ART. II. TERTULLIAN

Qu. Sept. Flor. Tertulliani Opera, Ad Optimorum Librorum Fidem Expressa, curante E. F. LEOPOLD. Lipsiæ: 1839.

By a singular fate, though reported heretical and excommunicated, Tertullian has become enrolled upon the foremost list of those mighty writers, the Fathers. In the early part of his career, he may be rightly taken as the exponent of much of the teachings of the African Church to her catechumens. Later, as his peculiarities became more hardened, he represents the ascetic tendency, which is part of every deeply religious mind. As he has represented both phases with unequalled power, he has won a place upon that glorious roll. Quoted as undoubted evidence to facts, his opinions have been always mistrusted. By many, his opinions are quoted as facts; by others, his facts as opinions. To us, the usual mode of quoting him in controversial works, has the air of a dernier résort.

His impulsive temperament, the zeal that fills him,-so overpowers his cooler judgment, that he, more than any other writer of Theology, lays open to inspection the workings of his mind. He exhibits the progressive steps of his errors, and the course of his mental development, through the successive periods of his life. But ascertain the date of his different works, and they furnish a perfect psychological study.

When he first entered the pale of the Church, she had her legitimate influence upon him, and his earlier writings show it. But when this freshest opinion wore off, and his natural temperament, eager, sensuous, vivid, ascetic, asserted itself, then the tone of his writings changed. He had a high work to do. He did it fearlessly and well. For this one thing he was able to comprehend, fully, the antagonism between the Church and the world. The Apology commands the admiration of every reader. Nor is it the least proof of his ability, that St. Cyprian and St. Augustine called him master, and owned his power over their minds. His training in Rhetoric often makes

his style affected; his legal phrases, his imitation of Greek authors, and his own practice in Greek composition, make his language obscure, and the use of the vernacular idioms often makes it barbarous. His sarcastic power is too reckless. But when he has fairly plunged into his subject, and it occupies him completely, then he loses his mastery over himself; he rises into a noble eloquence, never yet surpassed. As a lawyer, pleading a noble cause of oppressed right before the whole world, he seems at times to be confused by the very grandeur of his theme, and then to burst into a masterly control over it. This makes his writings so unequal, and betrays him, sometimes, into trifling.

To the student, the theologian, and the ritualist, alike, Tertullian presents many attractions. His habit of compressing his thoughts into the fewest words, demands a more continuous effort of attention than we generally choose to accord. Too frequently, he but half develops his ideas. But his fulness of thought, his subtle argumentation, his epigrammatic expressions, his enthusiasm for his subject, the felicity of his terms, infect the attentive reader. He is a suggestive writer. Take the opening paragraphs of his Adversus Hermogenem. There are volumes of later polemics in them. A good guidepost, but a poor guide, he marks an era in the history of Theology. Could we but persuade a single student, who has been repelled by his obscurity, to re-open this author, with the determination to master him, he would soon catch the love for him, which a recent German editor, Leopold, thus expresses :—

"When, nearly thirty years ago, I began to read Tertullian's writings, in order that I might drink in a knowledge of Christian History and Doctrines from the fountains themselves, I cannot deny that his style seemed to me obscure and repulsive, it was so interlarded with solecisms and barbarisms. Yet when I recalled his reputation and influence with his contemporaries and successors, I re-read his works, book by book, and my weariness was quickly turned into wondering admiration of the fertility of his genius, and the singular abundance of his teachings, wherein he excelled all others."

"Let us enter into the presence of the master,
Quintus Sept. Florus Tertullianus."

His father was a Centurion under the Proconsul of Africa,

and was a heathen. It is only by conjecture that we can assign any probable date for Tertullian's birth. He was not converted to Christianity till the early prime of his manhood, as is evident from the tone of his thoughts, and the general style of his writings. The style is the same in the De Patientiâ and in the De Jejuniis; only, in the latter, the mannerisms are far more marked. Say, then, that he had already seen his thirtieth year. As Mosheim has settled the date of his Apologeticus at A. D. 198, and as he had probably been converted some time, we may safely put the date of his birth at A. D. 162. The main facts of his life are three, apart from his writings :-His Conversion to Christianity, his Ordination to the Priesthood, his Montanism. Jerome relates, that he lived to a decrepid old age. A few scattered notices of himself, judged to be so often by inference, can be collected, but they afford but little information. But by a study of his works, we may still construct a study of his character, and may be able to trace the oscillations of his mind, and, possibly, determine their causes.

