfect, when it discovers the agents in every deed, and neither spares the guilty nor grudges the virtuous their full share of either punishment or praise with the principals who employed their services.
Footnotes
555:7371Matt. ix. 4.
555:7372Matt. v. 28.
555:7373The leading power.
Chapter XVI.—The Heretics Called the Flesh “The Vessel of the Soul,” In Order to Destroy the Responsibility of the Body. Their Cavil Turns Upon Themselves and Shows the Flesh to Be a Sharer in Human Actions.
When, however, we attribute to the soul authority, and to the flesh submission, we must see to it that (our opponents) do not turn our position by another argument, by insisting on so placing the flesh in the service of the soul, that it be not (considered as) its servant, lest they should be compelled, if it were so regarded, to admit its companionship (to the soul). For they would argue that servants and companions possess a discretion in discharging the functions of their respective office, and a power over their will in both relations: in short, (they would claim to be) men themselves, and therefore (would expect) to share the credit with their principals, to whom they voluntarily yielded their assistance; whereas the flesh had no discretion, no sentiment in itself, but possessing no power of its own of willing or refusing, it, in fact, appears to stand to the soul in the stead of a vessel as an instrument rather than a servant. The soul alone, therefore, will have to be judged (at the last day) pre-eminently as to how it has employed the vessel of the flesh; the vessel itself, of course, not being amenable to a judicial award: for who condemns the cup if any man has mixed poison in it? or who sentences the sword to the beasts, if a man has perpetrated with it the atrocities of a brigand? Well, now, we will grant that the flesh is innocent, in so far as bad actions will not be charged upon it: what, then, is there to hinder its being saved on the score of its innocence? For although it is free from all imputation of good works, as it is of evil ones, yet it is more consistent with the divine goodness to deliver the innocent. A beneficent man, indeed, is bound to do so: it suits then the character of the Most Bountiful to bestow even gratuitously such a favour. And yet, as to the cup, I will not take the poisoned one, into which some certain death is injected, but one which has been infected with the breath of a lascivious woman, 7374 or of Cybele’s priest, or of a gladiator, or of a hangman: then I want to know whether you would pass a milder condemnation on it than on the kisses of such persons? One indeed which is soiled with our own filth, or one which is not mingled to our own mind we are apt to dash to pieces, and then to increase our anger with our servant. As for the sword, which is drunk with the blood of the brigand’s victims, who would not banish it entirely from his house, much more from his bed-room, or from his pillow, from the presumption that he would be sure to dream of nothing but the apparitions of the souls which were pursuing and disquieting him for lying down with the blade which shed their own blood? Take, however, the cup which has no reproach on it, and which deserves the credit of a faithful ministration, it will be adorned by its drinking-master with chaplets, or be honoured with a handful of flowers. The sword also which has received honourable stains in war, and has been thus engaged in a better manslaughter, will secure its own praise by consecration. It is quite possible, then, to pass decisive sentences even on vessels and on instruments, that so they too may participate in the merits of their proprietors and employers. Thus much do I say from a desire to meet even this argument, although there is a failure in the example, owing to the diversity in the nature of the objects. For every vessel or every instrument becomes useful from without, consisting as it does of material perfectly extraneous to the substance of the human owner or employer; whereas the flesh, being conceived, formed, and generated along with the soul from its earliest existence in the womb, is mixed up with it likewise in all its operations. For although it is called “a vessel” by the apostle, such as he enjoins to be treated “with honour,” 7375 it is yet designated by the same apostle as “the outward man,” 7376 —that clay, of course, which at the first was inscribed with the title of a man, not of a cup or a sword, or any paltry vessel. Now it is called a “vessel” in consideration of its capacity, whereby it receives and contains the soul; but “man,” from its community of nature, which renders it in all operations a servant and not an instrument. Accordingly, in the judgment it will be held to be a servant (even though it may have no independent discretion of its own), on the ground of its being an integral portion of that which possesses such discretion, and is not a mere chattel. And although the apostle is well aware that the flesh does nothing of itself which is not also imputed to the soul, he yet deems the flesh to be “sinful;” 7377 lest it should be supposed to be free from all responsibility by the mere fact of its seeming to be impelled by the soul. So, again, when he is ascribing certain praiseworthy actions to the flesh, he says, “Therefore glorify and exalt God in your body,” 7378 —being certain that such efforts are actuated by the soul; but still he ascribes them to the flesh, because it is to it that he also promises the recompense. Besides, neither rebuke, (on the one hand), would have been suitable to it, if free from blame; nor, (on the other hand), would exhortation, if it were incapable of glory. Indeed, both rebuke and exhortation would be alike idle towards the flesh, if it were an improper object for that recompence which is certainly received in the resurrection.
Footnotes
556:7374“Frictricis” is Oehler’s reading.
556:73751 Thess. iv. 4.
556:73762 Cor. iv. 16.
556:7377Rom. viii. 3.
556:73781 Cor. vi. 20.
Chapter XVII.—The Flesh Will Be Associated with the Soul in Enduring the Penal Sentences of the Final Judgment.
“Every uneducated 7379 person who agrees with our opinion will be apt to suppose that the flesh will have to be present at the final judgment even on this account, because otherwise the soul would be incapable of suffering pain or pleasure, as being incorporeal; for this is the common opinion. We on our part, however, do here maintain, and in a special treatise on the subject prove, that the soul is corporeal, possessing a peculiar kind of solidity in its nature, such as enables it both to perceive and suffer. That souls are even now susceptible of torment and of blessing in Hades, though they are disembodied, and notwithstanding their banishment from the flesh, is proved by the case of Lazarus. I have no doubt given to my opponent room to say: Since, then, the soul has a bodily substance of its own, it will be sufficiently endowed with the faculty of suffering and sense, so as not to require the presence of the flesh. No, no, (is my reply): it will still need the flesh; not as being unable to feel anything without the help of the flesh, but because it is necessary that it should possess such a faculty along with the flesh. For in as far as it has a sufficiency of its own for action, in so far has it likewise a capacity for suffering. But the truth is, in respect of action, it labours under some amount of incapacity; for in its own nature it has simply the ability to think, to will, to desire, to dispose: for fully carrying out the purpose, it looks for the assistance of the flesh. In like manner, it also requires the conjunction of the flesh to endure suffering, in order that by its aid it may be as fully able to suffer, as without its assistance it was not fully able to act. In respect, indeed, of those sins, such as concupiscence, and thought, and wish, which it has a competency of its own to commit, it at once 7380 pays the penalty of them. Now, no doubt, if these were alone sufficient to constitute absolute desert without requiring the addition of acts, the soul would suffice in itself to encounter the full responsibility of the judgment, being to be judged for those things in the doing of which it alone had possessed a sufficiency. Since, however, acts too are indissolubly attached to deserts; since also acts are ministerially effected by the flesh, it is no longer enough that the soul apart from the flesh be requited with pleasure or pain for what are actually works of the flesh, although it has a body (of its own), although it has members (of its own), which in like manner are insufficient for its full perception, just as they are also for its perfect action. Therefore as it has acted in each several instance, so proportionably does it suffer in Hades, being the first to taste of judgment as it was the first to induce to the commission of sin; but still it is waiting for the flesh in order that it may through the flesh also compensate for its deeds, inasmuch as it laid upon the flesh the execution of its own thoughts. This, in short, will be the process of that judgment which is postponed to the last great day, in order that by the exhibition of the flesh the entire course of the divine vengeance may be accomplished. Besides, (it is obvious to remark) there would be no delaying to the end of that doom which souls are already tasting in Hades, if it was destined for souls alone.
Footnotes
556:7379Simplicior.
557:7380Interim.
Chapter XVIII.—Scripture Phrases and Passages Clearly Assert “The Resurrection of the Dead.” The Force of This Very Phrase Explained as Indicating the Prominent Place of the Flesh in the General Resurrection.
Thus far it has been my object by prefatory remarks to lay a foundation for the defence of all the Scriptures which promise a resurrection of the flesh. Now, inasmuch as this verity is supported by so many just and reasonable considerations—I mean the dignity of the flesh itself, 7381 the power and might of God, 7382 the analogous cases in which these are displayed, 7383 as well as the good reasons for the judgment, and the need thereof 7384 —it will of course be only right and proper that the Scriptures should be understood in the sense suggested by such authoritative considerations, and not after the conceits of the heretics, which arise from infidelity solely, because it is deemed incredible that the flesh should be recovered from death and restored to life; not because (such a restoration) is either unattainable by the flesh itself, or impossible for God to effect, or unsuitable to the final judgment. Incredible, no doubt, it might be, if it had not been revealed in the word of God; 7385 except that, even if it had not been thus first announced by God, it might have been fairly enough assumed, that the revelation of it had been withheld, simply because so many strong presumptions in its favour had been already furnished. Since, however, (the great fact) is proclaimed in so many inspired passages, that is so far a dissuasive against understanding it in a sense different from that which is attested by such arguments as persuade us to its reception, even irrespective of the testimonies of revelation. Let us see, then, first of all in what title this hope of ours is held out to our view. 7386 There is, I imagine, one divine edict which is exposed to the gaze of all men: it is “The Resurrection of the Dead.” 7387 These words are prompt, decisive, clear. I mean to take these very terms, discuss them, and discover to what substance they apply. As to the word resurrectio, whenever I hear of its impending over a human being, I am forced to inquire what part of him has been destined to fall, since nothing can be expected to rise again, unless it has first been prostrated. It is only the man who is ignorant of the fact that the flesh falls by death, that can fail to discover that it stands erect by means of life. Nature pronounces God’s sentence: “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” 7388 Even the man who has not heard the sentence, sees the fact. No death but is the ruin of our limbs. This destiny of the body the Lord also described, when, clothed as He was in its very substance, He said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.” 7389 For He showed to what belongs (the incidents of) being destroyed, thrown down, and kept down—even to that to which it also appertains to be lifted and raised up again; although He was at the same time bearing about with Him “a soul that was trembling even unto death,” 7390 but which did not fall through death, because even the Scripture informs us that “He spoke of His body.” 7391 So that it is the flesh which falls by death; and accordingly it derives its name, cadaver, from cadendo. 7392 The soul, however, has no trace of a fall in its designation, as indeed there is no mortality in its condition. Nay it is the soul which communicates its ruin to the body when it is breathed out of it, just as it is also destined to raise it up again from the earth when it shall re-enter it. That cannot fall which by its entrance raises; nor can that droop which by its departure causes ruin. I will go further, and say that the soul does not even fall into sleep along with the body, nor does it with its companion even lie down in repose. For it is agitated in dreams, and disturbed: it might, however, rest, if it lay down; and lie down it certainly would, if it fell. Thus that which does not fall even into the likeness of death, does not succumb to the reality thereof. Passing now to the other word mortuorum, I wish you to look carefully, and see to what substance it is applicable. Were we to allow, under this head, as is sometimes held by the heretics, that the soul is mortal, so that being mortal it shall attain to a resurrection; this would afford a presumption that the flesh also, being no less mortal, would share in the same resurrection. But our present point is to derive from the proper signification of this word an idea of the destiny which it indicates. Now, just as the term resurrection is predicated of that which falls—that is, the flesh—so will there be the same application of the word dead, because what is called “the resurrection of the dead” indicates the rising up again of that which is fallen down. We learn this from the case of Abraham, the father of the faithful, a man who enjoyed close intercourse with God. For when he requested of the sons of Heth a spot to bury Sarah in, he said to them, “Give me the possession of a burying place with you, that I may bury my dead,” 7393 —meaning, of course, her flesh; for he could not have desired a place to bury her soul in, even if the soul is to be deemed mortal, and even if it could bear to be described by the word “dead.” Since, then, this word indicates the body, it follows that when “the resurrection of the dead” is spoken of, it is the rising again of men’s bodies that is meant.
Footnotes
557:7381As stated in ch. v.–ix.
557:7382See ch. xi.
557:7383As stated in ch. xii. and xiii.
557:7384See ch. xiv.–xvii.
557:7385Divinitus.
557:7386Proscripta.
558:7387Resurrectio Mortuorum.
558:7388Gen. iii. 19.
558:7389John ii. 19.
558:7390Matt. xxvi. 38.
558:7391John ii. 21.
558:7392“Corpse from falling.” This, of course, does not show the connection of the words, like the Latin. [Elucidation I.]
558:7393Gen. xxiii. 4.
Chapter XIX.—The Sophistical Sense Put by Heretics on the Phrase “Resurrection of the Dead,” As If It Meant the Moral Change of a New Life.
Now this consideration of the phrase in question, and its signification—besides maintaining, of course, the true meaning of the important words—must needs contribute to this further result, that whatever obscurity our adversaries throw over the subject under the pretence of figurative and allegorical language, the truth will stand out in clearer light, and out of uncertainties certain and definite rules will be prescribed. For some, when they have alighted on a very usual form of prophetic statement, generally expressed in figure and allegory, though not always, distort into some imaginary sense even the most clearly described doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, alleging that even death itself must be understood in a spiritual sense. They say that which is commonly supposed to be death is not really so,—namely, the separation of body and soul: it is rather the ignorance of God, by reason of which man is dead to God, and is not less buried in error than he would be in the grave. Wherefore that also must be held to be the resurrection, when a man is reanimated by access to the truth, and having dispersed the death of ignorance, and being endowed with new life by God, has burst forth from the sepulchre of the old man, even as the Lord likened the scribes and Pharisees to “whited sepulchres.” 7394 Whence it follows that they who have by faith attained to the resurrection, are with the Lord after they have once put Him on in their baptism. By such subtlety, then, even in conversation have they often been in the habit of misleading our brethren, as if they held a resurrection of the dead as well as we. Woe, say they, to him who has not risen in the present body; for they fear that they might alarm their hearers if they at once denied the resurrection. Secretly, however, in their minds they think this: Woe betide the simpleton who during his present life fails to discover the mysteries of heresy; since this, in their view, is the resurrection. There are however, a great many also, who, claiming to hold a resurrection after the soul’s departure, maintain that going out of the sepulchre means escaping out of the world, since in their view the world is the habitation of the dead—that is, of those who know not God; or they will go so far as to say that it actually means escaping out of the body itself, since they imagine that the body detains the soul, when it is shut up in the death of a worldly life, as in a grave.
Footnotes
559:7394Matt. xxiii. 27.
Chapter XX.—Figurative Senses Have Their Foundation in Literal Fact. Besides, the Allegorical Style is by No Means the Only One Found in the Prophetic Scriptures, as Alleged by the Heretics.
Now, to upset all conceits of this sort, let me dispel at once the preliminary idea on which they rest—their assertion that the prophets make all their announcements in figures of speech. Now, if this were the case, the figures themselves could not possibly have been distinguished, inasmuch as the verities would not have been declared, out of which the figurative language is stretched. And, indeed, if all are figures, where will be that of which they are the figures? How can you hold up a mirror for your face, if the face nowhere exists? But, in truth, all are not figures, but there are also literal statements; nor are all shadows, but there are bodies too: so that we have prophecies about the Lord Himself even, which are clearer than the day. For it was not figuratively that the Virgin conceived in her womb; nor in a trope did she bear Emmanuel, that is, Jesus, God with us. 7395 Even granting that He was figuratively to take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria, 7396 still it was literally that He was to “enter into judgment with the elders and princes of the people.” 7397 For in the person of Pilate “the heathen raged,” and in the person of Israel “the people imagined vain things;” “the kings of the earth” in Herod, and the rulers in Annas and Caiaphas, were gathered together “against the Lord, and against His anointed.” 7398 He, again, was “led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a sheep before the shearer,” that is, Herod, “is dumb, so He opened not His mouth.” 7399 “He gave His back to scourges, and His cheeks to blows, not turning His face even from the shame of spitting.” 7400 “He was numbered with the transgressors;” 7401 “He was pierced in His hands and His feet;” 7402 “they cast lots for his raiment;” 7403 “they gave Him gall, and made Him drink vinegar;” 7404 “they shook their heads, and mocked Him;” 7405 “He was appraised by the traitor in thirty pieces of silver.” 7406 What figures of speech does Isaiah here give us? What tropes does David? What allegories does Jeremiah? Not even of His mighty works have they used parabolic language. Or else, were not the eyes of the blind opened? did not the tongue of the dumb recover speech? 7407 did not the relaxed hands and palsied knees become strong, 7408 and the lame leap as an hart? 7409 No doubt we are accustomed also to give a spiritual significance to these statements of prophecy, according to the analogy of the physical diseases which were healed by the Lord; but still they were all fulfilled literally: thus showing that the prophets foretold both senses, except that very many of their words can only be taken in a pure and simple signification, and free from all allegorical obscurity; as when we hear of the downfall of nations and cities, of Tyre and Egypt, and Babylon and Edom, and the navy of Carthage; also when they foretell Israel’s own chastisements and pardons, its captivities, restorations, and at last its final dispersion. Who would prefer affixing a metaphorical interpretation to all these events, instead of accepting their literal truth? The realities are involved in the words, just as the words are read in the realities. Thus, then, (we find that) the allegorical style is not used in all parts of the prophetic record, although it occasionally occurs in certain portions of it.
Footnotes
559:7395Isa. 7:14, Matt. 1:23.
559:7396Isa. viii. 4.
559:7397Isa. iii. 13.
559:7398Ps. 2:1, 2.
559:7399Isa. liii. 7.
559:7400Isa. l. 6, Sept.
559:7401Isa. liii. 12.
559:7402Ps. xxii. 17.
559:7403Psa. 22.18.
559:7404Ps. lxix. 22. Tertullian only briefly gives the sense in two words: et potus amaros.
559:7405Ps. xxii. 8.
559:7406Zech. xi. 12.
559:7407Isa. xxxv. 5.
559:7408Isa. 35.3.
559:7409Isa. 35.6.
Chapter XXI.—No Mere Metaphor in the Phrase Resurrection of the Dead. In Proportion to the Importance of Eternal Truths, is the Clearness of Their Scriptural Enunciation.
Well, if it occurs occasionally in certain portions of it, you will say, then why not in that phrase, 7410 where the resurrection might be spiritually understood? There are several reasons why not. First, what must be the meaning of so many important passages of Holy Scripture, which so obviously attest the resurrection of the body, as to admit not even the appearance of a figurative signification? And, indeed, (since some passages are more obscure than others), it cannot but be right—as we have shown above 7411 —that uncertain statements should be determined by certain ones, and obscure ones by such as are clear and plain; else there is fear that, in the conflict of certainties and uncertainties, of explicitness and obscurity, faith may be shattered, truth endangered, and the Divine Being Himself be branded as inconstant. Then arises the improbability that the very mystery on which our trust wholly rests, on which also our instruction entirely depends, should have the appearance of being ambiguously announced and obscurely propounded, inasmuch as the hope of the resurrection, unless it be clearly set forth on the sides both of punishment and reward, would fail to persuade any to embrace a religion like ours, exposed as it is to public detestation and the imputation of hostility to others. There is no certain work where the remuneration is uncertain. There is no real apprehension when the peril is only doubtful. But both the recompense of reward, and the danger of losing it, depend on the issues of the resurrection. Now, if even those purposes of God against cities, and nations, and kings, which are merely temporal, local, and personal in their character, have been proclaimed so clearly in prophecy, how is it to be supposed that those dispensations of His which are eternal, and of universal concern to the human race, should be void of all real light in themselves? The grander they are, the clearer should be their announcement, in order that their superior greatness might be believed. And I apprehend that God cannot possibly have ascribed to Him either envy, or guile, or inconsistency, or artifice, by help of which evil qualities it is that all schemes of unusual grandeur are litigiously promulgated.
Footnotes
560:7410Resurrectio Mortuorum, of which we have been speaking.
560:7411See ch. xix.
Chapter XXII.—The Scriptures Forbid Our Supposing Either that the Resurrection is Already Past, or that It Takes Place Immediately at Death. Our Hopes and Prayers Point to the Last Great Day as the Period of Its Accomplishment.
We must after all this turn our attention to those scriptures also which forbid our belief in such a resurrection as is held by your Animalists (for I will not call them Spiritualists), 7412 that it is either to be assumed as taking place now, as soon as men come to the knowledge of the truth, or else that it is accomplished immediately after their departure from this life. Now, forasmuch as the seasons of our entire hope have been fixed in the Holy Scripture, and since we are not permitted to place the accomplishment thereof, as I apprehend, previous to Christ’s coming, our prayers are directed towards 7413 the end of this world, to the passing away thereof at the great day of the Lord—of His wrath and vengeance—the last day, which is hidden (from all), and known to none but the Father, although announced beforehand by signs and wonders, and the dissolution of the elements, and the conflicts of nations. I would turn out the words of the prophets, if the Lord Himself had said nothing (except that prophecies were the Lord’s own word); but it is more to my purpose that He by His own mouth confirms their statement. Being questioned by His disciples when those things were to come to pass which He had just been uttering about the destruction of the temple, He discourses to them first of the order of Jewish events until the overthrow of Jerusalem, and then of such as concerned all nations up to the very end of the world. For after He had declared that “Jerusalem was to be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles should be fulfilled,” 7414 —meaning, of course, those which were to be chosen of God, and gathered in with the remnant of Israel—He then goes on to proclaim, against this world and dispensation (even as Joel had done, and Daniel, and all the prophets with one consent 7415 ), that “there should be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, distress of nations with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring, men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth.” 7416 “For,” says He, “the powers of heaven shall be shaken; and then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds, with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh.” 7417 He spake of its “drawing nigh,” not of its being present already; and of “those things beginning to come to pass,” not of their having happened: because when they have come to pass, then our redemption shall be at hand, which is said to be approaching up to that time, raising and exciting our minds to what is then the proximate harvest of our hope. He immediately annexes a parable of this in “the trees which are tenderly sprouting into a flower-stalk, and then developing the flower, which is the precursor of the fruit.” 7418 “So likewise ye,” (He adds), “when ye shall see all these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of heaven is nigh at hand.” 7419 “Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all those things, and to stand before the Son of man;” 7420 that is, no doubt, at the resurrection, after all these things have been previously transacted. Therefore, although there is a sprouting in the acknowledgment of all this mystery, yet it is only in the actual presence of the Lord that the flower is developed and the fruit borne. Who is it then, that has aroused the Lord, now at God’s right hand, so unseasonably and with such severity “shake terribly” (as Isaiah 7421 expresses it) “that earth,” which, I suppose, is as yet unshattered? Who has thus early put “Christ’s enemies beneath His feet” (to use the language of David 7422 ), making Him more hurried than the Father, whilst every crowd in our popular assemblies is still with shouts consigning “the Christians to the lions?” 7423 Who has yet beheld Jesus descending from heaven in like manner as the apostles saw Him ascend, according to the appointment of the two angels? 7424 Up to the present moment they have not, tribe by tribe, smitten their breasts, looking on Him whom they pierced. 7425 No one has as yet fallen in with Elias; 7426 no one has as yet escaped from Antichrist; 7427 no one has as yet had to bewail the downfall of Babylon. 7428 And is there now anybody who has risen again, except the heretic? He, of course, has already quitted the grave of his own corpse—although he is even now liable to fevers and ulcers; he, too, has already trodden down his enemies—although he has even now to struggle with the powers of the world. And as a matter of course, he is already a king—although he even now owes to Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s. 7429
Footnotes
560:7412For the opinions of those Valentinians who held that Christ’s flesh was composed of soul or of spirit—a refined, ethereal substance—see Tertullian’s De Carne Christi, cc. x.–xv.
560:7413Suspirant in.
560:7414Luke xxi. 24.
560:7415Joel 3:9, Dan. 7:13, 14.
561:7416Luke 21:25, 26.
561:7417Luke 21.26-28.
561:7418Luke 21:29, 30, Matt. 24:32.
561:7419Luke 21:31, Matt. 24:33.
561:7420Luke xxi. 36.
561:7421Isa. ii. 19.
561:7422Ps. cx. 1.
561:7423Compare The Apology, xl.; De Spect. xxvii.; De Exhort. Cast. xii.
561:7424Acts i. 11.
561:7425Zech. 12:10, John 19:37.
561:7426Mal. iv. 5.
561:74271 John iv. 3.
561:7428Rev. xviii. 2.
561:7429Matt. xxii. 21.
Chapter XXIII.—Sundry Passages of St. Paul, Which Speak of a Spiritual Resurrection, Compatible with the Future Resurrection of the Body, Which is Even Assumed in Them.
The apostle indeed teaches, in his Epistle to the Colossians, that we were once dead, alienated, and enemies to the Lord in our minds, whilst we were living in wicked works; 7430 that we were then buried with Christ in baptism, and also raised again with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead. 7431 “And you, (adds he), when ye were dead in sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses.” 7432 And again: “If ye are dead with Christ from the elements of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?” 7433 Now, since he makes us spiritually dead—in such a way, however, as to allow that we shall one day have to undergo a bodily death,—so, considering indeed that we have been also raised in a like spiritual sense, he equally allows that we shall further have to undergo a bodily resurrection. In so many words 7434 he says: “Since ye are risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.” 7435 Accordingly, it is in our mind that he shows that we rise (with Christ), since it is by this alone that we are as yet able to reach to heavenly objects. These we should not “seek,” nor “set our affection on,” if we had them already in our possession. He also adds: “For ye are dead”—to your sins, he means, not to yourselves—“and your life is hid with Christ in God.” 7436 Now that life is not yet apprehended which is hidden. In like manner John says: “And it doth not yet appear what we shall be: we know, however, that when He shall be manifest, we shall be like Him.” 7437 We are far indeed from being already what we know not of; we should, of course, be sure to know it if we were already (like Him). It is therefore the contemplation of our blessed hope even in this life by faith (that he speaks of)—not its presence nor its possession, but only its expectation. Concerning this expectation and hope Paul writes to the Galatians: “For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.” 7438 He says “we wait for it,” not we are in possession of it. By the righteousness of God, he means that judgment which we shall have to undergo as the recompense of our deeds. It is in expectation of this for himself that the apostle writes to the Philippians: “If by any means,” says he, “I might attain to the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had already attained, or were already perfect.” 7439 And yet he had believed, and had known all mysteries, as an elect vessel and the great teacher of the Gentiles; but for all that he goes on to say: “I, however, follow on, if so be I may apprehend that for which I also am apprehended of Christ.” 7440 Nay, more: “Brethren,” (he adds), “I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing (I do), forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of blamelessness, 7441 whereby I may attain it;” meaning the resurrection from the dead in its proper time. Even as he says to the Galatians: “Let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap.” 7442 Similarly, concerning Onesiphorus, does he also write to Timothy: “The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy in that day;” 7443 unto which day and time he charges Timothy himself “to keep what had been committed to his care, without spot, unrebukable, until the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ: which in His times He shall show, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords,” 7444 speaking of (Him as) God. It is to these same times that Peter in the Acts refers, when he says: “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; and He shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets.” 7445
Footnotes
561:7430Col. i. 21.
561:7431Col. ii. 12.
561:7432Col. 2.13.
561:7433Col. 2.20. The last clause in Tertullian is, “Quomodo sententiam fertis?”
561:7434Denique.
561:7435Col. 3:1, 2.
561:7436Col. 3.3.
562:74371 John iii. 2.
562:7438Gal. v. 5.
562:7439Phil. 3:11, 12.
562:7440Phil. 3.12.
562:7441Vers. 13, 14. In the last clause Tertullian reads τῆς ἀνεγκλήσεως = blamelessness, or purity, instead of τῆς ἄνω κλήσεως ="our high calling.”
562:7442Gal. vi. 9.
562:74432 Tim. i. 18.
562:74441 Tim. 6:14, 15, 20.
562:7445Acts iii. 19-21.
Chapter XXIV.—Other Passages Quoted from St. Paul, Which Categorically Assert the Resurrection of the Flesh at the Final Judgment.
The character of these times learn, along with the Thessalonians. For we read: “How ye turned from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus.” 7446 And again: “For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord God, Jesus Christ, at His coming?” 7447 Likewise: “Before God, even our Father, at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, with the whole company of His saints.” 7448 He teaches them that they must “not sorrow concerning them that are asleep,” and at the same time explains to them the times of the resurrection, saying, “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus shall God bring with Him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of our Lord, shall not prevent them that are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we be ever with the Lord.” 7449 What archangel’s voice, (I wonder), what trump of God is now heard, except it be, forsooth, in the entertainments of the heretics? For, allowing that the word of the gospel may be called “the trump of God,” since it was still calling men, yet they must at that time either be dead as to the body, that they may be able to rise again; and then how are they alive? Or else caught up into the clouds; and how then are they here? “Most miserable,” no doubt, as the apostle declared them, are they “who in this life only” shall be found to have hope: 7450 they will have to be excluded while they are with premature haste seizing that which is promised after this life; erring concerning the truth, no less than Phygellus and Hermogenes. 7451 Hence it is that the Holy Ghost, in His greatness, foreseeing clearly all such interpretations as these, suggests (to the apostle), in this very epistle of his to the Thessalonians, as follows: “But of the times and the seasons, brethren, there is no necessity for my writing unto you. For ye yourselves know perfectly, that the day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, ‘Peace,’ and ‘All things are safe,’ then sudden destruction shall come upon them.” 7452 Again, in the second epistle he addresses them with even greater earnestness: “Now I beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto Him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, nor be troubled, either by spirit, or by word,” that is, the word of false prophets, “or by letter,” that is, the letter of false apostles, “as if from us, as that the day of the Lord is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means. For that day shall not come, unless indeed there first come a falling away,” he means indeed of this present empire, “and that man of sin be revealed,” that is to say, Antichrist, “the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God or religion; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, affirming that he is God. Remember ye not, that when I was with you, I used to tell you these things? And now ye know what detaineth, that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work; only he who now hinders must hinder, until he be taken out of the way.” 7453 What obstacle is there but the Roman state, the falling away of which, by being scattered into ten kingdoms, shall introduce Antichrist upon (its own ruins)? “And then shall be revealed the wicked one, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming: even him whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish.” 7454
Footnotes
562:74461 Thess. 1:9, 10.
562:74471 Thess. ii. 19. Some mss. omit “God.”
562:74481 Thess. iii. 13.
562:74491 Thess. iv. 13-17.
562:74501 Cor. xv. 19.
562:74512 Tim. i. 15.
563:74521 Thess. v. 1-3.
563:74532 Thess. ii. 1-7.
563:74542 Thess. ii. 8-10.
Chapter XXV.—St. John, in the Apocalypse, Equally Explicit in Asserting the Same Great Doctrine.
In the Revelation of John, again, the order of these times is spread out to view, which “the souls of the martyrs” are taught to wait for beneath the altar, whilst they earnestly pray to be avenged and judged: 7455 (taught, I say, to wait), in order that the world may first drink to the dregs the plagues that await it out of the vials of the angels, 7456 and that the city of fornication may receive from the ten kings its deserved doom, 7457 and that the beast Antichrist with his false prophet may wage war on the Church of God; and that, after the casting of the devil into the bottomless pit for a while, 7458 the blessed prerogative of the first resurrection may be ordained from the thrones; 7459 and then again, after the consignment of him to the fire, that the judgment of the final and universal resurrection may be determined out of the books. 7460 Since, then, the Scriptures both indicate the stages of the last times, and concentrate the harvest of the Christian hope in the very end of the world, it is evident, either that all which God promises to us receives its accomplishment then, and thus what the heretics pretend about a resurrection here falls to the ground; or else, even allowing that a confession of the mystery (of divine truth) is a resurrection, that there is, without any detriment to this view, room for believing in that which is announced for the end. It moreover follows, that the very maintenance of this spiritual resurrection amounts to a presumption in favour of the other bodily resurrection; for if none were announced for that time, there would be fair ground for asserting only this purely spiritual resurrection. Inasmuch, however, as (a resurrection) is proclaimed for the last time, it is proved to be a bodily one, because there is no spiritual one also then announced. For why make a second announcement of a resurrection of only one character, that is, the spiritual one, since this ought to be undergoing accomplishment either now, without any regard to different times, or else then, at the very conclusion of all the periods? It is therefore more competent for us even to maintain a spiritual resurrection at the commencement of a life of faith, who acknowledge the full completion thereof at the end of the world.
Footnotes
563:7455Rev. 6:9, 10.
563:7456Rev. xvi.
563:7457Rev. xviii.
563:7458Rev. xx. 2.
563:7459Rev. 20.4-6.
563:7460Rev. 20.12-14.
Chapter XXVI.—Even the Metaphorical Descriptions of This Subject in the Scriptures Point to the Bodily Resurrection, the Only Sense Which Secures Their Consistency and Dignity.
To a preceding objection, that the Scriptures are allegorical, I have still one answer to make—that it is open to us also to defend the bodily character of the resurrection by means of the language of the prophets, which is equally figurative. For consider that primeval sentence which God spake when He called man earth; saying, “Earth thou art, and to earth shalt thou return.” 7461 In respect, of course, to his fleshly substance, which had been taken out of the ground, and which was the first to receive the name of man, as we have already shown, 7462 does not this passage give one instruction to interpret in relation to the flesh also whatever of wrath or of grace God has determined for the earth, because, strictly speaking, the earth is not exposed to His judgment, since it has never done any good or evil? “Cursed,” no doubt, it was, for it drank the blood of man; 7463 but even this was as a figure of homicidal flesh. For if the earth has to suffer either joy or injury, it is simply on man’s account, that he may suffer the joy or the sorrow through the events which happen to his dwelling-place, whereby he will rather have to pay the penalty which, simply on his account, even the earth must suffer. When, therefore, God even threatens the earth, I would prefer saying that He threatens the flesh: so likewise, when He makes a promise to the earth, I would rather understand Him as promising the flesh; as in that passage of David: “The Lord is King, let the earth be glad,” 7464 —meaning the flesh of the saints, to which appertains the enjoyment of the kingdom of God. Then he afterwards says: “The earth saw and trembled; the mountains melted like wax at the presence of the Lord,”—meaning, no doubt the flesh of the wicked; and (in a similar sense) it is written: “For they shall look on Him whom they pierced.” 7465 If indeed it will be thought that both these passages were pronounced simply of the element earth, how can it be consistent that it should shake and melt at the presence of the Lord, at whose royal dignity it before exulted? So again in Isaiah, “Ye shall eat the good of the land,” 7466 the expression means the blessings which await the flesh when in the kingdom of God it shall be renewed, and made like the angels, and waiting to obtain the things “which neither eye hath seen, nor ear heard, and which have not entered into the heart of man.” 7467 Otherwise, how vain that God should invite men to obedience by the fruits of the field and the elements of this life, when He dispenses these to even irreligious men and blasphemers; on a general condition once for all made to man, “sending rain on the good and on the evil, and making His sun to shine on the just and on the unjust!” 7468 Happy, no doubt, is faith, if it is to obtain gifts which the enemies of God and Christ not only use, but even abuse, “worshipping the creature itself in opposition to the Creator!” 7469 You will reckon, (I suppose) onions and truffles among earth’s bounties, since the Lord declares that “man shall not live on bread alone!” 7470 In this way the Jews lose heavenly blessings, by confining their hopes to earthly ones, being ignorant of the promise of heavenly bread, and of the oil of God’s unction, and the wine of the Spirit, and of that water of life which has its vigour from the vine of Christ. On exactly the same principle, they consider the special soil of Judæa to be that very holy land, which ought rather to be interpreted of the Lord’s flesh, which, in all those who put on Christ, is thenceforward the holy land; holy indeed by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, truly flowing with milk and honey by the sweetness of His assurance, truly Judæan by reason of the friendship of God. For “he is not a Jew which is one outwardly, but he who is one inwardly.” 7471 In the same way it is that both God’s temple and Jerusalem (must be understood) when it is said by Isaiah: “Awake, awake, O Jerusalem! put on the strength of thine arm; awake, as in thine earliest time,” 7472 that is to say, in that innocence which preceded the fall into sin. For how can words of this kind of exhortation and invitation be suitable for that Jerusalem which killed the prophets, and stoned those that were sent to them, and at last crucified its very Lord? Neither indeed is salvation promised to any one land at all, which must needs pass away with the fashion of the whole world. Even if anybody should venture strongly to contend that paradise is the holy land, which it may be possible to designate as the land of our first parents Adam and Eve, it will even then follow that the restoration of paradise will seem to be promised to the flesh, whose lot it was to inhabit and keep it, in order that man may be recalled thereto just such as he was driven from it.
Footnotes
563:7461Gen. iii. 19.
564:7462See above, ch. v.
564:7463Gen. iv. 11.
564:7464Ps. xcvii. 1.
564:7465Zech. xii. 10.
564:7466Isa. i. 19.
564:74671 Cor. ii. 9.
564:7468Matt. v. 45.
564:7469Rom. i. 25.
564:7470Matt. iv. 4.
564:7471Rom. 2:28, 29.
564:7472Isa. li. 9, Sept.
Chapter XXVII.—Certain Metaphorical Terms Explained of the Resurrection of the Flesh.
We have also in the Scriptures robes mentioned as allegorizing the hope of the flesh. Thus in the Revelation of John it is said: “These are they which have not defiled their clothes with women,” 7473 —indicating, of course, virgins, and such as have become “eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.” 7474 Therefore they shall be “clothed in white raiment,” 7475 that is, in the bright beauty of the unwedded flesh. In the gospel even, “the wedding garment” may be regarded as the sanctity of the flesh. 7476 And so, when Isaiah tells us what sort of “fast the Lord hath chosen,” and subjoins a statement about the reward of good works, he says: “Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy garments, 7477 shall speedily arise;” 7478 where he has no thought of cloaks or stuff gowns, but means the rising of the flesh, which he declared the resurrection of, after its fall in death. Thus we are furnished even with an allegorical defence of the resurrection of the body. When, then, we read, “Go, my people, enter into your closets for a little season, until my anger pass away,” 7479 we have in the closets graves, in which they will have to rest for a little while, who shall have at the end of the world departed this life in the last furious onset of the power of Antichrist. Why else did He use the expression closets, in preference to some other receptacle, if it were not that the flesh is kept in these closets or cellars salted and reserved for use, to be drawn out thence on a suitable occasion? It is on a like principle that embalmed corpses are set aside for burial in mausoleums and sepulchres, in order that they may be removed therefrom when the Master shall order it. Since, therefore, there is consistency in thus understanding the passage (for what refuge of little closets could possibly shelter us from the wrath of God?), it appears that by the very phrase which he uses, “Until His anger pass away,” 7480 which shall extinguish Antichrist, he in fact shows that after that indignation the flesh will come forth from the sepulchre, in which it had been deposited previous to the bursting out of the anger. Now out of the closets nothing else is brought than that which had been put into them, and after the extirpation of Antichrist shall be busily transacted the great process of the resurrection.
Footnotes
564:7473Rev. 3:4, Rev. 14:4.
564:7474Matt. xix. 12.
565:7475Rev. iii. 5.
565:7476Matt. 22:11, 12.
565:7477There is a curious change of the word here made by Tertullian, who reads ἱμάτια instead of ἰάματα, “thy health,” or “healings,” which is the word in the Sept.
565:7478Isa. lviii. 8.
565:7479Isa. xxvi. 20.
565:7480Isa. xxvi. 20.
Chapter XXVIII.—Prophetic Things and Actions, as Well as Words, Attest This Great Doctrine.
But we know that prophecy expressed itself by things no less than by words. By words, and also by deeds, is the resurrection foretold. When Moses puts his hand into his bosom, and then draws it out again dead, and again puts his hand into his bosom, and plucks it out living, 7481 does not this apply as a presage to all mankind?—inasmuch as those three signs 7482 denoted the threefold power of God: when it shall, first, in the appointed order, subdue to man the old serpent, the devil, 7483 however formidable; then, secondly, draw forth the flesh from the bosom of death; 7484 and then, at last, shall pursue all blood (shed) in judgment. 7485 On this subject we read in the writings of the same prophet, (how that) God says: “For your blood of your lives will I require of all wild beasts; and I will require it of the hand of man, and of his brother’s hand.” 7486 Now nothing is required except that which is demanded back again, and nothing is thus demanded except that which is to be given up; and that will of course be given up, which shall be demanded and required on the ground of vengeance. But indeed there cannot possibly be punishment of that which never had any existence. Existence, however, it will have, when it is restored in order to be punished. To the flesh, therefore, applies everything which is declared respecting the blood, for without the flesh there cannot be blood. The flesh will be raised up in order that the blood may be punished. There are, again, some statements (of Scripture) so plainly made as to be free from all obscurity of allegory, and yet they strongly require 7487 their very simplicity to be interpreted. There is, for instance, that passage in Isaiah: “I will kill, and I will make alive.” 7488 Certainly His making alive is to take place after He has killed. As, therefore, it is by death that He kills, it is by the resurrection that He will make alive. Now it is the flesh which is killed by death; the flesh, therefore, will be revived by the resurrection. Surely if killing means taking away life from the flesh, and its opposite, reviving, amounts to restoring life to the flesh, it must needs be that the flesh rise again, to which the life, which has been taken away by killing, has to be restored by vivification.
Footnotes
565:7481Exod. 4:6, 7.
565:7482Ex. iv. 2-9.
565:7483Comp. Exod. 4:3, 4.
565:7484Comp. Exod. 4:6, 7.
565:7485Comp. Ex. 4.9.
565:7486Gen. ix. 5.
565:7487Sitiant.
565:7488Isa. 38:12, 13, 16. The very words, however, occur not in Isaiah, but in 1 Sam. 2:6, Deut. 32:39.
Chapter XXIX.—Ezekiel’s Vision of the Dry Bones Quoted.
Inasmuch, then, as even the figurative portions of Scripture, and the arguments of facts, and some plain statements of Holy Writ, throw light upon the resurrection of the flesh (although without specially naming the very substance), how much more effectual for determining the question will not those passages be which indicate the actual substance of the body by expressly mentioning it! Take Ezekiel: “And the hand of the Lord,” says he, “was upon me; and the Lord brought me forth in the Spirit, and set me in the midst of a plain which was full of bones; and He led me round about them in a circuit: and, behold, there were many on the face of the plain; and, lo, they were very dry. And He said unto me, Son of man, will these bones live? And I said, O Lord God, Thou knowest. And He said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones; and thou shalt say, Ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God to these bones, Behold, I bring upon you the breath of life, and ye shall live: and I will give unto you the spirit, and I will place muscles over you, and I will spread skin upon you; and ye shall live, and shall know that I am the Lord. And I prophesied as the Lord commanded me: and while I prophesy, behold there is a voice, behold also a movement, and bones approached bones. And I saw, and behold sinews and flesh came up over them, and muscles were placed around them; but there was no breath in them. And He said unto me, Prophesy to the wind, son of man, prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord God, Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe in these dead men, and let them live. So I prophesied to the wind, as He commanded me, and the spirit entered into the bones, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, strong and exceeding many. And the Lord said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say themselves, Our bones are become dry, and our hope is perished, and we in them have been violently destroyed. Therefore prophesy unto them, (and say), Behold, even I will open your sepulchres, and will bring you out of your sepulchres, O my people, and will bring you into the land of Israel: and ye shall know how that I the Lord opened your sepulchres, and brought you, O my people, out of your sepulchres; and I will give my Spirit unto you, and ye shall live, and shall rest in your own land: and ye shall know how that I the Lord have spoken and done these things, saith the Lord.” 7489
Footnotes
566:7489Ezek. xxxvii. 1-14.
Chapter XXX.—This Vision Interpreted by Tertullian of the Resurrection of the Bodies of the Dead. A Chronological Error of Our Author, Who Supposes that Ezekiel in His Ezek. 31. Prophesied Before the Captivity.
I am well aware how they torture even this prophecy into a proof of the allegorical sense, on the ground that by saying, “These bones are the whole house of Israel,” He made them a figure of Israel, and removed them from their proper literal condition; and therefore (they contend) that there is here a figurative, not a true prediction of the resurrection, for (they say) the state of the Jews is one of humiliation, in a certain sense dead, and very dry, and dispersed over the plain of the world. Therefore the image of a resurrection is allegorically applied to their state, since it has to be gathered together, and recompacted bone to bone (in other words, tribe to tribe, and people to people), and to be reincorporated by the sinews of power and the nerves of royalty, and to be brought out as it were from sepulchres, that is to say, from the most miserable and degraded abodes of captivity, and to breathe afresh in the way of a restoration, and to live thenceforward in their own land of Judæa. And what is to happen after all this? They will die, no doubt. And what will there be after death? No resurrection from the dead, of course, since there is nothing of the sort here revealed to Ezekiel. Well, but the resurrection is elsewhere foretold: so that there will be one even in this case, and they are rash in applying this passage to the state of Jewish affairs; or even if it do indicate a different recovery from the resurrection which we are maintaining, what matters it to me, provided there be also a resurrection of the body, just as there is a restoration of the Jewish state? In fact, by the very circumstance that the recovery of the Jewish state is prefigured by the reincorporation and reunion of bones, proof is offered that this event will also happen to the bones themselves; for the metaphor could not have been formed from bones, if the same thing exactly were not to be realized in them also. Now, although there is a sketch of the true thing in its image, the image itself still possesses a truth of its own: it must needs be, therefore, that must have a prior existence for itself, which is used figuratively to express some other thing. Vacuity is not a consistent basis for a similitude, nor does nonentity form a suitable foundation for a parable. It will therefore be right to believe that the bones are destined to have a rehabiliment of flesh and breath, such as it is here said they will have, by reason indeed of which their renewed state could alone express the reformed condition of Jewish affairs, which is pretended to be the meaning of this passage. It is, however, more characteristic of a religious spirit to maintain the truth on the authority of a literal interpretation, such as is required by the sense of the inspired passage. Now, if this vision had reference to the condition of the Jews, as soon as He had revealed to him the position of the bones, He would at once have added, “These bones are the whole house of Israel,” and so forth. But immediately on showing the bones, He interrupts the scene by saying somewhat of the prospect which is most suited to bones; without yet naming Israel, He tries the prophet’s own faith: “Son of man, can these bones ever live?” so that he makes answer: “O Lord, Thou knowest.” Now God would not, you may be sure, have tried the prophet’s faith on a point which was never to be a real one, of which Israel should never hear, and in which it was not proper to repose belief. Since, however, the resurrection of the dead was indeed foretold, but Israel, in the distrust of his great unbelief, was offended at it; and, whilst gazing on the condition of the crumbling grave, despaired of a resurrection; or rather, did not direct his mind mainly to it, but to his own harassing circumstances,—therefore God first instructed the prophet (since he, too, was not free from doubt), by revealing to him the process of the resurrection, with a view to his earnest setting forth of the same. He then charged the people to believe what He had revealed to the prophet, telling them that they were themselves, though refusing to believe their resurrection, the very bones which were destined to rise again. Then in the concluding sentence He says, “And ye shall know how that I the Lord have spoken and done these things,” intending of course to do that of which He had spoken; but certainly not meaning to do that which He had spoken of, if His design had been to do something different from what He had said.
Chapter XXXI.—Other Passages Out of the Prophets Applied to the Resurrection of the Flesh.
Unquestionably, if the people were indulging in figurative murmurs that their bones were become dry, and that their hope had perished—plaintive at the consequences of their dispersion—then God might fairly enough seem to have consoled their figurative despair with a figurative promise. Since, however, no injury had as yet alighted on the people from their dispersion, although the hope of the resurrection had very frequently failed amongst them, it is manifest that it was owing to the perishing condition of their bodies that their faith in the resurrection was shaken. God, therefore, was rebuilding the faith which the people were pulling down. But even if it were true that Israel was then depressed at some shock in their existing circumstances, we must not on that account suppose that the purpose of revelation could have rested in a parable: its aim must have been to testify a resurrection, in order to raise the nation’s hope to even an eternal salvation and an indispensable restoration, and thereby turn off their minds from brooding over their present affairs. This indeed is the aim of other prophets likewise. “Ye shall go forth,” (says Malachi), “from your sepulchres, as young calves let loose from their bonds, and ye shall tread down your enemies.” 7490 And again, (Isaiah says): “Your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall spring up like the grass,” 7491 because the grass also is renewed by the dissolution and corruption of the seed. In a word, if it is contended that the figure of the rising bones refers properly to the state of Israel, why is the same hope announced to all nations, instead of being limited to Israel only, of reinvesting those osseous remains with bodily substance and vital breath, and of raising up their dead out of the grave? For the language is universal: “The dead shall arise, and come forth from their graves; for the dew which cometh from Thee is medicine to their bones.” 7492 In another passage it is written: “All flesh shall come to worship before me, saith the Lord.” 7493 When? When the fashion of this world shall begin to pass away. For He said before: “As the new heaven and the new earth, which I make, remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed remain.” 7494 Then also shall be fulfilled what is written afterwards: “And they shall go forth” (namely, from their graves), “and shall see the carcases of those who have transgressed: for their worm shall never die, nor shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be a spectacle to all flesh” 7495 even to that which, being raised again from the dead and brought out from the grave, shall adore the Lord for this great grace.
Footnotes
567:7490Mal. 4:2, 3.
567:7491Isa. lxvi. 14.
567:7492Isa. xxvi. 19.
567:7493Isa. lxvi. 23.
567:7494Isa. 66.22.
567:7495Isa. lxvi. 24.
Chapter XXXII.—Even Unburied Bodies Will Be Raised Again. Whatever Befalls Them God Will Restore Them Again. Jonah’s Case Quoted in Illustration of God’s Power.
But, that you may not suppose that it is merely those bodies which are consigned to tombs whose resurrection is foretold, you have it declared in Scripture: “And I will command the fishes of the sea, and they shall cast up the bones which they have devoured; and I will bring joint to joint, and bone to bone.” You will ask, Will then the fishes and other animals and carnivorous birds be raised again, in order that they may vomit up what they have consumed, on the ground of your reading in the law of Moses, that blood is required of even all the beasts? Certainly not. But the beasts and the fishes are mentioned in relation to the restoration of flesh and blood, in order the more emphatically to express the resurrection of such bodies as have even been devoured, when redress is said to be demanded of their very devourers. Now I apprehend that in the case of Jonah we have a fair proof of this divine power, when he comes forth from the fish’s belly uninjured in both his natures—his flesh and his soul. No doubt the bowels of the whale would have had abundant time during three days for consuming and digesting Jonah’s flesh, quite as effectually as a coffin, or a tomb, or the gradual decay of some quiet and concealed grave; only that he wanted to prefigure even those beasts (which symbolize) especially the men who are wildly opposed to the Christian name, or the angels of iniquity, of whom blood will be required by the full exaction of an avenging judgment. Where, then, is the man who, being more disposed to learn than to assume, more careful to believe than to dispute, and more scrupulous of the wisdom of God than wantonly bent on his own, when he hears of a divine purpose respecting sinews and skin, and nerves and bones, will forthwith devise some different application of these words, as if all that is said of the substances in question were not naturally intended for man? For either there is here no reference to the destiny of man—in the gracious provision of the kingdom (of heaven), in the severity of the judgment-day, in all the incidents of the resurrection; or else, if there is any reference to his destiny, the destination must necessarily be made in reference to those substances of which the man is composed, for whom the destiny is reserved. Another question I have also to ask of these very adroit transformers of bones and sinews, and nerves and sepulchres: Why, when anything is declared of the soul, do they not interpret the soul to be something else, and transfer it to another signification?—since, whenever any distinct statement is made of a bodily substance, they will obstinately prefer taking any other sense whatever, rather than that which the name indicates. If things which pertain to the body are figurative, why are not those which pertain to the soul figurative also? Since, however, things which belong to the soul have nothing allegorical in them, neither therefore have those which belong to the body. For man is as much body as he is soul; so that it is impossible for one of these natures to admit a figurative sense, and the other to exclude it.
Chapter XXXIII.—So Much for the Prophetic Scriptures. In the Gospels, Christ’s Parables, as Explained by Himself, Have a Clear Reference to the Resurrection of the Flesh.
This is evidence enough from the prophetic Scriptures. I now appeal to the Gospels. But here also I must first meet the same sophistry as advanced by those who contend that the Lord, like (the prophets), said everything in the way of allegory, because it is written: “All these things spake Jesus in parables, and without a parable spake He not unto them,” 7496 that is, to the Jews. Now the disciples also asked Him, “Why speakest Thou in parables?” 7497 And the Lord gave them this answer: “Therefore I speak unto them in parables: because they seeing, see not; and hearing, they hear not, according to the prophecy of Esaias.” 7498 But since it was to the Jews that He spoke in parables, it was not then to all men; and if not to all, it follows that it was not always and in all things parables with Him, but only in certain things, and when addressing a particular class. But He addressed a particular class when He spoke to the Jews. It is true that He spoke sometimes even to the disciples in parables. But observe how the Scripture relates such a fact: “And He spake a parable unto them.” 7499 It follows, then, that He did not usually address them in parables; because if He always did so, special mention would not be made of His resorting to this mode of address. Besides, there is not a parable which you will not find to be either explained by the Lord Himself, as that of the sower, (which He interprets) of the management of the word of God; 7500 or else cleared by a preface from the writer of the Gospel, as in the parable of the arrogant judge and the importunate widow, which is expressly applied to earnestness in prayer; 7501 or capable of being spontaneously understood, 7502 as in the parable of the fig-tree, which was spared a while in hopes of improvement—an emblem of Jewish sterility. Now, if even parables obscure not the light of the gospel, how unlikely it is that plain sentences and declarations, which have an unmistakeable meaning, should signify any other thing than their literal sense! But it is by such declarations and sentences that the Lord sets forth either the last judgment, or the kingdom, or the resurrection: “It shall be more tolerable,” He says, “for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you.” 7503 And “Tell them that the kingdom of God is at hand.” 7504 And again, “It shall be recompensed to you at the resurrection of the just.” 7505 Now, if the mention of these events (I mean the judgment-day, and the kingdom of God, and the resurrection) has a plain and absolute sense, so that nothing about them can be pressed into an allegory, neither should those statements be forced into parables which describe the arrangement, and the process, and the experience of the kingdom of God, and of the judgment, and of the resurrection. On the contrary, things which are destined for the body should be carefully understood in a bodily sense,—not in a spiritual sense, as having nothing figurative in their nature. This is the reason why we have laid it down as a preliminary consideration, that the bodily substance both of the soul and of the flesh is liable to the recompense, which will have to be awarded in return for the co-operation of the two natures, that so the corporeality of the soul may not exclude the bodily nature of the flesh by suggesting a recourse to figurative descriptions, since both of them must needs be regarded as destined to take part in the kingdom, and the judgment, and the resurrection. And now we proceed to the special proof of this proposition, that the bodily character of the flesh is indicated by our Lord whenever He mentions the resurrection, at the same time without disparagement to the corporeal nature of the soul,—a point which has been actually admitted but by a few.
Footnotes
568:7496Matt. xiii. 34.
568:7497Matt. 13.10.
568:7498Matt. 13:13, Isa. 6:9.
568:7499See Luke 6:39, 20, and other places, especially in this Gospel.
568:7500See Luke viii. 11.
568:7501See Luke xviii. 1.
568:7502Such cases of obvious meaning, which required no explanation, are referred to in Matt. 21:45, Luke 20:19.
569:7503Matt. xi. 22.
569:7504Matt. x. 7.
569:7505Luke xiv. 14.
Chapter XXXIV.—Christ Plainly Testifies to the Resurrection of the Entire Man. Not in His Soul Only, Without the Body.
To begin with the passage where He says that He is come to “to seek and to save that which is lost.” 7506 What do you suppose that to be which is lost? Man, undoubtedly. The entire man, or only a part of him? The whole man, of course. In fact, since the transgression which caused man’s ruin was committed quite as much by the instigation of the soul from concupiscence as by the action of the flesh from actual fruition, it has marked the entire man with the sentence of transgression, and has therefore made him deservedly amenable to perdition. So that he will be wholly saved, since he has by sinning been wholly lost. Unless it be true that the sheep (of the parable) is a “lost” one, irrespective of its body; then its recovery may be effected without the body. Since, however, it is the bodily substance as well as the soul, making up the entire animal, which was carried on the shoulders of the Good Shepherd, we have here unquestionably an example how man is restored in both his natures. Else how unworthy it were of God to bring only a moiety of man to salvation—and almost less than that; whereas the munificence of princes of this world always claims for itself the merit of a plenary grace! Then must the devil be understood to be stronger for injuring man, ruining him wholly? and must God have the character of comparative weakness, since He does not relieve and help man in his entire state? The apostle, however, suggests that “where sin abounded, there has grace much more abounded.” 7507 How, in fact, can he be regarded as saved, who can at the same time be said to be lost—lost, that is, in the flesh, but saved as to his soul? Unless, indeed, their argument now makes it necessary that the soul should be placed in a “lost” condition, that it may be susceptible of salvation, on the ground that is properly saved which has been lost. We, however, so understand the soul’s immortality as to believe it “lost,” not in the sense of destruction, but of punishment, that is, in hell. And if this is the case, then it is not the soul which salvation will affect, since it is “safe” already in its own nature by reason of its immortality, but rather the flesh, which, as all readily allow, is subject to destruction. Else, if the soul is also perishable (in this sense), in other words, not immortal—the condition of the flesh—then this same condition ought in all fairness to benefit the flesh also, as being similarly mortal and perishable, since that which perishes the Lord purposes to save. I do not care now to follow the clue of our discussion, so far as to consider whether it is in one of his natures or in the other that perdition puts in its claim on man, provided that salvation is equally distributed over the two substances, and makes him its aim in respect of them both. For observe, in which substance so-ever you assume man to have perished, in the other he does not perish. He will therefore be saved in the substance in which he does not perish, and yet obtain salvation in that in which he does perish. You have (then) the restoration of the entire man, inasmuch as the Lord purposes to save that part of him which perishes, whilst he will not of course lose that portion which cannot be lost. Who will any longer doubt of the safety of both natures, when one of them is to obtain salvation, and the other is not to lose it? And, still further, the Lord explains to us the meaning of the thing when He says: “I came not to do my own will, but the Father’s, who hath sent me.” 7508 What, I ask, is that will? “That of all which He hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.” 7509 Now, what had Christ received of the Father but that which He had Himself put on? Man, of course, in his texture of flesh and soul. Neither, therefore, of those parts which He has received will He allow to perish; nay, no considerable portion—nay, not the least fraction, of either. If the flesh be, as our opponents slightingly think, but a poor fraction, then the flesh is safe, because not a fraction of man is to perish; and no larger portion is in danger, because every portion of man is in equally safe keeping with Him. If, however, He will not raise the flesh also up at the last day, then He will permit not only a fraction of man to perish, but (as I will venture to say, in consideration of so important a part) almost the whole of him. But when He repeats His words with increased emphasis, “And this is the Father’s will, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may have eternal life: and I will raise him up at the last day,” 7510 —He asserts the full extent of the resurrection. For He assigns to each several nature that reward which is suited to its services: both to the flesh, for by it the Son was “seen;” and to the soul, for by it He was “believed on.” Then, you will say, to them was this promise given by whom Christ was “seen.” Well, be it so; only let the same hope flow on from them to us! For if to them who saw, and therefore believed, such fruit then accrued to the operations of the flesh and the soul, how much more to us! For more “blessed,” says Christ, “are they who have not seen, and yet have believed;” 7511 since, even if the resurrection of the flesh must be denied to them, it must at any rate be a fitting boon to us, who are the more blessed. For how could we be blessed, if we were to perish in any part of us?
Footnotes
569:7506Luke xix. 10.
569:7507Rom. v. 20.
570:7508John vi. 38.
570:7509John 6.39.
570:7510John 6.40.
570:7511John xx. 29.
Chapter XXXV.—Explanation of What is Meant by the Body, Which is to Be Raised Again. Not the Corporeality of the Soul.
But He also teaches us, that “He is rather to be feared, who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell,” that is, the Lord alone; “not those which kill the body, but are not able to hurt the soul,” 7512 that is to say, all human powers. Here, then, we have a recognition of the natural immortality of the soul, which cannot be killed by men; and of the mortality of the body, which may be killed: whence we learn that the resurrection of the dead is a resurrection of the flesh; for unless it were raised again, it would be impossible for the flesh to be “killed in hell.” But as a question may be here captiously raised about the meaning of “the body” (or “the flesh”), I will at once state that I understand by the human body nothing else than that fabric of the flesh which, whatever be the kind of material of which it is constructed and modified, is seen and handled, and sometimes indeed killed, by men. In like manner, I should not admit that anything but cement and stones and bricks form the body of a wall. If any one imports into our argument some body of a subtle, secret nature, he must show, disclose, and prove to me that that identical body is the very one which was slain by human violence, and then (I will grant) that it is of such a body that (our scripture) speaks. If, again, the body or corporeal nature of the soul 7513 is cast in my teeth, it will only be an idle subterfuge! For since both substances are set before us (in this passage, which affirms) that “body and soul” are destroyed in hell, a distinction is obviously made between the two; and we are left to understand the body to be that which is tangible to us, that is, the flesh, which, as it will be destroyed in hell—since it did not “rather fear” being destroyed by God—so also will it be restored to life eternal, since it preferred to be killed by human hands. If, therefore, any one shall violently suppose that the destruction of the soul and the flesh in hell amounts to a final annihilation of the two substances, and not to their penal treatment (as if they were to be consumed, not punished), let him recollect that the fire of hell is eternal—expressly announced as an everlasting penalty; and let him then admit that it is from this circumstance that this never-ending “killing” is more formidable than a merely human murder, which is only temporal. He will then come to the conclusion that substances must be eternal, when their penal “killing” is an eternal one. Since, then, the body after the resurrection has to be killed by God in hell along with the soul, we surely have sufficient information in this fact respecting both the issues which await it, namely the resurrection of the flesh, and its eternal “killing.” Else it would be most absurd if the flesh should be raised up and destined to “the killing in hell,” in order to be put an end to, when it might suffer such an annihilation (more directly) if not raised again at all. A pretty paradox, 7514 to be sure, that an essence must be refitted with life, in order that it may receive that annihilation which has already in fact accrued to it! But Christ, whilst confirming us in the selfsame hope, adds the example of “the sparrows”—how that “not one of them falls to the ground without the will of God.” 7515 He says this, that you may believe that the flesh which has been consigned to the ground, is able in like manner to rise again by the will of the same God. For although this is not allowed to the sparrows, yet “we are of more value than many sparrows,” 7516 for the very reason that, when fallen, we rise again. He affirms, lastly, that “the very hairs of our head are all numbered,” 7517 and in the affirmation He of course includes the promise of their safety; for if they were to be lost, where would be the use of having taken such a numerical care of them? Surely the only use lies (in this truth): “That of all which the Father hath given to me, I should lose none,” 7518 —not even a hair, as also not an eye nor a tooth. And yet whence shall come that “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” 7519 if not from eyes and teeth?—even at that time when the body shall be slain in hell, and thrust out into that outer darkness which shall be the suitable torment of the eyes. He also who shall not be clothed at the marriage feast in the raiment of good works, will have to be “bound hand and foot,”—as being, of course, raised in his body. So, again, the very reclining at the feast in the kingdom of God, and sitting on Christ’s thrones, and standing at last on His right hand and His left, and eating of the tree of life: what are all these but most certain proofs of a bodily appointment and destination?
Footnotes
570:7512Matt. x. 28.
570:7513Tertullian supposed that even the soul was in a certain sense of a corporeal essence. [Compare the speculations of Crusius in Auberlen, Divine Revelation, (Translation of A.B. Paton, Edinburgh, Clarks, 1867).]
571:7514Scilicet.
571:7515Matt. x. 29.
571:7516Matt. 10.31.
571:7517Matt. x. 30.
571:7518John vi. 39.
571:7519Matt. 8:12, Matt. 13:42, Matt. 22:13, Matt. 25:30.
Chapter XXXVI.—Christ’s Refutation of the Sadducees, and Affirmation of Catholic Doctrine.
Let us now see whether (the Lord) has not imparted greater strength to our doctrine in breaking down the subtle cavil of the Sadducees. Their great object, I take it, was to do away altogether with the resurrection, for the Sadducees in fact did not admit any salvation either for the soul or the flesh; 7520 and therefore, taking the strongest case they could for impairing the credibility of the resurrection, they adapted an argument from it in support of the question which they started. Their specious inquiry concerned the flesh, whether or not it would be subject to marriage after the resurrection; and they assumed the case of a woman who had married seven brothers, so that it was a doubtful point to which of them she should be restored. 7521 Now, let the purport both of the question and the answer be kept steadily in view, and the discussion is settled at once. For since the Sadducees indeed denied the resurrection, whilst the Lord affirmed it; since, too, (in affirming it,) He reproached them as being both ignorant of the Scriptures—those, of course which had declared the resurrection—as well as incredulous of the power of God, though, of course, effectual to raise the dead, and lastly, since He immediately added the words, “Now, that the dead are raised,” 7522 (speaking) without misgiving, and affirming the very thing which was being denied, even the resurrection of the dead before Him who is “the God of the living,”—(it clearly follows) that He affirmed this verity in the precise sense in which they were denying it; that it was, in fact, the resurrection of the two natures of man. Nor does it follow, (as they would have it,) that because Christ denied that men would marry, He therefore proved that they would not rise again. On the contrary, He called them “the children of the resurrection,” 7523 in a certain sense having by the resurrection to undergo a birth; and after that they marry no more, but in their risen life are “equal unto the angels,” 7524 inasmuch as they are not to marry, because they are not to die, but are destined to pass into the angelic state by putting on the raiment of incorruption, although with a change in the substance which is restored to life. Besides, no question could be raised whether we are to marry or die again or not, without involving in doubt the restoration most especially of that substance which has a particular relation both to death and marriage—that is, the flesh. Thus, then, you have the Lord affirming against the Jewish heretics what is now encountering the denial of the Christian Sadducees—the resurrection of the entire man.
Footnotes
571:7520Compare Tertullian’s De Præscript. Hæret. c. xxxiii.
571:7521Matt. 22:23, Mark 12:18, Luke 20:27.
571:7522Luke xx. 37.
571:7523Luke 20.36.
571:7524Luke 20.36.
Chapter XXXVII.—Christ’s Assertion About the Unprofitableness of the Flesh Explained Consistently with Our Doctrine.
He says, it is true, that “the flesh profiteth nothing;” 7525 but then, as in the former case, the meaning must be regulated by the subject which is spoken of. Now, because they thought His discourse was harsh and intolerable, supposing that He had really and literally enjoined on them to eat his flesh, He, with the view of ordering the state of salvation as a spiritual thing, set out with the principle, “It is the spirit that quickeneth;” and then added, “The flesh profiteth nothing,”—meaning, of course, to the giving of life. He also goes on to explain what He would have us to understand by spirit: “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” In a like sense He had previously said: “He that heareth my words, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but shall pass from death unto life.” 7526 Constituting, therefore, His word as the life-giving principle, because that word is spirit and life, He likewise called His flesh by the same appellation; because, too, the Word had become flesh, 7527 we ought therefore to desire Him in order that we may have life, and to devour Him with the ear, and to ruminate on Him with the understanding, and to digest Him by faith. Now, just before (the passage in hand), He had declared His flesh to be “the bread which cometh down from heaven,” 7528 impressing on (His hearers) constantly under the figure of necessary food the memory of their forefathers, who had preferred the bread and flesh of Egypt to their divine calling. 7529 Then, turning His subject to their reflections, because He perceived that they were going to be scattered from Him, He says: “The flesh profiteth nothing.” Now what is there to destroy the resurrection of the flesh? As if there might not reasonably enough be something which, although it “profiteth nothing” itself, might yet be capable of being profited by something else. The spirit “profiteth,” for it imparts life. The flesh profiteth nothing, for it is subject to death. Therefore He has rather put the two propositions in a way which favours our belief: for by showing what “profits,” and what “does not profit,” He has likewise thrown light on the object which receives as well as the subject which gives the “profit.” Thus, in the present instance, we have the Spirit giving life to the flesh which has been subdued by death; for “the hour,” says He, “is coming, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.” 7530 Now, what is “the dead” but the flesh? and what is “the voice of God” but the Word? and what is the Word but the Spirit, 7531 who shall justly raise the flesh which He had once Himself become, and that too from death, which He Himself suffered, and from the grave, which He Himself once entered? Then again, when He says, “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in which all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth; they that have done good, to the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation,” 7532 —none will after such words be able to interpret the dead “that are in the graves” as any other than the bodies of the flesh, because the graves themselves are nothing but the resting-place of corpses: for it is incontestable that even those who partake of “the old man,” that is to say, sinful men—in other words, those who are dead through their ignorance of God (whom our heretics, forsooth, foolishly insist on understanding by the word “graves” 7533 )—are plainly here spoken of as having to come from their graves for judgment. But how are graves to come forth from graves?
Footnotes
572:7525John vi. 63.
572:7526John v. 24.
572:7527John i. 14.
572:7528John vi. 51.
572:7529John 6:31, 49, 58.
572:7530John v. 25.
572:7531The divine nature of the Son. See our Anti-Marcion, pp. 129, 247, note 7, Edin.
572:7532John 5:28, 29.
572:7533Compare c. xix. above.
Chapter XXXVIII.—Christ, by Raising the Dead, Attested in a Practical Way the Doctrine of the Resurrection of the Flesh.
After the Lord’s words, what are we to think of the purport of His actions, when He raises dead persons from their biers and their graves? To what end did He do so? If it was only for the mere exhibition of His power, or to afford the temporary favour of restoration to life, it was really no great matter for Him to raise men to die over again. If, however, as was the truth, it was rather to put in secure keeping men’s belief in a future resurrection, then it must follow from the particular form of His own examples, that the said resurrection will be a bodily one. I can never allow it to be said that the resurrection of the future, being destined for the soul only, did then receive these preliminary illustrations of a raising of the flesh, simply because it would have been impossible to have shown the resurrection of an invisible soul except by the resuscitation of a visible substance. They have but a poor knowledge of God, who suppose Him to be only capable of doing what comes within the compass of their own thoughts; and after all, they cannot but know full well what His capability has ever been, if they only make acquaintance with the writings of John. For unquestionably he, who has exhibited to our sight the martyrs’ hitherto disembodied souls resting under the altar, 7534 was quite able to display them before our eyes rising without a body of flesh. I, however, for my part prefer (believing) that it is impossible for God to practise deception (weak as He only could be in respect of artifice), from any fear of seeming to have given preliminary proofs of a thing in a way which is inconsistent with His actual disposal of the thing; nay more, from a fear that, since He was not powerful enough to show us a sample of the resurrection without the flesh, He might with still greater infirmity be unable to display (by and by) the full accomplishment of the sample in the self-same substance of the flesh. No example, indeed, is greater than the thing of which it is a sample. Greater, however, it is, if souls with their body are to be raised as the evidence of their resurrection without the body, so as that the entire salvation of man in soul and body should become a guarantee for only the half, the soul; whereas the condition in all examples is, that which would be deemed the less—I mean the resurrection of the soul only—should be the foretaste, as it were, of the rising of the flesh also at its appointed time. And therefore, according to our estimate of the truth, those examples of dead persons who were raised by the Lord were indeed a proof of the resurrection both of the flesh and of the soul,—a proof, in fact, that this gift was to be denied to neither substance. Considered, however, as examples only, they expressed all the less significance—less, indeed, than Christ will express at last—for they were not raised up for glory and immortality, but only for another death.
Footnotes
573:7534Rev. vi. 9-11.
Chapter XXXIX.—Additional Evidence Afforded to Us in the Acts of the Apostles.
The Acts of the Apostles, too, attest 7535 the resurrection. Now the apostles had nothing else to do, at least among the Jews, than to explain 7536 the Old Testament and confirm 7537 the New, and above all, to preach God in Christ. Consequently they introduced nothing new concerning the resurrection, besides announcing it to the glory of Christ: in every other respect it had been already received in simple and intelligent faith, without any question as to what sort of resurrection it was to be, and without encountering any other opponents than the Sadducees. So much easier was it to deny the resurrection altogether, than to understand it in an alien sense. You find Paul confessing his faith before the chief priests, under the shelter of the chief captain, 7538 among the Sadducees and the Pharisees: “Men and brethren,” he says, “I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee; of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am now called in question by you,” 7539 —referring, of course, to the nation’s hope; in order to avoid, in his present condition, as an apparent transgressor of the law, being thought to approach to the Sadducees in opinion on the most important article of the faith—even the resurrection. That belief, therefore, in the resurrection which he would not appear to impair, he really confirmed in the opinion of the Pharisees, since he rejected the views of the Sadducees, who denied it. In like manner, before Agrippa also, he says that he was advancing “none other things than those which the prophets had announced.” 7540 He was therefore maintaining just such a resurrection as the prophets had foretold. He mentions also what is written by “Moses,” touching the resurrection of the dead; (and in so doing) he must have known that it would be a rising in the body, since requisition will have to be made therein of the blood of man. 7541 He declared it then to be of such a character as the Pharisees had admitted it, and such as the Lord had Himself maintained it, and such too as the Sadducees refused to believe it—such refusal leading them indeed to an absolute rejection of the whole verity. Nor had the Athenians previously understood Paul to announce any other resurrection. 7542 They had, in fact, derided his announcement; but they would have indulged no such derision if they had heard from him nothing but the restoration of the soul, for they would have received that as the very common anticipation of their own native philosophy. But when the preaching of the resurrection, of which they had previously not heard, by its absolute novelty excited the heathen, and a not unnatural incredulity in so wonderful a matter began to harass the simple faith with many discussions, then the apostle took care in almost every one of his writings to strengthen men’s belief of this Christian hope, pointing out that there was such a hope, and that it had not as yet been realized, and that it would be in the body,—a point which was the especial object of inquiry, and, what was besides a doubtful question, not in a body of a different kind from ours.
Footnotes
573:7535Tertullian always refers to this book by a plural phrase.
573:7536Resignandi.
573:7537Consignandi.
573:7538Sub tribuno.
573:7539Acts xxiii. 6.
573:7540Acts xxvi. 22.
573:7541Gen. 9:5, 6.
573:7542Acts xvii. 32.
Chapter XL.—Sundry Passages of St. Paul Which Attest Our Doctrine Rescued from the Perversions of Heresy.
Now it is no matter of surprise if arguments are captiously taken from the writings of (the apostle) himself, inasmuch as there “must needs be heresies;” 7543 but these could not be, if the Scriptures were not capable of a false interpretation. Well, then, heresies finding that the apostle had mentioned two “men”—“the inner man,” that is, the soul, and “the outward man,” that is, the flesh—awarded salvation to the soul or inward man, and destruction to the flesh or outward man, because it is written (in the Epistle) to the Corinthians: “Though our outward man decayeth, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.” 7544 Now, neither the soul by itself alone is “man” (it was subsequently implanted in the clayey mould to which the name man had been already given), nor is the flesh without the soul “man”: for after the exile of the soul from it, it has the title of corpse. Thus the designation man is, in a certain sense, the bond between the two closely united substances, under which designation they cannot but be coherent natures. As for the inward man, indeed, the apostle prefers its being regarded as the mind and heart 7545 rather than the soul; 7546 in other words, not so much the substance itself as the savour of the substance. Thus when, writing to the Ephesians, he spoke of “Christ dwelling in their inner man,” he meant, no doubt, that the Lord ought to be admitted into their senses. 7547 He then added, “in your hearts by faith, rooted and grounded in love,”—making “faith” and “love” not substantial parts, but only conceptions of the soul. But when he used the phrase “in your hearts,” seeing that these are substantial parts of the flesh, he at once assigned to the flesh the actual “inward man,” which he placed in the heart. Consider now in what sense he alleged that “the outward man decayeth, while the inward man is renewed day by day.” You certainly would not maintain that he could mean that corruption of the flesh which it undergoes from the moment of death, in its appointed state of perpetual decay; but the wear and tear which for the name of Christ it experiences during its course of life before and until death, in harassing cares and tribulations as well as in tortures and persecutions. Now the inward man will have, of course, to be renewed by the suggestion of the Spirit, advancing by faith and holiness day after day, here in this life, not there after the resurrection, were our renewal is not a gradual process from day to day, but a consummation once for all complete. You may learn this, too, from the following passage, where the apostle says: “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen,” that is, our sufferings, “but at the things which are not seen,” that is, our rewards: “for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” 7548 For the afflictions and injuries wherewith the outward man is worn away, he affirms to be only worthy of being despised by us, as being light and temporary; preferring those eternal recompenses which are also invisible, and that “weight of glory” which will be a counterpoise for the labours in the endurance of which the flesh here suffers decay. So that the subject in this passage is not that corruption which they ascribe to the outward man in the utter destruction of the flesh, with the view of nullifying the resurrection. So also he says elsewhere: “If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together; for I reckon that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.” 7549 Here again he shows us that our sufferings are less than their rewards. Now, since it is through the flesh that we suffer with Christ—for it is the property of the flesh to be worn by sufferings—to the same flesh belongs the recompense which is promised for suffering with Christ. Accordingly, when he is going to assign afflictions to the flesh as its especial liability—according to the statement he had already made—he says, “When we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest;” 7550 then, in order to make the soul a fellow-sufferer with the body, he adds, “We were troubled on every side; without were fightings,” which of course warred down the flesh, “within were fears,” which afflicted the soul. 7551 Although, therefore, the outward man decays—not in the sense of missing the resurrection, but of enduring tribulation—it will be understood from this scripture that it is not exposed to its suffering without the inward man. Both therefore, will be glorified together, even as they have suffered together. Parallel with their participation in troubles, must necessarily run their association also in rewards.
Footnotes
574:75431 Cor. xi. 19.
574:75442 Cor. iv. 16.
574:7545Animum.
574:7546Animam.
574:7547Eph. iii. 17.
574:75482 Cor. 4:17, 18.
574:7549Rom. 8:17, 18.
574:75502 Cor. vii. 5.
574:75512 Cor. 7.5.
Chapter XLI.—The Dissolution of Our Tabernacle Consistent with the Resurrection of Our Bodies.
It is still the same sentiment which he follows up in the passage in which he puts the recompense above the sufferings: “for we know;” he says, “that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens;” 7552 in other words, owing to the fact that our flesh is undergoing dissolution through its sufferings, we shall be provided with a home in heaven. He remembered the award (which the Lord assigns) in the Gospel: “Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 7553 Yet, when he thus contrasted the recompense of the reward, he did not deny the flesh’s restoration; since the recompense is due to the same substance to which the dissolution is attributed,—that is, of course, the flesh. Because, however, he had called the flesh a house, he wished elegantly to use the same term in his comparison of the ultimate reward; promising to the very house, which undergoes dissolution through suffering, a better house through the resurrection. Just as the Lord also promises us many mansions as of a house in His Father’s home; 7554 although this may possibly be understood of the domicile of this world, on the dissolution of whose fabric an eternal abode is promised in heaven, inasmuch as the following context, having a manifest reference to the flesh, seems to show that these preceding words have no such reference. For the apostle makes a distinction, when he goes on to say, “For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven, if so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked;” 7555 which means, before we put off the garment of the flesh, we wish to be clothed with the celestial glory of immortality. Now the privilege of this favour awaits those who shall at the coming of the Lord be found in the flesh, and who shall, owing to the oppressions of the time of Antichrist, deserve by an instantaneous death, 7556 which is accomplished by a sudden change, to become qualified to join the rising saints; as he writes to the Thessalonians: “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we too shall ourselves be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” 7557
Footnotes
575:75522 Cor. v. 1.
575:7553Matt. v. 10.
575:7554John xiv. 2.
575:75552 Cor. 5:2, 3.
575:7556Compendio mortis. Compare our Anti-Marcion for the same thoughts and words, v. 12. [p. 455, supra.]
575:75571 Thess. iv. 15-17.
Chapter XLII.—Death Changes, Without Destroying, Our Mortal Bodies. Remains of the Giants.
It is the transformation these shall undergo which he explains to the Corinthians, when he writes: “We shall all indeed rise again (though we shall not all undergo the transformation) in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump”—for none shall experience this change but those only who shall be found in the flesh. “And the dead,” he says, “shall be raised, and we shall be changed.” Now, after a careful consideration of this appointed order, you will be able to adjust what follows to the preceding sense. For when he adds, “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality,” 7558 this will assuredly be that house from heaven, with which we so earnestly desire to be clothed upon, whilst groaning in this our present body,—meaning, of course, over this flesh in which we shall be surprised at last; because he says that we are burdened whilst in this tabernacle, which we do not wish indeed to be stripped of, but rather to be in it clothed over, in such a way that mortality may be swallowed up of life, that is, by putting on over us whilst we are transformed that vestiture which is from heaven. For who is there that will not desire, while he is in the flesh, to put on immortality, and to continue his life by a happy escape from death, through the transformation which must be experienced instead of it, without encountering too that Hades which will exact the very last farthing? 7559 Notwithstanding, he who has already traversed Hades is destined also to obtain the change after the resurrection. For from this circumstance it is that we definitively declare that the flesh will by all means rise again, and, from the change that is to come over it, will assume the condition of angels. Now, if it were merely in the case of those who shall be found in the flesh that the change must be undergone, in order that mortality may be swallowed up of life—in other words, that the flesh (be covered) with the heavenly and eternal raiment—it would either follow that those who shall be found in death would not obtain life, deprived as they would then be of the material and so to say the aliment of life, that is, the flesh; or else, these also must needs undergo the change, that in them too mortality may be swallowed up of life, since it is appointed that they too should obtain life. But, you say, in the case of the dead, mortality is already swallowed up of life. No, not in all cases, certainly. For how many will most probably be found of men who had just died—so recently put into their graves, that nothing in them would seem to be decayed? For you do not of course deem a thing to be decayed unless it be cut off, abolished, and withdrawn from our perception, as having in every possible way ceased to be apparent. There are the carcases of the giants of old time; it will be obvious enough that they are not absolutely decayed, for their bony frames are still extant. We have already spoken of this elsewhere. 7560 For instance, 7561 even lately in this very city, 7562 when they were sacrilegiously laying the foundations of the Odeum on a good many ancient graves, people were horror-stricken to discover, after some five hundred years, bones, which still retained their moisture, and hair which had not lost its perfume. It is certain not only that bones remain indurated, but also that teeth continue undecayed for ages—both of them the lasting germs of that body which is to sprout into life again in the resurrection. Lastly, even if everything that is mortal in all the dead shall then be found decayed—at any rate consumed by death, by time, and through age,—is there nothing which will be “swallowed up of life,” 7563 nor by being covered over and arrayed in the vesture of immortality? Now, he who says that mortality is going to be swallowed up of life has already admitted that what is dead is not destroyed by those other before-mentioned devourers. And verily it will be extremely fit that all shall be consummated and brought about by the operations of God, and not by the laws of nature. Therefore, inasmuch as what is mortal has to be swallowed up of life, it must needs be brought out to view in order to be so swallowed up; (needful) also to be swallowed up, in order to undergo the ultimate transformation. If you were to say that a fire is to be lighted, you could not possibly allege that what is to kindle it is sometimes necessary and sometimes not. In like manner, when he inserts the words “If so be that being unclothed 7564 we be not found naked,” 7565 —referring, of course, to those who shall not be found in the day of the Lord alive and in the flesh—he did not say that they whom he had just described as unclothed or stripped, were naked in any other sense than meaning that they should be understood to be reinvested with the very same substance they had been divested of. For although they shall be found naked when their flesh has been laid aside, or to some extent sundered or worn away (and this condition may well be called nakedness,) they shall afterwards recover it again, in order that, being reinvested with the flesh, they may be able also to have put over that the supervestment of immortality; for it will be impossible for the outside garment to fit except over one who is already dressed.
Footnotes
575:75581 Cor. xv. 51-53.
575:7559Comp. Matt. v. 26, and see Tertullian’s De Anima, xxxv. [and see cap. xliii., infra, p. 576.]
576:7560De Anim. c. li.
576:7561Sed: for “scilicet.”
576:7562Carthage.
576:75632 Cor. v. 4. [Against Marcion, p. 455, note 24.]
576:7564Exuti. He must have read ἐκδυσάμενοι , instead of the reading of nearly all the ms. authorities, ἐνδυσάμενοι.
576:75652 Cor. v. 3.
Chapter XLIII.—No Disparagement of Our Doctrine in St. Paul’s Phrase, Which Calls Our Residence in the Flesh Absence from the Lord.
In the same way, when he says, “Therefore we are always confident, and fully aware, that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord; for we walk by faith, not be sight,” 7566 it is manifest that in this statement there is no design of disparaging the flesh, as if it separated us from the Lord. For there is here pointedly addressed to us an exhortation to disregard this present life, since we are absent from the Lord as long as we are passing through it—walking by faith, not by sight; in other words, in hope, not in reality. Accordingly he adds: “We are indeed confident and deem it good rather to be absent from the body, and present with the Lord;” 7567 in order, that is, that we may walk by sight rather than by faith, in realization rather than in hope. Observe how he here also ascribes to the excellence of martyrdom a contempt for the body. For no one, on becoming absent from the body, is at once a dweller in the presence of the Lord, except by the prerogative of martyrdom, 7568 he gains a lodging in Paradise, not in the lower regions. Now, had the apostle been at a loss for words to describe the departure from the body? Or does he purposely use a novel phraseology? For, wanting to express our temporary absence from the body, he says that we are strangers, absent from it, because a man who goes abroad returns after a while to his home. Then he says even to all: “We therefore earnestly desire to be acceptable unto God, whether absent or present; for we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ Jesus.” 7569 If all of us, then all of us wholly; if wholly, then our inward man and outward too—that is, our bodies no less than our souls. “That every one,” as he goes on to say, “may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” 7570 Now I ask, how do you read this passage? Do you take it to be confusedly constructed, with a transposition 7571 of ideas? Is the question about what things will have to be received by the body, or the things which have been already done in the body? Well, if the things which are to be borne by the body are meant, then undoubtedly a resurrection of the body is implied; and if the things which have been already done in the body are referred to, (the same conclusion follows): for of course the retribution will have to be paid by the body, since it was by the body that the actions were performed. Thus the apostle’s whole argument from the beginning is unravelled in this concluding clause, wherein the resurrection of the flesh is set forth; and it ought to be understood in a sense which is strictly in accordance with this conclusion.
Footnotes
576:75662 Cor. 5:6, 7.
576:75672 Cor. 5.8.
576:7568Comp. his De Anima, c. lv. [Elucidation III.]
577:75692 Cor. 5:9, 10.
577:75702 Cor. v. 10.
577:7571Per hyperbaton.
