found this, and faith occupies the place of seeking. Thus Tertullian sets his face against a seeking and a doubting on religious matters without rule or limit, and points to the needfulness of a firm truth in which the religious element of the spirit shall find repose. Yet he is very far from wishing to set a limit to all further inquiry. He distinguishes between the interest arising from the impulse of faith, and that arising from the desire of knowledge. He allows free inquiry, provided the divine truth received by faith be held fast, within that boundary After the words which we have already quoted in another connexion, he adds, "The Lord says, 'Thy faith hath saved thee,' not practice in the interpretation of the Scriptures." And what he describes as the limit of all seeking, the regula fidei, refers to the historical fundamental facts of revelation and redemption.'

As we have remarked above, Tertullian designed in this work, as its principal object, to establish a sure method of warding off and refuting all heresies, so that it would not be necessary to meet them on the uncertain ground of Scripture interpretation. This design, as developed by Tertullian, is not perfectly novel : he occupies a middle position between Irenæus and that later development of the church, of which Vincentius Lirenensis is the type. As in the doctrine of tradition laid down by Irenæus we find the germ of what was further matured dialectically by Tertullian, so in the work before us we find the germ of the whole doctrine of Vincentius Lirenensis on the criteria of truth, to be obtained independently of the exposition of Scripture. Unquestionably, tradition by the living word was the original source of knowledge of the Christian faith; but this source could only retain its purity as long as the living word of the apostles continued to be heard. When this was silent, and recourse to it was no longer possible, tradition was exposed to perversion and obscurity from various quarters, and then the fixed, written word of the apostles, not so exposed as oral tradition to falsification, occupied the place of their living presence for succeeding generations. But as many errors were continually arising from inattention to the different stages of historical development, so that what rightfully had its place in an earlier stage, was carried into a later without conscious discrimination, where it no longer had a rightful

We shall have more to say in another connexion, respecting this regula fidei.

position, it happened likewise, in reference to tradition, that men, being once accustomed to this source of knowledge, believed that they must still continue to draw from it, without taking into account the difference of the times. Moreover, the unanimous tradition of the essential truths of the Gospel might with justice be deduced in part from the original communication, which might be traced back to the instructions of the apostles, and in part might be considered as the expression of the universal Christian consciousness. But another criterion was really needed in order to testify to this as the unchangeable essence of Christianity, since historical tradition, as the expression of the Christian consciousness, is subject to disturbances. When the idea of the church became divested of its internal spiritual character, the idea of tradition would be also made dependent on the authority of the church, deduced by the succession of bishops from the apostles, and thus becomes deteriorated like the former. Irenæus expresses the conviction that this regula fidei may be obtained equally as well by the sound independent exposition of holy writ as from tradition. To him it was something certain in itself. Both sources of knowledge proceeded independently, side by side, with equal rights. But Tertullian went a step further. He made the tradition of the apostolic church, and of the church in general, a standard of Scripture exposition. He denied from the first the competence of heretics to propound a new doctrine, and to expound Scripture according to their mind, as far as they did not agree with the apostolic church, or with the whole church as derived from it, but wished to set up something new in place of what was original and ancient. The opposition of the new against the ancient, of individual judgment against universal consent, these are the præscriptiones which testify against the heretics. Tertullian can speak of one præscriptio; but also of several præscriptiones into which this one may be divided.

"This is the question," says Tertullian,—"To whom does the faith itself belong? Whose are the Scriptures? From whom, and by whom, and when, and to whom is the doctrine delivered by which men become Christians? For wherever the true Christian rule and faith shall be shown to be, there will be the true Scriptures and expositions, and all the true Christian traditions." Everything leads back to the apostles, who delivered the same doctrine to those whom they placed

at the head of the churches; in these churches the same doctrine has been taught from generation to generation; hence it has spread along with the church, and by its dura tion, and by its agreement with them, the whole church is an apostolic one. Communion with this apostolic church is, therefore, according to Tertullian, an evidence that a person is in possession of the original doctrine, the genuine canon and the pure interpretation of holy writ. He maintains that since man has withdrawn himself from the original truth, he has an interest in falsifying holy writ. In this respect there is sometimes reason for complaining of the arbitrary criticism of the heretics; but cases have also occurred in which injustice has been done them, since persons have gone on the presumption that a various reading which has been found among the heretics, was fabricated by them in favour of their system.

When the Gnostics, especially the Marcionites, appealed to the contrariety between the apostles themselves, Paul and Peter,-Tertullian remarked, on the other hand, that these apostles did not publish a different faith, but only represented the same faith in a different form, in consequence of the difference in their spheres of labour.'

