Again, Tertullian remarks frequently that heresy has the closest connexion with philosophy. Both handle the same questions: "Whence is evil, and why? and whence is man and how? and whence is God?"[147] Marcion, for instance, is "sick (like so many nowadays and, most of all, the heretics) with the question of evil, whence is evil?"[148] and turns to dualism. Or else "the heretics begin with questions of the resurrection, for the resurrection of the flesh they find harder to believe than the unity of the Godhead."[149] What Celsus, a typical product of contemporary philosophy, thought of the resurrection of the flesh we have seen—a "hope of worms!" Lastly, there was a strong tendency in the church at large for re-statement of the gospel in the terms of philosophy; and in such endeavours, as we know, there is always the danger of supposing the terms and the philosophy of the day to be more permanent and more valid than the experience which they are supposed to express. In Tertullian's century there seemed some prospect that every characteristic feature of the gospel would be so "re-stated" as to leave the gospel entirely indistinguishable from any other eclectic system of the moment. Jesus became a phantom, or an æon; his body, sidereal substance, which offered, Clement himself said, no material resistance to the touch of St John's hand. God divided, heaven gone, no hope or faith left possible in a non-real Christ even in this life—Christians would be indeed of all men most miserable, and morality would have no longer any basis nor any motive. What in all this could tempt a man to face the lions? It was not for this that Christians shed their blood—no, the Gnostics recommended flight in persecution. It is easy to understand the sweeping Viderint—Tertullian's usual phrase for dismissing people and ideas on whom no more is to be said—"Let them look to it who have produced a Stoic and Platonic and dialectic Christianity. We need no curiosity who have Jesus Christ, no inquiry who have the gospel."[150]
It was natural for Clement and his school to try to bring the gospel and philosophy to a common basis—a natural impulse, which all must share who speculate. The mistake has been that the church took their conclusions so readily and has continued to believe them. For Tertullian is, on his side, right, and we know in fact a great deal more about Jesus than we can know about the Logos.
The Præscription of heretics
Accordingly a large part of Tertullian's work, as a Christian, was the writing of treatises against heresy. He has in one book—de Præscriptionibus Hæreticorum—dealt with all heretics together. The Regula Fidei, which is a short creed,[151] was instituted, he says, by Christ, and is held among Christians without questions, "save those which heretics raise and which make heretics." On that Regula rests the Christian faith. To know nothing against it, is to know everything. But appeal is made to Scripture. We must then see who has the title to Scripture (possessio),[152] and whence it comes. Jesus Christ while on earth taught the twelve, and they went into the world and promulgated "the same doctrine of the same faith," founding churches in every city, from which other churches have taken faith and doctrine—he uses the metaphors of seed and of layers (tradux) from plants. Every day churches are so formed and duly counted Apostolic. Thus the immense numbers of churches may be reckoned equivalent to the one first church. No other than the Apostles are to be received, as no others were taught by Christ. "Thus it is established that every doctrine which agrees with those Apostolic mother-churches, the originals of the faith, is to be set down to truth, as in accordance with what the churches have received from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, and Christ from God."[153] But have the churches been faithful in the transmission of this body of doctrine? Suppose them all to have gone wrong, suppose the Holy Spirit to have been so negligent—is it likely that so vast a number should have wandered away into one faith? Again let Marcion and others show the history of their churches. Let their doctrines be compared with the Apostolic, and their varieties and contradictions will show they are not Apostolic. If then Truth be adjudged to those who walk by the Regula, duly transmitted through the church, the Apostles and Christ from God, then heretics have no right of appeal to the Scriptures which are not theirs. If they are heretics, they cannot be Christians; if they are not Christians, they have no right (ius) to Christian literature. "With what right (iure) Marcion, do you cut down my wood? By what licence, Valentinus, do you divert my springs? ... This is my estate; I have long held it; I am first in occupation; I trace my sure descent from the founders to whom the thing belonged. I am the heir of the Apostles."[154]
In this, as in most human arguments, there are strands of different value. The legal analogy gave a name to the book—præscriptio was the barring of a claim—but it is not the strongest line. Law rarely is. But Tertullian was not content to rule his opponents out of court. He used legal methods and manners too freely, but he knew well enough that these settled nothing. As a rule he had much stronger grounds for his attack. He wrote five books against Marcion to maintain the unity of the Godhead and the identity of the Father of Jesus, the God of the Old Testament and the God of Nature. His book against the Valentinians has a large element of humour in it—perhaps the best rejoinder to the framers of a cosmogony of so many æons, none demonstrable, all fanciful,—the thirty of them suggest to him the famous Latin sow of the Æneid.[155] Against Hermogenes he maintains the doctrine of the creation of the world from nothing. The hypothesis that God used pre-existing matter, makes matter antecedent and more or less equal to God. And then, in legal vein, he asks a question. How did God come to use matter? "These are the three ways in which another's property may be taken,—by right, by benefit, by assault, that is by title, by request, by violence." Hermogenes denies God's title in this case; which then of the other means does he prefer?[156]