Chapter XLIV.—Sundry Other Passages of St. Paul Explained in a Sentence Confirmatory of Our Doctrine.
Now, if you will examine the words which precede the passage where mention is made of the outward and the inward man, will you not discover the whole truth, both of the dignity and the hope of the flesh? For, when he speaks of the “light which God hath commanded to shine in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord in the person of Jesus Christ,” 7572 and says that “we have this treasure in earthen vessels,” 7573 meaning of course the flesh, which is meant—that the flesh shall be destroyed, because it is “an earthen vessel,” deriving its origin from clay; or that it is to be glorified, as being the receptacle of a divine treasure? Now if that true light, which is in the person of Christ, contains in itself life, and that life with its light is committed to the flesh, is that destined to perish which has life entrusted to it? Then, of course, the treasure will perish also; for perishable things are entrusted to things which are themselves perishable, which is like putting new wine into old bottles. When also he adds, “Always bearing about in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus Christ,” 7574 what sort of substance is that which, after (being called) the temple of God, can now be also designated the tomb of Christ? But why do we bear about in the body the dying of the Lord? In order, as he says, “that His life also may be manifested.” 7575 Where? “In the body.” In what body? “In our mortal body.” 7576 Therefore in the flesh, which is mortal indeed through sin, but living through grace—how great a grace you may see when the purpose is, “that the life of Christ may be manifested in it.” Is it then in a thing which is a stranger to salvation, in a substance which is perpetually dissolved, that the life of Christ will be manifested, which is eternal, continuous, incorruptible, and already the life of God? Else to what epoch belongs that life of the Lord which is to be manifested in our body? It surely is the life which He lived up to His passion, which was not only openly shown among the Jews, but has now been displayed even to all nations. Therefore that life is meant which “has broken the adamantine gates of death and the brazen bars of the lower world,” 7577 —a life which thenceforth has been and will be ours. Lastly, it is to be manifested in the body. When? After death. How? By rising in our body, as Christ also rose in His. But lest any one should here object, that the life of Jesus has even now to be manifested in our body by the discipline of holiness, and patience, and righteousness, and wisdom, in which the Lord’s life abounded, the most provident wisdom of the apostle inserts this purpose: “For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that His life may be manifested in our mortal body.” 7578 In us, therefore, even when dead, does he say that this is to take place in us. And if so, how is this possible except in our body after its resurrection? Therefore he adds in the concluding sentence: “Knowing that He which raised up the Lord Jesus, shall raise up us also with Him,” 7579 risen as He is already from the dead. But perhaps “with Him” means “like Him:” well then, if it be like Him, it is not of course without the flesh.
Footnotes
577:75722 Cor. iv. 6.
577:75732 Cor. 4.7.
577:75742 Cor. iv. 10.
577:75752 Cor. 4.10.
577:75762 Cor. 4.10.
577:7577Ps. cvii. 16.
577:75782 Cor. iv. 11.
577:75792 Cor. 4.14.
Chapter XLV.—The Old Man and the New Man of St. Paul Explained.
But in their blindness they again impale themselves on the point of the old and the new man. When the apostle enjoins us “to put off the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and to be renewed in the spirit of our mind; and to put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness,” 7580 (they maintain) that by here also making a distinction between the two substances, and applying the old one to the flesh and the new one to the spirit, he ascribes to the old man—that is to say, the flesh—a permanent corruption. Now, if you follow the order of the substances, the soul cannot be the new man because it comes the later of the two; nor can the flesh be the old man because it is the former. For what fraction of time was it that intervened between the creative hand of God and His afflatus? I will venture to say, that even if the soul was a good deal prior to the flesh, by the very circumstance that the soul had to wait to be itself completed, it made the other 7581 really the former. For everything which gives the finishing stroke and perfection to a work, although it is subsequent in its mere order, yet has the priority in its effect. Much more is that prior, without which preceding things could have no existence. If the flesh be the old man, when did it become so? From the beginning? But Adam was wholly a new man, and of that new man there could be no part an old man. And from that time, ever since the blessing which was pronounced upon man’s generation, 7582 the flesh and the soul have had a simultaneous birth, without any calculable difference in time; so that the two have been even generated together in the womb, as we have shown in our Treatise on the Soul. 7583 Contemporaneous in the womb, they are also temporally identical in their birth. The two are no doubt produced by human parents 7584 of two substances, but not at two different periods; rather they are so entirely one, that neither is before the other in point of time. It is more correct (to say), that we are either entirely the old man or entirely the new, for we cannot tell how we can possibly be anything else. But the apostle mentions a very clear mark of the old man. For “put off,” says he, “concerning the former conversation, the old man;” 7585 (he does) not say concerning the seniority of either substance. It is not indeed the flesh which he bids us to put off, but the works which he in another passage shows to be “works of the flesh.” 7586 He brings no accusation against men’s bodies, of which he even writes as follows: “Putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor: for we are members one of another. Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands (the thing which is good), that he may have to give to him that needeth. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good for the edification of faith, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil-speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: but be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ hath forgiven you.” 7587 Why, therefore, do not those who suppose the flesh to be the old man, hasten their own death, in order that by laying aside the old man they may satisfy the apostle’s precepts? As for ourselves, we believe that the whole of faith is to be administered in the flesh, nay more, by the flesh, which has both a mouth for the utterance of all holy words, and a tongue to refrain from blasphemy, and a heart to avoid all irritation, and hands to labour and to give; while we also maintain that as well the old man as the new has relation to the difference of moral conduct, and not to any discrepancy of nature. And just as we acknowledge that that which according to its former conversation was “the old man” was also corrupt, and received its very name in accordance with “its deceitful lusts,” so also (do we hold) that it is “the old man in reference to its former conversation,” 7588 and not in respect of the flesh through any permanent dissolution. Moreover, it is still unimpaired in the flesh, and identical in that nature, even when it has become “the new man;” since it is of its sinful course of life, and not of its corporeal substance, that it has been divested.
Footnotes
578:7580Eph. iv. 22-24.
578:7581The flesh.
578:7582Gen. i. 28.
578:7583See ch. xxvii.
578:7584We treat “homines” as a nominative, after Oehler.
578:7585Eph. iv. 22.
578:7586Gal. v. 19.
578:7587Eph. iv. 25-32.
578:7588Eph. iv. 22.
Chapter XLVI.—It is the Works of the Flesh, Not the Substance of the Flesh, Which St. Paul Always Condemns.
You may notice that the apostle everywhere condemns the works of the flesh in such a way as to appear to condemn the flesh; but no one can suppose him to have any such view as this, since he goes on to suggest another sense, even though somewhat resembling it. For when he actually declares that “they who are in the flesh cannot please God,” he immediately recalls the statement from an heretical sense to a sound one, by adding, “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.” 7589 Now, by denying them to be in the flesh who yet obviously were in the flesh, he showed that they were not living amidst the works of the flesh, and therefore that they who could not please God were not those who were in the flesh, but only those who were living after the flesh; whereas they pleased God, who, although existing in the flesh, were yet walking after the Spirit. And, again, he says that “the body is dead;” but it is “because of sin,” even as “the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” 7590 When, however, he thus sets life in opposition to the death which is constituted in the flesh, he unquestionably promises the life of righteousness to the same state for which he determined the death of sin. But unmeaning is this opposition which he makes between the “life” and the “death,” if the life is not there where that very thing is to which he opposes it—even the death which is to be extirpated of course from the body. Now, if life thus extirpates death from the body, it can accomplish this only by penetrating thither where that is which it is excluding. But why am I resorting to knotty arguments, 7591 when the apostle treats the subject with perfect plainness? “For if,” says he, “the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Jesus from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies, because of His Spirit that dwelleth in you;” 7592 so that even if a person were to assume that the soul is “the mortal body,” he would (since he cannot possibly deny that the flesh is this also) be constrained to acknowledge a restoration even of the flesh, in consequence of its participation in the selfsame state. From the following words, moreover, you may learn that it is the works of the flesh which are condemned, and not the flesh itself: “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh: for if ye live after the flesh ye shall die; but if ye, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” 7593 Now (that I may answer each point separately), since salvation is promised to those who are living in the flesh, but walking after the Spirit, it is no longer the flesh which is an adversary to salvation, but the working of the flesh. When, however, this operativeness of the flesh is done away with, which is the cause of death, the flesh is shown to be safe, since it is freed from the cause of death. “For the law,” says he, “of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death,” 7594 —that, surely, which he previously mentioned as dwelling in our members. 7595 Our members, therefore, will no longer be subject to the law of death, because they cease to serve that of sin, from both which they have been set free. “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and through 7596 sin condemned sin in the flesh,” 7597 —not the flesh in sin, for the house is not to be condemned with its inhabitant. He said, indeed, that “sin dwelleth in our body.” 7598 But the condemnation of sin is the acquittal of the flesh, just as its non-condemnation subjugates it to the law of sin and death. In like manner, he called “the carnal mind” first “death,” 7599 and afterwards “enmity against God;” 7600 but he never predicated this of the flesh itself. But to what then, you will say, must the carnal mind be ascribed, if it be not to the carnal substance itself? I will allow your objection, if you will prove to me that the flesh has any discernment of its own. If, however, it has no conception of anything without the soul, you must understand that the carnal mind must be referred to the soul, although ascribed sometimes to the flesh, on the ground that it is ministered to for the flesh and through the flesh. And therefore (the apostle) says that “sin dwelleth in the flesh,” because the soul by which sin is provoked has its temporary lodging in the flesh, which is doomed indeed to death, not however on its own account, but on account of sin. For he says in another passage also: “How is it that you conduct yourselves as if you were even now living in the world?” 7601 where he is not writing to dead persons, but to those who ought to have ceased to live after the ways of the world.
Footnotes
579:7589Rom. 8:8, 9.
579:7590Rom. 8.10.
579:7591Nodosius.
579:7592Rom. viii. 11.
579:7593Rom. 8:12, 13.
579:7594Rom. 8.2.
579:7595Rom. 7:17, 20, 23.
579:7596Per delinquentiam: see the De Carne Christi, xvi.
579:7597Rom. viii. 3.
579:7598Rom. vii. 20.
579:7599Rom. viii. 6.
579:7600Rom. 8.7.
579:7601Col. ii. 20.
Chapter XLVII.—St. Paul, All Through, Promises Eternal Life to the Body.
For that must be living after the world, which, as the old man, he declares to be “crucified with Christ,” 7602 not as a bodily structure, but as moral behaviour. Besides, if we do not understand it in this sense, it is not our bodily frame which has been transfixed (at all events), nor has our flesh endured the cross of Christ; but the sense is that which he has subjoined, “that the body of sin might be made void,” 7603 by an amendment of life, not by a destruction of the substance, as he goes on to say, “that henceforth we should not serve sin;” 7604 and that we should believe ourselves to be “dead with Christ,” in such a manner as that “we shall also live with Him.” 7605 On the same principle he says: “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed.” 7606 To what? To the flesh? No, but “unto sin.” 7607 Accordingly as to the flesh they will be saved—“alive unto God in Christ Jesus,” 7608 through the flesh of course, to which they will not be dead; since it is “unto sin,” and not to the flesh, that they are dead. For he pursues the point still further: “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it, and that ye should yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield ye yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead”—not simply alive, but as alive from the dead—“and your members as instruments of righteousness.” 7609 And again: “As ye have yielded your members servants of uncleanness, and of iniquity unto iniquity, even so now yield your members servants of righteousness unto holiness; for whilst ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What fruit had ye then in those things of which ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” 7610 Thus throughout this series of passages, whilst withdrawing our members from unrighteousness and sin, and applying them to righteousness and holiness, and transferring the same from the wages of death to the donative of eternal life, he undoubtedly promises to the flesh the recompense of salvation. Now it would not at all have been consistent that any rule of holiness and righteousness should be especially enjoined for the flesh, if the reward of such a discipline were not also within its reach; nor could even baptism be properly ordered for the flesh, if by its regeneration a course were not inaugurated tending to its restitution; the apostle himself suggesting this idea: “Know ye not, that so many of us as are baptized into Jesus Christ, are baptized into His death? We are therefore buried with Him by baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised up from the dead, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” 7611 And that you may not suppose that this is said merely of that life which we have to walk in the newness of, through baptism, by faith, the apostle with superlative forethought adds: “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of Christ’s death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection.” 7612 By a figure we die in our baptism, but in a reality we rise again in the flesh, even as Christ did, “that, as sin has reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness unto life eternal, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” 7613 But how so, unless equally in the flesh? For where the death is, there too must be the life after the death, because also the life was first there, where the death subsequently was. Now, if the dominion of death operates only in the dissolution of the flesh, in like manner death’s contrary, life, ought to produce the contrary effect, even the restoration of the flesh; so that, just as death had swallowed it up in its strength, it also, after this mortal was swallowed up of immortality, may hear the challenge pronounced against it: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” 7614 For in this way “grace shall there much more abound, where sin once abounded.” 7615 In this way also “shall strength be made perfect in weakness,” 7616 —saving what is lost, reviving what is dead, healing what is stricken, curing what is faint, redeeming what is lost, freeing what is enslaved, recalling what has strayed, raising what is fallen; and this from earth to heaven, where, as the apostle teaches the Philippians, “we have our citizenship, 7617 from whence also we look for our Saviour Jesus Christ, who shall change our body of humiliation, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body” 7618 —of course after the resurrection, because Christ Himself was not glorified before He suffered. These must be “the bodies” which he “beseeches” the Romans to “present” as “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God.” 7619 But how a living sacrifice, if these bodies are to perish? How a holy one, if they are profanely soiled? How acceptable to God, if they are condemned? Come, now, tell me how that passage (in the Epistle) to the Thessalonians—which, because of its clearness, I should suppose to have been written with a sunbeam—is understood by our heretics, who shun the light of Scripture: “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly.” And as if this were not plain enough, it goes on to say: “And may your whole body, and soul, and spirit be preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord.” 7620 Here you have the entire substance of man destined to salvation, and that at no other time than at the coming of the Lord, which is the key of the resurrection. 7621
Footnotes
580:7602Rom. vi. 6.
580:7603Evacuetur: καταργηθῃ. A.V. destroyed, i.e. deprived of all activity, Rom. vi. 6.
580:7604Rom. vi. 6. Tertullian’s reading literally is, “that thus far (and no further) we should be servants of sin.”
580:7605Rom. 6.8.
580:7606Rom. 6.11.
580:7607Rom. 6.11.
580:7608Rom. 6.11.
580:7609Rom. 6:12, 13.
580:7610Rom. 6.19-23.
580:7611Rom. 6:3, 4.
580:7612Rom. 6.5.
580:7613Rom. v. 21.
580:76141 Cor. xv. 55.
580:7615Rom. v. 20.
580:76162 Cor. xii. 9.
580:7617Municipatum.
580:7618Phil. 3:20, 21.
581:7619Rom. xii. 1.
581:76201 Thess. v. 23.
581:7621[Note Tertullian’s summary of the text, in harmony with the Tripartite philosophy of humanity.]
Chapter XLVIII.—Sundry Passages in the Great Chapter of the Resurrection of the Dead Explained in Defence of Our Doctrine.
But “flesh and blood,” you say, “cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” 7622 We are quite aware that this too is written; but although our opponents place it in the front of the battle, we have intentionally reserved the objection until now, in order that we may in our last assault overthrow it, after we have removed out of the way all the questions which are auxiliary to it. However, they must contrive to recall to their mind even now our preceding arguments, in order that the occasion which originally suggested this passage may assist our judgment in arriving at its meaning. The apostle, as I take it, having set forth for the Corinthians the details of their church discipline, had summed up the substance of his own gospel, and of their belief in an exposition of the Lord’s death and resurrection, for the purpose of deducing therefrom the rule of our hope, and the groundwork thereof. Accordingly he subjoins this statement: “Now if Christ be preached that He rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there be no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen: and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, because ye are yet in your sins, and they which have fallen asleep in Christ are perished.” 7623 Now, what is the point which he evidently labours hard to make us believe throughout this passage? The resurrection of the dead, you say, which was denied: he certainly wished it to be believed on the strength of the example which he adduced—the Lord’s resurrection. Certainly, you say. Well now, is an example borrowed from different circumstances, or from like ones? From like ones, by all means, is your answer. How then did Christ rise again? In the flesh, or not? No doubt, since you are told that He “died according to the Scriptures,” 7624 and “that He was buried according to the Scriptures,” 7625 no otherwise than in the flesh, you will also allow that it was in the flesh that He was raised from the dead. For the very same body which fell in death, and which lay in the sepulchre, did also rise again; (and it was) not so much Christ in the flesh, as the flesh in Christ. If, therefore, we are to rise again after the example of Christ, who rose in the flesh, we shall certainly not rise according to that example, unless we also shall ourselves rise again in the flesh. “For,” he says, “since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.” 7626 (This he says) in order, on the one hand, to distinguish the two authors—Adam of death, Christ of resurrection; and, on the other hand, to make the resurrection operate on the same substance as the death, by comparing the authors themselves under the designation man. For if “as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,” 7627 their vivification in Christ must be in the flesh, since it is in the flesh that arises their death in Adam. “But every man in his own order,” 7628 because of course it will be also every man in his own body. For the order will be arranged severally, on account of the individual merits. Now, as the merits must be ascribed to the body, it must needs follow that the order also should be arranged in respect of the bodies, that it may be in relation to their merits. But inasmuch as “some are also baptized for the dead,” 7629 we will see whether there be a good reason for this. Now it is certain that they adopted this (practice) with such a presumption as made them suppose that the vicarious baptism (in question) would be beneficial to the flesh of another in anticipation of the resurrection; for unless it were a bodily resurrection, there would be no pledge secured by this process of a corporeal baptism. “Why are they then baptized for the dead,” 7630 he asks, unless the bodies rise again which are thus baptized? For it is not the soul which is sanctified by the baptismal bath: 7631 its sanctification comes from the “answer.” 7632 “And why,” he inquires, “stand we in jeopardy every hour?” 7633 —meaning, of course, through the flesh. “I die daily,” 7634 (says he); that is, undoubtedly, in the perils of the body, in which “he even fought with beasts at Ephesus,” 7635 —even with those beasts which caused him such peril and trouble in Asia, to which he alludes in his second epistle to the same church of Corinth: “For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed above measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life.” 7636 Now, if I mistake not, he enumerates all these particulars in order that in his unwillingness to have his conflicts in the flesh supposed to be useless, he may induce an unfaltering belief in the resurrection of the flesh. For useless must that conflict be deemed (which is sustained in a body) for which no resurrection is in prospect. “But some man will say, How are the dead to be raised? And with what body will they come?” 7637 Now here he discusses the qualities of bodies, whether it be the very same, or different ones, which men are to resume. Since, however, such a question as this must be regarded as a subsequent one, it will in passing be enough for us that the resurrection is determined to be a bodily one even from this, that it is about the quality of bodies that the inquiry arises.
Footnotes
581:76221 Cor. xv. 50.
581:76231 Cor. xv. 12-18.
581:76241 Cor. 15.3.
581:76251 Cor. 15.4.
581:76261 Cor. 15.21.
581:76271 Cor. xv. 22.
581:76281 Cor. 15.23.
581:76291 Cor. 15.29.
582:76301 Cor. 15.29.
582:7631Lavatione.
582:7632Comp. 1 Pet. iii. 21.
582:76331 Cor. xv. 30.
582:76341 Cor. 15.31.
582:76351 Cor. 15.32.
582:76362 Cor. i. 8.
582:76371 Cor. xv. 35.
Chapter XLIX.—The Same Subject Continued. What Does the Apostle Exclude from the Dead? Certainly Not the Substance of the Flesh.
We come now to the very gist 7638 of the whole question: What are the substances, and of what nature are they, which the apostle has disinherited of the kingdom of God? The preceding statements give us a clue to this point also. He says: “The first man is of the earth, earthy”—that is, made of dust, that is, Adam; “the second man is from heaven” 7639 —that is, the Word of God, which is Christ, in no other way, however, man (although “from heaven”), than as being Himself flesh and soul, just as a human being is, just as Adam was. Indeed, in a previous passage He is called “the second Adam,” 7640 deriving the identity of His name from His participation in the substance, because not even Adam was flesh of human seed, in which Christ is also like Him. 7641 “As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.” 7642 Such (does he mean), in substance; or first of all in training, and afterwards in the dignity and worth which that training aimed at acquiring? Not in substance, however, by any means will the earthy and the heavenly be separated, designated as they have been by the apostle once for all, as men. For even if Christ were the only true “heavenly,” nay, super-celestial Being, He is still man, as composed of body and soul; and in no respect is He separated from the quality of “earthiness,” owing to that condition of His which makes Him a partaker of both substances. In like manner, those also who after Him are heavenly, are understood to have this celestial quality predicated of them not from their present nature, but from their future glory; because in a preceding sentence, which originated this distinction respecting difference of dignity, there was shown to be “one glory in celestial bodies, and another in terrestrial ones,” 7643 —“one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for even one star differeth from another star in glory,” 7644 although not in substance. Then, after having thus premised the difference in that worth or dignity which is even now to be aimed at, and then at last to be enjoyed, the apostle adds an exhortation, that we should both here in our training follow the example of Christ, and there attain His eminence in glory: “As we have borne the image of the earthy, let us also bear the image of the heavenly.” 7645 We have indeed borne the image of the earthy, by our sharing in his transgression, by our participation in his death, by our banishment from Paradise. Now, although the image of Adam is here borne by is in the flesh, yet we are not exhorted to put off the flesh; but if not the flesh, it is the conversation, in order that we may then bear the image of the heavenly in ourselves,—no longer indeed the image of God, and no longer the image of a Being whose state is in heaven; but after the lineaments of Christ, by our walking here in holiness, righteousness, and truth. And so wholly intent on the inculcation of moral conduct is he throughout this passage, that he tells us we ought to bear the image of Christ in this flesh of ours, and in this period of instruction and discipline. For when he says “let us bear” in the imperative mood, he suits his words to the present life, in which man exists in no other substance than as flesh and soul; or if it is another, even the heavenly, substance to which this faith (of ours) looks forward, yet the promise is made to that substance to which the injunction is given to labour earnestly to merit its reward. Since, therefore, he makes the image both of the earthy and the heavenly consist of moral conduct—the one to be abjured, and the other to be pursued—and then consistently adds, “For this I say” (on account, that is, of what I have already said, because the conjunction “for” connects what follows with the preceding words) “that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” 7646 —he means the flesh and blood to be understood in no other sense than the before-mentioned “image of the earthy;” and since this is reckoned to consist in “the old conversation,” 7647 which old conversation receives not the kingdom of God, therefore flesh and blood, by not receiving the kingdom of God, are reduced to the life of the old conversation. Of course, as the apostle has never put the substance for the works of man, he cannot use such a construction here. Since, however he has declared of men which are yet alive in the flesh, that they “are not in the flesh,” 7648 meaning that they are not living in the works of the flesh, you ought not to subvert its form nor its substance, but only the works done in the substance (of the flesh), alienating us from the kingdom of God. It is after displaying to the Galatians these pernicious works that he professes to warn them beforehand, even as he had “told them in time past, that they which do such things should not inherit the kingdom of God,” 7649 even because they bore not the image of the heavenly, as they had borne the image of the earthy; and so, in consequence of their old conversation, they were to be regarded as nothing else than flesh and blood. But even if the apostle had abruptly thrown out the sentence that flesh and blood must be excluded from the kingdom of God, without any previous intimation of his meaning, would it not have been equally our duty to interpret these two substances as the old man abandoned to mere flesh and blood—in other words, to eating and drinking, one feature of which would be to speak against the faith of the resurrection: “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” 7650 Now, when the apostle parenthetically inserted this, he censured flesh and blood because of their enjoyment in eating and drinking.
Footnotes
582:7638Ad carnem et sanguinem revera.
582:76391 Cor. xv. 47.
582:76401 Cor. 15.45.
582:7641See De Carne Christi. ch. xvi.
582:76421 Cor. xv. 48.
582:76431 Cor. xv. 40.
582:76441 Cor. 15.41.
582:7645Ver. 49.
583:76461 Cor. xv. 50.
583:7647See Eph. iv. 22.
583:7648Rom. viii. 9.
583:7649Gal. v. 21.
583:76501 Cor. xv. 32.
Chapter L.—In What Sense Flesh and Blood are Excluded from the Kingdom of God.
Putting aside, however, all interpretations of this sort, which criminate the works of the flesh and blood, it may be permitted me to claim for the resurrection these very substances, understood in none other than their natural sense. For it is not the resurrection that is directly denied to flesh and blood, but the kingdom of God, which is incidental to 7651 the resurrection (for there is a resurrection of judgment 7652 also); and there is even a confirmation of the general resurrection of the flesh, whenever a special one is excepted. Now, when it is clearly stated what the condition is to which the resurrection does not lead, it is understood what that is to which it does lead; and, therefore, whilst it is in consideration of men’s merits that a difference is made in their resurrection by their conduct in the flesh, and not by the substance thereof, it is evident even from this, that flesh and blood are excluded from the kingdom of God in respect of their sin, not of their substance; and although in respect of their natural condition 7653 they will rise again for the judgment, because they rise not for the kingdom. Again, I will say, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;” 7654 and justly (does the apostle declare this of them, considered) alone and in themselves, in order to show that the Spirit is still needed (to qualify them) for the kingdom. 7655 For it is “the Spirit that quickeneth” us for the kingdom of God; “the flesh profiteth nothing.” 7656 There is, however, something else which can be profitable thereunto, that is, the Spirit; and through the Spirit, the works also of the Spirit. Flesh and blood, therefore, must in every case rise again, equally, in their proper quality. But they to whom it is granted to enter the kingdom of God, will have to put on the power of an incorruptible and immortal life; for without this, or before they are able to obtain it, they cannot enter into the kingdom of God. With good reason, then, flesh and blood, as we have already said, by themselves fail to obtain the kingdom of God. But inasmuch as “this corruptible (that is, the flesh) must put on incorruption, and this mortal (that is, the blood) must put on immortality,” 7657 by the change which is to follow the resurrection, it will, for the best of reasons, happen that flesh and blood, after that change and investiture, 7658 will become able to inherit the kingdom of God—but not without the resurrection. Some will have it, that by the phrase “flesh and blood,” because of its rite of circumcision, Judaism is meant, which is itself too alienated from the kingdom of God, as being accounted “the old or former conversation,” and as being designated by this title in another passage of the apostle also, who, “when it pleased God to reveal to him His Son, to preach Him amongst the heathen, immediately conferred not with flesh and blood,” as he writes to the Galatians, 7659 (meaning by the phrase) the circumcision, that is to say, Judaism.
Footnotes
583:7651Obvenit.
583:7652A.V. damnation, John v. 29.
583:7653Forma.
583:76541 Cor. xv. 50.
583:7655This must be the meaning of the dative illi.
583:7656John vi. 63.
584:76571 Cor. xv. 53.
584:7658We have kept this word to suit the last Scripture quotation; but Tertullian’s word, both here and in the quotation, is “devorata,” swallowed up.
584:7659See Gal. 1:15, 16.
Chapter LI.—The Session of Jesus in His Incarnate Nature at the Right Hand of God a Guarantee of the Resurrection of Our Flesh.
That, however, which we have reserved for a concluding argument, will now stand as a plea for all, and for the apostle himself, who in very deed would have to be charged with extreme indiscretion, if he had so abruptly, as some will have it, and as they say, blindfold, and so indiscriminately, and so unconditionally, excluded from the kingdom of God, and indeed from the court of heaven itself, all flesh and blood whatsoever; since Jesus is still sitting there at the right hand of the Father, 7660 man, yet God—the last Adam, 7661 yet the primary Word—flesh and blood, yet purer than ours—who “shall descend in like manner as He ascended into heaven” 7662 the same both in substance and form, as the angels affirmed, 7663 so as even to be recognised by those who pierced Him. 7664 Designated, as He is, “the Mediator 7665 between God and man,” He keeps in His own self the deposit of the flesh which has been committed to Him by both parties—the pledge and security of its entire perfection. For as “He has given to us the earnest of the Spirit,” 7666 so has He received from us the earnest of the flesh, and has carried it with Him into heaven as a pledge of that complete entirety which is one day to be restored to it. Be not disquieted, O flesh and blood, with any care; in Christ you have acquired both heaven and the kingdom of God. Otherwise, if they say that you are not in Christ, let them also say that Christ is not in heaven, since they have denied you heaven. Likewise “neither shall corruption,” says he, “inherit incorruption.” 7667 This he says, not that you may take flesh and blood to be corruption, for they are themselves rather the subjects of corruption,—I mean through death, since death does not so much corrupt, as actually consume, our flesh and blood. But inasmuch as he had plainly said that the works of the flesh and blood could not obtain the kingdom of God, with the view of stating this with accumulated stress, he deprived corruption itself—that is, death, which profits so largely by the works of the flesh and blood—from all inheritance of incorruption. For a little afterwards, he has described what is, as it were, the death of death itself: “Death,” says he, “is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin”—here is the corruption; “and the strength of sin is the law” 7668 —that other law, no doubt, which he has described “in his members as warring against the law of his mind,” 7669 —meaning, of course, the actual power of sinning against his will. Now he says in a previous passage (of our Epistle to the Corinthians), that “the last enemy to be destroyed is death.” 7670 In this way, then, it is that corruption shall not inherit incorruption; in other words, death shall not continue. When and how shall it cease? In that “moment, that twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, when the dead shall rise incorruptible.” 7671 But what are these, if not they who were corruptible before—that is, our bodies; in other words, our flesh and blood? And we undergo the change. But in what condition, if not in that wherein we shall be found? “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” 7672 What mortal is this but the flesh? what corruptible but the blood. Moreover, that you may not suppose the apostle to have any other meaning, in his care to teach you, and that you may understand him seriously to apply his statement to the flesh, when he says “this corruptible” and “this mortal,” he utters the words while touching the surface of his own body. 7673 He certainly could not have pronounced these phrases except in reference to an object which was palpable and apparent. The expression indicates a bodily exhibition. Moreover, a corruptible body is one thing, and corruption is another; so a mortal body is one thing, and mortality is another. For that which suffers is one thing, and that which causes it to suffer is another. Consequently, those things which are subject to corruption and mortality, even the flesh and blood, must needs also be susceptible of incorruption and immortality.
Footnotes
584:7660Mark xvi. 19.
584:76611 Cor. xv. 45.
584:7662Acts i. 9.
584:7663Acts 1.10.
584:7664Zech. 12:10, John 19:37, Rev. 1:7.
584:76651 Tim. ii. 5. Tertullian’s word is “sequester,” the guardian of a deposit.
584:76662 Cor. v. 5.
584:76671 Cor. xv. 50.
584:76681 Cor. xv. 54-56.
584:7669Rom. vii. 23.
584:76701 Cor. xv. 26.
584:76711 Cor. 15.52.
584:76721 Cor. 15.53.
585:7673Cutem ipsam. Rufinus says that in the church of Aquileia they touched their bodies when they recited the clause of the creed which they rendered “the resurrection of this body.”
Chapter LII.—From St. Paul’s Analogy of the Seed We Learn that the Body Which Died Will Rise Again, Garnished with the Appliances of Eternal Life.
Let us now see in what body he asserts that the dead will come. And with a felicitous sally he proceeds at once to illustrate the point, as if an objector had plied him with some such question. “Thou fool,” says he, “that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die.” 7674 From this example of the seed it is then evident that no other flesh is quickened than that which shall have undergone death, and therefore all the rest of the question will become clear enough. For nothing which is incompatible with the idea suggested by the example can possibly be understood; nor from the clause which follows, “That which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body which shall be,” 7675 are you permitted to suppose that in the resurrection a different body is to arise from that which is sown in death. Otherwise you have run away from the example. For if wheat be sown and dissolved in the ground, barley does not spring up. Still it is not 7676 the very same grain in kind; nor is its nature the same, or its quality and form. Then whence comes it, if it is not the very same? For even the decay is a proof of the thing itself, since it is the decay of the actual grain. Well, but does not the apostle himself suggest in what sense it is that “the body which shall be” is not the body which is sown, even when he says, “But bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain; but God giveth it a body as it pleaseth Him?” 7677 Gives it of course to the grain which he says is sown bare. No doubt, you say. Then the grain is safe enough, to which God has to assign a body. But how safe, if it is nowhere in existence, if it does not rise again if it rises not again its actual self? If it rises not again, it is not safe; and if it is not even safe, it cannot receive a body from God. But there is every possible proof that it is safe. For what purpose, therefore, will God give it “a body, as it pleases Him,” even when it already has its own “bare” body, unless it be that in its resurrection it may be no longer bare? That therefore will be additional matter which is placed over the bare body; nor is that at all destroyed on which the superimposed matter is put,—nay, it is increased. That, however, is safe which receives augmentation. The truth is, it is sown the barest grain, without a husk to cover it, without a spike even in germ, without the protection of a bearded top, without the glory of a stalk. It rises, however, out of the furrow enriched with a copious crop, built up in a compact fabric, constructed in a beautiful order, fortified by cultivation, and clothed around on every side. These are the circumstances which make it another body from God, to which it is changed not by abolition, but by amplification. And to every seed God has assigned its own body 7678 —not, indeed, its own in the sense of its primitive body—in order that what it acquires from God extrinsically may also at last be accounted its own. Cleave firmly then to the example, and keep it well in view, as a mirror of what happens to the flesh: believe that the very same flesh which was once sown in death will bear fruit in resurrection-life—the same in essence, only more full and perfect; not another, although reappearing in another form. For it shall receive in itself the grace and ornament which God shall please to spread over it, according to its merits. Unquestionably it is in this sense that he says, “All flesh is not the same flesh;” 7679 meaning not to deny a community of substance, but a parity of prerogative,—reducing the body to a difference of honour, not of nature. With this view he adds, in a figurative sense, certain examples of animals and heavenly bodies: “There is one flesh of man” (that is, servants of God, but really human), “another flesh of beasts” (that is, the heathen, of whom the prophet actually says, “Man is like the senseless cattle” 7680 ), “another flesh of birds” (that is, the martyrs which essay to mount up to heaven), “another of fishes” (that is, those whom the water of baptism has submerged). 7681 In like manner does he take examples from the heavenly bodies: “There is one glory of the sun” (that is, of Christ), “and another glory of the moon” (that is, of the Church), “and another glory of the stars” (in other words, of the seed of Abraham). “For one star differeth from another star in glory: so there are bodies terrestrial as well as celestial” (Jews, that is, as well as Christians). 7682 Now, if this language is not to be construed figuratively, it was absurd enough for him to make a contrast between the flesh of mules and kites, as well as the heavenly bodies and human bodies; for they admit of no comparison as to their condition, nor in respect of their attainment of a resurrection. Then at last, having conclusively shown by his examples that the difference was one of glory, not of substance, he adds: “So also is the resurrection of the dead.” 7683 How so? In no other way than as differing in glory only. For again, predicating the resurrection of the same substance and returning once more to (his comparison of) the grain, he says: “It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” 7684 Now, certainly nothing else is raised than that which is sown; and nothing else is sown than that which decays in the ground; and it is nothing else than the flesh which is decayed in the ground. For this was the substance which God’s decree demolished, “Earth thou art, and to earth shalt thou return;” 7685 because it was taken out of the earth. And it was from this circumstance that the apostle borrowed his phrase of the flesh being “sown,” since it returns to the ground, and the ground is the grand depository for seeds which are meant to be deposited in it, and again sought out of it. And therefore he confirms the passage afresh, by putting on it the impress (of his own inspired authority), saying, “For so it is written;” 7686 that you may not suppose that the “being sown” means anything else than “thou shalt return to the ground, out of which thou wast taken;” nor that the phrase “for so it is written” refers to any other thing that the flesh.
Footnotes
585:76741 Cor. xv. 36.
585:76751 Cor. 15.37.
585:7676An objection of the opponent.
585:76771 Cor. 15:37, 38.
585:76781 Cor. xv. 38.
585:76791 Cor. 15.39.
585:7680Ps. xlix. 20, Sept.
585:76811 Cor. xv. 39.
586:76821 Cor. xv. 41.
586:76831 Cor. 15.42.
586:76841 Cor. 15.42-44.
586:7685Gen. iii. 19.
586:76861 Cor. xv. 45.
Chapter LIII.—Not the Soul, But the Natural Body Which Died, is that Which is to Rise Again. The Resurrection of Lazarus Commented on. Christ’s Resurrection, as the Second Adam, Guarantees Our Own.
Some, however, contend that the soul is “the natural (or animate) body,” 7687 with the view of withdrawing the flesh from all connection with the risen body. Now, since it is a clear and fixed point that the body which is to rise again is that which was sown in death, they must be challenged to an examination of the very fact itself. Else let them show that the soul was sown after death; in a word, that it underwent death,—that is, was demolished, dismembered, dissolved in the ground, nothing of which was ever decreed against it by God: let them display to our view its corruptibility and dishonour (as well as) its weakness, that it may also accrue to it to rise again in incorruption, and in glory, and in power. 7688 Now in the case of Lazarus, (which we may take as) the palmary instance of a resurrection, the flesh lay prostrate in weakness, the flesh was almost putrid in the dishonour of its decay, the flesh stank in corruption, and yet it was as flesh that Lazarus rose again—with his soul, no doubt. But that soul was incorrupt; nobody had wrapped it in its linen swathes; nobody had deposited it in a grave; nobody had yet perceived it “stink;” nobody for four days had seen it “sown.” Well, now, this entire condition, this whole end of Lazarus, the flesh indeed of all men is still experiencing, but the soul of no one. That substance, therefore, to which the apostle’s whole description manifestly refers, of which he clearly speaks, must be both the natural (or animate) body when it is sown, and the spiritual body when it is raised again. For in order that you may understand it in this sense, he points to this same conclusion, when in like manner, on the authority of the same passage of Scripture, he displays to us “the first man Adam as made a living soul.” 7689 Now since Adam was the first man, since also the flesh was man prior to the soul 7690 it undoubtedly follows that it was the flesh that became the living soul. Moreover, since it was a bodily substance that assumed this condition, it was of course the natural (or animate) body that became the living soul. By what designation would they have it called, except that which it became through the soul, except that which it was not previous to the soul, except that which it can never be after the soul, but through its resurrection? For after it has recovered the soul, it once more becomes the natural (or animate) body, in order that it may become a spiritual body. For it only resumes in the resurrection the condition which it once had. There is therefore by no means the same good reason why the soul should be called the natural (or animate) body, which the flesh has for bearing that designation. The flesh, in fact, was a body before it was an animate body. When the flesh was joined by the soul, 7691 it then became the natural (or animate) body. Now, although the soul is a corporeal substance, 7692 yet, as it is not an animated body, but rather an animating one, it cannot be called the animate (or natural) body, nor can it become that thing which it produces. It is indeed when the soul accrues to something else that it makes that thing animate; but unless it so accrues, how will it ever produce animation? As therefore the flesh was at first an animate (or natural) body on receiving the soul, so at last will it become a spiritual body when invested with the spirit. Now the apostle, by severally adducing this order in Adam and in Christ, fairly distinguishes between the two states, in the very essentials of their difference. And when he calls Christ “the last Adam,” 7693 you may from this circumstance discover how strenuously he labours to establish throughout his teaching the resurrection of the flesh, not of the soul. Thus, then, the first man Adam was flesh, not soul, and only afterwards became a living soul; and the last Adam, Christ, was Adam only because He was man, and only man as being flesh, not as being soul. Accordingly the apostle goes on to say: “Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual,” 7694 as in the case of the two Adams. Now, do you not suppose that he is distinguishing between the natural body and the spiritual body in the same flesh, after having already drawn the distinction therein in the two Adams, that is, in the first man and in the last? For from which substance is it that Christ and Adam have a parity with each other? No doubt it is from their flesh, although it may be from their soul also. It is, however, in respect of the flesh that they are both man; for the flesh was man prior to the soul. It was actually from it that they were able to take rank, so as to be deemed—one the first, and the other the last man, or Adam. Besides, things which are different in character are only incapable of being arranged in the same order when their diversity is one of substance; for when it is a diversity either in respect of place, or of time, or of condition, they probably do admit of classification together. Here, however, they are called first and last, from the substance of their (common) flesh, just as afterwards again the first man (is said to be) of the earth, and the second of heaven; 7695 but although He is “of heaven” in respect of the spirit, He is yet man according to the flesh. Now since it is the flesh, and not the soul, that makes an order (or classification together) in the two Adams compatible, so that the distinction is drawn between them of “the first man becoming a living soul, and the last a quickening spirit,” 7696 so in like manner this distinction between them has already suggested the conclusion that the distinction is due to the flesh; so that it is of the flesh that these words speak: “Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual.” 7697 And thus, too, the same flesh must be understood in a preceding passage: “That which is sown is the natural body, and that which rises again is the spiritual body; because that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural: since the first Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam a quickening spirit.” 7698 It is all about man, and all about the flesh because about man.
What shall we say then? Has not the flesh even now (in this life) the spirit by faith? so that the question still remains to be asked, how it is that the animate (or natural) body can be said to be sown? Surely the flesh has received even here the spirit—but only its “earnest;” 7699 whereas of the soul (it has received) not the earnest, but the full possession. Therefore it has the name of animate (or natural) body, expressly because of the higher substance of the soul (or anima,) in which it is sown, destined hereafter to become, through the full possession of the spirit which it shall obtain, the spiritual body, in which it is raised again. What wonder, then, if it is more commonly called after the substance with which it is fully furnished, than after that of which it has yet but a sprinkling?
Footnotes
586:7687What in our version is rendered “a natural body,” is St. Paul’s σῶμα ψυχικόν, which the heretics held to be merely a periphrasis for ψυχή. We have rendered Tertullian’s phrase corpus animale by “animate body,” the better to suit the argument.
586:76881 Cor. 15:42, 43.
586:7689Compare 1 Cor. 15:45, Gen. 2:7.
586:7690See this put more fully above, c. v., near the end.
587:7691Animata.
587:7692See the De Anima, v.–ix., for a full statement of Tertullian’s view of the soul’s corporeality.
587:76931 Cor. xv. 45.
587:76941 Cor. xv. 46.
587:76951 Cor. 15.47.
587:76961 Cor. 15.45.
587:76971 Cor. 15.46.
587:76981 Cor. 15:44, 45.
587:76992 Cor. 1:22, 2 Cor. 5:5, Eph. 1:14.
Chapter LIV.—Death Swallowed Up of Life. Meaning of This Phrase in Relation to the Resurrection of the Body.
Then, again, questions very often are suggested by occasional and isolated terms, just as much as they are by connected sentences. Thus, because of the apostle’s expression, “that mortality may be swallowed up of life” 7700 —in reference to the flesh—they wrest the word swallowed up into the sense of the actual destruction of the flesh; as if we might not speak of ourselves as swallowing bile, or swallowing grief, meaning that we conceal and hide it, and keep it within ourselves. The truth is, when it is written, “This mortal must put on immortality,” 7701 it is explained in what sense it is that “mortality is swallowed up of life”—even whilst, clothed with immortality, it is hidden and concealed, and contained within it, not as consumed, and destroyed, and lost. But death, you will say in reply to me, at this rate, must be safe, even when it has been swallowed up. Well, then, I ask you to distinguish words which are similar in form according to their proper meanings. Death is one thing, and mortality is another. It is one thing for death to be swallowed up, and another thing for mortality to be swallowed up. Death is incapable of immortality, but not so mortality. Besides, as it is written that “this mortal must put on immortality,” 7702 how is this possible when it is swallowed up of life? But how is it swallowed up of life, (in the sense of destroyed by it) when it is actually received, and restored, and included in it? For the rest, it is only just and right that death should be swallowed up in utter destruction, since it does itself devour with this same intent. Death, says the apostle, has devoured by exercising its strength, and therefore has been itself devoured in the struggle “swallowed up in victory.” 7703 “O death, where is thy sting? O death, where is thy victory?” 7704 Therefore life, too, as the great antagonist of death, will in the struggle swallow up for salvation what death, in its struggle, had swallowed up for destruction.
Footnotes
587:77002 Cor. v. 4.
588:77011 Cor. xv. 53.
588:77021 Cor. xv. 53.
588:77031 Cor. 15.54.
588:77041 Cor. 15.55.
Chapter LV.—The Change of a Thing’s Condition is Not the Destruction of Its Substance. The Application of This Principle to Our Subject.
Now although, in proving that the flesh shall rise again we ipso facto prove that no other flesh will partake of that resurrection than that which is in question, yet insulated questions and their occasions do require even discussions of their own, even if they have been already sufficiently met. We will therefore give a fuller explanation of the force and the reason of a change which (is so great, that it) almost suggests the presumption that it is a different flesh which is to rise again; as if, indeed, so great a change amounted to utter cessation, and a complete destruction of the former self. A distinction, however, must be made between a change, however great, and everything which has the character of destruction. For undergoing change is one thing, but being destroyed is another thing. Now this distinction would no longer exist, if the flesh were to suffer such a change as amounts to destruction. Destroyed, however, it must be by the change, unless it shall itself persistently remain throughout the altered condition which shall be exhibited in the resurrection. For precisely as it perishes, if it does not rise again, so also does it equally perish even if it does rise again, on the supposition that it is lost 7705 in the change. It will as much fail of a future existence, as if it did not rise again at all. And how absurd is it to rise again for the purpose of not having a being, when it had it in its power not to rise again, and so lose its being—because it had already begun its non-existence! Now, things which are absolutely different, as mutation and destruction are, will not admit of mixture and confusion; in their operations, too, they differ. One destroys, the other changes. Therefore, as that which is destroyed is not changed, so that which is changed is not destroyed. To perish is altogether to cease to be what a thing once was, whereas to be changed is to exist in another condition. Now, if a thing exists in another condition, it can still be the same thing itself; for since it does not perish, it has its existence still. A change, indeed, it has experienced, but not a destruction. A thing may undergo a complete change, and yet remain still the same thing. In like manner, a man also may be quite himself in substance even in the present life, and for all that undergo various changes—in habit, in bodily bulk, in health, in condition, in dignity, and in age—in taste, business, means, houses, laws and customs—and still lose nothing of his human nature, nor so to be made another man as to cease to be the same; indeed, I ought hardly to say another man, but another thing. This form of change even the Holy Scriptures give us instances of. The hand of Moses is changed, and it becomes like a dead one, bloodless, colourless, and stiff with cold; but on the recovery of heat, and on the restoration of its natural colour, it is again the same flesh and blood. 7706 Afterwards the face of the same Moses is changed, 7707 with a brightness which eye could not bear. But he was Moses still, even when he was not visible. So also Stephen had already put on the appearance of an angel, 7708 although they were none other than his human knees 7709 which bent beneath the stoning. The Lord, again, in the retirement of the mount, had changed His raiment for a robe of light; but He still retained features which Peter could recognise. 7710 In that same scene Moses also and Elias gave proof that the same condition of bodily existence may continue even in glory—the one in the likeness of a flesh which he had not yet recovered, the other in the reality of one which he had not yet put off. 7711 It was as full of this splendid example that Paul said: “Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body.” 7712 But if you maintain that a transfiguration and a conversion amounts to the annihilation of any substance, then it follows that “Saul, when changed into another man,” 7713 passed away from his own bodily substance; and that Satan himself, when “transformed into an angel of light,” 7714 loses his own proper character. Such is not my opinion. So likewise changes, conversions and reformations will necessarily take place to bring about the resurrection, but the substance of the flesh will still be preserved safe.
Footnotes
588:7705Subducitur.
588:7706Exod. 4:6, 7.
588:7707Exod. 34:29, 35.
588:7708Acts vi. 15.
589:7709Acts 7:59, 60.
589:7710Matt. xvii. 2-4.
589:7711Matt. 17.3.
589:7712Phil. iii. 21.
589:77131 Sam. x. 6.
589:77142 Cor. xi. 14.
Chapter LVI.—The Procedure of the Last Judgment, and Its Awards, Only Possible on the Identity of the Risen Body with Our Present Flesh.
For how absurd, and in truth how unjust, and in both respects how unworthy of God, for one substance to do the work, and another to reap the reward: that this flesh of ours should be torn by martyrdom, and another wear the crown; or, on the other hand, that this flesh of ours should wallow in uncleanness, and another receive the condemnation! Is it not better to renounce all faith at once in the hope of the resurrection, 7715 than to trifle with the wisdom and justice of God? 7716 Better that Marcion should rise again than Valentinus. For it cannot be believed that the mind, or the memory, or the conscience of existing man is abolished by putting on that change of raiment which immortality and incorruption supplies; for in that case all the gain and fruit of the resurrection, and the permanent effect 7717 of God’s judgment both on soul and body, 7718 would certainly fall to the ground. If I remember not that it is I who have served Him, how shall I ascribe glory to God? How sing to Him “the new song,” 7719 if I am ignorant that it is I who owe Him thanks? But why is exception taken only against the change of the flesh, and not of the soul also, which in all things is superior to the flesh? How happens it, that the self-same soul which in our present flesh has gone through all life’s course, which has learnt the knowledge of God, and put on Christ, and sown the hope of salvation in this flesh, must reap its harvest in another flesh of which we know nothing? Verily that must be a most highly favoured flesh, which shall have the enjoyment of life at so gratuitous a rate! But if the soul is not to be changed also, then there is no resurrection of the soul; nor will it be believed to have itself risen, unless it has risen some different thing.
Footnotes
589:7715With Marcion.
589:7716With Valentinus.
589:7717Statu.
589:7718Utrobique.
589:7719Rev. 5:9, Rev. 14:3.
Chapter LVII.—Our Bodies, However Mutilated Before or After Death, Shall Recover Their Perfect Integrity in the Resurrection. Illustration of the Enfranchised Slave.
We now come to the most usual cavil of unbelief. If, they say, it be actually the selfsame substance which is recalled to life with all its form, and lineaments, and quality, then why not with all its other characteristics? Then the blind, and the lame, and the palsied, and whoever else may have passed away with any conspicuous mark, will return again with the same. What now is the fact, although you in the greatness of your conceit 7720 thus disdain to accept from God so vast a grace? Does it not happen that, when you now admit the salvation of only the soul, you ascribe it to men at the cost of half their nature? What is the good of believing in the resurrection, unless your faith embraces the whole of it? If the flesh is to be repaired after its dissolution, much more will it be restored after some violent injury. Greater cases prescribe rules for lesser ones. Is not the amputation or the crushing of a limb the death of that limb? Now, if the death of the whole person is rescinded by its resurrection, what must we say of the death of a part of him? If we are changed for glory, how much more for integrity! 7721 Any loss sustained by our bodies is an accident to them, but their entirety is their natural property. In this condition we are born. Even if we become injured in the womb, this is loss suffered by what is already a human being. Natural condition 7722 is prior to injury. As life is bestowed by God, so is it restored by Him. As we are when we receive it, so are we when we recover it. To nature, not to injury, are we restored; to our state by birth, not to our condition by accident, do we rise again. If God raises not men entire, He raises not the dead. For what dead man is entire, although he dies entire? Who is without hurt, that is without life? What body is uninjured, when it is dead, when it is cold, when it is ghastly, when it is stiff, when it is a corpse? When is a man more infirm, than when he is entirely infirm? When more palsied, than when quite motionless? Thus, for a dead man to be raised again, amounts to nothing short of his being restored to his entire condition,—lest he, forsooth, be still dead in that part in which he has not risen again. God is quite able to re-make what He once made. This power and this unstinted grace of His He has already sufficiently guaranteed in Christ; and has displayed Himself to us (in Him) not only as the restorer of the flesh, but as the repairer of its breaches. And so the apostle says: “The dead shall be raised incorruptible” (or unimpaired). 7723 But how so, unless they become entire, who have wasted away either in the loss of their health, or in the long decrepitude of the grave? For when he propounds the two clauses, that “this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality,” 7724 he does not repeat the same statement, but sets forth a distinction. For, by assigning immortality to the repeating of death, and incorruption to the repairing of the wasted body, he has fitted one to the raising and the other to the retrieval of the body. I suppose, moreover, that he promises to the Thessalonians the integrity of the whole substance of man. 7725 So that for the great future there need be no fear of blemished or defective bodies. Integrity, whether the result of preservation or restoration, will be able to lose nothing more, after the time that it has given back to it whatever it had lost. Now, when you contend that the flesh will still have to undergo the same sufferings, if the same flesh be said to have to rise again, you rashly set up nature against her Lord, and impiously contrast her law against His grace; as if it were not permitted the Lord God both to change nature, and to preserve her, without subjection to a law. How is it, then, that we read, “With men these things are impossible, but with God all things are possible;” 7726 and again, “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise?” 7727 Let me ask you, if you were to manumit your slave (seeing that the same flesh and soul will remain to him, which once were exposed to the whip, and the fetter, and the stripes), will it therefore be fit for him to undergo the same old sufferings? I trow not. He is instead thereof honoured with the grace of the white robe, and the favour of the gold ring, and the name and tribe as well as table of his patron. Give, then, the same prerogative to God, by virtue of such a change, of reforming our condition, not our nature, by taking away from it all sufferings, and surrounding it with safeguards of protection. Thus our flesh shall remain even after the resurrection—so far indeed susceptible of suffering, as it is the flesh, and the same flesh too; but at the same time impassible, inasmuch as it has been liberated by the Lord for the very end and purpose of being no longer capable of enduring suffering.
Footnotes
589:7720Qualiscunque.
589:7721Or the recovery of our entire person.
589:7722Genus.
590:77231 Cor. xv. 52.
590:77241 Cor. xv. 53.
590:77251 Thess. 4:13, 1 Thess. 5:23.
590:7726Matt. xix. 26.
590:77271 Cor. i. 27.
Chapter LVIII.—From This Perfection of Our Restored Bodies Will Flow the Consciousness of Undisturbed Joy and Peace.
“Everlasting joy,” says Isaiah, “shall be upon their heads.” 7728 Well, there is nothing eternal until after the resurrection. “And sorrow and sighing,” continues he, “shall flee away.” 7729 The angel echoes the same to John: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes;” 7730 from the same eyes indeed which had formerly wept, and which might weep again, if the loving-kindness of God did not dry up every fountain of tears. And again: “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death,” 7731 and therefore no more corruption, it being chased away by incorruption, even as death is by immortality. If sorrow, and mourning, and sighing, and death itself, assail us from the afflictions both of soul and body, how shall they be removed, except by the cessation of their causes, that is to say, the afflictions of flesh and soul? where will you find adversities in the presence of God? where, incursions of an enemy in the bosom of Christ? where, attacks of the devil in the face of the Holy Spirit?—now that the devil himself and his angels are “cast into the lake of fire.” 7732 Where now is necessity, and what they call fortune or fate? What plague awaits the redeemed from death, after their eternal pardon? What wrath is there for the reconciled, after grace? What weakness, after their renewed strength? What risk and danger, after their salvation? That the raiment and shoes of the children of Israel remained unworn and fresh for the space of forty years; 7733 that in their very persons the exact point 7734 of convenience and propriety checked the rank growth of their nails and hair, so that any excess herein might not be attributed to indecency; that the fires of Babylon injured not either the mitres or the trousers of the three brethren, however foreign such dress might be to the Jews; 7735 that Jonah was swallowed by the monster of the deep, in whose belly whole ships were devoured, and after three days was vomited out again safe and sound; 7736 that Enoch and Elias, who even now, without experiencing a resurrection (because they have not even encountered death), are learning to the full what it is for the flesh to be exempted from all humiliation, and all loss, and all injury, and all disgrace—translated as they have been from this world, and from this very cause already candidates for everlasting life; 7737 —to what faith do these notable facts bear witness, if not to that which ought to inspire in us the belief that they are proofs and documents of our own future integrity and perfect resurrection? For, to borrow the apostle’s phrase, these were “figures of ourselves;” 7738 and they are written that we may believe both that the Lord is more powerful than all natural laws about the body, and that He shows Himself the preserver of the flesh the more emphatically, in that He has preserved for it its very clothes and shoes.
Footnotes
590:7728Isa. xxxv. 10.
590:7729Isa. 35.10.
590:7730Rev. vii. 17.
590:7731Rev. xxi. 4.
590:7732Rev. 20:10, 13.
591:7733Deut. xxix. 5.
591:7734Justitia.
591:7735Dan. iii. 27.
591:7736Jonah 1:17, Jonah 2:10.
591:7737Gen. 5:24, 2 Kings 2:11.
591:77381 Cor. x. 6.
Chapter LIX.—Our Flesh in the Resurrection Capable, Without Losing Its Essential Identity, of Bearing the Changed Conditions of Eternal Life, or of Death Eternal.
But, you object, the world to come bears the character of a different dispensation, even an eternal one; and therefore, you maintain, that the non-eternal substance of this life is incapable of possessing a state of such different features. This would be true enough, if man were made for the future dispensation, and not the dispensation for man. The apostle, however, in his epistle says, “Whether it be the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours:” 7739 and he here constitutes us heirs even of the future world. Isaiah gives you no help when he says, “All flesh is grass;” 7740 and in another passage, “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.” 7741 It is the issues of men, not their substances, which he distinguishes. But who does not hold that the judgment of God consists in the twofold sentence, of salvation and of punishment? Therefore it is that “all flesh is grass,” which is destined to the fire; and “all flesh shall see the salvation of God,” which is ordained to eternal life. For myself, I am quite sure that it is in no other flesh than my own that I have committed adultery, nor in any other flesh am I striving after continence. If there be any one who bears about in his person two instruments of lasciviousness, he has it in his power, to be sure, to mow down 7742 “the grass” of the unclean flesh, and to reserve for himself only that which shall see the salvation of God. But when the same prophet represents to us even nations sometimes estimated as “the small dust of the balance,” 7743 and as “less than nothing, and vanity,” 7744 and sometimes as about to hope and “trust in the name” 7745 and arm of the Lord, are we at all misled respecting the Gentile nations by the diversity of statement? Are some of them to turn believers, and are others accounted dust, from any difference of nature? Nay, rather Christ has shone as the true light on the nations within the ocean’s limits, and from the heaven which is over us all. 7746 Why, it is even on this earth that the Valentinians have gone to school for their errors; and there will be no difference of condition, as respects their body and soul, between the nations which believe and those which do not believe. Precisely, then, as He has put a distinction of state, not of nature, amongst the same nations, so also has He discriminated their flesh, which is one and the same substance in those nations, not according to their material structure, but according to the recompense of their merit.
Footnotes
591:77391 Cor. iii. 22.
591:7740Isa. xl. 7.
591:7741Isa. 40.5.
591:7742Demetere.
591:7743Isa. xl. 15.
591:7744Isa. 40.17. The word is spittle, which the LXX. uses in the fifteenth verse for the “dust” of the Hebrew Bible.
591:7745Isa. xlii. 4, Sept; quoted from the LXX. by Christ in Matt. xii. 21, and by St. Paul in Rom. xv. 12.
591:7746An allusion to some conceits of the Valentinians, who put men of truest nature and fit for Christ’s grace outside of the ocean-bounded earth, etc.
Chapter LX.—All the Characteristics of Our Bodies—Sex, Various Limbs, Etc.—Will Be Retained, Whatever Change of Functions These May Have, of Which Point, However, We are No Judges. Analogy of the Repaired Ship.
But behold how persistently they still accumulate their cavils against the flesh, especially against its identity, deriving their arguments even from the functions of our limbs; on the one hand saying that these ought to continue permanently pursuing their labours and enjoyments, as appendages to the same corporeal frame; and on the other hand contending that, inasmuch as the functions of the limbs shall one day come to an end, the bodily frame itself must be destroyed, its permanence without its limbs being deemed to be as inconceivable, as that of the limbs themselves without their functions! What, they ask, will then be the use of the cavity of our mouth, and its rows of teeth, and the passage of the throat, and the branch-way of the stomach, and the gulf of the belly, and the entangled tissue of the bowels, when there shall no longer be room for eating and drinking? What more will there be for these members to take in, masticate, swallow, secrete, digest, eject? Of what avail will be our very hands, and feet, and all our labouring limbs, when even all care about food shall cease? What purpose can be served by loins, conscious of seminal secretions, and all the other organs of generation, in the two sexes, and the laboratories of embryos, and the fountains of the breast, when concubinage, and pregnancy, and infant nurture shall cease? In short, what will be the use of the entire body, when the entire body shall become useless? In reply to all this, we have then already settled the principle that the dispensation of the future state ought not to be compared with that of the present world, and that in the interval between them a change will take place; and we now add the remark, that these functions of our bodily limbs will continue to supply the needs of this life up to the moment when life itself shall pass away from time to eternity, as the natural body gives place to the spiritual, until “this mortal puts on immorality, and this corruptible puts on incorruption:” 7747 so that when life shall itself become freed from all wants, our limbs shall then be freed also from their services, and therefore will be no longer wanted. Still, although liberated from their offices, they will be yet preserved for judgment, “that every one may receive the things done in his body.” 7748 For the judgment-seat of God requires that man be kept entire. Entire, however, he cannot be without his limbs, of the substance of which, not the functions, he consists; unless, forsooth, you will be bold enough to maintain that a ship is perfect without her keel, or her bow, or her stern, and without the solidity of her entire frame. And yet how often have we seen the same ship, after being shattered with the storm and broken by decay, with all her timbers repaired and restored, gallantly riding on the wave in all the beauty of a renewed fabric! Do we then disquiet ourselves with doubt about God’s skill, and will, and rights? Besides, if a wealthy shipowner, who does not grudge money merely for his amusement or show, thoroughly repairs his ship, and then chooses that she should make no further voyages, will you contend that the old form and finish is still not necessary to the vessel, although she is no longer meant for actual service, when the mere safety of a ship requires such completeness irrespective of service? The sole question, therefore, which is enough for us to consider here, is whether the Lord, when He ordains salvation for man, intends it for his flesh; whether it is His will that the selfsame flesh shall be renewed. If so, it will be improper for you to rule, from the inutility of its limbs in the future state, that the flesh will be incapable of renovation. For a thing may be renewed, and yet be useless from having nothing to do; but it cannot be said to be useless if it has no existence. If, indeed, it has existence, it will be quite possible for it also not to be useless; it may possibly have something to do; for in the presence of God there will be no idleness.
Footnotes
592:77471 Cor. xv. 53.
592:77482 Cor. v. 10.
Chapter LXI.—The Details of Our Bodily Sex, and of the Functions of Our Various Members. Apology for the Necessity Which Heresy Imposes of Hunting Up All Its Unblushing Cavils.
Now you have received your mouth, O man, for the purpose of devouring your food and imbibing your drink: why not, however, for the higher purpose of uttering speech, so as to distinguish yourself from all other animals? Why not rather for preaching the gospel of God, that so you may become even His priest and advocate before men? Adam indeed gave their several names to the animals, before he plucked the fruit of the tree; before he ate, he prophesied. Then, again, you received your teeth for the consumption of your meal: why not rather for wreathing your mouth with suitable defence on every opening thereof, small or wide? Why not, too, for moderating the impulses of your tongue, and guarding your articulate speech from failure and violence? Let me tell you, (if you do not know), that there are toothless persons in the world. Look at them, and ask whether even a cage of teeth be not an honour to the mouth. There are apertures in the lower regions of man and woman, by means of which they gratify no doubt their animal passions; but why are they not rather regarded as outlets for the cleanly discharge of natural fluids? Women, moreover, have within them receptacles where human seed may collect; but are they not designed for the secretion of those sanguineous issues, which their tardier and weaker sex is inadequate to disperse? For even details like these require to be mentioned, seeing that heretics single out what parts of our bodies may suit them, handle them without delicacy, and, as their whim suggests, pour torrents of scorn and contempt upon the natural functions of our members, for the purpose of upsetting the resurrection, and making us blush over their cavils; not reflecting that before the functions cease, the very causes of them will have passed away. There will be no more meat, because no more hunger; no more drink, because no more thirst; no more concubinage, because no more child-bearing; no more eating and drinking, because no more labour and toil. Death, too, will cease; so there will be no more need of the nutriment of food for the defence of life, nor will mothers’ limbs any longer have to be laden for the replenishment of our race. But even in the present life there may be cessations of their office for our stomachs and our generative organs. For forty days Moses 7749 and Elias 7750 fasted, and lived upon God alone. For even so early was the principle consecrated: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” 7751 See here faint outlines of our future strength! We even, as we may be able, excuse our mouths from food, and withdraw our sexes from union. How many voluntary eunuchs are there! How many virgins espoused to Christ! How many, both of men and women, whom nature has made sterile, with a structure which cannot procreate! Now, if even here on earth both the functions and the pleasures of our members may be suspended, with an intermission which, like the dispensation itself, can only be a temporary one, and yet man’s safety is nevertheless unimpaired, how much more, when his salvation is secure, and especially in an eternal dispensation, shall we not cease to desire those things, for which, even here below, we are not unaccustomed to check our longings!
Footnotes
593:7749Ex. xxiv. 8.
593:77501 Kings xix. 8.
593:7751Deut. 8:3, Matt. 4:4.
Chapter LXII.—Our Destined Likeness to the Angels in the Glorious Life of the Resurrection.
To this discussion, however, our Lord’s declaration puts an effectual end: “They shall be,” says He, “equal unto the angels.” 7752 As by not marrying, because of not dying, so, of course, by not having to yield to any like necessity of our bodily state; even as the angels, too, sometimes. were “equal unto” men, by eating and drinking, and submitting their feet to the washing of the bath—having clothed themselves in human guise, without the loss of their own intrinsic nature. If therefore angels, when they became as men, submitted in their own unaltered substance of spirit to be treated as if they were flesh, why shall not men in like manner, when they become “equal unto the angels,” undergo in their unchanged substance of flesh the treatment of spiritual beings, no more exposed to the usual solicitations of the flesh in their angelic garb, than were the angels once to those of the spirit when encompassed in human form? We shall not therefore cease to continue in the flesh, because we cease to be importuned by the usual wants of the flesh; just as the angels ceased not therefore to remain in their spiritual substance, because of the suspension of their spiritual incidents. Lastly, Christ said not, “They shall be angels,” in order not to repeal their existence as men; but He said, “They shall be equal unto the angels,” 7753 that He might preserve their humanity unimpaired. When He ascribed an angelic likeness to the flesh, 7754 He took not from it its proper substance.
Footnotes
593:7752Luke 20:36, Matt. 22:30.
593:7753ἰσάγγελοι.
593:7754Cui.
Chapter LXIII.—Conclusion. The Resurrection of the Flesh in Its Absolute Identity and Perfection. Belief of This Had Become Weak. Hopes for Its Refreshing Restoration Under the Influences of the Paraclete.
And so the flesh shall rise again, wholly in every man, in its own identity, in its absolute integrity. Wherever it may be, it is in safe keeping in God’s presence, through that most faithful “Mediator between God and man, (the man) Jesus Christ,” 7755 who shall reconcile both God to man, and man to God; the spirit to the flesh, and the flesh to the spirit. Both natures has He already united in His own self; He has fitted them together as bride and bridegroom in the reciprocal bond of wedded life. Now, if any should insist on making the soul the bride, then the flesh will follow the soul as her dowry. The soul shall never be an outcast, to be had home by the bridegroom bare and naked. She has her dower, her outfit, her fortune in the flesh, which shall accompany her with the love and fidelity of a foster-sister. But suppose the flesh to be the bride, then in Christ Jesus she has in the contract of His blood received His Spirit as her spouse. Now, what you take to be her extinction, you may be sure is only her temporary retirement. It is not the soul only which withdraws from view. The flesh, too, has her departures for a while—in waters, in fires, in birds, in beasts; she may seem to be dissolved into these, but she is only poured into them, as into vessels. And should the vessels themselves afterwards fail to hold her, escaping from even these, and returning to her mother earth, she is absorbed once more, as it were, by its secret embraces, ultimately to stand forth to view, like Adam when summoned to hear from his Lord and Creator the words, “Behold, the man is become as one of us!” 7756 —thoroughly “knowing” by that time “the evil” which she had escaped, “and the good” which she has acquired. Why, then, O soul, should you envy the flesh? There is none, after the Lord, whom you should love so dearly; none more like a brother to you, which is even born along with yourself in God. You ought rather to have been by your prayers obtaining resurrection for her: her sins, whatever they were, were owing to you. However, it is no wonder if you hate her; for you have repudiated her Creator. 7757 You have accustomed yourself either to deny or change her existence even in Christ 7758 —corrupting the very Word of God Himself, who became flesh, either by mutilating or misinterpreting the Scripture, 7759 and introducing, above all, apocryphal mysteries and blasphemous fables. 7760 But yet Almighty God, in His most gracious providence, by “pouring out of His Spirit in these last days, upon all flesh, upon His servants and on His handmaidens,” 7761 has checked these impostures of unbelief and perverseness, reanimated men’s faltering faith in the resurrection of the flesh, and cleared from all obscurity and equivocation the ancient Scriptures (of both God’s Testaments 7762 ) by the clear light of their (sacred) words and meanings. Now, since it was “needful that there should be heresies, in order that they which are approved might be made manifest;” 7763 since, however, these heresies would be unable to put on a bold front without some countenance from the Scriptures, it therefore is plain enough that the ancient Holy Writ has furnished them with sundry materials for their evil doctrine, which very materials indeed (so distorted) are refutable from the same Scriptures. It was fit and proper, therefore, that the Holy Ghost should no longer withhold the effusions of His gracious light upon these inspired writings, in order that they might be able to disseminate the seeds of truth with no admixture of heretical subtleties, and pluck out from it their tares. He has accordingly now dispersed all the perplexities of the past, and their self-chosen allegories and parables, by the open and perspicuous explanation of the entire mystery, through the new prophecy, which descends in copious streams from the Paraclete. If you will only draw water from His fountains, you will never thirst for other doctrine: no feverish craving after subtle questions will again consume you; but by drinking in evermore the resurrection of the flesh, you will be satisfied with the refreshing draughts.
Footnotes
593:77551 Tim. ii. 5.
594:7756Gen. iii. 22.
594:7757In this apostrophe to the soul, he censures Marcion’s heresy.
594:7758Compare the De Carne Christi.
594:7759See the De Præscript. Hæret. ch. xxxviii. supra, for instances of these diverse methods of heresy. Marcion is mentioned as the mutilator of Scripture, by cutting away from it whatever opposed his views; Valentinus as the corrupter thereof, by his manifold and fantastic interpretations.
594:7760See the Adv. Valentinianos, supra.
594:7761Joel 2:28, 29, Acts 2:17, 18. [See last sentence. He improves upon St. Peter’s interpretation of this text (as see below) by attributing his own clear views to the charismata, which he regards as still vouchsafed to the more spiritual.]
594:7762We follow Oehler’s view here, by all means.
594:77631 Cor. xi. 19.
Elucidations.
————————————
I.
(Cadaver, cap. xviii. p. 588.)
The Schoolmen and middle-age jurists improved on Tertullian’s etymology. He says,—“a cadendo—cadaver.” But they form the word thus: Caro data vermibus = Ca-da-ver.
On this subject see a most interesting discourse of the (paradoxical and sophistical, nay the whimsical) Count Joseph de Maistre, in his Soirées de St. Pétersbourg. 7764 He remarks on the happy formation of many Latin words, in this manner: e.g., Cæcus ut ire = Cæcutire, “to grope like a blind man.” The French, he says, are not without such examples, and he instances the word ancêtre = ancestor, as composed out of ancien and être, i.e., one of a former existence. Courage, he says, is formed from cæur and rage, this use of rage being the Greek θυμος. He supposes that the English use the word rage in this sense, but I recall only the instance:
“Chill penury repressed their noble rage,”
from Gray’s Elegy. The Diversions of Purley, of Horne-Tooke, supply amusing examples of the like in the formation of English words.
II.
(His flesh, the Bread, cap. xxxvii. p. 572.)
Note our author’s exposition. He censures those who understood our Lord’s words after the letter, as if they were to eat the carnal body. He expounds the spiritual thing which gives life as to be understood by the text: “the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.” His word is the life-giving principle and therefore he called his flesh by the same name: and we are to “devour Him with the ear and to ruminate on Him with the understanding, and to digest Him by faith.” The flesh profits nothing, the spirit imparts life. Now, was Tertullian ever censured for this exposition? On the contrary, this was the faith of the Catholic Church, from the beginning. Our Saxon forefathers taught the same, as appears from the Homily of Ælfric, 7765 a.d. 980, and from the exposition of Ratramn, a.d. 840. The heresy of Transubstantiation was not dogmatic even among Latins, until the Thirteenth century, and it prevailed in England less than three hundred years, when the Catholic doctrine was restored, through the influence of Ratramn’s treatise first upon the mind of Ridley and then by Ridley’s arguments with Cranmer. Thus were their understandings opened to the Scriptures and to the acknowledging of the Truth, for which they suffered martyrdom. To the reformation we owe the rescue of Ante-Nicene doctrine from the perversions of the Schoolmen and the gradual corruptions of doctrine after the Ninth Century.
III.
(Paradise, cap. xliii. p. 576.)
This sentence reads, in the translation I am editing, as follows: “No one, on becoming absent from the body, is at once a dweller in the presence of the Lord, except by the prerogative of martyrdom, whereby (the saint) gets at once a lodging in Paradise, not in Hades.” But the original does not say precisely this, nor does the author use the Greek word Hades. His words are: “Nemo enim peregrinatus a corpore statim immoratur penes Dominum nisi ex martyrii prœrogativa Paradiso silicet non Inferis diversurus.” The passage therefore, is not necessarily as inconsistent with the author’s topography of the invisible world, as might seem. “Not in the regions beneath Paradise but in Paradise itself,” seems to be the idea; Paradise being included in the world of Hades, indeed, but in a lofty region, far enough removed from the Inferi, and refreshed by light from the third Heaven and the throne itself, (as this planet is by the light of the Sun,) immensely distant though it be from the final abode of the Redeemed.
Footnotes
594:7764Œuvres, Tom. v. p. 111.
595:776582 See Soames’ Anglo Saxon Church, cap. xii. p. 465, and cap. xi. pp. 423–430. See also the valuable annotations of Dr. Routh’s Opuscula, Vol. II. pp. 167–186.
VII.
Against Praxeas; 7766
In Which He Defends, in all Essential Points, the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity. 7767
[Translated by Dr. Holmes.]
————————————
Chapter I.—Satan’s Wiles Against the Truth. How They Take the Form of the Praxean Heresy. Account of the Publication of This Heresy.
In various ways has the devil rivalled and resisted the truth. Sometimes his aim has been to destroy the truth by defending it. He maintains that there is one only Lord, the Almighty Creator of the world, in order that out of this doctrine of the unity he may fabricate a heresy. He says that the Father Himself came down into the Virgin, was Himself born of her, Himself suffered, indeed was Himself Jesus Christ. Here the old serpent has fallen out with himself, since, when he tempted Christ after John’s baptism, he approached Him as “the Son of God;” surely intimating that God had a Son, even on the testimony of the very Scriptures, out of which he was at the moment forging his temptation: “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.” 7768 Again: “If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence; 7769 for it is written, He shall give His angels charge concerning thee”—referring no doubt, to the Father—“and in their hands they shall bear thee up, that thou hurt not thy foot against a stone.” 7770 Or perhaps, after all, he was only reproaching the Gospels with a lie, saying in fact: “Away with Matthew; away with Luke! Why heed their words? In spite of them, I declare that it was God Himself that I approached; it was the Almighty Himself that I tempted face to face; and it was for no other purpose than to tempt Him that I approached Him. If, on the contrary, it had been only the Son of God, most likely I should never have condescended to deal with Him.” However, he is himself a liar from the beginning, 7771 and whatever man he instigates in his own way; as, for instance, Praxeas. For he was the first to import into Rome from Asia this kind of heretical pravity, a man in other respects of restless disposition, and above all inflated with the pride of confessorship simply and solely because he had to bear for a short time the annoyance of a prison; on which occasion, even “if he had given his body to be burned, it would have profited him nothing,” not having the love of God, 7772 whose very gifts he has resisted and destroyed. For after the Bishop of Rome 7773 had acknowledged the prophetic gifts of Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla, and, in consequence of the acknowledgment, had bestowed his peace 7774 on the churches of Asia and Phrygia, he, by importunately urging false accusations against the prophets themselves and their churches, and insisting on the authority of the bishop’s predecessors in the see, compelled him to recall the pacific letter which he had issued, as well as to desist from his purpose of acknowledging the said gifts. By this Praxeas did a twofold service for the devil at Rome: he drove away prophecy, and he brought in heresy; he put to flight the Paraclete, and he crucified the Father. Praxeas’ tares had been moreover sown, and had produced their fruit here also, 7775 while many were asleep in their simplicity of doctrine; but these tares actually seemed to have been plucked up, having been discovered and exposed by him whose agency God was pleased to employ. Indeed, Praxeas had deliberately resumed his old (true) faith, teaching it after his renunciation of error; and there is his own handwriting in evidence remaining among the carnally-minded, 7776 in whose society the transaction then took place; afterwards nothing was heard of him. We indeed, on our part, subsequently withdrew from the carnally-minded on our acknowledgment and maintenance of the Paraclete. 7777 But the tares of Praxeas had then everywhere shaken out their seed, which having lain hid for some while, with its vitality concealed under a mask, has now broken out with fresh life. But again shall it be rooted up, if the Lord will, even now; but if not now, in the day when all bundles of tares shall be gathered together, and along with every other stumbling-block shall be burnt up with unquenchable fire. 7778
Footnotes
597:7766The error of Praxeas appears to have originated in anxiety to maintain the unity of God; which, he thought, could only be done by saying that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost were one and the same. He contended, therefore, according to Tertullian, that the Father himself descended into the virgin, was born of her, suffered, and was in a word Jesus Christ. From the most startling of the deductions from Praxeas’ general theory, his opponents gave him and his followers the name of Patripassians; from another point in his teaching they were called Monarchians. [Probable date not earlier than a.d. 208].
597:7767[Elucidation I.]
597:7768Matt. iv. 3.
597:7769Matt. 4.6.
597:7770Ps. xci. 11.
597:7771John viii. 44.
597:77721 Cor. xiii. 3.
597:7773Probably Victor. [Elucidation II.]
597:7774Had admitted them to communion.
597:7775“The connection renders it very probable that the hic quoque of this sentence forms an antithesis to Rome, mentioned before, and that Tertullian expresses himself as if he had written from the very spot where these things had transpired. Hence we are led to conclude that it was Carthage.”—Neander, Antignostikus, ii. 519, note 2, Bohn.
598:7776On the designation Psychici, see our Anti-Marcion, p. 263, note 5, Edin.
598:7777[This statement may only denote a withdrawal from the communion of the Bishop of Rome, like that of Cyprian afterwards. That prelate had stultified himself and broken faith with Tertullian; but, it does not, necessarily, as Bp. Bull too easily concludes, define his ultimate separation from his own bishop and the North-African church.]
598:7778Matt. xiii. 30.
Chapter II.—The Catholic Doctrine of the Trinity and Unity, Sometimes Called the Divine Economy, or Dispensation of the Personal Relations of the Godhead.
In the course of time, then, the Father forsooth was born, and the Father suffered, God Himself, the Lord Almighty, whom in their preaching they declare to be Jesus Christ. We, however, as we indeed always have done (and more especially since we have been better instructed by the Paraclete, who leads men indeed into all truth), believe that there is one only God, but under the following dispensation, or οἰκονομία , as it is called, that this one only God has also a Son, His Word, who proceeded 7779 from Himself, by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. Him we believe to have been sent by the Father into the Virgin, and to have been born of her—being both Man and God, the Son of Man and the Son of God, and to have been called by the name of Jesus Christ; we believe Him to have suffered, died, and been buried, according to the Scriptures, and, after He had been raised again by the Father and taken back to heaven, to be sitting at the right hand of the Father, and that He will come to judge the quick and the dead; who sent also from heaven from the Father, according to His own promise, the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, 7780 the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost. That this rule of faith has come down to us from the beginning of the gospel, even before any of the older heretics, much more before Praxeas, a pretender of yesterday, will be apparent both from the lateness of date 7781 which marks all heresies, and also from the absolutely novel character of our new-fangled Praxeas. In this principle also we must henceforth find a presumption of equal force against all heresies whatsoever—that whatever is first is true, whereas that is spurious which is later in date. 7782 But keeping this prescriptive rule inviolate, still some opportunity must be given for reviewing (the statements of heretics), with a view to the instruction and protection of divers persons; were it only that it may not seem that each perversion of the truth is condemned without examination, and simply prejudged; 7783 especially in the case of this heresy, which supposes itself to possess the pure truth, in thinking that one cannot believe in One Only God in any other way than by saying that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are the very selfsame Person. As if in this way also one were not All, in that All are of One, by unity (that is) of substance; while the mystery of the dispensation 7784 is still guarded, which distributes the Unity into a Trinity, placing in their order 7785 the three Persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: three, however, not in condition, 7786 but in degree; 7787 not in substance, but in form; not in power, but in aspect; 7788 yet of one substance, and of one condition, and of one power, inasmuch as He is one God, from whom these degrees and forms and aspects are reckoned, under the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. 7789 How they are susceptible of number without division, will be shown as our treatise proceeds.
Footnotes
598:7779The Church afterwards applied this term exclusively to the Holy Ghost. [That is, the Nicene Creed made it technically applicable to the Spirit, making the distinction marked between the generation of the Word and the procession of the Holy Ghost.]
598:7780The “Comforter.”
598:7781See our Anti-Marcion, p. 119, n. 1. Edin.
598:7782See his De Præscript. xxix.
598:7783Tertullian uses similar precaution in his argument elsewhere. See our Anti-Marcion, pp. 3 and 119. Edin.
598:7784οἰκονομία.
598:7785Dirigens.
598:7786Statu.
598:7787See The Apology, ch. xxi.
598:7788Specie.
598:7789See Bull’s Def. Fid. Nic., and the translation (by the translator of this work), in the Oxford Series, p. 202.
Chapter III.—Sundry Popular Fears and Prejudices. The Doctrine of the Trinity in Unity Rescued from These Misapprehensions.
The simple, indeed, (I will not call them unwise and unlearned,) who always constitute the majority of believers, are startled at the dispensation 7790 (of the Three in One), on the ground that their very rule of faith withdraws them from the world’s plurality of gods to the one only true God; not understanding that, although He is the one only God, He must yet be believed in with His own οἰκονομία . The numerical order and distribution of the Trinity they assume to be a division of the Unity; whereas the Unity which derives the Trinity out of its own self is so far from being destroyed, that it is actually supported by it. They are constantly throwing out against us that we are preachers of two gods and three gods, while they take to themselves pre-eminently the credit of being worshippers of the One God; just as if the Unity itself with irrational deductions did not produce heresy, and the Trinity rationally considered constitute the truth. We, say they, maintain the Monarchy (or, sole government of God). 7791 And so, as far as the sound goes, do even Latins (and ignorant ones too) pronounce the word in such a way that you would suppose their understanding of the μοναρχία (or Monarchy) was as complete as their pronunciation of the term. Well, then Latins take pains to pronounce the μοναρχία (or Monarchy), while Greeks actually refuse to understand the οἰκονομία, or Dispensation (of the Three in One). As for myself, however, if I have gleaned any knowledge of either language, I am sure that μοναρχία (or Monarchy) has no other meaning than single and individual 7792 rule; but for all that, this monarchy does not, because it is the government of one, preclude him whose government it is, either from having a son, or from having made himself actually a son to himself, 7793 or from ministering his own monarchy by whatever agents he will. Nay more, I contend that no dominion so belongs to one only, as his own, or is in such a sense singular, or is in such a sense a monarchy, as not also to be administered through other persons most closely connected with it, and whom it has itself provided as officials to itself. If, moreover, there be a son belonging to him whose monarchy it is, it does not forthwith become divided and cease to be a monarchy, if the son also be taken as a sharer in it; but it is as to its origin equally his, by whom it is communicated to the son; and being his, it is quite as much a monarchy (or sole empire), since it is held together by two who are so inseparable. 7794 Therefore, inasmuch as the Divine Monarchy also is administered by so many legions and hosts of angels, according as it is written, “Thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him;” 7795 and since it has not from this circumstance ceased to be the rule of one (so as no longer to be a monarchy), because it is administered by so many thousands of powers; how comes it to pass that God should be thought to suffer division and severance in the Son and in the Holy Ghost, who have the second and the third places assigned to them, and who are so closely joined with the Father in His substance, when He suffers no such (division and severance) in the multitude of so many angels? Do you really suppose that Those, who are naturally members of the Father’s own substance, pledges of His love, 7796 instruments of His might, nay, His power itself and the entire system of His monarchy, are the overthrow and destruction thereof? You are not right in so thinking. I prefer your exercising yourself on the meaning of the thing rather than on the sound of the word. Now you must understand the overthrow of a monarchy to be this, when another dominion, which has a framework and a state peculiar to itself (and is therefore a rival), is brought in over and above it: when, e.g., some other god is introduced in opposition to the Creator, as in the opinions of Marcion; or when many gods are introduced, according to your Valentinuses and your Prodicuses. Then it amounts to an overthrow of the Monarchy, since it involves the destruction of the Creator. 7797
Footnotes
599:7790οἰκονυμία.
599:7791So Bp. Kaye, On Tertullian, p. 499.
599:7792Unicum.
599:7793This was a notion of Praxeas. See ch. x.
599:7794Tam unicis.
599:7795Dan. vii. 10.
599:7796“Pignora” is often used of children and dearest relations.
599:7797[The first sentence of this chapter is famous for a controversy between Priestly and Bp. Horsley, the latter having translated idiotæ by the word idiots. See Kaye, p. 498.]
Chapter IV.—The Unity of the Godhead and the Supremacy and Sole Government of the Divine Being. The Monarchy Not at All Impaired by the Catholic Doctrine.
