Le Nourry, Dissertatio in Apologeticum, ad Nationes et ad Scapulam, Cap. I-VII

A Dissertation on the Apologeticum of Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullian, the two books To the Nations, and the one To Scapula (by Dom Nicolas Le Nourry, priest and monk of the Order of St Benedict, of the Congregation of St Maur).

CHAPTER ONE. An analysis of the Apologeticum, and who the Tertullian is under whose name it is inscribed.

ARTICLE ONE. An analysis of the Apologeticum.

When Tertullian saw, not without great sorrow of mind, that the Christians were harassed and killed by the heathen with such injustice that they were neither permitted to defend themselves openly nor to be heard publicly by the judges, he undertook to plead their cause before the presiding magistrates of the Roman empire by the hidden force of writings. First, then, he complains most gravely that all Christians were held in an utterly implacable hatred, and tortured, by the heathen, who neither knew them nor wished to know them, against all the laws of equity and of nature. Indeed, the public evidence of this ignorance refuted their perversity all the more, in that, as soon as they came to know what the Christian religion is and of what kind, they at once abandoned the worship of false gods and embraced it throughout the whole world. Nor is it to be said that they were then being led astray into evil. For this is the condition of the evil man, that, covered with shame and fear, he seeks hiding-places; the Christian, on the contrary, even when condemned and tormented with every kind of torture, glories in his profession, rejoices and exults (Chapter I).

Next, if the Christian is guilty of sacrilege, incest, murder or any other crime whatever, as the gentiles prattled, why is he condemned by them against divine and human laws, without any accusation of a crime, without a witness, without prior examination of any circumstance, of the time, of accomplices, but solely on the prejudgement of the name? Pliny, therefore, moved by this injustice, asked the emperor Trajan what was to be done about the Christians, who were convicted of no crime or offence at all, apart from an obstinate will to persevere in the worship of God and of Christ and in their own discipline. But he received no other answer from him than that they were not to be sought out, but, when brought before the judges, ought to be punished. And what, I ask you, is more unjust than that law which forbids Christians to be sought out, as being innocent, and orders them to be condemned as guilty (Chapter II)?

Moreover, it was provided by divine and human laws that no one accused of any crime whatever should ever be tortured by any penalty or interrogation except so that he might confess his crimes. The Christians, on the contrary, were tormented so that they might deny the crimes of which they were usually accused, and deny that they were Christians. The battle, therefore, was over the name of Christians alone. And certainly the sentence that the judges pronounced against them from the tablet, leaving out the statement of any crime, carried nothing else than that Christians were condemned. The heathen, then, sinned the more gravely against the more sacred laws, in that they more often admitted that the morals of the Christians were chaste and holy, and that those of their own gentiles who gave their names to the Christian faith always became better. Nevertheless they raged against these neophytes with no less cruelty than against all the rest, because of the Christian name they had taken.

"But," said the heathen, "the name of their founder displeases us." What then, Tertullian replies, of hatefulness can underlie the name of Christ? Is it not derived from sweetness or kindness? And what is there in it more worthy of hatred than in the very name of philosophers, physicians, cooks, handed down from their founders and received by others? In short, the name of no sect ought to seem evil or hateful unless what evil there is in the sect itself is first certainly discerned and proved (Chapter III).

The heathen insisted that they were bound by the prescription of the laws passed by the emperors to harass and do away with the Christians. But this objection, says Tertullian, is utterly absurd. For no one is bound by any unjust law, one that either forbids good or commands something wicked. And such were the laws enacted against the Christians. Moreover, the heathen could not deny that many laws had been given by their own and by other legislators, subject to human weakness, which, because they seemed either harmful or useless, were afterwards amended, cut down, or abrogated by others. For were not the laws of Lycurgus by the Lacedaemonians, were not the Papian laws on the bearing of children by the emperor Severus, either corrected or set aside? Was not the law concerning creditors in

cutting into parts changed? Nor indeed is it any wonder. For neither antiquity nor the dignity of the author, but equity alone, commends laws. And none was ever more unjust than that which ordered Christians to be condemned solely for their name, without their case being heard (Chapter IV).

For how far it is not only new and unjust but even tyrannical, Tertullian shows from this: that Tiberius, in whose reign the Christian name began to be spread through the various parts of the world, having heard of the miracles of Christ, wished Him to be enrolled among the number of the gods. And although, with the senate opposing, he did not accomplish this, he nevertheless remained in his opinion and threatened danger to the accusers of the Christians. Of his successors, however, Nero was the first of all (alas, how impious and wicked a man!) to rage against the Christians with the Caesarian sword. Domitian, not unequal to him in cruelty, when he had attempted the same, quickly checked his efforts. Far removed from both, however, was Marcus Aurelius, who, when rain had been obtained from heaven by the prayers of Christian soldiers, ordered that those who accused the followers of Christ be punished more severely. Before him Trajan, without passing any law, forbade them to be sought out. Nor is there extant any law or any decree against them of the emperors Hadrian, Vespasian, Pius and Verus. Only the worst, the most wicked and the most impious emperors, therefore, raged against them (Chapter V).