The incarnation of Christ
His best work in the controversial field is in his treatises, On the Flesh of Christ, On the Resurrection of the Flesh, and On the Soul. The first of these, above all, will appeal to any reader to whom the historic Jesus is significant. Much has changed in outlook and preconceptions since Tertullian wrote, but his language on the reality of Jesus, as an actual human being and no sidereal or celestial semblance of a man, on the incarnation, and the love of God, still glows and still finds a response. "Away," he pictures Marcion saying, "Away with those census-rolls of Cæsar, always tiresome, away with the cramped inns, the soiled rags, the hard stall. Let the angelic host look to it!"[157] And then he rejoins, Do you think nativity impossible—or unsuitable—for God? Declaim as you like on the ugliness of the circumstances; yet Christ did love men (born, if you like, just as you say); for man he descended, for man he preached, for man he lowered himself with every humiliation down to death, and the death of the cross. Yes, he loved him whom he redeemed at so high a price. And with man he loved man's nativity, even his flesh. The conversion of men to the worship of the true God, the rejection of error, the discipline of justice, of purity, of pity, of patience, of all innocence—these are not folly, and they are bound up with the truth of the Gospel. Is it unworthy of God? "Spare the one hope of all the world, thou, who wouldst do away with the disgrace of faith. Whatever is unworthy of God is all to my good."[158] The Son of God also died—"It is credible because it is foolish. He was buried and rose again; it is certain because it is impossible." And how could all this be, if his body were not true? "You bisect Christ with a lie. The whole of him was Truth."[159] The gospel narrative from beginning to end implies that Christ's body was like ours—"he hungered under the devil, thirsted under the Samaritan woman, shed tears over Lazarus, was troubled[160] at death (for, the flesh, he said, is weak), last of all he shed his blood." How could men have spat in a face radiant with "celestial grandeur"? Wait! Christ has not yet subdued his enemies that he may triumph with his friends.
Jesus is to come again, as he was, as he is, sitting at the Father's right hand, God and man, flesh and blood, the same in essence and form as when he ascended; so he shall come.[161] And men will be raised in the flesh to receive judgment. A storm overhangs the world.[162] What the treasure-house of eternal fire will be, may be guessed from the petty vents men see in Etna and elsewhere.[163] There will be white robes for martyrs; for the timid a little portion in the lake of fire and sulphur.[164] All that Gibbon thought would "offend the reason and humanity of the present age" in the last chapter of the de Spectacutis may recur to the reader. But, continues Tertullian in that passage, my gaze will be upon those who let loose their fury on the Lord himself—"'This,' I shall say, 'is he, the son of the carpenter or the harlot, Sabbath-breaker, Samaritan, demoniac. This is he whom you bought from Judas; this is he, whom you beat with the reed and the palms of your hands, whom you disfigured with your spittle, to whom you gave gall and vinegar. This is he whom his disciples stole away, that it might be said he had risen,—or the gardener took him away, that his lettuces might not be trodden by the crowds that came.'" "A long variety of affected and unfeeling witticisms," is Gibbon's judgment.
A mind less intent on polemic will judge otherwise of Tertullian and his controversies. There is, first of all, much more of the philosophic temper than is commonly supposed. He does not, like Clement and other Greeks, revel in cosmological speculations as to the Logos, nor does he loosely adopt the abstract methods of later Greek philosophy. But in his treatment of the Soul, of moral order and disorder, and of responsibility, he shows no mean powers of mind. He argues from experience, and from the two sources, from which he could best hope to learn most directly the mind of God, Nature and the Scriptures. The infallibility of the Scriptures is of course a limitation to freedom of speculation, but it was an axiom of the early church, and a man of experience might accept it, bound up as it was with sound results in the martyr-death and the changed life. Tertullian will get back to the facts, if he can; and if he judges too swiftly of Nature and too swiftly accepts the literal truth of Scripture,—while these are drawbacks to our acceptance of his conclusions, there is still to be seen in him more independence of mind than in those Greek Fathers for whom Greek philosophy had spoken the last word in metaphysics. It is psychology that interests Tertullian more, and moral questions, and these he handles more deeply than the Stoics. He stands in line with Augustine and Calvin, his spiritual descendants.