But as for me, who derive the Son from no other source but from the substance of the Father, and (represent Him) as doing nothing without the Father’s will, and as having received all power from the Father, how can I be possibly destroying the Monarchy from the faith, when I preserve it in the Son just as it was committed to Him by the Father? The same remark (I wish also to be formally) made by me with respect to the third degree in the Godhead, because I believe the Spirit to proceed from no other source than from the Father through the Son. 7798 Look to it then, that it be not you rather who are destroying the Monarchy, when you overthrow the arrangement and dispensation of it, which has been constituted in just as many names as it has pleased God to employ. But it remains so firm and stable in its own state, notwithstanding the introduction into it of the Trinity, that the Son actually has to restore it entire to the Father; even as the apostle says in his epistle, concerning the very end of all: “When He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; for He must reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet;” 7799 following of course the words of the Psalm: “Sit Thou on my right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.” 7800 “When, however, all things shall be subdued to Him, (with the exception of Him who did put all things under Him,) then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.” 7801 We thus see that the Son is no obstacle to the Monarchy, although it is now administered by 7802 the Son; because with the Son it is still in its own state, and with its own state will be restored to the Father by the Son. No one, therefore, will impair it, on account of admitting the Son (to it), since it is certain that it has been committed to Him by the Father, and by and by has to be again delivered up by Him to the Father. Now, from this one passage of the epistle of the inspired apostle, we have been already able to show that the Father and the Son are two separate Persons, not only by the mention of their separate names as Father and the Son, but also by the fact that He who delivered up the kingdom, and He to whom it is delivered up—and in like manner, He who subjected (all things), and He to whom they were subjected—must necessarily be two different Beings.
Footnotes
599:7798[Compare Cap. viii. infra.]
600:77991 Cor. 15:24, 25.
600:7800Ps. cx. 1.
600:78011 Cor. 15:27, 28.
600:7802Apud.
Chapter V.—The Evolution of the Son or Word of God from the Father by a Divine Procession. Illustrated by the Operation of the Human Thought and Consciousness.
But since they will have the Two to be but One, so that the Father shall be deemed to be the same as the Son, it is only right that the whole question respecting the Son should be examined, as to whether He exists, and who He is and the mode of His existence. Thus shall the truth itself 7803 secure its own sanction 7804 from the Scriptures, and the interpretations which guard 7805 them. There are some who allege that even Genesis opens thus in Hebrew: “In the beginning God made for Himself a Son.” 7806 As there is no ground for this, I am led to other arguments derived from God’s own dispensation, 7807 in which He existed before the creation of the world, up to the generation of the Son. For before all things God was alone—being in Himself and for Himself universe, and space, and all things. Moreover, He was alone, because there was nothing external to Him but Himself. Yet even not then was He alone; for He had with Him that which He possessed in Himself, that is to say, His own Reason. For God is rational, and Reason was first in Him; and so all things were from Himself. This Reason is His own Thought (or Consciousness) 7808 which the Greeks call λόγος, by which term we also designate Word or Discourse 7809 and therefore it is now usual with our people, owing to the mere simple interpretation of the term, to say that the Word 7810 was in the beginning with God; although it would be more suitable to regard Reason as the more ancient; because God had not Word 7811 from the beginning, but He had Reason 7812 even before the beginning; because also Word itself consists of Reason, which it thus proves to have been the prior existence as being its own substance. 7813 Not that this distinction is of any practical moment. For although God had not yet sent out His Word, 7814 He still had Him within Himself, both in company with and included within His very Reason, as He silently planned and arranged within Himself everything which He was afterwards about to utter 7815 through His Word. Now, whilst He was thus planning and arranging with His own Reason, He was actually causing that to become Word which He was dealing with in the way of Word or Discourse. 7816 And that you may the more readily understand this, consider first of all, from your own self, who are made “in the image and likeness of God,” 7817 for what purpose it is that you also possess reason in yourself, who are a rational creature, as being not only made by a rational Artificer, but actually animated out of His substance. Observe, then, that when you are silently conversing with yourself, this very process is carried on within you by your reason, which meets you with a word at every movement of your thought, at every impulse of your conception. Whatever you think, there is a word; whatever you conceive, there is reason. You must needs speak it in your mind; and while you are speaking, you admit speech as an interlocutor with you, involved in which there is this very reason, whereby, while in thought you are holding converse with your word, you are (by reciprocal action) producing thought by means of that converse with your word. Thus, in a certain sense, the word is a second person within you, through which in thinking you utter speech, and through which also, (by reciprocity of process,) in uttering speech you generate thought. The word is itself a different thing from yourself. Now how much more fully is all this transacted in God, whose image and likeness even you are regarded as being, inasmuch as He has reason within Himself even while He is silent, and involved in that Reason His Word! I may therefore without rashness first lay this down (as a fixed principle) that even then before the creation of the universe God was not alone, since He had within Himself both Reason, and, inherent in Reason, His Word, which He made second to Himself by agitating it within Himself.
Footnotes
600:7803Res ipsa.
600:7804Formam, or shape.
600:7805Patrocinantibus.
600:7806See St. Jerome’s Quæstt. Hebr. in Genesim, ii. 507.
600:7807“Dispositio” means “mutual relations in the Godhead.” See Bp. Bull’s Def. Fid. Nicen., Oxford translation, p. 516.
600:7808Sensus ipsius.
600:7809Sermonem. [He always calls the Logos not Verbum, but Sermo, in this treatise. A masculine word was better to exhibit our author’s thought. So Erasmus translates Logos in his N. Testament, on which see Kaye, p. 516.]
600:7810Sermonen.
600:7811Sermonalis.
600:7812Rationalis.
600:7813i.e., “Reason is manifestly prior to the Word, which it dictates” (Bp. Kaye, p. 501).
600:7814Sermonem.
600:7815Dicturus. Another reading is “daturus,” about to give.
600:7816Sermone.
600:7817Gen. i. 26.
Chapter VI.—The Word of God is Also the Wisdom of God. The Going Forth of Wisdom to Create the Universe, According to the Divine Plan.
This power and disposition 7818 of the Divine Intelligence 7819 is set forth also in the Scriptures under the name of Σοφία, Wisdom; for what can be better entitled to the name of Wisdom 7820 than the Reason or the Word of God? Listen therefore to Wisdom herself, constituted in the character of a Second Person: “At the first the Lord created me as the beginning of His ways, with a view to His own works, before He made the earth, before the mountains were settled; moreover, before all the hills did He beget me;” 7821 that is to say, He created and generated me in His own intelligence. Then, again, observe the distinction between them implied in the companionship of Wisdom with the Lord. “When He prepared the heaven,” says Wisdom, “I was present with Him; and when He made His strong places upon the winds, which are the clouds above; and when He secured the fountains, (and all things) which are beneath the sky, I was by, arranging all things with Him; I was by, in whom He delighted; and daily, too, did I rejoice in His presence.” 7822 Now, as soon as it pleased God to put forth into their respective substances and forms the things which He had planned and ordered within Himself, in conjunction with His Wisdom’s Reason and Word, He first put forth the Word Himself, having within Him His own inseparable Reason and Wisdom, in order that all things might be made through Him through whom they had been planned and disposed, yea, and already made, so far forth as (they were) in the mind and intelligence of God. This, however, was still wanting to them, that they should also be openly known, and kept permanently in their proper forms and substances.
Footnotes
601:7818“Mutual relations in the Godhead.”
601:7819Sensus.
601:7820Sapientius.
601:7821Prov. viii. 22-25.
601:7822Prov. viii. 27-30.
Chapter VII.—The Son by Being Designated Word and Wisdom, (According to the Imperfection of Human Thought and Language) Liable to Be Deemed a Mere Attribute. He is Shown to Be a Personal Being.
Then, therefore, does the Word also Himself assume His own form and glorious garb, 7823 His own sound and vocal utterance, when God says, “Let there be light.” 7824 This is the perfect nativity of the Word, when He proceeds forth from God—formed 7825 by Him first to devise and think out all things under the name of Wisdom—“The Lord created or formed 7826 me as the beginning of His ways;” 7827 then afterward begotten, to carry all into effect—“When He prepared the heaven, I was present with Him.” 7828 Thus does He make Him equal to Him: for by proceeding from Himself He became His first-begotten Son, because begotten before all things; 7829 and His only-begotten also, because alone begotten of God, in a way peculiar to Himself, from the womb of His own heart—even as the Father Himself testifies: “My heart,” says He, “hath emitted my most excellent Word.” 7830 The Father took pleasure evermore in Him, who equally rejoiced with a reciprocal gladness in the Father’s presence: “Thou art my Son, to-day have I begotten Thee;” 7831 even before the morning star did I beget Thee. The Son likewise acknowledges the Father, speaking in His own person, under the name of Wisdom: “The Lord formed Me as the beginning of His ways, with a view to His own works; before all the hills did He beget Me.” 7832 For if indeed Wisdom in this passage seems to say that She was created by the Lord with a view to His works, and to accomplish His ways, yet proof is given in another Scripture that “all things were made by the Word, and without Him was there nothing made;” 7833 as, again, in another place (it is said), “By His word were the heavens established, and all the powers thereof by His Spirit” 7834 —that is to say, by the Spirit (or Divine Nature) which was in the Word: thus is it evident that it is one and the same power which is in one place described under the name of Wisdom, and in another passage under the appellation of the Word, which was initiated for the works of God 7835 which “strengthened the heavens;” 7836 “by which all things were made,” 7837 “and without which nothing was made.” 7838 Nor need we dwell any longer on this point, as if it were not the very Word Himself, who is spoken of under the name both of Wisdom and of Reason, and of the entire Divine Soul and Spirit. He became also the Son of God, and was begotten when He proceeded forth from Him. Do you then, (you ask,) grant that the Word is a certain substance, constructed by the Spirit and the communication of Wisdom? Certainly I do. But you will not allow Him to be really a substantive being, by having a substance of His own; in such a way that He may be regarded as an objective thing and a person, and so be able (as being constituted second to God the Father,) to make two, the Father and the Son, God and the Word. For you will say, what is a word, but a voice and sound of the mouth, and (as the grammarians teach) air when struck against, 7839 intelligible to the ear, but for the rest a sort of void, empty, and incorporeal thing. I, on the contrary, contend that nothing empty and void could have come forth from God, seeing that it is not put forth from that which is empty and void; nor could that possibly be devoid of substance which has proceeded from so great a substance, and has produced such mighty substances: for all things which were made through Him, He Himself (personally) made. How could it be, that He Himself is nothing, without whom nothing was made? How could He who is empty have made things which are solid, and He who is void have made things which are full, and He who is incorporeal have made things which have body? For although a thing may sometimes be made different from him by whom it is made, yet nothing can be made by that which is a void and empty thing. Is that Word of God, then, a void and empty thing, which is called the Son, who Himself is designated God? “The Word was with God, and the Word was God.” 7840 It is written, “Thou shalt not take God’s name in vain.” 7841 This for certain is He “who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.” 7842 In what form of God? Of course he means in some form, not in none. For who will deny that God is a body, although “God is a Spirit?” 7843 For Spirit has a bodily substance of its own kind, in its own form. 7844 Now, even if invisible things, whatsoever they be, have both their substance and their form in God, whereby they are visible to God alone, how much more shall that which has been sent forth from His substance not be without substance! Whatever, therefore, was the substance of the Word that I designate a Person, I claim for it the name of Son; and while I recognize the Son, I assert His distinction as second to the Father. 7845
Footnotes
601:7823Ornatum.
601:7824Gen. i. 3.
601:7825Conditus. [See Theophilus To Autolycus, cap. x. note 1, p. 98, Vol. II. of this series. Also Ibid. p. 103, note 5. On the whole subject, Bp. Bull, Defensio Fid. Nicænæ. Vol. V. pp. 585–592.]
601:7826Condidit.
601:7827Prov. viii. 22.
601:7828Prov. 8.27.
601:7829Col. i. 15.
601:7830Ps. xlv. 1. See this reading, and its application, fully discussed in our note 5, p. 66, of the Anti-Marcion, Edin.
601:7831Ps. ii. 7.
602:7832Prov. 8:22, 25.
602:7833John i. 3.
602:7834Ps. xxxiii. 6.
602:7835Prov. viii. 22.
602:7836Prov. 8.28.
602:7837John i. 3.
602:7838John i. 3.
602:7839Offensus.
602:7840John i. 1.
602:7841Ex. xx. 7.
602:7842Phil. ii. 6.
602:7843John iv. 24.
602:7844This doctrine of the soul’s corporeality in a certain sense is treated by Tertullian in his De Resurr. Carn. xvii., and De Anima v. By Tertullian, spirit and soul were considered identical. See our Anti-Marcion, p. 451, note 4, Edin.
602:7845[On Tertullian’s orthodoxy, here, see Kaye, p. 502.]
Chapter VIII.—Though the Son or Word of God Emanates from the Father, He is Not, Like the Emanations of Valentinus, Separable from the Father. Nor is the Holy Ghost Separable from Either. Illustrations from Nature.
If any man from this shall think that I am introducing some προβολή—that is to say, some prolation 7846 of one thing out of another, as Valentinus does when he sets forth Æon from Æon, one after another—then this is my first reply to you: Truth must not therefore refrain from the use of such a term, and its reality and meaning, because heresy also employs it. The fact is, heresy has rather taken it from Truth, in order to mould it into its own counterfeit. Was the Word of God put forth or not? Here take your stand with me, and flinch not. If He was put forth, then acknowledge that the true doctrine has a prolation; 7847 and never mind heresy, when in any point it mimics the truth. The question now is, in what sense each side uses a given thing and the word which expresses it. Valentinus divides and separates his prolations from their Author, and places them at so great a distance from Him, that the Æon does not know the Father: he longs, indeed, to know Him, but cannot; nay, he is almost swallowed up and dissolved into the rest of matter. 7848 With us, however, the Son alone knows the Father, 7849 and has Himself unfolded “the Father’s bosom.” 7850 He has also heard and seen all things with the Father; and what He has been commanded by the Father, that also does He speak. 7851 And it is not His own will, but the Father’s, which He has accomplished, 7852 which He had known most intimately, even from the beginning. “For what man knoweth the things which be in God, but the Spirit which is in Him?” 7853 But the Word was formed by the Spirit, and (if I may so express myself) the Spirit is the body of the Word. The Word, therefore, is both always in the Father, as He says, “I am in the Father;” 7854 and is always with God, according to what is written, “And the Word was with God;” 7855 and never separate from the Father, or other than the Father, since “I and the Father are one.” 7856 This will be the prolation, taught by the truth, 7857 the guardian of the Unity, wherein we declare that the Son is a prolation from the Father, without being separated from Him. For God sent forth the Word, as the Paraclete also declares, just as the root puts forth the tree, and the fountain the river, and the sun the ray. 7858 For these are προβολαί, or emanations, of the substances from which they proceed. I should not hesitate, indeed, to call the tree the son or offspring of the root, and the river of the fountain, and the ray of the sun; because every original source is a parent, and everything which issues from the origin is an offspring. Much more is (this true of) the Word of God, who has actually received as His own peculiar designation the name of Son. But still the tree is not severed from the root, nor the river from the fountain, nor the ray from the sun; nor, indeed, is the Word separated from God. Following, therefore, the form of these analogies, I confess that I call God and His Word—the Father and His Son—two. For the root and the tree are distinctly two things, but correlatively joined; the fountain and the river are also two forms, but indivisible; so likewise the sun and the ray are two forms, but coherent ones. Everything which proceeds from something else must needs be second to that from which it proceeds, without being on that account separated. Where, however, there is a second, there must be two; and where there is a third, there must be three. Now the Spirit indeed is third from God and the Son; just as the fruit of the tree is third from the root, or as the stream out of the river is third from the fountain, or as the apex of the ray is third from the sun. Nothing, however, is alien from that original source whence it derives its own properties. In like manner the Trinity, flowing down from the Father through intertwined and connected steps, does not at all disturb the Monarchy, 7859 whilst it at the same time guards the state of the Economy. 7860
Footnotes
602:7846“The word προβολή properly means anything which proceeds or is sent forth from the substance of another, as the fruit of a tree or the rays of the sun. In Latin, it is translated by prolatio, emissio, or editio, or what we now express by the word development. In Tertullian’s time, Valentinus had given the term a material signification. Tertullian, therefore, has to apologize for using it, when writing against Praxeas, the forerunner of the Sabellians” (Newman’s Arians, ii. 4; reprint, p. 101).
603:7847προβολή.
603:7848See Adv. Valentin. cc. xiv. xv.
603:7849Matt. xi. 27.
603:7850John i. 18.
603:7851John viii. 26.
603:7852John vi. 38.
603:78531 Cor. ii. 11.
603:7854John xiv. 11.
603:7855John i. 1.
603:7856John x. 30.
603:7857Literally, the προβολή, “of the truth.”
603:7858[Compare cap. iv. supra.]
603:7859Or oneness of the divine empire.
603:7860Or dispensation of the divine tripersonality. See above ch. ii.
Chapter IX.—The Catholic Rule of Faith Expounded in Some of Its Points. Especially in the Unconfused Distinction of the Several Persons of the Blessed Trinity.
Bear always in mind that this is the rule of faith which I profess; by it I testify that the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit are inseparable from each other, and so will you know in what sense this is said. Now, observe, my assertion is that the Father is one, and the Son one, and the Spirit one, and that They are distinct from Each Other. This statement is taken in a wrong sense by every uneducated as well as every perversely disposed person, as if it predicated a diversity, in such a sense as to imply a separation among the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit. I am, moreover, obliged to say this, when (extolling the Monarchy at the expense of the Economy) they contend for the identity of the Father and Son and Spirit, that it is not by way of diversity that the Son differs from the Father, but by distribution: it is not by division that He is different, but by distinction; because the Father is not the same as the Son, since they differ one from the other in the mode of their being. 7861 For the Father is the entire substance, but the Son is a derivation and portion of the whole, 7862 as He Himself acknowledges: “My Father is greater than I.” 7863 In the Psalm His inferiority is described as being “a little lower than the angels.” 7864 Thus the Father is distinct from the Son, being greater than the Son, inasmuch as He who begets is one, and He who is begotten is another; He, too, who sends is one, and He who is sent is another; and He, again, who makes is one, and He through whom the thing is made is another. Happily the Lord Himself employs this expression of the person of the Paraclete, so as to signify not a division or severance, but a disposition (of mutual relations in the Godhead); for He says, “I will pray the Father, and He shall send you another Comforter…even the Spirit of truth,” 7865 thus making the Paraclete distinct from Himself, even as we say that the Son is also distinct from the Father; so that He showed a third degree in the Paraclete, as we believe the second degree is in the Son, by reason of the order observed in the Economy. Besides, does not the very fact that they have the distinct names of Father and Son amount to a declaration that they are distinct in personality? 7866 For, of course, all things will be what their names represent them to be; and what they are and ever will be, that will they be called; and the distinction indicated by the names does not at all admit of any confusion, because there is none in the things which they designate. “Yes is yes, and no is no; for what is more than these, cometh of evil.” 7867
Footnotes
603:7861“Modulo,” in the sense of dispensation or economy. See Oehler and Rigault. on The Apology, c. xxi.
604:7862“In his representation of the distinction (of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity), Tertullian sometimes uses expressions which in aftertimes, when controversy had introduced greater precision of language, were studiously avoided by the orthodox. Thus he calls the Father the whole substance, the Son a derivation from or portion of the whole.” (Bp. Kaye, On Tertullian, p. 505). After Arius, the language of theology received greater precision; but as it is, there is no doubt of the orthodoxy of Tertullian’s doctrine, since he so firmly and ably teaches the Son’s consubstantiality with the Father—equal to Him and inseparable from him. [In other words, Tertullian could not employ a technical phraseology afterwards adopted to give precision to the same orthodox ideas.]
604:7863John xiv. 28.
604:7864Ps. viii. 5.
604:7865John xiv. 16.
604:7866Aliud ab alio.
604:7867Matt. v. 37.
Chapter X.—The Very Names of Father and Son Prove the Personal Distinction of the Two. They Cannot Possibly Be Identical, Nor is Their Identity Necessary to Preserve the Divine Monarchy.
So it is either the Father or the Son, and the day is not the same as the night; nor is the Father the same as the Son, in such a way that Both of them should be One, and One or the Other should be Both,—an opinion which the most conceited “Monarchians” maintain. He Himself, they say, made Himself a Son to Himself. 7868 Now a Father makes a Son, and a Son makes a Father; 7869 and they who thus become reciprocally related out of each other to each other cannot in any way by themselves simply become so related to themselves, that the Father can make Himself a Son to Himself, and the Son render Himself a Father to Himself. And the relations which God establishes, them does He also guard. A father must needs have a son, in order to be a father; so likewise a son, to be a son, must have a father. It is, however, one thing to have, and another thing to be. For instance, in order to be a husband, I must have a wife; I can never myself be my own wife. In like manner, in order to be a father, I have a son, for I never can be a son to myself; and in order to be a son, I have a father, it being impossible for me ever to be my own father. And it is these relations which make me (what I am), when I come to possess them: I shall then be a father, when I have a son; and a son, when I have a father. Now, if I am to be to myself any one of these relations, I no longer have what I am myself to be: neither a father, because I am to be my own father; nor a son, because I shall be my own son. Moreover, inasmuch as I ought to have one of these relations in order to be the other; so, if I am to be both together, I shall fail to be one while I possess not the other. For if I must be myself my son, who am also a father, I now cease to have a son, since I am my own son. But by reason of not having a son, since I am my own son, how can I be a father? For I ought to have a son, in order to be a father. Therefore I am not a son, because I have not a father, who makes a son. In like manner, if I am myself my father, who am also a son, I no longer have a father, but am myself my father. By not having a father, however, since I am my own father, how can I be a son? For I ought to have a father, in order to be a son. I cannot therefore be a father, because I have not a son, who makes a father. Now all this must be the device of the devil—this excluding and severing one from the other—since by including both together in one under pretence of the Monarchy, he causes neither to be held and acknowledged, so that He is not the Father, since indeed He has not the Son; neither is He the Son, since in like manner He has not the Father: for while He is the Father, He will not be the Son. In this way they hold the Monarchy, but they hold neither the Father nor the Son. Well, but “with God nothing is impossible.” 7870 True enough; who can be ignorant of it? Who also can be unaware that “the things which are impossible with men are possible with God?” 7871 “The foolish things also of the world hath God chosen to confound the things which are wise.” 7872 We have read it all. Therefore, they argue, it was not difficult for God to make Himself both a Father and a Son, contrary to the condition of things among men. For a barren woman to have a child against nature was no difficulty with God; nor was it for a virgin to conceive. Of course nothing is “too hard for the Lord.” 7873 But if we choose to apply this principle so extravagantly and harshly in our capricious imaginations, we may then make out God to have done anything we please, on the ground that it was not impossible for Him to do it. We must not, however, because He is able to do all things suppose that He has actually done what He has not done. But we must inquire whether He has really done it. God could, if He had liked, have furnished man with wings to fly with, just as He gave wings to kites. We must not, however, run to the conclusion that He did this because He was able to do it. He might also have extinguished Praxeas and all other heretics at once; it does not follow, however, that He did, simply because He was able. For it was necessary that there should be both kites and heretics; it was necessary also that the Father should be crucified. 7874 In one sense there will be something difficult even for God—namely, that which He has not done—not because He could not, but because He would not, do it. For with God, to be willing is to be able, and to be unwilling is to be unable; all that He has willed, however, He has both been able to accomplish, and has displayed His ability. Since, therefore, if God had wished to make Himself a Son to Himself, He had it in His power to do so; and since, if He had it in His power, He effected His purpose, you will then make good your proof of His power and His will (to do even this) when you shall have proved to us that He actually did it.
Footnotes
604:7868[Kaye, p. 507, note 3.]
604:7869As correlatives, one implying the existence of the other.
604:7870Matt. xix. 26.
605:7871Luke xviii. 27.
605:78721 Cor. i. 27.
605:7873Gen. xviii. 14.
605:7874An ironical reference to a great paradox in the Praxean heresy.
Chapter XI.—The Identity of the Father and the Son, as Praxeas Held It, Shown to Be Full of Perplexity and Absurdity. Many Scriptures Quoted in Proof of the Distinction of the Divine Persons of the Trinity.
It will be your duty, however, to adduce your proofs out of the Scriptures as plainly as we do, when we prove that He made His Word a Son to Himself. For if He calls Him Son, and if the Son is none other than He who has proceeded from the Father Himself, and if the Word has proceeded from the Father Himself, He will then be the Son, and not Himself from whom He proceeded. For the Father Himself did not proceed from Himself. Now, you who say that the Father is the same as the Son, do really make the same Person both to have sent forth from Himself (and at the same time to have gone out from Himself as) that Being which is God. If it was possible for Him to have done this, He at all events did not do it. You must bring forth the proof which I require of you—one like my own; that is, (you must prove to me) that the Scriptures show the Son and the Father to be the same, just as on our side the Father and the Son are demonstrated to be distinct; I say distinct, but not separate: 7875 for as on my part I produce the words of God Himself, “My heart hath emitted my most excellent Word,” 7876 so you in like manner ought to adduce in opposition to me some text where God has said, “My heart hath emitted Myself as my own most excellent Word,” in such a sense that He is Himself both the Emitter and the Emitted, both He who sent forth and He who was sent forth, since He is both the Word and God. I bid you also observe, 7877 that on my side I advance the passage where the Father said to the Son, “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee.” 7878 If you want me to believe Him to be both the Father and the Son, show me some other passage where it is declared, “The Lord said unto Himself, I am my own Son, to-day have I begotten myself;” or again, “Before the morning did I beget myself;” 7879 and likewise, “I the Lord possessed Myself the beginning of my ways for my own works; before all the hills, too, did I beget myself;” 7880 and whatever other passages are to the same effect. Why, moreover, could God the Lord of all things, have hesitated to speak thus of Himself, if the fact had been so? Was He afraid of not being believed, if He had in so many words declared Himself to be both the Father and the Son? Of one thing He was at any rate afraid—of lying. Of Himself, too, and of His own truth, was He afraid. Believing Him, therefore, to be the true God, I am sure that He declared nothing to exist in any other way than according to His own dispensation and arrangement, and that He had arranged nothing in any other way than according to His own declaration. On your side, however, you must make Him out to be a liar, and an impostor, and a tamperer with His word, if, when He was Himself a Son to Himself, He assigned the part of His Son to be played by another, when all the Scriptures attest the clear existence of, and distinction in (the Persons of) the Trinity, and indeed furnish us with our Rule of faith, that He who speaks, and He of whom He speaks, and to whom He speaks, cannot possibly seem to be One and the Same. So absurd and misleading a statement would be unworthy of God, that, when it was Himself to whom He was speaking, He speaks rather to another, and not to His very self. Hear, then, other utterances also of the Father concerning the Son by the mouth of Isaiah: “Behold my Son, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom I am well pleased: I will put my Spirit upon Him, and He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.” 7881 Hear also what He says to the Son: “Is it a great thing for Thee, that Thou shouldest be called my Son to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the dispersed of Israel? I have given Thee for a light to the Gentiles, that Thou mayest be their salvation to the end of the earth.” 7882 Hear now also the Son’s utterances respecting the Father: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel unto men.” 7883 He speaks of Himself likewise to the Father in the Psalm: “Forsake me not until I have declared the might of Thine arm to all the generation that is to come.” 7884 Also to the same purport in another Psalm: “O Lord, how are they increased that trouble me!” 7885 But almost all the Psalms which prophesy of 7886 the person of Christ, represent the Son as conversing with the Father—that is, represent Christ (as speaking) to God. Observe also the Spirit speaking of the Father and the Son, in the character of 7887 a third Person: “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on my right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.” 7888 Likewise in the words of Isaiah: “Thus saith the Lord to the Lord 7889 mine Anointed.” 7890 Likewise, in the same prophet, He says to the Father respecting the Son: “Lord, who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? We brought a report concerning Him, as if He were a little child, as if He were a root in a dry ground, who had no form nor comeliness.” 7891 These are a few testimonies out of many; for we do not pretend to bring up all the passages of Scripture, because we have a tolerably large accumulation of them in the various heads of our subject, as we in our several chapters call them in as our witnesses in the fulness of their dignity and authority. 7892 Still, in these few quotations the distinction of Persons in the Trinity is clearly set forth. For there is the Spirit Himself who speaks, and the Father to whom He speaks, and the Son of whom He speaks. 7893 In the same manner, the other passages also establish each one of several Persons in His special character—addressed as they in some cases are to the Father or to the Son respecting the Son, in other cases to the Son or to the Father concerning the Father, and again in other instances to the (Holy) Spirit.
Footnotes
605:7875Distincte, non divise.
605:7876For this version of Ps. xlv. 1, see our Anti-Marcion, p. 66, note 5, Edin.
605:7877Ecce.
605:7878Ps. ii. 7.
605:7879In allusion to Ps. cx. 3 (Sept.)
605:7880In allusion to Prov. viii. 22.
606:7881Isa. xlii. 1.
606:7882Isa. xlix. 6.
606:7883Isa. 61:1, Luke 4:18.
606:7884Ps. lxxi. 18.
606:7885Ps. iii. 1.
606:7886Sustinent.
606:7887Ex.
606:7888Ps. cx. 1.
606:7889Tertullian reads Κυρίῳ instead of Κύρῳ, “Cyrus.”
606:7890Isa. xlv. 1.
606:7891Isa. 53:1, 2.
606:7892[See Elucidation III., and also cap. xxv. infra.]
606:7893[See De Baptismo, cap. v. p. 344, Ed. Oehler, and note how often our author cites an important text, by half quotation, leaving the residue to the reader’s memory, owing to the impetuosity of his genius and his style: “Monte decurrens velut amnis, imbres quem super notas aluere ripas fervet, etc.”]
Chapter XII.—Other Quotations from Holy Scripture Adduced in Proof of the Plurality of Persons in the Godhead.
If the number of the Trinity also offends you, as if it were not connected in the simple Unity, I ask you how it is possible for a Being who is merely and absolutely One and Singular, to speak in plural phrase, saying, “Let us make man in our own image, and after our own likeness;” 7894 whereas He ought to have said, “Let me make man in my own image, and after my own likeness,” as being a unique and singular Being? In the following passage, however, “Behold the man is become as one of us,” 7895 He is either deceiving or amusing us in speaking plurally, if He is One only and singular. Or was it to the angels that He spoke, as the Jews interpret the passage, because these also acknowledge not the Son? Or was it because He was at once the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, that He spoke to Himself in plural terms, making Himself plural on that very account? Nay, it was because He had already His Son close at His side, as a second Person, His own Word, and a third Person also, the Spirit in the Word, that He purposely adopted the plural phrase, “Let us make;” and, “in our image;” and, “become as one of us.” For with whom did He make man? and to whom did He make him like? (The answer must be), the Son on the one hand, who was one day to put on human nature; and the Spirit on the other, who was to sanctify man. With these did He then speak, in the Unity of the Trinity, as with His ministers and witnesses. In the following text also He distinguishes among the Persons: “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God created He him.” 7896 Why say “image of God?” Why not “His own image” merely, if He was only one who was the Maker, and if there was not also One in whose image He made man? But there was One in whose image God was making man, that is to say, Christ’s image, who, being one day about to become Man (more surely and more truly so), had already caused the man to be called His image, who was then going to be formed of clay—the image and similitude of the true and perfect Man. But in respect of the previous works of the world what says the Scripture? Its first statement indeed is made, when the Son has not yet appeared: “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.” 7897 Immediately there appears the Word, “that true light, which lighteth man on his coming into the world,” 7898 and through Him also came light upon the world. 7899 From that moment God willed creation to be effected in the Word, Christ being present and ministering unto Him: and so God created. And God said, “Let there be a firmament,…and God made the firmament;” 7900 and God also said, “Let there be lights (in the firmament); and so God made a greater and a lesser light.” 7901 But all the rest of the created things did He in like manner make, who made the former ones—I mean the Word of God, “through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made.” 7902 Now if He too is God, according to John, (who says,) “The Word was God,” 7903 then you have two Beings—One that commands that the thing be made, and the Other that executes the order and creates. In what sense, however, you ought to understand Him to be another, I have already explained, on the ground of Personality, not of Substance—in the way of distinction, not of division. 7904 But although I must everywhere hold one only substance in three coherent and inseparable (Persons), yet I am bound to acknowledge, from the necessity of the case, that He who issues a command is different from Him who executes it. For, indeed, He would not be issuing a command if He were all the while doing the work Himself, while ordering it to be done by the second. 7905 But still He did issue the command, although He would not have intended to command Himself if He were only one; or else He must have worked without any command, because He would not have waited to command Himself.
Footnotes
606:7894Gen. i. 26.
606:7895Gen. iii. 22.
607:7896Gen. i. 27.
607:7897Gen. i. 3.
607:7898John i. 9.
607:7899Mundialis lux.
607:7900Gen. 1:6, 7.
607:7901Gen. 1:14, 16.
607:7902John i. 3.
607:7903John i. 1.
607:7904[Kaye thinks the Athanasian hymn (so called) was composed by one who had this treatise always in mind. See p. 526.]
607:7905Per eum.
Chapter XIII.—The Force of Sundry Passages of Scripture Illustrated in Relation to the Plurality of Persons and Unity of Substance. There is No Polytheism Here, Since the Unity is Insisted on as a Remedy Against Polytheism.
Well then, you reply, if He was God who spoke, and He was also God who created, at this rate, one God spoke and another created; (and thus) two Gods are declared. If you are so venturesome and harsh, reflect a while; and that you may think the better and more deliberately, listen to the psalm in which Two are described as God: “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; the sceptre of Thy kingdom is a sceptre of righteousness. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity: therefore God, even Thy God, hath anointed Thee or made Thee His Christ.” 7906 Now, since He here speaks to God, and affirms that God is anointed by God, He must have affirmed that Two are God, by reason of the sceptre’s royal power. Accordingly, Isaiah also says to the Person of Christ: “The Sabæans, men of stature, shall pass over to Thee; and they shall follow after Thee, bound in fetters; and they shall worship Thee, because God is in Thee: for Thou art our God, yet we knew it not; Thou art the God of Israel.” 7907 For here too, by saying, “God is in Thee,” and “Thou art God,” he sets forth Two who were God: (in the former expression in Thee, he means) in Christ, and (in the other he means) the Holy Ghost. That is a still grander statement which you will find expressly made in the Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” 7908 There was One “who was,” and there was another “with whom” He was. But I find in Scripture the name Lord also applied to them Both: “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on my right hand.” 7909 And Isaiah says this: “Lord, who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?” 7910 Now he would most certainly have said Thine Arm, if he had not wished us to understand that the Father is Lord, and the Son also is Lord. A much more ancient testimony we have also in Genesis: “Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.” 7911 Now, either deny that this is Scripture; or else (let me ask) what sort of man you are, that you do not think words ought to be taken and understood in the sense in which they are written, especially when they are not expressed in allegories and parables, but in determinate and simple declarations? If, indeed, you follow those who did not at the time endure the Lord when showing Himself to be the Son of God, because they would not believe Him to be the Lord, then (I ask you) call to mind along with them the passage where it is written, “I have said, Ye are gods, and ye are children of the Most High;” 7912 and again, “God standeth in the congregation of gods;” 7913 in order that, if the Scripture has not been afraid to designate as gods human beings, who have become sons of God by faith, you may be sure that the same Scripture has with greater propriety conferred the name of the Lord on the true and one only Son of God. Very well! you say, I shall challenge you to preach from this day forth (and that, too, on the authority of these same Scriptures) two Gods and two Lords, consistently with your views. God forbid, (is my reply). For we, who by the grace of God possess an insight into both the times and the occasions of the Sacred Writings, especially we who are followers of the Paraclete, not of human teachers, do indeed definitively declare that Two Beings are God, the Father and the Son, and, with the addition of the Holy Spirit, even Three, according to the principle of the divine economy, which introduces number, in order that the Father may not, as you perversely infer, be Himself believed to have been born and to have suffered, which it is not lawful to believe, forasmuch as it has not been so handed down. That there are, however, two Gods or two Lords, is a statement which at no time proceeds out of our mouth: not as if it were untrue that the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, and each is God; but because in earlier times Two were actually spoken of as God, and two as Lord, that when Christ should come He might be both acknowledged as God and designated as Lord, being the Son of Him who is both God and Lord. Now, if there were found in the Scriptures but one Personality of Him who is God and Lord, Christ would justly enough be inadmissible to the title of God and Lord: for (in the Scriptures) there was declared to be none other than One God and One Lord, and it must have followed that the Father should Himself seem to have come down (to earth), inasmuch as only One God and One Lord was ever read of (in the Scriptures), and His entire Economy would be involved in obscurity, which has been planned and arranged with so clear a foresight in His providential dispensation as matter for our faith. As soon, however, as Christ came, and was recognised by us as the very Being who had from the beginning 7914 caused plurality 7915 (in the Divine Economy), being the second from the Father, and with the Spirit the third, and Himself declaring and manifesting the Father more fully (than He had ever been before), the title of Him who is God and Lord was at once restored to the Unity (of the Divine Nature), even because the Gentiles would have to pass from the multitude of their idols to the One Only God, in order that a difference might be distinctly settled between the worshippers of One God and the votaries of polytheism. For it was only right that Christians should shine in the world as “children of light,” adoring and invoking Him who is the One God and Lord as “the light of the world.” Besides, if, from that perfect knowledge 7916 which assures us that the title of God and Lord is suitable both to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, we were to invoke a plurality of gods and lords, we should quench our torches, and we should become less courageous to endure the martyr’s sufferings, from which an easy escape would everywhere lie open to us, as soon as we swore by a plurality of gods and lords, as sundry heretics do, who hold more gods than One. I will therefore not speak of gods at all, nor of lords, but I shall follow the apostle; so that if the Father and the Son, are alike to be invoked, I shall call the Father “God,” and invoke Jesus Christ as “Lord.” 7917 But when Christ alone (is mentioned), I shall be able to call Him “God,” as the same apostle says: “Of whom is Christ, who is over all, God blessed for ever.” 7918 For I should give the name of “sun” even to a sunbeam, considered in itself; but if I were mentioning the sun from which the ray emanates, I certainly should at once withdraw the name of sun from the mere beam. For although I make not two suns, still I shall reckon both the sun and its ray to be as much two things and two forms 7919 of one undivided substance, as God and His Word, as the Father and the Son.
Footnotes
607:7906Ps. 45:6, 7.
607:7907Isa. 45:14, 15 (Sept.).
607:7908John i. 1.
607:7909Ps. cx. 1.
607:7910Isa. liii. 1.
608:7911Gen. xix. 24.
608:7912Ps. lxxxii. 6.
608:7913Psa. 82.1.
608:7914Retro.
608:7915Numerum.
608:7916Conscientia.
608:7917Rom. i. 7.
608:7918Rom. ix. 5.
609:7919Species.
Chapter XIV.—The Natural Invisibility of the Father, and the Visibility of the Son Witnessed in Many Passages of the Old Testament. Arguments of Their Distinctness, Thus Supplied.
Moreover, there comes to our aid, when we insist upon the Father and the Son as being Two, that regulating principle which has determined God to be invisible. When Moses in Egypt desired to see the face of the Lord, saying, “If therefore I have found grace in Thy sight, manifest Thyself unto me, that I may see Thee and know Thee,” 7920 God said, “Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me, and live:” 7921 in other words, he who sees me shall die. Now we find that God has been seen by many persons, and yet that no one who saw Him died (at the sight). The truth is, they saw God according to the faculties of men, but not in accordance with the full glory of the Godhead. For the patriarchs are said to have seen God (as Abraham and Jacob), and the prophets (as, for instance Isaiah and Ezekiel), and yet they did not die. Either, then, they ought to have died, since they had seen Him—for (the sentence runs), “No man shall see God, and live;” or else if they saw God, and yet did not die, the Scripture is false in stating that God said, “If a man see my face, he shall not live.” Either way, the Scripture misleads us, when it makes God invisible, and when it produces Him to our sight. Now, then, He must be a different Being who was seen, because of one who was seen it could not be predicated that He is invisible. It will therefore follow, that by Him who is invisible we must understand the Father in the fulness of His majesty, while we recognise the Son as visible by reason of the dispensation of His derived existence; 7922 even as it is not permitted us to contemplate the sun, in the full amount of his substance which is in the heavens, but we can only endure with our eyes a ray, by reason of the tempered condition of this portion which is projected from him to the earth. Here some one on the other side may be disposed to contend that the Son is also invisible as being the Word, and as being also the Spirit; 7923 and, while claiming one nature for the Father and the Son, to affirm that the Father is rather One and the Same Person with the Son. But the Scripture, as we have said, maintains their difference by the distinction it makes between the Visible and the Invisible. They then go on to argue to this effect, that if it was the Son who then spake to Moses, He must mean it of Himself that His face was visible to no one, because He was Himself indeed the invisible Father in the name of the Son. And by this means they will have it that the Visible and the Invisible are one and the same, just as the Father and the Son are the same; (and this they maintain) because in a preceding passage, before He had refused (the sight of) His face to Moses, the Scripture informs us that “the Lord spake face to face with Moses, even as a man speaketh unto his friend;” 7924 just as Jacob also says, “I have seen God face to face.” 7925 Therefore the Visible and the Invisible are one and the same; and both being thus the same, it follows that He is invisible as the Father, and visible as the Son. As if the Scripture, according to our exposition of it, were inapplicable to the Son, when the Father is set aside in His own invisibility. We declare, however, that the Son also, considered in Himself (as the Son), is invisible, in that He is God, and the Word and Spirit of God; but that He was visible before the days of His flesh, in the way that He says to Aaron and Miriam, “And if there shall be a prophet amongst you, I will make myself known to him in a vision, and will speak to him in a dream; not as with Moses, with whom I shall speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, that is to say, in truth, and not enigmatically,” that is to say, in image; 7926 as the apostle also expresses it, “Now we see through a glass, darkly (or enigmatically), but then face to face.” 7927 Since, therefore, He reserves to some future time His presence and speech face to face with Moses—a promise which was afterwards fulfilled in the retirement of the mount (of transfiguration), when as we read in the Gospel, “Moses appeared talking with Jesus” 7928 —it is evident that in early times it was always in a glass, (as it were,) and an enigma, in vision and dream, that God, I mean the Son of God, appeared—to the prophets and the patriarchs, as also to Moses indeed himself. And even if the Lord did possibly 7929 speak with him face to face, yet it was not as man that he could behold His face, unless indeed it was in a glass, (as it were,) and by enigma. Besides, if the Lord so spake with Moses, that Moses actually discerned His face, eye to eye, 7930 how comes it to pass that immediately afterwards, on the same occasion, he desires to see His face, 7931 which he ought not to have desired, because he had already seen it? And how, in like manner, does the Lord also say that His face cannot be seen, because He had shown it, if indeed He really had, (as our opponents suppose). Or what is that face of God, the sight of which is refused, if there was one which was visible to man? “I have seen God,” says Jacob, “face to face, and my life is preserved.” 7932 There ought to be some other face which kills if it be only seen. Well, then, was the Son visible? (Certainly not, 7933 ) although He was the face of God, except only in vision and dream, and in a glass and enigma, because the Word and Spirit (of God) cannot be seen except in an imaginary form. But, (they say,) He calls the invisible Father His face. For who is the Father? Must He not be the face of the Son, by reason of that authority which He obtains as the begotten of the Father? For is there not a natural propriety in saying of some personage greater (than yourself), That man is my face; he gives me his countenance? “My Father,” says Christ, “is greater than I.” 7934 Therefore the Father must be the face of the Son. For what does the Scripture say? “The Spirit of His person is Christ the Lord.” 7935 As therefore Christ is the Spirit of the Father’s person, there is good reason why, in virtue indeed of the unity, the Spirit of Him to whose person He belonged—that is to say, the Father—pronounced Him to be His “face.” Now this, to be sure, is an astonishing thing, that the Father can be taken to be the face of the Son, when He is His head; for “the head of Christ is God.” 7936
Footnotes
609:7920Ex. xxxiii. 13.
609:7921Ex. 33.20.
609:7922Pro modulo derivationis.
609:7923Spiritus here is the divine nature of Christ.
609:7924Ex. xxxiii. 11.
609:7925Gen. xxxii. 30.
609:7926Num. xii. 6-8.
609:79271 Cor. xiii. 12.
609:7928Mark 9:4, Matt. 17:3.
609:7929Si forte.
609:7930Cominus sciret.
610:7931Comp. Exod. 33:13, 11.
610:7932Gen. xxii. 30.
610:7933Involved in the nunquid.
610:7934John xiv. 28.
610:7935Lam. iv. 20. Tertullian reads, “Spiritus personæ ejus Christus Dominus.” This varies only in the pronoun from the Septuagint, which runs, Πνεῦμα προσώπου ἡμῶν Χριστὸς Κύριος. According to our A.V., “the breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the Lord” (or, “our anointed Lord”), allusion is made, in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, to the capture of the king—the last of David’s line, “as an anointed prince.” Comp. Jer. lii. 9.
610:79361 Cor. xi. 3.
Chapter XV.—New Testament Passages Quoted. They Attest the Same Truth of the Son’s Visibility Contrasted with the Father’s Invisibility.
If I fail in resolving this article (of our faith) by passages which may admit of dispute 7937 out of the Old Testament, I will take out of the New Testament a confirmation of our view, that you may not straightway attribute to the Father every possible (relation and condition) which I ascribe to the Son. Behold, then, I find both in the Gospels and in the (writings of the) apostles a visible and an invisible God (revealed to us), under a manifest and personal distinction in the condition of both. There is a certain emphatic saying by John: “No man hath seen God at any time;” 7938 meaning, of course, at any previous time. But he has indeed taken away all question of time, by saying that God had never been seen. The apostle confirms this statement; for, speaking of God, he says, “Whom no man hath seen, nor can see;” 7939 because the man indeed would die who should see Him. 7940 But the very same apostles testify that they had both seen and “handled” Christ. 7941 Now, if Christ is Himself both the Father and the Son, how can He be both the Visible and the Invisible? In order, however, to reconcile this diversity between the Visible and the Invisible, will not some one on the other side argue that the two statements are quite correct: that He was visible indeed in the flesh, but was invisible before His appearance in the flesh; so that He who as the Father was invisible before the flesh, is the same as the Son who was visible in the flesh? If, however, He is the same who was invisible before the incarnation, how comes it that He was actually seen in ancient times before (coming in) the flesh? And by parity of reasoning, if He is the same who was visible after (coming in) the flesh, how happens it that He is now declared to be invisible by the apostles? How, I repeat, can all this be, unless it be that He is one, who anciently was visible only in mystery and enigma, and became more clearly visible by His incarnation, even the Word who was also made flesh; whilst He is another whom no man has seen at any time, being none else than the Father, even Him to whom the Word belongs? Let us, in short, examine who it is whom the apostles saw. “That,” says John, “which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life.” 7942 Now the Word of life became flesh, and was heard, and was seen, and was handled, because He was flesh who, before He came in the flesh, was the “Word in the beginning with God” the Father, 7943 and not the Father with the Word. For although the Word was God, yet was He with God, because He is God of God; and being joined to the Father, is with the Father. 7944 “And we have seen His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father;” 7945 that is, of course, (the glory) of the Son, even Him who was visible, and was glorified by the invisible Father. And therefore, inasmuch as he had said that the Word of God was God, in order that he might give no help to the presumption of the adversary, (which pretended) that he had seen the Father Himself and in order to draw a distinction between the invisible Father and the visible Son, he makes the additional assertion, ex abundanti as it were: “No man hath seen God at any time.” 7946 What God does he mean? The Word? But he has already said: “Him we have seen and heard, and our hands have handled the Word of life.” Well, (I must again ask,) what God does he mean? It is of course the Father, with whom was the Word, the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, and has Himself declared Him. 7947 He was both heard and seen and, that He might not be supposed to be a phantom, was actually handled. Him, too, did Paul behold; but yet he saw not the Father. “Have I not,” he says, “seen Jesus Christ our Lord?” 7948 Moreover, he expressly called Christ God, saying: “Of whom are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever.” 7949 He shows us also that the Son of God, which is the Word of God, is visible, because He who became flesh was called Christ. Of the Father, however, he says to Timothy: “Whom none among men hath seen, nor indeed can see;” and he accumulates the description in still ampler terms: “Who only hath immortality, and dwelleth in the light which no man can approach unto.” 7950 It was of Him, too, that he had said in a previous passage: “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to the only God;” 7951 so that we might apply even the contrary qualities to the Son Himself—mortality, accessibility—of whom the apostle testifies that “He died according to the Scriptures,” 7952 and that “He was seen by himself last of all,” 7953 —by means, of course, of the light which was accessible, although it was not without imperilling his sight that he experienced that light. 7954 A like danger to which also befell Peter, and John, and James, (who confronted not the same light) without risking the loss of their reason and mind; and if they, who were unable to endure the glory of the Son, 7955 had only seen the Father, they must have died then and there: “For no man shall see God, and live.” 7956 This being the case, it is evident that He was always seen from the beginning, who became visible in the end; and that He, (on the contrary,) was not seen in the end who had never been visible from the beginning; and that accordingly there are two—the Visible and the Invisible. It was the Son, therefore, who was always seen, and the Son who always conversed with men, and the Son who has always worked by the authority and will of the Father; because “the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do” 7957 —“do” that is, in His mind and thought. 7958 For the Father acts by mind and thought; whilst the Son, who is in the Father’s mind and thought, 7959 gives effect and form to what He sees. Thus all things were made by the Son, and without Him was not anything made. 7960
Footnotes
610:7937Quæstionibus.
610:7938John i. 18.
610:79391 Tim. vi. 16.
610:7940Exod. 33:20, Deut. 5:26, Judg. 13:22.
610:79411 John i. 1.
610:79421 John i. 1.
610:7943John 1:1, 2.
610:7944Quia cum Patre apud Patrem.
610:7945John i. 14.
611:79461 John iv. 12.
611:7947John i. 18.
611:79481 Cor. ix. 1.
611:7949Rom. ix. 5.
611:79501 Tim. vi. 16.
611:79511 Tim. i. 17.
611:79521 Cor. xv. 3.
611:79531 Cor. 15.8.
611:7954Acts xxii. 11.
611:7955Matt. 17:6, Mark 9:6.
611:7956Ex. xxxiii. 20.
611:7957John v. 19.
611:7958In sensu.
611:7959The reading is, “in Patris sensu;” another reading substitutes “sinu” for “sensu;” q.d. “the Father’s bosom.”
611:7960John i. 3.
Chapter XVI.—Early Manifestations of the Son of God, as Recorded in the Old Testament; Rehearsals of His Subsequent Incarnation.
But you must not suppose that only the works which relate to the (creation of the) world were made by the Son, but also whatsoever since that time has been done by God. For “the Father who loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand,” 7961 loves Him indeed from the beginning, and from the very first has handed all things over to Him. Whence it is written, “From the beginning the Word was with God, and the Word was God;” 7962 to whom “is given by the Father all power in heaven and on earth.” 7963 “The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son” 7964 —from the very beginning even. For when He speaks of all power and all judgment, and says that all things were made by Him, and all things have been delivered into His hand, He allows no exception (in respect) of time, because they would not be all things unless they were the things of all time. It is the Son, therefore, who has been from the beginning administering judgment, throwing down the haughty tower, and dividing the tongues, punishing the whole world by the violence of waters, raining upon Sodom and Gomorrah fire and brimstone, as 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 to the very last. Thus was He ever learning even as God to converse with men upon earth, being no other than the Word which was to be made flesh. But He was thus learning (or rehearsing), 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. 7965 For as it was on our account and for our learning that these events are described in the Scriptures, so for our sakes also were they done—(even ours, I say), “upon whom the ends of the world are come.” 7966 In this way it was that even then He knew full well what human feelings and affections were, intending as He always did to take upon Him man’s actual component substances, body and soul, making inquiry of Adam (as if He were ignorant), 7967 “Where art thou, Adam?” 7968 —repenting that He had made man, as if He had lacked foresight; 7969 tempting Abraham, as if ignorant of what was in man; offended with persons, and then reconciled to them; and whatever other (weaknesses and imperfections) the heretics lay hold of (in their assumptions) as unworthy of God, in order to discredit the Creator, not considering that these circumstances are suitable enough for the Son, who was one day to experience even human sufferings—hunger and thirst, and tears, and actual birth and real death, and in respect of such a dispensation “made by the Father a little less than the angels.” 7970 But the heretics, you may be sure, will not allow that those things are suitable even to the Son of God, which you are imputing to the very Father Himself, when you pretend 7971 that He made Himself less (than the angels) on our account; whereas the Scripture informs us that He who was made less was so affected by another, and not Himself by Himself. What, again, if He was One who was “crowned with glory and honour,” and He Another by whom He was so crowned, 7972 —the Son, in fact, by the Father? Moreover, how comes it to pass, that the Almighty Invisible God, “whom no man hath seen nor can see; He who dwelleth in light unapproachable;” 7973 “He who dwelleth not in temples made with hands;” 7974 “from before whose sight the earth trembles, and the mountains melt like wax;” 7975 who holdeth the whole world in His hand “like a nest;” 7976 “whose throne is heaven, and earth His footstool;” 7977 in whom is every place, but Himself is in no place; who is the utmost bound of the universe;—how happens it, I say, that He (who, though) the Most High, should yet have walked in paradise towards the cool of the evening, in quest of Adam; and should have shut up the ark after Noah had entered it; and at Abraham’s tent should have refreshed Himself under an oak; and have called to Moses out of the burning bush; and have appeared as “the fourth” in the furnace of the Babylonian monarch (although He is there called the Son of man),—unless all these events had happened as an image, as a mirror, as an enigma (of the future incarnation)? Surely even these things could not have been believed even of the Son of God, unless they had been given us in the Scriptures; possibly also they could not have been believed of the Father, even if they had been given in the Scriptures, since these men bring Him down into Mary’s womb, and set Him before Pilate’s judgment-seat, and bury Him in the sepulchre of Joseph. Hence, therefore, their error becomes manifest; for, being ignorant that the entire order of the divine administration has from the very first had its course through the agency of the Son, they believe that the Father Himself was actually seen, and held converse with men, and worked, and was athirst, and suffered hunger (in spite of the prophet who says: “The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, shall never thirst at all, nor be hungry;” 7978 much more, shall neither die at any time, nor be buried!), and therefore that it was uniformly one God, even the Father, who at all times did Himself the things which were really done by Him through the agency of the Son.
Footnotes
611:7961John iii. 35. Tertullian reads the last clause (according to Oehler), “in sinu ejus,” q.d. “to Him who is in His bosom.”
611:7962John i. 1.
611:7963Matt. xxviii. 18.
611:7964John v. 22.
612:7965See our Anti-Marcion, p. 112, note 10. Edin.
612:7966Comp. 1 Cor. x. 11.
612:7967See the treatise, Against Marcion. ii. 25, supra.
612:7968Gen. iii. 9.
612:7969Gen. vi. 6.
612:7970Ps. viii. 6.
612:7971Quasi.
612:7972Ps. viii. 6.
612:79731 Tim. vi. 16.
612:7974Acts xvii. 24.
612:7975Joel 2:10, Ps. 97:5.
612:7976Isa. x. 14.
612:7977Isa. lxvi. 1.
612:7978Isa. xl. 28.
Chapter XVII.—Sundry August Titles, Descriptive of Deity, Applied to the Son, Not, as Praxeas Would Have It, Only to the Father.
They more readily supposed that the Father acted in the Son’s name, than that the Son acted in the Father’s; although the Lord says Himself, “I am come in my Father’s name;” 7979 and even to the Father He declares, “I have manifested Thy name unto these men;” 7980 whilst the Scripture likewise says, “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord,” 7981 that is to say, the Son in the Father’s name. And as for the Father’s names, God Almighty, the Most High, the Lord of hosts, the King of Israel, the “One that is,” we say (for so much do the Scriptures teach us) that they belonged suitably to the Son also, and that the Son came under these designations, and has always acted in them, and has thus manifested them in Himself to men. “All things,” says He, “which the Father hath are mine.” 7982 Then why not His names also? When, therefore, you read of Almighty God, and the Most High, and the God of hosts, and the King of Israel, the “One that is,” consider whether the Son also be not indicated by these designations, who in His own right is God Almighty, in that He is the Word of Almighty God, and has received power over all; is the Most High, in that He is “exalted at the right hand of God,” as Peter declares in the Acts; 7983 is the Lord of hosts, because all things are by the Father made subject to Him; is the King of Israel because to Him has especially been committed the destiny of that nation; and is likewise “the One that is,” because there are many who are called Sons, but are not. As to the point maintained by them, that the name of Christ belongs also to the Father, they shall hear (what I have to say) in the proper place. Meanwhile, let this be my immediate answer to the argument which they adduce from the Revelation of John: “I am the Lord which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty;” 7984 and from all other passages which in their opinion make the designation of Almighty God unsuitable to the Son. As if, indeed, He which is to come were not almighty; whereas even the Son of the Almighty is as much almighty as the Son of God is God.
Footnotes
612:7979John v. 43.
613:7980John xvii. 6.
613:7981Ps. cxviii. 26.
613:7982John xvi. 15.
613:7983Acts ii. 22.
613:7984Rev. i. 8.
Chapter XVIII.—The Designation of the One God in the Prophetic Scriptures. Intended as a Protest Against Heathen Idolatry, It Does Not Preclude the Correlative Idea of the Son of God. The Son is in the Father.
But what hinders them from readily perceiving this community of the Father’s titles in the Son, is the statement of Scripture, whenever it determines God to be but One; as if the selfsame Scripture had not also set forth Two both as God and Lord, as we have shown above. 7985 Their argument is: Since we find Two and One, therefore Both are One and the Same, both Father and Son. Now the Scripture is not in danger of requiring the aid of any one’s argument, lest it should seem to be self-contradictory. It has a method of its own, both when it sets forth one only God, and also when it shows that there are Two, Father and Son; and is consistent with itself. It is clear that the Son is mentioned by it. For, without any detriment to the Son, it is quite possible for it to have rightly determined that God is only One, to whom the Son belongs; since He who has a Son ceases not on that account to exist,—Himself being One only, that is, on His own account, whenever He is named without the Son. And He is named without the Son whensoever He is defined as the principle (of Deity) in the character of “its first Person,” which had to be mentioned before the name of the Son; because it is the Father who is acknowledged in the first place, and after the Father the Son is named. Therefore “there is one God,” the Father, “and without Him there is none else.” 7986 And when He Himself makes this declaration, He denies not the Son, but says that there is no other God; and the Son is not different from the Father. Indeed, if you only look carefully at the contexts which follow such statements as this, you will find that they nearly always have distinct reference to the makers of idols and the worshippers thereof, with a view to the multitude of false gods being expelled by the unity of the Godhead, which nevertheless has a Son; and inasmuch as this Son is undivided and inseparable from the Father, so is He to be reckoned as being in the Father, even when He is not named. The fact is, if He had named Him expressly, He would have separated Him, saying in so many words: “Beside me there is none else, except my Son.” In short He would have made His Son actually another, after excepting Him from others. Suppose the sun to say, “I am the Sun, and there is none other besides me, except my ray,” would you not have remarked how useless was such a statement, as if the ray were not itself reckoned in the sun? He says, then, that there is no God besides Himself in respect of the idolatry both of the Gentiles as well as of Israel; nay, even on account of our heretics also, who fabricate idols with their words, just as the heathen do with their hands; that is to say, they make another God and another Christ. When, therefore, He attested His own unity, the Father took care of the Son’s interests, that Christ should not be supposed to have come from another God, but from Him who had already said, “I am God and there is none other beside me,” 7987 who shows us that He is the only God, but in company with His Son, with whom “He stretcheth out the heavens alone.” 7988
Footnotes
613:7985See above ch. xiii. p. 607.
613:7986Isa. xlv. 5.
614:7987Isa. 45:5, 18, Isa. 44:6.
614:7988Isa. xliv. 24.
Chapter XIX.—The Son in Union with the Father in the Creation of All Things. This Union of the Two in Co-Operation is Not Opposed to the True Unity of God. It is Opposed Only to Praxeas’ Identification Theory.
But this very declaration of His they will hastily pervert into an argument of His singleness. “I have,” says He, “stretched out the heaven alone.” Undoubtedly alone as regards all other powers; and He thus gives a premonitory evidence against the conjectures of the heretics, who maintain that the world was constructed by various angels and powers, who also make the Creator Himself to have been either an angel or some subordinate agent sent to form external things, such as the constituent parts of the world, but who was at the same time ignorant of the divine purpose. If, now, it is in this sense that He stretches out the heavens alone, how is it that these heretics assume their position so perversely, as to render inadmissible the singleness of that Wisdom which says, “When He prepared the heaven, I was present with Him?” 7989 —even though the apostle asks, “Who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counsellor?” 7990 meaning, of course, to except that wisdom which was present with Him. 7991 In Him, at any rate, and with Him, did (Wisdom) construct the universe, He not being ignorant of what she was making. “Except Wisdom,” however, is a phrase of the same sense exactly as “except the Son,” who is Christ, “the Wisdom and Power of God,” 7992 according to the apostle, who only knows the mind of the Father. “For who knoweth the things that be in God, except the Spirit which is in Him?” 7993 Not, observe, without Him. There was therefore One who caused God to be not alone, except “alone” from all other gods. But (if we are to follow the heretics), the Gospel itself will have to be rejected, because it tells us that all things were made by God through the Word, without whom nothing was made. 7994 And if I am not mistaken, there is also another passage in which it is written: “By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the hosts of them by His Spirit.” 7995 Now this Word, the Power of God and the Wisdom of God, must be the very Son of God. So that, if (He did) all things by the Son, He must have stretched out the heavens by the Son, and so not have stretched them out alone, except in the sense in which He is “alone” (and apart) from all other gods. Accordingly He says, concerning the Son, immediately afterwards: “Who else is it that frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and maketh diviners mad, turning wise men backward, and making their knowledge foolish, and confirming the words 7996 of His Son?” 7997 —as, for instance, when He said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him.” 7998 By thus attaching the Son to Himself, He becomes His own interpreter in what sense He stretched out the heavens alone, meaning alone with His Son, even as He is one with His Son. The utterance, therefore, will be in like manner the Son’s, “I have stretched out the heavens alone,” 7999 because by the Word were the heavens established. 8000 Inasmuch, then, as the heaven was prepared when Wisdom was present in the Word, and since all things were made by the Word, it is quite correct to say that even the Son stretched out the heaven alone, because He alone ministered to the Father’s work. It must also be He who says, “I am the First, and to all futurity I AM.” 8001 The Word, no doubt, was before all things. “In the beginning was the Word;” 8002 and in that beginning He was sent forth 8003 by the Father. The Father, however, has no beginning, as proceeding from none; nor can He be seen, since He was not begotten. He who has always been alone could never have had order or rank. Therefore, if they have determined that the Father and the Son must be regarded as one and the same, for the express purpose of vindicating the unity of God, that unity of His is preserved intact; for He is one, and yet He has a Son, who is equally with Himself comprehended in the same Scriptures. Since they are unwilling to allow that the Son is a distinct Person, second from the Father, lest, being thus second, He should cause two Gods to be spoken of, we have shown above 8004 that Two are actually described in Scripture as God and Lord. And to prevent their being offended at this fact, we give a reason why they are not said to be two Gods and two Lords, but that they are two as Father and Son; and this not by severance of their substance, but from the dispensation wherein we declare the Son to be undivided and inseparable from the Father,—distinct in degree, not in state. And although, when named apart, He is called God, He does not thereby constitute two Gods, but one; and that from the very circumstance that He is entitled to be called God, from His union with the Father.
Footnotes
614:7989Prov. viii. 27.
614:7990Rom. xi. 34.
614:7991Prov. viii. 30.
614:79921 Cor. i. 24.
614:79931 Cor ii. 11.
614:7994John i. 3.
614:7995Ps. xxxiii. 6.
614:7996Isa. xliv. 25.
614:7997On this reading, see our Anti-Marcion, p. 207, note 9. Edin.
614:7998Matt. iii. 17.
614:7999Isa. xliv. 24.
614:8000Ps. xxxiii. 6.
614:8001Isa. xli. 4 (Sept.).
614:8002John i. 1.
614:8003Prolatus.
614:8004See ch. xiii. p. 107.
Chapter XX.—The Scriptures Relied on by Praxeas to Support His Heresy But Few. They are Mentioned by Tertullian.
But I must take some further pains to rebut their arguments, when they make selections from the Scriptures in support of their opinion, and refuse to consider the other points, which obviously maintain the rule of faith without any infraction of the unity of the Godhead, and with the full admission 8005 of the Monarchy. For as in the Old Testament Scriptures they lay hold of nothing else than, “I am God, and beside me there is no God;” 8006 so in the Gospel they simply keep in view the Lord’s answer to Philip, “I and my Father are one;” 8007 and, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and I am in the Father, and the Father in me.” 8008 They would have the entire revelation of both Testaments yield to these three passages, whereas the only proper course is to understand the few statements in the light of the many. But in their contention they only act on the principle of all heretics. For, inasmuch as only a few testimonies are to be found (making for them) in the general mass, they pertinaciously set off the few against the many, and assume the later against the earlier. The rule, however, which has been from the beginning established for every case, gives its prescription against the later assumptions, as indeed it also does against the fewer.
Footnotes
615:8005Sonitu.
615:8006Isa. xlv. 5.
615:8007John x. 30.
615:8008John 14:9, 10.
Chapter XXI.—In This and the Four Following Chapters It is Shewn, by a Minute Analysis of St. John’s Gospel, that the Father and Son are Constantly Spoken of as Distinct Persons.
Consider, therefore, how many passages present their prescriptive authority to you in this very Gospel before this inquiry of Philip, and previous to any discussion on your part. And first of all there comes at once to hand the preamble of John to his Gospel, which shows us what He previously was who had to become flesh. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God: all things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made.” 8009 Now, since these words may not be taken otherwise than as they are written, there is without doubt shown to be One who was from the beginning, and also One with whom He always was: one the Word of God, the other God (although the Word is also God, but God regarded as the Son of God, not as the Father); One through whom were all things, Another by whom were all things. But in what sense we call Him Another we have already often described. In that we called Him Another, we must needs imply that He is not identical—not identical indeed, yet not as if separate; Other by dispensation, not by division. He, therefore, who became flesh was not the very same as He from whom the Word came. “His glory was beheld—the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father;” 8010 not, (observe,) as of the Father. He “declared” (what was in) “the bosom of the Father alone;” 8011 the Father did not divulge the secrets of His own bosom. For this is preceded by another statement: “No man hath seen God at any time.” 8012 Then, again, when He is designated by John (the Baptist) as “the Lamb of God,” 8013 He is not described as Himself the same with Him of whom He is the beloved Son. He is, no doubt, ever the Son of God, but yet not He Himself of whom He is the Son. This (divine relationship) Nathanæl at once recognised in Him, 8014 even as Peter did on another occasion: “Thou art the Son of God.” 8015 And He affirmed Himself that they were quite right in their convictions; for He answered Nathanæl: “Because I said, I saw thee under the fig-tree, therefore dost thou believe?” 8016 And in the same manner He pronounced Peter to be “blessed,” inasmuch as “flesh and blood had not revealed it to him”—that he had perceived the Father—“but the Father which is in heaven.” 8017 By asserting all this, He determined the distinction which is between the two Persons: that is, the Son then on earth, whom Peter had confessed to be the Son of God; and the Father in heaven, who had revealed to Peter the discovery which he had made, that Christ was the Son of God. When He entered the temple, He called it “His Father’s house,” 8018 speaking as the Son. In His address to Nicodemus He says: “So God loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” 8019 And again: “For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He that believeth on Him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God.” 8020 Moreover, when John (the Baptist) was asked what he happened to know of Jesus, he said: “The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.” 8021 Whom, indeed, did He reveal to the woman of Samaria? Was it not “the Messias which is called Christ?” 8022 And so He showed, of course, that He was not the Father, but the Son; and elsewhere He is expressly called “the Christ, the Son of God,” 8023 and not the Father. He says, therefore,” My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work;” 8024 whilst to the Jews He remarks respecting the cure of the impotent man, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” 8025 “My Father and I”—these are the Son’s words. And it was on this very account that “the Jews sought the more intently to kill Him, not only because He broke the Sabbath, but also because He said that God was His Father, thus making Himself equal with God. Then indeed did He answer and say unto them, The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do; for what things soever He doeth these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth Him all things that He Himself doeth; and He will also show Him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. For as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son also quickeneth whom He will. For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son, that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father, who hath sent the Son. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my words, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life. Verily I say unto you, that the hour is coming, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and when they have heard it, they shall live. For as the Father hath eternal life in Himself, so also hath He given to the Son to have eternal life in Himself; and He hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man” 8026 —that is, according to the flesh, even as He is also the Son of God through His Spirit. 8027 Afterwards He goes on to say: “But I have greater witness than that of John; for the works which the Father hath given me to finish—those very works bear witness of me that the Father hath sent me. And the Father Himself, which hath sent me, hath also borne witness of me.” 8028 But He at once adds, “Ye have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His shape;” 8029 thus affirming that in former times it was not the Father, but the Son, who used to be seen and heard. Then He says at last: “I am come in my Father’s name, and ye have not received me.” 8030 It was therefore always the Son (of whom we read) under the designation of the Almighty and Most High God, and King, and Lord. To those also who inquired “what they should do to work the works of God,” 8031 He answered, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.” 8032 He also declares Himself to be “the bread which the Father sent from heaven;” 8033 and adds, that “all that the Father gave Him should come to Him, and that He Himself would not reject them, 8034 because He had come down from heaven not to do His own will, but the will of the Father; and that the will of the Father was that every one who saw the Son, and believed on Him, should obtain the life (everlasting,) and the resurrection at the last day. No man indeed was able to come to Him, except the Father attracted him; whereas every one who had heard and learnt of the Father came to Him.” 8035 He goes on then expressly to say, “Not that any man hath seen the Father;” 8036 thus showing us that it was through the Word of the Father that men were instructed and taught. Then, when many departed from Him, 8037 and He turned to the apostles with the inquiry whether “they also would go away,” 8038 what was Simon Peter’s answer? “To whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life, and we believe that Thou art the Christ.” 8039 (Tell me now, did they believe) Him to be the Father, or the Christ of the Father?
Footnotes
615:8009John i. 1-3.
615:8010John i. 14.
615:8011Unius sinum Patris. Another reading makes: “He alone (unus) declared,” etc. See John i. 18.
615:8012John i. 18, first clause.
615:8013John i. 29.
615:8014John i. 49.
615:8015Matt. xvi. 16.
615:8016John i. 50.
615:8017Matt. xvi. 17.
616:8018John ii. 16.
616:8019John iii. 16.
616:8020John 3:17, 18.
616:8021John 3:35, 36.
616:8022John iv. 25.
616:8023John xx. 31.
616:8024John iv. 34.
616:8025John v. 17.
616:8026John v. 19-27.
616:8027i.e. His divine nature.
616:8028John 5:36, 37.
616:8029John 5.37.
616:8030John 5.43.
616:8031John vi. 29.
616:8032John 6.30.
616:8033John 6.32.
616:8034The expression is in the neuter collective form in the original.
616:8035John vi. 37-45.
616:8036John 6.46.
617:8037John 6.66.
617:8038John 6.67.
617:8039John 6.68.
Chapter XXII.—Sundry Passages of St. John Quoted, to Show the Distinction Between the Father and the Son. Even Praxeas’ Classic Text—I and My Father are One—Shown to Be Against Him.
Again, whose doctrine does He announce, at which all were astonished? 8040 Was it His own or the Father’s? So, when they were in doubt among themselves whether He were the Christ (not as being the Father, of course but as the Son), He says to them “You are not ignorant whence I am; and I am not come of myself, but He that sent me is true, whom ye know not; but I know Him, because I am from Him.” 8041 He did not say, Because I myself am He; and, I have sent mine own self: but His words are, “He hath sent me.” When, likewise, the Pharisees sent men to apprehend Him, He says: “Yet a little while am I with you, and (then) I go unto Him that sent me.” 8042 When, however, He declares that He is not alone, and uses these words, “but I and the Father that sent me,” 8043 does He not show that there are Two—Two, and yet inseparable? Indeed, this was the sum and substance of what He was teaching them, that they were inseparably Two; since, after citing the law when it affirms the truth of two men’s testimony, 8044 He adds at once: “I am one who am bearing witness of myself; and the Father (is another,) who hath sent me, and beareth witness of me.” 8045 Now, if He were one—being at once both the Son and the Father—He certainly would not have quoted the sanction of the law, which requires not the testimony of one, but of two. Likewise, when they asked Him where His Father was, 8046 He answered them, that they had known neither Himself nor the Father; and in this answer He plainly told them of Two, whom they were ignorant of. Granted that “if they had known Him, they would have known the Father also,” 8047 this certainly does not imply that He was Himself both Father and Son; but that, by reason of the inseparability of the Two, it was impossible for one of them to be either acknowledged or unknown without the other. “He that sent me,” says He, “is true; and I am telling the world those things which I have heard of Him.” 8048 And the Scripture narrative goes on to explain in an exoteric manner, that “they understood not that He spake to them concerning the Father,” 8049 although they ought certainly to have known that the Father’s words were uttered in the Son, because they read in Jeremiah, “And the Lord said to me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth;” 8050 and again in Isaiah, “The Lord hath given to me the tongue of learning that I should understand when to speak a word in season.” 8051 In accordance with which, Christ Himself says: “Then shall ye know that I am He and that I am saying nothing of my own self; but that, as my Father hath taught me, so I speak, because He that sent me is with me.” 8052 This also amounts to a proof that they were Two, (although) undivided. Likewise, when upbraiding the Jews in His discussion with them, because they wished to kill Him, He said, “I speak that which I have seen with my Father, and ye do that which ye have seen with your father;” 8053 “but now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth which I have heard of God;” 8054 and again, “If God were your Father, ye would love me, for I proceeded forth and came from God,” 8055 (still they are not hereby separated, although He declares that He proceeded forth from the Father. Some persons indeed seize the opportunity afforded them in these words to propound their heresy of His separation; but His coming out from God is like the ray’s procession from the sun, and the river’s from the fountain, and the tree’s from the seed); “I have not a devil, but I honour my Father;” 8056 again, “If I honour myself, my honour is nothing: it is my Father that honoureth me, of whom ye say, that He is your God: yet ye have not known Him, but I know Him; and if I should say, I know Him not, I shall be a liar like unto you; but I know Him, and keep His saying.” 8057 But when He goes on to say, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad,” 8058 He certainly proves that it was not the Father that appeared to Abraham, but the Son. In like manner He declares, in the case of the man born blind, “that He must do the works of the Father which had sent Him;” 8059 and after He had given the man sight, He said to him, “Dost thou believe in the Son of God?” Then, upon the man’s inquiring who He was, He proceeded to reveal Himself to him, as that Son of God whom He had announced to him as the right object of his faith. 8060 In a later passage He declares that He is known by the Father, and the Father by Him; 8061 adding that He was so wholly loved by the Father, that He was laying down His life, because He had received this commandment from the Father. 8062 When He was asked by the Jews if He were the very Christ 8063 (meaning, of course, the Christ of God; for to this day the Jews expect not the Father Himself, but the Christ of God, it being nowhere said that the Father will come as the Christ), He said to them, “I am telling you, and yet ye do not believe: the works which I am doing, in my Father’s name, they actually bear witness of me.” 8064 Witness of what? Of that very thing, to be sure, of which they were making inquiry—whether He were the Christ of God. Then, again, concerning His sheep, and (the assurance) that no man should pluck them out of His hand, 8065 He says, “My Father, which gave them to me, is greater than all;” 8066 adding immediately, “I am and my Father are one.” 8067 Here, then, they take their stand, too infatuated, nay, too blind, to see in the first place that there is in this passage an intimation of Two Beings—“I and my Father;” then that there is a plural predicate, “are,” inapplicable to one person only; and lastly, that (the predicate terminates in an abstract, not a personal noun)—“we are one thing” Unum, not “one person” Unus. For if He had said “one Person,” He might have rendered some assistance to their opinion. Unus, no doubt, indicates the singular number; but (here we have a case where) “Two” are still the subject in the masculine gender. He accordingly says Unum, a neuter term, which does not imply singularity of number, but unity of essence, likeness, conjunction, affection on the Father’s part, who loves the Son, and submission on the Son’s, who obeys the Father’s will. When He says, “I and my Father are one” in essence—Unum—He shows that there are Two, whom He puts on an equality and unites in one. He therefore adds to this very statement, that He “had showed them many works from the Father,” for none of which did He deserve to be stoned. 8068 And to prevent their thinking Him deserving of this fate, as if He had claimed to be considered as God Himself, that is, the Father, by having said, “I and my Father are One,” representing Himself as the Father’s divine Son, and not as God Himself, He says, “If it is written in your law, I said, Ye are gods; and if the Scripture cannot be broken, say ye of Him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, that He blasphemeth, because He said, I am the Son of God? If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not; but if I do, even if ye will not believe me, still believe the works; and know that I am in the Father, and the Father in me.” 8069 It must therefore be by the works that the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father; and so it is by the works that we understand that the Father is one with the Son. All along did He therefore strenuously aim at this conclusion, that while they were of one power and essence, they should still be believed to be Two; for otherwise, unless they were believed to be Two, the Son could not possibly be believed to have any existence at all.
Footnotes
617:8040See John vii. passim.
617:8041John 7:28, 29.
617:8042John 7.33.
617:8043John viii. 16.
617:8044John 8.17.
617:8045John 8.18.
617:8046John 8.19.
617:8047John 8.19.
617:8048John viii. 26.
617:8049John 8.27.
617:8050Jer. i. 9.
617:8051Isa. l. 4.
617:8052John 8:28, 29.
617:8053John 8.38.
617:8054John 8.40.
617:8055John 8.42.
617:8056John 8.49.
617:8057John 8:54, 55.
618:8058John 8.56.
618:8059John ix. 4.
618:8060John 9.35-38.
618:8061John x. 15.
618:8062John 10:15, 17, 18.
618:8063John 10.24.
618:8064John 10.25.
618:8065John 10.26-28.
618:8066John 10.29.
618:8067John 10.30.
618:8068John x. 32.
618:8069John 10.34-38.
Chapter XXIII.—More Passages from the Same Gospel in Proof of the Same Portion of the Catholic Faith. Praxeas’ Taunt of Worshipping Two Gods Repudiated.
Again, when Martha in a later passage acknowledged Him to be the Son of God, 8070 she no more made a mistake than Peter 8071 and Nathanæl 8072 had; and yet, even if she had made a mistake, she would at once have learnt the truth: for, behold, when about to raise her brother from the dead, the Lord looked up to heaven, and, addressing the Father, said—as the Son, of course: “Father, I thank Thee that Thou always hearest me; it is because of these crowds that are standing by that I have spoken to Thee, that they may believe that Thou hast sent me.” 8073 But in the trouble of His soul, (on a later occasion,) He said: “What shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause is it that I am come to this hour; only, O Father, do Thou glorify Thy name” 8074 —in which He spake as the Son. (At another time) He said: “I am come in my Father’s name.” 8075 Accordingly, the Son’s voice was indeed alone sufficient, (when addressed) to the Father. But, behold, with an abundance (of evidence) 8076 the Father from heaven replies, for the purpose of testifying to the Son: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him.” 8077 So, again, in that asseveration, “I have both glorified, and will glorify again,” 8078 how many Persons do you discover, obstinate Praxeas? Are there not as many as there are voices? You have the Son on earth, you have the Father in heaven. Now this is not a separation; it is nothing but the divine dispensation. We know, however, that God is in the bottomless depths, and exists everywhere; but then it is by power and authority. We are also sure that the Son, being indivisible from Him, is everywhere with Him. Nevertheless, in the Economy or Dispensation itself, the Father willed that the Son should be regarded 8079 as on earth, and Himself in heaven; whither the Son also Himself looked up, and prayed, and made supplication of the Father; whither also He taught us to raise ourselves, and pray, “Our Father which art in heaven,” etc., 8080 —although, indeed, He is everywhere present. This heaven the Father willed to be His own throne; while He made the Son to be “a little lower than the angels,” 8081 by sending Him down to the earth, but meaning at the same time to “crown Him with glory and honour,” 8082 even by taking Him back to heaven. This He now made good to Him when He said: “I have both glorified Thee, and will glorify Thee again.” The Son offers His request from earth, the Father gives His promise from heaven. Why, then, do you make liars of both the Father and the Son? If either the Father spake from heaven to the Son when He Himself was the Son on earth, or the Son prayed to the Father when He was Himself the Son in heaven, how happens it that the Son made a request of His own very self, by asking it of the Father, since the Son was the Father? Or, on the other hand, how is it that the Father made a promise to Himself, by making it to the Son, since the Father was the Son? Were we even to maintain that they are two separate gods, as you are so fond of throwing out against us, it would be a more tolerable assertion than the maintenance of so versatile and changeful a God as yours! Therefore it was that in the passage before us the Lord declared to the people present: “Not on my own account has this voice addressed me, but for your sakes,” 8083 that these likewise may believe both in the Father and in the Son, severally, in their own names and persons and positions. “Then again, Jesus exclaims, and says, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on Him that sent me;” 8084 because it is through the Son that men believe in the Father, while the Father also is the authority whence springs belief in the Son. “And he that seeth me, seeth Him that sent me.” 8085 How so? Even because, (as He afterwards declares,) “I have not spoken from myself, but the Father which sent me: He hath given me a commandment what I should say, and what I should speak.” 8086 For “the Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know when I ought to speak” 8087 the word which I actually speak. “Even as the Father hath said unto me, so do I speak.” 8088 Now, in what way these things were said to Him, the evangelist and beloved disciple John knew better than Praxeas; and therefore he adds concerning his own meaning: “Now before the feast of the passover, Jesus knew that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God, and was going to God.” 8089 Praxeas, however, would have it that it was the Father who proceeded forth from Himself, and had returned to Himself; so that what the devil put into the heart of Judas was the betrayal, not of the Son, but of the Father Himself. But for the matter of that, things have not turned out well either for the devil or the heretic; because, even in the Son’s case, the treason which the devil wrought against Him contributed nothing to his advantage. It was, then, the Son of God, who was in the Son of man, that was betrayed, as the Scripture says afterwards: “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in Him.” 8090 Who is here meant by “God?” Certainly not the Father, but the Word of the Father, who was in the Son of man—that is in the flesh, in which Jesus had been already glorified by the divine power and word. “And God,” says He, “shall also glorify Him in Himself;” 8091 that is to say, the Father shall glorify the Son, because He has Him within Himself; and even though prostrated to the earth, and put to death, He would soon glorify Him by His resurrection, and making Him conqueror over death.
Footnotes
618:8070John xi. 27.
618:8071Matt. xvi. 16.
618:8072John i. 49.
618:8073John 11:41, 42.
618:8074John 12:27, 28.
619:8075John v. 43.
619:8076Or, “by way of excess.”
619:8077Matt. xvii. 5.
619:8078John xii. 28.
619:8079Or, held (haberi).
619:8080Matt. vi. 9.
619:8081Ps. viii. 5.
619:8082Psa. 8.5.
619:8083John xii. 30.
619:8084John xii. 44.
619:8085John 12.45.
619:8086John xii. 49.
619:8087Isa. l. 4.
619:8088John xii. 50.
619:8089John 13:1, 3.
619:8090John 13.31.
619:8091John 13.32.
Chapter XXIV.—On St. Philip’s Conversation with Christ. He that Hath Seen Me, Hath Seen the Father. This Text Explained in an Anti-Praxean Sense.
But there were some who even then did not understand. For Thomas, who was so long incredulous, said: “Lord, we know not whither Thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye would have known the Father also: but henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him.” 8092 And now we come to Philip, who, roused with the expectation of seeing the Father, and not understanding in what sense he was to take “seeing the Father,” says: “Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” 8093 Then the Lord answered him: “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?” 8094 Now whom does He say that they ought to have known?—for this is the sole point of discussion. Was it as the Father that they ought to have known Him, or as the Son? If it was as the Father, Praxeas must tell us how Christ, who had been so long time with them, could have possibly ever been (I will not say understood, but even) supposed to have been the Father. He is clearly defined to us in all Scriptures—in the Old Testament as the Christ of God, in the New Testament as the Son of God. In this character was He anciently predicted, in this was He also declared even by Christ Himself; nay, by the very Father also, who openly confesses Him from heaven as His Son, and as His Son glorifies Him. “This is my beloved Son;” “I have glorified Him, and I will glorify Him.” In this character, too, was He believed on by His disciples, and rejected by the Jews. It was, moreover, in this character that He wished to be accepted by them whenever He named the Father, and gave preference to the Father, and honoured the Father. This, then, being the case, it was not the Father whom, after His lengthened intercourse with them, they were ignorant of, but it was the Son; and accordingly the Lord, while upbraiding Philip for not knowing Himself who was the object of their ignorance, wished Himself to be acknowledged indeed as that Being whom He had reproached them for being ignorant of after so long a time—in a word, as the Son. And now it may be seen in what sense it was said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” 8095 —even in the same in which it was said in a previous passage, “I and my Father are one.” 8096 Wherefore? Because “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world” 8097 and, “I am the way: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me;” 8098 and, “No man can come to me, except the Father draw him;” 8099 and, “All things are delivered unto me by the Father;” 8100 and, “As the Father quickeneth (the dead), so also doth the Son;” 8101 and again, “If ye had known me, ye would have known the Father also.” 8102 For in all these passages He had shown Himself to be the Father’s Commissioner, 8103 through whose agency even the Father could be seen in His works, and heard in His words, and recognised in the Son’s administration of the Father’s words and deeds. The Father indeed was invisible, as Philip had learnt in the law, and ought at the moment to have remembered: “No man shall see God, and live.” 8104 So he is reproved for desiring to see the Father, as if He were a visible Being, and is taught that He only becomes visible in the Son from His mighty works, and not in the manifestation of His person. If, indeed, He meant the Father to be understood as the same with the Son, by saying, “He who seeth me seeth the Father,” how is it that He adds immediately afterwards, “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?” 8105 He ought rather to have said: “Believest thou not that I am the Father?” With what view else did He so emphatically dwell on this point, if it were not to clear up that which He wished men to understand—namely, that He was the Son? And then, again, by saying, “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me,” 8106 He laid the greater stress on His question on this very account, that He should not, because He had said, “He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father,” be supposed to be the Father; because He had never wished Himself to be so regarded, having always professed Himself to be the Son, and to have come from the Father. And then He also set the conjunction of the two Persons in the clearest light, in order that no wish might be entertained of seeing the Father as if He were separately visible, and that the Son might be regarded as the representative of the Father. And yet He omitted not to explain how the Father was in the Son and the Son in the Father. “The words,” says He, “which I speak unto you, are not mine,” 8107 because indeed they were the Father’s words; “but the Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works.” 8108 It is therefore by His mighty works, and by the words of His doctrine, that the Father who dwells in the Son makes Himself visible—even by those words and works whereby He abides in Him, and also by Him in whom He abides; the special properties of Both the Persons being apparent from this very circumstance, that He says, “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.” 8109 Accordingly He adds: “Believe—” What? That I am the Father? I do not find that it is so written, but rather, “that I am in the Father, and the Father in me; or else believe me for my works’ sake;” 8110 meaning those works by which the Father manifested Himself to be in the Son, not indeed to the sight of man, but to his intelligence.