Then next Tertullian, to shut off from the heathen every way of arguing foolishly from the institutions and laws of their ancestors, makes it plain to anyone by a brief induction that the laws and more sacred statutes concerning expenditure, canvassing, abstinence from wine, divorce and the worship of the gods had been ruined by them. For the Roman consuls cast out Liber with his mysteries from Rome and from all Italy, just as Piso and Gabinius, likewise consuls, cast Serapis, Isis and Harpocrates out of the Capitol and the court of the gods, and these were restored by the Romans only by right of return. In short, all the heathen had sent a notice of divorce to the customs of their forefathers in dress, food, furnishings, property and even in speech itself. In vain, therefore, did they charge the Christians with having trampled on and overthrown the authority of their ancient fathers, which they themselves had ruined as boldly as they had with impunity (Chapter VI).

From there our author passes to the false and lying unspeakable crimes of the Christians, which he refutes in such a way as to show most clearly that they are as far from them as the gentiles were in fact guilty of them. For first, the Christians had long been defamed as though they devoured, in the manner of wild beasts, the flesh of a boy they had killed, and afterwards, when the lights had been put out by the work of dogs, wallowed most foully in every kind of debauchery and incest. But surely nothing was easier than to convict the Christians of such great crimes, if they were really committed by them. For they always had as many enemies and foes as there were Jews, as there were soldiers, as there were members of their households, as there were almost their own wives, indeed also gentile men, who always persecuted them. Yet none of them ever recognized such great crimes, and much less betrayed them,

or sold his silence to those same Christians for some price. And indeed, who would have betrayed these crimes? Not the Christians, certainly, who concealed their mysteries no less scrupulously than the gentiles theirs. Nor yet the heathen, who, being wholly shut out from the assemblies of those same Christians, could beyond doubt not know what was done in them. "But," they said, "these things have been spread abroad by common report." But what is lighter than report? Since it always springs either from envy or from hatred, or from suspicion, or from the pleasure of deceiving others, it lasts only so long as it lies (Chapter VII).

Tertullian insists that those outrages are so horrible that no one ought ever to have believed, or could have committed, them. For the Christians promised their followers eternal happiness. But who would bring himself to believe that they had promised it to a man who would kill an infant, eat bread dipped in its fresh blood, and afterwards be defiled by unspeakable incest? Indeed no one will ever be persuaded that these things could have been done even by a heathen who has any sense of shame and humanity. Nor may you say that a fraud was practised by others on the candidates of the Christian religion. For who could have practised it? The father of the rites, or someone else by whom they were instructed? But by what trick, by what sleights could he teach them what they had to do to commit those execrable crimes? Suppose, however, and grant if you will, that these things were committed by them: why then, when at length they had recognized and done them, did they never complain of the fraud practised on them, but all persevered so constantly in so horrible a doctrine handed down to them? Did they fear that they would be punished if they disclosed them? On the contrary, they would thereby have won the favour of the heathen; but they preferred to perish rather than live with such a conscience (Chapter VIII).

With the same ease, however, with which Tertullian clears the Christians of such great crimes, he shows that the gentiles are wholly and entirely convicted of the same or similar ones. For to Saturn, who did not spare his own sons, they sacrificed infants in Africa openly up to the first proconsulate of Tiberius, and secretly thereafter. The Gauls used to slaughter their elders to Mercury, the Taurians their guests to Diana, the Romans beast-fighters, men none the less, to Jupiter in the public games. What of this, that others with no less cruelty either snatched life from infants by abortion or exposed the newborn to a death soon to come? Add to this that not only did certain nations, like Catiline, make a pact with their own blood shed, but the Scythians too were said to eat men. The priests of Bellona also were consecrated with their own blood, and gladiators, like those suffering from the falling sickness, drank the blood of other men slain in the arena. Others too, at the public shows, ate the flesh either of a stag that had lain in a man's blood, or of a boar that had bloodied a man, or the stomachs of a bear, which were still belching up the entrails of men killed in these games. Lastly, by a more horrible crime, never to be named, they swallowed the substance of man. The Christians, on the contrary, shrank from

every kind of savagery, nor was it lawful for them, even amid the cruellest torments, to taste either the blood of animals, or anything strangled, or carrion offered to false gods (Chapter IX).

And what cause was there for the heathen to accuse the Christians of incest, of which most wicked Jupiter had given the example, and of which the Persians were guilty? The Macedonians too were suspected of the same crime, by whom he was mocked who, acting the tragedy of Oedipus, lamented that his mother had been violated by himself. Why say more? The wicked gentiles, accustomed to debauchery, in blind lust inflicted defilement even on their own children, once exposed and no longer known to them. But the Christians either persevered in the state of virginity or, after marriage, always abstained from every excess.

