Blessedness of Christian marriage. 431 10, 8. 25. or of flesh, but really twain in one flesh! Where the flesh Mark is one, one also is the spirit. Together they pray, together fall down, and together pass their fasts; teaching one another, exhorting one another, waiting on one another. Both are Heb. 10, together in the Church of God, together in the Feast of God, together in straits, in persecutions, in refreshments. Neither hideth from the other, neither shunneth the other, neither is a burden to the other. Freely the sick is visited, the needy supported. Alms without torture, sacrifices without scruple, daily diligence without hindrance! No stealthy signing, no hurried salutation, no silent benediction! Psalms and hymns resound between the two, and they provoke one another Heb.10, which shall sing the best to his God. Such things Christ seeing and hearing rejoiceth. To these He sendeth His John14, peace. Where two are, there is Himself also: where Him- Mat.18, self also is, there also the Evil one is not. These are the 20. things which that word of the Apostle hath left to be under-1 Cor. 7, stood by us under its brevity. Of these things put thyself in mind, if need shall be. By these turn thyself away from the examples of certain women". It is not lawful for believers 1 Cor. to marry otherwise: it is not expedient. n m sustinentes, as wgornagrign, Mark see c. 1. beg. [Tr.] 3, 9. [Tr.] 24. 27. 39. 10, 33. Tertullian here, not Note O, on page 421. less explicitly because incidentally, allows of marriage after divorce. Only, here, from the context, it appears that it is marriage of a woman, who has divorced her husband, not been divorced by him. The same is implied in the adv. Marc. iv. 34. " That marriage abideth which is not duly severed. To marry, while a marriage abideth, is adultery. Thus, if He conditionally prohibited to put away a wife, He did not wholly prohibit it; and what He did not wholly prohibit, He permitted in other cases, in which the cause for which He prohibited it, no longer exists." i. e. Marriage was not to be severed by man, he was not to "put away his wife, for the sake of marrying another;" (ib.) but if the marriage was severed by God, through death, or ipso facto broken through adultery, so that they ceased to be one, in either case alike it ceased. A new marriage was adultery, only while the former endured; and it endured until it was duly severed; but since adultery of the divorced was such a severance, a new marriage, according to T.'s argument, Ux. II. 432 Opinions as to the re-marriage of one lawfully divorcing ; NOTE ceased to be adultery. It is remarkable that Pamelius and others explain ON AD away this testimony of Tertullian, being opposed to the Roman practice, by reference to the treatise de Monog. c. 9. 10. written against the Church, and because he there does not allow of the marriage of the divorcing party, infer that neither does he here; forgetting, that he there rejects second marriage altogether, even of the widowed, which he here admits. Epiphanius (Hær. 59. c. 4. quoted by Bingham, 22. 2. 12.) allows remarriage, in case of the marriage being dissolved by adultery; the Apostolic Constit. (iii. 1.) speak of "one who has lost her husband by death or any other occasion, having the gift of widowhood," and declares her "blessed" "if she abide by herself," implying plainly that if she had not the gift, she might marry; Ambrosiaster (in 1 Cor. 7, 15.) allows re-marriage when the heathen party departed, as being sin against the Author of marriage, but he thinks that in the case of adultery, 1 Cor. 7, 11. permits it to the man only. S. Jerome Ep. 55. ad Amand. §. 3. thinks it forbidden to the woman by Rom. 7. and 1 Cor. 7, 39.; but in that he mentions as remarkable, (Ep. 77. ad Ocean. de morte Fabiolæ,) that one did penance for it, this, (as Bingham observes,) does not seem to have been then required; himself also calls it "a fault" only, (§. 3, 4.) excuses it on the ground of "necessity," calls the marriage "the shadow of a miserable marriage." S. Basil Ep. Can. i. can. 9. thinks the man pardonable, and his second wife not to be condemned, but that the woman is prohibited by the custom of the Church. Origen mentions that even some Bishops permitted it in the case of women, but regards it as a concession to infirmity, as contrary to the letter of Rom. 7, 3. 1 Cor. 7, 39. (in Matt. 19, 8. Tom. xiv. §. 