Footnotes
620:8092John xiv. 5-7.
620:8093John 14.8.
620:8094John 14.9.
620:8095John xiv. 9.
620:8096John x. 30.
620:8097John xvi. 28.
620:8098John xiv. 6.
620:8099John vi. 44.
620:8100Matt. xi. 27.
620:8101John v. 21.
620:8102John xiv. 7.
620:8103Vicarium.
620:8104Ex. xxxiii. 20.
620:8105John xiv. 10.
620:8106John xiv. 11.
621:8107John xiv. 10.
621:8108John 14.10.
621:8109John 14.10.
621:8110John 14.11.
Chapter XXV.—The Paraclete, or Holy Ghost. He is Distinct from the Father and the Son as to Their Personal Existence. One and Inseparable from Them as to Their Divine Nature. Other Quotations Out of St. John’s Gospel.
What follows Philip’s question, and the Lord’s whole treatment of it, to the end of John’s Gospel, continues to furnish us with statements of the same kind, distinguishing the Father and the Son, with the properties of each. Then there is the Paraclete or Comforter, also, which He promises to pray for to the Father, and to send from heaven after He had ascended to the Father. He is called “another Comforter,” indeed; 8111 but in what way He is another we have already shown, 8112 “He shall receive of mine,” says Christ, 8113 just as Christ Himself received of the Father’s. Thus the connection of the Father in the Son, and of the Son in the Paraclete, produces three coherent Persons, who are yet distinct One from Another. These Three are one 8114 essence, not one Person, 8115 as it is said, “I and my Father are One,” 8116 in respect of unity of substance not singularity of number. Run through the whole Gospel, and you will find that He whom you believe to be the Father (described as acting for the Father, although you, for your part, forsooth, suppose that “the Father, being the husbandman,” 8117 must surely have been on earth) is once more recognised by the Son as in heaven, when, “lifting up His eyes thereto,” 8118 He commended His disciples to the safe-keeping of the Father. 8119 We have, moreover, in that other Gospel a clear revelation, i.e. of the Son’s distinction from the Father, “My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” 8120 and again, (in the third Gospel,) “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.” 8121 But even if (we had not these passages, we meet with satisfactory evidence) after His resurrection and glorious victory over death. Now that all the restraint of His humiliation is taken away, He might, if possible, have shown Himself as the Father to so faithful a woman (as Mary Magdalene) when she approached to touch Him, out of love, not from curiosity, nor with Thomas’ incredulity. But not so; Jesus saith unto her, “Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father; but go to my brethren” (and even in this He proves Himself to be the Son; for if He had been the Father, He would have called them His children, (instead of His brethren), “and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.” 8122 Now, does this mean, I ascend as the Father to the Father, and as God to God? Or as the Son to the Father, and as the Word to God? Wherefore also does this Gospel, at its very termination, intimate that these things were ever written, if it be not, to use its own words, “that ye might believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?” 8123 Whenever, therefore, you take any of the statements of this Gospel, and apply them to demonstrate the identity of the Father and the Son, supposing that they serve your views therein, you are contending against the definite purpose of the Gospel. For these things certainly are not written that you may believe that Jesus Christ is the Father, but the Son. 8124
Footnotes
621:8111John xiv. 16.
621:8112See above ch. xiii.
621:8113John xvi. 14.
621:8114Unum. [On this famous passage see Elucidation III.]
621:8115Unus.
621:8116John x. 30.
621:8117John xv. 1.
621:8118John xvii. 1.
621:8119John xvii. 11.
621:8120Matt. xxvii. 46.
621:8121Luke xxiii. 46.
621:8122John xx. 17.
621:8123John xx. 31.
621:8124[A curious anecdote is given by Carlyle in his Life of Frederick (Book xx. cap. 6), touching the text of “the Three Witnesses.” Gottsched satisfied the king that it was not in the Vienna ms. save in an interpolation of the margin “in Melanchthon’s hand.” Luther’s Version lacks this text.]
Chapter XXVI.—A Brief Reference to the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke. Their Agreement with St. John, in Respect to the Distinct Personality of the Father and the Son.
In addition to Philip’s conversation, and the Lord’s reply to it, the reader will observe that we have run through John’s Gospel to show that many other passages of a clear purport, both before and after that chapter, are only in strict accord with that single and prominent statement, which must be interpreted agreeably to all other places, rather than in opposition to them, and indeed to its own inherent and natural sense. I will not here largely use the support of the other Gospels, which confirm our belief by the Lord’s nativity: it is sufficient to remark that He who had to be born of a virgin is announced in express terms by the angel himself as the Son of God: “The Spirit of God shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also the Holy Thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” 8125 On this passage even they will wish to raise a cavil; but truth will prevail. Of course, they say, the Son of God is God, and the power of the highest is the Most High. And they do not hesitate to insinuate 8126 what, if it had been true, would have been written. Whom was he 8127 so afraid of as not plainly to declare, “God shall come upon thee, and the Highest shall overshadow thee?” Now, by saying “the Spirit of God” (although the Spirit of God is God,) and by not directly naming God, he wished that portion 8128 of the whole Godhead to be understood, which was about to retire into the designation of “the Son.” The Spirit of God in this passage must be the same as the Word. For just as, when John says, “The Word was made flesh,” 8129 we understand the Spirit also in the mention of the Word: so here, too, we acknowledge the Word likewise in the name of the Spirit. For both the Spirit is the substance of the Word, and the Word is the operation of the Spirit, and the Two are One (and the same). 8130 Now John must mean One when he speaks of Him as “having been made flesh,” and the angel Another when he announces Him as “about to be born,” if the Spirit is not the Word, and the Word the Spirit. For just as the Word of God is not actually He whose Word He is, so also the Spirit (although He is called God) is not actually He whose Spirit He is said to be. Nothing which belongs to something else is actually the very same thing as that to which it belongs. Clearly, when anything proceeds from a personal subject, 8131 and so belongs to him, since it comes from him, it may possibly be such in quality exactly as the personal subject himself is from whom it proceeds, and to whom it belongs. And thus the Spirit is God, and the Word is God, because proceeding from God, but yet is not actually the very same as He from whom He proceeds. Now that which is God of God, although He is an actually existing thing, 8132 yet He cannot be God Himself 8133 (exclusively), but so far God as He is of the same substance as God Himself, and as being an actually existing thing, and as a portion of the Whole. Much more will “the power of the Highest” not be the Highest Himself, because It is not an actually existing thing, as being Spirit—in the same way as the wisdom (of God) and the providence (of God) is not God: these attributes are not substances, but the accidents of the particular substance. Power is incidental to the Spirit, but cannot itself be the Spirit. These things, therefore, whatsoever they are—(I mean) the Spirit of God, and the Word and the Power—having been conferred on the Virgin, that which is born of her is the Son of God. This He Himself, in those other Gospels also, testifies Himself to have been from His very boyhood: “Wist ye not,” says He, “that I must be about my Father’s business?” 8134 Satan likewise knew Him to be this in his temptations: “Since Thou art the Son of God.” 8135 This, accordingly, the devils also acknowledge Him to be: “we know Thee, who Thou art, the Holy Son of God.” 8136 His “Father” He Himself adores. 8137 When acknowledged by Peter as the “Christ (the Son) of God,” 8138 He does not deny the relation. He exults in spirit when He says to the Father, “I thank Thee, O Father, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent.” 8139 He, moreover, affirms also that to no man is the Father known, but to His Son; 8140 and promises that, as the Son of the Father, He will confess those who confess Him, and deny those who deny Him, before His Father. 8141 He also introduces a parable of the mission to the vineyard of the Son (not the Father), who was sent after so many servants, 8142 and slain by the husbandmen, and avenged by the Father. He is also ignorant of the last day and hour, which is known to the Father only. 8143 He awards the kingdom to His disciples, as He says it had been appointed to Himself by the Father. 8144 He has power to ask, if He will, legions of angels from the Father for His help. 8145 He exclaims that God had forsaken Him. 8146 He commends His spirit into the hands of the Father. 8147 After His resurrection He promises in a pledge to His disciples that He will send them the promise of His Father; 8148 and lastly, He commands them to baptize into the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, not into a unipersonal God. 8149 And indeed it is not once only, but three times, that we are immersed into the Three Persons, at each several mention of Their names.
Footnotes
622:8125Luke i. 35.
622:8126Inicere.
622:8127i.e., the angel of the Annunciation.
622:8128On this not strictly defensible term of Tertullian, see Bp. Bull’s Defence of the Nicene Creed, book ii. ch. vii. sec. 5, Translation, pp. 199, 200.
622:8129John i. 14.
622:8130“The selfsame Person is understood under the appellation both of Spirit and Word, with this difference only, that He is called ‘the Spirit of God,’ so far as He is a Divine Person,…and ‘the Word,’ so far as He is the Spirit in operation, proceeding with sound and vocal utterance from God to set the universe in order.”—Bp. Bull, Def. Nic. Creed, p. 535, Translation.
622:8131Ex ipso.
622:8132Substantiva res.
622:8133Ipse Deus: i.e., God so wholly as to exclude by identity every other person.
622:8134Luke ii. 49.
622:8135Matt. 4:3, 6.
622:8136Mark 1:24, Matt. 8:29.
622:8137Matt. 11:25, 26, Luke 10:21, John 11:41.
622:8138Matt. xvi. 17.
622:8139Matt. xi. 25.
622:8140Matt. 11:27, Luke 10:22.
622:8141Matt. 10:32, 33.
622:8142Matt. xxi. 33-41.
623:8143Matt. xxiv. 36.
623:8144Luke xxii. 29.
623:8145Matt. xxvi. 53.
623:8146Matt. xxvii. 46.
623:8147Luke xxiii. 46.
623:8148Luke xxiv. 49.
623:8149Non in unum.
Chapter XXVII.—The Distinction of the Father and the Son, Thus Established, He Now Proves the Distinction of the Two Natures, Which Were, Without Confusion, United in the Person of the Son. The Subterfuges of Praxeas Thus Exposed.
But why should I linger over matters which are so evident, when I ought to be attacking points on which they seek to obscure the plainest proof? For, confuted on all sides on the distinction between the Father and the Son, which we maintain without destroying their inseparable union—as (by the examples) of the sun and the ray, and the fountain and the river—yet, by help of (their conceit) an indivisible number, (with issues) of two and three, they endeavour to interpret this distinction in a way which shall nevertheless tally with their own opinions: so that, all in one Person, they distinguish two, Father and Son, understanding the Son to be flesh, that is man, that is Jesus; and the Father to be spirit, that is God, that is Christ. Thus they, while contending that the Father and the Son are one and the same, do in fact begin by dividing them rather than uniting them. For if Jesus is one, and Christ is another, then the Son will be different from the Father, because the Son is Jesus, and the Father is Christ. Such a monarchy as this they learnt, I suppose, in the school of Valentinus, making two—Jesus and Christ. But this conception of theirs has been, in fact, already confuted in what we have previously advanced, because the Word of God or the Spirit of God is also called the power of the Highest, whom they make the Father; whereas these relations 8150 are not themselves the same as He whose relations they are said to be, but they proceed from Him and appertain to Him. However, another refutation awaits them on this point of their heresy. See, say they, it was announced by the angel: “Therefore that Holy Thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” 8151 Therefore, (they argue,) as it was the flesh that was born, it must be the flesh that is the Son of God. Nay, (I answer,) this is spoken concerning the Spirit of God. For it was certainly of the Holy Spirit that the virgin conceived; and that which He conceived, she brought forth. That, therefore, had to be born which was conceived and was to be brought forth; that is to say, the Spirit, whose “name should be called Emmanuel which, being interpreted, is, God with us.” 8152 Besides, the flesh is not God, so that it could not have been said concerning it, “That Holy Thing shall be called the Son of God,” but only that Divine Being who was born in the flesh, of whom the psalm also says, “Since God became man in the midst of it, and established it by the will of the Father.” 8153 Now what Divine Person was born in it? The Word, and the Spirit which became incarnate with the Word by the will of the Father. The Word, therefore, is incarnate; and this must be the point of our inquiry: How the Word became flesh,—whether it was by having been transfigured, as it were, in the flesh, or by having really clothed Himself in flesh. Certainly it was by a real clothing of Himself in flesh. For the rest, we must needs believe God to be unchangeable, and incapable of form, as being eternal. But transfiguration is the destruction of that which previously existed. For whatsoever is transfigured into some other thing ceases to be that which it had been, and begins to be that which it previously was not. God, however, neither ceases to be what He was, nor can He be any other thing than what He is. The Word is God, and “the Word of the Lord remaineth for ever,”—even by holding on unchangeably in His own proper form. Now, if He admits not of being transfigured, it must follow that He be understood in this sense to have become flesh, when He comes to be in the flesh, and is manifested, and is seen, and is handled by means of the flesh; since all the other points likewise require to be thus understood. For if the Word became flesh by a transfiguration and change of substance, it follows at once that Jesus must be a substance compounded of 8154 two substances—of flesh and spirit,—a kind of mixture, like electrum, composed of gold and silver; and it begins to be neither gold (that is to say, spirit) nor silver (that is to say, flesh),—the one being changed by the other, and a third substance produced. Jesus, therefore, cannot at this rate be God for He has ceased to be the Word, which was made flesh; nor can He be Man incarnate for He is not properly flesh, and it was flesh which the Word became. Being compounded, therefore, of both, He actually is neither; He is rather some third substance, very different from either. But the truth is, we find that He is expressly set forth as both God and Man; the very psalm which we have quoted intimating (of the flesh), that “God became Man in the midst of it, He therefore established it by the will of the Father,”—certainly in all respects as the Son of God and the Son of Man, being God and Man, differing no doubt according to each substance in its own especial property, inasmuch as the Word is nothing else but God, and the flesh nothing else but Man. Thus does the apostle also teach respecting His two substances, saying, “who was made of the seed of David;” 8155 in which words He will be Man and Son of Man. “Who was declared to be the Son of God, according to the Spirit;” 8156 in which words He will be God, and the Word—the Son of God. We see plainly the twofold state, which is not confounded, but conjoined in One Person—Jesus, God and Man. Concerning Christ, indeed, I defer what I have to say. 8157 (I remark here), that the property of each nature is so wholly preserved, that the Spirit 8158 on the one hand did all things in Jesus suitable to Itself, such as miracles, and mighty deeds, and wonders; and the Flesh, on the other hand, exhibited the affections which belong to it. It was hungry under the devil’s temptation, thirsty with the Samaritan woman, wept over Lazarus, was troubled even unto death, and at last actually died. If, however, it was only a tertium quid, some composite essence formed out of the Two substances, like the electrum (which we have mentioned), there would be no distinct proofs apparent of either nature. But by a transfer of functions, the Spirit would have done things to be done by the Flesh, and the Flesh such as are effected by the Spirit; or else such things as are suited neither to the Flesh nor to the Spirit, but confusedly of some third character. Nay more, on this supposition, either the Word underwent death, or the flesh did not die, if so be the Word was converted into flesh; because either the flesh was immortal, or the Word was mortal. Forasmuch, however, as the two substances acted distinctly, each in its own character, there necessarily accrued to them severally their own operations, and their own issues. Learn then, together with Nicodemus, that “that which is born in the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.” 8159 Neither the flesh becomes Spirit, nor the Spirit flesh. In one Person they no doubt are well able to be co-existent. Of them Jesus consists—Man, of the flesh; of the Spirit, God—and the angel designated Him as “the Son of God,” 8160 in respect of that nature, in which He was Spirit, reserving for the flesh the appellation “Son of Man.” In like manner, again, the apostle calls Him “the Mediator between God and Men,” 8161 and so affirmed His participation of both substances. Now, to end the matter, will you, who interpret the Son of God to be flesh, be so good as to show us what the Son of Man is? Will He then, I want to know, be the Spirit? But you insist upon it that the Father Himself is the Spirit, on the ground that “God is a Spirit,” just as if we did not read also that there is “the Spirit of God;” in the same manner as we find that as “the Word was God,” so also there is “the Word of God.”
Footnotes
623:8150Ipsæ.
623:8151Luke i. 35.
623:8152Matt. i. 23.
623:8153His version of Ps. lxxxvii. 5.
624:8154Ex.
624:8155Rom. i. 3.
624:8156Rom. 1.4.
624:8157See next chapter.
624:8158i.e., Christ’s divine nature.
624:8159John iii. 6.
624:8160Luke i. 35.
624:81611 Tim. ii. 5.
Chapter XXVIII.—Christ Not the Father, as Praxeas Said. The Inconsistency of This Opinion, No Less Than Its Absurdity, Exposed. The True Doctrine of Jesus Christ According to St. Paul, Who Agrees with Other Sacred Writers.
And so, most foolish heretic, you make Christ to be the Father, without once considering the actual force of this name, if indeed Christ is a name, and not rather a surname, or designation; for it signifies “Anointed.” But Anointed is no more a proper name than Clothed or Shod; it is only an accessory to a name. Suppose now that by some means Jesus were also called Vestitus (Clothed), as He is actually called Christ from the mystery of His anointing, would you in like manner say that Jesus was the Son of God, and at the same time suppose that Vestitus was the Father? Now then, concerning Christ, if Christ is the Father, the Father is an Anointed One, and receives the unction of course from another. Else if it is from Himself that He receives it, then you must prove it to us. But we learn no such fact from the Acts of the Apostles in that ejaculation of the Church to God, “Of a truth, Lord, against Thy Holy Child Jesus, whom Thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together.” 8162 These then testified both that Jesus was the Son of God, and that being the Son, He was anointed by the Father. Christ therefore must be the same as Jesus who was anointed by the Father, and not the Father, who anointed the Son. To the same effect are the words of Peter: “Let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ,” that is, Anointed. 8163 John, moreover, brands that man as “a liar” who “denieth that Jesus is the Christ;” whilst on the other hand he declares that “every one is born of God who believeth that Jesus is the Christ.” 8164 Wherefore he also exhorts us to believe in the name of His (the Father’s,) Son Jesus Christ, that “our fellowship may be with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” 8165 Paul, in like manner, everywhere speaks of “God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ.” When writing to the Romans, he gives thanks to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 8166 To the Galatians he declares himself to be “an apostle not of men, neither by man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father.” 8167 You possess indeed all his writings, which testify plainly to the same effect, and set forth Two—God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father. (They also testify) that Jesus is Himself the Christ, and under one or the other designation the Son of God. For precisely by the same right as both names belong to the same Person, even the Son of God, does either name alone without the other belong to the same Person. Consequently, whether it be the name Jesus which occurs alone, Christ is also understood, because Jesus is the Anointed One; or if the name Christ is the only one given, then Jesus is identified with Him, because the Anointed One is Jesus. Now, of these two names Jesus Christ, the former is the proper one, which was given to Him by the angel; and the latter is only an adjunct, predicable of Him from His anointing,—thus suggesting the proviso that Christ must be the Son, not the Father. How blind, to be sure, is the man who fails to perceive that by the name of Christ some other God is implied, if he ascribes to the Father this name of Christ! For if Christ is God the Father, when He says, “I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God,” 8168 He of course shows plainly enough that there is above Himself another Father and another God. If, again, the Father is Christ, He must be some other Being who “strengtheneth the thunder, and createth the wind, and declareth unto men His Christ.” 8169 And if “the kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ,” 8170 that Lord must be another Being, against whose Christ were gathered together the kings and the rulers. And if, to quote another passage, “Thus saith the Lord to my Lord Christ,” 8171 the Lord who speaks to the Father of Christ must be a distinct Being. Moreover, when the apostle in his epistle prays, “That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and of knowledge,” 8172 He must be other (than Christ), who is the God of Jesus Christ, the bestower of spiritual gifts. And once for all, that we may not wander through every passage, He “who raised up Christ from the dead, and is also to raise up our mortal bodies,” 8173 must certainly be, as the quickener, different from the dead Father, 8174 or even from the quickened Father, if Christ who died is the Father.
Footnotes
625:8162Acts iv. 27.
625:8163Acts ii. 36.
625:8164See 1 John 2:22, 1 John 4:2, 3, 1 John 5:1.
625:81651 John i. 3.
625:8166Rom. i. 8.
625:8167Gal. i. 1.
625:8168John xx. 17.
625:8169Amos iv. 13, Sept.
625:8170Ps. ii. 2.
625:8171Here Tertullian reads τῷ Χριστῷ μου Κυρίῳ, instead of Κύρῳ, “to Cyrus,” in Isa. xlv. 1.
625:8172Eph. i. 17.
625:8173Rom. viii. 11.
625:8174From this deduction of the doctrine of Praxeas, that the Father must have suffered on the cross, his opponents called him and his followers Patripassians.
Chapter XXIX.—It Was Christ that Died. The Father is Incapable of Suffering Either Solely or with Another. Blasphemous Conclusions Spring from Praxeas’ Premises.
Silence! Silence on such blasphemy. Let us be content with saying that Christ died, the Son of the Father; and let this suffice, because the Scriptures have told us so much. For even the apostle, to his declaration—which he makes not without feeling the weight of it—that “Christ died,” immediately adds, “according to the Scriptures,” 8175 in order that he may alleviate the harshness of the statement by the authority of the Scriptures, and so remove offence from the reader. Now, although when two substances are alleged to be in Christ—namely, the divine and the human—it plainly follows that the divine nature is immortal, and that which is human is mortal, it is manifest in what sense he declares “Christ died”—even in the sense in which He was flesh and Man and the Son of Man, not as being the Spirit and the Word and the Son of God. In short, since he says that it was Christ (that is, the Anointed One) that died, he shows us that that which died was the nature which was anointed; in a word, the flesh. Very well, say you; since we on our side affirm our doctrine in precisely the same terms which you use on your side respecting the Son, we are not guilty of blasphemy against the Lord God, for we do not maintain that He died after the divine nature, but only after the human. Nay, but you do blaspheme; because you allege not only that the Father died, but that He died the death of the cross. For “cursed are they which are hanged on a tree,” 8176 —a curse which, after the law, is compatible to the Son (inasmuch as “Christ has been made a curse for us,” 8177 but certainly not the Father); since, however, you convert Christ into the Father, you are chargeable with blasphemy against the Father. But when we assert that Christ was crucified, we do not malign Him with a curse; we only re-affirm 8178 the curse pronounced by the law: 8179 nor indeed did the apostle utter blasphemy when he said the same thing as we. 8180 Besides, as there is no blasphemy in predicating of the subject that which is fairly applicable to it; so, on the other hand, it is blasphemy when that is alleged concerning the subject which is unsuitable to it. On this principle, too, the Father was not associated in suffering with the Son. The heretics, indeed, fearing to incur direct blasphemy against the Father, hope to diminish it by this expedient: they grant us so far that the Father and the Son are Two; adding that, since it is the Son indeed who suffers, the Father is only His fellow-sufferer. 8181 But how absurd are they even in this conceit! For what is the meaning of “fellow-suffering,” but the endurance of suffering along with another? Now if the Father is incapable of suffering, He. is incapable of suffering in company with another; otherwise, if He can suffer with another, He is of course capable of suffering. You, in fact, yield Him nothing by this subterfuge of your fears. You are afraid to say that He is capable of suffering whom you make to be capable of fellow-suffering. Then, again, the Father is as incapable of fellow-suffering as the Son even is of suffering under the conditions of His existence as God. Well, but how could the Son suffer, if the Father did not suffer with Him? My answer is, The Father is separate from the Son, though not from Him as God. For even if a river be soiled with mire and mud, although it flows from the fountain identical in nature with it, and is not separated from the fountain, yet the injury which affects the stream reaches not to the fountain; and although it is the water of the fountain which suffers down the stream, still, since it is not affected at the fountain, but only in the river, the fountain suffers nothing, but only the river which issues from the fountain. So likewise the Spirit of God, 8182 whatever suffering it might be capable of in the Son, yet, inasmuch as it could not suffer in the Father, the fountain of the Godhead, but only in the Son, it evidently could not have suffered, 8183 as the Father. But it is enough for me that the Spirit of God suffered nothing as the Spirit of God, 8184 since all that It suffered It suffered in the Son. It was quite another matter for the Father to suffer with the Son in the flesh. This likewise has been treated by us. Nor will any one deny this, since even we are ourselves unable to suffer for God, unless the Spirit of God be in us, who also utters by our instrumentality 8185 whatever pertains to our own conduct and suffering; not, however, that He Himself suffers in our suffering, only He bestows on us the power and capacity of suffering.
Footnotes
625:81751 Cor. xv. 3.
626:8176Gal. iii. 13.
626:8177Same ver.
626:8178Referimus: or, “Recite and record.”
626:8179Deut. xxi. 23.
626:8180Gal. iii. 13.
626:8181[This passage convinces Lardner that Praxeas was not a Patripassian. Credib. Vol. VIII. p. 607.]
626:8182That is, the divine nature in general in this place.
626:8183That which was open to it to suffer in the Son.
626:8184Suo nomine.
626:8185De nobis.
Chapter XXX.—How the Son Was Forsaken by the Father Upon the Cross. The True Meaning Thereof Fatal to Praxeas. So Too, the Resurrection of Christ, His Ascension, Session at the Father’s Right Hand, and Mission of the Holy Ghost.
However, if you persist in pushing your views further, I shall find means of answering you with greater stringency, and of meeting you with the exclamation of the Lord Himself, so as to challenge you with the question, What is your inquiry and reasoning about that? You have Him exclaiming in the midst of His passion: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” 8186 Either, then, the Son suffered, being “forsaken” by the Father, and the Father consequently suffered nothing, inasmuch as He forsook the Son; or else, if it was the Father who suffered, then to what God was it that He addressed His cry? But this was the voice of flesh and soul, that is to say, of man—not of the Word and Spirit, that is to say, not of God; and it was uttered so as to prove the impassibility of God, who “forsook” His Son, so far as He handed over His human substance to the suffering of death. This verity the apostle also perceived, when he writes to this effect: “If the Father spared not His own Son.” 8187 This did Isaiah before him likewise perceive, when he declared: “And the Lord hath delivered Him up for our offences.” 8188 In this manner He “forsook” Him, in not sparing Him; “forsook” Him, in delivering Him up. In all other respects the Father did not forsake the Son, for it was into His Father’s hands that the Son commended His spirit. 8189 Indeed, after so commending it, He instantly died; and as the Spirit 8190 remained with the flesh, the flesh cannot undergo the full extent of death, i.e., in corruption and decay. For the Son, therefore, to die, amounted to His being forsaken by the Father. The Son, then, both dies and rises again, according to the Scriptures. 8191 It is the Son, too, who ascends to the heights of heaven, 8192 and also descends to the inner parts of the earth. 8193 “He sitteth at the Father’s right hand” 8194 —not the Father at His own. He is seen by Stephen, at his martyrdom by stoning, still sitting at the right hand of God 8195 where He will continue to sit, until the Father shall make His enemies His footstool. 8196 He will come again on the clouds of heaven, just as He appeared when He ascended into heaven. 8197 Meanwhile He has received from the Father the promised gift, and has shed it forth, even the Holy Spirit—the Third Name in the Godhead, and the Third Degree of the Divine Majesty; the Declarer of the One Monarchy of God, but at the same time the Interpreter of the Economy, to every one who hears and receives the words of the new prophecy; 8198 and “the Leader into all truth,” 8199 such as is in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, according to the mystery of the doctrine of Christ.
Footnotes
626:8186Matt. xxvii. 46.
627:8187Rom. viii. 32.
627:8188This is the sense rather than the words of Isa. 53:5, 6.
627:8189Luke xxiii. 46.
627:8190i.e., the divine nature.
627:81911 Cor. 15:3, 4.
627:8192John iii. 13.
627:8193Eph. iv. 9.
627:8194Mark 16:19, Rev. 3:21.
627:8195Acts vii. 55.
627:8196Ps. cx. 1.
627:8197Acts 1:11, Luke 21:37.
627:8198Tertullian was now a [pronounced] Montanist.
627:8199John xvi. 13.
Chapter XXXI.—Retrograde Character of the Heresy of Praxeas. The Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity Constitutes the Great Difference Between Judaism and Christianity.
But, (this doctrine of yours bears a likeness) to the Jewish faith, of which this is the substance—so to believe in One God as to refuse to reckon the Son besides Him, and after the Son the Spirit. Now, what difference would there be between us and them, if there were not this distinction which you are for breaking down? What need would there be of the gospel, which is the substance of the New Covenant, laying down (as it does) that the Law and the Prophets lasted until John the Baptist, if thenceforward the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not both believed in as Three, and as making One Only God? God was pleased to renew His covenant with man in such a way as that His Unity might be believed in, after a new manner, through the Son and the Spirit, in order that God might now be known openly, 8200 in His proper Names and Persons, who in ancient times was not plainly understood, though declared through the Son and the Spirit. Away, then, with 8201 those “Antichrists who deny the Father and the Son.” For they deny the Father, when they say that He is the same as the Son; and they deny the Son, when they suppose Him to be the same as the Father, by assigning to Them things which are not Theirs, and taking away from Them things which are Theirs. But “whosoever shall confess that (Jesus) Christ is the Son of God” (not the Father), “God dwelleth in him, and he in God.” 8202 We believe not the testimony of God in which He testifies to us of His Son. “He that hath not the Son, hath not life.” 8203 And that man has not the Son, who believes Him to be any other than the Son.
Footnotes
627:8200Coram.
627:8201Viderint.
627:82021 John iv. 15.
627:82031 John v. 12.
Postscript.
————————————
The learned Dr. Holmes, the translator of the Second volume of the Edinburgh series, to which our arrangement has given another position, furnished it with a Preface as follows:
“This volume contains all Tertullian’s polemical works (placed in his second volume by Oehler, whose text we have followed), with the exception of the long treatise Against Marcion, which has already formed a volume of this series, and the Adversus Judæos, which, not to increase the bulk of the present volume, appears among the Miscellaneous Tracts.
“For the scanty facts connected with our author’s life, and for some general remarks on the importance and style of his writings, the reader is referred to the Introduction of my translation of the Five Books against Marcion.
“The treatises which comprise this volume will be found replete with the vigorous thought and terse expression which always characterize Tertullian.
“Brief synopses are prefixed to the several treatises, and headings are supplied to the chapters: these, with occasional notes on difficult passages and obscure allusions, will, it is hoped, afford sufficient aid for an intelligent perusal of these ancient writings, which cannot fail to be interesting alike to the theologian and the general reader,—full as they are of reverence for revealed truth, and at the same time of independence of judgment, adorned with admirable variety and fulness of knowledge, genial humour, and cultivated imagination.”
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Dr. Holmes further adorned this same volume with a dedication to a valued friend, in the following words:
“The Right Rev. Father in God, W. I. Trower, D.D., late Lord Bishop of Gibraltar, and formerly Bishop of Glasgow and Galway:
My Dear Lord, In one of our conversations last summer, you were kind enough to express an interest in this publication, and to favour me with some valuable hints on my own share in it. It gives me therefore great pleasure to inscribe your honoured name on the first page of this volume.
I avail myself of this public opportunity of endorsing, on my own account, the high opinion which has long been entertained of your excellent volumes on The Epistles and The Gospels.
Recalling to mind, as I often do, our pleasant days at Pennycross and Mannamead, I remain, my dear Lord, very faithfully yours, Peter Holmes.”
Mannamead, March 10, 1870.
Elucidations.
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I.
(Sundry doctrinal statements of Tertullian. See p. 601 (et seqq.), supra.)
I am glad for many reasons that Dr. Holmes appends the following from Bishop Kaye’s Account of the Writings of Tertullian:
“On the doctrine of the blessed Trinity, in order to explain his meaning Tertullian borrows illustrations from natural objects. The three Persons of the Trinity stand to each other in the relation of the root, the shrub, and the fruit; of the fountain, the river, and the cut from the river; of the sun, the ray, and the terminating point of the ray. For these illustrations he professes himself indebted to the Revelations of the Paraclete. In later times, divines have occasionally resorted to similar illustrations for the purpose of familiarizing the doctrine of the Trinity to the mind; nor can any danger arise from the proceeding, so long as we recollect that they are illustrations, not arguments—that we must not draw conclusions from them, or think that whatever may be truly predicated of the illustrations, may be predicated with equal truth of that which it was designed to illustrate.”
“‘Notwithstanding, however, the intimate union which subsists between the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, we must be careful,’ says Tertullian, ‘to distinguish between their Persons.’ In his representations of this distinction he sometimes uses expressions which in after times, when controversy had introduced greater precision of language, were studiously avoided by the orthodox. Thus he calls the Father the whole substance—the Son a derivation from or portion of the whole.” 8204
“After showing that Tertullian’s opinions were generally coincident with the orthodox belief of the Christian Church on the great subject of the Trinity in Unity, Bp. Kaye goes on to say: ‘We are far from meaning to assert that expressions may not occasionally be found which are capable of a different interpretation, and which were carefully avoided by the orthodox writers of later times, when the controversies respecting the Trinity had introduced greater precision of language.’ Pamelius thought it necessary to put the reader on his guard against certain of these expressions; and Semler has noticed, with a sort of ill-natured industry (we call it ill-natured industry, because the true mode of ascertaining a writer’s opinions is, not to fix upon particular expressions, but to take the general tenor of his language), every passage in the Tract against Praxeas in which there is any appearance of contradiction, or which will bear a construction favourable to the Arian tenets. Bp. Bull also, who conceives the language of Tertullian to be explicit and correct on the subject of the pre-existence and the consubstantiality, admits that he occasionally uses expressions at variance with the co-eternity of Christ. For instance, in the Tract against Hermogenes, 8205 we find a passage in which it is expressly asserted that there was a time when the Son was not. Perhaps, however, a reference to the peculiar tenets of Hermogenes will enable us to account for this assertion. That heretic affirmed that matter was eternal, and argued thus: ‘God was always God, and always Lord; but the word Lord implies the existence of something over which He was Lord. Unless, therefore, we suppose the eternity of something distinct from God, it is not true that He was always Lord.’ Tertullian boldly answered, that God was not always Lord; and that in Scripture we do not find Him called Lord until the work of creation was completed. In like manner, he contended that the titles of Judge and Father imply the existence of sin, and of a Son. As, therefore, there was a time when neither sin nor the Son existed, the titles of Judge and Father were not at that time applicable to God. Tertullian could scarcely mean to affirm (in direct opposition to his own statements in the Tract against Praxeas) that there was ever a time when the λόγος, or Ratio, or Sermo Internusdid not exist. But with respect to Wisdom and the Son (Sophia and Filius) the case is different. Tertullian assigns to both a beginning of existence: Sophia was created or formed in order to devise the plan of the universe; and the Son was begotten in order to carry that plan into effect. Bp. Bull appears to have given an accurate representation of the matter, when he says that, according to our author, the Reason and Spirit of God, being the substance of the Word and Son, were co-eternal with God; but that the titles of Word and Son were not strictly applicable until the former had been emitted to arrange, and the latter begotten to execute, the work of creation. Without, therefore, attempting to explain, much less to defend, all Tertullian’s expressions and reasonings, we are disposed to acquiesce in the statement given by Bp. Bull of his opinions (Defence of the Nicene Creed, sec. iii. ch. x. (p. 545 of the Oxford translation)): ‘From all this it is clear how rashly, as usual, Petavius has pronounced that, “so far as relates to the eternity of the Word, it is manifest that Tertullian did not by any means acknowledge it.”’ To myself, indeed, and as I suppose to my reader also, after the many clear testimonies which I have adduced, the very opposite is manifest, unless indeed Petavius played on the term, the Word, which I will not suppose. For Tertullian does indeed teach that the Son of God was made and was called the Word (Verbum or Sermo) from some definite beginning, i.e. at the time when He went out from God the Father with the voice, ‘Let there be light’ in order to arrange the universe. But, for all that, that he really believed that the very hypostasis which is called the Word and Son of God is eternal, I have, I think, abundantly demonstrated.” (The whole of Bp. Bull’s remark is worth considering; it occurs in the translation just referred to, pp. 508–545.)—(Pp. 521–525.)
“In speaking also of the Holy Ghost, Tertullian occasionally uses terms of a very ambiguous and equivocal character. He says, for instance (Adversus Praxean, c. xii.), that in Gen. i. 26, God addressed the Son, His Word (the Second Person in the Trinity), and the Spirit in the Word (the Third Person of the Trinity). Here the distinct personality of the Spirit is expressly asserted; although it is difficult to reconcile Tertullian’s words, ‘Spiritus in Sermone,’ with the assertion. It is, however, certain both from the general tenor of the Tract against Praxeas, and from many passages in his other writings (for instance, Ad Martyras, iii.), that the distinct personality of the Holy Ghost formed an article of Tertullian’s creed. The occasional ambiguity of his language respecting the Holy Ghost is perhaps in part to be traced to the variety of senses in which the term ‘Spiritus’ is used. It is applied generally to God, for ‘God is a Spirit’ (Adv. Marcionem, ii. 9); and for the same reason to the Son, who is frequently called ‘the Spirit of God,’ and ‘the Spirit of the Creator’ (De Oratione, i.; Adv. Praxean, xiv., xxvi.; Adv. Marcionem, v. 8; Apolog. xxiii.; Adv. Marcionem, iii. 6, iv. 33). Bp. Bull likewise (Defence of the Nicene Creed, i. 2), following Grotius, has shown that the word ‘Spiritus’ is employed by the fathers to express the divine nature in Christ.”—(Pp. 525, 526.)
II.
(The bishop of Rome, cap. i. p. 597.)
Probably Victor (a.d. 190), who is elsewhere called Victorinus, as Oehler conjectures, by a blunderer who tacked the inus to his name, because he was thinking of Zephyrinus, his immediate successor. This Victor “acknowledged the prophetic gifts of Montanus,” and kept up communion with the Phrygian churches that adopted them: but worse than that, he now seems to have patronized the Patri-passion heresy, under the compulsion of Praxeas. So Tertullian says, who certainly had no idea that the Bishop of Rome was the infallible judge of controversies, when he recorded the facts of this strange history. Thus, we find the very founder of “Latin Christianity,” accusing a contemporary Bishop of Rome of heresy and the patronage of heresy, in two particulars. Our earliest acquaintance with that See presents us with Polycarp’s superior authority, at Rome itself, in maintaining apostolic doctrine and suppressing heresy. “He it was, who coming to Rome,” says Irenæus, 8206 “in the time of Anicetus, caused many to turn away from the aforesaid heretics (viz. Valentinus and Marcion) to the Church of God, proclaiming that he had received this one and sole truth from the Apostles.” Anicetus was a pious prelate who never dreamed of asserting a superior claim as the chief depositary of Apostolic orthodoxy, and whose beautiful example in the Easter-questions discussed between Polycarp and himself, is another illustration of the independence of the sister churches, at that period. 8207 Nor is it unworthy to be noted, that the next event, in Western history, establishes a like principle against that other and less worthy occupant of the Roman See, of whom we have spoken. Irenæus rebukes Victor for his dogmatism about Easter, and reproaches him with departing from the example of his predecessors in the same See. 8208 With Eleutherus he had previously remonstrated, though mildly, for his toleration of heresy and his patronage of the raising schism of Montanus. 8209
III.
(These three are one, cap. xxv. p. 621. Also p. 606.)
Porson having spoken Pontifically upon the matter of the text of “the Three Witnesses,” cadit quæstio, locutus est Augur Apollo. It is of more importance that Bishop Kaye in his calm wisdom, remarks as follows; 8210 “In my opinion, the passage in Tertullian, far from containing an allusion to 1 John v. 7, furnishes most decisive proof that he knew nothing of the verse.” After this, and the acquiescence of scholars generally, it would be presumption to say a word on the question of quoting it as Scripture. In Textual Criticism it seems to be an established canon that it has no place in the Greek Testament. I submit, however, that, something remains to be said for it, on the ground of the old African Version used and quoted by Tertullian and Cyprian; and I dare to say, that, while there would be no ground whatever for inserting it in our English Version, the question of striking it out is a widely different one. It would be sacrilege, in my humble opinion, for reasons which will appear, in the following remarks, upon our author.
It appears to me very clear that Tertullian is quoting 1 John v. 7 in the passage now under consideration: “Qui tres unum sunt, non unus, quomodo dictum est, Ego et Pater unum sumus, etc.” Let me refer to a work containing a sufficient answer to Porson, on this point of Tertullian’s quotation, which it is easier to pass sub-silentio, than to refute. I mean Forster’s New Plea, of which the full title is placed in the margin. 8211 The whole work is worth thoughtful study, but, I name it with reference to this important passage of our author, exclusively. In connection with other considerations on which I have no right to enlarge in this place, it satisfies me as to the primitive origin of the text in the Vulgate, and hence of its right to stand in our English Vulgate until it can be shewn that the Septuagint Version, quoted and honoured by our Lord, is free from similar readings, and divergences from the Hebrew mss.
Stated as a mere question as to the early African Church, 8212 the various versions known as the Itala, and the right of the Latin and English Vulgates to remain as they are, the whole question is a fresh one. Let me be pardoned for saying: (1) that I am not pleading for it as a proof-text of the Trinity, having never once quoted it as such in a long ministry, during which I have preached nearly a hundred Trinity-Sunday Sermons; (2) that I consider it as practically Apocryphal, and hence as coming under St. Jerome’s law, and being useless to establish doctrine; and (3) that I feel no need of it, owing to the wealth of Scripture on the same subject. Tertullian, himself says that he cites “only a few out of many texts—not pretending to bring up all the passages of Scripture…having produced an accumulation of witnesses in the fulness of their dignity and authority.”
To those interested in the question let me commend the learned dissertation of Grabe on the textual case, as it stood in his day. 8213 I value it chiefly because it proves that the Greek Testament, elsewhere says, disjointedly, what is collected into 1 John v. 7. It is, therefore, Holy Scripture in substance, if not in the letter. What seems to me important, however, is the balance it gives to the whole context, and the defective character of the grammar and logic, if it be stricken out. In the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate of the Old Testament we have a precisely similar case. Refer to Psa. xiii., alike in the Latin and the Greek, as compared with our English Version. 8214 Between the third and fourth verses, three whole verses are interpolated: Shall we strike them out? Of course, if certain critics are to prevail over St. Paul, for he quotes them (Rom. iii. 10) with the formula: “As it is written.” Now, then, till we expurgate the English Version of the Epistle to the Romans,—or rather the original of St. Paul himself, I employ Grabe’s argument only to prove my point, which is this, viz., that 1 John v. 7 being Scripture, ought to be left untouched in the Versions where it stands, although it be no part of the Greek Testament.
Footnotes
629:8204Kaye, pp. 504–596.
629:8205Ch. iii. compared with ch. xviii.
630:8206Vol. i. p. 416, this Series.
630:8207Vol. I. p. 569, this Series.
631:8208Eusebius, B.V. cap. 24. Refer also to preceding note, and to Vol. I. p. 310, this Series.
631:8209Vol. II. pp. 3 and 4, this Series, also, Eusebius, B.V. Cap. iii.
631:8210p. 516.
631:8211“A New Plea for the Authenticity of the text of the Three Heavenly Witnesses: or, Porson’s Letters to Travis eclectically examined, etc. etc. By the Rev. Charles Forster, etc.” Cambridge, Deighton, Bell & Co., and London, Bell & Daldy, 1867.
631:8212See Milman, Hist. Lat. Christ., i. p. 29.
631:8213See Bull’s Works, Vol. V., p. 381.
632:8214Where it is Psalm XIV.
VIII.
Scorpiace.
Antidote for the Scorpion’s Sting. 8215
[Translated by Rev. S. Thelwall.]
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Chapter I.
The earth brings forth, as if by suppuration, great evil from the diminutive scorpion. The poisons are as many as are the kinds of it, the disasters as many as are also the species of it, the pains as many as are also the colours of it. Nicander writes on the subject of scorpions, and depicts them. And yet to smite with the tail—which tail will be whatever is prolonged from the hindmost part of the body, and scourges—is the one movement which they all use when making an assault. Wherefore that succession of knots in the scorpion, which in the inside is a thin poisoned veinlet, rising up with a bow-like bound, draws tight a barbed sting at the end, after the manner of an engine for shooting missiles. From which circumstance they also call after the scorpion, the warlike implement which, by its being drawn back, gives an impetus to the arrows. The point in their case is also a duct of extreme minuteness, to inflict the wound; and where it penetrates, it pours out poison. The usual time of danger is the summer season: fierceness hoists the sail when the wind is from the south and the south-west. Among cures, certain substances supplied by nature have very great efficacy; magic also puts on some bandage; the art of healing counteracts with lancet and cup. For some, making haste, take also beforehand a protecting draught; but sexual intercourse drains it off, and they are dry again. We have faith for a defence, if we are not smitten with distrust itself also, in immediately making the sign 8216 and adjuring, 8217 and besmearing the heel with the beast. Finally, we often aid in this way even the heathen, seeing we have been endowed by God with that power which the apostle first used when he despised the viper’s bite. 8218 What, then, does this pen of yours offer, if faith is safe by what it has of its own? That it may be safe by what it has of its own also at other times, when it is subjected to scorpions of its own. These, too, have a troublesome littleness, and are of different sorts, and are armed in one manner, and are stirred up at a definite time, and that not another than one of burning heat. This among Christians is a season of persecution. When, therefore, faith is greatly agitated, and the Church burning, as represented by the bush, 8219 then the Gnostics break out, then the Valentinians creep forth, then all the opponents of martyrdom bubble up, being themselves also hot to strike, penetrate, kill. For, because they know that many are artless and also inexperienced, and weak moreover, that a very great number in truth are Christians who veer about with the wind and conform to its moods, they perceive that they are never to be approached more than when fear has opened the entrances to the soul, especially when some display of ferocity has already arrayed with a crown the faith of martyrs. Therefore, drawing along the tail hitherto, they first of all apply it to the feelings, or whip with it as if on empty space. Innocent persons undergo such suffering. So that you may suppose the speaker to be a brother or a heathen of the better sort. A sect troublesome to nobody so dealt with! Then they pierce. Men are perishing without a reason. For that they are perishing, and without a reason, is the first insertion. Then they now strike mortally. But the unsophisticated souls 8220 know not what is written, and what meaning it bears, where and when and before whom we must confess, or ought, save that this, to die for God, is, since He preserves me, not even artlessness, but folly, nay madness. If He kills me, how will it be His duty to preserve me? Once for all Christ died for us, once for all He was slain that we might not be slain. If He demands the like from me in return, does He also look for salvation from my death by violence? Or does God importune for the blood of men, especially if He refuses that of bulls and he-goats? 8221 Assuredly He had rather have the repentance than the death of the sinner. 8222 And how is He eager for the death of those who are not sinners? Whom will not these, and perhaps other subtle devices containing heretical poisons, pierce either for doubt if not for destruction, or for irritation if not for death? As for you, therefore, do you, if faith is on the alert, smite on the spot the scorpion with a curse, so far as you can, with your sandal, and leave it dying in its own stupefaction? But if it gluts the wound, it drives the poison inwards, and makes it hasten into the bowels; forthwith all the former senses become dull, the blood of the mind freezes, the flesh of the spirit pines away, loathing for the Christian name is accompanied by a sense of sourness. Already the understanding also seeks for itself a place where it may throw up; and thus, once for all, the weakness with which it has been smitten breathes out wounded faith either in heresy or in heathenism. And now the present state of matters is such, that we are in the midst of an intense heat, the very dog-star of persecution,—a state originating doubtless with the dog-headed one himself. 8223 Of some Christians the fire, of others the sword, of others the beasts, have made trial; others are hungering in prison for the martyrdoms of which they have had a taste in the meantime by being subjected to clubs and claws 8224 besides. We ourselves, having been appointed for pursuit, are like hares being hemmed in from a distance; and heretics go about according to their wont. Therefore the state of the times has prompted me to prepare by my pen, in opposition to the little beasts which trouble our sect, our antidote against poison, that I may thereby effect cures. You who read will at the same time drink. Nor is the draught bitter. If the utterances of the Lord are sweeter than honey and the honeycombs, 8225 the juices are from that source. If the promise of God flows with milk and honey, 8226 the ingredients which go to make that draught have the smack of this. “But woe to them who turn sweet into bitter, and light into darkness.” 8227 For, in like manner, they also who oppose martyrdoms, representing salvation to be destruction, transmute sweet into bitter, as well as light into darkness; and thus, by preferring this very wretched life to that most blessed one, they put bitter for sweet, as well as darkness for light.
Footnotes
633:8215[Written about a.d. 205.]
633:8216Of the cross over the wounded part. [This translation is frequently weakened by useless interpolations; some of these destroying the author’s style, for nothing, I have put into footnotes or dropped.]
633:8217I.e. adjuring the part, in the name of Jesus, and besmearing the poisoned heel with the gore of the beast, when it has been crushed to death. [So the translator; but the terse rhetoric of the original is not so circumstantial, and refers, undoubtedly, to the lingering influence of miracles, according to St. Mark xvi. 18.]
633:8218Acts xxviii. 3.
633:8219Ex. iii. 2.
634:8220The opponents of martyrdoms are meant.—Tr.
634:8221Ps. l. 13.
634:8222Ezek. xxxiii. 11.
634:8223i.e. the devil.—Tr.
634:8224An instrument of torture, so called.—Tr.
634:8225Ps. xix. 10.
634:8226Ex. iii. 17.
634:8227Isa. v. 20.
Chapter II.
But not yet about the good to be got from martyrdom must we learn, without our having first heard about the duty of suffering it; nor must we learn the usefulness of it, before we have heard about the necessity for it. The (question of the) divine warrant goes first—whether God has willed and also commanded ought of the kind, so that they who assert that it is not good are not plied with arguments for thinking it profitable save when they have been subdued. 8228 It is proper that heretics be driven 8229 to duty, not enticed. Obstinacy must be conquered, not coaxed. And, certainly, that will be pronounced beforehand quite good enough, which will be shown to have been instituted and also enjoined by God. Let the Gospels wait a little, while I set forth their root the Law, while I ascertain the will of God from those writings from which I recall to mind Himself also: “I am,” says He, “God, thy God, who have brought thee out of the land of Egypt. Thou shalt have no other gods besides me. Thou shalt not make unto thee a likeness of those things which are in heaven, and which are in the earth beneath, and which are in the sea under the earth. Thou shalt not worship them, nor serve them. For I am the Lord thy God.” 8230 Likewise in the same book of Exodus: “Ye yourselves have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. Ye shall not make unto you gods of silver, neither shall ye make unto you gods of gold.” 8231 To the following effect also, in Deuteronomy: “Hear, O Israel; The Lord thy God is one: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy might, and with all thy soul.” 8232 And again: “Neither do thou forget the Lord thy God, who brought thee forth from the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and serve Him only, and cleave to Him, and swear by His name. Ye shall not go after strange gods, and the gods of the nations which are round about you, because the Lord thy God is also a jealous God among you, and lest His anger should be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth.” 8233 But setting before them blessings and curses, He also says: “Blessings shall be yours, if ye obey the commandments of the Lord your God, whatsoever I command you this day, and do not wander from the way which I have commanded you, to go and serve other gods whom ye know not.” 8234 And as to rooting them out in every way: “Ye shall utterly destroy all the places wherein the nations, which ye shall possess by inheritance, served their gods, upon mountains and hills, and under shady trees. Ye shall overthrow all their altars, ye shall overturn and break in pieces their pillars, and cut down their groves, and burn with fire the graven images of the gods themselves, and destroy the names of them out of that place.” 8235 He further urges, when they (the Israelites) had entered the land of promise, and driven out its nations: “Take heed to thy self, that thou do not follow them after they be driven out from before thee, that thou do not inquire after their gods, saying, As the nations serve their gods, so let me do likewise.” 8236 But also says He: “If there arise among you a prophet himself, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and it come to pass, and he say, Let us go and serve other gods, whom ye know not, do not hearken to the words of that prophet or dreamer, for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye fear God with all your heart and with all your soul. After the Lord your God ye shall go, and fear Him, and keep His commandments, and obey His voice, and serve Him, and cleave unto Him. But that prophet or dreamer shall die; for he has spoken to turn thee away from the Lord thy God.” 8237 But also in another section, 8238 “If, however, thy brother, the son of thy father or of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend who is as thine own soul, solicit thee, saying secretly, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou knowest not, nor did thy fathers, of the gods of the nations which are round about thee, very nigh unto thee or far off from thee, do not consent to go with him, and do not hearken to him. Thine eye shall not spare him, neither shalt thou pity, neither shalt thou preserve him; thou shalt certainly inform upon him. Thine hand shall be first upon him to kill him, and afterwards the hand of thy people; and ye shall stone him, and he shall die, seeing he has sought to turn thee away from the Lord thy God.” 8239 He adds likewise concerning cities, that if it appeared that one of these had, through the advice of unrighteous men, passed over to other gods, all its inhabitants should be slain, and everything belonging to it become accursed, and all the spoil of it be gathered together into all its places of egress, and be, even with all the people, burned with fire in all its streets in the sight of the Lord God; and, says He, “it shall not be for dwelling in for ever: it shall not be built again any more, and there shall cleave to thy hands nought of its accursed plunder, that the Lord may turn from the fierceness of His anger.” 8240 He has, from His abhorrence of idols, framed a series of curses too: “Cursed be the man who maketh a graven or a molten image, an abomination, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and putteth it in a secret place.” 8241 But in Leviticus He says: “Go not ye after idols, nor make to yourselves molten gods: I am the Lord your God.” 8242 And in other passages: “The children of Israel are my household servants; these are they whom I led forth from the land of Egypt: 8243 I am the Lord your God. Ye shall not make you idols fashioned by the hand, neither rear you up a graven image. Nor shall ye set up a remarkable stone in your land (to worship it): I am the Lord your God.” 8244 These words indeed were first spoken by the Lord by the lips of Moses, being applicable certainly to whomsoever the Lord God of Israel may lead forth in like manner from the Egypt of a most superstitious world, and from the abode of human slavery. But from the mouth of every prophet in succession, sound forth also utterances of the same God, augmenting the same law of His by a renewal of the same commands, and in the first place announcing no other duty in so special a manner as the being on guard against all making and worshipping of idols; as when by the mouth of David He says: “The gods of the nations are silver and gold: they have eyes, and see not; they have ears, and hear not; they have a nose, and smell not; a mouth, and they speak not; hands, and they handle not; feet and they walk not. Like to them shall be they who make them, and trust in them.” 8245
Footnotes
634:8228By those in favour of its having been divinely enjoined.
634:8229By argument, of course.—Tr.
634:8230Ex. xx. 2.
634:8231Exod. 20:22, 23.
635:8232Deut. vi. 4.
635:8233Deut. vi. 12.
635:8234Deut. xi. 27.
635:8235Deut. 12:2, 3.
635:8236Deut. xii. 30.
635:8237Deut. xiii. 1.
635:8238Of course our division of the Scripture by chapter and verse did not exist in the days of Tertullian.—Tr.
635:8239Deut. xiii. 6.
635:8240Deut. xiii. 16.
635:8241Deut. xxvii. 15.
635:8242Rev. xix. 4.
635:8243The words in the Septuagint are: ὃτι ἐμοὶ οἱ υἱοὶτ ᾽Ισραὴλ οἰκέται εἰσίν, παῖδές μου οὗτοί εἰσιν οὕς ἐξήγαγον ἐκ γῆς Αἰγύπτου.
635:8244Lev. 25:55, Lev. 26:1.
636:8245Ps. 35:15, Ps. 15:4.
Chapter III.
Nor should I think it needful to discuss whether God pursues a worthy course in forbidding His own name and honour to be given over to a lie, or does so in not consenting that such as He has plucked from the maze of false religion should return again to Egypt, or does so in not suffering to depart from Him them whom He has chosen for Himself. Thus that, too, will not require to be treated by us, whether He has wished to be kept the rule which He has chosen to appoint, and whether He justly avenges the abandonment of the rule which He has wished to be kept; since He would have appointed it to no purpose if He had not wished it kept, and would have to no purpose wished it kept if He had been unwilling to uphold it. My next step, indeed, is to put to the test these appointments of God in opposition to false religions, the completely vanquished as well as also the punished, since on these will depend the entire argument for martyrdoms. Moses was apart with God on the mountain, when the people, not brooking his absence, which was so needful, seek to make gods for themselves, which, for his own part, he will prefer to destroy. 8246 Aaron is importuned, and commands that the earrings of their women be brought together, that they may be thrown into the fire. For the people were about to lose, as a judgment upon themselves, the true ornaments for the ears, the words of God. The wise fire makes for them the molten likeness of a calf, reproaching them with having the heart where they have their treasure also,—in Egypt, to wit, which clothed with sacredness, among the other animals, a certain ox likewise. Therefore the slaughter of three thousand by their nearest relatives, because they had displeased their so very near relative God, solemnly marked both the commencement and the deserts of the trespass. Israel having, as we are told in Numbers, 8247 turned aside at Sethim, the people go to the daughters of Moab to gratify their lust: they are allured to the idols, so that they committed whoredom with the spirit also: finally, they eat of their defiled sacrifices; then they both worship the gods of the nation, and are admitted to the rites of Beelphegor. For this lapse, too, into idolatry, sister to adultery, it took the slaughter of twenty-three thousand by the swords of their countrymen to appease the divine anger. After the death of Joshua the son of Nave they forsake the God of their fathers, and serve idols, Baalim and Ashtaroth; 8248 and the Lord in anger delivered them up to the hands of spoilers, and they continued to be spoiled by them, and to be sold to their adversaries, and could not at all stand before their enemies. Whithersoever they went forth, His hand was upon them for evil, and they were greatly distressed. And after this God sets judges (critas), the same as our censors, over them. But not even these did they continue steadfastly to obey. So soon as one of the judges died, they proceeded to transgress more than their fathers had done by going after the gods of others, and serving and worshipping them. Therefore the Lord was angry. “Since, indeed,” He says, “this nation have transgressed my covenant which I established with their fathers, and have not hearkened to my voice, I also will give no heed to remove from before them a man of the nations which Joshua left at his death.” 8249 And thus, throughout almost all the annals of the judges and of the kings who succeeded them, while the strength of the surrounding nations was preserved, He meted wrath out to Israel by war and captivity and a foreign yoke, as often as they turned aside from Him, especially to idolatry.
Footnotes
636:8246Ex. xxxii.
636:8247Num. xxv. 1.
636:8248Judg. ii. 8-13.
636:8249Judg. 2:20, 21.
Chapter IV.
If, therefore, it is evident that from the beginning this kind of worship has both been forbidden—witness the commands so numerous and weighty—and that it has never been engaged in without punishment following, as examples so numerous and impressive show, and that no offence is counted by God so presumptuous as a trespass of this sort, we ought further to perceive the purport of both the divine threatenings and their fulfilments, which was even then commended not only by the not calling in question, but also by the enduring of martyrdoms, for which certainly He had given occasion by forbidding idolatry. For otherwise martyrdoms would not take place. And certainly He had supplied, as a warrant for these, His own authority, willing those events to come to pass for the occurrence of which He had given occasion. At present (it is important), for we are getting severely stung concerning the will of God, and the scorpion repeats the prick, denying the existence of this will, finding fault with it, so that he either insinuates that there is another god, such that this is not his will, or none the less overthrows ours, seeing such is his will, or altogether denies this will of God, if he cannot deny Himself. But, for our part, contending elsewhere about God, and about all the rest of the body of heretical teaching, we now draw before us definite lines 8250 for one form of encounter, maintaining that this will, such as to have given occasion for martyrdoms, is that of not another god than the God of Israel, on the ground of the commandments relating to an always forbidden, as well as of the judgments upon a punished, idolatry. For if the keeping of a command involves the suffering of violence, this will be, so to speak, a command about keeping the command, requiring me to suffer that through which I shall be able to keep the command, violence namely, whatever of it threatens me when on my guard against idolatry. And certainly (in the case supposed) the Author of the command extorts compliance with it. He could not, therefore, have been unwilling that those events should come to pass by means of which the compliance will be manifest. The injunction is given me not to make mention of any other god, not even by speaking,—as little by the tongue as by the hand,—to fashion a god, and not to worship or in any way show reverence to another than Him only who thus commands me, whom I am both bid fear that I may not be forsaken by Him, and love with my whole being, that I may die for Him. Serving as a soldier under this oath, I am challenged by the enemy. If I surrender to them, I am as they are. In maintaining this oath, I fight furiously in battle, am wounded, hewn in pieces, slain. Who wished this fatal issue to his soldier, but he who sealed him by such an oath?
Footnotes
637:8250An allusion to what occurred in the games, there being lines to mark the space within which the contests were to be waged.—Tr.
Chapter V.
You have therefore the will of my God. We have cured this prick. Let us give good heed to another thrust touching the character of His will. It would be tedious to show that my God is good,—a truth with which the Marcionites have now been made acquainted by us. Meanwhile it is enough that He is called God for its being necessary that He should be believed to be good. For if any one make the supposition that God is evil, he will not be able to take his stand on both the constituents thereof: he will be bound either to affirm that he whom he has thought to be evil is not God, or that he whom he has proclaimed to be God is good. Good, therefore, will be the will also of him who, unless he is good, will not be God. The goodness of the thing itself also which God has willed—of martyrdom, I mean—will show this, because only one who is good has willed what is good. I stoutly maintain that martyrdom is good, as required by the God by whom likewise idolatry is forbidden and punished. For martyrdom strives against and opposes idolatry. But to strive against and oppose evil cannot be ought but good. Not as if I denied that there is a rivalry in evil things with one another, as well as in good also; but this ground for it requires a different state of matters. For martyrdom contends with idolatry, not from some malice which they share, but from its own kindness; for it delivers from idolatry. Who will not proclaim that to be good which delivers from idolatry? What else is the opposition between idolatry and martyrdom, than that between life and death? Life will be counted to be martyrdom as much as idolatry to be death. He who will call life an evil, has death to speak of as a good. This frowardness also appertains to men,—to discard what is wholesome, to accept what is baleful, to avoid all dangerous cures, or, in short, to be eager to die rather than to be healed. For they are many who flee from the aid of physic also, many in folly, many from fear and false modesty. And the healing art has manifestly an apparent cruelty, by reason of the lancet, and of the burning iron, and of the great heat of the mustard; yet to be cut and burned, and pulled and bitten, is not on that account an evil, for it occasions helpful pains; nor will it be refused merely because it afflicts, but because it afflicts inevitably will it be applied. The good accruing is the apology for the frightfulness of the work. In short, that man who is howling and groaning and bellowing in the hands of a physician will presently load the same hands with a fee, and proclaim that they are the best operators, and no longer affirm that they are cruel. Thus martyrdoms also rage furiously, but for salvation. God also will be at liberty to heal for everlasting life by means of fires and swords, and all that is painful. But you will admire the physician at least even in that respect, that for the most part he employs like properties in the cures to counteract the properties of the diseases, when he aids, as it were, the wrong way, succouring by means of those things to which the affliction is owing. For he both checks heat by heat, by laying on a greater load; and subdues inflammation by leaving thirst unappeased, by tormenting rather; and contracts the superabundance of bile by every bitter little draught, and stops hemorrhage by opening a veinlet in addition. But you will think that God must be found fault with, and that for being jealous, if He has chosen to contend with a disease and to do good by imitating the malady, to destroy death by death, to dissipate killing by killing, to dispel tortures by tortures, to disperse 8251 punishments by punishments, to bestow life by withdrawing it, to aid the flesh by injuring it, to preserve the soul by snatching it away. The wrongheadedness, as you deem it to be, is reasonableness; what you count cruelty is kindness. Thus, seeing God by brief (sufferings) effects cures for eternity, extol your God for your prosperity; you have fallen into His hands, but have happily fallen. He also fell into your sicknesses. Man always first provides employment for the physician; in short, he has brought upon himself the danger of death. He had received from his own Lord, as from a physician, the salutary enough rule to live according to the law, that he should eat of all indeed (that the garden produced) and should refrain from only one little tree which in the meantime the Physician Himself knew as a perilous one. He gave ear to him whom he preferred, and broke through self-restraint. He ate what was forbidden, and, surfeited by the trespass, suffered indigestion tending to death; he certainly richly deserving to lose his life altogether who wished to do so. But the inflamed tumour due to the trespass having been endured until in due time the medicine might be mixed, the Lord gradually prepared the means of healing—all the rules of faith, they also bearing a resemblance to (the causes of) the ailment, seeing they annul the word of death by the word of life, and diminish the trespass-listening by a listening of allegiance. Thus, even when that Physician commands one to die, He drives out the lethargy of death. Why does man show reluctance to suffer now from a cure, what he was not reluctant then to suffer from a disorder? Does he dislike being killed for salvation, who did not dislike being killed for destruction?—Will he feel squeamish with reference to the counter poison, who gaped for the poison?
Footnotes
638:8251Literally, “disperse in vapour.”—Tr.
Chapter VI.
But if, for the contest’s sake, God had appointed martyrdoms for us, that thereby we might make trial with our opponent, in order that He may now keep bruising him by whom man chose to be bruised, here too generosity rather than harshness in God holds sway. For He wished to make man, now plucked from the devil’s throat by faith, trample upon him likewise by courage, that he might not merely have escaped from, but also completely vanquished, his enemy. He who had called to salvation has been pleased to summon to glory also, that they who were rejoicing in consequence of their deliverance may be in transports when they are crowned likewise. With what good-will the world celebrates those games, the combative festivals and superstitious contests of the Greeks, involving forms both of worship and of pleasure, has now become clear in Africa also. As yet cities, by sending their congratulations severally, annoy Carthage, which was presented with the Pythian game after the racecourse had attained to an old age. Thus, by the world 8252 it has been believed to be a most proper mode of testing proficiency in studies, to put in competition the forms of skill, to elicit the existing condition of bodies and of voices, the reward being the informer, the public exhibition the judge, and pleasure the decision. Where there are mere contests, there are some wounds: fists make reel, heels kick like butting rams, boxing-gloves mangle, whips leave gashes. Yet there will be no one reproaching the superintendent of the contest for exposing men to outrage. Suits for injuries lie outside the racecourse. But to the extent that those persons deal in discoloration, and gore, and swellings, he will design for them crowns, doubtless, and glory, and a present, political privileges, contributions by the citizens, images, statues, and—of such sort as the world can give—an eternity of fame, a resurrection by being kept in remembrance. The pugilist himself does not complain of feeling pain, for he wishes it; the crown closes the wounds, the palm hides the blood: he is excited more by victory than by injury. Will you count this man hurt whom you see happy? But not even the vanquished himself will reproach the superintendent of the contest for his misfortune. Shall it be unbecoming in God to bring forth kinds of skill and rules of His own into public view, into this open ground of the world, to be seen by men, and angels, and all powers?—to test flesh and spirit as to stedfastness and endurance?—to give to this one the palm, to this one distinction, to that one the privilege of citizenship, to that one pay?—to reject some also, and after punishing to remove them with disgrace? You dictate to God, forsooth, the times, or the ways, or the places in which to institute a trial concerning His own troop (of competitors) as if it were not proper for the Judge to pronounce the preliminary decision also. Well now, if He had put forth faith to suffer martyrdoms not for the contest’s sake, but for its own benefit, ought it not to have had some store of hope, for the increase of which it might restrain desire of its own, and check its wish in order that it might strive to mount up, seeing they also who discharge earthly functions are eager for promotion? Or how will there be many mansions in our Father’s house, if not to accord with a diversity of deserts? How will one star also differ from another star in glory, unless in virtue of disparity in their rays? 8253 But further, if, on that account, some increase of brightness also was appropriate to loftiness of faith, that gain ought to have been of some such sort as would cost great effort, poignant suffering, torture, death. But consider the requital, when flesh and life are paid away—than which in man there is nought more precious, the one from the hand of God, the other from His breath—that the very things are paid away in obtaining the benefit of which the benefit consists; that the very things are expended which may be acquired; that the same things are the price which are also the commodities. God had foreseen also other weaknesses incident to the condition of man,—the stratagems of the enemy, the deceptive aspects of the creatures, the snares of the world; that faith, even after baptism, would be endangered; that the most, after attaining unto salvation, would be lost again, through soiling the wedding-dress, through failing to provide oil for their torchlets—would be such as would have to be sought for over mountains and woodlands, and carried back upon the shoulders. He therefore appointed as second supplies of comfort, and the last means of succour, the fight of martyrdom and the baptism—thereafter free from danger—of blood. And concerning the happiness of the man who has partaken of these, David says: “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.” 8254 For, strictly speaking, there cannot any longer be reckoned ought against the martyrs, by whom in the baptism (of blood) life itself is laid down. Thus, “love covers the multitude of sins;” 8255 and loving God, to wit, with all its strength (by which in the endurance of martyrdom it maintains the fight), with all its life 8256 (which it lays down for God), it makes of man a martyr. Shall you call these cures, counsels, methods of judging, spectacles, (illustrations of) even the barbarity of God? Does God covet man’s blood? And yet I might venture to affirm that He does, if man also covets the kingdom of heaven, if man covets a sure salvation, if man also covets a second new birth. The exchange is displeasing to no one, which can plead, in justification of itself, that either benefit or injury is shared by the parties making it.
Footnotes
638:8252Literally, “age.”—Tr.
639:82531 Cor. xv. 41.
639:8254Ps. 32:1, Rom. 4:7, etc.
639:82551 Pet. iv. 8.
639:8256Matt. xxii. 37.
Chapter VII.
If the scorpion, swinging his tail in the air, still reproach us with having a murderer for our God, I shall shudder at the altogether foul breath of blasphemy which comes stinking from his heretical mouth; but I will embrace even such a God, with assurance derived from reason, by which reason even He Himself has, in the person of His own Wisdom, by the lips of Solomon, proclaimed Himself to be more than a murderer: Wisdom (Sophia), says He has slain her own children. 8257 Sophia is Wisdom. She has certainly slain them wisely if only into life, and reasonably if only into glory. Of murder by a parent, oh the clever form! Oh the dexterity of crime! Oh the proof of cruelty, which has slain for this reason, that he whom it may have slain may not die! And therefore what follows? Wisdom is praised in hymns, in the places of egress; for the death of martyrs also is praised in song. Wisdom behaves with firmness in the streets, for with good results does she murder her own sons. 8258 Nay, on the top of the walls she speaks with assurance, when indeed, according to Esaias, this one calls out, “I am God’s;” and this one shouts, “In the name of Jacob;” and another writes, “In the name of Israel.” 8259 O good mother! I myself also wish to be put among the number of her sons, that I may be slain by her; I wish to be slain, that I may become a son. But does she merely murder her sons, or also torture them? For I hear God also, in another passage, say, “I will burn them as gold is burned, and will try them as silver is tried.” 8260 Certainly by the means of torture which fires and punishments supply, by the testing martyrdoms of faith. The apostle also knows what kind of God he has ascribed to us, when he writes: “If God spared not His own Son, but gave Him up for us, how did He not with Him also give us all things?” 8261 You see how divine Wisdom has murdered even her own proper, first-born and only Son, who is certainly about to live, nay, to bring back the others also into life. I can say with the Wisdom of God; It is Christ who gave Himself up for our offences. 8262 Already has Wisdom butchered herself also. The character of words depends not on the sound only, but on the meaning also, and they must be heard not merely by ears, but also by minds. He who does not understand, believes God to be cruel; although for him also who does not understand, an announcement has been made to restrain his harshness in understanding otherwise than aright. “For who,” says the apostle, “has known the mind of the Lord? or who has been His counsellor, to teach Him? or who has pointed out to Him the way of understanding?” 8263 But, indeed, the world has held it lawful for Diana of the Scythians, or Mercury of the Gauls, or Saturn of the Africans, to be appeased by human sacrifices; and in Latium to this day Jupiter has human blood given him to taste in the midst of the city; and no one makes it a matter of discussion, or imagines that it does not occur for some reason, or that it occurs by the will of his God, without having value. If our God, too, to have a sacrifice of His own, had required martyrdoms for Himself, who would have reproached Him for the deadly religion, and the mournful ceremonies, and the altar-pyre, and the undertaker-priest, and not rather have counted happy the man whom God should have devoured?
Footnotes
639:8257Prov. ix. 2: “She hath killed her beasts.” The corresponding words in the Septuagint are ἔσφαξε τα εαυτῆς θύματα. Augustine, in his De Civ. Dei, xvi. 20, explains the victims (θύματα) to be Martyrum victimas.—Tr.
639:8258Prov. 1:20, 21; see the Septuagint version.
639:8259Isa. xliv. 5.
639:8260Zech. xiii. 9.
639:8261Rom. viii. 32.
640:8262Rom. iv. 25.
640:8263Rom. xi. 34.
Chapter VIII.
We keep therefore the one position, and, in respect of this question only, summon to an encounter, whether martyrdoms have been commanded by God, that you may believe that they have been commanded by reason, if you know that they have been commanded by Him, because God will not command ought without reason. Since the death of His own saints is precious is His sight, as David sings, 8264 it is not, I think, that one which falls to the lot of men generally, and is a debt due by all (rather is that one even disgraceful on account of the trespass, and the desert of condemnation to which it is to be traced), but that other which is met in this very work—in bearing witness for religion, and maintaining the fight of confession in behalf of righteousness and the sacrament. As saith Esaias, “See how the righteous man perisheth, and no one layeth it to heart; and righteous men are taken away, and no one considereth it: for from before the face of unrighteousness the righteous man perisheth, and he shall have honour at his burial.” 8265 Here, too, you have both an announcement of martyrdoms, and of the recompense they bring. From the beginning, indeed, righteousness suffers violence. Forthwith, as soon as God has begun to be worshipped, religion has got ill-will for her portion. He who had pleased God is slain, and that by his brother. Beginning with kindred blood, in order that it might the more easily go in quest of that of strangers, ungodliness made the object of its pursuit, finally, that not only of righteous persons, but even of prophets also. David is persecuted; Elias put to flight; Jeremias stoned; Esaias cut asunder; Zacharias butchered between the altar and the temple, imparting to the hard stones lasting marks of his blood. 8266 That person himself, at the close of the law and the prophets, and called not a prophet, but a messenger, is, suffering an ignominious death, beheaded to reward a dancing-girl. And certainly they who were wont to be led by the Spirit of God used to be guided by Himself to martyrdoms; so that they had even already to endure what they had also proclaimed as requiring to be borne. Wherefore the brotherhood of the three also, when the dedication of the royal image was the occasion of the citizens being pressed to offer worship, knew well what faith, which alone in them had not been taken captive, required,—namely, that they must resist idolatry to the death. 8267 For they remembered also the words of Jeremias writing to those over whom that captivity was impending: “And now ye shall see borne upon (men’s) shoulders the gods of the Babylonians, of gold and silver and wood, causing fear to the Gentiles. Beware, therefore, that ye also do not be altogether like the foreigners, and be seized with fear while ye behold crowds worshipping those gods before and behind, but say in your mind, Our duty is to worship Thee, O Lord.” 8268 Therefore, having got confidence from God, they said, when with strength of mind they set at defiance the king’s threats against the disobedient: “There is no necessity for our making answer to this command of yours. For our God whom we worship is able to deliver us from the furnace of fire and from your hands; and then it will be made plain to you that we shall neither serve your idol, nor worship your golden image which you have set up.” 8269 O martyrdom even without suffering perfect! Enough did they suffer! enough were they burned, whom on this account God shielded, that it might not seem that they had given a false representation of His power. For forthwith, certainly, would the lions, with their pent-up and wonted savageness, have devoured Daniel also, a worshipper of none but God, and therefore accused and demanded by the Chaldeans, if it had been right that the worthy anticipation of Darius concerning God should have proved delusive. For the rest, every preacher of God, and every worshipper also, such as, having been summoned to the service of idolatry, had refused compliance, ought to have suffered, agreeably to the tenor of that argument too, by which the truth ought to have been recommended both to those who were then living and to those following in succession,—(namely), that the suffering of its defenders themselves bespeak trust for it, because nobody would have been willing to be slain but one possessing the truth. Such commands as well as instances, remounting to earliest times, show that believers are under obligation to suffer martyrdom.
Footnotes
640:8264Ps. cxvi. 15.
640:8265Isa. lvii. 1.
640:8266Matt. xiv. 3.
640:8267Dan. iii. 12.
640:8268Baruch vi. 3.
640:8269Dan. iii. 16.
Chapter IX.
It remains for us, lest ancient times may perhaps have had the sacrament 8270 (exclusively) their own, to review the modern Christian system, as though, being also from God, it might be different from what preceded, and besides, therefore, opposed thereto in its code of rules likewise, so that its Wisdom knows not to murder her own sons! Evidently, in the case of Christ both the divine nature and the will and the sect are different from any previously known! He will have commanded either no martyrdoms at all, or those which must be understood in a sense different from the ordinary, being such a person as to urge no one to a risk of this kind as to promise no reward to them who suffer for Him, because He does not wish them to suffer; and therefore does He say, when setting forth His chief commands, “Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 8271 The following statement, indeed, applies first to all without restriction, then specially to the apostles themselves: “Blessed shall ye be when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you, for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, since very great is your reward in heaven; for so used their fathers to do even to the prophets.” So that He likewise foretold their having to be themselves also slain, after the example of the prophets. Though, even if He had appointed all this persecution in case He were obeyed for those only who were then apostles, assuredly through them along with the entire sacrament, with the shoot of the name, with the layer of the Holy Spirit, the rule about enduring persecution also would have had respect to us too, as to disciples by inheritance, and, (as it were,) bushes from the apostolic seed. For even thus again does He address words of guidance to the apostles: “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves;” and, “Beware of men, for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues; and ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles,” etc. 8272 Now when He adds, “But the brother will deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child; and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death,” He has clearly announced with reference to the others, (that they would be subjected to) this form of unrighteous conduct, which we do not find exemplified in the case of the apostles. For none of them had experience of a father or a brother as a betrayer, which very many of us have. Then He returns to the apostles: “And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake.” How much more shall we, for whom there exists the necessity of being delivered up by parents too! Thus, by allotting this very betrayal, now to the apostles, now to all, He pours out the same destruction upon all the possessors of the name, on whom the name, along with the condition that it be an object of hatred, will rest. But he who will endure on to the end—this man will be saved. By enduring what but persecution,—betrayal,—death? For to endure to the end is nought else than to suffer the end. And therefore there immediately follow, “The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his own lord;” because, seeing the Master and Lord Himself was stedfast in suffering persecution, betrayal and death, much more will it be the duty of His servants and disciples to bear the same, that they may not seem as if superior to Him, or to have got an immunity from the assaults of unrighteousness, since this itself should be glory enough for them, to be conformed to the sufferings of their Lord and Master; and, preparing them for the endurance of these, He reminds them that they must not fear such persons as kill the body only, but are not able to destroy the soul, but that they must dedicate fear to Him rather who has such power that He can kill both body and soul, and destroy them in hell. Who, pray, are these slayers of the body only, but the governors and kings aforesaid—men, I ween? Who is the ruler of the soul also, but God only? Who is this but the threatener of fires hereafter, He without whose will not even one of two sparrows falls to the ground; that is, not even one of the two substances of man, flesh or spirit, because the number of our hairs also has been recorded before Him? Fear ye not, therefore. When He adds, “Ye are of more value than many sparrows,” He makes promise that we shall not in vain—that is, not without profit—fall to the ground if we choose to be killed by men rather than by God. “Whosoever therefore will confess in me before men, in him will I confess also before my Father who is in heaven; 8273 and whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I deny also before my Father who is in heaven.” Clear, as I think, are the terms used in announcing, and the way to explain, the confession as well as the denial, although the mode of putting them is different. He who confesses himself a Christian, beareth witness that he is Christ’s; he who is Christ’s must be in Christ. If he is in Christ, he certainly confesses in Christ, when he confesses himself a Christian. For he cannot be this without being in Christ. Besides, by confessing in Christ he confesses Christ too: since, by virtue of being a Christian, he is in Christ, while Christ Himself also is in him. For if you have made mention of day, you have also held out to view the element of light which gives us day, although you may not have made mention of light. Thus, albeit He has not expressly said, “He who will confess me,” (yet) the conduct involved in daily confession is not different from what is meant in our Lord’s declaration. For he who confesses himself to be what he is, that is, a Christian, confesses that likewise by which he is it, that is, Christ. Therefore he who has denied that he is a Christian, has denied in Christ, by denying that he is in Christ while he denies that he is a Christian; and, on the other hand, by denying that Christ is in him, while He denies that he is in Christ, he will deny Christ too. Thus both he who will deny in Christ, will deny Christ, and he who will confess in Christ will confess Christ. It would have been enough, therefore, though our Lord had made an announcement about confessing merely. For, from His mode of presenting confession, it might be decided beforehand with reference to its opposite too—denial, that is—that denial is repaid by the Lord with denial, just as confession is with confession. And therefore, since in the mould in which the confession has been cast the state of (the case with reference to) denial also may be perceived, it is evident that to another manner of denial belongs what the Lord has announced concerning it, in terms different from those in which He speaks of confession, when He says, “Who will deny me,” not “Who will deny in me.” For He had foreseen that this form of violence also would, for the most part, immediately follow when any one had been forced to renounce the Christian name,—that he who had denied that he was a Christian would be compelled to deny Christ Himself too by blaspheming Him. As not long ago, alas, we shuddered at the struggle waged in this way by some with their entire faith, which had had favourable omens. Therefore it will be to no purpose to say, “Though I shall deny that I am a Christian, I shall not be denied by Christ, for I have not denied Himself.” For even so much will be inferred from that denial, by which, seeing he denies Christ in him by denying that he is a Christian, he has denied Christ Himself also. But there is more, because He threatens likewise shame with shame (in return): “Whosoever shall be ashamed of me before men, of him will I also be ashamed before my Father who is in heaven.” For He was aware that denial is produced even most of all by shame, that the state of the mind appears in the forehead, and that the wound of shame precedes that in the body.
Footnotes
641:8270Tertullian means martyrdom.—Tr.
641:8271Matt. 5:10, Luke 6:23.
641:8272Matt. x. 16.
642:8273The words in the Greek, though correctly rendered in our authorized version, are, when translated literally, what Tertullian represents them to be.—Tr.
Chapter X.
But as to those who think that not here, that is, not within this environment of earth, nor during this period of existence, nor before men possessing this nature shared by us all, has confession been appointed to be made, what a supposition is theirs, being at variance with the whole order of things of which we have experience in these lands, and in this life, and under human authorities! Doubtless, when the souls have departed from their bodies, and begun to be put upon trial in the several stories of the heavens, with reference to the engagement (under which they have come to Jesus), and to be questioned about those hidden mysteries of the heretics, they must then confess before the real powers and the real men,—the Teleti, 8274 to wit, and the Abascanti, 8275 and the Acineti 8276 of Valentinus! For, say they, even the Demiurge himself did not uniformly approve of the men of our world, whom he counted as a drop of a bucket, 8277 and the dust of the threshing-floor, and spittle and locusts, and put on a level even with brute beasts. Clearly, it is so written. Yet not therefore must we understand that there is, besides us, another kind of man, which—for it is evidently thus (in the case proposed)—has been able to assume without invalidating a comparison between the two kinds, both the characteristics of the race and a unique property. For even if the life was tainted, so that condemned to contempt it might be likened to objects held in contempt, the nature was not forthwith taken away, so that there might be supposed to be another under its name. Rather is the nature preserved, though the life blushes; nor does Christ know other men than those with reference to whom He says, “Whom do men say that I am?” 8278 And, “As ye would that men should do to you, do ye likewise so to, them.” 8279 Consider whether He may not have preserved a race such that He is looking for a testimony to Himself from them, as well as consisting of those on whom He enjoins the interchange of righteous dealing. But if I should urgently demand that those heavenly men be described to me, Aratus will sketch more easily Perseus and Cepheus, and Erigone, and Ariadne, among the constellations. But who prevented the Lord from clearly prescribing that confession by men likewise has to be made where He plainly announced that His own would be; so that the statement might have run thus: ”Whosoever shall confess in me before men in heaven, I also will confess in him before my Father who is in heaven?” He ought to have saved me from this mistake about confession on earth, which He would not have wished me to take part in, if He had commanded one in heaven; for I knew no other men but the inhabitants of the earth, man himself even not having up to that time been observed in heaven. Besides, what is the credibility of the things (alleged), that, being after death raised to heavenly places, I should be put to the test there, whither I would not be translated without being already tested, that I should there be tried in reference to a command where I could not come, but to find admittance? Heaven lies open to the Christian before the way to it does; because there is no way to heaven, but to him to whom heaven lies open; and he who reaches it will enter. What powers, keeping guard at the gate, do I hear you affirm to exist in accordance with Roman superstition, with a certain Carnus, Forculus, and Limentinus? What powers do you set in order at the railings? If you have ever read in David, “Lift up your gates, ye princes, and let the everlasting gates be lifted up; and the King of glory shall enter in;” 8280 if you have also heard from Amos, “Who buildeth up to the heavens his way of ascent, and is such as to pour forth his abundance (of waters) over the earth;” 8281 know that both that way of ascent was thereafter levelled with the ground, by the footsteps of the Lord, and an entrance thereafter opened up by the might of Christ, and that no delay or inquest will meet Christians on the threshold, since they have there to be not discriminated from one another, but owned, and not put to the question, but received in. For though you think heaven still shut, remember that the Lord left here to Peter and through him to the Church, the keys of it, which every one who has been here put to the question, and also made confession, will carry with him. But the devil stoutly affirms that we must confess there, to persuade us that we must deny here. I shall send before me fine documents, to be sure, 8282 I shall carry with me excellent keys, the fear of them who kill the body only, but do nought against the soul: I shall be graced by the neglect of this command: I shall stand with credit in heavenly places, who could not stand in earthly: I shall hold out against the greater powers, who yielded to the lesser: I shall deserve to be at length let in, though now shut out. It readily occurs to one to remark further, “If it is in heaven that men must confess, it is here too that they must deny.” For where the one is, there both are. For contraries always go together. There will need to be carried on in heaven persecution even, which is the occasion of confession or denial. Why, then, do you refrain, O most presumptuous heretic, from transporting to the world above the whole series of means proper to the intimidation of Christians, and especially to put there the very hatred for the name, where Christ rules at the right hand of the Father? Will you plant there both synagogues of the Jews—fountains of persecution—before which the apostles endured the scourge, and heathen assemblages with their own circus, forsooth, where they readily join in the cry, Death to the third race? 8283 But ye are bound to produce in the same place both our brothers, fathers, children, mothers-in-law, daughters-in-law and those of our household, through whose agency the betrayal has been appointed; likewise kings, governors, and armed authorities, before whom the matter at issue must be contested. Assuredly there will be in heaven a prison also, destitute of the sun’s rays or full of light unthankfully, and fetters of the zones perhaps, and, for a rack-horse, the axis itself which whirls the heavens round. Then, if a Christian is to be stoned, hail-storms will be near; if burned, thunderbolts are at hand; if butchered, the armed Orion will exercise his function; if put an end to by beasts, the north will send forth the bears, the Zodiac the bulls and the lions. He who will endure these assaults to the end, the same shall be saved. Will there be then, in heaven, both an end, and suffering, a killing, and the first confession? And where will be the flesh requisite for all this? Where the body which alone has to be killed by men? Unerring reason has commanded us to set forth these things in even a playful manner; nor will any one thrust out the bar consisting in this objection (we have offered), so as not to be compelled to transfer the whole array of means proper to persecution, all the powerful instrumentality which has been provided for dealing with this matter, to the place where he has put the court before which confession should be made. Since confession is elicited by persecution, and persecution ended in confession, there cannot but be at the same time, in attendance upon these, the instrumentality which determines both the entrance and the exit, that is, the beginning and the end. But both hatred for the name will be here, persecution breaks out here, betrayal brings men forth here, examination uses force here, torture rages here, and confession or denial completes this whole course of procedure on the earth. Therefore, if the other things are here, confession also is not elsewhere; if confession is elsewhere, the other things also are not here. Certainly the other things are not elsewhere; therefore neither is confession in heaven. Or, if they will have it that the manner in which the heavenly examination and confession take place is different, it will certainly be also incumbent on them to devise a mode of procedure of their own of a very different kind, and opposed to that method which is indicated in the Scriptures. And we may be able to say, Let them consider (whether what they imagine to exist does so), if so be that this course of procedure, proper to examination and confession on earth—a course which has persecution as the source in which it originates, and which pleads dissension in the state—is preserved to its own faith, if so be that we must believe just as is also written, and understand just as is spoken. Here I endure the entire course (in question), the Lord Himself not appointing a different quarter of the world for my doing so. For what does He add after finishing with confession and denial? “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth, but a sword,”—undoubtedly on the earth. “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” 8284 For so is it brought to pass, that the brother delivers up the brother to death, and the father the son: and the children rise up against the parents, and cause them to die. And he who endureth to the end let that man be saved. 8285 So that this whole course of procedure characteristic of the Lord’s sword, which has been sent not to heaven, but to earth, makes confession also to be there, which by enduring to the end is to issue in the suffering of death.