If he speaks more of hell than certain Greeks do, it is not unnatural. The man, who saw such deaths in the amphitheatre as he describes in the Passion of Perpetua, who remembered the expressions he had then seen on the faces of the spectators, who knew too well the cruelty that went with Roman lust, could hardly help believing in hell. What was the origin of evil? asked philosopher and heretic. What is its destiny? and what are you to do with it now? asked Tertullian; and, in all seriousness, the answer to the former question is more likely to be found when the answers of the latter are reached. At any rate the latter are more practical, and that adjective, with what it suggests of drawback and of gain, belongs to Tertullian.
On conduct
His application of the test of utility to belief is obviously open to criticism. "It is expedient," said Varro, "for men to be deceived in religion." No, Tertullian would have said, it is more expedient for them to know the truth; and he backed his conviction by his appeal to Nature, on the one hand, Nature, rational through and through, and ever loyal to law, to fixity of principle, and on the other hand by reference to the verification of his position yielded by experience—once more the martyr-death and the transformed character. These fundamental ideas he may have misused in particulars, if not in matters more essential; but, if he is wrong from the beginning in holding them, human knowledge, progress and conduct become fortuitous and desultory at once. Nature and verification from life are substantially all we have. To these of course Tertullian added revelation in a sense distinct.
From the question of conduct we pass naturally to the great cleavage of Tertullian with the church. A change had come in church practice and government since the days when the Teaching of the Apostles represented actual present fact,—perhaps even since the Apology of Aristides. The church had grown larger, it had developed its organization, and it was relying more on the practical men with a turn for administration, who always appear when a movement, begun by idealists, seems to show signs of success. The situation creates them, and they cannot be avoided. They have their place, but they do not care for ideas. Thus in the church the ministry of the Spirit, the ministry of gifts, was succeeded by the ministry of office, with its lower ideals of the practical and the expedient. The numbers of the church swelled, and a theory began to spread, which Cyprian took up later on, and which was almost inevitable on his principles, that the church was an ark, with beasts clean and beasts unclean within it. This theory answered to the actual facts, hardly to the ideal, and Tertullian rejected it.[165] Conduct at once suggested the theory, and responded to it. Christians fell into adultery and apostasy, and while at first this meant "delivery to Satan," restoration became progressively easy. The Shepherd of Hermas extended second chances, till Tertullian fiercely spoke of "that apocryphal shepherd of adulterers.[166]"
From Phrygia came the suggestion of reformation. Our evidence as to the history of Montanism in its native land is derived from hostile sources, and the value of it must partly depend on the truth of the witnesses and partly on their intelligence, and of neither have we any guarantee at all. That they are clearly hostile is plain from the fragments in Eusebius. That they understood the inner meaning of what they condemned, we have no indication. Montanus, however, asserted Christ's promise of the Paraclete—his enemies allege that he identified himself with the Paraclete, a statement which might be used to show how quotation may lead to suggestio falsi. But the coming of the Paraclete was not in fact a synonym for fanaticism and the collection of money, as the enemies of Montanus hinted. It meant the bracing of Christian life and character, and the restoration of prophecy, new revelation of truth, power and progress. It appealed to the Christian world, and the movement spread—probably with modifications as it spread. The oracles of Montanus and of two women, Prisca and Maximilla, became widely known, and they inculcated a stern insistence on conduct, which was really needed, while they showed how reformation was to be reached. To use language of more modern times, involves risk of misconception; but if it may be done with caution, we may roughly say that the Montanists stood for what the Friends call the Inner Light, and for progressive revelation—or, at any rate, for something in this direction. The indwelling of God was not consistent with low living; and earnest souls, all over the world, were invested with greater power and courage to battle with the growing lightness in the church and to meet the never-ceasing hostility of the world—the lion and the cruel faces of the amphitheatre.