23.) Lactantius Instt. vi. 23 fin. thinks Scripture admits it in the case of the man, (about the woman he is silent ;) as do the Conc. Venetic. (A. 465.) can. 2. the [so-called] Synod. S. Patricii, can. 26. the Synod. Roman. under Leo IV. (A. 853.) can. 36. Bituric. (A. 1031.) can. 16. Lemovic. ii. can. 15. quoted by Coteler. Patr.Ap. p. 88. The law ascribed to Constantine, permitting it in three cases only, (ib.) perhaps had the sanction of the Church; although the later civil laws were laxer than those of the Church; the 1st Council of Arles (A. 312.) advises against re-marriage in such cases, does not forbid it; S. Augustine dissuades from it, but thinks it a venial error; on the other hand it is peremptorily called adultery by Hermas, Pastor ii. 4. Innocent I, Ep. 6. ad Exup. c. 6. S. Jerome in Matt. 19, 9. Yet in a case of extreme sin of the husband, it was allowed even to women, in a decree attributed to Pope Zachary, (ap. Gratian Caus. 32. q. 7. c. 23. Bingham 1. c.) but taken from the Pœnitentiale ap. Burchard. 1. 19. c. 5. and by the Council of Vermeriæ, (A. 753.) can. 18. by Pope Gregory III. (A. 726.) to a man, even in the case of infirmity only. (ib, c. 18. and note, ed. Richter.) The Council of Vermeria (can. 10.) allowed it to men in an aggravated case only, (ib.) The Council of Trent (Sess. 24. can. 7.) does not directly anathematize those who hold that “marriage is dissolved by adultery," but those who say "that the Church erred in teaching that it was not." Coteler. (l. c.) states it to be "still held by the Greeks and Armenians that adultery i. dissolves marriage." It might seem from one expression in the adv. Marc. iv. 34. that T. allowed of the marriage not only of the injured but of the adulterous party; in that he says, "he that marrieth one unlawfully put away, as being not put away, is an adulterer;" but this seems rather incidentally said, as applying our Lord's words, than as implying that one marrying one lawfully put away is no adulterer; for the adulteress does not cease to be such, because put away; and Tert.'s strong feeling of the unlawfulness that the members of Christ should become the members of an harlot, would prevent his accounting such a marriage lawful and Christian. Such marriage is allowed, after the husband's death, by S. Augustine (de Nupt. et Conc. i. 10. de Bon. Conjug. c. 14.) and the Council of Eliberis, (can. 9.) which also forbids any other, (can. 72. Bingham 1. c. §. 13.) but forbidden by the Synod. Forojul. (c. 10. ap. Coteler. I. c.) and by the Roman Court except under dispensation. rf ON PRESCRIPTION AGAINST HERETICS. DE HÆR. [The whole tenor of the "de Præscriptione Hæreticorum" certainly is such, as makes it difficult to think that it could have been written by one, who had himself separated from the Church. The force of this argument can hardly be represented by particular expressions; the colour cast over the whole is a yet stronger indication. Besides this general ground, however, there is the distinct declaration that the promise of the Comforter was fulfilled at the day of Pentecost, and so, that no further revelation was to be expected, (c. 22.) which is directly opposed to Montanism. Certainly the language here and in the Monog. c. 2. is very different: here, he says, "The Lord had indeed once said, I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now,' yet when He adds,' When He, the Spirit of truth, shall come, He shall lead you into all truth,' He shews that they were ignorant of nothing who He promised should attain all truth through the Spirit of truth, and accordingly He fulfilled the promise, the Acts of the Apostles proving the descent of the Holy Spirit:" there, "Is it admissible that the Paraclete should have taught any thing which can either be accounted new against Catholic tradition, or burthensome against the light load of the Lord? The Lord Himself has pronounced as to both. For when He says, 'I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now; when the Holy Spirit shall come, He shall lead you into all truth,' He sufficiently sets forth that He will guide to things which may both be accounted new, as never before published, and in a degree burthensome, as being on that account not published. The Paraclete, having many things to teach, which the Lord deferred for Him, as before defined," &c. Tertullian makes out his consistency to himself, in that as a Montanist, he still contended that the "rule of faith" is to be retained, that the Paraclete would teach nothing against it, and that the heretical and " opposed spirit appears from the difference of teaching, first adulterating the rule of faith, and so the order of discipline." But it still remains, that quoting the same two texts, he here, without any restriction, declares them to have been completely fulfilled at the Day of Pentecost, while, as a Montanist, he looks chiefly to a fulfilment after two hundred years, in his own time. 2) Then, he does not argue simply from the priority of Catholic truth, but appeals to it, as embodied in the Church, and adduces the Apostolic succession in proof of it. (c. 20. 