tions, and approach these contests, having pledged our very lives; desiring to obtain those things which God has promised in return, and fearing to suffer those things which he threatens to a contrary course of life. Finally, we conflict with all your cruelty, rushing of our own accord to the charge, and rejoice more when condemned than when acquitted. We have sent you this memorial, not fearing for ourselves, but for you and all our enemies, not to say our friends. For so our religiou commands us, to love even our enemies, and to pray for them who persecute us, that this our goodness may be perfect and peculiar, not common; for to love friends is common to all; but to love enemies belongs to Christians alone. We then who grieve for your ignorance, and pity human error, and look foward to future things, and behold the signs of them that daily threaten, are under the necessity of forcing ourselves in this manner to lay before you things which you will not hear publicly.

men.

"We worship one God, whom ye all know by nature; at whose lightnings and thunders ye tremble, in whose benefits ye rejoice. But other beings ye think to be God, whom we know to be dæmons." We perceive here that Tertullian presupposes the consciousness of one God as undeniable by all He then appeals to the right of universal liberty of conscience, which, as we have already seen, was first distinctly recognised by means of Christianity, and says, "Yet it belongs to man's natural right and privilege that each should worship as he thinks fit; nor does the religion of one man injure or profit another. But it is no part of religion to compel men to religion, which ought to be taken up voluntarily, not of compulsion, seeing that sacrifices also are required of a willing mind. Thus, although ye compel us to sacrifice, ye will render no service thereby to your gods; for they will not desire sacrifices from unwilling givers, unless they be contentious. But our God is not contentious. Finally, the true God bestows his gifts equally on the profane and on his own people."

Tertullian holds up as warning examples to the proconsul, the misfortunes which had befallen many persecutors of the Christians in Africa. Well might many of these persecutors -for similar examples frequently occur in the history of the spread of Christianity among heathen nations-be brought to

the conviction that they had roused against themselves the anger of a powerful Divine Being by their persecution of Christianity. Tertullian saw in the public calamities which followed the persecutions of the Christians, divine judgments, and announced them as such to the proconsul, whose conviction, however, was not effected by this means. The burialplaces of the Christians were special objects of the popular fury; for as a secta illicita they had no legal right to possess them, and from their meetings at the graves they were wont to return with invigorated energy of faith. Thus at an out

break of popular fury the cry was raised, "Away with the areas of the Christians!" by which was meant their places or interment. When a season of sterility followed, Tertullian saw in it a fulfilment of that demand in a different sense.

"When they cried out concerning the open spaces of our burying-place, 'Let there be no area,' there were no area to themselves, for they gathered not their harvest.”1 In a nocturnal phenomenon of a fire on the walls of Carthage, and a former thunderstorm, 'Tertullian beholds the sign of a special divine judgment, and says, "All these are the signs of the wrath of God which we must necessarily, as we are able, proclaim and teach, while we pray that it may be only local ; for the universal and final judgment they shall feel at its own time, who in any other way interpret these samples of it." He adds, alluding probably to a severe illness which the proconsul suffered, "We wish that to yourself it may be a warning, that immediately after your condemnation of Mavilus of Adrumetum to the beasts, your affliction followed, and now from the same cause the stoppage of blood," " (or, the warning by blood.) "But remember, we who fear thee not wish not to terrify thee; but I would that we could save you all, by warning you μǹ beoμaxeiv." He calls upon him at least to exercise as much humanity towards the Christians, as after all the strictness of the laws was permitted him. For according to the laws that existed since the time of the Emperor Trajan, those who avowed themselves Christians, and would not let it be thought that they would be untrue to their faith, were condemned to death. Tortures were only

2

"Areæ non sint, areæ ipsorum non fuerunt, messes enim suas non egerunt."

"Et nunc ex eadem causa interpellatio sanguinis." Cap. iii.

to be applied, as in other cases, in order to extort a confession from suspected parties who denied that they were Christians. Tertullian appealed to the fact, that the President of Leon in Spain, although a persecutor of the Christians, yet in conformity with the ancient edicts used only the punishment of the sword.

