In addition to these circumstances, it is known from his own writings that he was a convert from heathenism, and that he once despised the Gospel, which he afterwards embraced. As a Heathen, he had taken pleasure in the savage sports of the gladiators, and had fallen into the gross sins of Heathenism, but with these he contrasts his subsequent state, although with a deep consciousness of abiding sinfulness, and of his weakness of faith. Of special infirmities, he takes occasion of writing upon patience, to mention his own impatience. His conversion was probably A.D. 1961; his continuance in the Church can thus have been scarcely five years, since in A. D. 201*, it seems certain that he was a Montanist. He had then, at all events, reached middle age'. His Treatises addressed "to his wife," written while in the Church", imply the likelihood of continued life; the whole fde Cult. Fem. ii. 1. de Pœnit. c. 4. and fin. g de Bapt. c. 10. p. 267. hde Pat. c. 1. p. 327. 1 It seems clear, from the conclusion of the de Pallio, that it was written on his conversion to Christianity, the pallium being the dress of Christians. "Thus far speaketh the Pallium. But as for me, I now transfer my life to that sect and discipline, which is [not merely philosophical but] Divine also. Rejoice, Pallium, and be glad; a better philosophy hath accepted thee, from the time that thou becamest the Christian's dress." But the date of the de Pallio itself, in connection with Tertullian's other writings, then becomes fixed by the passage, in which he speaks of the peace consequent upon the harmony of the three Augusti, "How many cities hath the triple excellence of the existing rule either produced, or enlarged, or restored ? God favouring so many Augusti, making them as one, how many census have been formed! how many people purified! how many ranks ennobled how many barbarians driven out! Of a truth, the world, that most cultivated demesne of this Empire, all the aconite of hostility having been rooted out, with the cactus and brambles of treacherous intimacy, is adorned and agreeable above the orchards of Alcinous, or the rose-gardens of Midas." c. 2. The chief events alluded to, seem to have been the suppression of the revolt of Niger, the victories over the Arabians, Parthians, Adiabenians, the capture of Byzantium. The three Augusti, Severus, Antoninus Caracalla, and Albinus. The only other date would be two years later, when after the revolt and death of Albinus, Geta was made Cæsar; but they of whom T. speaks were three Augusti, Geta was not entitled Augustus until A. 208. This is subsequent to the date of some of T.'s Apologetic writings. (Pamelius and Scaliger agree in the above.) * The date (as it seems) of the de Corona, (see notice, below, p. 158.) He was certainly a Montanist in A.D. 207. the date of the first book against Marcion. In the fifteenth year of Severus." (c. 15.) 1 S. Jerome above. m Tillemont (Note 3. sur Tertullien) on this ground infers that T. wrote these Treatises in the interval between his conversion and his ordination. In the absence of any marks of their precise date, the assumption cannot be disproved. tenor of the two books implies that he was living in the ordinary course of married life. Previous to his conversion, he seems to have been engaged in the practice of the law", his accurate acquaintance with which Eusebius has occasion distinctly to specify; on his conversion he abandoned it, and in the interval before his secession, was admitted to the Priesthood". In this short interval, besides the works belonging to it now extant, he "detected, and as it seemed uprooted, the heresy of Praxeas," which had spread to Carthage, and brought Praxeas himself to sign a formal, though, it subsequently appeared, a hypocritical recantation, which was preserved in the Church'. In the same period probably he wrote two treatises against Marcion, the first a sketch, the second a fuller work, lost through the treachery of an apostate Catholic". A later author' mentions that he had "practised Rhetoric at Carthage for many years, with much distinction," and this is perhaps borne out by the very varied character of his learning". An early work of his is also mentioned by S. Jerome, written as The passage, quoted by Pamelius, (de Pallio, c. 5.) does not directly prove this; for it is spoken by the Pallium personified; it relates to other offices, judicial and military, (“non judico, non milito,") and declares that they which wore it had abandoned public life altogether. ("I have gone aloof from the people. My only business is within myself.") Yet, doubtless T. had reference to himself also, and the great prominence given to the law in the description makes it probable that he was previously engaged in it. • H. E. ii. 2. "Tertullian, a man accurately acquainted with the Roman laws, and in other respects distinguished, and among those in great repute at Rome." This is said on occasion of the history of Tiberius' proposal to rank our Lord among the deities of Rome. P de Pallio 1. c. the laity, he must be speaking communicative. r adv. Prax. c. 1. Trithemius Abbas. de Script. Eccl. " Especially in the Apology and the de Corona. Yet in the de Idol. c. 4. p. 224. he speaks of the weakness of his memory. x adv. Jov. i. 7. "Here would be the place to descant on the straits of marriage, and to give full play to the language of Rhetoricians in their common-places. Certainly Tertullian also, when yet young, disported in this subject," and Ep. 22. ad Eustoch. §. 22. Would you know from how many troubles the unmarried is free, by how many the wife beset, you may read 'Tertullian to a philosophic friend.'" Baronius, A. 197. §. 14. supposes that Tertullian was already a Christian, since S. Jerome in this very Epistle and elsewhere dissuades from reading Heathen writings. almost too large an inference, knowing, as we do, nothing of the circumstances of his conversion. Tertullian speaks of his own adult, but heathen, sins. (see q S. Jerome above. The way in which in the de An. c. 9. he distinguishes himself from the people, implies plainly that he was a priest. In the de Monog. c. 12. and the de Exh. Cast. c.7. in which he includes himself among But this seems an exercise after the manner of Rhetoricians. The greater part of his life was spent at Carthage, for although he mentions incidentally his having been at Rome', the chief allusions in his writings are Carthaginian'; the small sect which bore his name, lingered on, until S. Augustine's time, in Carthage. Of his mental qualities, the Ancient Church seems to have been much impressed with his acuteness, energy, learning, and eloquence; what we have left, are apparently but a small portion of the great number of works