The picture which St. Augustine draws of his own youth a hundred and ninety years later, may serve us to judge Tertullian's early years by. The temptations were the same, though their tempers so signally differ. The profession proposed to each was nearly the same; the course of instruction was the same. Tertullian was in training for a Lawyer; St. Augustine for a Rhetorician. They lived among people whose fickle, excitable natures, dissolute lives, and effeminate characters, were the same, though the interval of two centuries lay between them; but the outline of the evil which St. Augustine sketches in his Confessions, could well serve to fill up a picture of our own times. Unregenerate human nature is the same, whether in Carthage, under Septimius Severus, or in America, under Andrew Johnson.

The impulsive character of Tertullian would plunge him into much evil, which he acknowledges. His irritability would become more and more fixed, as years went on. But the obstinacy which generally is found with them, would, again, give him that perseverance which he needed, and would probably result in the resolution so plain in his writings. This, then, is

our impression of his life, for the twenty years preceding his conversion. Intended for the Forum, he required the long practice, which his works show he underwent; for his knowledge of Roman Law, his mastery over the learning of that age, and the power of his style evince the long and close application of an earnest, persevering student. As the instruction was to a greater degree oral than it is now, the students saw much more of each other, and formed themselves into cliques, and intimate friendships; the temptation to sin, by evil companionship, was multiplied. It would hardly be fair to say, that he was worse than others; yet he felt the stains he then contracted bitterly enough afterwards.

The pictures which he draws of the theatrical amusements, and of the Sacrifices, though veiled over very much, show him to have been once an eager spectator at the Circus, or an attendant upon the Flamen at the Sacrificial rites. What these scenes really were, Apuleius shows, and Tertullian admits, by inference, that he did not wholly escape their contaminating example. But in such a nature as his, rugged, severe, the reaction from them left a lasting disgust, and afterwards, a true sorrow upon his mind. Of a morbid disposition, he hated afterwards, as he then loved these sins, intensely. Mingling these idle, sinful amusements, with graver studies, he diligently prepared himself for the Law. And these double pursuits, acting and re-acting upon his mind, gradually moulded it into what it afterwards became. For, often, the first half of a lifetime, with its hopes, and follies, and illusions, is but the premise to the conclusion, in a soured, disappointed old age.

Fully prepared, he pleaded for some time in the Courts at Rome, as we may gather from this passage from the De Pallio, where the reference to the sewers can only apply to the Roman Forum. "I owe nothing," he saith, "to the Forum, nothing to the Campus, nothing to the Senate. I am no Office seeker, I occupy no Rostrum, I watch for no Lawsuits. I do not care to endure the grated sewers. [The stench of the sewers at the street corners.] I do not bluster in the Courts, I clamor out no petitions, I judge not, I serve not, I rule not. I have left public life." Here he acquired that dex

terity in managing a cause with tact, which distinguishes him. For, everything he writes upon assumes in his hands the appearance of a legal pleading. How long he remained at Rome, we do not know, but he had now received that training which fitted him for the special work to which GOD soon called him, and the time now approached when he must enter upon it.

Following out our conjectures, we may assign A. D. 191–2, as a probable date for his conversion. This great epoch of his life made, as was most proper, a deep impression upon his soul. The subdued tone of mind, the quiet earnestness which his catechetical training had disciplined him into, are evident, in the first works which he composed. With softened temper, freed, in a great measure, from the morbidness which afterwards seized upon him, gratefully reposing upon the rest he had so restlessly sought, he still retained the same fire, the same marked likes and dislikes, the same intense energy. Traces of the struggle with himself, which he must have fought when first called to know the Truth, and throughout his probation as Catechumen, the deep self-examination and sense of his own unworthiness, can be found in the first work which he wrote, the De Patientiâ. We think it more than probable that this is first, with another upon Repentance, and a third upon Prayer, following soon after. At least, they are the three first, by general consent, whether this may be their order or not. The opening words of the De Patientiâ are a revelation of his state of mind :

"I confess to the LORD GOD my rashness (if it be not more truly shamelessness) in writing upon Patience, for the setting forth of which I am not at all fitted, being one of no worth, when it is proper that both the demonstration and commendation of any virtue, when entered upon, should themselves be set forth by the practice of it; and persistence in it should shape its authority, else the words will put the facts to blush. For what is specially good, is specially of GOD, and HE alone giveth of His own, and to every man as HE counts him worthy. Therefore it may be some solace to discourse of what it is not granted [me] to enjoy; like the sick, who, when sickest, talk most of health. So I, most miserable man, ever sick with feverish impatience, must sigh for, anxiously pray for, and supplicate for, that health of patience which I do not possess, whenever I remember and contemplate, in my weakness, that true patience alone gives spiritual life and health in the Lord."-De Patien. § 1.