From the false and fictitious secret crimes of the Christians Tertullian passes to those which the heathen charged were manifest and public. Chief among these was that by which they were accused of sacrilege and of treason against the divine majesty because they utterly refused all worship to the gods. Nor indeed does Tertullian deny that this would beyond doubt be a great crime, if those whom the heathen worshipped really were gods. But the conscience of the heathen themselves bore witness that they were not gods but mere men. If anyone nevertheless still dares to resist, he will at once be refuted by countless testimonies of their own writers, who point out the places where those invented gods were born, where they led a mortal life, and where, when it was ended, they were buried. Since, however, it would have taken too long to review each of these gods by name, our author demonstrates it by the example of Saturn, the first of all the gods. For all the writers on antiquities assert that he was in truth a man who, after many expeditions, was received in Italy with Attic hospitality by Janus or Ino, and gave the name Saturnia to the mountain and the city he inhabited, and to all Italy. Nor did the tablets first fashioned there by him declare this less plainly, and the coin stamped with his image, on account of which he is said to preside over the treasury. He was therefore a man, and not sprung from heaven and earth, as some have fabled. Who, then, will dare to deny that all the other gods, who draw their origin from him, were also men (Chapter X)?

Nor indeed does Tertullian allow the reply that these were enrolled among the number of the gods only after their death. For no man can confer divinity on himself. If, then, it was given to anyone, whether before or after death, he must surely have received it from another, more powerful God. But there was never any cause at all why that supreme God should make some men gods after their death. For He never needed anyone's help, whether for making the world or for doing anything else. Before all the fictitious gods of the gentiles, indeed, the rains, the lights, the stars, the thunders, the lightnings and the various kinds of crops came into being. Indeed, the first of all men was created after all the things necessary for his life. No more, then, were Liber, Ceres, Bacchus and Minerva made gods for discovering crops,

than Lucullus was for cherries brought over from Pontus into Italy.

Nor with better reason can it be said that divinity was conferred on men for their merits and virtues. For from this it follows that there is some supreme god who dispenses divinity to the deserving. Then again, the gentiles were compelled to admit that their gods had been wicked, impious, criminal, most worthless men, and that others like them are justly condemned by others of good character. Grant, however, that they were upright: yet they were not better than Socrates and Aristides, nor braver than Themistocles and Alexander, nor more fortunate than Polycrates and Sulla, nor richer than Croesus or Crassus, more eloquent than Demosthenes and Cicero, wiser than Cato, and more just than Scipio. Why then did the heathen, leaving these in the underworld, raise those others to heaven as gods (Chapter XI)?

But say further who these gods of the gentiles are. I see nothing at all in them, says Tertullian, but the names of dead men. I hear nothing but fables, and from these fables I recognize the sacred rites that were instituted. And what of this, that their images, wrought from the material of common vessels and implements, or from the very vessels and implements themselves, were at length made gods by a sacrilegious consecration? Who, moreover, does not see that those fine images, while they are being made, suffer the same things as the Christians when they are tortured by the heathen? For they are made from the mines to which the Christians are condemned. They are set on crosses and stakes, scraped with hooks, burnt with fires; but by all these means the Christians are put out of the way. In this, however, they differ from them, that the images are at first without a head, which is at length cut off from the Christians, most unjustly condemned. Besides this, the Christians are banished to islands, on which nobody is unaware that almost all the gods of the gentiles were born and died. Nor could they answer that these were mere insults of the Christians against the gods, since Seneca attacked those same gods with more and far more bitter words. Rightly, then, did the Christians refuse to worship those images of the gods, which, defiled by kites, mice and spiders, are neglected, mocked and destroyed by the gentiles themselves.

Moreover, different peoples worshipped different gods, and no one could be a god without a decree of the senate. Their household gods, again, each man according to his need or his power pawned, or sold, or changed now into a ladle, now into a cooking-pot. Their public gods they held as taxable in the auction register, and up for sale under the spear and by the voice of the public crier. Nor is that indeed surprising. For the more holy the gods were, the more tribute they paid. And the begging religion of the heathen went round the taverns and demanded a large fee for entry into any temple.

But come, in what way, I ask, did the heathen honour their gods? In just the same way as dead emperors; indeed, they paid the same honour to those emperors while living as to their dead gods. In like manner too they made Larentina the harlot, Simon Magus, and some god or other of Synedus, and unclean Junos, Cereses and

Dianas they venerated. What more, then, could be done by any man to insult the ancient gods (Chapters XII, XIII)?