As the Christians often met with worse treatment from the cruelty or fanaticism of the populace than they would have suffered by legal infliction, many magistrates relaxed the strictness of the laws in their favour. Tertullian adduces examples of this sort: persons who were otherwise noted for harshness manifested their regret at being obliged to act in such matters, and sought to aid the Christians by various expedients; for instance, there was one who, when a Christian was dragged before his tribunal by the populace, let him go, telling him that it would be a breach of the peace' if he complied with the popular demand. To another a Christian was sent with a written specification of his offence, (elogium,) from which he saw that he had been suddenly seized and arrested by the military. He tore the document in pieces, saying, that according to his instructions (secundum mandatum) it was illegal to receive an accusation without the name of the accuser. There is a reference here to Trajan's rescript, which contained such a prohibition; and we learn from this incident that it was the general rule in such cases. Further, Tertullian gives an account of a proconsul in Lesser Asia in the reign of the Emperor Commodus, before whose tribunal when he began to persecnte the Christians, all the Christian inhabitants of the city appeared. Alarmed at their numbers, he sentenced only a few to death, and said to the others, "Miserable men! if ye wish to die, ye have precipices and halters!" Tertullian then goes on to say,—“ If the same thing should be done here, what wilt thou do with so many thounds of human beings, so many men and women, of every sex, ery age, of every degree, giving themselves up to thee?

i Christianum quasi tumultuosum civibus suis satisfacere A different interpretation is possible according as the word sum is taken as the neuter or the masculine. We have explained former sense. According to the second the passage would mean, eded hi as a noisy turbulent person, and without troubling !d leave him in the hands of his fellow-citizen. τοθνήσκειν, κρημνοὺς ἢ βροχοὺς ἔχεται

8

ar

How many fires, how many swords would be needed! What will Carthage itself, which thou must decimate, endure, when every man recognises there his own kinsfolk and comrades, when he beholds perchance men and matrons of thy own rank, and all the chief persons, and even the kinsfolk and friends of thy own friends! Spare then thyself, if not us; spare Carthage, if not thyself; spare the province which as soon as thy design was perceived, became exposed to false accusations both from the soldiery and from each man's private enemies. We have no master save God alone. He is before thee and cannot be hidden; but he is one to whom thou canst do nothing. But those whom thou thinkest to be thy masters are men, and must themselves one day die. Yet this sect shall never fail, for know that it is the more built up when it seems to be stricken down. For every one who beholds so much endurance, being struck with some misgiving, is kindled with the desire of inquiring what there is in the cause, and when he has discovered the truth respecting it, forthwith he follows it himself.” 1

1 Cap. v.

PART II.

THE SECOND CLASS OF TERTULLIAN'S WRITINGS.

WRITINGS WHICH RELATE TO CHRISTIAN AND CHURCH LIFE, AND TO ECCLESIASTICAL DISCIPLINE.

SECTION I.

PRE-MONTANIST WRITINGS.

WE begin this series with Tertullian's beautiful treatise De Patientia (On Patience). The predominant spirit of love and gentleness which animates this work, strikes us at once as not corresponding to the harshness of Montanism. Yet we cannot accept this as a proof that it belongs to the preMontanist class; for even as a Montanist there were intervals in Tertullian's life in which the peculiarly Christian element gained the ascendancy over the gloom of Montanism; or possibly he might have passed from a more rugged to a more moderate Montanism. Still we shall find in this work some certain marks of pre-Montanism. The peculiar subject of it necessarily brings out more prominently the characteristic distinction of the pure Christian stand-point. This treatise is important in the history of Christian ethics; for it is the first which discusses at length the nature of a virtue that occupies an important place among the cardinal virtues of Christianity, and forms a striking feature in that new ethical spirit which emanated from Christianity, and is closely connected with the peculiarities of the Christian faith. If we trace back the idea of this virtue to that of the ancient group of cardinal virtues, it will correspond to ardpeia or fortitudo. It is the more passive in relation to the predominantly active, which is the fundamental idea of the term, but both are one in the ethical outline of the Christian stand-point, that one