26-30. 32. 36. 37.) He would hardly have framed his rule thus, when he had declared against the Church. 3) Then, he so connects revelation with the Incarnation as to require that they who claimed to be instruments of a fresh revelation, should shew that our Lord had again been manifest in the flesh, and had conferred on them power to work the same miracles as Himself; (c. 30.) yet Montanus did not claim to work miracles, only to have ecstatic visions. 4) Again, he here explains the continued office of the Holy Ghost, as "Christi Vicarius," to be to retain the truth which He had taught through the Apostles (c. 28.) in the de Virg. Vel. c. 1. using the same title, he declares it to be, gradually to enlarge the truth so delivered. "Since the Lord therefore sent the Comforter, that inasmuch as human infirmity could not receive all things at once, the discipline might gradually be guided and ordered and brought to perfection by that Vicegerent of the Lord, The Holy Spirit." Seductive power of heresy not to be wondered at. 435 5) It is remarked (Bp. Kaye's Tertullian, p. 51.) that "some mention of the Paraclete would probably have been introduced into the short summary of the faith given, c. 13. as is the case in the de Virg. Vel. c. 1." Whereas the mention here is only of the ordinary guidance of believers, ("He sent the vicarious power of the Holy Spirit, who should lead believers;") there he speaks only of His developing guidance of the Church. 6) It is supposed that S. Augustine refers to the Appendix to this book, (adv. omnes Hæreses, c. 52.) Tertullian went over to the Phrygians whom he had before overthrown." (de Hær. 86.) This seems to me also probable, and the adv. omnes Hæreses, though an imperfect sketch, bears, I think, here and there, the stamp of Tertullian's vivid way of characterizing principles. In this case, the work itself must, of course, be written before his Montanism, since in the Appendix he condemns it. The only ground, on the other side, of any account, is that in the first book against Marcion, which he certainly wrote as a Montanist, (c. 29.) he is thought to refer to this tract as not yet written. His words (c. 1.) are, "In so far will that which is brought in subsequently be accounted heresy, in as far as what was delivered in times past and from the beginning will be held to be truth. But another brief treatise will maintain this position against heretics, that they may be confuted even without considering their doctrines, as being ruled to be such, through their novelty. Now, so far as any trial of strength is to be admitted, I will, for the time (interdum), lest the uniform calling-in of this compendious argument from prescription should be imputed to want of confidence-first set forth the rule of the opponent, &c." In itself, this language might equally apply to a work written or unwritten; the words "for the time" may mean as well, "waiving this ground for the present." On the other hand, the passage implies that the argument from prescription had been already urged (as some would think) to satiety, and so it seems probable that this book had been already written. He fears lest the continuance of the same line of defence might be misinterpreted, (he makes the same apology here, c. 16.) and so waiving this vantage-ground for the time, he takes the lower ground of entering into the details of the actual heretical system. Then also the obvious meaning of the close of this book is, that this was a general introduction to all the treatises against particular heresies; as indeed they all, probably, (except the adv. Hermogenem, as to which there is no proof either way, but which was subsequent to this,) were written while he was a Montanist.] I. THE state of the present times calleth for this admonition also from us, that we ought not to wonder about these heresies, either that they are, for they were foretold as about to be, or that they overturn the faith of some, for to this end are they, in order that Faith, by having wherewithal it may be tried, may have also wherewithal it may be proved. 1 Cor. 11, 19. Vainly therefore and without due thought are very many offended by this very thing, namely, that heresies have so much power. How much would they have, if they were not? When a thing hath attained to this, that in any case it is, it hath a final cause, on account of which it is: this obtaineth a power through the means of which it is, so that it is not possible that it should not be. a Matt. 7, 15. 24, 11. 24. Acts 20, 29. 30. 1 Tim. 4, 1 sqq. 2 Pet. 2, 1. |