Were not the gods also held in no less mockery by those who sacrificed to them all the worst things, and filched a third part of the tithes owed to Hercules? Did not others proclaim in their books, not without the greatest disgrace to them, that they fought among themselves on account of the Trojans or the Achaeans, that Venus was wounded, Mars almost wasted away in chains, Jupiter freed by a certain monster, now weeping, now foully in heat? The poets sing of Apollo serving Admetus and Neptune serving Laomedon, and Pindar of Aesculapius judged by the thunderbolt. Besides, the hardships and wanderings of the gods are chanted by the tragedians. Among the philosophers, Socrates, although he swore by the oak, the goat and the dog, was nevertheless condemned to death because he was destroying the gods. But when the condemnation was rescinded they at length gave him a splendid testimony. Lastly, a certain Diogenes mocked Hercules, and Varro brought in three hundred Jupiters (Chapter XIV).

Tertullian further presses that in the comedies and tragedies of the gentiles there were represented Anubis the adulterer, the male Moon, Diana flogged, the will of Jupiter, and three starving Herculeses. Besides, the actors put on show the Sun mourning, Cybele sighing for a disdainful shepherd, the eulogy of Jupiter, the judgement of Juno and Minerva; and at length in these the most disgraceful head represented the image of some god, and a body made womanish by ridiculous art represented Minerva or Hercules. Nor may you expect anything better from the auditorium. For there the role was acted of Attis castrated, of Hercules burning, of Mercury among the sports of the midday shows testing the dead with a branding-iron, and of the brother of Jupiter dragging off the corpses of dead men with a mallet. Tertullian passes over many other things like these, and reproaches the gentiles that within the temples of the gods, and among the very altars, and in the dwellings of the priests and the temple-keepers, they arranged adulteries and practised procuring. Who then, he says, are guilty against the divine majesty: they who held their gods in such mockery, or the Christians, who denied that these were gods, and who therefore did not know their temples by day, and would have despoiled them utterly if it could be done (Chapter XV)?

But against this the heathen objected that an ass's head was worshipped by the Christians as a god. But this, says Tertullian, is a pure dream, to which Cornelius Tacitus gave occasion when he falsely recorded that the Jews consecrated a likeness of the form of this beast because, when they were suffering from thirst in Egypt, certain wild asses had shown them a spring. But the calumny of this most lying writer was most clearly exposed when Pompey, entering the temple of the Jews, found no image there. And certainly, the more false that was, the more true it was that all beasts of burden, and geldings with their Hippona, were worshipped and honoured by the heathen.

Nor with better reason did they reproach the Christians with the worship of the cross of Christ. For what could they find fault with in it? Did there not stand on display among them Pallas of Attica, and Ceres

of Pharos, who as a rough stake and piece of wood was not distinguished from the upright of a cross? Besides, in the images of their gods, in their victories, trophies, military standards, the curtains of the banners and cantabra, or in their inner necklaces and robes, they worshipped the crosses placed beneath them.

Others, a little more plausibly indeed, suspected that the God of the Christians, like that of the Persians, was the Sun. But this false suspicion arose from the fact that these same Christians prayed to God turned towards the Sun, and gave themselves to gladness on the day of the Sun, that is, the Lord's day. But this was certainly the less deserving of the gentiles' reproach in that they had set apart the day of Saturn for leisure and feasting.

Lastly, our author hisses off a certain Jew, surely a very great rascal, who, being a beast-fighter, at the Circensian games most recently given "in this city," he says, put up a picture in which the God of the Christians was carried round, painted with ass's ears, hoofed on one foot, carrying a book and wearing a toga, with this ridiculous inscription: "The God of the Christians, ass-begotten." But as false and lying as this picture was, so true was it that the heathen worshipped gods composed of the limbs of men and beasts (Chapter XVI).

But so that the heathen might no longer slander the true doctrine of the Christians through wilful ignorance and, as usual, through shameless lies, Tertullian sets it out thus, with the greatest brevity as well as sincerity. The God, he says, whom we worship is one, Who created the whole world out of nothing for the adornment of His majesty. And although He is known, He is nevertheless invisible, beyond reckoning, immeasurable, and known as great as He is to Himself alone. That this one and true God really exists is shown by the world and by all the other things which He commanded by His word to be made, ordered by His reason and founded by His power. Moreover, this is most clearly proved by the testimony of our soul, naturally Christian, which, in whatever state it may be, whether of weakness, or of error, or of depraved lust, when it comes to its senses or returns to itself, cries out not "gods" but the one God, and calls Him to witness as judge (Chapter XVII).

No less evident an argument for the divine existence is drawn from the sacred books of the Old Testament, which were written by men flooded with the divine Spirit, and who confirmed their writings by various and true miracles. Aristeas, moreover, testifies that these books, first composed in the Hebrew tongue, were translated into Greek with the greatest fidelity by seventy Jews, at the instance of Ptolemy Philadelphus and with Menedemus approving. And at that time they were still preserved in Ptolemy's library, written out in Hebrew and Greek letters, and the Jews read them publicly on every sabbath. There could therefore be no doubt about their truth and integrity (Chapter XVIII).