Ecstacy
Yet Montanism failed for want of a clear conception of the real character of primitive Christianity. Aiming at morals, Montanists conceived of life and the human mind and God in a way very far from that of Jesus. They laid a stress, which is not his, on asceticism and on penance, and they cultivated ecstasy—in both regions renouncing the essentially spiritual conception of religion, and turning to a non-Christian view of matter. They thus aimed at obtaining or keeping the indwelling spirit of Jesus, known so well in the early church, but by mechanical means; and this, though the later church in this particular followed them for generations, is not to be done. Still, whatever their methods and their expedients, they stood for righteousness, and here lay the fascination of Montanism for Tertullian.
Throughout his later life Tertullian, then, was a Montanist, though the change was not so great as might be expected. Some of his works, such as that On Monogamy, bear the stamp of Montanism, for re-marriage was condemned by the Montanists. Elsewhere his citation of the oracles of Prisca suggests that a book belongs to the Montanist period; or we deduce it from such a passage as that in the work On the Soul where he describes a vision. The passage is short and it is suggestive.
"We have to-day among us a sister who has received gifts (charismata) of the nature of revelations, which she undergoes (patitur) in spirit in the church amid the rites of the Lord's day falling into ecstasy (per ecstasin). She converses with angels, sometimes even with the Lord, and sees and hears mysteries, and reads the hearts of certain persons, and brings healings to those who ask. According to what Scriptures are read, or psalms sung, or addresses made, or prayers offered up, the matter of her visions is supplied. It happened that we had spoken something of the soul, when this sister was in the spirit. When all was over, and the people had gone, she—for it is her practice to report what she has seen, and it is most carefully examined that it may be proved—'amongst other things,' she said, 'a soul was shown to me in bodily form and it seemed to be a spirit, but not empty, nor a thing of vacuity; on the contrary, it seemed as if it might be touched, soft, lucid, of the colour of air, and of human form in every detail."[167]
Such a story explains itself. The corporeity of the soul was a tenet of Stoicism, essential to Tertullian, for without it he could not conceive of what was to follow the resurrection. He spoke of it and we can imagine how. It would hardly take a vision to see anything of which he spoke. The sister however was, what in modern phrase is called, psychopathic, and the vision occurred, controlled by the suggestion that preceded it.
Conclusion
It must be admitted that there is in some of his Montanist treatises, particularly where he is handling matters of less importance, such as re-marriage, fasting, and the like, a bitterness of tone which is not pleasant. As long as his humour and his strong sense control his irony, it is no bad adjunct of his style, it is a great resource. But it declines into sarcasm, and "sarcasm," as Teufelsdröckh put it, "is the language of the devil"; and we find Tertullian, pleading for God and righteousness, in a tone and a temper little likely to win men. But the main ideas that dominate him still prevail—conduct, obedience, God's law in Nature and in the book, the value of the martyr-death.
Little is to be got by dwelling on his outbursts of ill temper; they hardly do more than illustrate what we knew already, his intensity, his sensibility, his passion. They form the negative side of the great positive qualities. Let me gather up a few scattered thoughts which come from his heart and are better and truer illustrations of the man, and with them let chapter and book have an end.
Conduct is the test of creed (de Præscr. Hær. 43). To lie about God is in a sense idolatry (de Præscr. 40). Security in sin means love of it (de Pudic. 9). Whatever darkness you pile above your deeds, God is light (de Pænit. 6). What we are forbidden to do, the soul pictures to itself at its peril (de Pænit. 3). Truth persuades by teaching, it does not teach by making things plausible (adv. Valent. 1). Faith is patience with its lamp lit—illuminata (de Pat. 6). Patience is the very nature of God. The recognition of God understands well enough the duty laid upon it. Let wrong-doing be wearied by your patience (de Pat. 3, 4, 8). There is no greater incitement to despise money than that the Lord himself had no wealth (de Pat. 7). Love is 'the supreme mystery (sacramentum) of faith (de Pat. 12). Faith fears no famine (de Idol. 12). Prayer is the wall of faith (de Or. 29). Every day, every moment, prayer is necessary to men.... Prayer comes from conscience. If conscience blush, prayer blushes (de exh. cast. 10). Good things scandalize none but the bad mind (de virg. vel. 3). Give to Cæsar what is Cæsar's—his image on the coin; give to God what is God's—his image in man, yourself (de Idol. 15).