Footnotes
642:8274The perfect.
642:8275The spell-resisting.
642:8276The steadfast.
643:8277Isa. xl. 15.
643:8278Matt. xvi. 13.
643:8279Matt. 7:12, Luke 6:31.
643:8280Ps. xxiv. 7.
643:8281Amos ix. 6.
643:8282In support of my cause.
643:8283More literally, “How long shall we suffer the third race!” The Christians are meant; the first race being the heathen, and the second the Jews.—Tr.
644:8284Matt. x. 34.
644:8285Matt. x. 21.
Chapter XI.
In the same manner, therefore, we maintain that the other announcements too refer to the condition of martyrdom. “He,” says Jesus, “who will value his own life also more than me, is not worthy of me,” 8286 —that is, he who will rather live by denying, than die by confessing, me; and “he who findeth his life shall lose it; but he who loseth it for my sake shall find it.” 8287 Therefore indeed he finds it, who, in winning life, denies; but he who thinks that he wins it by denying, will lose it in hell. On the other hand, he who, through confessing, is killed, will lose it for the present, but is also about to find it unto everlasting life. In fine, governors themselves, when they urge men to deny, say, “Save your life;” and, “Do not lose your life.” How would Christ speak, but in accordance with the treatment to which the Christian would be subjected? But when He forbids thinking about what answer to make at a judgment-seat, 8288 He is preparing His own servants for what awaited them, He gives the assurance that the Holy Spirit will answer by them; and when He wishes a brother to be visited in prison, 8289 He is commanding that those about to confess be the object of solicitude; and He is soothing their sufferings when He asserts that God will avenge His own elect. 8290 In the parable also of the withering of the word 8291 after the green blade had sprung up, He is drawing a picture with reference to the burning heat of persecutions. If these announcements are not understood as they are made, without doubt they signify something else than the sound indicates; and there will be one thing in the words, another in their meanings, as is the case with allegories, with parables, with riddles. Whatever wind of reasoning, therefore, these scorpions may catch (in their sails), with whatever subtlety they may attack, there is now one line of defence: 8292 an appeal will be made to the facts themselves, whether they occur as the Scriptures represent that they would; since another thing will then be meant in the Scriptures if that very one (which seems to be so) is not found in actual facts. For what is written, must needs come to pass. Besides, what is written will then come to pass, if something different does not. But, lo! we are both regarded as persons to be hated by all men for the sake of the name, as it is written; and are delivered up by our nearest of kin also, as it is written; and are brought before magistrates, and examined, and tortured, and make confession, and are ruthlessly killed, as it is written. So the Lord ordained. If He ordained these events otherwise, why do they not come to pass otherwise than He ordained them, that is, as He ordained them? And yet they do not come to pass otherwise than He ordained. Therefore, as they come to pass, so He ordained; and as He ordained, so they come to pass. For neither would they have been permitted to occur otherwise than He ordained, nor for His part would He have ordained otherwise than He would wish them to occur. Thus these passages of Scripture will not mean ought else than we recognise in actual facts; or if those events are not yet taking place which are announced, how are those taking place which have not been announced? For these events which are taking place have not been announced, if those which are announced are different, and not these which are taking place. Well now, seeing the very occurrences are met with in actual life which are believed to have been expressed with a different meaning in words, what would happen if they were found to have come to pass in a different manner than had been revealed? But this will be the waywardness of faith, not to believe what has been demonstrated, to assume the truth of what has not been demonstrated. And to this waywardness I will offer the following objection also, that if these events, which occur as is written, will not be the very ones which are announced, those too (which are meant) ought not to occur as is written, that they themselves also may not, after the example of these others, be in danger of exclusion, since there is one thing in the words and another in the facts; and there remains that even the events which have been announced are not seen when they occur, if they are announced otherwise than they have to occur. And how will those be believed (to have come to pass), which will not have been announced as they come to pass? Thus heretics, by not believing what is announced as it has been shown to have taken place, believe what has not been even announced.
Footnotes
644:8286Luke xiv. 26.
644:8287Matt. x. 39.
644:8288Matt. x. 19.
644:8289Matt. xxv. 36.
645:8290Luke xviii. 7.
645:8291Matt. xiii. 3.
645:8292See note 1, cap. iv. p. 637, supra.
Chapter XII.
Who, now, should know better the marrow of the Scriptures than the school of Christ itself?—the persons whom the Lord both chose for Himself as scholars, certainly to be fully instructed in all points, and appointed to us for masters to instruct us in all points. To whom would He have rather made known the veiled import of His own language, than to him to whom He disclosed the likeness of His own glory—to Peter, John, and James, and afterwards to Paul, to whom He granted participation in (the joys of) paradise too, prior to his martyrdom? Or do they also write differently from what they think—teachers using deceit, not truth? Addressing the Christians of Pontus, Peter, at all events, says, “How great indeed is the glory, if ye suffer patiently, without being punished as evildoers! For this is a lovely feature, and even hereunto were ye called, since Christ also suffered for us, leaving you Himself as an example, that ye should follow His own steps.” 8293 And again: “Beloved, be not alarmed by the fiery trial which is taking place among you, as though some strange thing happened unto you. For, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, do ye rejoice; that, when His glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. If ye are reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; because glory and the Spirit of God rest upon you: if only none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evil-doer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters; yet (if any man suffer) as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God on this behalf.” 8294 John, in fact, exhorts us to lay down our lives even for our brethren, 8295 affirming that there is no fear in love: “For perfect love casteth out fear, since fear has punishment; and he who fears is not perfect in love.” 8296 What fear would it be better to understand (as here meant), than that which gives rise to denial? What love does he assert to be perfect, but that which puts fear to flight, and gives courage to confess? What penalty will he appoint as the punishment of fear, but that which he who denies is about to pay, who has to be slain, body and soul, in hell? And if he teaches that we must die for the brethren, how much more for the Lord,—he being sufficiently prepared, by his own Revelation too, for giving such advice! For indeed the Spirit had sent the injunction to the angel of the church in Smyrna: “Behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried ten days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” 8297 Also to the angel of the church in Pergamus (mention was made) of Antipas, 8298 the very faithful martyr, who was slain where Satan dwelleth. Also to the angel of the church in Philadelphia 8299 (it was signified) that he who had not denied the name of the Lord was delivered from the last trial. Then to every conqueror the Spirit promises now the tree of life, and exemption from the second death; now the hidden manna with the stone of glistening whiteness, and the name unknown (to every man save him that receiveth it); now power to rule with a rod of iron, and the brightness of the morning star; now the being clothed in white raiment, and not having the name blotted out of the book of life, and being made in the temple of God a pillar with the inscription on it of the name of God and of the Lord, and of the heavenly Jerusalem; now a sitting with the Lord on His throne,—which once was persistently refused to the sons of Zebedee. 8300 Who, pray, are these so blessed conquerors, but martyrs in the strict sense of the word? For indeed theirs are the victories whose also are the fights; theirs, however, are the fights whose also is the blood. But the souls of the martyrs both peacefully rest in the meantime under the altar, 8301 and support their patience by the assured hope of revenge; and, clothed in their robes, wear the dazzling halo of brightness, until others also may fully share in their glory. For yet again a countless throng are revealed, clothed in white and distinguished by palms of victory, celebrating their triumph doubtless over Antichrist, since one of the elders says, “These are they who come out of that great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” 8302 For the flesh is the clothing of the soul. The uncleanness, indeed, is washed away by baptism, but the stains are changed into dazzling whiteness by martyrdom. For Esaias also promises, that out of red and scarlet there will come forth the whiteness of snow and wool. 8303 When great Babylon likewise is represented as drunk with the blood of the saints, 8304 doubtless the supplies needful for her drunkenness are furnished by the cups of martyrdoms; and what suffering the fear of martyrdoms will entail, is in like manner shown. For among all the castaways, nay, taking precedence of them all, are the fearful. “But the fearful,” says John—and then come the others—“will have their part in the lake of fire and brimstone.” 8305 Thus fear, which, as stated in his epistle, love drives out, has punishment.
Footnotes
645:82931 Pet. ii. 20.
645:82941 Pet. iv. 12.
646:82951 John iii. 16.
646:82961 John iv. 18.
646:8297Rev. ii. 10.
646:8298Rev. ii. 13.
646:8299Rev. iii. 10.
646:8300Matt. xx. 20-23.
646:8301Rev. vi. 9.
646:8302Rev. vii. 14.
646:8303Isa. i. 18.
646:8304Rev. xvii. 6.
646:8305Rev. xxi. 8.
Chapter XIII.
But how Paul, an apostle, from being a persecutor, who first of all shed the blood of the church, though afterwards he exchanged the sword for the pen, and turned the dagger into a plough, being first a ravening wolf of Benjamin, then himself supplying food as did Jacob, 8306 —how he, (I say,) speaks in favour of martyrdoms, now to be chosen by himself also, when, rejoicing over the Thessalonians, he says, “So that we glory in you in the churches of God, for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations, in which ye endure a manifestation of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be accounted worthy of His kingdom, for which ye also suffer!” 8307 As also in his Epistle to the Romans: “And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also, being sure that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope; and hope maketh not ashamed.” 8308 And again: “And if children, then heirs, heirs indeed of God, and joint-heirs with Christ: if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together. For I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” 8309 And therefore he afterward says: “Who shall separate us from the love of God? Shall tribulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? (As it is written: For Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we have been counted as sheep for the slaughter.) Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through Him who loved us. For we are persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor power, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 8310 But further, in recounting his own sufferings to the Corinthians, he certainly decided that suffering must be borne: “In labours, (he says,) more abundant, in prisons very frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes, save one; thrice was I beaten with rods; once was I stoned,” 8311 and the rest. And if these severities will seem to be more grievous than martyrdoms, yet once more he says: “Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake.” 8312 He also says, in verses occurring in a previous part of the epistle: “Our condition is such, that we are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; and are in need, but not in utter want; since we are harassed by persecutions, but not forsaken; it is such that we are cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in our body the dying of Christ.” 8313 “But though,” says he, “our outward man perisheth”—the flesh doubtless, by the violence of persecutions—“yet the inward man is renewed day by day”—the soul, doubtless, by hope in the promises. “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal”—he is speaking of troubles; “but the things which are not seen are eternal”—he is promising rewards. But writing in bonds to the Thessalonians, 8314 he certainly affirmed that they were blessed, since to them it had been given not only to believe on Christ, but also to suffer for His sake. “Having,” says he, “the same conflict which ye both saw in me, and now hear to be in me.” 8315 “For though I am offered upon the sacrifice, I joy and rejoice with you all; in like manner do ye also joy and rejoice with me.” You see what he decides the bliss of martyrdom to be, in honour of which he is providing a festival of mutual joy. When at length he had come to be very near the attainment of his desire, greatly rejoicing in what he saw before him, he writes in these terms to Timothy: “For I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; there is laid up for me the crown which the Lord will give me on that day” 8316 —doubtless of his suffering. Admonition enough did he for his part also give in preceding passages: “It is a faithful saying: For if we are dead with Christ, we shall also live with Him; if we suffer, we shall also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He also will deny us; if we believe not, yet He is faithful: He cannot deny Himself.” 8317 “Be not thou, therefore, ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner;” 8318 for he had said before: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” 8319 For we suffer with power from love toward God, and with a sound mind, when we suffer for our blamelessness. But further, if He anywhere enjoins endurance, for what more than for sufferings is He providing it? If anywhere He tears men away from idolatry, what more than martyrdoms takes the lead, in tearing them away to its injury?
Footnotes
646:8306Gen. 25:34, Gen. 27:25.
646:83072 Thess. i. 4.
646:8308Rom. v. 3.
646:8309Rom. viii. 17.
647:8310Rom. viii. 35.
647:83112 Cor. xi. 23.
647:83122 Cor. xii. 10.
647:83132 Cor. iv. 8.
647:8314Should be Philippians: i.e. Phil. 1:29, 30.
647:8315Phil. ii. 17.
647:83162 Tim. iv. 6.
647:83172 Tim ii. 11.
647:83182 Tim. i. 8.
647:83192 Tim. i. 7.
Chapter XIV.
No doubt the apostle admonishes the Romans 8320 to be subject to all power, because there is no power but of God, and because (the ruler) does not carry the sword without reason, and is the servant of God, nay also, says he, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. For he had also previously spoken thus: “For rulers are not a terror to a good work, but to an evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of it. Therefore he is a minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid.” Thus he bids you be subject to the powers, not on an opportunity occurring for his avoiding martyrdom, but when he is making an appeal in behalf of a good life, under the view also of their being as it were assistants bestowed upon righteousness, as it were handmaids of the divine court of justice, which even here pronounces sentence beforehand upon the guilty. Then he goes on also to show how he wishes you to be subject to the powers, bidding you pay “tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom,” 8321 that is, the things which are Cæsar’s to Cæsar, and the things which are God’s to God; 8322 but man is the property of God alone. Peter, 8323 no doubt, had likewise said that the king indeed must be honoured, yet so that the king be honoured only when he keeps to his own sphere, when he is far from assuming divine honours; because both father and mother will be loved along with God, not put on an equality with Him. Besides, one will not be permitted to love even life more than God.
Footnotes
647:8320Rom. xiii. 1.
647:8321Rom. xiii. 6.
648:8322Matt. xxii. 21.
648:83231 Pet. ii. 13.
Chapter XV.
Now, then, the epistles of the apostles also are well known. And do we, (you say), in all respects guileless souls and doves merely, love to go astray? I should think from eagerness to live. But let it be so, that meaning departs from their epistles. And yet, that the apostles endured such sufferings, we know: the teaching is clear. This only I perceive in running through the Acts. I am not at all on the search. The prisons there, and the bonds, and the scourges, and the big stones, and the swords, and the onsets by the Jews, and the assemblies of the heathen, and the indictments by tribunes, and the hearing of causes by kings, and the judgment-seats of proconsuls and the name of Cæsar, do not need an interpreter. That Peter is struck, 8324 that Stephen is overwhelmed by stones, 8325 that James is slain 8326 as is a victim at the altar, that Paul is beheaded has been written in their own blood. And if a heretic wishes his confidence to rest upon a public record, the archives of the empire will speak, as would the stones of Jerusalem. We read the lives of the Cæsars: At Rome Nero was the first who stained with blood the rising faith. Then is Peter girt by another, 8327 when he is made fast to the cross. Then does Paul obtain a birth suited to Roman citizenship, when in Rome he springs to life again ennobled by martyrdom. Wherever I read of these occurrences, so soon as I do so, I learn to suffer; nor does it signify to me which I follow as teachers of martyrdom, whether the declarations or the deaths of the apostles, save that in their deaths I recall their declarations also. For they would not have suffered ought of a kind they had not previously known they had to suffer. When Agabus, making use of corresponding action too, had foretold that bonds awaited Paul, the disciples, weeping and entreating that he would not venture upon going to Jerusalem, entreated in vain. 8328 As for him, having a mind to illustrate what he had always taught, he says, “Why weep ye, and grieve my heart? But for my part, I could wish not only to suffer bonds, but also to die at Jerusalem, for the name of my Lord Jesus Christ.” And so they yielded by saying, “Let the will of the Lord be done;” feeling sure, doubtless, that sufferings are included in the will of God. For they had tried to keep him back with the intention not of dissuading, but to show love for him; as yearning for (the preservation of) the apostle, not as counselling against martyrdom. And if even then a Prodicus or Valentinus stood by, suggesting that one must not confess on the earth before men, and must do so the less in truth, that God may not (seem to) thirst for blood, and Christ for a repayment of suffering, as though He besought it with the view of obtaining salvation by it for Himself also, he would have immediately heard from the servant of God what the devil had from the Lord: “Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art an offence unto me. It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.” 8329 But even now it will be right that he hear it, seeing that, long after, he has poured forth these poisons, which not even thus are to injure readily any of the weak ones, if any one in faith will drink, before being hurt, or even immediately after, this draught of ours.
Footnotes
648:8324It has been thought that the allusion is to the breaking of the legs of the crucified to hasten their death, not to the beating to which the apostles were subjected by the Jewish council: Acts v. 40.—Tr.
648:8325Acts vii. 59.
648:8326James the brother of our Lord, not the James mentioned Acts xii. 2.
648:8327John xxi. 18.
648:8328Acts xxi. 11.
648:8329Matt. 16:23, Matt. 4:10,—a mixing up of two passages of Scripture.
IX.
Appendix.
Against all Heresies. 8330
[Translated by Rev. S. Thelwall.]
————————————
Chapter I.—Earliest Heretics: 8331 Simon Magus, Menander, Saturninus, Basilides, Nicolaus. [The Work Begins as a Fragment.]
Of which heretics I will (to pass by a good deal) summarize some few particulars. For of Judaism’s heretics I am silent—Dositheus the Samaritan, I mean, who was the first who had the hardihood to repudiate the prophets, on the ground that they had not spoken under inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Of the Sadducees I am silent, who, springing from the root of this error, had the hardihood to adjoin to this heresy the denial likewise of the resurrection of the flesh. 8332 The Pharisees I pretermit, who were “divided” from the Jews by their superimposing of certain additaments to the law, which fact likewise made them worthy of receiving this very name; 8333 and, together with them, the Herodians likewise, who said that Herod was Christ. To those I betake myself who have chosen to make the gospel the starting-point of their heresies.
Of these the first of all is Simon Magus, who in the Acts of the Apostles earned a condign and just sentence from the Apostle Peter. 8334 He had the hardihood to call himself the Supreme Virtue, 8335 that is, the Supreme God; and moreover, (to assert) that the universe 8336 had been originated by his angels; that he had descended in quest of an erring dæmon, 8337 which was Wisdom; that, in a phantasmal semblance of God, he had not suffered among the Jews, but was as if he had suffered. 8338
After him Menander, his disciple (likewise a magician 8339 ), saying the same as Simon. Whatever Simon had affirmed himself to be, this did Menander equally affirm himself to be, asserting that none could possibly have salvation without being baptized in his name.
Afterwards, again, followed Saturninus: he, too, affirming that the innascible 8340 Virtue, that is God, abides in the highest regions, and that those regions are infinite, and in the regions immediately above us; but that angels far removed from Him made the lower world; 8341 and that, because light from above had flashed refulgently in the lower regions, the angels had carefully tried to form man after the similitude of that light; that man lay crawling on the surface of the earth; that this light and this higher virtue was, thanks to mercy, the salvable spark in man, while all the rest of him perishes; 8342 that Christ had not existed in a bodily substance, and had endured a quasi-passion in a phantasmal shape merely; that a resurrection of the flesh there will by no means be.
Afterwards broke out the heretic Basilides. He affirms that there is a supreme Deity, by name Abraxas, 8343 by whom was created Mind, which in Greek he calls Νοῦς; that thence sprang the Word; that of Him issued Providence, Virtue, 8344 and Wisdom; that out of these subsequently were made Principalities, powers, 8345 and Angels; that there ensued infinite issues and processions of angels; that by these angels 365 heavens were formed, and the world, 8346 in honour of Abraxas, whose name, if computed, has in itself this number. Now, among the last of the angels, those who made this world, 8347 he places the God of the Jews latest, that is, the God of the Law and of the Prophets, whom he denies to be a God, but affirms to be an angel. To him, he says, was allotted the seed of Abraham, and accordingly he it was who transferred the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt into the land of Canaan; affirming him to be turbulent above the other angels, and accordingly given to the frequent arousing of seditions and wars, yes, and the shedding of human blood. Christ, moreover, he affirms to have been sent, not by this maker of the world, 8348 but by the above-named Abraxas; and to have come in a phantasm, and been destitute of the substance of flesh: that it was not He who suffered among the Jews, but that Simon 8349 was crucified in His stead: whence, again, there must be no believing on him who was crucified, lest one confess to having believed on Simon. Martyrdoms, he says, are not to be endured. The resurrection of the flesh he strenuously impugns, affirming that salvation has not been promised to bodies.
A brother heretic 8350 emerged in Nicolaus. He was one of the seven deacons who were appointed in the Acts of the Apostles. 8351 He affirms that Darkness was seized with a concupiscence—and, indeed, a foul and obscene one—after Light: out of this permixture it is a shame to say what fetid and unclean (combinations arose). The rest (of his tenets), too, are obscene. For he tells of certain Æons, sons of turpitude, and of conjunctions of execrable and obscene embraces and permixtures, 8352 and certain yet baser outcomes of these. He teaches that there were born, moreover, dæmons, and gods, and spirits seven, and other things sufficiently sacrilegious. alike and foul, which we blush to recount, and at once pass them by. Enough it is for us that this heresy of the Nicolaitans has been condemned by the Apocalypse of the Lord with the weightiest authority attaching to a sentence, in saying “Because this thou holdest, thou hatest the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which I too hate.” 8353
Footnotes
649:8330[On p. 14, this volume, see nearly all that need be said, of this spurious treatise. I add a few references to Routh, Opuscula, Vol. 1. p. 160 etc. His honouring it with a place in his work must be my apology for not relegating it to the collection of spurious Tertulliana, sub fine.]
649:8331[Routh says he inadvertently changed his title to read Advs. Hæreticos, but that it is better after all, in view of the opening sentence.]
649:8332See Acts xxiii. 8, and the references there.
649:8333Pharisees = Separatists.
649:8334See Acts viii. 9-24.
649:8335I use Virtue in this and similar cases in its Miltonic sense.
649:8336Mundum.
649:8337Or, “intelligence.”
649:8338Or, “but had undergone a quasi-passion.”
649:8339Magus.
649:8340Innascibilem;” but Fr. Junius’ conjecture, “innoscibilem,” is agreeable to the Greek “ἄγνωστος.”
649:8341Mundum.
649:8342The text here is partially conjectural, and if correct, clumsy. For the sense, see de Anima, c. xxiii. ad init.
649:8343Or, Abraxes, or Abrasax.
649:8344Or, Power.
650:8345Potestates.
650:8346Mundum.
650:8347Mundum.
650:8348Mundum.
650:8349i.e. probably “Simon the Cyrenian.” See Matt. 27:32, Mark 15:21, Luke 23:26.
650:8350Alter hæreticus. But Fr. Junius suggests “aliter.”
650:8351See Acts vi. 1-6. [But the identity is doubtful.]
650:8352So Oehler gives in his text. But his suggestion, given in a note, is perhaps preferable: “and of execrable embraces and permixtures, and obscene conjunctions.”
650:8353See Rev. ii. 6.
Chapter II.—Ophites, Cainites, Sethites.
To these are added those heretics likewise who are called Ophites: 8354 for they magnify the serpent to such a degree, that they prefer him even to Christ Himself; for it was he, they say, who gave us the origin of the knowledge of good and of evil. 8355 His power and majesty (they say) Moses perceiving, set up the brazen serpent; and whoever gazed upon him obtained health. 8356 Christ Himself (they say further) in His gospel imitates Moses’ serpent’s sacred power, in saying: “And as Moses upreared the serpent in the desert, so it behoveth the Son of man to be upreared.” 8357 Him they introduce to bless their eucharistic (elements). 8358 Now the whole parade and doctrine of this error flowed from the following source. They say that from the supreme primary Æon whom men speak of 8359 there emanated several other inferior Æons. To all these, however, there opposed himself an Æon who name is Ialdabaoth. 8360 He had been conceived by the permixture of a second Æon with inferior Æons; and afterwards, when he 8361 had been desirous of forcing his way into the higher regions, had been disabled by the permixture of the gravity of matter with himself to arrive at the higher regions; had been left in the midst, and had extended himself to his full dimensions, and thus had made the sky. 8362 Ialdabaoth, however, had descended lower, and had made him seven sons, and had shut from their view the upper regions by self-distension, in order that, since (these) angels could not know what was above, 8363 they might think him the sole God. These inferior Virtues and angels, therefore, had made man; and, because he had been originated by weaker and mediocre powers, he lay crawling, worm-like. That Æon, however, out of which Ialdaboath had proceeded, moved to the heart with envy, had injected into man as he lay a certain spark; excited whereby, he was through prudence to grow wise, and be able to understand the things above. So, again, the Ialdaboath aforesaid, turning indignant, had emitted out of himself the Virtue and similitude of the serpent; and this had been the Virtue in paradise—that is, this had been the serpent—whom Eve had believed as if he had been God the Son. 8364 He 8365 plucked, say they, from the fruit of the tree, and thus conferred on mankind the knowledge of things good and evil. 8366 Christ, moreover, existed not in substance of flesh: salvation of the flesh is not to be hoped for at all.
Moreover, also, there has broken out another heresy also, which is called that of the Cainites. 8367 And the reason is, that they magnify Cain as if he had been conceived of some potent Virtue which operated in him; for Abel had been procreated after being conceived of an inferior Virtue, and accordingly had been found inferior. They who assert this likewise defend the traitor Judas, telling us that he is admirable and great, because of the advantages he is vaunted to have conferred on mankind; for some of them think that thanksgiving is to be rendered to Judas on this account: viz., Judas, they say, observing that Christ wished to subvert the truth, betrayed Him, in order that there might be no possibility of truth’s being subverted. And others thus dispute against them, and say: Because the powers of this world 8368 were unwilling that Christ should suffer, lest through His death salvation should be prepared for mankind, he, consulting for the salvation of mankind, betrayed Christ, in order that there might be no possibility at all of the salvation being impeded, which was being impeded through the Virtues which were opposing Christ’s passion; and thus, through the passion of Christ, there might be no possibility of the salvation of mankind being retarded.
But, again, the heresy has started forth which is called that of the Sethites. 8369 The doctrine of this perversity is as follows. Two human beings were formed by the angels—Cain and Abel. On their account arose great contentions and discords among the angels; for this reason, that Virtue which was above all the Virtues—which they style the Mother—when they said 8370 that Abel had been slain, willed this Seth of theirs to be conceived and born in place of Abel, in order that those angels might be escheated who had created those two former human beings, while this pure seed rises and is born. For they say that there had been iniquitous permixtures of two angels and human beings; for which reason that Virtue which (as we have said) they style the Mother brought on the deluge even, for the purpose of vengeance, in order that that seed of permixture might be swept away, and this only seed which was pure be kept entire. But (in vain): for they who had originated those of the former seed sent into the ark (secretly and stealthily, and unknown to that Mother-Virtue), together with those “eight souls,” 8371 the seed likewise of Ham, in order that the seed of evil should not perish, but should, together with the rest, be preserved, and after the deluge be restored to the earth, and, by example of the rest, should grow up and diffuse itself, and fill and occupy the whole orb. 8372 Of Christ, moreover, their sentiments are such that they call Him merely Seth, and say that He was instead of the actual Seth.
Footnotes
650:8354Or, “Serpentarians,” from ὄφις, a serpent.
650:8355See Gen. iii. 1-7.
650:8356See Num. xxi. 4-9.
650:8357John iii. 14.
650:8358Eucharistia (neut. pl.) = εὐχαριστεῖα (Fr. Junius in Oehler): perhaps “the place in which they celebrate the eucharist.”
650:8359These words are intended to give the force of the “illo” of the original.
650:8360Roberston (Ch. Hist. i. p. 39, note 2, ed. 2. 1858) seems to take this word to mean “Son of Darkness or Chaos.”
650:8361“Seque” Oehler reads here, which appears bad enough Latin, unless his “se” after “extendisse” is an error.
650:8362Or, “heaven.”
650:8363Or, “what the upper regions were.”
651:8364Filio Deo.
651:8365Or, “she;” but perhaps the text is preferable.
651:8366See Gen. iii. 1-7.
651:8367See de Bapt. c. i.
651:8368Mundi.
651:8369Or, Sethoites.
651:8370“Dicerent;” but Routh (I think) has conjectured “disceret” “when she learned,” etc., which is very simple and apt.
651:8371See 1 Pet. iii. 20.
651:8372Cf. Gen. 9:1, 2, 7, 19.
Chapter III.—Carpocrates, Cerinthus, Ebion.
Carpocrates, furthermore, introduced the following sect. He affirms that there is one Virtue, the chief among the upper (regions): that out of this were produced angels and Virtues, which, being far distant from the upper Virtues, created this world 8373 in the lower regions: that Christ was not born of the Virgin Mary, but was generated—a mere human being—of the seed of Joseph, superior (they admit) above all others in the practice of righteousness and in integrity of life; that He suffered among the Jews; and that His soul alone was received in heaven as having been more firm and hardy than all others: whence he would infer, retaining only the salvation of souls, that there are no resurrections of the body.
After him brake out the heretic Cerinthus, teaching similarly. For he, too, says that the world 8374 was originated by those angels; 8375 and sets forth Christ as born of the seed of Joseph, contending that He was merely human, without divinity; affirming also that the Law was given by angels; 8376 representing the God of the Jews as not the Lord, but an angel.
His successor was Ebion, 8377 not agreeing with Cerinthus in every point; in that he affirms the world 8378 to have been made by God, not by angels; and because it is written, “No disciple above his master, nor servant above his lord,” 8379 sets forth likewise the law as binding, 8380 of course for the purpose of excluding the gospel and vindicating Judaism.
Footnotes
651:8373Mundum.
651:8374Mundum.
651:8375“Ab illis” is perhaps an error for “ab angelis,” by absorption of the first syllable. So Routh has conjectured before me.
651:8376“Ab angelis:” an erroneous notion, which professed probably to derive support from John 1:17, Acts 7:53, Gal. 3:19, where, however, the Greek prepositions should be carefully noted, and ought in no case to be rendered by “ab.”
651:8377Al. Hebion.
651:8378Al. Hebion.
651:8379See Matt. 10:24, Luke 4:40, John 13:16.
652:8380i.e., as Rig.’s quotation from Jerome’s Indiculus (in Oehler) shows, “because in so far as, Christ observed it.”
Chapter IV.—Valentinus, Ptolemy and Secundus, Heracleon.
Valentinus the heretic, moreover, introduced many fables. These I will retrench and briefly summarize. For he introduces the Pleroma and the thirty Æons. These Æons, moreover, he explains in the way of syzygies, that is, conjugal unions 8381 of some kind. For among the first, 8382 he says, were Depth 8383 and Silence; of these proceeded Mind and Truth; out of whom burst the Word and Life; from whom, again, were created Man 8384 and the Church. But (these are not all); for of these last also proceeded twelve Æons; from Speech, 8385 moreover, and Life proceeded other ten Æons: such is the Triacontad of Æons, which is made up in the Pleroma of an ogdoad, a decad, and a duodecad. The thirtieth Æon, moreover, willed to see the great Bythus; and, to see him, had the hardihood to ascend into the upper regions; and not being capable of seeing his magnitude, desponded, 8386 and almost suffered dissolution, had not some one,—he whom he calls Horos, to wit,—sent to invigorate him, strengthened him by pronouncing the word “Iao.” 8387 This Æon, moreover, which was thus reduced to despondency, he calls Achamoth, (and says) that he was seized with certain regretful passions, and out of his passions gave birth to material essences. 8388 For he was panic-stricken, he says, and terror-stricken, and overcome with sadness; and of these passions he conceived and bare. Hence he made the heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and whatever is in them: for which cause all things made by him are infirm, and frail, and capable of falling, and mortal, inasmuch as he himself was conceived and produced from despondency. He, however, originated this world 8389 out of those material essences which Achamoth, by his panic, or terror, or sadness, or sweat, had supplied. For of his panic, he says, was made darkness; of his fear and ignorance, the spirits of wickedness and malignity; of his sadness and tears, the humidities of founts, the material essence of floods and sea. Christ, moreover, was sent by that First-Father who is Bythus. He, moreover, was not in the substance of our flesh; but, bringing down from heaven some spiritual body or other, passed through the Virgin Mary as water through a pipe, neither receiving nor borrowing aught thence. The resurrection of our present flesh he denies, but (maintains that) of some sister-flesh. 8390 Of the Law and the prophets some parts he approves, some he disapproves; that is, he disapproves all in reprobating some. A Gospel of his own he likewise has, beside these of ours.
After him arose the heretics Ptolemy and Secundus, who agree throughout with Valentinus, differing only in the following point: viz., whereas Valentinus had feigned but thirty Æons, they have added several more; for they first added four, and subsequently four more. And Valentine’s assertion, that it was the thirtieth Æon which strayed out from the Pleroma, (as falling into despondency,) they deny; for the one which desponded on account of disappointed yearning to see the First-Father was not of the original triacontad, they say.
There arose, besides, Heracleon, a brother 8391 -heretic, whose sentiments pair with Valentine’s; but, by some novelty of terminology, he is desirous of seeming to differ in sentiment. For he introduces the notion that there existed first what he terms (a Monad); 8392 and then out of that Monad (arose) two, and then the rest of the Æons. Then he introduces the whole system of Valentine.
Footnotes
652:8381Conjugationes. Cowper uses our word “conjugation” in this sense in one of his humorous pieces. [“Pairing-time.”] The “syzygies” consisted of one male and one female Æon each.
652:8382Oehler separates “in primis;” but perhaps they ought to be united—“inprimis,” or “imprimis”—and taken as ="primo ab initio.”
652:8383Bythus.
652:8384Hominem.
652:8385“Sermone:” he said “Verbum” before.
652:8386In defectione fuisse.
652:8387Cf. adv. Valent. cc. x. xiv. [Routh says that this IAO (see note 8) is wanting in the older editions. It was borrowed from the Adv. Valentin. to eke out a defect.]
652:8388Such appears to be the meaning of this sentence as Oehler gives it. But the text is here corrupt; and it seems plain there must either be something lost relating to this “Achamoth,” or else some capital error in the reading, or, thirdly, some gross and unaccountable confusion in the writer: for the sentence as it stands is wholly irreconcilable with what follows. It evidently makes “Achamoth” identical with “the thirtieth Æon” above-named; and yet, without introducing any fresh subject, the writer goes on to state that this despondent Œon, who “conceived and bare,” was itself the offspring of despondency, and made an infirm world out of the infirm materials which “Achamoth” supposed it with. Now it is apparent from other sources—as, for instance, from Tert. adv. Valentin, above referred to—that the “thirtieth Æon” was supposed to be female, Sophia (Wisdom) by name, and that she was said to be the parent of “Achamoth,” or “Enthymesis” (see adv. Valentin. cc. ix. x. xi. xiv. xxv.), while “Achamoth” herself appears by some accounts to be also called κάτω Σοφία. The name “Achamoth” itself, which Tertullian (adv. Valentin. c. xiv. ad init.) calls an “uninterpretable name,” is believed to be a representation of a Hebrew word meaning “wisdom;” and hence, possibly, some of the confusion may have arisen,—from a promiscuous use, namely, of the titles “Achamoth” and “Sophia.” Moreover, it would appear that some words lower down as to the production by “Achamoth” of “Demiurgus,” must have dropped out. Unless these two omissions be supplied, the passage is wholly unintelligible. Can the fact that the Hebrew word which “Achamoth” represents is a fem. pl. in any way explain this confused medley, or help to reconcile conflicting accounts? The ἄνω and κάτω Σοφία seem to point in some degree to some such solution of some of the existing difficulties. “Iao,” again, is a word which has cause much perplexity. Can it possibly be connected with ἰάομαι, “to heal?” [See note 8.]
652:8389Mundum.
652:8390Oehler’s suggestion is to vary the pointing so as to give this sense: “The resurrection of this flesh he denies. But of a sister-Law and prophets,” etc. But this seems even more harsh than the other.
652:8391“Alter,” i.e., perhaps another of the same class.
652:8392It seems almost necessary to supply some word here; and as “Monade” follows, it seemed simple to supply “Monada.”
Chapter V.—Marcus and Colarbasus.
After these there were not wanting a Marcus and a Colarbasus, composing a novel heresy out of the Greek alphabet. For they affirm that without those letters truth cannot be found; nay more, that in those letters the whole plenitude and perfection of truth is comprised; for this was why Christ said, “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” 8393 In fact, they say that Jesus Christ descended, 8394 that is, that the dove came down on Jesus; 8395 and, since the dove is styled by the Greek name περιστερά —(peristera), it has in itself this number DCCCI. 8396 These men run through their Ω, Ψ, Χ, Φ, Υ, Τ—through the whole alphabet, indeed, up to Α and Β—and compute ogdoads and decads. So we may grant it useless and idle to recount all their trifles. What, however, must be allowed not merely vain, but likewise dangerous, is this: they feign a second God, beside the Creator; they affirm that Christ was not in the substance of flesh; they say there is to be no resurrection of the flesh.
Footnotes
653:8393See Rev. 1:7, Rev. 21:6, Rev. 22:13.
653:8394Denique Jesum Christum descendisse. So Oehler, who does not notice any conjectural emendation, or various reading, of the words. If correct, his reading would refer to the views of a twofold Jesus Christ—a real and a phantasmal one—held by docetic Gnostics, or to such views as Valentine’s, in whose system, so far as it is ascertainable from the confused and discrepant account of it, there would appear to have been one Æon called Christ, another called Jesus, and a human person called Jesus and Christ, with whom the true Jesus associated Himself. Some such jumble of ideas the two heretics now under review would seem to have held, if Oehler’s be the true reading. But the difficulties are somewhat lessened if we accept the very simple emendation which naturally suggests itself, and which, I see, Semler has proposed and Routh inclines to receive, “in Jesum Christum descendisse,” i.e. “that Christ descended on Jesus.”
653:8395See Matt. 3:13, Mark 1:9, Luke 3:21, John 1:29.
653:8396Habere secum numerum DCCCI. So Oehler, after Jos. Scaliger, who, however, seems to have read “secum hunc numerum,” for the ordinary reading, “habere secundum numerum,” which would mean, “represents, in the way of numerical value, DCCCI.”
Chapter VI.—Cerdo, Marcion, Lucan, Apelles.
To this is added one Cerdo. He introduces two first causes, 8397 that is, two Gods—one good, the other cruel: 8398 the good being the superior; the latter, the cruel one, being the creator of the world. 8399 He repudiates the prophecies and the Law; renounces God the Creator; maintains that Christ who came was the Son of the superior God; affirms that He was not in the substance of flesh; states Him to have been only in a phantasmal shape, to have not really suffered, but undergone a quasipassion, and not to have been born of a virgin, nay, really not to have been born at all. A resurrection of the soul merely does he approve, denying that of the body. The Gospel of Luke alone, and that not entire, does he receive. Of the Apostle Paul he takes neither all the epistles, nor in their integrity. The Acts of the Apostles and the Apocalypse he rejects as false.
After him emerged a disciple of his, one Marcion by name, a native of Pontus, 8400 son of a bishop, excommunicated because of a rape committed on a certain virgin. 8401 He, starting from the fact that it is said, “Every good tree beareth good fruit, but an evil evil,” 8402 attempted to approve the heresy of Cerdo; so that his assertions are identical with those of the former heretic before him.
After him arose one Lucan by name, a follower and disciple of Marcion. He, too, wading through the same kinds of blasphemy, teaches the same as Marcion and Cerdo had taught.
Close on their heels follows Apelles, a disciple of Marcion, who after lapsing, into his own carnality, 8403 was severed from Marcion. He introduces one God in the infinite upper regions, and states that He made many powers and angels; beside Him, withal, another Virtue, which he affirms to be called Lord, but represents as an angel. By him he will have it appear that the world 8404 was originated in imitation of a superior world. 8405 With this lower world he mingled throughout (a principle of) repentance, because he had not made it so perfectly as that superior world had been originated. The Law and the prophets he repudiates. Christ he neither, like Marcion, affirms to have been in a phantasmal shape, nor yet in substance of a true body, as the Gospel teaches; but says, because He descended from the upper regions, that in the course of His descent He wove together for Himself a starry and airy 8406 flesh; and, in His resurrection, restored, in the course of His ascent, to the several individual elements whatever had been borrowed in His descent: and thus—the several parts of His body dispersed—He reinstated in heaven His spirit only. This man denies the resurrection of the flesh. He uses, too, one only apostle; but that is Marcion’s, that is, a mutilated one. He teaches the salvation of souls alone. He has, besides, private but extraordinary lections of his own, which he calls “Manifestations” 8407 of one Philumene, 8408 a girl whom he follows as a prophetess. He has, besides, his own books, which he has entitled books of Syllogisms, in which he seeks to prove that whatever Moses has written about God is not true, but is false.
Footnotes
653:8397Initia duo.
653:8398Sævum.
653:8399Mundi.
653:8400“Ponticus genere,” lit. “a Pontic by race,” which of course may not necessarily, like our native, imply actual birth in Pontus. [Note—“son of a bishop:” an index of early date, though not necessarily Ante-Nicene. A mere forgery of later origin would have omitted it.]
653:8401Rig., with whom Oehler agrees, reminds us that neither in the de Præscr. nor in the adv. Marc., nor, apparently, in Irenæus, is any such statement brought forward.
653:8402See Matt. vii. 17.
653:8403See de Præscr. c. xxx., and comp. with it what is said of Marcion above.
653:8404Mundum.
653:8405Mundi.
653:8406“Aëream,” i.e., composed of the air, the lower air, or atmosphere; not “aetheream,” of the upper air, or ether.
654:8407Phaneroseis. Oehler refers to de Præscr. c. xxx. q. v.
654:8408φιλουμένη, “loved one.”
Chapter VII.—Tatian, Cataphrygians, Cataproclans, Catæschinetans.
To all these heretics is added one Tatian, a brother-heretic. This man was Justin Martyr’s disciple. After Justin’s death he began to cherish different opinions from his. For he wholly savours of Valentinus; adding this, that Adam cannot even attain salvation: as if, when the branches become salvable, 8409 the root were not!
Other heretics swell the list who are called Cataphrygians, but their teaching is not uniform. For there are (of them) some who are called Cataproclans; 8410 there are others who are termed Catæschinetans. 8411 These have a blasphemy common, and a blasphemy not common, but peculiar and special. The common blasphemy lies in their saying that the Holy Spirit was in the apostles indeed, the Paraclete was not; and in their saying that the Paraclete has spoken in Montanus more things than Christ brought forward into (the compass of) the Gospel, and not merely more, but likewise better and greater. But the particular one they who follow Æschines have; this, namely, whereby they add this, that they affirm Christ to be Himself Son and Father.
Footnotes
654:8409Salvi. Perhaps if it be questionable whether this word may be so rendered in a correct Latinist, it may be lawful to render it so in so incorrect a one as our present author.
654:8410i.e. followers of Proclus.
654:8411i.e. followers of Æschines. So this writer takes “Cataphryges” to mean followers of the Phrygians.”
Chapter VIII.—Blastus, Two Theodoti, Praxeas.
In addition to all these, there is likewise Blastus, who would latently introduce Judaism. For he says the passover is not to be kept otherwise than according to the law of Moses, on the fourteenth of the month. But who would fail to see that evangelical grace is escheated if he recalls Christ to the Law?
Add to these Theodotus the Byzantine, who, after being apprehended for Christ’s Name, and apostatizing, 8412 ceased not to blaspheme against Christ. For he introduced a doctrine by which to affirm that Christ was merely a human being, but deny His deity; teaching that He was born of the Holy Spirit indeed of a virgin, but was a solitary and bare human being, 8413 with no pre-eminence above the rest (of mankind), but only that of righteousness.
After him brake out a second heretical Theodotus, who again himself introduced a sister-sect, and says that the human being Christ Himself 8414 was merely conceived alike, and born, of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, but that He was inferior to Melchizedek; because it is said of Christ, “Thou art a priest unto eternity, after the order of Melchizedek.” 8415 For that Melchizedek, he says, was a heavenly Virtue of pre-eminent grace; in that Christ acts for human beings, being made their Deprecator and Advocate: Melchizedek does so 8416 for heavenly angels and Virtues. For to such a degree, he says, is he better than Christ, that he is ἀπάτωρ (fatherless), ἀμήτωρ (motherless), ἀγενεαλογητον (without genealogy), of whom neither the beginning nor the end has been comprehended, nor can be comprehended. 8417
But after all these, again, one Praxeas introduced a heresy which Victorinus 8418 was careful to corroborate. He asserts that Jesus Christ is God the Father Almighty. Him he contends to have been crucified, and suffered, and died; beside which, with a profane and sacrilegious temerity, he maintains the proposition that He is Himself sitting at His own right hand. 8419
Footnotes
654:8412Negavit. See de Idol. c. xxiii. note 1.
654:8413Hominem solitarium atque nudum. The words seems to mean, destitute of anything superhuman.
654:8414Et ipsum hominem Christum tantummodo. I rather incline to read, as in the preceding sentence, “et ipse”: “and himself affirms Christ to have been merely human, conceived alike,” etc.
654:8415See Ps. cx. 4, and the references there.
654:8416The Latin here is very careless, unless, with Routh, we suggest “et” for “eo,” and render: “and that what Christ does,” etc., “Melchizedek does,” etc.
654:8417See Heb. vii. 1-3.
654:8418Who he is, no one knows. Oehler (following the lead of Fabricius on Philaster, cap. 49, p. 102) believes the name to be a mistake for Victor, a bishop of Rome, who (see Adv. Prax. c. i.) had held the episcopate when Praxeas was there. His successor was Zephyrinus; and it is an ingenious conjecture of Oehler, that these two names, the one written as a correction of the other, may have been confused: thus, Victor/Zephrynus; and thus of the two may have been made Victorinus.
654:8419The form and order of the words here used are certainly remarkably similar to the expressions and order of the “Apostles’ Creed.”
Tertullian.
————————————
Part Third.
I.
On Repentance. 8420
[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]
————————————
Chapter I.—Of Heathen Repentance.
Repentance, men understand, so far as nature is able, to be an emotion of the mind arising from disgust 8421 at some previously cherished worse sentiment: that kind of men I mean which even we ourselves were in days gone by—blind, without the Lord’s light. From the reason of repentance, however, they are just as far as they are from the Author of reason Himself. Reason, in fact, is a thing of God, inasmuch as there is nothing which God the Maker of all has not provided, disposed, ordained by reason—nothing which He has not willed should be handled and understood by reason. All, therefore, who are ignorant of God, must necessarily be ignorant also of a thing which is His, because no treasure-house 8422 at all is accessible to strangers. And thus, voyaging all the universal course of life without the rudder of reason, they know not how to shun the hurricane which is impending over the world. 8423 Moreover, how irrationally they behave in the practice of repentance, it will be enough briefly to show just by this one fact, that they exercise it even in the case of their good deeds. They repent of good faith, of love, of simple-heartedness, of patience, of mercy, just in proportion as any deed prompted by these feelings has fallen on thankless soil. They execrate their own selves for having done good; and that species chiefly of repentance which is applied to the best works they fix in their heart, making it their care to remember never again to do a good turn. On repentance for evil deeds, on the contrary, they lay lighter stress. In short, they make this same (virtue) a means of sinning more readily than a means of right-doing.
Footnotes
657:8420[We pass from the polemical class of our author’s writings to those of a practical and ethical character. This treatise on Penitence is the product of our author’s best days, and may be dated a.d. 192.]
657:8421“Offensa sententiæ pejoris;” or possibly, “the miscarriage of some,” etc.
657:8422Thesaurus.
657:8423Sæculo. [Erasmus doubted the genuineness of this treatise, partly because of the comparative purity of its style. See Kaye, p. 42.]
Chapter II.—True Repentance a Thing Divine, Originated by God, and Subject to His Laws.
But if they acted as men who had any part in God, and thereby in reason also, they would first weigh well the importance of repentance, and would never apply it in such a way as to make it a ground for convicting themselves of perverse self-amendment. In short, they would regulate the limit of their repentance, because they would reach (a limit) in sinning too—by fearing God, I mean. But where there is no fear, in like manner there is no amendment; where there is no amendment, repentance is of necessity vain, for it lacks the fruit for which God sowed it; that is, man’s salvation. For God—after so many and so great sins of human temerity, begun by the first of the race, Adam, after the condemnation of man, together with the dowry of the world 8424 after his ejection from paradise and subjection to death—when He had hasted back to His own mercy, did from that time onward inaugurate repentance in His own self, by rescinding the sentence of His first wrath, engaging to grant pardon to His own work and image. 8425 And so He gathered together a people for Himself, and fostered them with many liberal distributions of His bounty, and, after so often finding them most ungrateful, ever exhorted them to repentance and sent out the voices of the universal company of the prophets to prophesy. By and by, promising freely the grace which in the last times He was intending to pour as a flood of light on the universal world 8426 through His Spirit, He bade the baptism of repentance lead the way, with the view of first preparing, 8427 by means of the sign and seal of repentance, them whom He was calling, through grace, to (inherit) the promise surely made to Abraham. John holds not his peace, saying, “Enter upon repentance, for now shall salvation approach the nations” 8428 —the Lord, that is, bringing salvation according to God’s promise. To Him John, as His harbinger, directed the repentance (which he preached), whose province was the purging of men’s minds, that whatever defilement inveterate error had imparted, whatever contamination in the heart of man ignorance had engendered, that repentance should sweep and scrape away, and cast out of doors, and thus prepare the home of the heart, by making it clean, for the Holy Spirit, who was about to supervene, that He might with pleasure introduce Himself there-into, together with His celestial blessings. Of these blessings the title is briefly one—the salvation of man—the abolition of former sins being the preliminary step. This 8429 is the (final) cause of repentance, this her work, in taking in hand the business of divine mercy. What is profitable to man does service to God. The rule of repentance, however, which we learn when we know the Lord, retains a definite form,—viz., that no violent hands so to speak, be ever laid on good deeds or thoughts. 8430 For God, never giving His sanction to the reprobation of good deeds, inasmuch as they are His own (of which, being the author, He must necessarily be the defender too), is in like manner the acceptor of them, and if the acceptor, likewise the rewarder. Let, then, the ingratitude of men see to it, 8431 if it attaches repentance even to good works; let their gratitude see to it too, if the desire of earning it be the incentive to well-doing: earthly and mortal are they each. For how small is your gain if you do good to a grateful man! or your loss if to an ungrateful! A good deed has God as its debtor, just as an evil has too; for a judge is rewarder of every cause. Well, since, God as Judge presides over the exacting and maintaining 8432 of justice, which to Him is most dear; and since it is with an eye to justice that He appoints all the sum of His discipline, is there room for doubting that, just as in all our acts universally, so also in the case of repentance, justice must be rendered to God?—which duty can indeed only be fulfilled on the condition that repentance be brought to bear only on sins. Further, no deed but an evil one deserves to be called sin, nor does any one err by well-doing. But if he does not err, why does he invade (the province of) repentance, the private ground of such as do err? Why does he impose on his goodness a duty proper to wickedness? Thus it comes to pass that, when a thing is called into play where it ought not, there, where it ought, it is neglected.
Footnotes
657:8424Sæculi dote. With which he had been endowed. Comp. Gen. 1:28, Ps. 8:4.
657:8425i.e., man.
657:8426Orbi.
658:8427Componeret.
658:8428Comp. Matt. 3:1, 2, Mark 1:4, Luke 3:4.
658:8429i.e., man’s salvation.
658:8430See the latter part of c. i.
658:8431Viderit.
658:8432Or, “defending.”
Chapter III.—Sins May Be Divided into Corporeal and Spiritual. Both Equally Subject, If Not to Human, Yet to Divine Investigation and Punishment. 8433
What things, then, they be for which repentance seems just and due—that is, what things are to be set down under the head of sin—the occasion indeed demands that I should note down; but (to do so) may seem to be unnecessary. For when the Lord is known, our spirit, having been “looked back upon” 8434 by its own Author, emerges unbidden into the knowledge of the truth; and being admitted to (an acquaintance with) the divine precepts, is by them forthwith instructed that “that from which God bids us abstain is to be accounted sin:” inasmuch as, since it is generally agreed that God is some great essence of good, of course nothing but evil would be displeasing to good; in that, between things mutually contrary, friendship there is none. Still it will not be irksome briefly to touch upon the fact 8435 that, of sins, some are carnal, that is, corporeal; some spiritual. For since man is composed of this combination of a two-fold substance, the sources of his sins are no other than the sources of his composition. But it is not the fact that body and spirit are two things that constitute the sins mutually different—otherwise they are on this account rather equal, because the two make up one—lest any make the distinction between their sins proportionate to the difference between their substances, so as to esteem the one lighter, or else heavier, than the other: if it be true, (as it is,) that both flesh and spirit are creatures of God; one wrought by His hand, one consummated by His afflatus. Since, then, they equally pertain to the Lord, whichever of them sins equally offends the Lord. Is it for you to distinguish the acts of the flesh and the spirit, whose communion and conjunction in life, in death, and in resurrection, are so intimate, that “at that time” 8436 they are equally raised up either for life or else for judgment; because, to wit, they have equally either sinned or lived innocently? This we would (once for all) premise, in order that we may understand that no less necessity for repentance is incumbent on either part of man, if in anything it have sinned, than on both. The guilt of both is common; common, too, is the Judge—God to wit; common, therefore, is withal the healing medicine of repentance. The source whence sins are named “spiritual” and “corporeal” is the fact that every sin is matter either of act or else of thought: so that what is in deed is “corporeal,” because a deed, like a body, is capable of being seen and touched; what is in the mind is “spiritual,” because spirit is neither seen nor handled: by which consideration is shown that sins not of deed only, but of will too, are to be shunned, and by repentance purged. For if human finitude 8437 judges only sins of deed, because it is not equal to (piercing) the lurking-places of the will, let us not on that account make light of crimes of the will in God’s sight. God is all-sufficient. Nothing from whence any sin whatsoever proceeds is remote from His sight; because He is neither ignorant, nor does He omit to decree it to judgment. He is no dissembler of, nor double-dealer with, 8438 His own clear-sightedness. What (shall we say of the fact) that will is the origin of deed? For if any sins are imputed to chance, or to necessity, or to ignorance, let them see to themselves: if these be excepted, there is no sinning save by will. Since, then, will is the origin of deed, is it not so much the rather amenable to penalty as it is first in guilt? Nor, if some difficulty interferes with its full accomplishment, is it even in that case exonerated; for it is itself imputed to itself: nor; having done the work which lay in its own power, will it be excusable by reason of that miscarriage of its accomplishment. In fact, how does the Lord demonstrate Himself as adding a superstructure to the Law, except by interdicting sins of the will as well (as other sins); while He defines not only the man who had actually invaded another’s wedlock to be an adulterer, but likewise him who had contaminated (a woman) by the concupiscence of his gaze? 8439 Accordingly it is dangerous enough for the mind to set before itself what it is forbidden to perform, and rashly through the will to perfect its execution. And since the power of this will is such that, even without fully sating its self-gratification, it stands for a deed; as a deed, therefore, it shall be punished. It is utterly vain to say, “I willed, but yet I did not.” Rather you ought to carry the thing through, because you will; or else not to will, because you do not carry it through. But, by the confession of your consciousness, you pronounce your own condemnation. For if you eagerly desired a good thing, you would have been anxious to carry it through; in like manner, as you do not carry an evil thing through, you ought not to have eagerly desired it. Wherever you take your stand, you are fast bound by guilt; because you have either willed evil, or else have not fulfilled good.
Footnotes
658:8433[Without reference to Luther’s theory of justification, we must all adopt this as the test of “a standing or falling church,” viz. “How does it deal with sin and the sinner.”]
658:8434Luke xxii. 61.
658:8435Or, “briefly to lay down the rule.”
659:8436i.e., in the judgment-day. Compare the phrase “that day and that hour” in Scripture.
659:8437Mediocritas.
659:8438Prævaricatorem: comp. ad Ux.b. ii. c. ii. ad init.
659:8439Matt. 5:27, 28; comp. de Idol. ii.
Chapter IV.—Repentance Applicable to All the Kinds of Sin. To Be Practised Not Only, Nor Chiefly, for the Good It Brings, But Because God Commands It.
To all sins, then, committed whether by flesh or spirit, whether by deed or will, the same God who has destined penalty by means of judgment, has withal engaged to grant pardon by means of repentance, saying to the people, “Repent thee, and I will save thee;” 8440 and again, “I live, saith the Lord, and I will (have) repentance rather than death.” 8441 Repentance, then, is “life,” since it is preferred to “death.” That repentance, O sinner, like myself (nay, rather, less than myself, for pre-eminence in sins I acknowledge to be mine 8442 ), do you so hasten to, so embrace, as a shipwrecked man the protection 8443 of some plank. This will draw you forth when sunk in the waves of sins, and will bear you forward into the port of the divine clemency. Seize the opportunity of unexpected felicity: that you, who sometime were in God’s sight nothing but “a drop of a bucket,” 8444 and “dust of the threshing-floor,” 8445 and “a potter’s vessel,” 8446 may thenceforward become that “tree which is sown beside 8447 the waters, is perennial in leaves, bears fruit at its own time,” 8448 and shall not see “fire,” 8449 nor “axe.” 8450 Having found “the truth,” 8451 repent of errors; repent of having loved what God loves not: even we ourselves do not permit our slave-lads not to hate the things which are offensive to us; for the principle of voluntary obedience 8452 consists in similarity of minds.
To reckon up the good, of repentance, the subject-matter is copious, and therefore should be committed to great eloquence. Let us, however, in proportion to our narrow abilities, inculcate one point,—that what God enjoins is good and best. I hold it audacity to dispute about the “good” of a divine precept; for, indeed, it is not the fact that it is good which binds us to obey, but the fact that God has enjoined it. To exact the rendering of obedience the majesty of divine power has the prior 8453 right; the authority of Him who commands is prior to the utility of him who serves. “Is it good to repent, or no?” Why do you ponder? God enjoins; nay, He not merely enjoins, but likewise exhorts. He invites by (offering) reward—salvation, to wit; even by an oath, saying “I live,” 8454 He desires that credence may be given Him. Oh blessed we, for whose sake God swears! Oh most miserable, if we believe not the Lord even when He swears! What, therefore, God so highly commends, what He even (after human fashion) attests on oath, we are bound of course to approach, and to guard with the utmost seriousness; that, abiding permanently in (the faith of) the solemn pledge 8455 of divine grace, we may be able also to persevere in like manner in its fruit 8456 and its benefit.
Footnotes
659:8440Comp. Ezek. 18:30, 32.
659:8441The substance of this is found in Ezek. xxxiii. 11.
659:8442Compare 1 Tim. i. 16.
659:8443Comp. c. xii. sub fin. [Ut naufragus alicuius tabulæ fidem; this expression soon passed into Theological technology, and as “the plank after shipwreck” is universally known.]
659:8444Isa. xl. 15.
659:8445Dan. 2:35, Matt. 3:12.
659:8446Ps. 2:9, Rev. 2:27.
659:8447Penes.
659:8448Ps. 1:3, Jer. 17:8. Compare Luke xxiii. 31.
659:8449Jer. 17:8, Matt. 3:10.
659:8450Matt. iii. 10.
659:8451John xiv. 6.
660:8452Obsequii.
660:8453Or, “paramount.”
660:8454See ref. 1 on the preceding page. The phrase is “as I live” in the English version.
660:8455“Asseveratione:” apparently a play on the word, as compared with “perseverare,” which follows.
660:8456Or, “enjoyment.”
Chapter V.—Sin Never to Be Returned to After Repentance. 8457
For what I say is this, that the repentance which, being shown us and commanded us through God’s grace, recalls us to grace 8458 with the Lord, when once learned and undertaken by us ought never afterward to be cancelled by repetition of sin. No pretext of ignorance now remains to plead on your behalf; in that, after acknowledging the Lord, and accepting His precepts 8459 —in short, after engaging in repentance of (past) sins—you again betake yourself to sins. Thus, in as far as you are removed from ignorance, in so far are you cemented 8460 to contumacy. For if the ground on which you had repented of having sinned was that you had begun to fear the Lord, why have you preferred to rescind what you did for fear’s sake, except because you have ceased to fear? For there is no other thing but contumacy which subverts fear. Since there is no exception which defends from liability to penalty even such as are ignorant of the Lord—because ignorance of God, openly as He is set before men, and comprehensible as He is even on the score of His heavenly benefits, is not possible 8461 —how perilous is it for Him to be despised when known? Now, that man does despise Him, who, after attaining by His help to an understanding of things good and evil, often an affront to his own understanding—that is, to God’s gift—by resuming what he understands ought to be shunned, and what he has already shunned: he rejects the Giver in abandoning the gift; he denies the Benefactor in not honouring the benefit. How can he be pleasing to Him, whose gift is displeasing to himself? Thus he is shown to be not only contumacious toward the Lord, but likewise ungrateful. Besides, that man commits no light sin against the Lord, who, after he had by repentance renounced His rival the devil, and had under this appellation subjected him to the Lord, again upraises him by his own return (to the enemy), and makes himself a ground of exultation to him; so that the Evil One, with his prey recovered, rejoices anew against the Lord. Does he not—what is perilous even to say, but must be put forward with a view to edification—place the devil before the Lord? For he seems to have made the comparison who has known each; and to have judicially pronounced him to be the better whose (servant) he has preferred again to be. Thus he who, through repentance for sins, had begun to make satisfaction to the Lord, will, through another repentance of his repentance, make satisfaction to the devil, and will be the more hateful to God in proportion as he will be the more acceptable to His rival. But some say that “God is satisfied if He be looked up to with the heart and the mind, even if this be not done in outward act, and that thus they sin without damage to their fear and their faith:” that is, that they violate wedlock without damage to their chastity; they mingle poison for their parent without damage to their filial duty! Thus, then, they will themselves withal be thrust down into hell without damage to their pardon, while they sin without damage to their fear! Here is a primary example of perversity: they sin, because they fear! 8462 I suppose, if they feared not, they would not sin! Let him, therefore, who would not have God offended not revere Him at all, if fear 8463 is the plea for offending. But these dispositions have been wont to sprout from the seed of hypocrites, whose friendship with the devil is indivisible, whose repentance never faithful.
Footnotes
660:8457[The formidable doctrine of 1 John 3:9, 1 John 5:18, etc. must excuse our author for his severe adherence to this principle of purifying the heart from habitual sin. But, the church refused to press it against St. Matt. xviii. 22. In our own self-indulgent day, we are more prone, I fear, to presumption than to over strictness. The Roman casuists make attrition suffice, and so turn absolution into a mere sponge, and an encouragement to perpetual sinning and formal confession.]
660:8458i.e., favour.
660:8459Which is solemnly done in baptism.
660:8460Adglutinaris.
660:8461Acts xiv. 15-17: “licet” here may ="lawful,” “permissible,” “excusable.”
660:8462“Timent,” not “metuunt.” “Metus” is the word Tertullian has been using above for religious, reverential fear.
661:8463Timor.
Chapter VI.—Baptism Not to Be Presumptously Received. It Requires Preceding Repentance, Manifested by Amendment of Life.
Whatever, then, our poor ability has attempted to suggest with reference to laying hold of repentance once for all, and perpetually retaining it, does indeed bear upon all who are given up to the Lord, as being all competitors for salvation in earning the favour of God; but is chiefly urgent in the case of those young novices who are only just beginning to bedew 8464 their ears with divine discourses, and who, as whelps in yet early infancy, and with eyes not yet perfect, creep about uncertainly, and say indeed that they renounce their former deed, and assume (the profession of) repentance, but neglect to complete it. 8465 For the very end of desiring importunes them to desire somewhat of their former deeds; just as fruits, when they are already beginning to turn into the sourness or bitterness of age, do yet still in some part flatter 8466 their own loveliness. Moreover, a presumptuous confidence in baptism introduces all kind of vicious delay and tergiversation with regard to repentance; for, feeling sure of undoubted pardon of their sins, men meanwhile steal the intervening time, and make it for themselves into a holiday-time 8467 for sinning, rather than a time for learning not to sin. Further, how inconsistent is it to expect pardon of sins (to be granted) to a repentance which they have not fulfilled! This is to hold out your hand for merchandise, but not produce the price. For repentance is the price at which the Lord has determined to award pardon: He proposes the redemption 8468 of release from penalty at this compensating exchange of repentance. If, then, sellers first examine the coin with which they make their bargains, to see whether it be cut, or scraped, or adulterated, 8469 we believe likewise that the Lord, when about to make us the grant of so costly merchandise, even of eternal life, first institutes a probation of our repentance. “But meanwhile let us defer the reality of our repentance: it will then, I suppose, be clear that we are amended when we are absolved.” 8470 By no means; (but our amendment should be manifested) while, pardon being in abeyance, there is still a prospect of penalty; while the penitent does not yet merit—so far as merit we can—his liberation; while God is threatening, not while He is forgiving. For what slave, after his position has been changed by reception of freedom, charges himself with his (past) thefts and desertions? What soldier, after his discharge, makes satisfaction for his (former) brands? A sinner is bound to bemoan himself before receiving pardon, because the time of repentance is coincident with that of peril and of fear. Not that I deny that the divine benefit—the putting away of sins, I mean—is in every way sure to such as are on the point of entering the (baptismal) water; but what we have to labour for is, that it may be granted us to attain that blessing. For who will grant to you, a man of so faithless repentance, one single sprinkling of any water whatever? To approach it by stealth, indeed, and to get the minister appointed over this business misled by your asseverations, is easy; but God takes foresight for His own treasure, and suffers not the unworthy to steal a march upon it. What, in fact, does He say? “Nothing hid which shall not be revealed.” 8471 Draw whatever (veil of) darkness you please over your deeds, “God is light.” 8472 But some think as if God were under a necessity of bestowing even on the unworthy, what He has engaged (to give); and they turn His liberality into slavery. But if it is of necessity that God grants us the symbol of death, 8473 then He does so unwillingly. But who permits a gift to be permanently retained which he has granted unwillingly? For do not many afterward fall out of (grace)? is not this gift taken away from many? These, no doubt, are they who do steal a march upon (the treasure), who, after approaching to the faith of repentance, set up on the sands a house doomed to ruin. Let no one, then, flatter himself on the ground of being assigned to the “recruit-classes” of learners, as if on that account he have a licence even now to sin. As soon as you “know the Lord,” 8474 you should fear Him; as soon as you have gazed on Him, you should reverence Him. But what difference does your “knowing” Him make, while you rest in the same practises as in days bygone, when you knew Him not? What, moreover, is it which distinguishes you from a perfected 8475 servant of God? Is there one Christ for the baptized, another for the learners? Have they some different hope or reward? some different dread of judgment? some different necessity for repentance? That baptismal washing is a sealing of faith, which faith is begun and is commended by the faith of repentance. We are not washed in order that we may cease sinning, but because we have ceased, since in heart we have been bathed 8476 already. For the first baptism of a learner is this, a perfect fear; 8477 thenceforward, in so far as you have understanding of the Lord faith is sound, the conscience having once for all embraced repentance. Otherwise, if it is (only) after the baptismal waters that we cease sinning, it is of necessity, not of free-will, that we put on innocence. Who, then, is pre-eminent in goodness? he who is not allowed, or he whom it displeases, to be evil? he who is bidden, or he whose pleasure it is, to be free from crime? Let us, then, neither keep our hands from theft unless the hardness of bars withstand us, nor refrain our eyes from the concupiscence of fornication unless we be withdrawn by guardians of our persons, if no one who has surrendered himself to the Lord is to cease sinning unless he be bound thereto by baptism. But if any entertain this sentiment, I know not whether he, after baptism, do not feel more sadness to think that he has ceased from sinning, than gladness that he hath escaped from it. And so it is becoming that learners desire baptism, but do not hastily receive it: for he who desires it, honours it; he who hastily receives it, disdains it: in the one appears modesty, in the other arrogance; the former satisfies, the latter neglects it; the former covets to merit it, but the latter promises it to himself as a due return; the former takes, the latter usurps it. Whom would you judge worthier, except one who is more amended? whom more amended, except one who is more timid, and on that account has fulfilled the duty of true repentance? for he has feared to continue still in sin, lest he should not merit the reception of baptism. But the hasty receiver, inasmuch as he promised it himself (as his due), being forsooth secure (of obtaining it), could not fear: thus he fulfilled not repentance either, because he lacked the instrumental agent of repentance, that is, fear. 8478 Hasty reception is the portion of irreverence; it inflates the seeker, it despises the Giver. And thus it sometimes deceives, 8479 for it promises to itself the gift before it be due; whereby He who is to furnish the gift is ever offended.
Footnotes
661:8464Deut. xxxii. 2.
661:8465i.e., by baptism.
661:8466Adulantur.
661:8467“Commeatus,” a military word ="furlough,” hence “holiday-time.”
661:8468i.e., repurchase.
661:8469Adulter; see de Idol. c. i.
661:8470i.e., in baptism.
661:8471Luke viii. 17.
661:84721 John i. 5.
661:8473Symbolum mortis indulget. Comp. Rom. 6:3, 4, 8, Col. 2:12, 20.
661:8474Jer. 31:34, Heb. 8:11.
662:8475i.e., in baptism.
662:8476See John 13:10, Matt. 23:26.
662:8477Metus integer.
662:8478Metus.
662:8479Or, “disappoints,” i.e., the hasty recipient himself.
Chapter VII.—Of Repentance, in the Case of Such as Have Lapsed After Baptism.
So long, Lord Christ, may the blessing of learning or hearing concerning the discipline of repentance be granted to Thy servants, as is likewise behoves them, while learners, 8480 not to sin; in other words, may they thereafter know nothing of repentance, and require nothing of it. It is irksome to append mention of a second—nay, in that case, the last—hope; 8481 lest, by treating of a remedial repenting yet in reserve, we seem to be pointing to a yet further space for sinning. Far be it that any one so interpret our meaning, as if, because there is an opening for repenting, there were even now, on that account, an opening for sinning; and as if the redundance of celestial clemency constituted a licence for human temerity. Let no one be less good because God is more so, by repeating his sin as often as he is forgiven. Otherwise be sure he will find an end of escaping, when he shall not find one of sinning. We have escaped once: thus far and no farther let us commit ourselves to perils, even if we seem likely to escape a second time. 8482 Men in general, after escaping shipwreck, thenceforward declare divorce with ship and sea; and by cherishing the memory of the danger, honour the benefit conferred by God,—their deliverance, namely. I praise their fear, I love their reverence; they are unwilling a second time to be a burden to the divine mercy; they fear to seem to trample on the benefit which they have attained; they shun, with a solicitude which at all events is good, to make trial a second time of that which they have once learned to fear. Thus the limit of their temerity is the evidence of their fear.
Moreover, man’s fear 8483 is an honour to God. But however, that most stubborn foe (of ours) never gives his malice leisure; indeed, he is then most savage when he fully feels that a man is freed from his clutches; he then flames fiercest while he is fast becoming extinguished. Grieve and groan he must of necessity over the fact that, by the grant of pardon, so many works of death 8484 in man have been overthrown, so many marks of the condemnation which formerly was his own erased. He grieves that that sinner, (now) Christ’s servant, is destined to judge him and his angels. 8485 And so he observes, assaults, besieges him, in the hope that he may be able in some way either to strike his eyes with carnal concupiscence, or else to entangle his mind with worldly enticements, or else to subvert his faith by fear of earthly power, or else to wrest him from the sure way by perverse traditions: he is never deficient in stumbling-blocks nor in temptations. These poisons of his, therefore, God foreseeing, although the gate of forgiveness has been shut and fastened up with the bar of baptism, has permitted it still to stand somewhat open. 8486 In the vestibule He has stationed the second repentance for opening to such as knock: but now once for all, because now for the second time; 8487 but never more because the last time it had been in vain. For is not even this once enough? You have what you now deserved not, for you had lost what you had received. If the Lord’s indulgence grants you the means of restoring what you had lost, be thankful for the benefit renewed, not to say amplified; for restoring is a greater thing than giving, inasmuch as having lost is more miserable than never having received at all. However, if any do incur the debt of a second repentance, his spirit is not to be forthwith cut down and undermined by despair. Let it by all means be irksome to sin again, but let not to repent again be irksome: irksome to imperil one’s self again, but not to be again set free. Let none be ashamed. Repeated sickness must have repeated medicine. You will show your gratitude to the Lord by not refusing what the Lord offers you. You have offended, but can still be reconciled. You have One whom you may satisfy, and Him willing. 8488
Footnotes
662:8480i.e., before baptism.
662:8481[Elucidation I. See infra, this chapter, sub fine.]
662:8482[When our author wrote to the Martyrs, (see cap. 1.) he was less disposed to such remorseless discipline: and perhaps we have here an element of his subsequent system, one which led him to accept the discipline of Montanism. On this general subject, we shall find enough when we come to Cyprian and Novatian.]
662:8483Timor.
662:8484“Mortis opera,” or “deadly works:” cf. de Idol. c. iv. (mid.), “perdition of blood,” and the note there.
663:84851 Cor. vi. 3.
663:8486Or, “has permitted somewhat still to stand open.”
663:8487[See cap. vii. supra.]
663:8488To accept the satisfaction.
Chapter VIII.—Examples from Scripture to Prove the Lord’s Willingness to Pardon.
This if you doubt, unravel 8489 the meaning of “what the Spirit saith to the churches.” 8490 He imputes to the Ephesians “forsaken love;” 8491 reproaches the Thyatirenes with “fornication,” and “eating of things sacrificed to idols;” 8492 accuses the Sardians of “works not full;” 8493 censures the Pergamenes for teaching perverse things; 8494 upbraids the Laodiceans for trusting to their riches; 8495 and yet gives them all general monitions to repentance—under comminations, it is true; but He would not utter comminations to one unrepentant if He did not forgive the repentant. The matter were doubtful if He had not withal elsewhere demonstrated this profusion of His clemency. Saith He not, 8496 “He who hath fallen shall rise again, and he who hath been averted shall be converted?” He it is, indeed, who “would have mercy rather than sacrifices.” 8497 The heavens, and the angels who are there, are glad at a man’s repentance. 8498 Ho! you sinner, be of good cheer! you see where it is that there is joy at your return. What meaning for us have those themes of the Lord’s parables? Is not the fact that a woman has lost a drachma, and seeks it and finds it, and invites her female friends to share her joy, an example of a restored sinner? 8499 There strays, withal, one little ewe of the shepherd’s; but the flock was not more dear than the one: that one is earnestly sought; the one is longed for instead of all; and at length she is found, and is borne back on the shoulders of the shepherd himself; for much had she toiled 8500 in straying. 8501 That most gentle father, likewise, I will not pass over in silence, who calls his prodigal son home, and willingly receives him repentant after his indigence, slays his best fatted calf, and graces his joy with a banquet. 8502 Why not? He had found the son whom he had lost; he had felt him to be all the dearer of whom he had made a gain. Who is that father to be understood by us to be? God, surely: no one is so truly a Father; 8503 no one so rich in paternal love. He, then, will receive you, His own son, 8504 back, even if you have squandered what you had received from Him, even if you return naked—just because you have returned; and will joy more over your return than over the sobriety of the other; 8505 but only if you heartily repent—if you compare your own hunger with the plenty of your Father’s “hired servants”—if you leave behind you the swine, that unclean herd—if you again seek your Father, offended though He be, saying, “I have sinned, nor am worthy any longer to be called Thine.” Confession of sins lightens, as much as dissimulation aggravates them; for confession is counselled by (a desire to make) satisfaction, dissimulation by contumacy.
Footnotes
663:8489Evolve: perhaps simply ="read.”
663:8490Rev. 2:7, 11, 17, 29, Rev. 3:6, 13, 21.
663:8491Rev. ii. 4.
663:8492Rev. ii. 20.
663:8493Rev. iii. 2.
663:8494Rev. 2:14, 15.
663:8495Rev. iii. 17.
663:8496Jer. viii. 4 (in LXX.) appears to be the passage meant. The Eng. Ver. is very different.
663:8497Hos. 6:6, Matt. 9:13. The words in Hosea in the LXX. are, διότι ἕλεος θέλω ἤ θυσίαν (al. καὶ οὐ θυσίαν).
663:8498Luke 15:7, 10.
663:8499Luke xv. 8-10.
663:8500Or, “suffered.”
663:8501Luke xv. 3-7.
663:8502Luke xv. 11-32.
663:8503Cf. Matt. 23:9, Eph. 3:14, in the Greek.
663:8504Publicly enrolled as such in baptism; for Tertullian here is speaking solely of the “second repentance.”
663:8505See Luke xv. 29-32.
Chapter IX.—Concerning the Outward Manifestations by Which This Second Repentance is to Be Accompanied.
The narrower, then, the sphere of action of this second and only (remaining) repentance, the more laborious is its probation; in order that it may not be exhibited in the conscience alone, but may likewise be carried out in some (external) act. This act, which is more usually expressed and commonly spoken of under a Greek name, is ἐξομολόγησις , 8506 whereby we confess our sins to the Lord, not indeed as if He were ignorant of them, but inasmuch as by confession satisfaction is settled, 8507 of confession repentance is born; by repentance God is appeased. And thus exomologesis is a discipline for man’s prostration and humiliation, enjoining a demeanor calculated to move mercy. With regard also to the very dress and food, it commands (the penitent) to lie in sackcloth and ashes, to cover his body in mourning, 8508 to lay his spirit low in sorrows, to exchange for severe treatment the sins which he has committed; moreover, to know no food and drink but such as is plain,—not for the stomach’s sake, to wit, but the soul’s; for the most part, however, to feed prayers on fastings, to groan, to weep and make outcries 8509 unto the Lord your 8510 God; to bow before the feet of the presbyters, and kneel to God’s dear ones; to enjoin on all the brethren to be ambassadors to bear his 8511 deprecatory supplication (before God). All this exomologesis (does), that it may enhance repentance; may honour God by its fear of the (incurred) danger; may, by itself pronouncing against the sinner, stand in the stead of God’s indignation, and by temporal mortification (I will not say frustrate, but) expunge eternal punishments. Therefore, while it abases the man, it raises him; while it covers him with squalor, it renders him more clean; while it accuses, it excuses; while it condemns, it absolves. The less quarter you give yourself, the more (believe me) will God give you.
Footnotes
664:8506Utter confession.
664:8507For the meaning of “satisfaction,” see Hooker Eccl. Pol. vi. 5, where several references to the present treatise occur. [Elucidation II.]
664:8508Sordibus.
664:8509Cf. Ps. 22:1, Ps. 38:8, Heb. 5:7.
664:8510Tertullian changes here to the second person, unless Oehler’s “tuum” be a misprint for “suum.”
664:8511“Suæ,” which looks as if the “tuum” above should be “suum.” [St. James v. 16.]
Chapter X.—Of Men’s Shrinking from This Second Repentance and Exomologesis, and of the Unreasonableness of Such Shrinking.
Yet most men either shun this work, as being a public exposure 8512 of themselves, or else defer it from day to day. I presume (as being) more mindful of modesty than of salvation; just like men who, having contracted some malady in the more private parts of the body, avoid the privity of physicians, and so perish with their own bashfulness. It is intolerable, forsooth, to modesty to make satisfaction to the offended Lord! to be restored to its forfeited 8513 salvation! Truly you are honourable in your modesty; bearing an open forehead for sinning, but an abashed one for deprecating! I give no place to bashfulness when I am a gainer by its loss; when itself in some son exhorts the man, saying, “Respect not me; it is better that I perish through 8514 you, i.e. than you through me.” At all events, the time when (if ever) its danger is serious, is when it is a butt for jeering speech in the presence of insulters, where one man raises himself on his neighbour’s ruin, where there is upward clambering over the prostrate. But among brethren and fellow-servants, where there is common hope, fear, 8515 joy, grief, suffering, because there is a common Spirit from a common Lord and Father, why do you think these brothers to be anything other than yourself? Why flee from the partners of your own mischances, as from such as will derisively cheer them? The body cannot feel gladness at the trouble of any one member, 8516 it must necessarily join with one consent in the grief, and in labouring for the remedy. In a company of two 8517 is the church; 8518 but the church is Christ. 8519 When, then, you cast yourself at the brethren’s knees, you are handling Christ, you are entreating Christ. In like manner, when they shed tears over you, it is Christ who suffers, Christ who prays the Father for mercy. What a son 8520 asks is ever easily obtained. Grand indeed is the reward of modesty, which the concealment of our fault promises us! to wit, if we do hide somewhat from the knowledge of man, shall we equally conceal it from God? Are the judgment of men and the knowledge of God so put upon a par? Is it better to be damned in secret than absolved in public? But you say, “It is a miserable thing thus to come to exomologesis:” yes, for evil does bring to misery; but where repentance is to be made, the misery ceases, because it is turned into something salutary. Miserable it is to be cut, and cauterized, and racked with the pungency of some (medicinal) powder: still, the things which heal by unpleasant means do, by the benefit of the cure, excuse their own offensiveness, and make present injury bearable for the sake 8521 of the advantage to supervene.
Footnotes
664:8512[Elucidation III.]
664:8513Prodactæ.
664:8514Per. But “per,” according to Oehler, is used by Tertullian as ="propter” —on your account, for your sake.
664:8515Metus.
664:85161 Cor. xii. 26.
664:8517In uno et altero.
664:8518See Matt. xviii. 20.
664:8519i.e. as being His body.
664:8520Or, “the Son.” Comp. John 11:41, 42.
665:8521Or, “by the grace.”
Chapter XI.—Further Strictures on the Same Subject.
What if, besides the shame which they make the most account of, men dread likewise the bodily inconveniences; in that, unwashen, sordidly attired, estranged from gladness, they must spend their time in the roughness of sackcloth, and the horridness of ashes, and the sunkenness of face caused by fasting? Is it then becoming for us to supplicate for our sins in scarlet and purple? Hasten hither with the pin for panning the hair, and the powder for polishing the teeth, and some forked implement of steel or brass for cleaning the nails. Whatever of false brilliance, whatever of feigned redness, is to be had, let him diligently apply it to his lips or cheeks. Let him furthermore seek out baths of more genial temperature in some gardened or seaside retreat; let him enlarge his expenses; let him carefully seek the rarest delicacy of fatted fowls; let him refine his old wine: and when any shall ask him, “On whom are you lavishing all this?” let him say, “I have sinned against God, and am in peril of eternally perishing: and so now I am drooping, and wasting and torturing myself, that I may reconcile God to myself, whom by sinning I have offended.” Why, they who go about canvassing for the obtaining of civil office, feel it neither degrading nor irksome to struggle, in behalf of such their desires, with annoyances to soul and body; and not annoyances merely, but likewise contumelies of all kinds. What meannesses of dress do they not affect? what houses do they not beset with early and late visits?—bowing whenever they meet any high personage, frequenting no banquets, associating in no entertainments, but voluntarily exiled from the felicity of freedom and festivity: and all that for the sake of the fleeting joy of a single year! Do we hesitate, when eternity is at stake, to endure what the competitor for consulship or prætorship puts up with? 8522 and shall we be tardy in offering to the offended Lord a self-chastisement in food and raiment, which 8523 Gentiles lay upon themselves when they have offended no one at all? Such are they of whom Scripture makes mention: “Woe to them who bind their own sins as it were with a long rope.” 8524
Footnotes
665:8522Quod securium virgarumque petitio sustinet.
665:8523“Quæ,” neut. pl.
665:8524Isa. v. 18 (comp. the LXX.).
Chapter XII.—Final Considerations to Induce to Exomologesis.