Their antiquity, moreover, claims the greatest authority for them. For the book-chest of one prophet, that is, the books of Moses, than all the other writings of the gentiles, than their gods, temples, oracles, rites, indeed than all the Greek

letters, and than most nations and cities, are older. For that Moses, contemporary with Inachus, far surpasses in age not only Homer and the fall of Priam but also the very ancient Danaus. And the other prophets, though later than he, nevertheless precede the Greek sages, lawgivers and historians by no short interval of time. But since it would take too long to relate what is very easy to prove to everyone, Tertullian therefore let this proof go, yet in such a way as to point out the sources and cite various writers from whom that antiquity of sacred Scripture can be made most evident to anyone (Chapter XIX).

Nor, further, does he derive its supreme authority from this antiquity alone, but chiefly from the fact that it is plainly divine. For by its authors, breathed upon by the divine Spirit, the disasters of the world and many other things were foretold which we know actually to have happened. We ought not, therefore, to doubt the rest, which were also foretold by them. It must therefore be settled and fixed that only one God, Who is everywhere proclaimed by them, exists, and that the Christian religion, which is supported by these books of theirs, is true (Chapter XX).

But then the heathen rose up and cried out that this religion of the Christians was new, since they differed wholly and entirely from the Jewish both in name and in rites. To them, however, Tertullian replies that the Jews flourished in the greatest happiness for as long as they merited the grace of God by their remarkable righteousness and the faith of the patriarchs. But after they had trampled on His laws and fallen into the greatest crimes, as their punishment they were scattered, and wander about straying and exiled from sky and soil, so that it has not been granted them even to set foot in greeting on their own homeland. And not only were these things foretold by their sacred seers, but also that there would be another people to which God would transfer a greater grace than to them. And Christ is the arbiter and master of this chosen people, foretold also by those same prophets. And He, not wholly unknown to the philosophers Zeno and Cleanthes, is the λόγος of God, word, reason, sophia, wisdom, and true Son. For not after the manner of men or of manufactured gods, but as a ray from the sun, so spirit from spirit and light from light, He was begotten; He did not withdraw from the source, but went out in such a way as not to be separated from the substance of His Father, from Whom He is another in measure, not in number, in degree, not in state, and is altogether one God with Him. Then, at the appointed time, having descended into a virgin, He was made man mingled with God.

These things could not be dismissed as old wives' tales either by the gentiles, who had invented other such tales, or by the Jews, who knew that He had been promised by their prophets. For these went astray in this, that, not understanding what is said in those sacred Scriptures about His first and second coming, they denied that He had already come to us. And so great was their blindness, perversity and wickedness that they accused of magic Him Who by the miracles He performed openly showed Himself to be the λόγος of God. And when by His heavenly doctrine He drew very many to Himself, then, exasperated, they brought Him before Pontius Pilate,

and by the violence of their votes extorted from him that He be fastened to a cross, as He Himself had foretold. And as He was dying there took place an altogether unusual eclipse of the sun, recorded in their archives by those same Jews, who did not know that it had been announced by the prophets. By them, further, His body was laid in a tomb. But when He had wonderfully risen on the third day, they spread it about that it had been stolen by the disciples. But He, alive again, withdrew Himself from the crowds and, having spent forty days with certain disciples, instructed them in the doctrine to be spread everywhere, and after this, wrapped in a cloud, ascended into heaven. Pilate, who was then a Christian in conscience, reported all these things to Tiberius, who would indeed have believed in Christ had he not been Caesar and ruled over the heathen. But the Jews, more savage, most cruelly harassed the disciples of Christ as they preached the doctrine handed down to them by Him; and Nero was the first to shed their blood at Rome.

Furthermore, Tertullian steadfastly asserts that this is the true sum of Christian doctrine, and that credit cannot be withheld from him by the heathen. For the Christians were thoroughly convinced that it had never been lawful for anyone to lie, and much less for themselves when setting out the teachings of their religion. What evil, then, could there be in the religion and worship of those who openly declared that God was worshipped by them through Christ? Did not the Jews venerate God through Moses, and were not the Greek gentiles initiated into their superstitions through other men, and the Romans through Numa Pompilius? Rather, it should have been asked whether the divinity of Christ is true, by the knowledge of which man is reformed for the better (Chapter XXI).

The Christians believed, moreover, that there are demons, not unknown to the philosophers, and especially to Socrates and Zeno, to the poets and to the magi, whom the common people invoke when cursing or in reviling others. These are of a spiritual substance, like the angels, but having fallen into sin they have plotted the destruction of man from the beginning of the world. And being endowed with spiritual powers as with a spiritual substance, they not only blight the crops and the health of man, but also shake his mind with depraved impulses and turn it away from the thought of the divinity. And since by their native swiftness they are everywhere in a single moment, and know the dispositions of God, they ape divinity while they steal divination. Besides this, they utter ambiguous oracles, heal those whom they have harmed, work false miracles by various sleights, produce phantoms, defame the souls of the departed, crush boys to draw out an oracle's utterance, send dreams, and through their work goats and tables used to divine. And the heathen, who ascribed all these things to their gods, beyond doubt admitted that these were demons.