But to this there is no end, and an end there must be. By his expression of Christian ideas in the natural language of Roman thought, by his insistence on the reality of the historic Jesus and on the inevitable consequences of human conduct, by his reference of all matters of life and controversy to the will of God manifested in Nature, in inspiration and in experience, Tertullian laid Western Christendom under a great debt, never very generously acknowledged. For us it may be as profitable to go behind the writings till we find the man, and to think of the manhood, with every power and every endowment, sensibility, imagination, energy, flung with passionate enthusiasm on the side of purity and righteousness, of God and Truth; to think of the silent self-sacrifice freely and generously made for a despised cause, of a life-long readiness for martyrdom, of a spirit, unable to compromise, unable in its love of Christ to see His work undone by cowardice, indulgence and unfaith, and of a nature in all its fulness surrendered. That the Gospel could capture such a man as Tertullian, and, with all his faults of mind and temper, make of him what it did, was a measure of its power to transform the old world and a prophecy of its power to hold the modern world, too, and to make more of it as the ideas of Jesus find fuller realization and verification in every generation of Christian character and experience.
Chapter X Footnotes:
[1] Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. 15 (vol. ii, p. 177, Milman-Smith); Tertullian, de Spectaculis, 30.
[2] Both of these in de Pallio, 1. It may be noted that in allusions to Dido's story he prefers the non-Virgilian version, more honourable to the Queen; Apol. 50; ad martyras, 4.
[3] adv. Valentin. 12.
[4] References to his Greek treatises (all lost) may be found in de cor. mil. 6; de bapt. 15; de virg. vel. 1.
[5] De viris illustribus, sub nomine.
[6] de anima 39.
[7] Ibid. 41.
[8] Ibid. 39.
[9] adv. Valent. 3, in infantia inter somni difficultates a nutricula audisse lamiæ turres et pectines Solis; ibid. 20, puerilium dicibulorum in mari poma nasci et in arbore pisces.
[10] e.g. he alludes to a manual on flowers and garlands by Claudius Saturninus, and another on a similar subject, perhaps, by Leo Ægyptius; de cor. mil. 7, 12. Apart from the Christian controversy on the use of flowers, we shall find later on that he had a keener interest in them than some critics might suppose; adv. Marc. i, 13, 14.
[11] de juga, 10.
[12] de anima, 2; cf. ibid. 10, quotation of a great anatomist Herophilus who dissected "six hundred" subjects in order to find out Nature's secrets; also ibid. 25, a discussion of childbirth to show that the soul does not come into the child with its first breath; ibid. 43, a discussion of sleep. Scorpiace, 5, surgery.
[13] e.g. the end of adv. Hermogenem.
[14] Puns, e.g., on areæ, ad Scap. 3; on strophæ, de Spect. 29; on pleroma, adv. Val. 12. See his nonsense on the tears, salt, sweet, and bituminous, of Achamoth, a Valentinian figure, adv. Val. 15; on "the Milesian tales of his Æons," de Anima. 23.
[15] adv. Valent. 6.
[16] adv. Valent. 1.
[17] de baptismo, 4.
[18] de oratione, 15
[19] de anima, 3.
[20] de bapt. 3 (end)
[21] On de pallio see Boissier, La Fin da Paganisme, bk. iii, ch. 1.
[22] ad Natt, i, 7; the charges were incest, and child-murder for purposes of magic.
[23] de Præscriptione, 44 (end). Similarly of resurrection, virgin-birth, etc..—recogitavi.
[24] de Patientia, 1, miserrimus ego semper æger caloribus impatientiæ.
[25] Cf. his tone as to the scortum, unexampled, so far as I know, in Latin literature, and only approached in Greek perhaps by Dio Chrysostom—the publicæ libidinis hostiæ (de Spect. 17), publicarum libidinum victimæ (de cult. fem. ii, 12). He alone of all who mention the strange annual scene on the stage, which Cato withdrew to allow, has pity for the poor women.
[26] de Pænitentia, 8.
[27] de corona, 12.
[28] I refer especially to such passages as de Carne Christi, 4-9, 14; de Resurr. Carnis, 7, 12, etc.
[29] de Pænit. 1, hoc genus hominum quod et ipsi retro fuimus, cæci, sine domini lumine.
[30] Apol. 15, cf. ad Natt. i, 10, another draft of the same matter.
[31] de Spect. 19, eamus in amphitheatrum ... delectemur sanguine humano (ironically).
[32] Apol. 15. The burning-iron was to see whether any life were left in the fallen.
[33] de Spect. 19 (end).
[34] de Spectaculis, 17.
[35] de Pænit. 4.
[36] de Pænit. 12, peccator omnium notarum, nec ulli rei nisi pænitentiæ natus.