If you shrink back from exomologesis, consider in your heart the hell, 8525 which exomologesis will extinguish for you; and imagine first the magnitude of the penalty, that you may not hesitate about the adoption of the remedy. What do we esteem that treasure-house of eternal fire to be, when small vent-holes 8526 of it rouse such blasts of flames that neighbouring cities either are already no more, or are in daily expectation of the same fate? The haughtiest 8527 mountains start asunder in the birth-throes of their inly-gendered fire; and—which proves to us the perpetuity of the judgment—though they start asunder, though they be devoured, yet come they never to an end. Who will not account these occasional punishments inflicted on the mountains as examples of the judgment which menaces the impenitent? Who will not agree that such sparks are but some few missiles and sportive darts of some inestimably vast centre of fire? Therefore, since you know that after the first bulwarks of the Lord’s baptism 8528 there still remains for you, in exomologesis a second reserve of aid against hell, why do you desert your own salvation? Why are you tardy to approach what you know heals you? Even dumb irrational animals recognise in their time of need the medicines which have been divinely assigned them. The stag, transfixed by the arrow, knows that, to force out the steel, and its inextricable lingerings, he must heal himself with dittany. The swallow, if she blinds her young, knows how to give them eyes again by means of her own swallow-wort. 8529 Shall the sinner, knowing that exomologesis has been instituted by the Lord for his restoration, pass that by which restored the Babylonian king 8530 to his realms? Long time had he offered to the Lord his repentance, working out his exomologesis by a seven years’ squalor, with his nails wildly growing after the eagle’s fashion, and his unkempt hair wearing the shagginess of a lion. Hard handling! Him whom men were shuddering at, God was receiving back. But, on the other hand, the Egyptian emperor—who, after pursuing the once afflicted people of God, long denied to their Lord, rushed into the battle 8531 —did, after so many warning plagues, perish in the parted sea, (which was permitted to be passable to “the People” alone,) by the backward roll of the waves: 8532 for repentance and her handmaid 8533 exomologesis he had cast away.
Why should I add more touching these two planks 8534 (as it were) of human salvation, caring more for the business of the pen 8535 than the duty of my conscience? For, sinner as I am of every dye, 8536 and born for nothing save repentance, I cannot easily be silent about that concerning which also the very head and fount of the human race, and of human offence, Adam, restored by exomologesis to his own paradise, 8537 is not silent.
Footnotes
665:8525Gehennam. Comp. ad Ux.ii. c. vi. ad fin.
665:8526Fumariola, i.e. the craters of volcanoes.
665:8527Superbissimi: perhaps a play on the word, which is connected with “super” and “superus,” as “haughty” with “high.”
665:8528For Tertullian’s distinction between “the Lord’s baptism” and “John’s” see de Bapt. x.
665:8529Or “celandine,” which is perhaps only another form of “chelidonia” (“Chelidonia major,” Linn.).
665:8530Dan. iv. 25 sqq. See de Pa. xiii.
666:8531Proelium.
666:8532Ex. xiv. 15-31.
666:8533“Ministerium,” the abstract for the concrete: so “servitia” = slaves.
666:8534See c. iv. [Tabula was the word in cap. iv. but here it becomes planca, and planca post naufragium is the theological formula, ever since, among Western theologians.]
666:8535See de Bapt. xii. sub init.
666:8536Lit. “of all brands.” Comp. c. vi.: “Does the soldier…make satisfaction for his brands.”
666:8537Cf. Gen. 3:24, Luke 23:43, 2 Cor. 12:4, Rev. 2:7. [Elucidation IV.]
Elucidations.
————————————
I.
(Such as have lapsed, cap. vii. p. 660.)
The penitential system of the Primitive days, referred to in our author, began to be changed when less public confessions were authorized, on account of the scandals which publicity generated. Changes were as follows:
1. A grave presbyter was appointed to receive and examine voluntary penitents as the Penitentiary of a diocese, and to suspend or reconcile them with due solemnities—circa a.d. 250.
2. This plan also became encumbered with difficulties and was abolished in the East, circa a.d. 400.
3. A discipline similar to that of the Anglican Church (which is but loosely maintained therein) succeeded, under St. Chrysostom; who frequently maintains the sufficiency of confession according to Matt. vi. 6. A Gallican author 8538 says—“this is the period regarded by historians as the most brilliant in Church history. At the close of the fourth century, in the great churches of the Orient, sixty thousand Christians received the Eucharistic communion, in one day, in both kinds, with no other than their private confessions to Almighty God. The scandalous evil-liver alone was repelled from the Eucharistic Table.” This continued till circa a.d. 700.
4. Particular, but voluntary confessions were now made in the East and West, but with widely various acceptance under local systems of discipline. The absolutions were precatory: “may God absolve Thee.” This lasted, even in the West, till the compulsory system of the Lateran Council, a.d. 1215.
5. Since this date, so far as the West is concerned, the whole system of corrupt casuistry and enforced confession adopted in the West has utterly destroyed the Primitive doctrine and discipline as to sin and its remedy wherever it prevails. In the East, private confession exists in a system wholly different and one which maintains the Primitive Theology and the Scriptural principle. (1) It is voluntary; (2) it is free from the corrupt system of the casuists; (3) it distinguishes between Ecclesiastical Absolution and that of Him who alone “seeth in secret;” (4) it admits no compromise with attrition, but exacts the contrite heart and the firm resolve to go and sin no more, and (5) finally, it employs a most guarded and Evangelical formula of remission, of which see Elucidation IV.
II.
(The last hope, cap. vii. p. 662.)
How absolutely the Lateran Council has overthrown the Primitive discipline is here made manifest. The spirit of the latter is expressed by our author in language which almost prompts to despair. It makes sin “exceeding sinful” and even Ecclesiastical forgiveness the reverse of easy. The Lateran System of enforced Confession makes sin easy and restoration to a sinless state equally so: a perpetual resort to the confessor being the only condition for evil living, and a chronic state of pardon and peace. But, let the Greek Church be heard in this matter, rather than an Anglican Catholic. I refer to Macarius, Bishop of Vinnitza and Rector of the Theological Academy of St. Petersburg, as follows: 8539 “It is requisite (for the effective reception of Absolution) at least according to the teaching of the Orthodox Church of the Orient, that the following conditions be observed: (1) Contrition for sins, is in the very nature of Penitence, indispensable; (2), consequently, there must be a firm resolution to reform the life; (3) also, faith in Christ and hope in his mercy, with (4) auricular confession before the priest.” He allows that this latter condition was not primitive, but was a maternal concession to penitents of later date: this, however, is voluntary, and of a widely different form from that of the Latin, as will appear below in Elucidation IV.
Now, he contrasts with this the system of Rome, and condemns it, on overwhelming considerations. 1. It makes penances compensations 8540 or “satisfaction,” offered for sins to divine Justice, this (he says) “is in contradiction with the Christian doctrine of justification, the Scripture teaching one full and entire satisfaction for the sins of the whole human race, once for all presented by our Lord Jesus Christ. This doctrine is equally in conflict with the entire teaching of the Primitive Church.”
2. It introduces a false system of indulgences, as the consequence of its false premisses.
3. He demonstrates the insufficiency of attrition, which respects the fear of punishment, and not sin itself. But the Council of Trent affirms the sufficiency of attrition, and permits the confessor to absolve the attrite. Needless to say, the masses accept this wide gate and broad way to salvation rather than the strait gate and narrow way of hating sin and reforming the life, in obedience to the Gospel.
III.
(Among brethren, cap. x., p. 662.)
A controversial writer has lately complained that Bp. Kaye speaks of the public confession treated of by our author in this work, and adds—“Tertullian nowhere used the word public.” The answer is that he speaks of the discipline of Exomologesis, which was, in its own nature, as public as preaching. A Gallican writer, less inclined to Jesuitism in the use of words, says frankly: “When one studies this question, with the documents before his eyes, it is impossible not to confess that the Primitive discipline of the Church exhibits not a vestige of the auricular confession afterwards introduced.” See Irenæus, Adv. Hæres. Vol. I. p. 335, this Series. The Lii. of the canons called Apostolical, reflects a very simple view of the matter, in these words: “If any Bishop or Presbyter will not receive one who turns from his sins, but casts him out, let him be deposed: for he grieves Christ, who said, There shall be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.” The ascetic spirit of our author seems at war with that of this Canon.
IV.
(Exomologesis, cap. xii., p. 663.)
To this day, in the Oriental Churches, the examination of the presbyter who hears the voluntary confession of penitents, is often very primitive in its forms and confined to general inquiries under the Decalogue. The Casuistry of (Dens and Liguori) the Western Schemata Practica has not defiled our Eastern brethren to any great extent.
In the office 8541 (᾽Ακολουθία τῶν ἐξομολουγουμένων) we have a simple and beautiful form of prayer and supplication in which the following is the formula of Absolution: “My Spiritual child, who hast confessed to my humility, I, unworthy and a sinner, have not the power to forgive sins on Earth; God only can: and through that Divine voice which came to the Apostles, after the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, saying—‘Whosoever sins, etc.,’ we, therein confiding, say—Whatsoever thou hast confessed to my extreme humility, and whatsoever thou hast omitted to say, either through ignorance or forgetfulness, God forgive thee in this present world and in that which is to come.”
The plural (We therein confiding) is significant and a token of Primitive doctrine: i.e. of confession before the whole Church, (2 Cor. ii. 10): and note the precatory form—“God forgive thee.” The perilous form Ego te absolvo is not Catholic: it dates from the thirteenth century and is used in the West only. It is not wholly dropped from the Anglican Office, but has been omitted from the American Prayer-Book.
Footnotes
666:8538Le Confesseur, par L’Abbé * * * p. 15, Brussels 1866.
667:8539Theol. Dogmat. Orthodoxe, pp. 529–541, etc.
667:8540Couc. Trident. Sess. xiv. cap. 8.
668:8541The Great Euchologion, p. 220, Venice, 1851.
II.
On Baptism.
[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]
————————————
Chapter I.—Introduction. Origin of the Treatise.
Happy is our 8542 sacrament of water, in that, by washing away the sins of our early blindness, we are set free and admitted into eternal life! A treatise on this matter will not be superfluous; instructing not only such as are just becoming formed (in the faith), but them who, content with having simply believed, without full examination of the grounds 8543 of the traditions, carry (in mind), through ignorance, an untried though probable faith. The consequence is, that a viper of the Cainite heresy, lately conversant in this quarter, has carried away a great number with her most venomous doctrine, making it her first aim to destroy baptism. Which is quite in accordance with nature; for vipers and asps and basilisks themselves generally do affect arid and waterless places. But we, little fishes, after the example of our ΙΧΘΥΣ 8544 Jesus Christ, are born in water, nor have we safety in any other way than by permanently abiding in water; so that most monstrous creature, who had no right to teach even sound doctrine, 8545 knew full well how to kill the little fishes, by taking them away from the water!
Footnotes
669:8542i.e. Christian (Oehler).
669:8543Rationibus.
669:8544This curious allusion it is impossible, perhaps, to render in our language. The word ΙΧΘΥΣ (ikhthus) in Greek means “a fish;” and it was used as a name for our Lord Jesus, because the initials of the words ᾽Ιησοῦς Χριστὸς Θεοῦ Υἰὸς Σωτήρ (i.e. Jesus Christ the Son of God, the Savior), make up that word. Oehler with these remarks, gives abundant references on that point. [Dr. Allix suspects Montanism here, but see Kaye, p. 43, and Lardner, Credib. II. p. 335. We may date it circa a.d. 193.]
669:8545As being a woman. See 1 Tim. 2:11, 12.
Chapter II.—The Very Simplicity of God’s Means of Working, a Stumbling-Block to the Carnal Mind.
Well, but how great is the force of perversity for so shaking the faith or entirely preventing its reception, that it impugns it on the very principles of which the faith consists! There is absolutely nothing which makes men’s minds more obdurate than the simplicity of the divine works which are visible in the act, when compared with the grandeur which is promised thereto in the effect; so that from the very fact, that with so great simplicity, without pomp, without any considerable novelty of preparation, finally, without expense, a man is dipped in water, and amid the utterance of some few words, is sprinkled, and then rises again, not much (or not at all) the cleaner, the consequent attainment of eternity 8546 is esteemed the more incredible. I am a deceiver if, on the contrary, it is not from their circumstance, and preparation, and expense, that idols’ solemnities or mysteries get their credit and authority built up. Oh, miserable incredulity, which quite deniest to God His own properties, simplicity and power! What then? Is it not wonderful, too, that death should be washed away by bathing? But it is the more to be believed if the wonderfulness be the reason why it is not believed. For what does it behove divine works to be in their quality, except that they be above all wonder? 8547 We also ourselves wonder, but it is because we believe. Incredulity, on the other hand, wonders, but does not believe: for the simple acts it wonders at, as if they were vain; the grand results, as if they were impossible. And grant that it be just as you think 8548 sufficient to meet each point is the divine declaration which has forerun: “The foolish things of the world hath God elected to confound its wisdom;” 8549 and, “The things very difficult with men are easy with God.” 8550 For if God is wise and powerful (which even they who pass Him by do not deny), it is with good reason that He lays the material causes of His own operation in the contraries of wisdom and of power, that is, in foolishness and impossibility; since every virtue receives its cause from those things by which it is called forth.
Footnotes
669:8546Consecutio æternitatis.
669:8547Admirationem.
669:8548i.e. that the simple be vain, and the grand impossible.
669:85491 Cor. i. 27, not quite exactly quoted.
669:8550Luke xviii. 27, again inexact.
Chapter III.—Water Chosen as a Vehicle of Divine Operation and Wherefore. Its Prominence First of All in Creation.
Mindful of this declaration as of a conclusive prescript, we nevertheless proceed to treat the question, “How foolish and impossible it is to be formed anew by water. In what respect, pray, has this material substance merited an office of so high dignity?” The authority, I suppose, of the liquid element has to be examined. 8551 This 8552 however, is found in abundance, and that from the very beginning. For water is one of those things which, before all the furnishing of the world, were quiescent with God in a yet unshapen 8553 state. “In the first beginning,” saith Scripture, “God made the heaven and the earth. But the earth was invisible, and unorganized, 8554 and darkness was over the abyss; and the Spirit of the Lord was hovering 8555 over the waters.” 8556 The first thing, O man, which you have to venerate, is the age of the waters in that their substance is ancient; the second, their dignity, in that they were the seat of the Divine Spirit, more pleasing to Him, no doubt, than all the other then existing elements. For the darkness was total thus far, shapeless, without the ornament of stars; and the abyss gloomy; and the earth unfurnished; and the heaven unwrought: water 8557 alone—always a perfect, gladsome, simple material substance, pure in itself—supplied a worthy vehicle to God. What of the fact that waters were in some way the regulating powers by which the disposition of the world thenceforward was constituted by God? For the suspension of the celestial firmament in the midst He caused by “dividing the waters;” 8558 the suspension of “the dry land” He accomplished by “separating the waters.” After the world had been hereupon set in order through its elements, when inhabitants were given it, “the waters” were the first to receive the precept “to bring forth living creatures.” 8559 Water was the first to produce that which had life, that it might be no wonder in baptism if waters know how to give life. 8560 For was not the work of fashioning man himself also achieved with the aid of waters? Suitable material is found in the earth, yet not apt for the purpose unless it be moist and juicy; which (earth) “the waters,” separated the fourth day before into their own place, temper with their remaining moisture to a clayey consistency. If, from that time onward, I go forward in recounting universally, or at more length, the evidences of the “authority” of this element which I can adduce to show how great is its power or its grace; how many ingenious devices, how many functions, how useful an instrumentality, it affords the world, I fear I may seem to have collected rather the praises of water than the reasons of baptism; although I should thereby teach all the more fully, that it is not to be doubted that God has made the material substance which He has disposed throughout all His products 8561 and works, obey Him also in His own peculiar sacraments; that the material substance which governs terrestrial life acts as agent likewise in the celestial.
Footnotes
670:8551Compare the Jews’ question, Matt. xxi. 23.
670:8552Its authority.
670:8553Impolita.
670:8554Incomposita.
670:8555Ferebatur.
670:8556Gen. 1:1, 2, and comp. the LXX.
670:8557Liquor.
670:8558Gen. 1:6, 7, 8.
670:8559Animas.
670:8560Animare.
670:8561Rebus.
Chapter IV.—The Primeval Hovering of the Spirit of God Over the Waters Typical of Baptism. The Universal Element of Water Thus Made a Channel of Sanctification. Resemblance Between the Outward Sign and the Inward Grace.
But it will suffice to have thus called at the outset those points in which withal is recognised that primary principle of baptism,—which was even then fore-noted by the very attitude assumed for a type of baptism,—that the Spirit of God, who hovered over (the waters) from the beginning, would continue to linger over the waters of the baptized. 8562 But a holy thing, of course, hovered over a holy; or else, from that which hovered over that which was hovered over borrowed a holiness, since it is necessary that in every case an underlying material substance should catch the quality of that which overhangs it, most of all a corporeal of a spiritual, adapted (as the spiritual is) through the subtleness of its substance, both for penetrating and insinuating. Thus the nature of the waters, sanctified by the Holy One, itself conceived withal the power of sanctifying. Let no one say, “Why then, are we, pray, baptized with the very waters which then existed in the first beginning?” Not with those waters, of course, except in so far as the genus indeed is one, but the species very many. But what is an attribute to the genus reappears 8563 likewise in the species. And accordingly it makes no difference whether a man be washed in a sea or a pool, a stream or a fount, a lake or a trough; 8564 nor is there any distinction between those whom John baptized in the Jordan and those whom Peter baptized in the Tiber, unless withal the eunuch whom Philip baptized in the midst of his journeys with chance water, derived (therefrom) more or less of salvation than others. 8565 All waters, therefore, in virtue of the pristine privilege of their origin, do, after invocation of God, attain the sacramental power of sanctification; for the Spirit immediately supervenes from the heavens, and rests over the waters, sanctifying them from Himself; and being thus sanctified, they imbibe at the same time the power of sanctifying. Albeit the similitude may be admitted to be suitable to the simple act; that, since we are defiled by sins, as it were by dirt, we should be washed from those stains in waters. But as sins do not show themselves in our flesh (inasmuch as no one carries on his skin the spot of idolatry, or fornication, or fraud), so persons of that kind are foul in the spirit, which is the author of the sin; for the spirit is lord, the flesh servant. Yet they each mutually share the guilt: the spirit, on the ground of command; the flesh, of subservience. Therefore, after the waters have been in a manner endued with medicinal virtue 8566 through the intervention of the angel, 8567 the spirit is corporeally washed in the waters, and the flesh is in the same spiritually cleansed.
Footnotes
670:8562Intinctorum.
670:8563Redundat.
671:8564Alveo.
671:8565Acts viii. 26-40.
671:8566Medicatis.
671:8567See c. vi. ad init., and c. v. ad fin.
Chapter V.—Use Made of Water by the Heathen. Type of the Angel at the Pool of Bethsaida. 8568
“Well, but the nations, who are strangers to all understanding of spiritual powers, ascribe to their idols the imbuing of waters with the self-same efficacy.” (So they do) but they cheat themselves with waters which are widowed. 8569 For washing is the channel through which they are initiated into some sacred rites—of some notorious Isis or Mithras. The gods themselves likewise they honour by washings. Moreover, by carrying water around, and sprinkling it, they everywhere expiate 8570 country-seats, houses, temples, and whole cities: at all events, at the Apollinarian and Eleusinian games they are baptized; and they presume that the effect of their doing that is their regeneration and the remission of the penalties due to their perjuries. Among the ancients, again, whoever had defiled himself with murder, was wont to go in quest of purifying waters. Therefore, if the mere nature of water, in that it is the appropriate material for washing away, leads men to flatter themselves with a belief in omens of purification, how much more truly will waters render that service through the authority of God, by whom all their nature has been constituted! If men think that water is endued with a medicinal virtue by religion, what religion is more effectual than that of the living God? Which fact being acknowledged, we recognise here also the zeal of the devil rivalling the things of God, 8571 while we find him, too, practising baptism in his subjects. What similarity is there? The unclean cleanses! the ruiner sets free! the damned absolves! He will, forsooth, destroy his own work, by washing away the sins which himself inspires! These (remarks) have been set down by way of testimony against such as reject the faith; if they put no trust in the things of God, the spurious imitations of which, in the case of God’s rival, they do trust in. Are there not other cases too, in which, without any sacrament, unclean spirits brood on waters, in spurious imitation of that brooding 8572 of the Divine Spirit in the very beginning? Witness all shady founts, and all unfrequented brooks, and the ponds in the baths, and the conduits 8573 in private houses, or the cisterns and wells which are said to have the property of “spiriting away,” 8574 through the power, that is, of a hurtful spirit. Men whom waters have drowned 8575 or affected with madness or with fear, they call nymph-caught, 8576 or “lymphatic,” or “hydro-phobic.” Why have we adduced these instances? Lest any think it too hard for belief that a holy angel of God should grant his presence to waters, to temper them to man’s salvation; while the evil angel holds frequent profane commerce with the selfsame element to man’s ruin. If it seems a novelty for an angel to be present in waters, an example of what was to come to pass has forerun. An angel, by his intervention, was wont to stir the pool at Bethsaida. 8577 They who were complaining of ill-health used to watch for him; for whoever had been the first to descend into them, after his washing, ceased to complain. This figure of corporeal healing sang of a spiritual healing, according to the rule by which things carnal are always antecedent 8578 as figurative of things spiritual. And thus, when the grace of God advanced to higher degrees among men, 8579 an accession of efficacy was granted to the waters and to the angel. They who 8580 were wont to remedy bodily defects, 8581 now heal the spirit; they who used to work temporal salvation 8582 now renew eternal; they who did set free but once in the year, now save peoples in a body 8583 daily, death being done away through ablution of sins. The guilt being removed, of course the penalty is removed too. Thus man will be restored for God to His “likeness,” who in days bygone had been conformed to “the image” of God; (the “image” is counted (to be) in his form: the “likeness” in his eternity:) for he receives again that Spirit of God which he had then first received from His afflatus, but had afterward lost through sin.
Footnotes
671:8568Bethesda, Eng. Ver.
671:8569i.e., as Oehler rightly explains, “lacking the Holy Spirit’s presence and virtue.”
671:8570Or, “purify.”
671:8571[Diabolus Dei Simius.]
671:8572Gestationem.
671:8573Euripi.
671:8574Rapere.
671:8575Necaverunt.
671:8576“Nympholeptos,” restored by Oehler, = νυμφολήπτους.
671:8577So Tertullian reads, and some copies, but not the best, of the New Testament in the place referred to, John v. 1-9. [And note Tertullian’s textual testimony as to this Scripture.]
672:8578Compare 1 Cor. xv. 46.
672:8579John 1:16, 17.
672:8580Qui: i.e. probably “angeli qui.”
672:8581Vitia.
672:8582Or, “health”—salutem.
672:8583Conservant populos.
Chapter VI.—The Angel the Forerunner of the Holy Spirit. Meaning Contained in the Baptismal Formula.
Not that in 8584 the waters we obtain the Holy Spirit; but in the water, under (the witness of) the angel, we are cleansed, and prepared for the Holy Spirit. In this case also a type has preceded; for thus was John beforehand the Lord’s forerunner, “preparing His ways.” 8585 Thus, too, does the angel, the witness 8586 of baptism, “make the paths straight” 8587 for the Holy Spirit, who is about to come upon us, by the washing away of sins, which faith, sealed in (the name of) the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, obtains. For if “in the mouth of three witnesses every word shall stand:” 8588 —while, through the benediction, we have the same (three) as witnesses of our faith whom we have as sureties 8589 of our salvation too—how much more does the number of the divine names suffice for the assurance of our hope likewise! Moreover, after the pledging both of the attestation of faith and the promise 8590 of salvation under “three witnesses,” there is added, of necessity, mention of the Church; 8591 inasmuch as, wherever there are three, (that is, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, ) there is the Church, which is a body of three. 8592
Footnotes
672:8584Compare c. viii., where Tertullian appears to regard the Holy Spirit as given after the baptized had come out of the waters and received the “unction.”
672:8585Luke i. 76.
672:8586Arbiter. [Eccl. 5:6, Acts 12:15.]
672:8587Isa. 40:3, Matt. 3:3.
672:8588Deut. 19:15, Matt. 18:16, 2 Cor. 13:1.
672:8589Sponsores.
672:8590Sponsio.
672:8591Compare de Orat. c. ii. sub fin.
672:8592Compare the de Orat. quoted above, and de Patien. xxi.; and see Matt. xviii. 20.
Chapter VII.—Of the Unction.
After this, when we have issued from the font, 8593 we are thoroughly anointed with a blessed unction,—(a practice derived) from the old discipline, wherein on entering the priesthood, men were wont to be anointed with oil from a horn, ever since Aaron was anointed by Moses. 8594 Whence Aaron is called “Christ,” 8595 from the “chrism,” which is “the unction;” which, when made spiritual, furnished an appropriate name to the Lord, because He was “anointed” with the Spirit by God the Father; as written in the Acts: “For truly they were gathered together in this city 8596 against Thy Holy Son whom Thou hast anointed.” 8597 Thus, too, in our case, the unction runs carnally, (i.e. on the body,) but profits spiritually; in the same way as the act of baptism itself too is carnal, in that we are plunged in water, but the effect spiritual, in that we are freed from sins.
Footnotes
672:8593Lavacro.
672:8594See Exod. 29:7, Lev. 8:12, Ps. 33:2.
672:8595i.e. “Anointed.” Aaron, or at least the priest, is actually so called in the LXX., in Lev. 4:5, 16, ὁ ἱερεὺς ὁ Χριστός: as in the Hebrew it is the word whence Messiah is derived which is used.
672:8596Civitate.
672:8597Acts iv. 27. “In this city” (ἐν τῇ πόλει ταύτῃ) is omitted in the English version; and the name ᾽Ιησοῦν, “Jesus,” is omitted by Tertullian. Compare Acts 10:38, Lev. 4:18, Isa. 61:1 in the LXX.
Chapter VIII.—Of the Imposition of Hands. Types of the Deluge and the Dove.
In the next place the hand is laid on us, invoking and inviting the Holy Spirit through benediction. 8598 Shall it be granted possible for human ingenuity to summon a spirit into water, and, by the application of hands from above, to animate their union into one body 8599 with another spirit of so clear sound; 8600 and shall it not be possible for God, in the case of His own organ, 8601 to produce, by means of “holy hands,” 8602 a sublime spiritual modulation? But this, as well as the former, is derived from the old sacramental rite in which Jacob blessed his grandsons, born of Joseph, Ephrem 8603 and Manasses; with his hands laid on them and interchanged, and indeed so transversely slanted one over the other, that, by delineating Christ, they even portended the future benediction into Christ. 8604 Then, over our cleansed and blessed bodies willingly descends from the Father that Holiest Spirit. Over the waters of baptism, recognising as it were His primeval seat, 8605 He reposes: (He who) glided down on the Lord “in the shape of a dove,” 8606 in order that the nature of the Holy Spirit might be declared by means of the creature (the emblem) of simplicity and innocence, because even in her bodily structure the dove is without literal 8607 gall. And accordingly He says, “Be ye simple as doves.” 8608 Even this is not without the supporting evidence 8609 of a preceding figure. For just as, after the waters of the deluge, by which the old iniquity was purged—after the baptism, so to say, of the world—a dove was the herald which announced to the earth the assuagement 8610 of celestial wrath, when she had been sent her way out of the ark, and had returned with the olive-branch, a sign which even among the nations is the fore-token of peace; 8611 so by the self-same law 8612 of heavenly effect, to earth—that is, to our flesh 8613 —as it emerges from the font, 8614 after its old sins flies the dove of the Holy Spirit, bringing us the peace of God, sent out from the heavens where is the Church, the typified ark. 8615 But the world returned unto sin; in which point baptism would ill be compared to the deluge. And so it is destined to fire; just as the man too is, who after baptism renews his sins: 8616 so that this also ought to be accepted as a sign for our admonition.
Footnotes
672:8598[See Bunsen, Hippol. Vol. III. Sec. xiii. p. 22.]
672:8599Concorporationem.
672:8600The reference is to certain hydraulic organs, which the editors tell us are described by Vitruvius, ix. 9 and x. 13, and Pliny, H. N. vii. 37.
672:8601i.e. Man. There may be an allusion to Eph. ii. 10, “We are His worksmanship,” and to Ps. cl. 4.
672:8602Compare 1 Tim. ii. 8.
672:8603i.e. Ephraim.
672:8604In Christum.
673:8605See c. iv. p. 668.
673:8606Matt. 3:16, Luke 3:22.
673:8607Ipso. The ancients held this.
673:8608Matt. x. 16. Tertullian has rendered ἀκέραιοι (unmixed) by “simplices,” i.e. without fold.
673:8609Argumento.
673:8610Pacem.
673:8611Paci.
673:8612Dispositione.
673:8613See de Orat. iv. ad init.
673:8614Lavacro.
673:8615Compare de Idol. xxiv. ad fin.
673:8616[2 Pet. 1:9, Heb. 10:26, 27, 29. These awful texts are too little felt by modern Christians. They are too often explained away.]
Chapter IX.—Types of the Red Sea, and the Water from the Rock.
How many, therefore, are the pleas 8617 of nature, how many the privileges of grace, how many the solemnities of discipline, the figures, the preparations, the prayers, which have ordained the sanctity of water? First, indeed, when the people, set unconditionally free, 8618 escaped the violence of the Egyptian king by crossing over through water, it was water that extinguished 8619 the king himself, with his entire forces. 8620 What figure more manifestly fulfilled in the sacrament of baptism? The nations are set free from the world 8621 by means of water, to wit: and the devil, their old tyrant, they leave quite behind, overwhelmed in the water. Again, water is restored from its defect of “bitterness” to its native grace of “sweetness” by the tree 8622 of Moses. That tree was Christ, 8623 restoring, to wit, of Himself, the veins of sometime envenomed and bitter nature into the all-salutary waters of baptism. This is the water which flowed continuously down for the people from the “accompanying rock;” for if Christ is “the Rock,” without doubt we see baptism blest by the water in Christ. How mighty is the grace of water, in the sight of God and His Christ, for the confirmation of baptism! Never is Christ without water: if, that is, He is Himself baptized in water; 8624 inaugurates in water the first rudimentary displays of His power, when invited to the nuptials; 8625 invites the thirsty, when He makes a discourse, to His own sempiternal water; 8626 approves, when teaching concerning love, 8627 among works of charity, 8628 the cup of water offered to a poor (child); 8629 recruits His strength at a well; 8630 walks over the water; 8631 willingly crosses the sea; 8632 ministers water to His disciples. 8633 Onward even to the passion does the witness of baptism last: while He is being surrendered to the cross, water intervenes; witness Pilate’s hands: 8634 when He is wounded, forth from His side bursts water; witness the soldier’s lance! 8635
Footnotes
673:8617Patrocinia—“pleas in defence.”
673:8618“Libere expeditus,” set free, and that without any conditions, such as Pharaoh had from time to time tried to impose. See Exod. 8:25, 28, Exod. 10:10, 11, 24.
673:8619“Extinxit,” as it does fire.
673:8620Ex. xiv. 27-30.
673:8621Sæculo.
673:8622See Exod. 15:24, 25.
673:8623“The Tree of Life,” “the True Vine,” etc.
673:8624Matt. iii. 13-17.
673:8625John ii. 1-11.
673:8626John 7:37, 38.
673:8627Agape. See de Orat. c. 28, ad fin.
673:8628Dilectionis. See de Patien. c. xii.
673:8629Matt. x. 42.
673:8630John iv. 6.
673:8631Matt. xiv. 25.
673:8632Mark iv. 36.
673:8633John xiii. 1-12.
673:8634Matt. xxvii. 24. Comp. de Orat. c. xiii.
673:8635John xix. 34. See c. xviii. sub fin.
Chapter X.—Of John’s Baptism.
We have spoken, so far as our moderate ability permitted, of the generals which form the groundwork of the sanctity 8636 of baptism. I will now, equally to the best of my power, proceed to the rest of its character, touching certain minor questions.
The baptism announced by John formed the subject, even at that time, of a question, proposed by the Lord Himself indeed to the Pharisees, whether that baptism were heavenly, or truly earthly: 8637 about which they were unable to give a consistent 8638 answer, inasmuch as they understood not, because they believed not. But we, with but as poor a measure of understanding as of faith, are able to determine that that baptism was divine indeed, (yet in respect of the command, not in respect of efficacy 8639 too, in that we read that John was sent by the Lord to perform this duty,) 8640 but human in its nature: for it conveyed nothing celestial, but it fore-ministered to things celestial; being, to wit, appointed over repentance, which is in man’s power. 8641 In fact, the doctors of the law and the Pharisees, who were unwilling to “believe,” did not “repent” either. 8642 But if repentance is a thing human, its baptism must necessarily be of the same nature: else, if it had been celestial, it would have given both the Holy Spirit and remission of sins. But none either pardons sins or freely grants the Spirit save God only. 8643 Even the Lord Himself said that the Spirit would not descend on any other condition, but that He should first ascend to the Father. 8644 What the Lord was not yet conferring, of course the servant could not furnish. Accordingly, in the Acts of the Apostles, we find that men who had “John’s baptism” had not received the Holy Spirit, whom they knew not even by hearing. 8645 That, then, was no celestial thing which furnished no celestial (endowments): whereas the very thing which was celestial in John—the Spirit of prophecy—so completely failed, after the transfer of the whole Spirit to the Lord, that he presently sent to inquire whether He whom he had himself preached, 8646 whom he had pointed out when coming to him, were “HE.” 8647 And so “the baptism of repentance” 8648 was dealt with 8649 as if it were a candidate for the remission and sanctification shortly about to follow in Christ: for in that John used to preach “baptism for the remission of sins,” 8650 the declaration was made with reference to future remission; if it be true, (as it is,) that repentance is antecedent, remission subsequent; and this is “preparing the way.” 8651 But he who “prepares” does not himself “perfect,” but procures for another to perfect. John himself professes that the celestial things are not his, but Christ’s, by saying, “He who is from the earth speaketh concerning the earth; He who comes from the realms above is above all;” 8652 and again, by saying that he “baptized in repentance only, but that One would shortly come who would baptize in the Spirit and fire;” 8653 —of course because true and stable faith is baptized with water, unto salvation; pretended and weak faith is baptized with fire, unto judgment.
Footnotes
673:8636Religionem.
673:8637Matt. 21:25, Mark 11:30, Luke 20:4.
673:8638Constanter.
674:8639Potestate.
674:8640See John i. 33.
674:8641It is difficult to see how this statement is to be reconciled with Acts v. 31. [i.e. under the universal illumination, John i. 9.]
674:8642Matt. 3:7, Matt. 21:23, 31, 32.
674:8643Mark 2:8, 1 Thess. 4:8, 2 Cor. 1:21, 22, 2 Cor. 5:5.
674:8644John 16:6, 7.
674:8645Acts 19:1, John 7:39
674:8646Matt. 3:11, 12, John 1:6.
674:8647Matt. 11:2, Luke 7:18. [He repeats this view.]
674:8648Acts xix. 4.
674:8649Agebatur.
674:8650Mark i. 4.
674:8651Luke i. 76.
674:8652John 3:30, 31, briefly quoted.
674:8653Matt. iii. 11, not quite exactly given.
Chapter XI.—Answer to the Objection that “The Lord Did Not Baptize.”
“But behold, “say some, “the Lord came, and baptized not; for we read, ‘And yet He used not to baptize, but His disciples!’” 8654 As if, in truth, John had preached that He would baptize with His own hands! Of course, his words are not so to be understood, but as simply spoken after an ordinary manner; just as, for instance, we say, “The emperor set forth an edict,” or, “The prefect cudgelled him.” Pray does the emperor in person set forth, or the prefect in person cudgel? One whose ministers do a thing is always said to do it. 8655 So “He will baptize you” will have to be understood as standing for, “Through Him,” or “Into Him,” “you will be baptized.” But let not (the fact) that “He Himself baptized not” trouble any. For into whom should He baptize? Into repentance? Of what use, then, do you make His forerunner? Into remission of sins, which He used to give by a word? Into Himself, whom by humility He was concealing? Into the Holy Spirit, who had not yet descended from the Father? Into the Church, which His apostles had not yet founded? And thus it was with the selfsame “baptism of John” that His disciples used to baptize, as ministers, with which John before had baptized as forerunner. Let none think it was with some other, because no other exists, except that of Christ subsequently; which at that time, of course, could not be given by His disciples, inasmuch as the glory of the Lord had not yet been fully attained, 8656 nor the efficacy of the font 8657 established through the passion and the resurrection; because neither can our death see dissolution except by the Lord’s passion, nor our life be restored without His resurrection.
Footnotes
674:8654John iv. 2.
674:8655For instances of this, compare Matt. 8:5, Luke 7:3, 7, Mark 10:35, Matt. 20:20.
674:8656Cf. 1 Pet. i. 11, ad fin.
674:8657Lavacri.
Chapter XII.—Of the Necessity of Baptism to Salvation.
When, however, the prescript is laid down that “without baptism, salvation is attainable by none” (chiefly on the ground of that declaration of the Lord, who says, “Unless one be born of water, he hath not life” 8658 ), there arise immediately scrupulous, nay rather audacious, doubts on the part of some, “how, in accordance with that prescript, salvation is attainable by the apostles, whom—Paul excepted—we do not find baptized in the Lord? Nay, since Paul is the only one of them who has put on the garment of Christ’s baptism, 8659 either the peril of all the others who lack the water of Christ is prejudged, that the prescript may be maintained, or else the prescript is rescinded if salvation has been ordained even for the unbaptized.” I have heard—the Lord is my witness—doubts of that kind: that none may imagine me so abandoned as to excogitate, unprovoked, in the licence of my pen, ideas which would inspire others with scruple.
And now, as far as I shall be able, I will reply to them who affirm “that the apostles were unbaptized.” For if they had undergone the human baptism of John, and were longing for that of the Lord, then since the Lord Himself had defined baptism to be one; 8660 (saying to Peter, who was desirous 8661 of being thoroughly bathed, “He who hath once bathed hath no necessity to wash a second time;” 8662 which, of course, He would not have said at all to one not baptized;) even here we have a conspicuous 8663 proof against those who, in order to destroy the sacrament of water, deprive the apostles even of John’s baptism. Can it seem credible that “the way of the Lord,” that is, the baptism of John, had not then been “prepared” in those persons who were being destined to open the way of the Lord throughout the whole world? The Lord Himself, though no “repentance” was due from Him, was baptized: was baptism not necessary for sinners? As for the fact, then, that “others were not baptized”—they, however, were not companions of Christ, but enemies of the faith, doctors of the law and Pharisees. From which fact is gathered an additional suggestion, that, since the opposers of the Lord refused to be baptized, they who followed the Lord were baptized, and were not like-minded with their own rivals: especially when, if there were any one to whom they clave, the Lord had exalted John above him (by the testimony) saying, “Among them who are born of women there is none greater than John the Baptist.” 8664
Others make the suggestion (forced enough, clearly “that the apostles then served the turn of baptism when in their little ship, were sprinkled and covered with the waves: that Peter himself also was immersed enough when he walked on the sea.” 8665 It is, however, as I think, one thing to be sprinkled or intercepted by the violence of the sea; another thing to be baptized in obedience to the discipline of religion. But that little ship did present a figure of the Church, in that she is disquieted “in the sea,” that is, in the world, 8666 “by the waves,” that is, by persecutions and temptations; the Lord, through patience, sleeping as it were, until, roused in their last extremities by the prayers of the saints, He checks the world, 8667 and restores tranquillity to His own.
Now, whether they were baptized in any manner whatever, or whether they continued unbathed 8668 to the end—so that even that saying of the Lord touching the “one bath” 8669 does, under the person of Peter, merely regard us—still, to determine concerning the salvation of the apostles is audacious enough, because on them the prerogative even of first choice, 8670 and thereafter of undivided intimacy, might be able to confer the compendious grace of baptism, seeing they (I think) followed Him who was wont to promise salvation to every believer. “Thy faith,” He would say, “hath saved thee;” 8671 and, “Thy sins shall be remitted thee,” 8672 on thy believing, of course, albeit thou be not yet baptized. If that 8673 was wanting to the apostles, I know not in the faith of what things it was, that, roused by one word of the Lord, one left the toll-booth behind for ever; 8674 another deserted father and ship, and the craft by which he gained his living; 8675 a third, who disdained his father’s obsequies, 8676 fulfilled, before he heard it, that highest precept of the Lord, “He who prefers father or mother to me, is not worthy of me.” 8677
Footnotes
675:8658John iii. 5, not fully given.
675:8659See Gal. iii. 27.
675:8660See Eph. iv. 5.
675:8661“Volenti,” which Oehler notes as a suggestion of Fr. Junius, is adopted here in preference to Oehler’s “nolenti.”
675:8662John 13:9, 10.
675:8663Exerta. Comp. c. xviii. sub init.; ad Ux. ii. c. i. sub fin.
675:8664Matt. xi. 11, ἐγήγερται omitted.
675:8665Matt. 8:24, Matt. 14:28, 29. [Our author seems to allow that sprinkling is baptism, but not Christian baptism: a very curious passage. Compare the foot-washing, John xiii. 8.]
675:8666Sæculo.
675:8667Sæculum.
675:8668Illoti.
675:8669Lavacrum. [John 13:9, 10, as above.]
675:8670i.e. of being the first to be chosen.
675:8671Luke 18:42, Mark 10:52.
675:8672“Remittentur” is Oehler’s reading; “remittuntur” others read; but the Greek is in perfect tense. See Mark ii. 5.
675:8673i.e. faith, or perhaps the “compendious grace of baptism.”
675:8674Matt. ix. 9.
675:8675Matt. 4:21, 22.
675:8676Luke 9:59, 60; but it is not said there that the man did it.
675:8677Matt. x. 37.
Chapter XIII.—Another Objection: Abraham Pleased God Without Being Baptized. Answer Thereto. Old Things Must Give Place to New, and Baptism is Now a Law.
Here, then, those miscreants 8678 provoke questions. And so they say, “Baptism is not necessary for them to whom faith is sufficient; for withal, Abraham pleased God by a sacrament of no water, but of faith.” But in all cases it is the later things which have a conclusive force, and the subsequent which prevail over the antecedent. Grant that, in days gone by, there was salvation by means of bare faith, before the passion and resurrection of the Lord. But now that faith has been enlarged, and is become a faith which believes in His nativity, passion, and resurrection, there has been an amplification added to the sacrament, 8679 viz., the sealing act of baptism; the clothing, in some sense, of the faith which before was bare, and which cannot exist now without its proper law. For the law of baptizing has been imposed, and the formula prescribed: “Go,” He saith, “teach the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” 8680 The comparison with this law of that definition, “Unless a man have been reborn of water and Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of the heavens,” 8681 has tied faith to the necessity of baptism. Accordingly, all thereafter 8682 who became believers used to be baptized. Then it was, too, 8683 that Paul, when he believed, was baptized; and this is the meaning of the precept which the Lord had given him when smitten with the plague of loss of sight, saying, “Arise, and enter Damascus; there shall be demonstrated to thee what thou oughtest to do,” to wit—be baptized, which was the only thing lacking to him. That point excepted, he had sufficiently learnt and believed “the Nazarene” to be “the Lord, the Son of God.” 8684
Footnotes
675:8678i.e. probably the Cainites. See c. ii.
676:8679i.e. the sacrament, or obligation of faith. See beginning of chapter.
676:8680Matt. xxviii. 19: “all” omitted.
676:8681John ii. 5: “shall not” for “cannot;” “kingdom of the heavens”—an expression only occurring in Matthew—for “kingdom of God.”
676:8682i.e. from the time when the Lord gave the “law.”
676:8683i.e. not till after the “law” had been made.
676:8684See Acts ix. 1-31.
Chapter XIV.—Of Paul’s Assertion, that He Had Not Been Sent to Baptize.
But they roll back an objection from that apostle himself, in that he said, “For Christ sent me not to baptize;” 8685 as if by this argument baptism were done away! For if so, why did he baptize Gaius, and Crispus, and the house of Stephanas? 8686 However, even if Christ had not sent him to baptize, yet He had given other apostles the precept to baptize. But these words were written to the Corinthians in regard of the circumstances of that particular time; seeing that schisms and dissensions were agitated among them, while one attributes everything to Paul, another to Apollos. 8687 For which reason the “peace-making” 8688 apostle, for fear he should seem to claim all gifts for himself, says that he had been sent “not to baptize, but to preach.” For preaching is the prior thing, baptizing the posterior. Therefore the preaching came first: but I think baptizing withal was lawful to him to whom preaching was.
Footnotes
676:86851 Cor. i. 17.
676:86861 Cor. 1:14, 16.
676:86871 Cor. 1:11, 12, 1 Cor. 3:3, 4.
676:8688Matt. v. 9; referred to in de Patien. c. ii.
Chapter XV.—Unity of Baptism. Remarks on Heretical And Jewish Baptism.
I know not whether any further point is mooted to bring baptism into controversy. Permit me to call to mind what I have omitted above, lest I seem to break off the train of impending thoughts in the middle. There is to us one, and but one, baptism; as well according to the Lord’s gospel 8689 as according to the apostle’s letters, 8690 inasmuch as he says, “One God, and one baptism, and one church in the heavens.” 8691 But it must be admitted that the question, “What rules are to be observed with regard to heretics?” is worthy of being treated. For it is to us 8692 that that assertion 8693 refers. Heretics, however, have no fellowship in our discipline, whom the mere fact of their excommunication 8694 testifies to be outsiders. I am not bound to recognize in them a thing which is enjoined on me, because they and we have not the same God, nor one—that is, the same—Christ. And therefore their baptism is not one with ours either, because it is not the same; a baptism which, since they have it not duly, doubtless they have not at all; nor is that capable of being counted which is not had. 8695 Thus they cannot receive it either, because they have it not. But this point has already received a fuller discussion from us in Greek. We enter, then, the font 8696 once: once are sins washed away, because they ought never to be repeated. But the Jewish Israel bathes daily, 8697 because he is daily being defiled: and, for fear that defilement should be practised among us also, therefore was the definition touching the one bathing 8698 made. Happy water, which once washes away; which does not mock sinners (with vain hopes); which does not, by being infected with the repetition of impurities, again defile them whom it has washed!
Footnotes
676:8689Oehler refers us to c. xii. above, “He who hath once bathed.”
676:8690i.e. the Epistle to the Ephesians especially.
676:8691Eph. 4:4, 5, 6, but very inexactly quoted.
676:8692i.e. us Christians; of “Catholics,” as Oehler explains it.
676:8693i.e. touching the “one baptism.”
676:8694Ademptio communicationis. [See Bunsen, Hippol. III. p. 114, Canon 46.]
676:8695Comp. Eccles. i. 15.
676:8696Lavacrum.
676:8697Compare de Orat. c. xiv.
676:8698In John 13:10, Eph. 4:5.
Chapter XVI.—Of the Second Baptism—With Blood.
We have indeed, likewise, a second font, 8699 (itself withal one with the former,) of blood, to wit; concerning which the Lord said, “I have to be baptized with a baptism,” 8700 when He had been baptized already. For He had come “by means of water and blood,” 8701 just as John has written; that He might be baptized by the water, glorified by the blood; to make us, in like manner, called by water, chosen 8702 by blood. These two baptisms He sent out from the wound in His pierced side, 8703 in order that they who believed in His blood might be bathed with the water; they who had been bathed in the water might likewise drink the blood. 8704 This is the baptism which both stands in lieu of the fontal bathing 8705 when that has not been received, and restores it when lost.
Footnotes
677:8699Lavacrum. [See Aquinas, Quæst. lxvi. 11.]
677:8700Luke xii. 50, not given in full.
677:87011 John v. 6.
677:8702Matt. 20:16, Rev. 17:14.
677:8703John xix. 34. See c. ix. ad fin.
677:8704See John vi. 53, etc.
677:8705Lavacrum. [The three baptisms: fluminis, flaminis, sanguinis.]
Chapter XVII.—Of the Power of Conferring Baptism.
For concluding our brief subject, 8706 it remains to put you in mind also of the due observance of giving and receiving baptism. Of giving it, the chief priest 8707 (who is the bishop) has the right: in the next place, the presbyters and deacons, yet not without the bishop’s authority, on account of the honour of the Church, which being preserved, peace is preserved. Beside these, even laymen have the right; for what is equally received can be equally given. Unless bishops, or priests, or deacons, be on the spot, other disciples are called i.e. to the work. The word of the Lord ought not to be hidden by any: in like manner, too, baptism, which is equally God’s property, 8708 can be administered by all. But how much more is the rule 8709 of reverence and modesty incumbent on laymen—seeing that these powers 8710 belong to their superiors—lest they assume to themselves the specific 8711 function of the bishop! Emulation of the episcopal office is the mother of schisms. The most holy apostle has said, that “all things are lawful, but not all expedient.” 8712 Let it suffice assuredly, in cases of necessity, to avail yourself (of that rule 8713 , if at any time circumstance either of place, or of time, or of person compels you (so to do); for then the stedfast courage of the succourer, when the situation of the endangered one is urgent, is exceptionally admissible; inasmuch as he will be guilty of a human creature’s loss if he shall refrain from bestowing what he had free liberty to bestow. But the woman of pertness, 8714 who has usurped the power to teach, will of course not give birth for herself likewise to a right of baptizing, unless some new beast shall arise 8715 like the former; so that, just as the one abolished baptism, 8716 so some other should in her own right confer it! But if the writings which wrongly go under Paul’s name, claim Thecla’s example as a licence for women’s teaching and baptizing, let them know that, in Asia, the presbyter who composed that writing, 8717 as if he were augmenting Paul’s fame from his own store, after being convicted, and confessing that he had done it from love of Paul, was removed 8718 from his office. For how credible would it seem, that he who has not permitted a woman 8719 even to learn with over-boldness, should give a female 8720 the power of teaching and of baptizing! “Let them be silent,” he says, “and at home consult their own husbands.” 8721
Footnotes
677:8706Materiolam.
677:8707Summus sacerdos. Compare de Orat. xxviii., “nos…veri sacerdotes,” etc.: and de Ex. Cast. c. vii., “nonne et laici sacerdotes sumus?”
677:8708Census.
677:8709Disciplina.
677:8710i.e. the powers of administering baptism and “sowing the word.” [i.e. “The Keys.” Scorpiace, p. 643.]
677:8711Dicatum.
677:87121 Cor. x. 23, where μοι in the received text seems interpolated.
677:8713Or, as Oehler explains it, of your power of baptizing, etc.
677:8714Quintilla. See c. i.
677:8715Evenerit. Perhaps Tertullian means literally—though that sense of the word is very rare—“shall issue out of her,” alluding to his “pariet” above.
677:8716See c. i. ad fin.
677:8717The allusion is to a spurious work entitled Acta Pauli et Theclæ. [Of which afterwards. But see Jones, on the Canon, II. p. 353, and Lardner, Credibility, II. p. 305.]
677:8718Decessisse.
677:8719Mulieri.
677:8720Fœminæ.
677:87211 Cor. 14:34, 35.
Chapter XVIII.—Of the Persons to Whom, and the Time When, Baptism is to Be Administered.
But they whose office it is, know that baptism is not rashly to be administered. “Give to every one who beggeth thee,” 8722 has a reference of its own, appertaining especially to almsgiving. On the contrary, this precept is rather to be looked at carefully: “Give not the holy thing to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine;” 8723 and, “Lay not hands easily on any; share not other men’s sins.” 8724 If Philip so “easily” baptized the chamberlain, let us reflect that a manifest and conspicuous 8725 evidence that the Lord deemed him worthy had been interposed. 8726 The Spirit had enjoined Philip to proceed to that road: the eunuch himself, too, was not found idle, nor as one who was suddenly seized with an eager desire to be baptized; but, after going up to the temple for prayer’s sake, being intently engaged on the divine Scripture, was thus suitably discovered—to whom God had, unasked, sent an apostle, which one, again, the Spirit bade adjoin himself to the chamberlain’s chariot. The Scripture which he was reading 8727 falls in opportunely with his faith: Philip, being requested, is taken to sit beside him; the Lord is pointed out; faith lingers not; water needs no waiting for; the work is completed, and the apostle snatched away. “But Paul too was, in fact, ‘speedily’ baptized:” for Simon, 8728 his host, speedily recognized him to be “an appointed vessel of election.” God’s approbation sends sure premonitory tokens before it; every “petition” 8729 may both deceive and be deceived. And so, according to the circumstances and disposition, and even age, of each individual, the delay of baptism is preferable; principally, however, in the case of little children. For why is it necessary—if (baptism itself) is not so necessary 8730 —that the sponsors likewise should be thrust into danger? Who both themselves, by reason of mortality, may fail to fulfil their promises, and may be disappointed by the development of an evil disposition, in those for whom they stood? The Lord does indeed say, “Forbid them not to come unto me.” 8731 Let them “come,” then, while they are growing up; let them “come” while they are learning, while they are learning whither to come; 8732 let them become Christians 8733 when they have become able to know Christ. Why does the innocent period of life hasten to the “remission of sins?” More caution will be exercised in worldly 8734 matters: so that one who is not trusted with earthly substance is trusted with divine! Let them know how to “ask” for salvation, that you may seem (at least) to have given “to him that asketh.” 8735 For no less cause must the unwedded also be deferred—in whom the ground of temptation is prepared, alike in such as never were wedded 8736 by means of their maturity, and in the widowed by means of their freedom—until they either marry, or else be more fully strengthened for continence. If any understand the weighty import of baptism, they will fear its reception more than its delay: sound faith is secure of salvation.
Footnotes
677:8722Luke vi. 30. [See note 4, p. 676.]
677:8723Matt. vii. 6.
677:87241 Tim. v. 22; μηδενὶ omitted, ταχέως rendered by “facile,” and μηδἔ by “ne.”
677:8725“Exertam,” as in c. xii.: “probatio exerta,” “a conspicuous proof.”
678:8726Comp. Acts viii. 26-40.
678:8727Acts 8:28, 30, 32, 33, Isa. 53:7, 8, especially in LXX. The quotation, as given in Acts, agrees nearly verbatim with the Cod. Alex. there.
678:8728Tertullian seems to have confused the “Judas” with whom Saul stayed (Acts ix. 11) with the “Simon” with whom St. Peter stayed (Acts ix. 43); and it was Ananias, not Judas, to whom he was pointed out as “an appointed vessel,” and by whom he was baptized. [So above, he seems to have confounded Philip, the deacon, with Philip the apostle.]
678:8729See note 24, [where Luke vi. 30 is shown to be abused].
678:8730Tertullian has already allowed (in c. xvi) that baptism is not indispensably necessary to salvation.
678:8731Matt. 19:14, Mark 10:14, Luke 18:16.
678:8732Or, “whither they are coming.”
678:8733i.e. in baptism.
678:8734Sæcularibus.
678:8735See beginning of chapter, [where Luke vi. 30, is shown to be abused].
678:8736Virginibus; but he is speaking about men as well as women. Comp. de Orat. c. xxii. [I need not point out the bearings of the above chapter, nor do I desire to interpose any comments. The Editor’s interpolations, where purely gratuitous, I have even stricken out, though I agree with them. See that work of genius, the Liberty of Prophesying, by Jer. Taylor, sect. xviii. and its candid admissions.]
Chapter XIX.—Of the Times Most Suitable for Baptism.
The Passover affords a more than usually solemn day for baptism; when, withal, the Lord’s passion, in which we are baptized, was completed. Nor will it be incongruous to interpret figuratively the fact that, when the Lord was about to celebrate the last Passover, He said to the disciples who were sent to make preparation, “Ye will meet a man bearing water.” 8737 He points out the place for celebrating the Passover by the sign of water. After that, Pentecost is a most joyous space 8738 for conferring baptisms; 8739 wherein, too, the resurrection of the Lord was repeatedly proved 8740 among the disciples, and the hope of the advent of the Lord indirectly pointed to, in that, at that time, when He had been received back into the heavens, the angels 8741 told the apostles that “He would so come, as He had withal ascended into the heavens;” 8742 at Pentecost, of course. But, moreover, when Jeremiah says, “And I will gather them together from the extremities of the land in the feast-day,” he signifies the day of the Passover and of Pentecost, which is properly a “feast-day.” 8743 However, every day is the Lord’s; every hour, every time, is apt for baptism: if there is a difference in the solemnity, distinction there is none in the grace.
Footnotes
678:8737Mark 14:13, Luke 22:10, “a small earthen pitcher of water.”
678:8738[He means the whole fifty days from the Paschal Feast till Pentecost, including the latter. Bunsen Hippol. III. 18.]
678:8739Lavacris.
678:8740Frequentata, i.e. by His frequent appearance. See Acts i. 3, δι᾽ ἡμερῶν τεσσαράκοντα ὀπτανόμενος αὐτοῖς.
678:8741Comp. Acts 1:10, Luke 9:30: in each place St. Luke says, ἄνδρες δύο: as also in Luke 24.4 of his Gospel.
678:8742Acts 1:10, 11; but it is οὐρανόν throughout in the Greek.
678:8743Jer. xxxi. 8, xxxviii. 8 in LXX., where ἐν ἑορτῇ φασέκ is found, which is not in the English version.
Chapter XX.—Of Preparation For, and Conduct After, the Reception of Baptism.
They who are about to enter baptism ought to pray with repeated prayers, fasts, and bendings of the knee, and vigils all the night through, and with the confession of all by- gone sins, that they may express the meaning even of the baptism of John: “They were baptized,” saith (the Scripture), “confessing their own sins.” 8744 To us it is matter for thankfulness if we do now publicly confess our iniquities or our turpitudes: 8745 for we do at the same time both make satisfaction 8746 for our former sins, by mortification of our flesh and spirit, and lay beforehand the foundation of defences against the temptations which will closely follow. “Watch and pray,” saith (the Lord), “lest ye fall into temptation.” 8747 And the reason, I believe, why they were tempted was, that they fell asleep; so that they deserted the Lord when apprehended, and he who continued to stand by Him, and used the sword, even denied Him thrice: for withal the word had gone before, that “no one untempted should attain the celestial kingdoms.” 8748 The Lord Himself forthwith after baptism 8749 temptations surrounded, when in forty days He had kept fast. “Then,” some one will say, “it becomes us, too, rather to fast after baptism.” 8750 Well, and who forbids you, unless it be the necessity for joy, and the thanksgiving for salvation? But so far as I, with my poor powers, understand, the Lord figuratively retorted upon Israel the reproach they had cast on the Lord. 8751 For the people, after crossing the sea, and being carried about in the desert during forty years, although they were there nourished with divine supplies, nevertheless were more mindful of their belly and their gullet than of God. Thereupon the Lord, driven apart into desert places after baptism, 8752 showed, by maintaining a fast of forty days, that the man of God lives “not by bread alone,” but “by the word of God;” 8753 and that temptations incident to fulness or immoderation of appetite are shattered by abstinence. Therefore, blessed ones, whom the grace of God awaits, when you ascend from that most sacred font 8754 of your new birth, and spread your hands 8755 for the first time in the house of your mother, 8756 together with your brethren, ask from the Father, ask from the Lord, that His own specialties of grace and distributions of gifts 8757 may be supplied you. “Ask,” saith He, “and ye shall receive.” 8758 Well, you have asked, and have received; you have knocked, and it has been opened to you. Only, I pray that, when you are asking, you be mindful likewise of Tertullian the sinner. 8759
Footnotes
679:8744Matt. iii. 6. [See the collection of Dr. Bunsen for the whole primitive discipline to which Tertullian has reference, Hippol. Vol. III. pp. 5–23, and 29.]
679:8745Perhaps Tertullian is referring to Prov. xxviii. 13. If we confess now, we shall be forgiven, and not put to shame at the judgment day.
679:8746See de Orat. c. xxiii. ad fin., and the note there.
679:8747Matt. xxvi. 41.
679:8748What passage is referred to is doubtful. The editors point us to Luke 22:28, 29; but the reference is unsatisfactory.
679:8749Lavacrum.
679:8750Lavacro. Compare the beginning of the chapter.
679:8751Viz. by their murmuring for bread (see Exod. 16:3, 7); and again—nearly forty years after—in another place. See Num. xxi. 5.
679:8752Aquam: just as St. Paul says the Israelites had been “baptized” (or “baptized themselves”) “into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” 1 Cor. x. 2.
679:8753Matt. iv. 1-4.
679:8754Lavacro.
679:8755In prayer: comp. de Orat. c. xiv.
679:8756i.e. the Church: comp. de Orat. c. 2.
679:87571 Cor. xii. 4-12.
679:8758Matt. 7:7, Luke 11:9; αἰτεῖτε, καὶ δοθήσεται, ὑμῖν in both places.
679:8759[The translator, though so learned and helpful, too often encumbers the text with superfluous interpolations. As many of these, while making the reading difficult, add nothing to the sense yet destroy the terse, crabbed force of the original, I have occasionally restored the spirit of a sentence, by removing them.]
Elucidation.
————————————
The argument (p. 673, note 6,) is conclusive, but not clear. The disciples of John must have been baptized by him, (Luke vii. 29-30) and “all the people,” must have included those whom Jesus called. But, this was not Christ’s baptism: See Acts 19:2, 5. Compare note 8, p. 673. And see the American Editor’s “Apollos.”
III.
On Prayer.
[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]
————————————
Chapter I.—General Introduction. 8760
The Spirit of God, and the Word of God, and the Reason of God—Word of Reason, and Reason and Spirit of Word—Jesus Christ our Lord, namely, who is both the one and the other, 8761 —has determined for us, the disciples of the New Testament, a new form of prayer; for in this particular also it was needful that new wine should be laid up in new skins, and a new breadth be sewn to a new garment. 8762 Besides, whatever had been in bygone days, has either been quite changed, as circumcision; or else supplemented, as the rest of the Law; or else fulfilled, as Prophecy; or else perfected, as faith itself. For the new grace of God has renewed all things from carnal unto spiritual, by superinducing the Gospel, the obliterator of the whole ancient bygone system; in which our Lord Jesus Christ has been approved as the Spirit of God, and the Word of God, and the Reason of God: the Spirit, by which He was mighty; the Word, by which He taught; the Reason, by which He came. 8763 So the prayer composed by Christ has been composed of three parts. In speech, 8764 by which prayer is enunciated, in spirit, by which alone it prevails, even John had taught his disciples to pray, 8765 but all John’s doings were laid as groundwork for Christ, until, when “He had increased”—just as the same John used to fore-announce “that it was needful” that “He should increase and himself decrease” 8766 —the whole work of the forerunner passed over, together with his spirit itself, unto the Lord. Therefore, after what form of words John taught to pray is not extant, because earthly things have given place to heavenly. “He who is from the earth,” says John, “speaketh earthly things; and He who is here from the heavens speaketh those things which He hath seen.” 8767 And what is the Lord Christ’s—as this method of praying is—that is not heavenly? And so, blessed brethren, let us consider His heavenly wisdom: first, touching the precept of praying secretly, whereby He exacted man’s faith, that he should be confident that the sight and hearing of Almighty God are present beneath roofs, and extend even into the secret place; and required modesty in faith, that it should offer its religious homage to Him alone, whom it believed to see and to hear everywhere. Further, since wisdom succeeded in the following precept, let it in like manner appertain unto faith, and the modesty of faith, that we think not that the Lord must be approached with a train of words, who, we are certain, takes unsolicited foresight for His own. And yet that very brevity—and let this make for the third grade of wisdom—is supported on the substance of a great and blessed interpretation, and is as diffuse in meaning as it is compressed in words. For it has embraced not only the special duties of prayer, be it veneration of God or petition for man, but almost every discourse of the Lord, every record of His Discipline; so that, in fact, in the Prayer is comprised an epitome of the whole Gospel.
Footnotes
681:8760[After the discipline of Repentance and of Baptism the Laws of Christian Living come into view. Hence this is the logical place for this treatise. See the Prolegomena of Muratori and learned annotations, in Routh, Opuscula I. p. 173, et sqq. We may date it circa a.d. 192. For much of the Primitive Discipline, concerning Prayer, see Bunsen, Hippol. III. pp. 88–91, etc.]
681:8761Oehler’s punctuation is followed here. The sentence is difficult, and has perplexed editors and commentators considerably.
681:8762Matt. 9:16, 17, Mark 2:21, 22, Luke 5:36, 37.
681:8763Routh suggests, “fortase quâ sensit,” referring to the Adv. Praxeam, c. 5.
681:8764Sermone.
681:8765This is Oehler’s punctuation. The edition of Pamelius reads: “So the prayer composed by Christ was composed of three parts: of the speech, by which it is enunciated; of the spirit, by which alone it prevails; of the reason, by which it is taught.” Rigaltius and subsequent editors read, “of the reason, by which it is conceived;” but this last clause is lacking in the mss., and Oehler’s reading appears, as he says, to “have healed the words.” [Oehler’s punctuation must stand; but, the preceding sentence justifies the interpolation of Rigaltius and heals more effectually.]
681:8766John iii. 30.
681:8767John 3:31, 32.
Chapter II.—The First Clause.
The prayer begins with a testimony to God, and with the reward of faith, when we say, “Our Father who art in the heavens;” for (in so saying), we at once pray to God, and commend faith, whose reward this appellation is. It is written, “To them who believed on Him He gave power to be called sons of God.” 8768 However, our Lord very frequently proclaimed God as a Father to us; nay, even gave a precept “that we call no one on earth father, but the Father whom we have in the heavens:” 8769 and so, in thus praying, we are likewise obeying the precept. Happy they who recognize their Father! This is the reproach that is brought against Israel, to which the Spirit attests heaven and earth, saying, “I have begotten sons, and they have not recognized me.” 8770 Moreover, in saying “Father,” we also call Him “God.” That appellation is one both of filial duty and of power. Again, in the Father the Son is invoked; “for I,” saith He, “and the Father are One.” 8771 Nor is even our mother the Church passed by, if, that is, in the Father and the Son is recognized the mother, from whom arises the name both of Father and of Son. In one general term, then, or word, we both honour God, together with His own, 8772 and are mindful of the precept, and set a mark on such as have forgotten their Father.
Footnotes
682:8768John i. 12.
682:8769Matt. xxiii. 9.
682:8770Isa. i. 2.
682:8771John x. 30.
682:8772“i.e., together with the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Oehler); “His Son and His church” (Dodgson).
Chapter III.—The Second Clause.
The name of “God the Father” had been published to none. Even Moses, who had interrogated Him on that very point, had heard a different name. 8773 To us it has been revealed in the Son, for the Son is now the Father’s new name. “I am come,” saith He, “in the Father’s name;” 8774 and again, “Father, glorify Thy name;” 8775 and more openly, “I have manifested Thy name to men.” 8776 That name, therefore, we pray may “be hallowed.” Not that it is becoming for men to wish God well, as if there were any other 8777 by whom He may be wished well, or as if He would suffer unless we do so wish. Plainly, it is universally becoming for God to be blessed 8778 in every place and time, on account of the memory of His benefits ever due from every man. But this petition also serves the turn of a blessing. Otherwise, when is the name of God not “holy,” and “hallowed” through Himself, seeing that of Himself He sanctifies all others—He to whom that surrounding circle of angels cease not to say, “Holy, holy, holy?” 8779 In like wise, therefore, we too, candidates for angelhood, if we succeed in deserving it, begin even here on earth to learn by heart that strain hereafter to be raised unto God, and the function of future glory. So far, for the glory of God. On the other hand, for our own petition, when we say, “Hallowed be Thy name,” we pray this; that it may be hallowed in us who are in Him, as well in all others for whom the grace of God is still waiting; 8780 that we may obey this precept, too, in “praying for all,” 8781 even for our personal enemies. 8782 And therefore with suspended utterance, not saying, “Hallowed be it in us,” we say,—“in all.”
Footnotes
682:8773Ex. iii. 13-16.
682:8774John v. 43.
682:8775John xii. 28.
682:8776John xvii. 6.
682:8777i.e., “any other god.”
682:8778Ps. ciii. 22.
682:8779Isa. 6:3, Rev. 4:8.
682:8780Isa. xxx. 18.
682:87811 Tim. ii. 1.
682:8782Matt. v. 44.
Chapter IV.—The Third Clause.
According to this model, 8783 we subjoin, “Thy will be done in the heavens and on the earth;” 8784 not that there is some power withstanding 8785 to prevent God’s will being done, and we pray for Him the successful achievement of His will; but we pray for His will to be done in all. For, by figurative interpretation of flesh and spirit, we are “heaven” and “earth;” albeit, even if it is to be understood simply, still the sense of the petition is the same, that in us God’s will be done on earth, to make it possible, namely, for it to be done also in the heavens. What, moreover, does God will, but that we should walk according to His Discipline? We make petition, then, that He supply us with the substance of His will, and the capacity to do it, that we may be saved both in the heavens and on earth; because the sum of His will is the salvation of them whom He has adopted. There is, too, that will of God which the Lord accomplished in preaching, in working, in enduring: for if He Himself proclaimed that He did not His own, but the Father’s will, without doubt those things which He used to do were the Father’s will; 8786 unto which things, as unto exemplars, we are now provoked; 8787 to preach, to work, to endure even unto death. And we need the will of God, that we may be able to fulfil these duties. Again, in saying, “Thy will be done,” we are even wishing well to ourselves, in so far that there is nothing of evil in the will of God; even if, proportionably to each one’s deserts, somewhat other 8788 is imposed on us. So by this expression we premonish our own selves unto patience. The Lord also, when He had wished to demonstrate to us, even in His own flesh, the flesh’s infirmity, by the reality of suffering, said, “Father, remove this Thy cup;” and remembering Himself, added, “save that not my will, but Thine be done.” 8789 Himself was the Will and the Power of the Father: and yet, for the demonstration of the patience which was due, He gave Himself up to the Father’s Will.
Footnotes
682:8783Mr. Dodgson renders, “next to this clause;” but the “forma” referred to seems, by what Tertullian proceeds to add, to be what he had said above, “not that it becomes us to wish God well,” etc.
682:8784We learn from this and other places, that the comparative adverb was wanting in some ancient formulæ of the Lord’s Prayer. [See Routh, Opuscula I. p. 178.]
682:8785See note 3.
682:8786John vi. 38.
682:8787For this use of the word “provoke,” see Heb. x. 24, Eng. ver.
683:8788[Something we might think other than good.]
683:8789Luke xxii. 42.
Chapter V.—The Fourth Clause.
“Thy kingdom come” has also reference to that whereto “Thy will be done” refers—in us, that is. For when does God not reign, in whose hand is the heart of all kings? 8790 But whatever we wish for ourselves we augur for Him, and to Him we attribute what from Him we expect. And so, if the manifestation of the Lord’s kingdom pertains unto the will of God and unto our anxious expectation, how do some pray for some protraction of the age, 8791 when the kingdom of God, which we pray may arrive, tends unto the consummation of the age? 8792 Our wish is, that our reign be hastened, not our servitude protracted. Even if it had not been prescribed in the Prayer that we should ask for the advent of the kingdom, we should, unbidden, have sent forth that cry, hastening toward the realization of our hope. The souls of the martyrs beneath the altar 8793 cry in jealousy unto the Lord, “How long, Lord, dost Thou not avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?” 8794 for, of course, their avenging is regulated by 8795 the end of the age. Nay, Lord, Thy kingdom come with all speed,—the prayer of Christians the confusion of the heathen, 8796 the exultation of angels, for the sake of which we suffer, nay, rather, for the sake of which we pray!
Footnotes
683:8790Prov. xxi. 1.
683:8791Or, “world,” sæculo.
683:8792Or, “world,” sæculi. See Matt. xxiv. 3, especially in the Greek. By “praying for some protraction in the age,” Tertullian appears to refer to some who used to pray that the end might be deferred (Rigalt.).
683:8793altari.
683:8794Rev. vi. 10.
683:8795So Dodgson aptly renders “dirigitur a.”
683:8796[See Ad Nationes, p. 128, supra.]
Chapter VI.—The Fifth Clause.
But how gracefully has the Divine Wisdom arranged the order of the prayer; so that after things heavenly—that is, after the “Name” of God, the “Will” of God, and the “Kingdom” of God—it should give earthly necessities also room for a petition! For the Lord had 8797 withal issued His edict, “Seek ye first the kingdom, and then even these shall be added:” 8798 albeit we may rather understand, “Give us this day our daily bread,” spiritually. For Christ is our Bread; because Christ is Life, and bread is life. “I am,” saith He, “the Bread of Life;” 8799 and, a little above, “The Bread is the Word of the living God, who came down from the heavens.” 8800 Then we find, too, that His body is reckoned in bread: “This is my body.” 8801 And so, in petitioning for “daily bread,” we ask for perpetuity in Christ, and indivisibility from His body. But, because that word is admissible in a carnal sense too, it cannot be so used without the religious remembrance withal of spiritual Discipline; for (the Lord) commands that bread be prayed for, which is the only food necessary for believers; for “all other things the nations seek after.” 8802 The like lesson He both inculcates by examples, and repeatedly handles in parables, when He says, “Doth a father take away bread from his children, and hand it to dogs?” 8803 and again, “Doth a father give his son a stone when he asks for bread?” 8804 For He thus shows what it is that sons expect from their father. Nay, even that nocturnal knocker knocked for “bread.” 8805 Moreover, He justly added, “Give us this day,” seeing He had previously said, “Take no careful thought about the morrow, what ye are to eat.” 8806 To which subject He also adapted the parable of the man who pondered on an enlargement of his barns for his forthcoming fruits, and on seasons of prolonged security; but that very night he dies. 8807
Footnotes
683:8797This is a slight mistake of Tertullian. The words referred to, “Seek ye first,” etc., do not occur till the end of the chapter in which the prayer is found, so that his pluperfect is out of place. [He must have been aware of this: he only gives logical order to the thought which existed in the divine mind. See note 10, p. 682.]
683:8798Matt. vi. 33.
683:8799John vi. 35.
683:8800John vi. 33.
683:8801Matt. xxvi. 26.
683:8802Matt. vi. 32.
683:8803Tertullian seems to refer to Matt. 15:26, Mark 7:27.
683:8804Matt. 7:9, Luke 11:11.
683:8805Luke xi. 5-9.
683:8806Matt. 6:34, Luke 12:29 seem to be referred to; but the same remark applies as in note 10 on the preceding page.
683:8807Luke xii. 16-20.
Chapter VII.—The Sixth Clause.
It was suitable that, after contemplating the liberality of God, 8808 we should likewise address His clemency. For what will aliments 8809 profit us, if we are really consigned to them, as it were a bull destined for a victim? 8810 The Lord knew Himself to be the only guiltless One, and so He teaches that we beg “to have our debts remitted us.” A petition for pardon is a full confession; because he who begs for pardon fully admits his guilt. Thus, too, penitence is demonstrated acceptable to God who desires it rather than the death of the sinner. 8811 Moreover, debt is, in the Scriptures, a figure of guilt; because it is equally due to the sentence of judgment, and is exacted by it: nor does it evade the justice of exaction, unless the exaction be remitted, just as the lord remitted to that slave in the parable his debt; 8812 for hither does the scope of the whole parable tend. For the fact withal, that the same servant, after liberated by his lord, does not equally spare his own debtor; and, being on that account impeached before his lord, is made over to the tormentor to pay the uttermost farthing—that is, every guilt, however small: corresponds with our profession that “we also remit to our debtors;” indeed elsewhere, too, in conformity with this Form of Prayer, He saith, “Remit, and it shall be remitted you.” 8813 And when Peter had put the question whether remission were to be granted to a brother seven times, “Nay,” saith He, “seventy-seven times;” 8814 in order to remould the Law for the better; because in Genesis vengeance was assigned “seven times” in the case of Cain, but in that of Lamech “seventy-seven times.” 8815
Footnotes
683:8808In the former petition, “Give us this day our daily bread.”
683:8809Such as “daily bread.”
684:8810That is, if we are just to be fed and fattened by them in body, as a bull which is destined for sacrifice is, and then, like him, slain—handed over to death?
684:8811Exod. 18:23, 32, Exod. 33:11.
684:8812Matt. xviii. 21-35.
684:8813Luke vi. 37.
684:8814Matt. xviii. 21-22.
684:8815Gen. 4:15, 24.
Chapter VIII.—The Seventh or Final Clause.
For the completeness of so brief a prayer He added—in order that we should supplicate not touching the remitting merely, but touching the entire averting, of acts of guilt—“Lead us not into temptation:” that is, suffer us not to be led into it, by him (of course) who tempts; but far be the thought that the Lord should seem to tempt, 8816 as if He either were ignorant of the faith of any, or else were eager to overthrow it. Infirmity 8817 and malice 8818 are characteristics of the devil. For God had commanded even Abraham to make a sacrifice of his son, for the sake not of tempting, but proving, his faith; in order through him to make an example for that precept of His, whereby He was, by and by, to enjoin that he should hold no pledges of affection dearer than God. 8819 He Himself, when tempted by the devil, demonstrated who it is that presides over and is the originator of temptation. 8820 This passage He confirms by subsequent ones, saying, “Pray that ye be not tempted;” 8821 yet they were tempted, (as they showed) by deserting their Lord, because they had given way rather to sleep than prayer. 8822 The final clause, therefore, is consonant, and interprets the sense of “Lead us not into temptation;” for this sense is, “But convey us away from the Evil One.”
Footnotes
684:8816See James i. 13.
684:8817Implied in the one hypothesis—ignorance.
684:8818Implied in the other—wishing to overthrow faith.
684:8819i.e. no children even. The reference is apparently to Matt. 10:37, Luke 14:26, with which may be compared Deut. 13:6, Deut. 33:9. If Oehler’s reading, which I have followed, be correct, the precept, which is not verbally given till ages after Abraham, is made to have a retrospective force on him.
684:8820See Matt. 4:10, Luke 4:8.
684:8821Luke 22:40, Matt. 26:41, Mark 14:31.
684:8822Routh refers us to De Bapt. c. 20, where Tertullian refers to the same event. [Note also his reference to De Fuga, cap. ii.]
Chapter IX.—Recapitulation. 8823
In summaries of so few words, how many utterances of the prophets, the Gospels, the apostles—how many discourses, examples, parables of the Lord, are touched on! How many duties are simultaneously discharged! The honour of God in the “Father;” the testimony of faith in the “Name;” the offering of obedience in the “Will;” the commemoration of hope in the “Kingdom;” the petition for life in the “Bread;” the full acknowledgment of debts in the prayer for their “Forgiveness;” the anxious dread of temptation in the request for “Protection.” What wonder? God alone could teach how he wished Himself prayed to. The religious rite of prayer therefore, ordained by Himself, and animated, even at the moment when it was issuing out of the Divine mouth, by His own Spirit, ascends, by its own prerogative, into heaven, commending to the Father what the Son has taught.
Footnotes
684:8823Here comes in the Codex Ambrosianus, with the title, “Here begins a treatise of Tertullian of divers necessary things;” and from it are taken the headings of the remaining chapters. (See Oehler and Routh.)
Chapter X.—We May Superadd Prayers of Our Own to the Lord’s Prayer.
Since, however, the Lord, the Foreseer of human necessities, 8824 said separately, after delivering His Rule of Prayer, “Ask, and ye shall receive;” 8825 and since there are petitions which are made according to the circumstances of each individual; our additional wants have the right—after beginning with the legitimate and customary prayers as a foundation, as it were—of rearing an outer superstructure of petitions, yet with remembrance of the Master’s precepts.
Footnotes
684:8824See Matt. vi. 8.
684:8825Matt. 7:7, Luke 11:9.
Chapter XI.—When Praying the Father, You are Not to Be Angry with a Brother.
That we may not be as far from the ears of God as we are from His precepts, 8826 the memory of His precepts paves for our prayers a way unto heaven; of which precepts the chief is, that we go not up unto God’s altar 8827 before we compose whatever of discord or offence we have contracted with our brethren. 8828 For what sort of deed is it to approach the peace of God 8829 without peace? the remission of debts 8830 while you retain them? How will he appease his Father who is angry with his brother, when from the beginning “all anger” is forbidden us? 8831 For even Joseph, when dismissing his brethren for the purpose of fetching their father, said, “And be not angry in the way.” 8832 He warned us, to be sure, at that time (for elsewhere our Discipline is called “the Way” 8833 ), that when, set in “the way” of prayer, we go not unto “the Father” with anger. After that, the Lord, “amplifying the Law,” 8834 openly adds the prohibition of anger against a brother to that of murder. 8835 Not even by an evil word does He permit it to be vented. 8836 Ever if we must be angry, our anger must not be maintained beyond sunset, as the apostle admonishes. 8837 But how rash is it either to pass a day without prayer, while you refuse to make satisfaction to your brother; or else, by perseverance in anger, to lose your prayer?
Footnotes
685:8826Oehler divides these two chapters as above. The generally adopted division unites this sentence to the preceding chapter, and begins the new chapter with, “The memory of His precepts;” and perhaps this is the preferable division.
685:8827altare. [Heb. xiii. 10.]
685:8828Matt. 5:22, 23.
685:8829Perhaps there may be an allusion to Phil. 4:6, 7.
685:8830See chap. vii. above, and compare Matt. 6:14, 15.
685:8831“Ab initio” probably refers to the book of Genesis, the initium, or beginning of Scripture, to which he is about to refer. But see likewise Eph. 4:31, Matt. 5:21, 22, Gen. 4:6, 7
685:8832Gen. xlv. 24: so the LXX.
685:8833See Acts 9:2, Acts 19:9, 23, in the Greek.
685:8834See Matt. v. 17.
685:8835Matt. 5:21, 22.
685:8836Matt. 5:21, 22, 1 Pet. 3:9, etc.
685:8837Eph. iv. 26.
Chapter XII.—We Must Be Free Likewise from All Mental Perturbation.
Nor merely from anger, but altogether from all perturbation of mind, ought the exercise of prayer to be free, uttered from a spirit such as the Spirit unto whom it is sent. For a defiled spirit cannot be acknowledged by a holy Spirit, 8838 nor a sad by a joyful, 8839 nor a fettered by a free. 8840 No one grants reception to his adversary: no one grants admittance except to his compeer.
Footnotes
685:8838Eph. iv. 30.
685:8839John 17:14, Rom. 14:17.
685:8840Ps. li. 12.
Chapter XIII.—Of Washing the Hands.
But what reason is there in going to prayer with hands indeed washed, but the spirit foul?—inasmuch as to our hands themselves spiritual purities are necessary, that they may be “lifted up pure” 8841 from falsehood, from murder, from cruelty, from poisonings, 8842 from idolatry, and all the other blemishes which, conceived by the spirit, are effected by the operation of the hands. These are the true purities; 8843 not those which most are superstitiously careful about, taking water at every prayer, even when they are coming from a bath of the whole body. When I was scrupulously making a thorough investigation of this practice, and searching into the reason of it, I ascertained it to be a commemorative act, bearing on the surrender 8844 of our Lord. We, however, pray to the Lord: we do not surrender Him; nay, we ought even to set ourselves in opposition to the example of His surrenderer, and not, on that account, wash our hands. Unless any defilement contracted in human intercourse be a conscientious cause for washing them, they are otherwise clean enough, which together with our whole body we once washed in Christ. 8845
Footnotes
685:88411 Tim. ii. 8.
685:8842Or, “sorceries.”
685:8843See Matt. 15:10, 11, 17, Matt. 23:25, 26.
685:8844By Pilate. See Matt. xxvii. 24. [N. B. quoad Ritualia.]
685:8845i.e. in baptism.
Chapter XIV.—Apostrophe.
Albeit Israel washed daily all his limbs over, yet is he never clean. His hands, at all events, are ever unclean, eternally dyed with the blood of the prophets, and of the Lord Himself; and on that account, as being hereditary culprits from their privity to their fathers’ crimes, 8846 they do not dare even to raise them unto the Lord, 8847 for fear some Isaiah should cry out, 8848 for fear Christ should utterly shudder. We, however, not only raise, but even expand them; and, taking our model from the Lord’s passion 8849 even in prayer we confess 8850 to Christ.
Footnotes
685:8846See Matt. 23:31, Luke 11:48.
685:8847I do not know Tertullian’s authority for this statement. Certainly Solomon did raise his hands (1 Kings viii. 54), and David apparently his (see Ps. 43:6, Ps. 28:2, Ps. 62:4, etc.). Compare, too, Exod. 17:11, 12. But probably he is speaking only of the Israel of his own day. [Evidently.]
685:8848Isa. i. 15.
685:8849i.e. from the expansion of the hands on the cross.
685:8850Or, “give praise.”
Chapter XV.—Of Putting Off Cloaks.
But since we have touched on one special point of empty observance, 8851 it will not be irksome to set our brand likewise on the other points against which the reproach of vanity may deservedly be laid; if, that is, they are observed without the authority of any precept either of the Lord, or else of the apostles. For matters of this kind belong not to religion, but to superstition, being studied, and forced, and of curious rather than rational ceremony; 8852 deserving of restraint, at all events, even on this ground, that they put us on a level with Gentiles. 8853 As, e.g., it is the custom of some to make prayer with cloaks doffed, for so do the nations approach their idols; which practice, of course, were its observance becoming, the apostles, who teach concerning the garb of prayer, 8854 would have comprehended in their instructions, unless any think that is was in prayer that Paul had left his cloak with Carpus! 8855 God, forsooth, would not hear cloaked suppliants, who plainly heard the three saints in the Babylonian king’s furnace praying in their trousers and turbans. 8856
Footnotes
685:8851i.e. the hand-washing.
686:8852Or, “reasonable service.” See Rom. xii. 1.
686:8853Or, “Gentile practices.”
686:8854See 1 Cor. xi. 3-16.
686:88552 Tim. iv. 13.
686:8856Dan. iii. 21, etc.
Chapter XVI.—Of Sitting After Prayer.
Again, for the custom which some have of sitting when prayer is ended, I perceive no reason, except that which children give. 8857 For what if that Hermas, 8858 whose writing is generally inscribed with the title The Shepherd, had, after finishing his prayer, not sat down on his bed, but done some other thing: should we maintain that also as a matter for observance? Of course not. Why, even as it is the sentence, “When I had prayed, and had sat down on my bed,” is simply put with a view to the order of the narration, not as a model of discipline. Else we shall have to pray nowhere except where there is a bed! Nay, whoever sits in a chair or on a bench, will act contrary to that writing. Further: inasmuch as the nations do the like, in sitting down after adoring their petty images; even on this account the practice deserves to be censured in us, because it is observed in the worship of idols. To this is further added the charge of irreverence,—intelligible even to the nations themselves, if they had any sense. If, on the one hand, it is irreverent to sit under the eye, and over against the eye, of him whom you most of all revere and venerate; how much more, on the other hand, is that deed most irreligious under the eye of the living God, while the angel of prayer is still standing by 8859 unless we are upbraiding God that prayer has wearied us!