which he composed; and these indicate no ordinary fertility of mind, in that he so little repeats himself, or recurs to favourite thoughts, as is so frequently the case even with the great St. Augustine. His character of mind is thus vividly described by Vincentius: "As Origen among the Greeks, so is Tertullian among the Latins to be accounted far the first of all our writers. For who was more learned than he? Who in divinity or humanity more practised? for by a certain wonderful capacity of mind, he attained to, and understood, all philosophy, all the sects of philosophers, all their founders and supporters, all their systems, all sorts of histories and studies. And for his wit, was he not so excellent, so grave, so forcible, that he almost undertook the overthrow of nothing, which either by quickness of wit or weight of reason he crushed not? Further, who is able to express the praises which his style of speech deserves, which is fraught (I know not how) with that force of reason, that such as it cannot persuade, it compels to assent: whose so many words almost are so many sentences; whose so many senses, so many victories. This know Marcion and Apelles, Praxeas and Hermogenes, Jews, Gentiles, Gnostics, and divers others: ab. not. d.) It seems more probable that he was not converted until middle age. Like S. Augustine, he may have long been lingering on the borders of Christianity. y de Cult. Fem. i. 7. In the de Pallio, c. 1. the Apology, c. 9. 45. fin. ad Scap. c. 3. ad Ux. i. 6. de Præscr. c. 36. adv. Marc. iv. 5. de Res. Carni, c. 45. Scorp. c. 6. PREFACE. whose blasphemous opinions he hath overthrown with his many and great volumes, as it had been with thunderbolts. And yet this man after all this, this Tertullian, I say, not holding the Catholic doctrine, that is, the universal and old faith, being far more eloquent than faithful, changing afterwards his mind, at last did that which the blessed confessor Hilary in a certain place writeth of him; He discredited (quoth he) with his later error his worthy writings:' and he also was a great temptation in the Church. But hereof I would not say more; only this I will add, that by his defending, against the precept of Moses, for true prophecies the new madness of Montanus springing up in the Church, and those mad dreams about new doctrine of frantic women, he deserved that we should also say of him and his writings, 'If a prophet shall rise up in the midst of thee,' and straight after, 'thou shalt not hear the words of that prophet.' Why so? Because (quoth he) your Lord God doth tempt you, whether you love Him or no.'' It is then the more strange, though the more solemn warning, that such an one, so gifted, so honoured, should not only have fallen into heresy, but into one, which would seem to have such little temptation; that he, who had seen his way clearly amid so much error, should have fallen, where there was so little apparently to attract, so much to repel. For it came not in a state of relaxed discipline, as in these latter days, when one might readily suppose that a mind ardent as Tertullian's might be led by the appearance of holiness, amid the degeneracy of the Church; he had not to advocate fasting when neglected or discountenanced, or the restoration of discipline, when sins the most grievous passed unnoticed. Tertullian himself even insists upon the slight difference between the Montanist fasts and those of the Church"; he does not even complain that the de Jejun. c. 15. "How very slight among us is the prohibition of meats! two weeks of dry-food do we offer unto God, and those too not entire, the Sabbaths and Lord's Days being excepted, abstaining too from things, which we do not reject bnt defer only." Church discountenanced their optional use, but that she objected to their being imposed of necessity; the picture which he himself gives of the penitence publicly imposed, and the nature of the offences which were visited by excommunication, certainly imply no relaxation of discipline; nor does it appear clearly that the Montanists followed out their own principles, so as to exclude all guilty of mortal sin from reconciliation with the Church. The only cases which he presses are sins of the flesh. Again, how few comparatively the cases of second marriages at all times, and then the widowed state which the Montanists would enforce was held in honour by the Church. Yet this slight increase in fasting, the prohibition of second marriages, the extension of a discipline already strict, and the denial of the right to flee in persecution, were the only outward temptations to forsake the Church. On the other hand, they for whom he forsook it, had early the reputation of " making a gain of godliness," systematically levying money on their followers, under the character of Oblations, and that even on the poor, the orphans, and the widows, and of other acts of luxury, pomp, avarice, dissipation'. Tertullian himself also joined them ib. c. 13. "Ye answer that these things are to be done by choice, not by command." d de Pœnit. c. 9. 11. see below, p. 364, 5. 367. de Pudic. c. 19. 21. He declares them unpardonable as being "sins unto death." (1 John 5, 16.) " You have no choice left, but either to deny that adultery and fornication are mortal sins, or to confess that they are irremissible; for which it is not even permitted to pray." He does not however specify other mortal sin. Apollonius, who wrote about A. 211. ap. Eus. v. 18. says, "But who is this upstart teacher [Montanus]? His deeds and teaching shew one...... It was he who appointed people to levy money, who under the name of offerings devised the new way of getting bribes, who supplies salaries to those that preach his doctrine, that by gluttony the teaching of that doctrine may gain support." "If they maintain that their prophets have not received presents, let them acknowledge this, that if convicted of having received them, they are no prophets; and then we will bring proofs innumerable that they have received them. And since all the fruits of a prophet must needs be put to the test, tell me, does a prophet dye his hair? does a prophet blacken his eyebrows? is a prophet fond of dress? does a prophet play with tables and dice? does a prophet lend on usury? let them confess whether these things are lawful or not: and that they have taken place with them I will prove." And of Priscilla and Maximilla. "We shew then that these very first prophetesses from the time that they were filled with the Spirit, left their husbands."....." Thinkest thou not that all Scripture forbids a prophet to receive gifts or money? When then I see that a prophetess has received both gold and silver and costly apparel, how shall I do else than reject her?" |