[37] de anima, 19 and 49. Add his words on the wife taken away by death, cui etiam religiosiorem reservas affectionem, etc., de exh. cast. 11.
[38] de anima, 20. Cf. ibid. 17, on the moderation of the Stoics, as compared with Plato, in their treatment of the fidelity of the senses.
[39] ad Scap. 2. Tamen humani iuris et naturalis potestatis est unicuique quod putaverit colere.
[40] adv. Marc. i, 10, major popularitas generis humani.
[41] de testim. animæ, 5.
[42] de test. an. 6.
[43] de jejunio, 6.
[44] de spectaculis, 20.
[45] de cor. mil. 5, Naturæ deus noster est.
[46] adv. Marc. i, 23.
[47] de anima, 16.
[48] adv. Marc. iii, 2; iv, 11.
[49] de cor. mil. 6, et legem naturalem suggerit et naturam legalem.
[50] Cf. de carne Christi, 4.
[51] de anima, 27.
[52] de carne Christi, 4, ipsum mulieris enitentis pudorem vel pro periculo honorandum vel pro natura religiosum.
[53] de Resurr. Carnis, 7.
[54] Ibid. 6.
[55] adv. Marcion. i, 13, 14. Compare the beautiful picture at the end of de Oratione, of the little birds flying up, "spreading out the cross of their wings instead of hands, and saying something that seems to be prayer."
[56] adv. Marc. ii, 4.
[57] de cor. mil. 15.
[58] de præscr. 40, et si adhuc memini, Mithra signat, etc.
[59] Apol. 18. Hæc et nos risimus aliquando. De vestris sumus.
[60] de test. animæ, 1.
[61] So Arnobius (i, 58, 59) and Augustine felt. Tertullian does not complain of the style himself, but it was a real hindrance to many.
[62] de Pallio, 3, Sed arcana ista nec omnium nosse.
[63] ad Scap. 3.
[64] "The devils entered into the swine." Cf. p. 164.
[65] Pliny to Trajan, 96, 3, pertinaciam et inflexibilem obstinationem.
[66] Marcus Aurelius, xi, 3. Cf. Aristides, Or. 46, who attributes authádeia, to oi en tê Palaistíne dussebeîs.
[67] Hist. August. M. Anton. 16, Erat enim ipse tantæ tranquillitatis ut vultum nunquam mutaverit mærore vel gaudio.
[68] Apol. 50, Illa ipsa obstinatio quam exprobratis magistra est. Quis enim bib contemplatione eius concutitur ad requirendum quid intus in re sit? quis non ubi requisivit accedit? ubi accessit pati exoptat, etc.
[69] ad. Scap. 5. Quisque enim tantam tolerantiam spectans, ut aliquo scrupulo percussus, et inquirere accenditur, quid sit in causa, et ubi cognoverit veritatem et ipse statim sequitur.
[70] Scorpiace, 8 (end).
[71] de testim. animæ, 2. Cf. de cult. fem. ii, 2, Timor fundamentum salutis est.
[72] de Pænitentia, 3.
[73] de Pænit. 40. Quid revolvis? Deus præcipit.
[74] ad Natt. i, 1.
[75] de Idol. 5.
[76] de cor mil. 11, non admittit status fidei necessitates.
[77] de Idol. 12.
[78] de virg. vel. i, Dominus noster Christus veritatem se non consuetudinem cognominavit.
[79] de Idol. 10.
[80] See the correspondence of Ausonius and Paulinus.
[81] Dio Cassius, 67, 14; Suetonius, Domit. 15; Eusebius, E.H. iii, 18. See E. G. Hardy, Studies in Roman History, ch. v., pp. 66, 67.
[82] To obtain evidence—legal in the case of slaves.
[83] de Idol. 17.
[84] Cf. adv. Valentin. 5.
[85] de cor. mil. 13, clavus latus in cruce ipsius. There is a suggestion of a play upon words.
[86] ad Scap. i, opening sentence of the tract.
[87] ad Nat. ii, 1.
[88] Apol. 7. Cf. Scorp. 10, synagogas Judæorum fontes persecutionum.
[89] Cf. de fuga, 12; ad Scap. 5.
[90] Apol. 7.
[91] de fuga, 14, sit tibi et in tribus ecclesia.
[92] ad Scap. 4.
[93] Passio Perpetuæ, 6.
[94] Scorpiace, 1.