Footnotes
686:8857i.e. that they have seen it done; for children imitate anything and everything (Oehler).
686:8858[Vol. II. p. 18 (Vision V.), this Series. Also, Ib. p. 57, note 2. See Routh’s quotation from Cotelerius, p. 180, in Volume before noted.]
686:8859Routh and Oehler (after Rigaltius) refer us to Tob. xii. 12. They also, with Dodgson, refer to Luke i. 11. Perhaps there may be a reference to Rev. 8:3, 4.
Chapter XVII.—Of Elevated Hands.
But we more commend our prayers to God when we pray with modesty and humility, with not even our hands too loftily elevated, but elevated temperately and becomingly; and not even our countenance over-boldly uplifted. For that publican who prayed with humility and dejection not merely in his supplication, but in his countenance too, went his way “more justified” than the shameless Pharisee. 8860 The sounds of our voice, likewise, should be subdued; else, if we are to be heard for our noise, how large windpipes should we need! But God is the hearer not of the voice, but of the heart, just as He is its inspector. The demon of the Pythian oracle says:
“And I do understand the mute, and plainly hear the speechless one.” 8861
Do the ears of God wait for sound? How, then, could Jonah’s prayer find way out unto heaven from the depth of the whale’s belly, through the entrails of so huge a beast; from the very abysses, through so huge a mass of sea? What superior advantage will they who pray too loudly gain, except that they annoy their neighbours? Nay, by making their petitions audible, what less error do they commit than if they were to pray in public? 8862
Footnotes
686:8860Luke xviii. 9-14.
686:8861Herod. i. 47.
686:8862Which is forbidden, Matt. 6:5, 6.
Chapter XVIII.—Of the Kiss of Peace.
Another custom has now become prevalent. Such as are fasting withhold the kiss of peace, which is the seal of prayer, after prayer made with brethren. But when is peace more to be concluded with brethren than when, at the time of some religious observance, 8863 our prayer ascends with more acceptability; that they may themselves participate in our observance, and thereby be mollified for transacting with their brother touching their own peace? What prayer is complete if divorced from the “holy kiss?” 8864 Whom does peace impede when rendering service to his Lord? What kind of sacrifice is that from which men depart without peace? Whatever our prayer be, it will not be better than the observance of the precept by which we are bidden to conceal our fasts; 8865 for now, by abstinence from the kiss, we are known to be fasting. But even if there be some reason for this practice, still, lest you offend against this precept, you may perhaps defer your “peace” at home, where it is not possible for your fast to be entirely kept secret. But wherever else you can conceal your observance, you ought to remember the precept: thus you may satisfy the requirements of Discipline abroad and of custom at home. So, too, on the day of the passover, 8866 when the religious observance of a fast is general, and as it were public, we justly forego the kiss, caring nothing to conceal anything which we do in common with all.
Footnotes
686:8863Such as fasting.
686:8864See Rom. 16:16, 1 Cor. 16:20, 2 Cor. 13:12, 1 Thess. 5:26, 1 Pet. 5:14. [The sexes apart.]
686:8865Matt. vi. 16-18.
687:8866i.e. “Good Friday,” as it is now generally called.
Chapter XIX.—Of Stations.
Similarly, too, touching the days of Stations, 8867 most think that they must not be present at the sacrificial prayers, on the ground that the Station must be dissolved by reception of the Lord’s Body. Does, then, the Eucharist cancel a service devoted to God, or bind it more to God? Will not your Station be more solemn if you have withal stood at God’s altar? 8868 When the Lord’s Body has been received and reserved 8869 each point is secured, both the participation of the sacrifice and the discharge of duty. If the “Station” has received its name from the example of military life—for we withal are God’s military 8870 —of course no gladness or sadness chanting to the camp abolishes the “stations” of the soldiers: for gladness will carry out discipline more willingly, sadness more carefully.
Footnotes
687:8867The word Statio seems to have been used in more than one sense in the ancient Church. A passage in the Shepherd of Hermas, referred to above (B. iii. Sim. 5), appears to make it ="fast.”
687:8868“Ara,” not “altare.”
687:8869For receiving at home apparently, when your station is over.
687:8870See 2 Tim. ii. 1, etc. [See Hermas, Vol. I., p. 33.]
Chapter XX.—Of Women’s Dress.
So far, however, as regards the dress of women, the variety of observance compels us—men of no consideration whatever—to treat, presumptuously indeed, after the most holy apostle, 8871 except in so far as it will not be presumptuously if we treat the subject in accordance with the apostle. Touching modesty of dress and ornamentation, indeed, the prescription of Peter 8872 likewise is plain, checking as he does with the same mouth, because with the same Spirit, as Paul, the glory of garments, and the pride of gold, and the meretricious elaboration of the hair.
Footnotes
687:8871See 1 Cor. 11:1, 1 Tim. 2:9, 10.
687:88721 Pet. iii. 1-6.
Chapter XXI.—Of Virgins.
But that point which is promiscuously observed throughout the churches, whether virgins ought to be veiled or no, must be treated of. For they who allow to virgins immunity from head-covering, appear to rest on this; that the apostle has not defined “virgins” by name, but “women,” 8873 as “to be veiled;” nor the sex generally, so as to say “females,” but a class of the sex, by saying “women:” for if he had named the sex by saying “females,” he would have made his limit absolute for every woman; but while he names one class of the sex, he separates another class by being silent. For, they say, he might either have named “virgins” specially; or generally, by a compendious term, “females.”
Footnotes
687:88731 Cor. xi. 5.
Chapter XXII.—Answer to the Foregoing Arguments.
They who make this concession 8874 ought to reflect on the nature of the word itself—what is the meaning of “woman” from the very first records of the sacred writings. Here they find it to be the name of the sex, not a class of the sex: if, that is, God gave to Eve, when she had not yet known a man, the surname “woman” and “female” 8875 —(“female,” whereby the sex generally; “woman,” hereby a class of the sex, is marked). 8876 So, since at that time the as yet unwedded Eve was called by the word “woman,” that word has been made common even to a virgin. 8877 Nor is it wonderful that the apostle—guided, of course, by the same Spirit by whom, as all the divine Scripture, so that book Genesis, was drawn up—has used the selfsame word in writing “women,” which, by the example of Eve unwedded, is applicable too to a “virgin.” In fact, all the other passages are in consonance herewith. For even by this very fact, that he has not named “virgins” (as he does in another place 8878 where he is teaching touching marrying), he sufficiently predicates that his remark is made touching every woman, and touching the whole sex; and that there is no distinction made between a “virgin” and any other, while he does not name her at all. For he who elsewhere—namely, where the difference requires—remembers to make the distinction, (moreover, he makes it by designating each species by their appropriate names,) wishes, where he makes no distinction (while he does not name each), no difference to be understood. What of the fact that in the Greek speech, in which the apostle wrote his letters, it is usual to say, “women” rather than “females;” that is, γυναῖκας (gunaikas) rather than θηλείας (theleias)? Therefore if that word, 8879 which by interpretation represents what “female” (femina) represents, 8880 is frequently used instead of the name of the sex, 8881 he has named the sex in saying γυναῖκα; but in the sex even the virgin is embraced. But, withal, the declaration is plain: “Every woman,” saith he, “praying and prophesying with head uncovered, 8882 dishonoureth her own head.” 8883 What is “every woman,” but woman of every age, of every rank, of every condition? By saying “every” he excepts nought of womanhood, just as he excepts nought of manhood either from not being covered; for just so he says, “Every man.” 8884 As, then, in the masculine sex, under the name of “man” even the “youth” is forbidden to be veiled; so, too, in the feminine, under the name of “woman,” even the “virgin” is bidden to be veiled. Equally in each sex let the younger age follow the discipline of the elder; or else let the male “virgins,” 8885 too, be veiled, if the female virgins withal are not veiled, because they are not mentioned by name. Let “man” and “youth” be different, if “woman” and “virgin” are different. For indeed it is “on account of the angels” 8886 that he saith women must be veiled, because on account of “the daughters of men” angels revolted from God. 8887 Who then, would contend that “women” alone—that is, 8888 such as were already wedded and had lost their virginity—were the objects of angelic concupiscence, unless “virgins” are incapable of excelling in beauty and finding lovers? Nay, let us see whether it were not virgins alone whom they lusted after; since Scriptures saith “the daughters of men;” 8889 inasmuch as it might have named “wives of men,” or “females,” indifferently. 8890 Likewise, in that it saith, “And they took them to themselves for wives,” 8891 it does so on this ground, that, of course, such are “received for wives” as are devoid of that title. But it would have expressed itself differently concerning such as were not thus devoid. And so (they who are named) are devoid as much of widowhood as of virginity. So completely has Paul by naming the sex generally, mingled “daughters” and species together in the genus. Again, while he says that “nature herself,” 8892 which has assigned hair as a tegument and ornament to women, “teaches that veiling is the duty of females,” has not the same tegument and the same honour of the head been assigned also to virgins? If “it is shameful” for a woman to be shorn it is similarly so to a virgin too. From them, then, to whom is assigned one and the same law of the head, 8893 one and the same discipline 8894 of the head is exacted,—(which extends) even unto those virgins whom their childhood defends, 8895 for from the first 8896 a virgin was named “female.” This custom, 8897 in short, even Israel observes; but if Israel did not observe it, our Law, 8898 amplified and supplemented, would vindicate the addition for itself; let it be excused for imposing the veil on virgins also. Under our dispensation, let that age which is ignorant of its sex 8899 retain the privilege of simplicity. For both Eve and Adam, when it befell them to be “wise,” 8900 forthwith veiled what they had learnt to know. 8901 At all events, with regard to those in whom girlhood has changed (into maturity), their age ought to remember its duties as to nature, so also, to discipline; for they are being transferred to the rank of “women” both in their persons and in their functions. No one is a “virgin” from the time when she is capable of marriage; seeing that, in her, age has by that time been wedded to its own husband, that is, to time. 8902 “But some particular virgin has devoted herself to God. From that very moment she both changes the fashion of her hair, and converts all her garb into that of a ‘woman.’” Let her, then, maintain the character wholly, and perform the whole function of a “virgin:” what she conceals 8903 for the sake of God, let her cover quite over. 8904 It is our business to entrust to the knowledge of God alone that which the grace of God effects in us, lest we receive from man the reward we hope for from God. 8905 Why do you denude before God 8906 what you cover before men? 8907 Will you be more modest in public than in the church? If your self-devotion is a grace of God, and you have received it, “why do you boast,” saith he, “as if you have not received it?” 8908 Why, by your ostentation of yourself, do you judge others? Is it that, by your boasting, you invite others unto good? Nay, but even you yourself run the risk of losing, if you boast; and you drive others unto the same perils! What is assumed from love of boasting is easily destroyed. Be veiled, virgin, if virgin you are; for you ought to blush. If you are a virgin, shrink from (the gaze of) many eyes. Let no one wonder at your face; let no one perceive your falsehood. 8909 You do well in falsely assuming the married character, if you veil your head; nay, you do not seem to assume it falsely, for you are wedded to Christ: to Him you have surrendered your body; act as becomes your Husband’s discipline. If He bids the brides of others to be veiled, His own, of course, much more. “But each individual man 8910 is not to think that the institution of his predecessor is to be overturned.” Many yield up their own judgment, and its consistency, to the custom of others. Granted that virgins be not compelled to be veiled, at all events such as voluntarily are so should not be prohibited; who, likewise, cannot deny themselves to be virgins, 8911 content, in the security of a good conscience before God, to damage their own fame. 8912 Touching such, however, as are betrothed, I can with constancy “above my small measure” 8913 pronounce and attest that they are to be veiled from that day forth on which they shuddered at the first bodily touch of a man by kiss and hand. For in them everything has been forewedded: their age, through maturity; their flesh, through age; their spirit, through consciousness; their modesty, through the experience of the kiss their hope, through expectation; their mind through volition. And Rebecca is example enough for us, who, when her betrothed had been pointed out, veiled herself for marriage merely on recognition of him. 8914
Footnotes
687:8874As to the distinction between “women” and “virgins.”
687:8875Gen. ii. 23. In the LXX. and in the Eng. ver. there is but the one word “woman.”
687:8876These words are regarded by Dr. Routh as spurious, and not without reason. Mr. Dodgson likewise omits them, and refers to de Virg. Vel. cc. 4 and 5.
687:8877In de Virg. Vel. 5, Tertullian speaks even more strongly: “And so you have the name, I say not now common, but proper to a virgin; a name which from the beginning a virgin received.”
687:88781 Cor. vii. 34 et seq.
688:8879γυνή.
688:8880Mr. Dodgson appears to think that there is some transposition here; and at first sight it may appear so. But when we look more closely, perhaps there is no need to make any difficulty: the stress is rather on the words “by interpretation,” which, of course, is a different thing from “usage;” and by interpretation γυνή appears to come nearer to “femina” than to “mulier.”
688:8881θηλεῖα.
688:8882Or, “unveiled.”
688:88831 Cor. xi. 5.
688:88841 Cor. xi. 4.
688:8885For a similar use of the word “virgin,” see Rev. xiv. 4.
688:88861 Cor. xi. 10.
688:8887See Gen. vi. 2 in the LXX., with the v. l. ed. Tisch. 1860; and compare Tertullian, de Idol. c. 9, and the note there. Mr. Dodgson refers, too, to de Virg. Vel. c. 7, where this curious subject is more fully entered into.
688:8888i.e. according to their definition, whom Tertullian is refuting.
688:8889Gen. iv. 2.
688:8890i.e. If married women had been meant, either word, “uxores” or “feminæ,” could have been used indifferently.
688:8891Gen. vi. 2.
688:88921 Cor. xi. 14.
688:8893i.e. long hair.
688:8894i.e. veiling.
688:8895i.e. “exempts.”
688:8896i.e. from her creation.
688:8897Of the “universal veiling of women.”
688:8898i.e. as above, the Sermon on the Mount.
688:8899i.e. mere infancy.
688:8900Gen. iii. 6.
688:8901Gen. 2:27, Gen. 3:7, 10, 11.
688:8902Routh refers us to de Virg. Vel. c. 11.
688:8903i.e. the redundance of her hair.
688:8904i.e. by a veil.
688:8905i.e. says Oehler, “lest we postpone the eternal favour of God, which we hope for, to the temporal veneration of men; a risk which those virgins seemed likely to run who, when devoted to God, used to go veiled in public, but bareheaded in the church.”
688:8906i.e. in church.
689:8907i.e. in public; see note 27, supra.
689:89081 Cor. iv. 7.
689:8909i.e. as Muratori, quoted by Oehler, says, your “pious” (?) fraud in pretending to be married when you are a virgin; because “devoted” virgins used to dress and wear veils like married women, as being regarded as “wedded to Christ.”
689:8910i.e. each president of a church, or bishop.
689:8911i.e. “are known to be such through the chastity of their manner and life” (Oehler).
689:8912“By appearing in public as married women, while in heart they are virgins” (Oehler).
689:8913Does Tertullian refer to 2 Cor. x. 13? or does “modulus” mean, as Oehler thinks, “my rule?” [It seems to me a very plain reference to the text before mentioned, and to the Apostolic Canon of not exceeding one’s Mission.]
689:8914Gen. 24:64, 65.
Chapter XXIII.—Of Kneeling.
In the matter of kneeling also prayer is subject to diversity of observance, through the act of some few who abstain from kneeling on the Sabbath; and since this dissension is particularly on its trial before the churches, the Lord will give His grace that the dissentients may either yield, or else indulge their opinion without offence to others. We, however (just as we have received), only on the day of the Lord’s Resurrection ought to guard not only against kneeling, but every posture and office of solicitude; deferring even our businesses lest we give any place to the devil. 8915 Similarly, too, in the period of Pentecost; which period we distinguish by the same solemnity of exultation. 8916 But who would hesitate every day to prostrate himself before God, at least in the first prayer with which we enter on the daylight? At fasts, moreover, and Stations, no prayer should be made without kneeling, and the remaining customary marks of humility; for (then) 8917 we are not only praying, but deprecating, and making satisfaction to God our Lord. 8918 Touching times of prayer nothing at all has been prescribed, except clearly “to pray at every time and every place.” 8919
Footnotes
689:8915Eph. iv. 27.
689:8916i.e. abstaining from kneeling: kneeling being more “a posture of solicitude” and of humility; standing, of “exultation.”
689:8917i.e. at fasts and Stations. [Sabbath = Saturday, supra.]
689:8918For the meaning of “satisfaction” as used by the Fathers, see Hooker, Eccl. Pol. vi. 5.
689:8919Eph. 6:18, 1 Thess. 5:17, 1 Tim. 2:8.
Chapter XXIV.—Of Place for Prayer.
But how “in every place,” since we are prohibited 8920 (from praying) in public? In every place, he means, which opportunity or even necessity, may have rendered suitable: for that which was done by the apostles 8921 (who, in gaol, in the audience of the prisoners, “began praying and singing to God”) is not considered to have been done contrary to the precept; nor yet that which was done by Paul, 8922 who in the ship, in presence of all, “made thanksgiving to God.” 8923
Footnotes
689:8920Matt. 6:5, 6, which forbids praying in public.
689:8921Paul and Silas (Acts xvi. 25).
689:8922I have followed Muratori’s reading here.
689:8923Mr. Dodgson renders “celebrated the Eucharist;” but that rendering appears very doubtful. See Acts xxvii. 35.
Chapter XXV.—Of Time for Prayer.
Touching the time, however, the extrinsic 8924 observance of certain hours will not be unprofitable—those common hours, I mean, which mark the intervals of the day—the third, the sixth, the ninth—which we may find in the Scriptures to have been more solemn than the rest. The first infusion of the Holy Spirit into the congregated disciples took place at “the third hour.” 8925 Peter, on the day on which he experienced the vision of Universal Community, 8926 (exhibited) in that small vessel, 8927 had ascended into the more lofty parts of the house, for prayer’s sake “at the sixth hour.” 8928 The same (apostle) was going into the temple, with John, “at the ninth hour,” 8929 when he restored the paralytic to his health. Albeit these practices stand simply without any precept for their observance, still it may be granted a good thing to establish some definite presumption, which may both add stringency to the admonition to pray, and may, as it were by a law, tear us out from our businesses unto such a duty; so that—what we read to have been observed by Daniel also, 8930 in accordance (of course) with Israel’s discipline—we pray at least not less than thrice in the day, debtors as we are to Three—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: of course, in addition to our regular prayers which are due, without any admonition, on the entrance of light and of night. But, withal, it becomes believers not to take food, and not to go to the bath, before interposing a prayer; for the refreshments and nourishments of the spirit are to be held prior to those of the flesh, and things heavenly prior to things earthly.
Footnotes
689:8924Mr. Dodgson supposes this word to mean “outward, as contrasted with the inward, ‘praying always.’” Oehler interprets, “ex vita communi.” But perhaps what Tertullian says lower down in the chapter, “albeit they stand simply without any precept enjoining their observance,” may give us the true clue to his meaning; so that “extrinsecus” would ="extrinsic to any direct injunction of our Lord or His apostles.”
690:8925Acts 2:1, 14, 15.
690:8926Communitatis omnis (Oehler). Mr. Dodgson renders, “of every sort of common thing.” Perhaps, as Routh suggests, we should read “omnium.”
690:8927Vasculo. But in Acts it is, σκεῦός τι ὡς ὀθόνην μεγάλην [Small is here comparatively used, with reference to Universality of which it was the symbol.]
690:8928Acts x. 9.
690:8929Acts iii. 1: but the man is not said to have been “paralytic,” but “lame from his mother’s womb.”
690:8930Dan. 6:10, Ps. 55:17 (in the LXX. it is liv. 18).
Chapter XXVI.—Of the Parting of Brethren.
You will not dismiss a brother who has entered your house without prayer.—“Have you seen,” says Scripture, “a brother? you have seen your Lord;” 8931 —especially “a stranger,” lest perhaps he be “an angel.” But again, when received yourself by brethren, you will not make 8932 earthly refreshments prior to heavenly, for your faith will forthwith be judged. Or else how will you—according to the precept 8933 —say, “Peace to this house,” unless you exchange mutual peace with them who are in the house?
Footnotes
690:8931I have ventured to turn the first part of the sentence into a question. What “scripture” this may be, no one knows. [It seems to me a clear reference to Matt. xxv. 38, amplified by the Matt. 25.45, in a way not unusual with our author.] Perhaps, in addition to the passages in Gen. 18:0, Heb. 13:2, to which the editors naturally refer, Tertullian may allude to such passages as Mark 9:37, Matt. 25:40, 45. [Christo in pauperibus.]
690:8932I have followed Routh’s conjecture, “feceris” for “fecerit,” which Oehler does not even notice.
690:8933Luke x. 5.
Chapter XXVII.—Of Subjoining a Psalm.
The more diligent in prayer are wont to subjoin in their prayers the “Hallelujah,” 8934 and such kind of psalms, in the closes of which the company respond. And, of course, every institution is excellent which, for the extolling and honouring of God, aims unitedly to bring Him enriched prayer as a choice victim. 8935
Footnotes
690:8934Perhaps “the great Hallelujah,” i.e. the last five psalms.
690:8935[The author seems to have in mind (Hos. xiv. 2) “the calves of our lips.”]
Chapter XXVIII.—Of the Spiritual Victim, Which Prayer is.
For this is the spiritual victim 8936 which has abolished the pristine sacrifices. “To what purpose,” saith He, “(bring ye) me the multitude of your sacrifices? I am full of holocausts of rams, and I desire not the fat of rams, and the blood of bulls and of goats. For who hath required these from your hands?” 8937 What, then, God has required the Gospel teaches. “An hour will come,” saith He, “when the true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and truth. For God is a Spirit, and accordingly requires His adorers to be such.” 8938 We are the true adorers and the true priests, 8939 who, praying in spirit, 8940 sacrifice, in spirit, prayer,—a victim proper and acceptable to God, which assuredly He has required, which He has looked forward to 8941 for Himself! This victim, devoted from the whole heart, fed on faith, tended by truth, entire in innocence, pure in chastity, garlanded with love, 8942 we ought to escort with the pomp 8943 of good works, amid psalms and hymns, unto God’s altar, 8944 to obtain for us all things from God.
Footnotes
690:89361 Pet. ii. 5.
690:8937Isa. i. 11. See the LXX.
690:8938John 4:23, 24.
690:8939Sacerdotes; comp. de Ex. Cast. c. 7.
690:89401 Cor. 14:15, Eph. 6:18.
690:8941Or, “provided.”
690:8942“Agape,” perhaps “the love-feast.”
690:8943Or, “procession.”
690:8944Altare.
Chapter XXIX.—Of the Power of Prayer.
For what has God, who exacts it ever denied 8945 to prayer coming from “spirit and truth?” How mighty specimens of its efficacy do we read, and hear, and believe! Old-world prayer, indeed, used to free from fires, 8946 and from beasts, 8947 and from famine; 8948 and yet it had not (then) received its form from Christ. But how far more amply operative is Christian prayer! It does not station the angel of dew in mid-fires, 8949 nor muzzle lions, nor transfer to the hungry the rustics’ bread; 8950 it has no delegated grace to avert any sense of suffering; 8951 but it supplies the suffering, and the feeling, and the grieving, with endurance: it amplifies grace by virtue, that faith may know what she obtains from the Lord, understanding what—for God’s name’s sake—she suffers. But in days gone by, withal prayer used to call down 8952 plagues, scatter the armies of foes, withhold the wholesome influences of the showers. Now, however, the prayer of righteousness averts all God’s anger, keeps bivouac on behalf of personal enemies, makes supplication on behalf of persecutors. Is it wonder if it knows how to extort the rains of heaven 8953 —(prayer) which was once able to procure its fires? 8954 Prayer is alone that which vanquishes 8955 God. But Christ has willed that it be operative for no evil: He had conferred on it all its virtue in the cause of good. And so it knows nothing save how to recall the souls of the departed from the very path of death, to transform the weak, to restore the sick, to purge the possessed, to open prison-bars, to loose the bonds of the innocent. Likewise it washes away faults, repels temptations, extinguishes persecutions, consoles the faint-spirited, cheers the high-spirited, escorts travellers, appeases waves, makes robbers stand aghast, nourishes the poor, governs the rich, upraises the fallen, arrests the falling, confirms the standing. Prayer is the wall of faith: her arms and missiles 8956 against the foe who keeps watch over us on all sides. And, so never walk we unarmed. By day, be we mindful of Station; by night, of vigil. Under the arms of prayer guard we the standard of our General; await we in prayer the angel’s trump. 8957 The angels, likewise, all pray; every creature prays; cattle and wild beasts pray and bend their knees; and when they issue from their layers and lairs, 8958 they look up heavenward with no idle mouth, making their breath vibrate 8959 after their own manner. Nay, the birds too, rising out of the nest, upraise themselves heavenward, and, instead of hands, expand the cross of their wings, and say somewhat to seem like prayer. 8960 What more then, touching the office of prayer? Even the Lord Himself prayed; to whom be honour and virtue unto the ages of the ages!
Footnotes
690:8945Routh would read, “What will God deny?”
690:8946Dan. iii.
690:8947Dan. vi.
690:89481 Kings 18:0, Jas. 5:17, Jas. 18:0.
691:8949i.e. “the angel who preserved in the furnace the three youths besprinkled, as it were, with dewy shower” (Muratori quoted by Oehler). [Apocrypha, The Song, etc., verses 26, 27.]
691:89502 Kings iv. 42-44.
691:8951i.e. in brief, its miraculous operations, as they are called, are suspended in these ways.
691:8952Or, “inflict.”
691:8953See Apolog. c. 5 (Oehler).
691:8954See 2 Kings i.
691:8955[A reference to Jacob’s wrestling. Also, probably, to Matt. xi. 12.]
691:8956Or, “her armour defensive and offensive.”
691:89571 Cor. 15:52, 1 Thess. 4:16.
691:8958Or, “pens and dens.”
691:8959As if in prayer.
691:8960This beautiful passage should be supplemented by a similar one from St. Bernard: “Nonne et aviculas levat, non onerat pennarum numerositas ipsa? Tolle eas, et reliquum corpus pondere suo fertur ad ima. Sic disciplinam Christi, sic suave jugum, sic onus leve, quo deponimus, eo deprimimur ipsi: quia portat potius quam portatur.” Epistola, ccclxxxv. Bernardi Opp. Tom. i. p. 691. Ed. (Mabillon.) Gaume, Paris, 1839. Bearing the cross uplifts the Christian.]
IV.
Ad Martyras. 8961
[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]
————————————
Chapter I.
Blessed Martyrs Designate,—Along with the provision which our lady mother the Church from her bountiful breasts, and each brother out of his private means, makes for your bodily wants in the prison, accept also from me some contribution to your spiritual sustenance; for it is not good that the flesh be feasted and the spirit starve: nay, if that which is weak be carefully looked to, it is but right that that which is still weaker should not be neglected. Not that I am specially entitled to exhort you; yet not only the trainers and overseers, but even the unskilled, nay, all who choose, without the slightest need for it, are wont to animate from afar by their cries the most accomplished gladiators, and from the mere throng of onlookers useful suggestions have sometimes come; first, then, O blessed, grieve not the Holy Spirit, 8962 who has entered the prison with you; for if He had not gone with you there, you would not have been there this day. Do you give all endeavour, therefore, to retain Him; so let Him lead you thence to your Lord. The prison, indeed, is the devil’s house as well, wherein he keeps his family. But you have come within its walls for the very purpose of trampling the wicked one under foot in his chosen abode. You had already in pitched battle outside utterly overcome him; let him have no reason, then, to say to himself, “They are now in my domain; with vile hatreds I shall tempt them, with defections or dissensions among themselves.” Let him fly from your presence, and skulk away into his own abysses, shrunken and torpid, as though he were an outcharmed or smoked-out snake. Give him not the success in his own kingdom of setting you at variance with each other, but let him find you armed and fortified with concord; for peace among you is battle with him. Some, not able to find this peace in the Church, have been used to seek it from the imprisoned martyrs. 8963 And so you ought to have it dwelling with you, and to cherish it, and to guard it, that you may be able perhaps to bestow it upon others.
Footnotes
693:8961Written in his early ministry, and strict orthodoxy. [It may be dated circa a.d. 197, as external evidence will shew.]
693:8962Eph. iv. 30. [Some differences had risen between these holy sufferers, as to the personal merits of offenders who had appealed to them for their interest in restoring them to communion.
693:8963[He favours this resource as sanctioned by custom, and gently persuades them, by agreeing as to its propriety, to bestow peace upon others. But, the foresight of those who objected was afterwards justified, for in Cyprian’s day this practice led to greater evils, and he was obliged to discourage it (ep. xi.) in an epistle to confessors.]
Chapter II.
Other things, hindrances equally of the soul, may have accompanied you as far as the prison gate, to which also your relatives may have attended you. There and thenceforth you were severed from the world; how much more from the ordinary course of worldly life and all its affairs! Nor let this separation from the world alarm you; for if we reflect that the world is more really the prison, we shall see that you have gone out of a prison rather than into one. The world has the greater darkness, blinding men’s hearts. The world imposes the more grievous fetters, binding men’s very souls. The world breathes out the worst impurities—human lusts. The world contains the larger number of criminals, even the whole human race. Then, last of all, it awaits the judgment, not of the proconsul, but of God. Wherefore, O blessed, you may regard yourselves as having been translated from a prison to, we may say, a place of safety. It is full of darkness, but ye yourselves are light; it has bonds, but God has made you free. Unpleasant exhalations are there, but ye are an odour of sweetness. The judge is daily looked for, but ye shall judge the judges themselves. Sadness may be there for him who sighs for the world’s enjoyments. The Christian outside the prison has renounced the world, but in the prison he has renounced a prison too. It is of no consequence where you are in the world—you who are not of it. And if you have lost some of life’s sweets, it is the way of business to suffer present loss, that after gains may be the larger. Thus far I say nothing of the rewards to which God invites the martyrs. Meanwhile let us compare the life of the world and of the prison, and see if the spirit does not gain more in the prison than the flesh loses. Nay, by the care of the Church and the love of the brethren, 8964 even the flesh does not lose there what is for its good, while the spirit obtains besides important advantages. You have no occasion to look on strange gods, you do not run against their images; you have no part in heathen holidays, even by mere bodily mingling in them; you are not annoyed by the foul fumes of idolatrous solemnities; you are not pained by the noise of the public shows, nor by the atrocity or madness or immodesty of their celebrants; your eyes do not fall on stews and brothels; you are free from causes of offence, from temptations, from unholy reminiscences; you are free now from persecution too. The prison does the same service for the Christian which the desert did for the prophet. Our Lord Himself spent much of His time in seclusion, that He might have greater liberty to pray, that He might be quit of the world. It was in a mountain solitude, too, He showed His glory to the disciples. Let us drop the name of prison; let us call it a place of retirement. Though the body is shut in, though the flesh is confined, all things are open to the spirit. In spirit, then, roam abroad; in spirit walk about, not setting before you shady paths or long colonnades, but the way which leads to God. As often as in spirit your footsteps are there, so often you will not be in bonds. The leg does not feel the chain when the mind is in the heavens. The mind compasses the whole man about, and whither it wills it carries him. But where thy heart shall be, there shall be thy treasure. 8965 Be there our heart, then, where we would have our treasure.
Footnotes
694:8964[Who ministered to their fellow-Christians in prison, for the testimony of Jesus. What follows is a sad picture of social life among heathens.]
694:8965Matt. vi. 21.
Chapter III.
Grant now, O blessed, that even to Christians the prison is unpleasant; yet we were called to the warfare of the living God in our very response to the sacramental words. Well, no soldier comes out to the campaign laden with luxuries, nor does he go to action from his comfortable chamber, but from the light and narrow tent, where every kind of hardness, roughness and unpleasantness must be put up with. Even in peace soldiers inure themselves to war by toils and inconveniences—marching in arms, running over the plain, working at the ditch, making the testudo, engaging in many arduous labours. The sweat of the brow is on everything, that bodies and minds may not shrink at having to pass from shade to sunshine, from sunshine to icy cold, from the robe of peace to the coat of mail, from silence to clamour, from quiet to tumult. In like manner, O blessed ones, count whatever is hard in this lot of yours as a discipline of your powers of mind and body. You are about to pass through a noble struggle, in which the living God acts the part of superintendent, in which the Holy Ghost is your trainer, in which the prize is an eternal crown of angelic essence, citizenship in the heavens, glory everlasting. Therefore your Master, Jesus Christ, who has anointed you with His Spirit, and led you forth to the arena, has seen it good, before the day of conflict, to take you from a condition more pleasant in itself, and has imposed on you a harder treatment, that your strength might be the greater. For the athletes, too, are set apart to a more stringent discipline, that they may have their physical powers built up. They are kept from luxury, from daintier meats, from more pleasant drinks; they are pressed, racked, worn out; the harder their labours in the preparatory training, the stronger is the hope of victory. “And they,” says the apostle, “that they may obtain a corruptible crown.” 8966 We, with the crown eternal in our eye, look upon the prison as our training-ground, that at the goal of final judgment we may be brought forth well disciplined by many a trial; since virtue is built up by hardships, as by voluptuous indulgence it is overthrown.
Footnotes
694:89661 Cor. ix. 25.
Chapter IV.
From the saying of our Lord we know that the flesh is weak, the spirit willing. 8967 Let us not, withal, take delusive comfort from the Lord’s acknowledgment of the weakness of the flesh. For precisely on this account He first declared the spirit willing, that He might show which of the two ought to be subject to the other—that the flesh might yield obedience to the spirit—the weaker to the stronger; the former thus from the latter getting strength. Let the spirit hold convene with the flesh about the common salvation, thinking no longer of the troubles of the prison, but of the wrestle and conflict for which they are the preparation. The flesh, perhaps, will dread the merciless sword, and the lofty cross, and the rage of the wild beasts, and that punishment of the flames, of all most terrible, and all the skill of the executioner in torture. But, on the other side, let the spirit set clearly before both itself and the flesh, how these things, though exceeding painful, have yet been calmly endured by many,—and, have even been eagerly desired for the sake of fame and glory; and this not only in the case of men, but of women too, that you, O holy women, may be worthy of your sex. It would take me too long to enumerate one by one the men who at their own self-impulse have put an end to themselves. As to women, there is a famous case at hand: the violated Lucretia, in the presence of her kinsfolk, plunged the knife into herself, that she might have glory for her chastity. Mucius burned his right hand on an altar, that this deed of his might dwell in fame. The philosophers have been outstripped,—for instance Heraclitus, who, smeared with cow dung, burned himself; and Empedocles, who leapt down into the fires of Ætna; and Peregrinus, 8968 who not long ago threw himself on the funeral pile. For women even have despised the flames. Dido did so, lest, after the death of a husband very dear to her, she should be compelled to marry again; and so did the wife of Hasdrubal, who, Carthage being on fire, that she might not behold her husband suppliant as Scipio’s feet, rushed with her children into the conflagration, in which her native city was destroyed. Regulus, a Roman general, who had been taken prisoner by the Carthaginians, declined to be exchanged for a large number of Carthaginian captives, choosing rather to be given back to the enemy. He was crammed into a sort of chest; and, everywhere pierced by nails driven from the outside, he endured so many crucifixions. Woman has voluntarily sought the wild beasts, and even asps, those serpents worse than bear or bull, which Cleopatra applied to herself, that she might not fall into the hands of her enemy. But the fear of death is not so great as the fear of torture. And so the Athenian courtezan succumbed to the executioner, when, subjected to torture by the tyrant for having taken part in a conspiracy, still making no betrayal of her confederates, she at last bit off her tongue and spat it in the tyrant’s face, that he might be convinced of the uselessness of his torments, however long they should be continued. Everybody knows what to this day is the great Lacedæmonian solemnity—the διαμαστύγωσις, or scourging; in which sacred rite the Spartan youths are beaten with scourges before the altar, their parents and kinsmen standing by and exhorting them to stand it bravely out. For it will be always counted more honourable and glorious that the soul rather than the body has given itself to stripes. But if so high a value is put on the earthly glory, won by mental and bodily vigour, that men, for the praise of their fellows, I may say, despise the sword, the fire, the cross, the wild beasts, the torture; these surely are but trifling sufferings to obtain a celestial glory and a divine reward. If the bit of glass is so precious, what must the true pearl be worth? Are we not called on, then, most joyfully to lay out as much for the true as others do for the false?
Footnotes
694:8967Matt. xxvi. 41.
695:8968[He is said to have perished circa a.d. 170.]
Chapter V.
I leave out of account now the motive of glory. All these same cruel and painful conflicts, a mere vanity you find among men—in fact, a sort of mental disease—as trampled under foot. How many ease-lovers does the conceit of arms give to the sword? They actually go down to meet the very wild beasts in vain ambition; and they fancy themselves more winsome from the bites and scars of the contest. Some have sold themselves to fires, to run a certain distance in a burning tunic. Others, with most enduring shoulders, have walked about under the hunters’ whips. The Lord has given these things a place in the world, O blessed, not without some reason: for what reason, but now to animate us, and on that day to confound us if we have feared to suffer for the truth, that we might be saved, what others out of vanity have eagerly sought for to their ruin?
Chapter VI.
Passing, too, from examples of enduring constancy having such an origin as this, let us turn to a simple contemplation of man’s estate in its ordinary conditions, that mayhap from things which happen to us whether we will or no, and which we must set our minds to bear, we may get instruction. How often, then, have fires consumed the living! How often have wild beasts torn men in pieces, it may be in their own forests, or it may be in the heart of cities, when they have chanced to escape from their dens! How many have fallen by the robber’s sword! How many have suffered at the hands of enemies the death of the cross, after having been tortured first, yes, and treated with every sort of contumely! One may even suffer in the cause of a man what he hesitates to suffer in the cause of God. In reference to this indeed, let the present time 8969 bear testimony, when so many persons of rank have met with death in a mere human being’s cause, and that though from their birth and dignities and bodily condition and age such a fate seemed most unlikely; either suffering at his hands if they have taken part against him, or from his enemies if they have been his partisans.
Footnotes
696:8969[After the defeat and suicide of Albinus, at Lyons, many persons, some of Senatorial rank, were cruelly put to death.]
V.
Appendix.
Introductory Notice to the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas.
[Translated by the Rev. R. E. Wallis, Ph.D.]
————————————
Nobody, will blame me for placing here the touching history of these Martyrs. It illustrates the period of history we are now considering, and sheds light on the preceding treatise. I can hardly read it without tears, and it ought to make us love “the noble army of martyrs.” I think Tertullian was the editor of the story, not its author. 8970 Felicitas is mentioned by name in the De Anima: and the closing paragraph of this memoir is quite in his style. To these words I need only add that Dr. Routh, who unfortunately decided not to re-edit it, ascribes the first edition to Lucas Holstenius. He was Librarian of the Vatican and died in 1661. The rest may be learned from this Introductory Notice of the Translator:
Perpetua and Felicitas suffered martyrdom in the reign of Septimius Severus, about the year 202 a.d. Tertullian mentions Perpetua, 8971 and a further clue to the date is given in the allusion to the birth-day of “Geta the Cæsar,” the son of Septimius Severus. There is therefore, good reason for rejecting the opinion held by some, that they suffered under Valerian and Gallienus. Some think that they suffered at Tuburbium in Mauritania; but the more general opinion is, that Carthage was the scene of their martyrdom.
The “Acta,” detailing the sufferings of Perpetua and Felicitas, has been held by all critics to be a genuine document of antiquity. But much difference exists as to who was the compiler. In the writing itself, Perpetua and Saturus are mentioned as having written certain portions of it; and there is no reason to doubt the statement. Who the writer of the remaining portion was, is not known. Some have assigned the work to Tertullian; some have maintained that, whoever the writer was, he was a Montanist, and some have tried to show that both martyrs and narrator were Montanists. 8972 The narrator must have been a contemporary; according to many critics, he was an eye-witness of the sufferings of the martyrs. And he must have written the narrative shortly after the events.
Dean Milman says, “There appear strong indications that the acts of these African martyrs are translated from the Greek; at least it is difficult otherwise to account for the frequent untranslated Greek words and idioms in the text. 8973
The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas was edited by Petrus Possinus, Rome, 1663; by Henr. Valesius, Paris, 1664; and the Bollandists. The best and latest edition is by Ruissart, whose text is adopted in Gallandi’s and Migne’s collections of the Fathers.
Footnotes
697:8970Cap. lv. He calls her fortissima martyr, and she is one of only two or three contemporary sufferers whom he mentioned by name.
697:8971[In the De Anima, cap. lv. as see above.]
697:8972[Yet see the sermons of St. Augustine (if indeed his) on the Passion of these Saints. Sermon 281 and 282, opp. Tom. v. pp. 1284–5.]
697:8973Hist. of Christianity, vol. i. ch. viii.
The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas.
————————————
Preface. 8974
If ancient illustrations of faith which both testify to God’s grace and tend to man’s edification are collected in writing, so that by the perusal of them, as if by the reproduction of the facts, as well God may be honoured, as man may be strengthened; why should not new instances be also collected, that shall be equally suitable for both purposes,—if only on the ground that these modern examples will one day become ancient and available for posterity, although in their present time they are esteemed of less authority, by reason of the presumed veneration for antiquity? But let men look to it, if they judge the power of the Holy Spirit to be one, according to the times and seasons; since some things of later date must be esteemed of more account as being nearer to the very last times, in accordance with the exuberance of grace manifested to the final periods determined for the world. For “in the last days, saith the Lord, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh; and their sons and their daughters shall prophesy. And upon my servants and my handmaidens will I pour out of my Spirit; and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” 8975 And thus we—who both acknowledge and reverence, even as we do the prophecies, modern visions as equally promised to us, and consider the other powers of the Holy Spirit as an agency of the Church for which also He was sent, administering all gifts in all, even as the Lord distributed to every one 8976 as well needfully collect them in writing, as commemorate them in reading to God’s glory; that so no weakness or despondency of faith may suppose that the divine grace abode only among the ancients, whether in respect of the condescension that raised up martyrs, or that gave revelations; since God always carries into effect what He has promised, for a testimony to unbelievers, to believers for a benefit. And we therefore, what we have heard and handled, declare also to you, brethren and little children, that as well you who were concerned in these matters may be reminded of them again to the glory of the Lord, as that you who know them by report may have communion with the blessed martyrs, and through them with the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and honour, for ever and ever. 8977 Amen.
Footnotes
699:8974[Both Perpetua and Felicitas were evidently Montanistic in character and impressions, but, the fact that they have never been reputed other than Catholic, goes far to explain Tertullian’s position for years after he had withdrawn from communion with the vacillating Victor.]
699:8975Joel 2:28, 29. [The quotation here is a note of Montanistic prepossessions in the writer.]
699:8976[Routh notes this as undoubted evidence of a Montanistic author. Reliquiæ, Vol. I. p. 455.]
699:8977[St. Augustine takes pains to remind us that these Acta are not canonical. De Anima, cap. 2, opp. Tom. x. p. 481.]
Chapter I.—Argument.—When the Saints Were Apprehended, St. Perpetua Successfully Resisted Her Father’s Pleading, Was Baptized with the Others, Was Thrust into a Filthy Dungeon. Anxious About Her Infant, by a Vision Granted to Her, She Understood that Her Martyrdom Would Take Place Very Shortly.
1. The young catechumens, Revocatus and his fellow-servant Felicitas, Saturninus and Secundulus, were apprehended. And among them also was Vivia Perpetua, respectably born, liberally educated, a married matron, having a father and mother and two brothers, one of whom, like herself, was a catechumen, and a son an infant at the breast. She herself was about twenty-two years of age. From this point onward she shall herself narrate the whole course of her martyrdom, as she left it described by her own hand and with her own mind.
2. “While” says she, “we were still with the persecutors, and my father, for the sake of his affection for me, was persisting in seeking to turn me away, and to cast me down from the faith,—‘Father,’ said I, ‘do you see, let us say, this vessel lying here to be a little pitcher, or something else?’ And he said, ‘I see it to be so.’ And I replied to him, ‘Can it be called by any other name than what it is?’ And he said, ‘No.’ ‘Neither can I call myself anything else than what I am, a Christian.’ Then my father, provoked at this saying, threw himself upon me, as if he would tear my eyes out. But he only distressed me, and went away overcome by the devil’s arguments. Then, in a few days after I had been without my father, I gave thanks to the Lord; and his absence became a source of consolation 8978 to me. In that same interval of a few days we were baptized, and to me the Spirit prescribed that in the water of baptism nothing else was to be sought for bodily endurance. 8979 After a few days we are taken into the dungeon, and I was very much afraid, because I had never felt such darkness. O terrible day! O the fierce heat of the shock of the soldiery, because of the crowds! I was very unusually distressed by my anxiety for my infant. There were present there Tertius and Pomponius, the blessed deacons who ministered to us, and had arranged by means of a gratuity that we might be refreshed by being sent out for a few hours into a pleasanter part of the prison. Then going out of the dungeon, all attended to their own wants. 8980 I suckled my child, which was now enfeebled with hunger. In my anxiety for it, I addressed my mother and comforted my brother, and commended to their care my son. I was languishing because I had seen them languishing on my account. Such solicitude I suffered for many days, and I obtained for my infant to remain in the dungeon with me; and forthwith I grew strong and was relieved from distress and anxiety about my infant; and the dungeon became to me as it were a palace, so that I preferred being there to being elsewhere.
3. “Then my brother said to me, ‘My dear sister, you are already in a position of great dignity, and are such that you may ask for a vision, and that it may be made known to you whether this is to result in a passion or an escape.’ 8981 And I, who knew that I was privileged to converse with the Lord, whose kindnesses I had found to be so great, boldly promised him, and said, ‘To-morrow I will tell you.’ And I asked, and this was what was shown me. I saw a golden ladder of marvellous height, reaching up even to heaven, and very narrow, so that persons could only ascend it one by one; and on the sides of the ladder was fixed every kind of iron weapon. There were there swords, lances, hooks, daggers; so that if any one went up carelessly, or not looking upwards, he would be torn to pieces and his flesh would cleave to the iron weapons. And under the ladder itself was crouching a dragon of wonderful size, who lay in wait for those who ascended, and frightened them from the ascent. And Saturus went up first, who had subsequently delivered himself up freely on our account, not having been present at the time that we were taken prisoners. And he attained the top of the ladder, and turned towards me, and said to me, ‘Perpetua, I am waiting for 8982 you; but be careful that the dragon do not bite you.’ And I said, ‘In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, he shall not hurt me.’ And from under the ladder itself, as if in fear of me, he slowly lifted up his head; and as I trod upon the first step, I trod upon his head. And I went up, and I saw an immense extent of garden, and in the midst of the garden a white-haired man sitting in the dress of a shepherd, 8983 of a large stature, milking sheep; and standing around were many thousand white-robed ones. And he raised his head, and looked upon me, and said to me, ‘Thou art welcome, daughter.’ And he called me, and from the cheese as he was milking he gave me as it were a little cake, and I received it with folded hands; and I ate it, and all who stood around said Amen. And at the sound of their voices I was awakened, still tasting a sweetness which I cannot describe. And I immediately related this to my brother, and we understood that it was to be a passion, and we ceased henceforth to have any hope in this world.
Footnotes
700:8978“Refrigeravit,” Græce ἀνέπαυσεν, scil. “requiem dedit.”
700:8979i.e. the grace of martyrdom.
700:8980Sibi vacabant.
700:8981Commeatus.
700:8982“Sustineo,” Græce ὑπομένω, scil. “exspecto.”
700:8983This was an ordinary mode of picturing our Lord in the oratories and on the sacred vessels of those days. [This passage will recall the allegory of Hermas, with which the martyr was doubtless familiar.]
Chapter II.—Argument. Perpetua, When Besieged by Her Father, Comforts Him. When Led with Others to the Tribunal, She Avows Herself a Christian, and is Condemned with the Rest to the Wild Beasts. She Prays for Her Brother Dinocrates, Who Was Dead.
1. “After a few days there prevailed a report that we should be heard. And then my father came to me from the city, worn out with anxiety. He came up to me, that he might cast me down, saying, ‘Have pity my daughter, on my grey hairs. Have pity on your father, if I am worthy to be called a father by you. If with these hands I have brought you up to this flower of your age, if I have preferred you to all your brothers, do not deliver me up to the scorn of men. Have regard to your brothers, have regard to your mother and your aunt, have regard to your son, who will not be able to live after you. Lay aside your courage, and do not bring us all to destruction; for none of us will speak in freedom if you should suffer anything.’ These things said my father in his affection, kissing my hands, and throwing himself at my feet; and with tears he called me not Daughter, but Lady. And I grieved over the grey hairs of my father, that he alone of all my family would not rejoice over my passion. And I comforted him, saying, ‘On that scaffold 8984 whatever God wills shall happen. For know that we are not placed in our own power, but in that of God.’ And he departed from me in sorrow.
2. “Another day, while we were at dinner, we were suddenly taken away to be heard, and we arrived at the town-hall. At once the rumour spread through the neighbourhood of the public place, and an immense number of people were gathered together. We mount the platform. The rest were interrogated, and confessed. Then they came to me, and my father immediately appeared with my boy, and withdrew me from the step, and said in a supplicating tone, ‘Have pity on your babe.’ And Hilarianus the procurator, who had just received the power of life and death in the place of the proconsul Minucius Timinianus, who was deceased, said, ‘Spare the grey hairs of your father, spare the infancy of your boy, offer sacrifice for the well-being of the emperors.’ And I replied, ‘I will not do so.’ Hilarianus said, ‘Are you a Christian?’ And I replied, ‘I am a Christian.’ And as my father stood there to cast me down from the faith, he was ordered by Hilarianus to be thrown down, and was beaten with rods. And my father’s misfortune grieved me as if I myself had been beaten, I so grieved for his wretched old age. 8985 The procurator then delivers judgment on all of us, and condemns us to the wild beasts, and we went down cheerfully to the dungeon. Then, because my child had been used to receive suck from me, and to stay with me in the prison, I send Pomponius the deacon to my father to ask for the infant, but my father would not give it him. And even as God willed it, the child no long desired the breast, nor did my breast cause me uneasiness, lest I should be tormented by care for my babe and by the pain of my breasts at once.
3. “After a few days, whilst we were all praying, on a sudden, in the middle of our prayer, there came to me a word, and I named Dinocrates; and I was amazed that that name had never come into my mind until then, and I was grieved as I remembered his misfortune. And I felt myself immediately to be worthy, and to be called on to ask on his behalf. 8986 And for him I began earnestly to make supplication, and to cry with groaning to the Lord. Without delay, on that very night, this was shown to me in a vision. 8987 I saw Dinocrates going out from a gloomy place, where also there were several others, and he was parched and very thirsty, with a filthy countenance and pallid colour, and the wound on his face which he had when he died. This Dinocrates had been my brother after the flesh, seven years of age 8988 who died miserably with disease—his face being so eaten out with cancer, that his death caused repugnance to all men. For him I had made my prayer, and between him and me there was a large interval, 8989 so that neither of us could approach to the other. And moreover, in the same place where Dinocrates was, there was a pool full of water, having its brink higher than was the stature of the boy; and Dinocrates raised himself up as if to drink. And I was grieved that, although that pool held water, still, on account of the height to its brink, he could not drink. And I was aroused, and knew that my brother was in suffering. But I trusted that my prayer would bring help to his suffering; and I prayed for him every day until we passed over into the prison of the camp, for we were to fight in the camp-show. Then was the birth-day of Geta Cæsar, and I made my prayer for my brother day and night, groaning and weeping that he might be granted to me.
4. “Then, on the day on which we remained in fetters, 8990 this was shown to me. I saw that that place which I had formerly observed to be in gloom was now bright; and Dinocrates, with a clean body well clad, was finding refreshment. And where there had been a wound, I saw a scar; and that pool which I had before seen, I saw now with its margin lowered even to the boy’s navel. And one drew water from the pool incessantly, and upon its brink was a goblet filled with water; and Dinocrates drew near and began to drink from it, and the goblet did not fail. And when he was satisfied, he went away from the water to play joyously, after the manner of children, and I awoke. Then I understood that he was translated from the place of punishment.
Footnotes
701:8984“Catasta,” a raised platform on which the martyrs were placed either for trial or torture.
701:8985[St. August. opp. iv. 541.]
701:8986[The story in 2 Maccab. xii. 40-45, is there narrated as a thought suggested to the soldiers under Judas, and not discouraged by him, though it concerned men guilty of idolatry and dying in mortal sin, by the vengeance of God. It may have occurred to early Christians that their heathen kindred might, therefore, not be beyond the visitations of the Divine compassion. But, obviously, even were it not an Apocryphal text, it can have no bearing whatever on the case of Christians. The doctrine of Purgatory is that nobody dying in mortal sin can have the benefit of its discipline, or any share in the prayers and oblations of the Faithful, whatever.]
701:8987“Oromate.” [This vision, it must be observed, has nothing to do with prayers for the Christian dead, for this brother of Perpetua was a heathen child whom she supposed to be in the Inferi. It illustrates the anxieties Christians felt for those of their kindred who had not died in the Lord; even for children of seven years of age. Could the gulf be bridged and they received into Abraham’s bosom? This dream of Perpetua comforted her with a trust that so it should be. Of course this story has been used fraudulently, to help a system of which these times knew nothing. Cyprian says expressly: “Apud Inferos confessio, non est, nec exomologesis illic fieri potest.” Epistola lii. p. 98. Opp. Paris, 1574. In the Edinburgh series (translation) this epistle is numbered 51, and elsewhere 54.]
701:8988[There is not the slightest reason to suppose that this child had been baptized: the father a heathen and Perpetua herself a recent catechumen. Elucidation.]
701:8989“Diadema,” or rather “diastema.” [Borrowed from Luke xvi. 26. But that gulf could not be passed according to the evangelist.]
701:8990“Nervo.”
Chapter III.—Argument. Perpetua is Again Tempted by Her Father. Her Third Vision, Wherein She is Led Away to Struggle Against an Egyptian. She Fights, Conquers, and Receives the Reward.
1. “Again, after a few days, Pudens, a soldier, an assistant overseer 8991 of the prison, who began to regard us in great esteem, perceiving that the great power of God was in us, admitted many brethren to see us, that both we and they might be mutually refreshed. And when the day of the exhibition drew near, my father, worn with suffering, came in to me, and began to tear out his beard, and to throw himself on the earth, and to cast himself down on his face, and to reproach his years, and to utter such words as might move all creation. I grieved for his unhappy old age. 8992
2. “The day before that on which we were to fight, I saw in a vision that Pomponius the deacon came hither to the gate of the prison, and knocked vehemently. I went out to him, and opened the gate for him; and he was clothed in a richly ornamented white robe, and he had on manifold calliculæ. 8993 And he said to me, ‘Perpetua, we are waiting for you; come!’ And he held his hand to me, and we began to go through rough and winding places. Scarcely at length had we arrived breathless at the amphitheatre, when he led me into the middle of the arena, and said to me, ‘Do not fear, I am here with you, and I am labouring with you;’ and he departed. And I gazed upon an immense assembly in astonishment. And because I knew that I was given to the wild beasts, I marvelled that the wild beasts were not let loose upon me. Then there came forth against me a certain Egyptian, horrible in appearance, with his backers, to fight with me. And there came to me, as my helpers and encouragers, handsome youths; and I was stripped, and became a man. 8994 Then my helpers began to rub me with oil, as is the custom for contest; and I beheld that Egyptian on the other hand rolling in the dust. 8995 And a certain man came forth, of wondrous height, so that he even over-topped the top of the amphitheatre; and he wore a loose tunic and a purple robe between two bands over the middle of the breast; and he had on calliculæ of varied form, made of gold and silver; and he carried a rod, as if he were a trainer of gladiators, and a green branch upon which were apples of gold. And he called for silence, and said, ‘This Egyptian, if he should overcome this woman, shall kill her with the sword; and if she shall conquer him, she shall receive this branch.’ Then he departed. And we drew near to one another, and began to deal out blows. He sought to lay hold of my feet, while I struck at his face with my heels; and I was lifted up in the air, and began thus to thrust at him as if spurning the earth. But when I saw that there was some delay I joined my hands so as to twine my fingers with one another; and I took hold upon his head, and he fell on his face, and I trod upon his head. 8996 And the people began to shout, and my backers to exult. And I drew near to the trainer and took the branch; and he kissed me, and said to me, ‘Daughter, peace be with you:’ and I began to go gloriously to the Sanavivarian gate. 8997 Then I awoke, and perceived that I was not to fight with beasts, but against the devil. Still I knew that the victory was awaiting me. This, so far, I have completed several days before the exhibition; but what passed at the exhibition itself let who will write.”
Footnotes
702:8991Optio.
702:8992[St. Aug. Opp. Tom. v. p. 1284.]
702:8993It seems uncertain what may be the meaning of this word. It is variously supposed to signify little round ornaments either of cloth or metal attached to the soldier’s dress, or the small bells on the priestly robe. Some also read the word galliculæ, small sandals.
702:8994[Concerning these visions, see Augustine, De Anima, cap. xviii. el seq.]
702:8995“Afa” is the Greek word ἁφή, a grip; hence used of the yellow sand sprinkled over wrestlers, to enable them to grasp one another.
702:8996[Ps. 44:5, Ps. 60:12, Ps. 91:13, Ps. 108:13.]
702:8997This was the way by which the victims spared by the popular clemency escaped from the amphitheatre.
Chapter IV.—Argument. Saturus, in a Vision, and Perpetua Being Carried by Angels into the Great Light, Behold the Martyrs. Being Brought to the Throne of God, are Received with a Kiss. They Reconcile Optatus the Bishop and Aspasius the Presbyter.
1. Moreover, also, the blessed Saturus related this his vision, which he himself committed to writing:—“We had suffered,” says he, “and we were gone forth from the flesh, and we were beginning to be borne by four angels into the east; and their hands touched us not. And we floated not supine, looking upwards, but as if ascending a gentle slope. And being set free, we at length saw the first boundless light; and I said, ‘Perpetua’ (for she was at my side), ‘this is what the Lord promised to us; we have received the promise.’ And while we are borne by those same four angels, there appears to us a vast space which was like a pleasure-garden, having rose-trees and every kind of flower. And the height of the trees was after the measure of a cypress, and their leaves were falling 8998 incessantly. Moreover, there in the pleasure-garden four other angels appeared, brighter than the previous ones, who, when they saw us, gave us honour, and said to the rest of the angels, ‘Here they are! Here they are!’ with admiration. And those four angels who bore us, being greatly afraid, put us down; and we passed over on foot the space of a furlong in a broad path. There we found Jocundus and Saturninus and Artaxius, who having suffered the same persecution were burnt alive; and Quintus, who also himself a martyr had departed in the prison. And we asked of them where the rest were. And the angels said to us, ‘Come first, enter and greet your Lord.’
2. “And we came near to place, the walls of which were such as if they were built of light; and before the gate of that place stood four angels, who clothed those who entered with white robes. And being clothed, we entered and saw the boundless light, and heard the united voice of some who said without ceasing, ‘Holy! Holy! Holy!’ 8999 And in the midst of that place we saw as it were a hoary man sitting, having snow-white hair, and with a youthful countenance; and his feet we saw not. And on his right hand and on his left were four-and-twenty elders, and behind them a great many others were standing. We entered with great wonder, and stood before the throne; and the four angels raised us up, and we kissed Him, and He passed His hand over our face. And the rest of the elders said to us, ‘Let us stand;’ and we stood and made peace. And the elders said to us, ‘Go and enjoy.’ And I said, ‘Perpetua, you have what you wish.’ And she said to me, ‘Thanks be to God, that joyous as I was in the flesh, I am now more joyous here.’
3. “And we went forth, and saw before the entrance Optatus the bishop at the right hand, and Aspasius the presbyter, a teacher, 9000 at the left hand, separate and sad; and they cast themselves at our feet, and said to us, ‘Restore peace between us, because you have gone forth and have left us thus.’ And we said to them, ‘Art not thou our father, and thou our presbyter, that you should cast yourselves at our feet?’ And we prostrated ourselves, and we embraced them; and Perpetua began to speak with them, and we drew them apart in the pleasure-garden under a rose-tree. And while we were speaking with them, the angels said unto them, ‘Let them alone, that they may refresh themselves; 9001 and if you have any dissensions between you, forgive one another.’ And they drove them away. And they said to Optatus, ‘Rebuke thy people, because they assemble to you as if returning from the circus, and contending about factious matters.’ And then it seemed to us as if they would shut the doors. And in that place we began to recognise many brethren, and moreover martyrs. We were all nourished with an indescribable odour, which satisfied us. Then, I joyously awoke.”
Footnotes
703:8998“Cadebant;” but “ardebant”—“were burning”—seems a more probable reading. [The imitations of the Shepherd of Hermas, in this memoir hardly need pointing out.]
703:8999Agios.
703:9000A presbyter, that is, whose office was to teach, as distinct from other presbyters. See Cyprian, Epistles, vol. i. Ep. xxiii. p. 68. note i. transl. [One of those referred to by St. James iii. 1, and by St. Paul, 1 Tim. v. 17.]
703:9001More probably, “rest and refresh yourselves.” [“Go and enjoy,” or, “play,” or “take pleasure,” in the section preceding.]
Chapter V.—Argument. Secundulus Dies in the Prison. Felicitas is Pregnant, But with Many Prayers She Brings Forth in the Eighth Month Without Suffering, the Courage of Perpetua and of Saturus Unbroken.
1. The above were the more eminent visions of the blessed martyrs Saturus and Perpetua themselves, which they themselves committed to writing. 9002 But God called Secundulus, while he has yet in the prison, by an earlier exit from the world, not without favour, so as to give a respite to the beasts. Nevertheless, even if his soul did not acknowledge cause for thankfulness, assuredly his flesh did.
2. But respecting Felicitas (for to her also the Lord’s favour approached in the same way), when she had already gone eight months with child (for she had been pregnant when she was apprehended), as the day of the exhibition was drawing near, she was in great grief lest on account of her pregnancy she should be delayed,—because pregnant women are not allowed to be publicly punished,—and lest she should shed her sacred and guiltless blood among some who had been wicked subsequently. Moreover, also, her fellow-martyrs were painfully saddened lest they should leave so excellent a friend, and as it were companion, alone in the path of the same hope. Therefore, joining together their united cry, they poured forth their prayer to the Lord three days before the exhibition. Immediately after their prayer her pains came upon her, and when, with the difficulty natural to an eight months’ delivery, in the labour of bringing forth she was sorrowing, some one of the servants of the Cataractarii 9003 said to her, “You who are in such suffering now, what will you do when you are thrown to the beasts, which you despised when you refused to sacrifice?” And she replied, “Now it is I that suffer what I suffer; but then there will be another in me, who will suffer for me, because I also am about to suffer for Him.” Thus she brought forth a little girl, which a certain sister brought up as her daughter.
3. Since then the Holy Spirit permitted, and by permitting willed, that the proceedings of that exhibition should be committed to writing, although we are unworthy to complete the description of so great a glory; yet we obey as it were the command of the most blessed Perpetua, nay her sacred trust, and add one more testimony concerning her constancy and her loftiness of mind. While they were treated with more severity by the tribune, because, from the intimations of certain deceitful men, he feared lest they should be withdrawn from the prison by some sort of magic incantations, Perpetua answered to his face, and said, “Why do you not at least permit us to be refreshed, being as we are objectionable to the most noble Cæsar, and having to fight on his birth-day? 9004 Or is it not your glory if we are brought forward fatter on that occasion?” The tribune shuddered and blushed, and commanded that they should be kept with more humanity, so that permission was given to their brethren and others to go in and be refreshed with them; even the keeper of the prison trusting them now himself.
4. Moreover, on the day before, when in that last meal, which they call the free meal, they were partaking as far as they could, not of a free supper, but of an agape; with the same firmness they were uttering such words as these to the people, denouncing against them the judgment of the Lord, bearing witness to the felicity of their passion, laughing at the curiosity of the people who came together; while Saturus said, “To-morrow is not enough for you, for you to behold with pleasure that which you hate. Friends today, enemies to-morrow. Yet note our faces diligently, that you may recognise them on that day of judgment.” Thus all departed thence astonished, and from these things many believed.
Footnotes
703:9002[To be regarded like the Shepherd of Hermas, merely as visions, or allegorical romances.]
704:9003“The gaolers,” so called from the “cataracta,” or prison-gate, which they guarded.
704:9004[A gentle banter, like that of St. Lawrence on the gridiron.]
Chapter VI.—Argument. From the Prison They are Led Forth with Joy into the Amphitheatre, Especially Perpetua and Felicitas. All Refuse to Put on Profane Garments. They are Scourged, They are Thrown to the Wild Beasts. Saturus Twice is Unhurt. Perpetua and Felicitas are Thrown Down; They are Called Back to the Sanavivarian Gate. Saturus Wounded by a Leopard, Exhorts the Soldier. They Kiss One Another, and are Slain with the Sword.
1. The day of their victory shone forth, and they proceeded from the prison into the amphitheatre, as if to an assembly, joyous and of brilliant countenances; if perchance shrinking, it was with joy, and not with fear. Perpetua followed with placid look, and with step and gait as a matron of Christ, beloved of God; casting down the luster of her eyes from the gaze of all. Moreover, Felicitas, rejoicing that she had safely brought forth, so that she might fight with the wild beasts; from the blood and from the midwife to the gladiator, to wash after childbirth with a second baptism. And when they were brought to the gate, and were constrained to put on the clothing—the men, that of the priests of Saturn, and the women, that of those who were consecrated to Ceres—that noble-minded woman resisted even to the end with constancy. For she said, “We have come thus far of our own accord, for this reason, that our liberty might not be restrained. For this reason we have yielded our minds, that we might not do any such thing as this: we have agreed on this with you.” Injustice acknowledged the justice; the tribune yielded to their being brought as simply as they were. Perpetua sang psalms, already treading under foot the head of the Egyptian; Revocatus, and Saturninus, and Saturus uttered threatenings against the gazing people about this martyrdom. When they came within sight of Hilarianus, by gesture and nod, they began to say to Hilarianus, “Thou judgest us,” say they, “but God will judge thee.” At this the people, exasperated, demanded that they should be tormented with scourges as they passed along the rank of the venatores. 9005 And they indeed rejoiced that they should have incurred any one of their Lord’s passions.
2. But He who had said, “Ask, and ye shall receive,” 9006 gave to them when they asked, that death which each one had wished for. For when at any time they had been discoursing among themselves about their wish in respect of their martyrdom, Saturninus indeed had professed that he wished that he might be thrown to all the beasts; doubtless that he might wear a more glorious crown. Therefore in the beginning of the exhibition he and Revocatus made trial of the leopard, and moreover upon the scaffold they were harassed by the bear. Saturus, however, held nothing in greater abomination than a bear; but he imagined that he would be put an end to with one bite of a leopard. Therefore, when a wild boar was supplied, it was the huntsman rather who had supplied that boar who was gored by that same beast, and died the day after the shows. Saturus only was drawn out; and when he had been bound on the floor near to a bear, the bear would not come forth from his den. And so Saturus for the second time is recalled unhurt.
3. Moreover, for the young women the devil prepared a very fierce cow, provided especially for that purpose contrary to custom, rivalling their sex also in that of the beasts. And so, stripped and clothed with nets, they were led forth. The populace shuddered as they saw one young woman of delicate frame, and another with breasts still dropping from her recent childbirth. So, being recalled, they are unbound. 9007 Perpetua is first led in. She was tossed, and fell on her loins; and when she saw her tunic torn from her side, she drew it over her as a veil for her middle, rather mindful of her modesty than her suffering. Then she was called for again, and bound up her dishevelled hair; for it was not becoming for a martyr to suffer with dishevelled hair, lest she should appear to be mourning in her glory. So she rose up; and when she saw Felicitas crushed, she approached and gave her her hand, and lifted her up. And both of them stood together; and the brutality of the populace being appeased, they were recalled to the Sanavivarian gate. Then Perpetua was received by a certain one who was still a catechumen, Rusticus by name, who kept close to her; and she, as if aroused from sleep, so deeply had she been in the Spirit and in an ecstasy, began to look round her, and to say to the amazement of all, “I cannot tell when we are to be led out to that cow.” And when she had heard what had already happened, she did not believe it 9008 until she had perceived certain signs of injury in her body and in her dress, and had recognised the catechumen. Afterwards causing that catechumen and the brother to approach, she addressed them, saying, “Stand fast in the faith, and love one another, all of you, and be not offended at my sufferings.”
4. The same Saturus at the other entrance exhorted the soldier Pudens, saying, “Assuredly here I am, as I have promised and foretold, for up to this moment I have felt no beast. And now believe with your whole heart. Lo, I am going forth to that beast, and I shall be destroyed with one bite of the leopard.” And immediately at the conclusion of the exhibition he was thrown to the leopard; and with one bite of his he was bathed with such a quantity of blood, that the people shouted out to him as he was returning, the testimony of his second baptism, “Saved and washed, saved and washed.” 9009 Manifestly he was assuredly saved who had been glorified in such a spectacle. Then to the soldier Pudens he said, “Farewell, and be mindful of my faith; and let not these things disturb, but confirm you.” And at the same time he asked for a little ring from his finger, and returned it to him bathed in his wound, leaving to him an inherited token and the memory of his blood. And then lifeless he is cast down with the rest, to be slaughtered in the usual place. And when the populace called for them into the midst, that as the sword penetrated into their body they might make their eyes partners in the murder, they rose up of their own accord, and transferred themselves whither the people wished; but they first kissed one another, that they might consummate their martyrdom with the kiss of peace. The rest indeed, immoveable and in silence, received the sword-thrust; much more Saturus, who also had first ascended the ladder, and first gave up his spirit, for he also was waiting for Perpetua. But Perpetua, that she might taste some pain, being pierced between the ribs, cried out loudly, and she herself placed the wavering right hand of the youthful gladiator to her throat. 9010 Possibly such a woman could not have been slain unless she herself had willed it, because she was feared by the impure spirit.
O most brave and blessed martyrs! O truly called and chosen unto the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ! whom whoever magnifies, and honours, and adores, assuredly ought to read these examples for the edification of the Church, not less than the ancient ones, so that new virtues also may testify that one and the same Holy Spirit is always operating even until now, and God the Father Omnipotent, and His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, whose is the glory and infinite power for ever and ever. Amen.
Footnotes
704:9005A row of men drawn up to scourge them as they passed along, a punishment probably similar to what is called “running the gauntlet.”
705:9006John xvi. 24.
705:9007Ita revocatæ discinguntur. Dean Milmam prefers reading this, “Thus recalled, they are clad in loose robes.”
705:9008[Routh, Reliq. Vol. I. p. 360.]
705:9009A cry in mockery of what was known as the effect of Christian baptism.
705:9010[Routh, Reliquiæ, Vol. I. p. 358.]
Elucidations.
————————————
(Dinocrates, cap. ii. p. 701.)
The avidity with which the Latin controversial writers seize upon this fanciful passage, (which, in fact, is subversive of their whole doctrine about Purgatory, as is the text from the Maccabees) makes emphatic the utter absence from the early Fathers of any reference to such a dogma; which, had it existed, must have appeared in every reference to the State of the Dead, and in every account of the discipline of penitents. Arbp. Usher 9011 ingeniously turns the tables upon these errorists, by quoting the Prayers for the Dead, which were used in the Early Church, but which, such as they were, not only make no mention of a Purgatory, but refute the dogma, by their uniform limitation of such prayers to the blessed dead, and to their consummation of bliss at the Last day and not before. Such a prayer seems to occur in 2 Tim. i. 18. The context (2 Tim. 1:16, 2 Tim. 4:19) strongly supports this view; Onesiphorus is spoken of as if deceased, apparently. But, as Chrysostom understands it, he was only absent (in Rome) from his household. From 2 Tim. 1.17 we should infer that he had left Rome. 9012
Footnotes
706:9011Republished, Oxford, 1838.
706:9012See Opp. Tom. xi. p. 657. Ed. Migne.
VI.
Of Patience. 9013
[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]
————————————
Chapter I.—Of Patience Generally; And Tertullian’s Own Unworthiness to Treat of It.
I fully confess unto the Lord God that it has been rash enough, if not even impudent, in me to have dared compose a treatise on Patience, for practising which I am all unfit, being a man of no goodness; 9014 whereas it were becoming that such as have addressed themselves to the demonstration and commendation of some particular thing, should themselves first be conspicuous in the practice of that thing, and should regulate the constancy of their commonishing by the authority of their personal conduct, for fear their words blush at the deficiency of their deeds. And would that this “blushing” would bring a remedy, so that shame for not exhibiting that which we go to suggest to others should prove a tutorship into exhibiting it; except that the magnitude of some good things—just as of some ills too—is insupportable, so that only the grace of divine inspiration is effectual for attaining and practising them. For what is most good rests most with God; nor does any other than He who possesses it dispense it, as He deems meet to each. And so to discuss about that which it is not given one to enjoy, will be, as it were, a solace; after the manner of invalids, who since they are without health, know not how to be silent about its blessings. So I, most miserable, ever sick with the heats of impatience, must of necessity sigh after, and invoke, and persistently plead for, that health of patience which I possess not; while I recall to mind, and, in the contemplation of my own weakness, digest, the truth, that the good health of faith, and the soundness of the Lord’s discipline, accrue not easily to any unless patience sit by his side. 9015 So is patience set over the things of God, that one can obey no precept, fulfil no work well-pleasing to the Lord, if estranged from it. The good of it, even they who live outside it, 9016 honour with the name of highest virtue. Philosophers indeed, who are accounted animals of some considerable wisdom, assign it so high a place, that, while they are mutually at discord with the various fancies of their sects and rivalries of their sentiments, yet, having a community of regard for patience alone, to this one of their pursuits they have joined in granting peace: for it they conspire; for it they league; it, in their affectation of 9017 virtue, they unanimously pursue; concerning patience they exhibit all their ostentation of wisdom. Grand testimony this is to it, in that it incites even the vain schools of the world 9018 unto praise and glory! Or is it rather an injury, in that a thing divine is bandied among worldly sciences? But let them look to that, who shall presently be ashamed of their wisdom, destroyed and disgraced together with the world 9019 (it lives in).
Footnotes
707:9013[Written possibly as late as a.d. 202; and is credited by Neander and Kaye, with Catholic Orthodoxy.]
707:9014“Nullius boni;” compare Rom. vii. 18.
707:9015[Elucidation I.]
707:9016i.e. who are strangers to it.
707:9017Or, “striving after.”
707:9018Or, “heathendom”—sæculi.
707:9019Sæculo.
Chapter II.—God Himself an Example of Patience.
To us 9020 no human affectation of canine 9021 equanimity, modelled 9022 by insensibility, furnishes the warrant for exercising patience; but the divine arrangement of a living and celestial discipline, holding up before us God Himself in the very first place as an example of patience; who scatters equally over just and unjust the bloom of this light; who suffers the good offices of the seasons, the services of the elements, the tributes of entire nature, to accrue at once to worthy and unworthy; bearing with the most ungrateful nations, adoring as they do the toys of the arts and the works of their own hands, persecuting His Name together with His family; bearing with luxury, avarice, iniquity, malignity, waxing insolent daily: 9023 so that by His own patience He disparages Himself; for the cause why many believe not in the Lord is that they are so long without knowing 9024 that He is wroth with the world. 9025
Footnotes
707:9020i.e. us Christians.
707:9021i.e. cynical = κυνικός = doglike. But Tertullian appears to use “caninæ” purposely, and I have therefore retained it rather than substitute (as Mr. Dodgson does) “cynical.”
707:9022i.e. the affectation is modelled by insensibility.
708:9023See Ps. lxxiv. 23 in A.V. It is Ps. lxxiii. in the LXX.
708:9024Because they see no visible proof of it.
708:9025Sæculo.
Chapter III.—Jesus Christ in His Incarnation and Work a More Imitable Example Thereof.
And this species of the divine patience indeed being, as it were, at a distance, may perhaps be esteemed as among “things too high for us;” 9026 but what is that which, in a certain way, has been grasped by hand 9027 among men openly on the earth? God suffers Himself to be conceived in a mother’s womb, and awaits the time for birth; and, when born, bears the delay of growing up; and, when grown up, is not eager to be recognised, but is furthermore contumelious to Himself, and is baptized by His own servant; and repels with words alone the assaults of the tempter; while from being “Lord” He becomes “Master,” teaching man to escape death, having been trained to the exercise of the absolute forbearance of offended patience. 9028 He did not strive; He did not cry aloud; nor did any hear His voice in the streets. He did not break the bruised reed; the smoking flax He did not quench: for the prophet—nay, the attestation of God Himself, placing His own Spirit, together with patience in its entirety, in His Son—had not falsely spoken. There was none desirous of cleaving to Him whom He did not receive. No one’s table or roof did He despise: indeed, Himself ministered to the washing of the disciples’ feet; not sinners, not publicans, did He repel; not with that city even which had refused to receive Him was He wroth, 9029 when even the disciples had wished that the celestial fires should be forthwith hurled on so contumelious a town. He cared for the ungrateful; He yielded to His ensnarers. This were a small matter, if He had not had in His company even His own betrayer, and stedfastly abstained from pointing him out. Moreover, while He is being betrayed, while He is being led up “as a sheep for a victim,” (for “so He no more opens His mouth than a lamb under the power of the shearer,”)He to whom, had He willed it, legions of angels would at one word have presented themselves from the heavens, approved not the avenging sword of even one disciple. The patience of the Lord was wounded in (the wound of) Malchus. And so, too, He cursed for the time to come the works of the sword; and, by the restoration of health, made satisfaction to him whom Himself had not hurt, through Patience, the mother of Mercy. I pass by in silence (the fact) that He is crucified, for this was the end for which He had come; yet had the death which must be undergone need of contumelies likewise? 9030 Nay, but, when about to depart, He wished to be sated with the pleasure of patience. He is spitted on, scourged, derided, clad foully, more foully crowned. Wondrous is the faith of equanimity! He who had set before Him the concealing of Himself in man’s shape, imitated nought of man’s impatience! Hence, even more than from any other trait, ought ye, Pharisees, to have recognised the Lord. Patience of this kind none of men would achieve. Such and so mighty evidences—the very magnitude of which proves to be among the nations indeed a cause for rejection of the faith, but among us its reason and rearing—proves manifestly enough (not by the sermons only, in enjoining, but likewise by the sufferings of the Lord in enduring) to them to whom it is given to believe, that as the effect and excellence of some inherent propriety, patience is God’s nature.
Footnotes
708:9026So Mr. Dodgson; and La Cerda, as quoted by Oehler. See Ps. cxxxi. 1 in LXX., where it is Ps. cxxx.
708:90271 John i. 1.
708:9028I have followed Oehler’s reading of this very difficult and much disputed passage. For the expression, “having been trained,” etc., compare Heb. v. 8.
708:9029Luke ix. 51-56.
708:9030Or, “yet had there been need of contumelies likewise for the undergoing of death?”
Chapter IV.—Duty of Imitating Our Master Taught Us by Slaves. Even by Beasts. Obedient Imitation is Founded on Patience.
Therefore, if we see all servants of probity and right feeling shaping their conduct suitably to the disposition of their lord; if, that is, the art of deserving favour is obedience, 9031 while the rule of obedience is a compliant subjection: how much more does it behove us to be found with a character in accordance with our Lord,—servants as we are of the living God, whose judgment on His servants turns not on a fetter or a cap of freedom, but on an eternity either of penalty or of salvation; for the shunning of which severity or the courting of which liberality there needs a diligence in obedience 9032 as great as are the comminations themselves which the severity utters, or the promises which the liberality freely makes. 9033 And yet we exact obedience 9034 not from men only, who have the bond of their slavery under their chin, 9035 or in any other legal way are debtors to obedience, 9036 but even from cattle, 9037 even from brutes; 9038 understanding that they have been provided and delivered for our uses by the Lord. Shall, then, creatures which God makes subject to us be better than we in the discipline of obedience? 9039 Finally, (the creatures) which obey, acknowledge their masters. Do we hesitate to listen diligently to Him to whom alone we are subjected—that is, the Lord? But how unjust is it, how ungrateful likewise, not to repay from yourself the same which, through the indulgence of your neighbour, you obtain from others, to him through whom you obtain it! Nor needs there more words on the exhibition of obedience 9040 due from us to the Lord God; for the acknowledgment 9041 of God understands what is incumbent on it. Lest, however, we seem to have inserted remarks on obedience 9042 as something irrelevant, (let us remember) that obedience 9043 itself is drawn from patience. Never does an impatient man render it, or a patient fail to find pleasure 9044 in it. Who, then, could treat largely (enough) of the good of that patience which the Lord God, the Demonstrator and Acceptor of all good things, carried about in His own self? 9045 To whom, again, would it be doubtful that every good thing ought, because it pertains 9046 to God, to be earnestly pursued with the whole mind by such as pertain to God? By means of which (considerations) both commendation and exhortation 9047 on the subject of patience are briefly, and as it were in the compendium of a prescriptive rule, established. 9048
Footnotes
708:9031“Obsequium,” distinguished by Döderlein from “obedientia,” as a more voluntary and spontaneous thing, founded less on authority than respect and love.
709:9032Obsequii.
709:9033“Pollicetur,” not “promittit.”
709:9034Obedientiam.
709:9035“Subnixis.” Perhaps this may be the meaning, as in Virg. Æn. iv. 217. But Oehler notices “subnexis” as a conjecture of Jos. Scaliger, which is very plausible, and would mean nearly the same. Mr. Dodgson renders “supported by their slavery;” and Oehler makes “subnixis” ="præditis,” “instructis.” [Elucidation II.]
709:9036Obsequii.
709:9037Pecudibus,” i.e. tame domestic cattle.
709:9038“Bestiis,” irrational creatures, as opposed to “homines,” here apparently wild beasts.
709:9039Obsequii. For the sentiment, compare Isa. i. 3.
709:9040Obsequii.
709:9041See above, “the creatures…acknowledge their masters.”
709:9042Obsequio.
709:9043Obsequio.
709:9044“Oblectatur” Oehler reads with the mss. The editors, as he says, have emended “Obluctatur,” which Mr. Dodgson reads.
709:9045See the previous chapter.
709:9046See the previous chapter.
709:9047See chap. i.
709:9048[All our author’s instances of this principle of the Præscriptio are noteworthy, as interpreting its use in the Advs. Hæreses.]
Chapter V.—As God is the Author of Patience So the Devil is of Impatience.
Nevertheless, the proceeding 9049 of a discussion on the necessaries of faith is not idle, because it is not unfruitful. In edification no loquacity is base, if it be base at any time. 9050 And so, if the discourse be concerning some particular good, the subject requires us to review also the contrary of that good. For you will throw more light on what is to be pursued, if you first give a digest of what is to be avoided.
Let us therefore consider, concerning Impatience, whether just as patience in God, so its adversary quality have been born and detected in our adversary, that from this consideration may appear how primarily adverse it is to faith. For that which has been conceived by God’s rival, of course is not friendly to God’s things. The discord of things is the same as the discord of their authors. Further, since God is best, the devil on the contrary worst, of beings, by their own very diversity they testify that neither works for 9051 the other; so that anything of good can no more seem to be effected for us by the Evil One, than anything of evil by the Good. Therefore I detect the nativity of impatience in the devil himself, at that very time when he impatiently bore that the Lord God subjected the universal works which He had made to His own image, that is, to man. 9052 For if he had endured (that), he would not have grieved; nor would he have envied man if he had not grieved. Accordingly he deceived him, because he had envied him; but he had envied because he had grieved: he had grieved because, of course, he had not patiently borne. What that angel of perdition 9053 first was—malicious or impatient—I scorn to inquire: since manifest it is that either impatience took its rise together with malice, or else malice from impatience; that subsequently they conspired between themselves; and that they grew up indivisible in one paternal bosom. But, however, having been instructed, by his own experiment, what an aid unto sinning was that which he had been the first to feel, and by means of which he had entered on his course of delinquency, he called the same to his assistance for the thrusting of man into crime. The woman, 9054 immediately on being met by him—I may say so without rashness—was, through his very speech with her, breathed on by a spirit infected with impatience: so certain is it that she would never have sinned at all, if she had honoured the divine edict by maintaining her patience to the end. What (of the fact) that she endured not to have been met alone; but in the presence of Adam, not yet her husband, not yet bound to lend her his ears, 9055 she is impatient of keeping silence, and makes him the transmitter of that which she had imbibed from the Evil One? Therefore another human being, too, perishes through the impatience of the one; presently, too, perishes of himself, through his own impatience committed in each respect, both in regard of God’s premonition and in regard of the devil’s cheatery; not enduring to observe the former nor to refute the latter. Hence, whence (the origin) of delinquency, arose the first origin of judgment; hence, whence man was induced to offend, God began to be wroth. Whence (came) the first indignation in God, thence (came) His first patience; who, content at that time with malediction only, refrained in the devil’s case from the instant infliction 9056 of punishment. Else what crime, before this guilt of impatience, is imputed to man? Innocent he was, and in intimate friendship with God, and the husbandman 9057 of paradise. But when once he succumbed to impatience, he quite ceased to be of sweet savour 9058 to God; he quite ceased to be able to endure things celestial. Thenceforward, a creature 9059 given to earth, and ejected from the sight of God, he begins to be easily turned by impatience unto every use offensive to God. For straightway that impatience conceived of the devil’s seed, produced, in the fecundity of malice, anger as her son; and when brought forth, trained him in her own arts. For that very thing which had immersed Adam and Eve in death, taught their son, too, to begin with murder. It would be idle for me to ascribe this to impatience, if Cain, that first homicide and first fratricide, had borne with equanimity and not impatiently the refusal by the Lord of his own oblations—if he is not wroth with his own brother—if, finally, he took away no one’s life. Since, then, he could neither have killed unless he had been wroth, nor have been wroth unless he had been impatient, he demonstrates that what he did through wrath must be referred to that by which wrath was suggested during this cradle-time of impatience, then (in a certain sense) in her infancy. But how great presently were her augmentations! And no wonder, If she has been the first delinquent, it is a consequence that, because she has been the first, therefore she is the only parent stem, 9060 too, to every delinquency, pouring down from her own fount various veins of crimes. 9061 Of murder we have spoken; but, being from the very beginning the outcome of anger, 9062 whatever causes besides it shortly found for itself it lays collectively on the account of impatience, as to its own origin. For whether from private enmities, or for the sake of prey, any one perpetrates that wickedness, 9063 the earlier step is his becoming impatient of 9064 either the hatred or the avarice. Whatever compels a man, it is not possible that without impatience of itself it can be perfected in deed. Who ever committed adultery without impatience of lust? Moreover, if in females the sale of their modesty is forced by the price, of course it is by impatience of contemning gain 9065 that this sale is regulated. 9066 These (I mention) as the principal delinquencies in the sight of the Lord, 9067 for, to speak compendiously, every sin is ascribable to impatience. “Evil” is “impatience of good.” None immodest is not impatient of modesty; dishonest of honesty; impious of piety; 9068 unquiet of quietness. In order that each individual may become evil he will be unable to persevere 9069 in being good. How, therefore, can such a hydra of delinquencies fail to offend the Lord, the Disapprover of evils? Is it not manifest that it was through impatience that Israel himself also always failed in his duty toward God, from that time when, 9070 forgetful of the heavenly arm whereby he had been drawn out of his Egyptian affliction, he demands from Aaron “gods 9071 as his guides;” when he pours down for an idol the contributions of his gold: for the so necessary delays of Moses, while he met with God, he had borne with impatience. After the edible rain of the manna, after the watery following 9072 of the rock, they despair of the Lord in not enduring a three-days’ thirst; 9073 for this also is laid to their charge by the Lord as impatience. And—not to rove through individual cases—there was no instance in which it was not by failing in duty through impatience that they perished. How, moreover, did they lay hands on the prophets, except through impatience of hearing them? on the Lord moreover Himself, through impatience likewise of seeing Him? But had they entered the path of patience, they would have been set free. 9074
Footnotes
709:9049“Procedere:” so Oehler, who, however, notices an ingenious conjecture of Jos. Scaliger—“procudere,” the hammering out, or forging.