Nor could they reply that their gods ought to be judged not by what was done in profane places but only by what was done in their temples. For the madness of the one who throws himself headlong from a tower consecrated to these gods is not different from that of the other who throws himself from the top of the roof of a neighbouring house. Nor is the frenzy of the one who cuts his arms and genitals in honour of the goddess unequal to that of the other who cuts his own throat. But if these things, says

Tertullian, should seem of slight weight, it is demonstrated by other arguments most unanswerably that the gods of the gentiles and the demons are the same. For let someone be brought forward who suffers from a god, who, breathing over the altars, conceives a divinity; let the virgin goddess, the promiser of rains, come forth; let the god Aesculapius be brought into the midst, about to heal someone dying; and then, if each and all of these, when a Christian asks them who they are, do not confess that they are demons, Tertullian allows that the blood of that same Christian be shed on the spot. But nothing at all is simpler, plainer and more effective than this demonstration. For either the demon will lie, and then he is no god; or he will speak the truth, and accordingly the gods are in fact demons. Whoever, then, says that these things are done by the gods must assert that they are subject to the Christians, and therefore that they are as false gods as the religion of the Christians is true. For all this power arises from the name of Christ, by which the demons, adjured by them, are compelled not only to come out of the possessed bodies of men, but besides to confess that they are not gods but unclean spirits, condemned beforehand for their wickedness, and that there is one true God, and that therefore the things said a little before about Christ are true (ch. XXII, XXIII).

Rightly, therefore, does Tertullian conclude from these things that the Christians are wrongly accused of offence against the divine majesty. For even if it were established that the gods of the heathen were true gods, they themselves nonetheless, like Plato, held that the supreme power lay with one, say Jupiter, and the offices with the rest. What wrong, then, did the Christians do, who worshipped and venerated one supreme God, as other men do one sole emperor? Was this less lawful for them than for each and every man, city and province to have some god of its own and peculiar to it? Yet certainly, with no one objecting, some privately worshipped Jupiter, others Faith, the Egyptians birds and beasts, the Syrians Astarte, and so the rest each his own god. In a word, everyone was allowed to worship whomever he wished, except the true God. But was not this rather the greatest crime of offence against the divine majesty, of which they falsely accused the Christians? And surely it was the greater, the more cruelly they strove to force the Christians to worship false divinities and utterly to deny the true God, the Creator of all things (ch. XXIV).

The Romans nevertheless objected that they had received the empire of the whole world in reward for their piety and religion towards their gods. What then, says Tertullian? Had they obtained it from their native and household gods, such as were Sterculus, Mutunus and Larentina the harlot? Who would believe it? Or from foreign and imported gods, who must have had greater care for protecting Rome than their own fatherland? But Cybele, brought to Rome, was so little concerned to announce to her great priest the archigallus the death of the Emperor Aurelius that she let him with an untroubled mind offer his arms and impure blood in sacrifice for the safety of this emperor, who had already departed this life eight days before. And on what ground did Jupiter bear so patiently that his Crete, where he was born, died and was buried, should by the Roman fasces

be shaken? Could Juno bear with an even mind that Carthage, once so dear to her and preferred to Samos, should be destroyed by the Romans, so that they might extend the bounds of their empire more widely? But if the matter is nevertheless so, why did the Romans pay her less honour than Larentia, a most prostituted she-wolf?

Then, too, many of their gods, such as Saturn and Jupiter, had reigned. From which god of the Romans, then, did they receive their kingdom? From some Sterculus? Who but a fool would dare to say so? There were also many kings who had never worshipped either the gods of the Romans or any others. Lastly, the Roman kingdom grew before its religion. For before Numa Pompilius had established vain superstitions at Rome, and before there were any images of the gods among them, the Latins had several kings. The Romans, therefore, says Tertullian, were not religious before they were great; and so they are not great on this account, because they are religious.

But he presses harder still: How, he says, did these men break into the kingdoms of others? Not by piety, surely, nor by religion, but by wars and victories, and therefore by the common slaughter and ruin of walls and temples, of priests and citizens, of things sacred and profane. Is this then the piety for which the gods gave the empire of the world to the Romans, who were even harming them, and took it from others, who also worshipped their own gods with no less piety? Lastly, before the foundations of Rome were laid, there reigned not only the Babylonians, Medes, Egyptians, Assyrians and Amazons, but also the Jews, who all rejected and despised the gods of the Romans and of the other gentiles. It is not, then, the gods of the Romans or of other nations who dispense kingdoms, but that one almighty God alone, Whose, says our author, is the world which is ruled, and man himself who rules. Not the Christians, therefore, who worshipped Him, but the Romans and the other gentiles stood convicted of the crime of offence against the divine majesty, who not only worshipped false gods but tried to compel these same Christians to their worship by every kind of torture (ch. XXV, XXVI).