[95] Apol. 30.
[96] Scorp. 10.
[97] de anima, 1.
[98] Apol. 16; ad Natt. i, 14.
[99] Scorpiace, 1; the reference is to Moses' bush, nec tamen consumebatur.
[100] Apol. 21.
[101] Scorpiace, 4 (end).
[102a] de fuga, 14 (both passages).
[102b] de fuga, 14 (both passages).
[103] de pudicitia, 22.
[104] For this cry in various forms see Apol. 40; de res. carn. 22; de exh. castit. 12; de spect. 27, conventus et cætus ... illic guotidiani in nos leones expostulantur.
[105] Scorpiace, 11, ecce autem et odio habimur ab omnibus hominibus nominis causa; de anima, 1, non unius urbis sed universi orbis iniquam sententiam sustinens pro nomine veritatis.
[106] Cf. de anima, 1, de patibulo et vivicombirio per omne ingenium crudelitatis exhauriat.
[107] Apol. 50, semen est sanguis Christianorum.
[108] de Bapt. 8.
[109] Ibid. 18.
[110] Ironic chapter in de pudicitia, 1. The edict is a technical term of the state, and the Pontifex Maximus was the Emperor, till Gratian refused the title in 375 A.D.
[111] Scorpiace, 6; cf. de Bapt. 16.
[112] de Bapt. 2.
[113] Ibid. 20.
[114] Ibid. 4.
[115] Ibid. 4.
[116] Cf. p. 102.
[117] de Bapt. 5.
[118] de Spectac. 4; de cor. mil. 3.
[119] de cor. mil. 3, ter mergitamur.
[120] de Bapt. 4.
[121] Ibid. 6.
[122] de Bapt. 8. For other minor details as to food and bathing see de cor. mil. 3.
[123] de Spectac. 4.
[124] de Idol. 6.
[125] de Idol. 11. Cf. Hermas, Mandate, 3, on lying in business.
[126] de Idol. 9.
[127] Ibid. 20.
[128] de cor. mil. 8.
[129] Ibid. 8.
[130] de Idol. 24, inter hos scopulos et sinus, inter hæc vada et freta idololatriæ, velificata spiritu dei fides navigat.
[131] de fuga, 13.
[132] Apol. 4.
[133] Apol. 6.
[134] Gwatkin, The Knowledge of God (Gifford Lectures) ii, p. 163.
[135] ad Natt. i, 5.
[136] Cf. pp. 20-22.
[137] Apol. 17, ita eum vis magnitudinis et notum hominibus obicit et ignotum.
[138] Apol. 21.
[139] Chapters 22 to 24 give a good summary of his views on dæmons.
[140] Celsus refers to Christian discussion of this; Origen, adv. Cels. iii 43.
[141] Cf. ad. Scap. 2, with argument from end of world.
[142] c. 39 vide, inquiunt, ut invicem se diligant.
[143] Epictetus, D. iii, 23.
[144] Clement, Strom. vi, 56, philautía.
[145] de anima, 1.
[146] Cf. de anima, 6, 17, 18, 23, etc.
[147] de Præscr. 7.
[148] adv. Marc. i, 2.
[149] de res. carnis, 2.
[150] de Præscr. 7.
[151] de Præscr. 13.
[152] de Præscr. 15.
[153] de Præscr. 21.
[154] de Præscr. 37, Mea est possessio. Cf. definition which says possessions appellantur agri ... qui non mancipatione sed usu tenebantur et ut quisque occupaverat possidebat. Tertullian improves this title as he goes on.
[155] This gibe is in adv. Marc. i, 5; there are plenty without it in adv. Val.
[156] adv. Hermog. 9, iure, beneficio, impetu, id est dominio precario vi.
[157] de carne Christi, 2.
[158] de carne Christi, 5, Quodcunque deo indignum est mihi expedit.
[159] de carne Christi, 5, prorsus credibile est quia ineptum est, ... certum est quia impossibile.... Quid dimidias mendacio Christum? Totus veritas fuit.
[160] de carne Christi, 9, trepidat perhaps represents the agonía of Luke.
[161] de res. carnis, 51.
[162] de pænit. 1.
[163] de pænit. 12.
[164] Scorpiace, 12
[165] de Idol. 24 (end), Viderimus enim si secundum arcæ typum et corvus et milvus et lupus et canis et serpens in ecclesia erit.
[166] de Pud. 20.
[167] de anima, 9.