709:9050Tertullian may perhaps wish to imply, in prayer. See Matt. vi. 7.
709:9051Facere. But Fulv. Ursinus (as Oehler tells us) has suggested a neat emendation—“favere,” favours.
709:9052See Ps. viii. 4-6.
709:9053Compare the expression in de Idol. iv., “perdition of blood” ="bloody perdition,” and the note there. So here “angel of perdition” may ="lost angel.”
710:9054Mulier. See de Orat. c. xxii.
710:90551 Cor. 7:3, 1 Pet. 3:7.
710:9056Impetu.
710:9057Colonus. Gen. ii. 15.
710:9058Sapere. See de Idol. c. i. sub fin.
710:9059Homo.
710:9060Matrix. Mr. Dodgson renders womb, which is admissible; but the other passages quoted by Oehler, where Tertullian uses this word, seem to suit better with the rendering given in the text.
710:9061Compare a similar expression in de Idol. ii. ad init.
710:9062Which Tertullian has just shown to be the result of impatience.
710:9063i.e. murder.
710:9064i.e. unable to restrain.
710:9065i.e. want of power or patience to contemn gain.
710:9066“Ordinatur;” but “orditur” has been very plausibly conjectured.
710:9067Mr. Dodgson refers to ad Uxor. i. 5, q. v. sub fin.
710:9068Or, “unduteous of duteousness.”
710:9069i.e. impatient.
710:9070I have departed slightly here from Oehler’s punctuation.
710:9071Exod. 32:1, Acts 7:39, 40.
711:9072i.e. the water which followed them, after being given forth by the smitten rock. See 1 Cor. x. 4.
711:9073See Num. xx. 1-6. But Tertullian has apparently confused this with Ex. xv. 22, which seems to be the only place where “a three-days’ thirst” is mentioned.
711:9074Free, i.e. from the bondage of impatience and of sin.
Chapter VI.—Patience Both Antecedent and Subsequent to Faith.
Accordingly it is patience which is both subsequent and antecedent to faith. In short, Abraham believed God, and was accredited by Him with righteousness; 9075 but it was patience which proved his faith, when he was bidden to immolate his son, with a view to (I would not say the temptation, but) the typical attestation of his faith. But God knew whom He had accredited with righteousness. 9076 So heavy a precept, the perfect execution whereof was not even pleasing to the Lord, he patiently both heard, and (if God had willed) would have fulfilled. Deservedly then was he “blessed,” because he was “faithful;” deservedly “faithful,” because “patient.” So faith, illumined by patience, when it was becoming propagated among the nations through “Abraham’s seed, which is Christ,” 9077 and was superinducing grace over the law, 9078 made patience her pre-eminent coadjutrix for amplifying and fulfilling the law, because that alone had been lacking unto the doctrine of righteousness. For men were of old wont to require “eye for eye, and tooth for tooth” 9079 and to repay with usury “evil with evil;” for, as yet, patience was not on earth, because faith was not either. Of course, meantime, impatience used to enjoy the opportunities which the law gave. That was easy, while the Lord and Master of patience was absent. But after He has supervened, and has united 9080 the grace of faith with patience, now it is no longer lawful to assail even with word, nor to say “fool” 9081 even, without “danger of the judgment.” Anger has been prohibited, our spirits retained, the petulance of the hand checked, the poison of the tongue 9082 extracted. The law has found more than it has lost, while Christ says, “Love your personal enemies, and bless your cursers, and pray for your persecutors, that ye may be sons of your heavenly Father.” 9083 Do you see whom patience gains for us as a Father? In this principal precept the universal discipline of patience is succinctly comprised, since evil-doing is not conceded even when it is deserved.
Footnotes
711:9075See Gen. 15:6, Rom. 4:3, 9, 22, Gal. 3:6, Jas. 2:23.
711:9076i.e. the trial was necessary not to prove his faith to God, who knows all whom He accounts righteous, but “typically” to us.
711:9077Gal. iii. 16.
711:9078John 1:17, Rom. 6:14, 15.
711:9079Matt. vi. 38, and the references there given.
711:9080Composuit.
711:9081See Matt. v. 22; and Wordsworth in loco, who thinks it probable that the meaning is “apostate.”
711:9082Ps. 40:3, Rom. 3:13, Jas. 3:8.
711:9083Matt. 5:44, 45.
Chapter VII.—The Causes of Impatience, and Their Correspondent Precepts.
Now, however, while we run through the causes of impatience, all the other precepts also will answer in their own places. If our spirit is aroused by the loss of property, it is commonished by the Lord’s Scriptures, in almost every place, to a contemning of the world; 9084 nor is there any more powerful exhortation to contempt of money submitted 9085 (to us), than (the fact) the Lord Himself is found amid no riches. He always justifies the poor, fore-condemns the rich. So He fore-ministered to patience “loss,” and to opulence “contempt” (as portion); 9086 demonstrating, by means of (His own) repudiation of riches, that hurts done to them also are not to be much regarded. Of that, therefore, which we have not the smallest need to seek after, because the Lord did not seek after it either, we ought to endure without heart-sickness the cutting down or taking away. “Covetousness,” the Spirit of the Lord has through the apostle pronounced “a root of all evils.” 9087 Let us not interpret that covetousness as consisting merely in the concupiscence of what is another’s: for even what seems ours is another’s; for nothing is ours, since all things are God’s, whose are we also ourselves. And so, if, when suffering from a loss, we feel impatiently, grieving for what is lost from what is not our own, we shall be detected as bordering on covetousness: we seek what is another’s when we ill brook losing what is another’s. He who is greatly stirred with impatience of a loss, does, by giving things earthly the precedence over things heavenly, sin directly 9088 against God; for the Spirit, which he has received from the Lord, he greatly shocks for the sake of a worldly matter. Willingly, therefore, let us lose things earthly, let us keep things heavenly. Perish the whole world, 9089 so I may make patience my gain! In truth, I know not whether he who has not made up his mind to endure with constancy the loss of somewhat of his, either by theft, or else by force, or else even by carelessness, would himself readily or heartily lay hand on his own property in the cause of almsgiving: for who that endures not at all to be cut by another, himself draws the sword on his own body? Patience in losses is an exercise in bestowing and communicating. Who fears not to lose, finds it not irksome to give. Else how will one, when he has two coats, give the one of them to the naked, 9090 unless he be a man likewise to offer to one who takes away his coat his cloak as well? 9091 How shall we fashion to us friends from mammon, 9092 if we love it so much as not to put up with its loss? We shall perish together with the lost mammon. Why do we find here, where it is our business to lose? 9093 To exhibit impatience at all losses is the Gentiles’ business, who give money the precedence perhaps over their soul; for so they do, when, in their cupidities of lucre, they encounter the gainful perils of commerce on the sea; when, for money’s sake, even in the forum, there is nothing which damnation (itself) would fear which they hesitate to essay; when they hire themselves for sport and the camp; when, after the manner of wild beasts, they play the bandit along the highway. But us, according to the diversity by which we are distinguished from them, it becomes to lay down not our soul for money, but money for our soul, whether spontaneously in bestowing or patiently in losing.
Footnotes
711:9084Sæculo.
711:9085Subjacet.
711:9086This appears to be the sense of this very difficult passage as Oehler reads it; and of Fr. Junius’ interpretation of it, which Oehler approves.
711:90871 Tim. vi. 10. See de Idol. xi. ad init.
711:9088De proximo. See above, c. v. Deo de proximo amicus, “a most intimate friend to God.”
712:9089Sæculum.
712:9090Luke iii. 11.
712:9091Matt. 5:40, Luke 6:29.
712:9092Luke xvi. 9.
712:9093“Alluding to Christ’s words in Matt. x. 39” (Rigalt. quoted by Oehler).
Chapter VIII.—Of Patience Under Personal Violence and Malediction.
We who carry about our very soul, our very body, exposed in this world 9094 to injury from all, and exhibit patience under that injury; shall we be hurt at the loss 9095 of less important things? 9096 Far from a servant of Christ be such a defilement as that the patience which has been prepared for greater temptations should forsake him in frivolous ones. If one attempt to provoke you by manual violence, the monition of the Lord is at hand: “To him,” He saith, “who smiteth thee on the face, turn the other cheek likewise.” 9097 Let outrageousness 9098 be wearied out by your patience. Whatever that blow may be, conjoined 9099 with pain and contumely, it 9100 shall receive a heavier one from the Lord. You wound that outrageous 9101 one more by enduring: for he will be beaten by Him for whose sake you endure. If the tongue’s bitterness break out in malediction or reproach, look back at the saying, “When they curse you, rejoice.” 9102 The Lord Himself was “cursed” in the eye of the law; 9103 and yet is He the only Blessed One. Let us servants, therefore, follow our Lord closely; and be cursed patiently, that we may be able to be blessed. If I hear with too little equanimity some wanton or wicked word uttered against me, I must of necessity either myself retaliate the bitterness, or else I shall be racked with mute impatience. When, then, on being cursed, I smite (with my tongue,) how shall I be found to have followed the doctrine of the Lord, in which it has been delivered that “a man is defiled, 9104 not by the defilements of vessels, but of the things which are sent forth out of his mouth.” Again, it is said that “impeachment 9105 awaits us for every vain and needless word.” 9106 It follows that, from whatever the Lord keeps us, the same He admonishes us to bear patiently from another. I will add (somewhat) touching the pleasure of patience. For every injury, whether inflicted by tongue or hand, when it has lighted upon patience, will be dismissed 9107 with the same fate as, some weapon launched against and blunted on a rock of most stedfast hardness. For it will wholly fall then and there with bootless and fruitless labour; and sometimes will recoil and spend its rage on him who sent it out, with retorted impetus. No doubt the reason why any one hurts you is that you may be pained; because the hurter’s enjoyment consists in the pain of the hurt. When, then, you have upset his enjoyment by not being pained, he must needs he pained by the loss of his enjoyment. Then you not only go unhurt away, which even alone is enough for you; but gratified, into the bargain, by your adversary’s disappointment, and revenged by his pain. This is the utility and the pleasure of patience.
Footnotes
712:9094Sæculo.
712:9095Delibatione.
712:9096i.e. money and the like. Compare Matt. 6:25, Luke 12:23.
712:9097Matt. v. 39.
712:9098Improbitas.
712:9099Constrictus. I have rendered after Oehler: but may not the meaning be “clenched,” like the hand which deals the blow?
712:9100As Oehler says “the blow” is said to “receive” that which, strictly, the dealer of it receives.
712:9101Improbum.
712:9102Matt. 5:11, 12, Luke 6:22, 23.
712:9103Deut. 21:23, Gal. 3:13. Tertullian’s quotations here are somewhat loose. He renders words which are distinct in the Greek by the same in his Latin.
712:9104Communicari—κοινοῦσθαι. See Mark vii. 15, “made common,” i.e. profane, unclean. Compare Acts 10:14, 15 in the Greek.
712:9105Reatum. See de Idol. i. ad init., “the highest impeachment of the age.”
712:9106Matt. xii. 36. Tertullian has rendered ἀργόν by “vani et supervacui.”
712:9107Dispungetur: a word which, in the active, means technically “to balance accounts,” hence “to discharge,” etc.
Chapter IX.—Of Patience Under Bereavement.
Not even that species of impatience under the loss of our dear ones is excused, where some assertion of a right to grief acts the patron to it. For the consideration of the apostle’s declaration must be set before us, who says, “Be not overwhelmed with sadness at the falling asleep of any one, just as the nations are who are without hope.” 9108 And justly; or, believing the resurrection of Christ we believe also in our own, for whose sake He both died and rose again. Since, then, there is certainty as to the resurrection of the dead, grief for death is needless, and impatience of grief is needless. For why should you grieve, if you believe that (your loved one) is not perished? Why should you bear impatiently the temporary withdrawal of him who you believe will return? That which you think to be death is departure. He who goes before us is not to be lamented, though by all means to be longed for. 9109 That longing also must be tempered with patience. For why should you bear without moderation the fact that one is gone away whom you will presently follow? Besides, impatience in matters of this kind bodes ill for our hope, and is a dealing insincerely with the faith. And we wound Christ when we accept not with equanimity the summoning out of this world of any by Him, as if they were to be pitied. “I desire,” says the apostle, “to be now received, and to be with Christ.” 9110 How far better a desire does he exhibit! If, then, we grieve impatiently over such as have attained the desire of Christians, we show unwillingness ourselves to attain it.
Footnotes
713:91081 Thess. iv. 13, not very strictly rendered.
713:9109Desiderandus.
713:9110Phil. i. 23, again loosely rendered: e.g. ἀναλῦσαι ="to weigh anchor,” is rendered by Tertullian “recipi.”
Chapter X.—Of Revenge.
There is, too, another chief spur of impatience, the lust of revenge, dealing with the business either of glory or else of malice. But “glory,” on the one hand, is everywhere “vain;” 9111 and malice, on the other, is always 9112 odious to the Lord; in this case indeed most of all, when, being provoked by a neighbour’s malice, it constitutes itself superior 9113 in following out revenge, and by paying wickedness doubles that which has once been done. Revenge, in the estimation of error, 9114 seems a solace of pain; in the estimation of truth, on the contrary, it is convicted of malignity. For what difference is there between provoker and provoked, except that the former is detected as prior in evil-doing, but the latter as posterior? Yet each stands impeached of hurting a man in the eye of the Lord, who both prohibits and condemns every wickedness. In evil doing there is no account taken of order, nor does place separate what similarity conjoins. And the precept is absolute, that evil is not to be repaid with evil. 9115 Like deed involves like merit. How shall we observe that principle, if in our loathing 9116 we shall not loathe revenge? What honour, moreover, shall we be offering to the Lord God, if we arrogate to ourselves the arbitrament of vengeance? We are corrupt 9117 —earthen vessels. 9118 With our own servant-boys, 9119 if they assume to themselves the right of vengeance on their fellow-servants, we are gravely offended; while such as make us the offering of their patience we not only approve as mindful of humility, of servitude, affectionately jealous of the right of their lord’s honour; but we make them an ampler satisfaction than they would have pre-exacted 9120 for themselves. Is there any risk of a different result in the case of a Lord so just in estimating, so potent in executing? Why, then, do we believe Him a Judge, if not an Avenger too? This He promises that He will be to us in return, saying, “Vengeance belongeth to me, and I will avenge;” 9121 that is, Leave patience to me, and I will reward patience. For when He says, “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” 9122 does He not require patience? For who will refrain from judging another, but he who shall be patient in not revenging himself? Who judges in order to pardon? And if he shall pardon, still he has taken care to indulge the impatience of a judger, and has taken away the honour of the one Judge, that is, God. How many mischances had impatience of this kind been wont to run into! How oft has it repented of its revenge! How oft has its vehemence been found worse than the causes which led to it!—inasmuch as nothing undertaken with impatience can be effected without impetuosity: nothing done with impetuosity fails either to stumble, or else to fall altogether, or else to vanish headlong. Moreover, if you avenge yourself too slightly, you will be mad; if too amply, you will have to bear the burden. 9123 What have I to do with vengeance, the measure of which, through impatience of pain, I am unable to regulate? Whereas, if I shall repose on patience, I shall not feel pain; if I shall not feel pain, I shall not desire to avenge myself.
Footnotes
713:9111See Gal. 5:26, Phil. 2:3.
713:9112Nunquam non.
713:9113i.e. perhaps superior in degree of malice.
713:9114i.e. of the world and its erroneous philosophies.
713:9115Rom. xii. 17.
713:9116Fastidientes, i.e. our loathing or abhorrence of sin. Perhaps the reference may be to Rom. xii. 9.
713:9117Isa. lxiv. 6.
713:9118Isa. 64:8, 2 Cor. 4:7.
713:9119Servulis.
713:9120Præsumpsissent.
713:9121Deut. 32:35, Ps. 94:1, Rom. 12:19, Heb. 10:30.
713:9122Matt. 7:1, Luke 6:37.
714:9123i.e. the penalty which the law will inflict.
Chapter XI.—Further Reasons for Practising Patience. Its Connection with the Beatitudes.
After these principal material causes of impatience, registered to the best of our ability, why should we wander out of our way among the rest,—what are found at home, what abroad? Wide and diffusive is the Evil One’s operation, hurling manifold irritations of our spirit, and sometimes trifling ones, sometimes very great. But the trifling ones you may contemn from their very littleness; to the very great ones you may yield in regard of their overpoweringness. Where the injury is less, there is no necessity for impatience; but where the injury is greater, there more necessary is the remedy for the injury—patience. Let us strive, therefore, to endure the inflictions of the Evil One, that the counter-zeal of our equanimity may mock the zeal of the foe. If, however, we ourselves, either by imprudence or else voluntarily, draw upon ourselves anything, let us meet with equal patience what we have to blame ourselves for. Moreover, if we believe that some inflictions are sent on us by the Lord, to whom should we more exhibit patience than to the Lord? Nay, He teaches 9124 us to give thanks and rejoice, over and above, at being thought worthy of divine chastisement. “Whom I love,” saith He, “I chasten.” 9125 O blessed servant, on whose amendment the Lord is intent! with whom He deigns to be wroth! whom He does not deceive by dissembling His reproofs! On every side, therefore, we are bound to the duty of exercising patience, from whatever quarter, either by our own errors or else by the snares of the Evil One, we incur the Lord’s reproofs. Of that duty great is the reward—namely, happiness. For whom but the patient has the Lord called happy, in saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens?” 9126 No one, assuredly, is “poor in spirit,” except he be humble. Well, who is humble, except he be patient? For no one can abase himself without patience, in the first instance, to bear the act of abasement. “Blessed,” saith He, “are the weepers and mourners.” 9127 Who, without patience, is tolerant of such unhappinesses? And so to such, “consolation” and “laughter” are promised. “Blessed are the gentle:” 9128 under this term, surely, the impatient cannot possibly be classed. Again, when He marks “the peacemakers” 9129 with the same title of felicity, and names them “sons of God,” pray have the impatient any affinity with “peace?” Even a fool may perceive that. When, however, He says, “Rejoice and exult, as often as they shall curse and persecute you; for very great is your reward in heaven,” 9130 of course it is not to the impatience of exultation 9131 that He makes that promise; because no one will “exult” in adversities unless he have first learnt to contemn them; no one will contemn them unless he have learnt to practise patience.
Footnotes
714:9124Docet. But a plausible conjecture, “decet,” “it becomes us,” has been made.
714:9125Prov. 3:11, 12, Heb. 12:5, 6, Rev. 3:19.
714:9126Matt. v. 3.
714:9127Matt. v. 4.
714:9128Matt. v. 5.
714:9129Matt. v. 9.
714:9130Matt. 5:11, 12, inexactly quoted.
714:9131Exultationis impatientiæ.
Chapter XII.—Certain Other Divine Precepts. The Apostolic Description of Charity. Their Connection with Patience.
As regards the rule of peace, which 9132 is so pleasing to God, who in the world that is prone to impatience 9133 will even once forgive his brother, I will not say “seven times,” or 9134 “seventy-seven times?” 9135 Who that is contemplating a suit against his adversary will compose the matter by agreement, 9136 unless he first begin by lopping off chagrin, hardheartedness, and bitterness, which are in fact the poisonous outgrowths of impatience? How will you “remit, and remission shall be granted” you 9137 if the absence of patience makes you tenacious of a wrong? No one who is at variance with his brother in his mind, will finish offering his “duteous gift at the altar,” unless he first, with intent to “reconciliate his brother,” return to patience. 9138 If “the sun go down over our wrath,” we are in jeopardy: 9139 we are not allowed to remain one day without patience. But, however, since Patience takes the lead in 9140 every species of salutary discipline, what wonder that she likewise ministers to Repentance, (accustomed as Repentance is to come to the rescue of such as have fallen,) when, on a disjunction of wedlock (for that cause, I mean, which makes it lawful, whether for husband or wife, to persist in the perpetual observance of widowhood), 9141 she 9142 waits for, she yearns for, she persuades by her entreaties, repentance in all who are one day to enter salvation? How great a blessing she confers on each! The one she prevents from becoming an adulterer; the other she amends. So, too, she is found in those holy examples touching patience in the Lord’s parables. The shepherd’s patience seeks and finds the straying ewe: 9143 for Impatience would easily despise one ewe; but Patience undertakes the labour of the quest, and the patient burden-bearer carries home on his shoulders the forsaken sinner. 9144 That prodigal son also the father’s patience receives, and clothes, and feeds, and makes excuses for, in the presence of the angry brother’s impatience. 9145 He, therefore, who “had perished” is saved, because he entered on the way of repentance. Repentance perishes not, because it finds Patience (to welcome it). For by whose teachings but those of Patience is Charity 9146 —the highest sacrament of the faith, the treasure-house of the Christian name, which the apostle commends with the whole strength of the Holy Spirit—trained? “Charity,” he says, “is long suffering;” thus she applies patience: “is beneficent;” Patience does no evil: “is not emulous;” that certainly is a peculiar mark of patience: “savours not of violence:” 9147 she has drawn her self-restraint from patience: “is not puffed up; is not violent;” 9148 for that pertains not unto patience: “nor does she seek her own” if, she offers her own, provided she may benefit her neighbours: “nor is irritable;” if she were, what would she have left to Impatience? Accordingly he says, “Charity endures all things; tolerates all things;” of course because she is patient. Justly, then, “will she never fail;” 9149 for all other things will be cancelled, will have their consummation. “Tongues, sciences, prophecies, become exhausted; faith, hope, charity, are permanent:” Faith, which Christ’s patience introduced; hope, which man’s patience waits for; charity, which Patience accompanies, with God as Master.
Footnotes
714:9132i.e. peace.
714:9133Impatientiæ natus: lit. “born for impatience.” Comp. de Pæniten. 12, ad fin. “nec ulli rei nisi pænitentiæ natus.”
714:9134Oehler reads “sed,” but the “vel” adopted in the text is a conjecture of Latinius, which Oehler mentions.
714:9135Septuagies septies. The reference is to Matt. 18:21, 22. Compare de Orat. vii. ad fin. and the note there.
714:9136Matt. v. 25.
714:9137Luke vi. 37.
714:9138Matt. 5:23, 24.
714:9139Eph. iv. 26. Compare de Orat. xi.
714:9140Gubernet.
715:9141What the cause is is disputed. Opinions are divided as to whether Tertullian means by it “marriage with a heathen” (which as Mr. Dodgson reminds us, Tertullian—de Uxor. ii. 3—calls “adultery”), or the case in which our Lord allowed divorce. See Matt. xix. 9.
715:9142i.e. patience.
715:9143Luke xv. 3-6.
715:9144Peccatricem, i.e. the ewe.
715:9145Luke xv. 11-32.
715:9146Dilectio = ἀγάπη. See Trench, New Testament Syn., s. v. ἀγάπη; and with the rest of this chapter compare carefully, in the Greek, 1 Cor. xiii. [Neander points out the different view our author takes of the same parable, in the de Pudicit. cap. 9, Vol. IV. this series.]
715:9147Protervum = Greek περπερεύεται.
715:9148Proterit = Greek ἀσχημονεῖ.
715:9149Excidet = Greek ἐκλείπει, suffers eclipse.
Chapter XIII.—Of Bodily Patience.
Thus far, finally, of patience simple and uniform, and as it exists merely in the mind: though in many forms likewise I labour after it in body, for the purpose of “winning the Lord;” 9150 inasmuch as it is a quality which has been exhibited by the Lord Himself in bodily virtue as well; if it is true that the ruling mind easily communicates the gifts 9151 of the Spirit with its bodily habitation. What, therefore, is the business of Patience in the body? In the first place, it is the affliction 9152 of the flesh—a victim 9153 able to appease the Lord by means of the sacrifice of humiliation—in making a libation to the Lord of sordid 9154 raiment, together with scantiness of food, content with simple diet and the pure drink of water 9155 in conjoining fasts to all this; in inuring herself to sackcloth and ashes. This bodily patience adds a grace to our prayers for good, a strength to our prayers against evil; this opens the ears of Christ our God, 9156 dissipates severity, elicits clemency. Thus that Babylonish king, 9157 after being exiled from human form in his seven years’ squalor and neglect, because he had offended the Lord; by the bodily immolation of patience not only recovered his kingdom, but—what is more to be desired by a man—made satisfaction to God. Further, if we set down in order the higher and happier grades of bodily patience, (we find that) it is she who is entrusted by holiness with the care of continence of the flesh: she keeps the widow, 9158 and sets on the virgin the seal 9159 and raises the self-made eunuch to the realms of heaven. 9160 That which springs from a virtue of the mind is perfected in the flesh; and, finally, by the patience of the flesh, does battle under persecution. If flight press hard, the flesh wars with 9161 the inconvenience of flight; if imprisonment overtake 9162 us, the flesh (still was) in bonds, the flesh in the gyve, the flesh in solitude, 9163 and in that want of light, and in that patience of the world’s misusage. 9164 When, however, it is led forth unto the final proof of happiness, 9165 unto the occasion of the second baptism, 9166 unto the act of ascending the divine seat, no patience is more needed there than bodily patience. If the “spirit is willing, but the flesh,” without patience, “weak,” 9167 where, save in patience, is the safety of the spirit, and of the flesh itself? But when the Lord says this about the flesh, pronouncing it “weak,” He shows what need there is of strengthening, it—that is by patience—to meet 9168 every preparation for subverting or punishing faith; that it may bear with all constancy stripes, fire, cross, beasts, sword; all which prophets and apostles, by enduring, conquered!
Footnotes
715:9150Phil. iii. 8.
715:9151“Invecta,” generally = "movables", household furniture.
715:9152Or, mortification, “adflictatio.”
715:9153i.e. fleshly mortification is a “victim,” etc.
715:9154Or, “mourning.” Comp. de Pæn. c. 9.
715:9155[The “water vs. wine” movement is not a discovery of our own times. “Drink a little wine,” said St. Paul medicinally; but (as a great and good divine once remarked) “we must not lay stress on the noun, but the adjective; let it be very little.”]
715:9156Christi dei.
715:9157Dan. iv. 33-37. Comp. de Pæn. c. 12. [I have removed an ambiguity by slightly touching the text here.]
715:91581 Tim. 5:3, 9, 10, 1 Cor. 7:39, 40.
715:91591 Cor. 7:34, 35.
715:9160Matt. xix. 12.
715:9161Ad. It seems to mean flesh has strength given it, by patience, to meet the hardships of the flight. Compare the πρὸς πλησμονὴν τῆς σαρκὸς, of St. Paul in Col. ii. 23. [Kaye compares this with the De Fuga, as proof of the author’s freedom from Montanism, when this was written.]
716:9162Præveniat: “prevent” us, before we have time to flee.
716:9163Solo.
716:9164[Elucidation III.]
716:9165i.e. martyrdom.
716:9166Comp. Luke xii. 50.
716:9167Matt. xxvi. 41.
716:9168“Adversus,” like the “ad” above, note 21, p. 713.
Chapter XIV.—The Power of This Twofold Patience, the Spiritual and the Bodily. Exemplified in the Saints of Old.
With this strength of patience, Esaias is cut asunder, and ceases not to speak concerning the Lord; Stephen is stoned, and prays for pardon to his foes. 9169 Oh, happy also he who met all the violence of the devil by the exertion of every species of patience! 9170 —whom neither the driving away of his cattle nor those riches of his in sheep, nor the sweeping away of his children in one swoop of ruin, nor, finally, the agony of his own body in (one universal) wound, estranged from the patience and the faith which he had plighted to the Lord; whom the devil smote with all his might in vain. For by all his pains he was not drawn away from his reverence for God; but he has been set up as an example and testimony to us, for the thorough accomplishment of patience as well in spirit as in flesh, as well in mind as in body; in order that we succumb neither to damages of our worldly goods, nor to losses of those who are dearest, nor even to bodily afflictions. What a bier 9171 for the devil did God erect in the person of that hero! What a banner did He rear over the enemy of His glory, when, at every bitter message, that man uttered nothing out of his mouth but thanks to God, while he denounced his wife, now quite wearied with ills, and urging him to resort to crooked remedies! How did God smile, 9172 how was the evil one cut asunder, 9173 while Job with mighty equanimity kept scraping off 9174 the unclean overflow of his own ulcer, while he sportively replaced the vermin that brake out thence, in the same caves and feeding-places of his pitted flesh! And so, when all the darts of temptations had blunted themselves against the corslet and shield of his patience, that instrument 9175 of God’s victory not only presently recovered from God the soundness of his body, but possessed in redoubled measure what he had lost. And if he had wished to have his children also restored, he might again have been called father; but he preferred to have them restored him “in that day.” 9176 Such joy as that—secure so entirely concerning the Lord—he deferred; meantime he endured a voluntary bereavement, that he might not live without some (exercise of) patience.
Footnotes
716:9169Acts 7:59, 60.
716:9170Job. See Job 1:0, Job 2:0.
716:9171“Feretrum”—for carrying trophies in a triumph, the bodies of the dead, and their effigies, etc.
716:9172Compare Ps. ii. 4.
716:9173i.e. with rage and disappointment.
716:9174Job ii. 8.
716:9175Operarius.
716:9176See 2 Tim. iv. 8. There is no authority for this statement of Tertullian’s in Scripture. [It is his inference rather.]
Chapter XV.—General Summary of the Virtues and Effects of Patience.
So amply sufficient a Depositary of patience is God. If it be a wrong which you deposit in His care, He is an Avenger; if a loss, He is a Restorer; if pain, He is a Healer; if death, He is a Reviver. What honour is granted to Patience, to have God as her Debtor! And not without reason: for she keeps all His decrees; she has to do with all His mandates. She fortifies faith; is the pilot of peace; assists charity; establishes humility; waits long for repentance; sets her seal on confession; rules the flesh; preserves the spirit; bridles the tongue; restrains the hand; tramples temptations under foot; drives away scandals; gives their crowning grace to martyrdoms; consoles the poor; teaches the rich moderation; overstrains not the weak; exhausts not the strong; is the delight of the believer; invites the Gentile; commends the servant to his lord, and his lord to God; adorns the woman; makes the man approved; is loved in childhood, praised in youth, looked up to in age; is beauteous in either sex, in every time of life. Come, now, see whether 9177 we have a general idea of her mien and habit. Her countenance is tranquil and peaceful; her brow serene 9178 contracted by no wrinkle of sadness or of anger; her eyebrows evenly relaxed in gladsome wise, with eyes downcast in humility, not in unhappiness; her mouth sealed with the honourable mark of silence; her hue such as theirs who are without care and without guilt; the motion of her head frequent against the devil, and her laugh threatening; 9179 her clothing, moreover, about her bosom white and well fitted to her person, as being neither inflated nor disturbed. For Patience sits on the throne of that calmest and gentlest Spirit, who is not found in the roll of the whirlwind, nor in the leaden hue of the cloud, but is of soft serenity, open and simple, whom Elias saw at his third essay. 9180 For where God is, there too is His foster-child, namely Patience. When God’s Spirit descends, then Patience accompanies Him indivisibly. If we do not give admission to her together with the Spirit, will (He) always tarry with us? Nay, I know not whether He would remain any longer. Without His companion and handmaid, He must of necessity be straitened in every place and at every time. Whatever blow His enemy may inflict He will be unable to endure alone, being without the instrumental means of enduring.
Footnotes
716:9177Si. This is Oehler’s reading, who takes “si” to be ="an.” But perhaps “sis” (="si vis”), which is Fr. Junius’ correction, is better: “Come, now, let us, if you please, give a general sketch of her mien and habit.”
716:9178Pura; perhaps “smooth.”
717:9179Compare with this singular feature, Isa. xxxvii. 22.
717:9180i.e., as Rigaltius (referred to by Oehler), explains, after the two visions of angels who appeared to him and said, “Arise and eat.” See 1 Kings xix. 4-13. [It was the fourth, but our author having mentioned two, inadvertently calls it the third, referring to the “still small voice,” in which Elijah saw His manifestation.]
Chapter XVI.—The Patience of the Heathen Very Different from Christian Patience. Theirs Doomed to Perdition. Ours Destined to Salvation.
This is the rule, this the discipline, these the works of patience which is heavenly and true; that is, of Christian patience, not false and disgraceful, like as is that patience of the nations of the earth. For in order that in this also the devil might rival the Lord, he has as it were quite on a par (except that the very diversity of evil and good is exactly on a par with their magnitude 9181 ) taught his disciples also a patience of his own; that, I mean, which, making husbands venal for dowry, and teaching them to trade in panderings, makes them subject to the power of their wives; which, with feigned affection, undergoes every toil of forced complaisance, 9182 with a view to ensnaring the childless; 9183 which makes the slaves of the belly 9184 submit to contumelious patronage, in the subjection of their liberty to their gullet. Such pursuits of patience the Gentiles are acquainted with; and they eagerly seize a name of so great goodness to apply it to foul practises: patient they live of rivals, and of the rich, and of such as give them invitations; impatient of God alone. But let their own and their leader’s patience look to itself—a patience which the subterraneous fire awaits! Let us, on the other hand, love the patience of God, the patience of Christ; let us repay to Him the patience which He has paid down for us! Let us offer to Him the patience of the spirit, the patience of the flesh, believing as we do in the resurrection of flesh and spirit.
Footnotes
717:9181One is finite, the other infinite.
717:9182Obsequii.
717:9183And thus getting a place in their wills.
717:9184i.e. professional “diners out.” Comp. Phil. iii. 19.
Elucidations.
————————————
I.
(Unless patience sit by his side, cap. i. p. 707.)
Let me quote words which, many years ago, struck me forcibly, and which I trust, have been blest to my soul; for which reason, I must be allowed, here, to thank their author, the learned and fearless Dean Burgon, of Chichester. In his invaluable Commentary on the Gospel, which while it abounds in the fruits of a varied erudition, aims only to be practically useful, this pious scholar remarks: “To Faith must be added Patience, the ‘patient waiting for God,’ if we would escape the snare which Satan spread, no less for the Holy One (i.e. in the Temp. upon the Pinnacle) than for the Israelites at Massah. And this is perhaps the reason of the remarkable prominence given to the grace of Patience, both by our Lord and His Apostles; a circumstance, as it may be thought, which has not altogether attracted the attention which it deserves.” He then cites examples; 9185 but a reference to any good concordance will strikingly exemplify the admirable comment of this “godly and well-learned man.” See his comments on Matt. 4:7, Luke 21:19.
II.
(Under their chin, cap. iv. p. 709.)
The reference in the note to Paris, as represented by Virgil and in ancient sculpture, seems somewhat to the point:
“Et nunc ille Paris, cum semiviro comitatu.
Mæonia mentum mitra crinemq, madentem,
Subnixus, etc.”
He had just spoken of the pileus as a “Cap of freedom,” but there was another form of pileus which was just the reverse and was probably tied by fimbriæ, under the chin, denoting a low order of slaves, effeminate men, perhaps spadones. Now, the Phrygian bonnet to which Virgil refers, is introduced by him to complete the reproach of his contemptuous expression (semiviro comitatu) just before. So, our author—“not only from men, i.e. men so degraded as to wear this badge of extreme servitude, but even from cattle, etc. Shall these mean creatures outdo us in obedience and patience?”
III.
(The world’s misusage, cap. xiii. p. 716.)
The Reverend Clergy who may read this note will forgive a brother, who begins to be in respect of years, like “Paul the aged,” for remarking, that the reading of the Ante-Nicene Fathers often leads him to sigh—“Such were they from whom we have received all that makes life tolerable, but how intolerable it was for them: are we, indeed, such as they would have considered Christians?” God be praised for His mercy and forbearance in our days; but, still it is true that “we have need of patience.” Is not much of all that we regard as “the world’s misusage,” the gracious hand of the Master upon us, giving us something for the exercise of that Patience, by which He forms us into His own image? (Heb. xii. 3.) Impatience of obscurity, of poverty, of ingratitude, of misrepresentation, of “the slings and arrows” of slander and abuse, is a revolt against that indispensable discipline of the Gospel which requires us to “endure afflictions” in some form or other. Who can complain when one thinks what it would have cost us to be Christians in Tertullian’s time? The ambition of the Clergy is always rebellion against God, and “patient waiting” is its only remedy. One will find profitable reading on this subject in Massillon, 9186 de l’Ambition des Clercs: “Reposez-vous sur le Seigneur du soin de votre destinée: il saura bien accomplir, tout seul, les desseins qu’il a sur vous. Si votre élévation est son bon plaisir, elle sera, aussi son ouvrage. Rendez-vous en digne seulement par la retraite, par la frayeur, par la fuite, par les sentiments vifs de votre indignité…c’est ainsi que les Chrysostome, les Grégoire, les Basil, les Augustin, furent donnés à l’Église.”
Footnotes
718:9185See—A Plain Commentary on the Four Gospels, intended chiefly for Devotional Reading. Oxford, 1854. Also (Vol. I. p. 28) Philadelphia, 1855.
718:9186Œuvres, Tom. vi. pp. 133–5. Ed. Paris, 1824.
Indexes
Index of Scripture References
Genesis
1 1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1 1:2 1:2 1:2 1:2 1:2 1:2 1:2 1:2 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:6 1:6 1:7 1:7 1:7 1:8 1:8 1:9 1:9 1:10 1:11 1:11 1:12 1:14 1:14 1:14 1:16 1:20 1:21 1:21 1:22 1:22 1:24 1:24 1:26 1:26 1:26 1:26 1:26 1:26 1:26 1:26 1:26 1:26 1:27 1:27 1:27 1:27 1:28 1:28 1:28 1:28 1:28 1:28 1:31 2:7 2:7 2:7 2:7 2:7 2:7 2:7 2:7 2:7 2:7 2:8 2:15 2:15 2:16 2:16 2:16 2:17 2:17 2:17 2:18 2:21 2:21 2:21 2:23 2:23 2:23 2:23 2:24 2:24 2:25 2:27 3:1 3:1-7 3:1-7 3:2 3:3 3:3 3:5 3:6 3:7 3:9 3:9 3:10 3:11 3:11 3:16 3:16 3:18 3:19 3:19 3:19 3:19 3:19 3:19 3:22 3:22 3:22 3:24 3:31 4:1-7 4:2 4:2-14 4:6 4:7 4:10 4:11 4:15 4:24 5:22 5:24 5:24 5:24 6:1-4 6:1-4 6:2 6:2 6:2 6:3 6:6 6:9 6:18 7:1 7:23 9:1 9:2 9:3 9:5 9:5 9:6 9:6 9:7 9:19 11:31 12 12:5 14 14:18 15:6 15:13 17 17 18 18 18:14 18:21 19 19:1-29 19:17 19:23-29 19:24 21:5 22:1-10 22:1-14 22:17 22:18 22:30 23:4 24:64 24:65 25:7 25:21-23 25:22 25:23 25:26 25:26 25:34 27:25 27:28 27:39 28:12-17 32 32:28 32:30 34:25-31 35:8 37 45:24 47:20 49:5-7 49:5-7 49:6 49:11 49:27
Exodus
1:18 1:22 2:13 2:14 2:15-21 3:2 3:8 3:8 3:13-16 3:17 3:17 3:21 3:22 3:22 3:22 4:2-9 4:3 4:4 4:6 4:6 4:6 4:7 4:7 4:7 4:9 4:10-12 4:24-26 4:25 7 7:12 8:19 8:25 8:28 10:2 10:10 10:11 10:24 12 12:1-11 12:6 12:16 12:16 12:16 12:34 12:35 12:40-42 13:2 14:15-31 14:27-30 15:22 15:22-26 15:24 15:25 15:27 16:3 16:7 17:8-16 17:11 17:12 18:23 18:32 19:1 20:2 20:4 20:4 20:4 20:7 20:7 20:8 20:8-11 20:9 20:9 20:10 20:10 20:12 20:12 20:12-17 20:13-16 20:14 20:14 20:15 20:16 20:17 20:22 20:23 21:24 21:24 21:24 21:25 23:13 23:13 23:13 23:20 23:20 23:21 23:21 24:8 28:13-21 29:7 30:22-33 32 32 32:1 32:1 32:1 32:4 32:6 32:6 32:10 32:23 32:32 33:11 33:11 33:11 33:13 33:13 33:13-23 33:20 33:20 33:20 33:20 33:20 33:20 33:20 33:23 34:29 34:35
Leviticus
4:5 4:16 4:18 6:30 8:12 10:9 13 13:2-6 14 15 15:19 16 16:5 16:7 17:1-9 18:8 19:17 19:17 19:18 19:18 19:18 19:18 19:18 20:10 20:13 20:15 21:1 23:5 24:2 24:17-22 25:4 25:55 26:1 26:1
Numbers
6:6 6:7 11 12:2 12:5-8 12:6-8 12:6-8 13:16 14:27 20:1-6 21 21:4-9 21:4-9 21:5 21:8 21:9 22 22 25:1 33:9 33:9
Deuteronomy
5:8 5:12 5:15 5:16-21 5:26 6:2 6:4 6:4 6:5 6:5 6:5 6:12 8:3 8:4 8:12-14 8:12-14 10:16 10:16 11:26 11:27 12:1-26 12:2 12:3 12:30 13:1 13:6 13:6-10 13:16 14 15:2 15:4 15:7 15:8 16:10 17:6 18:1 18:2 18:15 18:19 19:11-21 19:15 19:15 19:15 19:15 21:21 21:22 21:23 21:23 21:23 21:23 21:23 21:23 22 22:5 22:28 22:29 23:3 24:1 24:12 24:13 25:4 25:4 25:4 25:4 25:5 25:5 25:6 26:9 26:15 27:15 28:65 29:5 29:5 29:5 30:11-13 30:19 32:2 32:20 32:21 32:21 32:25 32:35 32:35 32:35 32:39 32:39 32:39 32:39 33:9 33:9 33:17 33:17
Joshua
3:9-17 5:2-9 6:1-20 10:13 23:7
Judges
2:8-13 2:20 2:21 9:2 13:12 13:22
1 Samuel
2:6 2:6-8 2:7 2:8 2:8 2:8 9 9:2 10:6 10:6 10:11 13 13:14 14:43-45 14:45 15:11 15:28 15:29 16:7 18:8 18:9 21:2-6 28:6-16
2 Samuel
5:6-8 5:8 6:17 7:12 7:13 11 12:13 12:13 12:13 12:14 16:7 22:44 22:45 24:1
1 Kings
1:39 3:5-13 4:25 8:54 11:4 11:14 11:29-39 12:15 12:25-33 17:7-16 18 19:4-13 19:8 19:12 21:27 21:29 21:29
2 Kings
1 1 1:9-12 2:11 2:11 2:11 2:16 2:23 2:23 2:24 2:24 4:23 4:26 4:29 4:42-44 4:42-44 5:9-14 6:1-7 10:29-31 14:9 17:7-17 17:15 18:4 19:14 20 20:3 20:5
1 Chronicles
17:12 21:1
2 Chronicles
13:11
Nehemiah
9:21
Esther
1:1 8:9
Job
1 1:12 2 2:8 5:12 5:13 5:13 10:10 10:10
Psalms
1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1-3 1:2 1:3 1:3 1:4 2:1 2:1 2:1 2:1 2:2 2:2 2:2 2:2 2:2 2:2 2:2 2:2 2:3 2:3 2:3 2:3 2:4 2:7 2:7 2:7 2:7 2:7 2:7 2:8 2:8 2:8 2:8 2:9 2:25 2:25 2:26 3 3:1 3:4 3:22 4:4 4:4 4:4 4:7 5:6 6:19-22 6:33 7:9 7:16 8:2 8:4-6 8:4-8 8:5 8:5 8:5 8:5 8:5 8:5 8:5 8:6 8:6 8:6 8:6 8:6 8:6 8:6 8:6 8:6 8:7 9:8 9:17 9:18 9:18 10 10 10 10 10:1 10:1 10:1 10:1 10:1 10:1 10:1 10:1 10:3 10:3 10:3 10:4 10:4 11:10 11:10 12:4 13 13:5-8 15:4 15:4-8 15:8 16:4 16:10 16:15 16:15 17 18:4 18:8 18:8 18:9 18:9 18:9 18:9 18:21 18:22 18:22 18:26 18:26 18:43 18:44 19:4 19:4 19:4 19:4 19:5 19:5 19:6 19:7 19:10 19:11 20:1 20:7 22 22:1 22:2 22:6 22:6 22:6 22:6 22:7 22:7 22:8 22:8 22:9 22:9 22:10 22:10 22:15 22:16 22:16 22:16 22:16 22:16 22:16 22:16 22:17 22:17 22:18 22:18 22:18 22:21 22:22 22:25 24:1 24:4 24:4 24:5 24:7 24:8 24:10 26:5 26:5 26:9 28:2 29:1 29:2 29:3 30 30 31:1 31:5 32:1 32:11 32:17 33:1 33:2 33:6 33:6 33:6 33:6 33:18 33:19 34:13 34:14 34:14 34:19 34:20 34:22 35:12 35:15 38:8 38:17 38:17 39:23 40:3 41:9 43:6 44:1 44:4 44:5 45:1 45:1 45:1 45:1 45:1 45:2 45:2 45:2 45:2 45:3 45:3 45:3 45:3 45:4 45:4 45:4 45:5 45:5 45:5 45:5 45:5 45:6 45:7 45:8 47:6 48 48:12 49:11 49:16 49:17 49:18 49:20 49:20 50:4 50:13 50:13 50:14 51:12 51:12 51:17 55:17 55:23 59:11 59:11 60:12 61 62:4 62:11 62:12 64:7 67:6 68:18 68:19 68:25 68:26 69:4 69:21 69:21 69:22 70:8 70:9 70:11 70:17 70:17 70:18 70:19 71:18 72:1 72:4 72:6 72:10 72:10 72:11 72:12 72:13 72:14 72:15 72:15 73 74:23 78:2 78:24 78:25 82:1 82:1 82:1 82:3 82:4 82:6 82:6 82:6 85:12 86:15 87:4 87:5 87:5 88:4 88:5 88:30 88:36 88:37 88:38 89:3 89:4 89:29 89:35-37 91:11 91:13 91:13 92:12 92:12-15 94:1 94:11 95 96:5 96:7-8 96:10 96:10 97:1 97:3 97:5 97:5 108:13 110:1 110:2 110:4 110:4 113:7 113:7 132:11
Proverbs
1:7 1:20 1:21 3:11 3:12 8 8:22 8:22 8:22 8:22 8:22 8:22 8:22-25 8:23 8:24 8:25 8:27 8:27 8:27-30 8:27-31 8:28 8:28 8:30 9:2 9:10 21:1 24:12 28:13
Ecclesiastes
1:15 3:17 5:6
Song of Solomon
4:8
Isaiah
1 1:2 1:2 1:2 1:2 1:2 1:2 1:2 1:2 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:4 1:4 1:4 1:4 1:7 1:7 1:7 1:7 1:8 1:8 1:8 1:8 1:8 1:8 1:10 1:10 1:10 1:11 1:11 1:11 1:11 1:11-14 1:11-14 1:12 1:13 1:13 1:13 1:13 1:14 1:14 1:14 1:14 1:14 1:15 1:15 1:16 1:17 1:17 1:17 1:17 1:18 1:18 1:18 1:18 1:19 1:20 1:20 1:22 2:2 2:2 2:2 2:3 2:3 2:3 2:3 2:3 2:3 2:4 2:4 2:4 2:4 2:4 2:12 2:19 2:19 2:19 2:19 2:20 2:20 3:1 3:1-3 3:2 3:3 3:3 3:3 3:3 3:4 3:12 3:13 3:13 3:14 3:14 3:15 3:16-24 5 5:2 5:2 5:5 5:6 5:6 5:7 5:7 5:7 5:7 5:11 5:12 5:12 5:14 5:18 5:20 5:20 5:21 5:23 5:26 6:3 6:9 6:9 6:9 6:10 6:10 6:10 6:10 7:4 7:9 7:9 7:9 7:13 7:14 7:14 7:14 7:14 7:14 7:14 7:14 7:14 7:14 7:14 7:15 8:4 8:4 8:4 8:4 8:4 8:8 8:10 8:14 8:14 8:14 8:14 8:14 9:1 9:2 9:2 9:6 9:6 9:6 10:1 10:2 10:2 10:14 10:23 10:23 10:33 11:1 11:1 11:1 11:1 11:1-3 11:1-3 11:2 11:2 11:2 11:6 11:8 11:9 14:13 14:14 14:14 19:1 25:8 25:8 26:19 26:20 26:20 27:1 27:11 28 28:11 28:14 28:16 28:16 28:16 28:16 29:13 29:13 29:13 29:13 29:13 29:14 29:14 29:14 29:14 29:18 30 30:18 30:27 30:30 31 32:9 32:10 33:14 33:14-16 33:17 33:18 34:4 35:1 35:2 35:3 35:3 35:3 35:3 35:4 35:4 35:5 35:5 35:5 35:6 35:6 35:6 35:8 35:9 35:10 35:10 37:22 38:12 38:13 38:16 38:21 39 39:6 40 40:3 40:3 40:3 40:4 40:5 40:5 40:6 40:7 40:7 40:8 40:8 40:9 40:9 40:12 40:13 40:13 40:13 40:13 40:14 40:14 40:14 40:15 40:15 40:15 40:15 40:15 40:15 40:17 40:18 40:25 40:28 41:4 41:4 41:8 41:17 41:18 41:19 42:1 42:2 42:2 42:3 42:3 42:4 42:4 42:4 42:4 42:5 42:6 42:6 42:6 42:6 42:6 42:6 42:6 42:7 42:7 42:15 42:19 42:19 43:18 43:18 43:18 43:19 43:19 43:19 43:19 43:19 43:19 43:20 44:5 44:5 44:6 44:6 44:8 44:8 44:20 44:24 44:24 44:24 44:25 44:25 44:26 45:1 45:1 45:1 45:1 45:2 45:3 45:3 45:3 45:5 45:5 45:5 45:5 45:5 45:7 45:7 45:7 45:7 45:7 45:7 45:14 45:15 45:18 45:18 45:18 45:23 46:9 46:9 46:12 46:12 46:13 46:13 48:12 48:13 48:13 49 49:6 49:6 49:6 49:12 49:18 49:18 49:18 49:21 50:3 50:4 50:4 50:4 50:4 50:4 50:6 50:6 50:10 50:10 50:10 50:11 50:11 51:7 51:9 52:5 52:5 52:5 52:5 52:6 52:7 52:7 52:7 52:7 52:7 52:11 52:11 52:14 52:14 52:14 53 53:1 53:1 53:2 53:2 53:2 53:2 53:2 53:2 53:3 53:3 53:3 53:3 53:3 53:3 53:3 53:4 53:4 53:4 53:5 53:5 53:6 53:7 53:7 53:7 53:7 53:7 53:7 53:7 53:7 53:8 53:8 53:8 53:8 53:9 53:9 53:9 53:10 53:12 53:12 53:12 53:12 53:12 55:3 55:3 55:4 55:4 55:5 55:5 55:6 55:7 56:2 57 57:1 57:1 57:1 57:2 57:2 57:16 57:16 58:1 58:2 58:6 58:6 58:6 58:7 58:7 58:7 58:7 58:7 58:8 58:13 59:4 60:8 60:8 61:1 61:1 61:1 61:1 61:1 61:2 61:2 61:3 61:10 63:1 63:3 63:3 63:3 63:9 63:9 64:6 64:8 65:2 65:5 65:13 65:13 65:13 65:13-16 65:14 65:17 65:17 66:1 66:5 66:14 66:22 66:23 66:23 66:24
Jeremiah
1:5 1:5 1:9 2:10-12 2:10-13 2:31 2:31 4:3 4:3 4:3 4:3 4:4 4:4 4:4 4:4 4:4 7:23 7:24 7:25 7:26 8:4 8:9 9:23 9:23 9:24 9:24 11:8 11:19 11:19 11:19 15:14 16:16 17:5 17:5 17:5 17:8 17:8 17:9 17:9 17:10 18:11 20:12 22:3 22:5 25:4 26:5 31:8 31:15 31:20 31:27 31:29 31:31 31:31 31:32 31:32 31:32 31:34 32:7-15 32:19 35:15 44:4 51:15 52:9
Lamentations
4:7 4:20 4:20
Ezekiel
8:12-9:6 9:4 11:22 11:23 16:3 16:3 16:45 18:7 18:8 18:16 18:23 18:23 18:30 18:32 22:2 22:8 23 28:11-16 31 33:11 33:11 33:11 33:11 33:11 36 36:20 36:20 36:23 36:23 37:1-14 43:2 48:30-35
Daniel
1:8-14 2:1 2:19 2:20 2:34 2:34 2:34 2:35 2:35 2:35 2:35 2:44 2:44 2:45 2:45 3 3 3:12 3:16 3:21 3:21 3:25 3:25 3:26 3:27 3:28 3:29 4:25 4:33 4:33-37 4:34 4:37 6 6 6:10 7:10 7:13 7:13 7:13 7:13 7:13 7:13 7:13 7:13 7:13 7:14 7:14 7:14 7:14 7:14 9 9:23 9:24 9:26 9:26 10:2 13:32 24
Hosea
1:6 1:9 1:10 2:11 2:11 2:17 2:23 5:15 6:1 6:1 6:2 6:6 6:6 6:6 6:6 6:6 8:6 8:14 10:6 11:8 12:4 13:14 14:2
Joel
2:10 2:22 2:28 2:28 2:28 2:28 2:28 2:29 2:29 2:29 3:1 3:1 3:9-15 3:18 3:28 3:28 3:30 3:31
Amos
2:6 2:12 3 4:13 4:13 4:13 4:13 5:21 6:1 6:1-6 8:9 8:9 8:9 8:10 9:6 9:6 9:6 9:6 9:6
Jonah
1:17 2:10 3:8 3:10 3:10 3:10 3:10 4:2 4:2
Micah
5:2 6:8 7:6 7:18 7:19
Nahum
1:4 1:15
Habakkuk
2:4 2:4 2:4 3:2 3:9-12 3:10 3:13
Haggai
1:1 1:12 2:2 2:4
Zechariah
1:14 2:8 3 3 3:8 4:3 4:7 4:14 6:11 6:12 7:10 8:16 8:17 9:15 9:16 10:9 11:12 11:12 11:13 12:10 12:10 12:10 12:10 12:10 12:12 12:12 13:2 13:9 14:4 14:14 14:14
Malachi
1 1 1:10 1:10 1:10 1:11 1:11 1:11 2:15 3:1 3:1-3 4:2 4:3 4:5 4:5
Matthew
1:1 1:16 1:20 1:21 1:23 1:23 1:23 1:23 1:23 2 2:1 2:1-12 2:3-6 2:11 2:16-18 2:16-18 3:1 3:2 3:3 3:6 3:7 3:7-9 3:7-12 3:8 3:9 3:9 3:10 3:10 3:10 3:11 3:11 3:12 3:12 3:12 3:13-17 3:13-17 3:16 3:16 3:16 3:17 3:17 4:1-4 4:1-11 4:3 4:3 4:4 4:4 4:6 4:6 4:7 4:10 4:10 4:12-16 4:14 4:16 4:21 4:21 4:22 4:22 5:3 5:4 5:5 5:9 5:9 5:10 5:10 5:11 5:11 5:12 5:12 5:14 5:15 5:16 5:17 5:17 5:17 5:17 5:17 5:17 5:17 5:17 5:17 5:20 5:21 5:21 5:21 5:22 5:22 5:22 5:22 5:22 5:22 5:23 5:23 5:24 5:25 5:25 5:25 5:26 5:26 5:26 5:26 5:27 5:28 5:28 5:28 5:28 5:28 5:28 5:28 5:32 5:34-37 5:37 5:37 5:37 5:38 5:39 5:40 5:44 5:44 5:44 5:44 5:45 5:45 5:45 5:45 5:45 5:48 6:5 6:5 6:6 6:6 6:6 6:8 6:9 6:12 6:14 6:15 6:16-18 6:21 6:24 6:24 6:24 6:24 6:25 6:25 6:27 6:28 6:31 6:32 6:33 6:34 6:34 6:38 7:1 7:6 7:6 7:6 7:7 7:7 7:7 7:7 7:7 7:9 7:12 7:13 7:15 7:15 7:16 7:17 7:17 7:18 8:5 8:5 8:5 8:6 8:12 8:15 8:20 8:24 8:29 9:4 9:4 9:9 9:9 9:13 9:13 9:16 9:16 9:17 9:17 10:5 10:7 10:10 10:16 10:16 10:16 10:19 10:21 10:22 10:24 10:24 10:24 10:27 10:28 10:29 10:30 10:31 10:32 10:33 10:33 10:33 10:33 10:34 10:34 10:37 10:37 10:37 10:37-38 10:39 10:39 10:42 11 11:2-6 11:8 11:10 11:11 11:12 11:13 11:13 11:14 11:22 11:25 11:25 11:26 11:27 11:27 11:27 11:27 11:27 12:7 12:8 12:19 12:20 12:21 12:21 12:36 12:37 12:37 12:40 12:41 12:42 12:48 12:48 12:48 12:48 12:48 13:3 13:10 13:11 13:12 13:13 13:25 13:30 13:31-43 13:34 13:42 13:54 13:55 14:3 14:25 14:28 14:29 15:10 15:11 15:13 15:14 15:17-20 15:22 15:24 15:24 15:24 15:26 15:26 15:26 16:13 16:16 16:16 16:17 16:17 16:17 16:18 16:19 16:19 16:23 16:24 16:24 17:1-8 17:2-4 17:3 17:3 17:3-8 17:5 17:6 17:12 18:8 18:15 18:16 18:16 18:16 18:20 18:20 18:21 18:21-22 18:21-35 18:22 18:22 19:4 19:6 19:8 19:9 19:12 19:12 19:14 19:21 19:26 19:26 19:26 19:27-30 19:28 20:16 20:16 20:20 20:20-23 21:15 21:16 21:23 21:23 21:25 21:31 21:32 21:33-41 21:45 22:11 22:12 22:13 22:21 22:21 22:21 22:21 22:23 22:23-32 22:30 22:30 22:30 22:34-40 22:37 22:37 22:37-40 22:44 23:9 23:9 23:25 23:26 23:26 23:27 23:31 24:3 24:4 24:11 24:13 24:24 24:24 24:24 24:29 24:32 24:33 24:35 24:36 25:30 25:36 25:38 25:40 25:41 25:41 25:41 25:45 25:45 26:7-12 26:17 26:26 26:27 26:28 26:38 26:38 26:41 26:41 26:41 26:41 26:41 26:52 26:53 26:56 27:3-10 27:9 27:11-14 27:20-25 27:24 27:24 27:24 27:25 27:25 27:32 27:34 27:34 27:35 27:35 27:45 27:45 27:46 27:46 27:46 27:50-52 28:18 28:18 28:19 28:19 28:19 28:19 28:19 28:20
Mark
1:2 1:4 1:4 1:9-11 1:19 1:20 1:24 2:5 2:8 2:8 2:14 2:21 2:22 4:34 4:34 4:36 5:25 6:1-9 6:3 7:15 7:27 8:34 8:38 8:38 9:4 9:6 9:37 10:14 10:29 10:30 10:35 10:52 11:30 12:17 12:18-27 12:28-34 13:32 14:12 14:12 14:13 14:21 14:31 15:1-5 15:8-15 15:21 15:33 15:37 15:38 16:9 16:15 16:16 16:18 16:19 16:19
Luke
1 1 1 1:1 1:11 1:20 1:22 1:26-38 1:27 1:31 1:35 1:35 1:35 1:35 1:35 1:35 1:37 1:41 1:41-45 1:42 1:43 1:46 1:47-48 1:52 1:52 1:52 1:62 1:63 1:76 1:76 1:78 1:78 1:79 2 2:1-7 2:1-7 2:8 2:13 2:22-24 2:23 2:25-33 2:25-35 2:32 2:34 2:34 2:36-38 2:49 3:1 3:1 3:1 3:2 3:4 3:4-6 3:5 3:11 3:12 3:13 3:21-22 3:22 3:22 3:49 4 4:8 4:14-18 4:16-30 4:18 4:22 4:23 4:24 4:27 4:27 4:27 4:27 4:27 4:29 4:30 4:31 4:31 4:32 4:32 4:33 4:34 4:34 4:40 4:40 4:41 4:42 4:42 4:43 5:1-11 5:10 5:11 5:12-14 5:14 5:16-26 5:27-39 5:29 5:31 5:31 5:34 5:35 5:36 5:37 6:1-4 6:5 6:7 6:9 6:12 6:13-19 6:14 6:20 6:20 6:20 6:20 6:21 6:21 6:21 6:21 6:22 6:22 6:23 6:23 6:24 6:25 6:26 6:26 6:27 6:27 6:28 6:28 6:29 6:29 6:30 6:30 6:30 6:30 6:31 6:31 6:34 6:35 6:35 6:36 6:37 6:37 6:37 6:37 6:38 6:39 6:39 6:40 6:40 6:41-45 6:43 6:43 6:44 6:46 7 7:1 7:1-10 7:3 7:7 7:11-17 7:16 7:16 7:18-23 7:20 7:21 7:22 7:25 7:25 7:26 7:27 7:27 7:28 7:29-30 7:36-50 8:8 8:11 8:16 8:17 8:17 8:18 8:18 8:18 8:18 8:19 8:20 8:20 8:21 8:21 8:25 8:28 8:30 8:43-46 8:48 8:48 9:1-6 9:7 9:8 9:10-17 9:20 9:20 9:21 9:22 9:23 9:24 9:26 9:26 9:26 9:28 9:28-36 9:30 9:33 9:35 9:35 9:41 9:47 9:48 9:51-56 9:51-56 9:56 9:57 9:58 9:58 9:59 9:59 9:59 9:60 9:60 9:60 9:62 10 10:4 10:4 10:5 10:5 10:7 10:9 10:11 10:11 10:16 10:18 10:18 10:19 10:20 10:21 10:21 10:21 10:21 10:22 10:22 10:22 10:23 10:24 10:25 10:25 10:25-28 10:27 10:27 11:1 11:2 11:3 11:4 11:5 11:5-8 11:5-9 11:8 11:9 11:9 11:9 11:9 11:11 11:11-13 11:14 11:18 11:19 11:20 11:21 11:22 11:27 11:27 11:27 11:28 11:28 11:29 11:29 11:30-32 11:33 11:37-52 11:39 11:40 11:41 11:42 11:42 11:46 11:47 11:48 11:49-51 11:52 12:1-21 12:2 12:4 12:5 12:6 12:8 12:8 12:9 12:10 12:11 12:12 12:13 12:14 12:16-20 12:16-20 12:22-24 12:22-28 12:23 12:24-27 12:27 12:28 12:28 12:28 12:29 12:30 12:30 12:30 12:31 12:31 12:32 12:35 12:35 12:36 12:38 12:39 12:41 12:41-46 12:49 12:50 12:50 12:51 12:53 12:56 12:57 12:58 12:59 13 13:1-5 13:15 13:20 13:21 13:25 13:25-28 13:28 13:28 13:29-35 14:12-14 14:14 14:16 14:18 14:18-20 14:21 14:23 14:26 14:26 14:26 14:26-27 14:27 14:28-30 15:1-10 15:3-6 15:3-7 15:7 15:8 15:8-10 15:10 15:11-31 15:11-32 15:11-32 15:29-32 16:9 16:11 16:12 16:13 16:13 16:13 16:15 16:15 16:16 16:16 16:16 16:16 16:16 16:17 16:18 16:18 16:19-31 16:19-31 16:23 16:23 16:23 16:24 16:24 16:26 16:26 16:29 16:29 17:1 17:2 17:3 17:4 17:10 17:11-19 17:12-14 17:14 17:15 17:17 17:19 17:19 17:20 17:21 17:21 17:25 17:26-30 17:32 18:1 18:1-8 18:2 18:3 18:7 18:7 18:8 18:9-14 18:10-14 18:16 18:18-20 18:19 18:19 18:20 18:21 18:22 18:22 18:27 18:27 18:27 18:31-33 18:38 18:38 18:39 18:40 18:42 18:42 18:42 19:1-10 19:8 19:9 19:9 19:10 19:10 19:10 19:12 19:13 19:20-24 19:22 19:27-47 19:41-44 20:4 20:4 20:5 20:6 20:8 20:8-18 20:16 20:19 20:20 20:25 20:25 20:27-33 20:27-38 20:33 20:34 20:35 20:35 20:35-37 20:36 20:36 20:36 20:36 20:36 20:36 20:36 20:37 20:37-38 20:38 20:39 20:41 20:41-44 20:49 20:50-51 21:1-22 21:7 21:8 21:8 21:9 21:9-11 21:12 21:12-14 21:13 21:16 21:17 21:19 21:19 21:20 21:22 21:23 21:24 21:25 21:25 21:26 21:26 21:26 21:26-28 21:27 21:28 21:28 21:29 21:29-31 21:30 21:31 21:31 21:31-33 21:33 21:33 21:34 21:34-38 21:35 21:35-36 21:36 21:37 21:37 21:38 22 22:3 22:7 22:7 22:10 22:15 22:15 22:15-20 22:19 22:19 22:20 22:20 22:22 22:28 22:28 22:29 22:29 22:30 22:34 22:40 22:42 22:47-49 22:54-62 22:61 22:66 22:67 22:67 22:69 22:70 22:70 22:71 23:1 23:2 23:2 23:3 23:7 23:8 23:9 23:13-25 23:25 23:26 23:31 23:33 23:43 23:43 23:44 23:45 23:45 23:46 23:46 23:46 23:46 23:46 23:46 23:47-55 23:51 24 24:1 24:3 24:4 24:4 24:6 24:7 24:13-19 24:21 24:25 24:25 24:26-27 24:27 24:37-39 24:39 24:39 24:41 24:42 24:44 24:45-48 24:47 24:49
John
1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1-3 1:1-3 1:2 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:3 1:4 1:6-36 1:9 1:9 1:12 1:13 1:13 1:14 1:14 1:14 1:14 1:14 1:14 1:14 1:16 1:17 1:17 1:17 1:17 1:18 1:18 1:18 1:18 1:18 1:18 1:21 1:23 1:29 1:29 1:29-34 1:33 1:36 1:49 1:49 1:50 2:1-10 2:1-11 2:4 2:4 2:4 2:5 2:16 2:19 2:21 3:5 3:5 3:6 3:6 3:6 3:13 3:14 3:14 3:16 3:17 3:18 3:30 3:30 3:30 3:31 3:31 3:32 3:35 3:35 3:35 3:36 4:2 4:2 4:3 4:6 4:12 4:20 4:22 4:23 4:24 4:24 4:24 4:24 4:25 4:34 5:1-9 5:1-9 5:17 5:17 5:18 5:19 5:19-27 5:21 5:22 5:22 5:24 5:25 5:28 5:29 5:29 5:31 5:35 5:36 5:37 5:37 5:39 5:43 5:43 5:43 5:43 5:43 6 6:15 6:29 6:30 6:31 6:31-32 6:32 6:33 6:35 6:37-45 6:38 6:38 6:38 6:39 6:39 6:40 6:44 6:44 6:46 6:49 6:51 6:51 6:53 6:58 6:63 6:63 6:63 6:66 6:66 6:67 6:67 6:68 6:68 6:70 7 7:5 7:28 7:29 7:33 7:35 7:37 7:37-39 7:38 7:39 8:16 8:17 8:18 8:19 8:19 8:26 8:26 8:27 8:28 8:29 8:38 8:40 8:40 8:42 8:44 8:49 8:54 8:55 8:56 9:4 9:35-38 10:15 10:15 10:17 10:18 10:24 10:25 10:25 10:26-28 10:29 10:30 10:30 10:30 10:30 10:30 10:30 10:30 10:31-33 10:32 10:34 10:34-38 10:37 10:38 11:25 11:27 11:41 11:41 11:41 11:42 11:42 12:27 12:28 12:28 12:28 12:30 12:34 12:44 12:45 12:49 12:50 13:1 13:1-5 13:1-12 13:1-17 13:3 13:8 13:9 13:9 13:10 13:10 13:10 13:10 13:16 13:25 13:31 13:32 14:2 14:5-7 14:6 14:6 14:6 14:7 14:8 14:9 14:9 14:9 14:9 14:10 14:10 14:10 14:10 14:10 14:11 14:11 14:11 14:16 14:16 14:26 14:28 14:28 15:1 15:25 15:26 16:6 16:7 16:12 16:13 16:13 16:13 16:14 16:15 16:20 16:20 16:20 16:24 16:28 16:30 17:1 17:6 17:6 17:11 17:14 18:20 18:28 18:36 18:36 19:8-12 19:12 19:12 19:12-16 19:17 19:17 19:23 19:24 19:26 19:28 19:31 19:31 19:32-37 19:34 19:34 19:37 19:37 20:17 20:17 20:27 20:28 20:29 20:31 20:31 21:18 21:19 21:20 21:23 56
Acts
1:3 1:9 1:10 1:10 1:10 1:11 1:11 1:11 1:11 1:15-20 2:1-4 2:5 2:9 2:10 2:14 2:15 2:16-33 2:17 2:17 2:17 2:17 2:18 2:18 2:22 2:22 2:22 2:30 2:36 3:1 3:5 3:13 3:19-21 4:25-30 4:27 4:27 5:31 5:39 5:40 6:1-6 6:15 7:6 7:38 7:38-41 7:39 7:39 7:40 7:40 7:51 7:52 7:53 7:55 7:59 7:59 7:59 7:60 7:60 8:9 8:9-24 8:9-24 8:18-21 8:21 8:26-40 8:26-40 8:28 8:30 8:32 8:33 9:1-31 9:2 9:3-8 9:11 9:43 10:9 10:14 10:15 10:38 12:2 12:15 12:23 13:6-11 13:8 13:17 13:47 14:10 14:15-17 15:1-31 15:5-29 15:20 16:3 16:16 16:25 17:21 17:23 17:24 17:32 19:1-7 19:2 19:4 19:5 19:9 19:23 20:29 20:30 21:11 21:23-26 22:11 23:6 23:8 26:18 26:22 26:26 27:35 28:2 28:3
Romans
1:3 1:3 1:3 1:4 1:4 1:7 1:8 1:16 1:16 1:17 1:17 1:18 1:18 1:20 1:20 1:20 1:20 1:20-23 1:25 1:26 2:2 2:2 2:6 2:12-16 2:14 2:16 2:21 2:24 2:24 2:24 2:24 2:28 2:28 2:29 2:29 3:10 3:13 3:19 3:21 3:22 4 4:3 4:7 4:9 4:11 4:11 4:22 4:25 5:1 5:3 5:20 5:20 5:20 5:20 5:21 5:21 6:2 6:3 6:3 6:4 6:4 6:4 6:5 6:6 6:6 6:6 6:6 6:8 6:8 6:11 6:11 6:11 6:12 6:13 6:14 6:15 6:19-23 7:4 7:4 7:4-6 7:7 7:7 7:8 7:13 7:14 7:17 7:18 7:20 7:20 7:23 7:23 7:23 8:2 8:2 8:3 8:3 8:3 8:3 8:3 8:3 8:3 8:3 8:5 8:5-13 8:6 8:7 8:8 8:8 8:8 8:9 8:9 8:10 8:10 8:11 8:11 8:11 8:11-10:2 8:12 8:13 8:17 8:17 8:18 8:18 8:19 8:20 8:21 8:32 8:32 8:35 9:5 9:5 9:5 9:10-13 9:20 9:28 9:32 9:32 9:33 9:33 9:33 10:2-4 10:10 10:14-17 10:15 10:17 10:18 10:18 10:21 11:18-21 11:33 11:33 11:33 11:33 11:34 11:34 11:34 11:34 11:34 11:34 11:35 11:35 12:1 12:1 12:9 12:9 12:10 12:12 12:12 12:12 12:15 12:16 12:17 12:17 12:18 12:19 12:19 12:19 12:19 12:19 13:1 13:1 13:4 13:4 13:6 13:8 13:9 13:9 14:17 14:23 14:23 15 15:12 16 16:16
1 Corinthians
1:3 1:3 1:10 1:10 1:11 1:12 1:12-15 1:14 1:16 1:17 1:18 1:19 1:19 1:20 1:20 1:20 1:21 1:21 1:22 1:23 1:23 1:24 1:25 1:25 1:27 1:27 1:27 1:27 1:27 1:27 1:29 1:31 2:2 2:6 2:7 2:7 2:8 2:8 2:9 2:11 2:11 2:11 2:11 2:14 2:14 3:1 3:3 3:4 3:6-9 3:10 3:10 3:11 3:16 3:16 3:16 3:17 3:18 3:18 3:19 3:19 3:19 3:20 3:21 3:21 3:22 3:22 3:23 3:25 4:5 4:5 4:7 4:9 4:15 5:1 5:4-5 5:5 5:5 5:7 5:7 5:7 5:10 5:10 5:10 5:11 5:13 5:13 5:13 6:2 6:3 6:3 6:3 6:11 6:13 6:14 6:15 6:15 6:15 6:19 6:20 6:20 6:20 6:20 7:3 7:7 7:8 7:9 7:10 7:10 7:11 7:13 7:14 7:14 7:14 7:20 7:27 7:29 7:29 7:29 7:31 7:31 7:34 7:34 7:35 7:39 7:39 7:39 7:40 8 8:2 8:4 8:4 8:5 8:5 8:5 8:5 8:6 8:10 8:10 9:1 9:7 9:9 9:9 9:9 9:10 9:10 9:13 9:13 9:14 9:15 9:16 9:19 9:20 9:20 9:22 9:22 9:22 9:22 9:25 10:2 10:4 10:4 10:4 10:4 10:4 10:6 10:6 10:6 10:7 10:7 10:7-10 10:11 10:11 10:11 10:14 10:19 10:21 10:23 10:25-27 10:27-29 10:28 10:32 10:33 11:1-16 11:3 11:3 11:3-16 11:4 11:5 11:5 11:5 11:6 11:7 11:7 11:9 11:10 11:10 11:10 11:10 11:10 11:14 11:14 11:16 11:18 11:18 11:18 11:19 11:19 11:19 11:19 11:19 11:19 11:19 11:19 11:19 11:23-29 11:25 12:1 12:1-11 12:4-11 12:4-12 12:8 12:8-11 12:12-30 12:23 12:26 12:31 13 13:1 13:3 13:12 13:13 14 14 14:15 14:20 14:21 14:25 14:26 14:32 14:34 14:34 14:34 14:35 14:35 15:3 15:3 15:3 15:3 15:3 15:3 15:4 15:4 15:4 15:4 15:8 15:11 15:11 15:12 15:12 15:12 15:12-18 15:13-18 15:14 15:17 15:18 15:19 15:21 15:21 15:22 15:23 15:24 15:25 15:25 15:25 15:26 15:27 15:27 15:27 15:28 15:29 15:29 15:29 15:30 15:31 15:32 15:32 15:35 15:35 15:36 15:37 15:37 15:37 15:38 15:38 15:38 15:38 15:39 15:39 15:39-41 15:40 15:41 15:41 15:41 15:41 15:42 15:42 15:42 15:42 15:42-44 15:43 15:43 15:44 15:44 15:45 15:45 15:45 15:45 15:45 15:45 15:45 15:45 15:46 15:46 15:46 15:46 15:46 15:47 15:47 15:47 15:47 15:48 15:48 15:49 15:50 15:50 15:50 15:50 15:50 15:50 15:50 15:50 15:51 15:51-53 15:52 15:52 15:52 15:52 15:52 15:52 15:52 15:53 15:53 15:53 15:53 15:53 15:53 15:53 15:53 15:54 15:54-56 15:55 15:55 15:55 15:55 16:20
2 Corinthians
1:3 1:3 1:8 1:21 1:22 1:22 2:10 3:6 3:6 3:7 3:7 3:8 3:13 3:14 3:15 3:16 3:18 3:18 4:4 4:4 4:4 4:6 4:6 4:7 4:7 4:7 4:8 4:8-12 4:10 4:10 4:10 4:10 4:10 4:11 4:11 4:14 4:14 4:14 4:16 4:16 4:16 4:16 4:16-18 4:17 4:18 5:1 5:1 5:2 5:2 5:3 5:3 5:3 5:4 5:4 5:4 5:4 5:4 5:5 5:5 5:5 5:5 5:6 5:6 5:7 5:8 5:8 5:9 5:10 5:10 5:10 5:10 5:10 5:10 5:17 5:17 5:17 5:17 6:7 6:14 6:14 6:16 6:17 7:1 7:5 7:5 10:4 10:13 11:2 11:3 11:13 11:14 11:14 11:14 11:14 11:14 11:15 11:23 12:2-4 12:4 12:4 12:5 12:7 12:8 12:9 12:9 12:9 12:9 12:10 13:1 13:1 13:1 13:1 13:2 13:10 13:12
Galatians
1 1:1 1:1 1:1 1:6 1:6 1:6 1:6-9 1:7 1:7 1:7 1:7 1:8 1:8 1:8 1:8 1:8 1:8 1:8 1:8 1:9 1:10 1:11-24 1:13 1:15 1:16 1:18 1:24 2:1 2:2 2:2 2:2 2:3 2:3 2:4 2:4 2:4 2:4 2:5 2:9 2:9 2:9 2:10 2:10 2:12 2:12 2:12 2:13 2:13 2:14 2:14 2:16 2:16 2:18 2:19 3 3:1 3:6 3:6 3:6-8 3:7 3:8 3:9 3:9 3:11 3:13 3:13 3:13 3:13 3:13 3:13 3:13 3:15 3:15 3:15-4:3 3:16 3:16 3:16 3:16 3:19 3:22 3:26 3:27 3:27 3:29 4 4:3 4:3 4:4 4:4 4:4 4:5 4:5 4:6 4:8 4:8 4:9 4:9 4:9 4:10 4:19 4:21-26 4:22 4:24 4:26 4:26 4:31 5:1 5:1 5:1 5:2 5:5 5:6 5:6 5:7 5:10 5:11 5:12 5:12 5:14 5:16 5:17 5:17 5:19 5:19-21 5:20 5:21 5:26 6:2 6:7 6:7 6:9 6:9 6:9 6:10 6:14 6:17 6:17
Ephesians
1:9 1:10 1:10 1:10 1:12 1:13 1:14 1:17 1:17 1:18 1:18 1:19-22 1:23 2:1 2:2 2:2 2:3 2:3 2:3 2:3 2:3 2:10 2:10 2:10 2:11 2:12 2:12 2:13 2:14 2:15 2:15-16 2:16 2:17 2:17-20 2:20 2:20 2:20 2:21 3:8 3:9 3:10 3:14 3:17 4:4 4:5 4:5 4:5 4:5 4:5 4:6 4:8 4:8 4:9 4:11 4:16 4:22 4:22 4:22 4:22-24 4:25 4:25-32 4:26 4:26 4:26 4:26 4:27 4:30 4:30 4:31 5:5 5:5 5:8 5:11 5:11 5:12 5:18 5:19 5:22 5:23 5:23 5:24 5:25 5:28 5:29 5:31 5:31 5:31 5:32 5:32 5:32 5:32 5:32 6:1 6:2 6:4 6:11 6:12 6:12 6:12 6:12 6:12 6:12 6:14-17 6:17 6:18 6:18 6:19 6:20 23
Philippians
1:10 1:14-17 1:18 1:23 1:23 1:29 1:30 2:3 2:6 2:6 2:6 2:7 2:8 2:8 2:8 2:15 2:17 3:1 3:2 3:4-6 3:5 3:7 3:8 3:8 3:9 3:11 3:12 3:12 3:15 3:19 3:20 3:20 3:20 3:20 3:20 3:21 3:21 3:21 3:21 4:3 4:6 4:7 4:8
Colossians
1:5 1:6 1:15 1:15 1:15 1:15 1:15 1:16 1:16 1:19 1:20 1:21 1:21 1:22 1:24 2:8 2:8 2:8 2:9 2:11 2:12 2:12 2:13 2:13 2:14 2:14 2:15 2:15 2:16 2:17 2:18 2:18 2:19 2:20 2:20 2:20 2:21 2:22 2:23 3:1 3:2 3:3 3:3 3:4 3:5 3:5
1 Thessalonians
1:9 1:9 1:10 1:10 2:15 2:19 3:13 4:3 4:4 4:4 4:5 4:8 4:11 4:13 4:13-17 4:13-17 4:15-17 4:15-17 4:16 4:16 4:16 4:16 4:17 4:17 4:17 5:1-3 5:17 5:18 5:19 5:20 5:21 5:23 5:23 5:23 5:23 5:26
2 Thessalonians
1:4 1:6-8 1:8 1:8 1:9 1:9 2:1-7 2:3 2:4 2:4 2:8-10 2:9 2:10 2:10-12 2:11 2:13 3:6-12 3:10
1 Timothy
1:4 1:4 1:4 1:4 1:16 1:17 1:18 1:19 1:20 1:20 2:1 2:2 2:5 2:5 2:5 2:5 2:8 2:8 2:8 2:9 2:9 2:10 2:11 2:12 3:1 3:16 4:1 4:1-3 4:3 4:3 5:3 5:9 5:10 5:17 5:21 5:22 5:23 6:3 6:4 6:10 6:10 6:13 6:13 6:14 6:15 6:16 6:16 6:16 6:20 6:20
2 Timothy
1:7 1:8 1:14 1:15 1:15 1:15 1:16-18 1:17 1:18 1:18 2:1 2:2 2:2 2:3 2:8 2:11 2:12 2:14 2:17 2:17 2:19 3:8 4:1-4 4:6 4:8 4:8 4:13 4:13 4:14 4:19
Titus
1:12 1:12 1:15 3:1 3:9 3:10 3:10 3:10 3:11 3:11 3:14
Hebrews
1:3 1:5 1:14 2:2 2:5-9 2:6-9 4:12 4:13 4:15 5:5-10 5:7 5:8 5:10 7:1-3 7:1-3 7:10 7:15 7:17 8:8-13 8:11 9:8 9:14 9:19 10:22 10:24 10:26 10:27 10:29 10:30 10:30 10:35 11:4 11:5 11:5 11:7 11:9 11:26 11:32-38 12:3 12:5 12:6 13:2 13:10 13:10-13
James
1:13 1:22 2:23 2:23 3:1 3:8 5:12 5:16 5:16 5:17 18
1 Peter
1:1 1:11 2:4 2:4 2:4-8 2:5 2:5 2:8 2:10 2:13 2:20 2:22 3:1-6 3:3 3:7 3:9 3:9 3:18-20 3:19 3:19 3:20 3:21 4:8 4:12 5:14
2 Peter
1:4 1:9 2:1 2:5 2:6-9 3:10
1 John
1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1 1:2 1:3 1:5 2:19 2:22 3:2 3:9 3:15 3:16 3:20 4:1-3 4:2 4:3 4:3 4:3 4:3 4:3 4:12 4:15 4:18 5:1 5:6 5:7 5:7 5:7 5:7 5:7 5:12 5:16-17 5:18 5:21
3 John
1:8
Revelation
1:7 1:7 1:7 1:8 1:10 1:13 1:13 1:16 1:16 2:4 2:6 2:7 2:7 2:10 2:10 2:11 2:12 2:13 2:14 2:14 2:15 2:17 2:20 2:24 2:26 2:27 2:27 2:29 3:2 3:4 3:5 3:6 3:10 3:13 3:17 3:19 3:21 3:21 3:21 4:4 4:8 5:9 6:2 6:9 6:9 6:9 6:9 6:9-11 6:10 6:10 6:13 6:14 7:14 7:17 8:3 8:4 10:1 11:3 12:9 12:9 12:10 14:3 14:4 14:4 16 17 17:6 17:14 18 18:2 18:4 19:4 19:15 19:21 20:2 20:3 20:4-6 20:10 20:11 20:12-14 20:13-15 21:1 21:1 21:2 21:4 21:6 21:6 21:8 21:10-23 22:1 22:13 22:14 22:15 22:17 22:18 22:19
Tobit
12:12
Wisdom of Solomon
1:1 1:1 1:6 2:12
Baruch
6:3
Susanna
1:32
Bel and the Dragon
1:1852
1 Maccabees
2:41 10:20
2 Maccabees
12:40-45
2 Esdras
15:1
Index of Greek Words and Phrases
Index of Hebrew Words and Phrases
Index of French Words and Phrases
Index of Pages of the Print Edition
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Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. III, part 2 of 2. . Hermetic Cloud, https://hermeticcloud.com/library/ante-nicene-fathers-vol-iii-part-2/. Public-domain text reproduced in full; markup only.