Those, however, whose clemency was greater tried to persuade them that, keeping at least in their mind the purpose of worshipping the true God, they should not refuse so obstinately, and at so certain a peril of their lives, to sacrifice to the gods. But this counsel of false mercy was breathed into them by the fraud and cunning of the demons, who, fearing the power of the Christians, wage war against them with implacable hatred. Nor indeed do they think it the least solace of their condemnation if they can at some time shake the constancy of the Christians and do them harm. Therefore the Christians resist them, and are persuaded that they never triumph more gloriously over their malice than when they are condemned for the constant profession of their faith (ch. XXVII).

Moreover, the heathen, through the wicked wiles and arts of the demons, wished to drive the Christians against their will not only to the worship of the gods, which ought to be entirely free and voluntary or none at all, but also to sacrificing to those same gods for the safety of the emperor. Wherefore those who shunned making these sacrifices they accused of a greater

crime than of offence against the divine majesty. And why not, since they feared the living emperor far more than their dead gods, and therefore would sooner perjure themselves by all these than by the emperor's genius? Yet what is more repugnant to right reason than to sacrifice to the gods for the safety of a man, which they can neither give nor preserve? For how, Tertullian presses, will they save others, who cannot protect their own temples and statues without the watches of Caesar's soldiers? And what of the fact that the temples and many of the gods hang on Caesar's nod and will? So the Christians, with far better right, prayed for the emperor's safety not to those false gods but to the true, living and eternal God. For the emperors themselves, if they are of sound mind, wish Him to be propitious to them from Whom they have it that they are men, that they live, that they rule over other men. For their safety, then, their prosperity, longer life and lasting reign, the Christians, with hands spread out, with bare head, without a prompter going before, poured out prayers proceeding from chaste flesh, an innocent soul and the Holy Spirit. But they did not offer, as the heathen did, grains worth a single as, nor the tears of an Arabian tree, nor the blood of an ox spent with disease or age, nor a foul conscience, or victims sacrificed by most depraved priests. Tertullian therefore challenges the governors of the heathen, if it can ever be right, to rack, torture and kill the Christians as they pray to God in this way for the emperor's safety (ch. XXVIII, XXIX, XXX).

With how sincere a mind, and with no feigned flattery, which could have profited them with the heathen who charged them with it, they thus prayed to almighty God, he shows from the fact that in their sacred writings, which they did not hide, it is enjoined on all that they pray to God not only for their enemies but also expressly for the emperors themselves. He adds that they had another reason, or rather necessity, for praying for the emperors and for the state of the Roman Empire: namely, that the end of the world, which was to perish with it, might be delayed. Wherefore they swore willingly by the safety of the emperors, but by no means by their genii, which they were accustomed to put to flight by adjurations (ch. XXXI, XXXII).

Moreover, says our author, the piety and devotion of the Christians towards the emperor was the greater, the more surely they knew that he had been chosen and appointed by the true God. From this God, therefore, they could the more easily obtain the emperor's safety, because by these prayers they confessed him to be less than God. But it was unlawful for them to call the emperor a god, inasmuch as he is a man, and while he triumphs is reminded of his human condition. Indeed, the Emperor Augustus would not be called lord. And rightly so; for there is one Lord of all, and of the emperor too, namely almighty God. Lastly, how could the emperor while still alive be called by the name of God, which the heathen did not give to the Caesars before their apotheosis (ch. XXXIII, XXXIV)?

With what ease and clearness Tertullian had so far proved that the Christians were not guilty of offence against the majesty

human, he shows with the same clearness that they could not for that reason be called public enemies by the heathen, because they did not celebrate the solemnities of the Caesars after their fashion. For who but an impious man will deny that these should be kept with great modesty, reverence, sobriety and chastity? Yet the gentiles celebrated them with the utmost wantonness, drunkenness, shamelessness, seditious running about, outrages, and with laurels and lamps hung on the doorposts of their houses like brothels. Add to this that, while keeping these festal solemnities, they did not spare the emperors themselves, for while they falsely wished them more years of life, they were at the same time thinking of creating another, new emperor.

Nor does our author allow it to be answered him that these were the wishes only of the blind and ungrateful mob, and not of others. For the most bitter enemies of the emperors, the Cassii, the Nigri, the Albini, were not men of the common people, nor were the others, bolder than the Sigerii and Parthenii, who beset Caesar between the two laurels; nor, finally, those who were then daily being discovered to be partners of these criminal factions. And yet these men offered sacrifices for the safety of the emperors, swore by their genius, and celebrated the solemnities as all the others did. The same duties were paid also by the astrologers, soothsayers, augurs and magicians, who by the arts of demons consulted about the future death of the Caesars and longed for it to be near (ch. XXXV).