But when his opponents adduced in evidence the dispute between Paul and Peter at Antioch, Tertullian at first refuted this by a remark indicative of a more unfettered spirit, since he candidly admitted Peter's error, but only maintained that this would not justify persons in inferring an opposition in his doctrine to that of Paul. But he did not remain faithful to his unprejudiced view. Perhaps it did not proceed so much from an excessive reverence for the apostles, which was afraid to acknowledge an error in them, but must be accounted for from Tertullian's manner in controversy of always pushing matters to an extreme, and not making the slightest concession to his opponents, that he afterwards put this construction on the affair; namely, that both Peter and Paul acted on the same principles; Peter became a Jew to the Jews, as Paul when he censured Peter became a Gentile to the Gentiles. Thus he allowed himself to be misled; although otherwise he belonged to the advocates of a strict truthfulness, he here in some degree relinquished it, through an erroneous extension of the idea of accommodation, in order that he might sanction in an equal manner the conduct of both the apostles.

1 Cap. xxiii.

The parties with whom Tertullian had to contend, especially the Marcionites, urged against the authority of tradition, that the churches might have misunderstood the truth that nad been announced to them, and probably mixed errors with it. They appealed, as Tertullian says, to passages in the Pauline Epistles, as in the Epistle to the Galatians, in which the churches are reproached for their apostasy from the original truth. They inferred, not without plausibility, what has happened once may happen again; hence tradition is not a certain witness. Tertullian, on the other hand, could appeal to the continued operation of the Holy Spirit in the extension and development of the general Christian consciousness; yet that did not exclude an intermixture of perplexing errors. "Well, then!" says Tertullian, "all the churches must have erred; the Holy Spirit can have taken care of not one to lead it into the truth; he, who was sent for this purpose by Christ, who was sought from the Father that he might be the teacher of truth. This Steward of God, this Vicar of Christ, must have neglected his work-suffering the churches to have understood for a while differently, to have believed differently from what he announced by the apostles." Then he brings forward their agreement as an evidence of truth : Is it probable," he asks, "that so many churches, and so great, should have adopted the same erroneous faith?" 1 He justly appeals against those who spoke as if they were the persons by whom Christianity was first brought to light-that, on such a supposition, the whole church must hitherto have existed to no purpose. He here again applies the principle which he had frequently made use of, that the truth is everywhere the original, and that error first existed as a counterfeit of truth. But we have already remarked that Tertullian probably erred in the application of this, in itself a correct principle. We are here obliged to say, that the most original of all is certainly the truth but although the original ground of truth remains firm, the disturbing element of error may soon mingle with it, and then the power of the original truth will again make itself felt in the reaction against the error of later origin. Hence this rule can never be so mechanically applied, in order to distinguish error and truth in the church from one another.

Cap. xxviii.

2 Cap. xxix.

In omnibus veritas imaginem antecedit; post rem similitude edit."

SECTION 11.

MONTANIST WRITINGS.

As we have seen, Tertullian wished, after he had furnished in his book on Prescriptions a general preservative against heretics in general, to commence an attack on particular heretical doctrines and sects. We have already remarked, that in combating the Gnostics in that work, he had chiefly in view the school of Marcion. It was natural, therefore, that his first special polemical treatise should be directed against the same class. But we have no longer that work in the form in which, as Tertullian himself says, it was originally composed; for we learn from his own words, that he at first published it in a form with which he was afterwards dissatisfied. He revised it, but the work in this revised state was circulated against his will, before it had received the final amendments.' Hence, at a later period, he was moved to recompose this polemical treatise entirely, and to send it forth as quite a new work. And in this state the five books against Marcion have come down to us. The work in this form was completed by Tertullian, not immediately after the Præscriptio, but when he had written several dogmatic and dogmatic-polemic treatises. This explains what would otherwise be inexplicable, that Tertullian, in his work against Marcion, mentions his treatise on the Resurrection as already written, and in the latter book he mentions the work against Marcion, and the treatise De Anima, as already written. Further, he mentions also the treatise De Carne Christi as also written. But if we turn to this latter, we find mention in it of a work against the Gnostics, and his book De Testimonio Animæ, as already written; on the other hand, he speaks of his book on the Resurrection as being still to be written, but in this latter work he mentions, as we have remarked, his book De Anima as already written. And if we go back to this book De Anima, we find his book

1 Lib. i. cap. 1. "Primum opusculum quasi properatum pleniore postea compositione rescideram."

"Si quid retro gestum est nobis adversus Marcionem jam hino viderit. Novam rem aggredimur ex vetere."