The faith, piety and devotion owed to the emperors, therefore, does not consist in these duties, which were often seen to be shown by their enemies, but in those morals and works of a good mind which you render to the emperors and to all others without distinction, and for no reward but that expected from God. And these the Christians performed, who are commanded to wish or do evil to no one, to think evil of no one, to hate no one, to love their enemies, and, when they are injured, not to return like for like. This was indeed so diligently observed by them that, whether assailed with stones by the mob, or burned with fire by the fury of others, or dug out of the grave by the frenzies of bacchanals, they never wished to avenge so many and so great injuries done to themselves or to their brethren. Yet they could have taken vengeance on them, either secretly with a few little torches, or openly with forces of soldiers greater than those of the heathen. For, scattered through the whole world, they had filled the cities, towns, camps, and everything except the temples of the gods alone. And even had they been able to muster smaller forces, for what war were those not ready and fit who gladly let themselves be slaughtered for the confession of their religion? Suppose even, if you will, that they had been unarmed. Yet by their mere withdrawal or separation from the gentiles they could most easily have avenged themselves. For so great was their multitude that the heathen, left to themselves alone, would have been stunned at their own solitude, and would have had more enemies than citizens. Lastly, it would certainly have been enough for the Christians' vengeance if they had not driven the demons out of the possessed bodies of the heathen. By so great a protection, then, this one alone, bestowed on the gentiles, they showed that they were enemies, not indeed of the human race, but of error, as we have proved so far (ch. XXXVI, XXXVII).

Thence our author passes to another, no less

impudent calumny, by which the Christians were arraigned on the false charge of unlawful faction. For what, he says, is an unlawful faction, if not one of men who troubled cities and kingdoms through ambition for dignities or glory? But the Christians, led by no ambition, had always renounced the gatherings of the heathen and public affairs, as well as the pleasures of the circus, the theatre, the arena and the other shows. And certainly, when these were rejected, no loss and no wrong came of it to the heathen, just as none came if at any time the Christians pursued other pleasures, which the heathen in their turn rejected (ch. XXXVIII).

Further, so that he might show all still more plainly that nothing was done by the Christians in the turbulent spirit of unlawful faction, but everything solely in the spirit of true religion and piety, Tertullian describes briefly and frankly what was done in their gatherings. In them, he says, they did violence to God, pouring out prayers for the emperor and the authorities, for the state of the world and the quiet of affairs, for a delay to be brought to the final end of the world. Then after this the divine Scriptures were read, with which they fed the faith of those standing by, raised their hope, and fixed their confidence. Afterwards followed exhortations, rebukes, and the divine censure for some grave sin. Over these gatherings, moreover, presided approved elders, who had obtained this honour not by price but by merit. And each one on a monthly day contributed of his own accord, and according to his small means, a modest coin for feeding any of the needy, the old, children, exiles, those consigned to prisons, and others condemned to the mines. In vain, therefore, did the heathen try to defame this mutual charity of the Christians, by which they also called one another brethren, united by the true religion; and they shared their goods with others, things over which the mutual love of the heathen was ever being broken. For those held all things in common except their wives, whom these, keeping everything else to themselves, shared with their friends, as Socrates and Cato did.

Tertullian goes on, and the supper of the Christians, he says, was not, like that of the Megarians or of the others he there censures, prodigal and sumptuous, but is rightly and deservedly called by the Greeks agape and by the Latins dilectio [love]. It begins with prayers, and afterwards all eat and drink with such moderation as to remember that God is to be worshipped through the night. After the water for the hands and the lights, each, as he is able, is called on to sing to God something from the holy Scriptures. Others, conversing with themselves, know that the Lord hears. Finally, as prayer began the banquet, so it ends it, and thence all depart, not in the tumultuous and wanton manner of the heathen, but with the utmost modesty. And from these things so set out Tertullian concludes that unlawful factions deserving condemnation are to be found, not in these gatherings of the Christians, but in those of the gentiles themselves.

Nor indeed with any better right did these cry out that the same Christians were the authors of all public calamities. For before their name was heard, several islands, named by our author, were swallowed up either by the waves of the sea or by earthquakes. It is established also that earlier, and before there were any Roman

gods, the whole world perished in a general flood, and not merely one of the plains, as Plato thought. Moreover, before the Jews had migrated into Egypt, and so long before Christ had founded His religion, avenging fire had consumed Sodom and Gomorrah, Vulsinii and Pompeii. Nor is it unknown to anyone that the Romans were routed in the battle of Cannae, and the Capitol taken by the Senones, when the Romans worshipped their gods and no Christians worshipped the true God. Lastly, the same destruction and ruin of cities and temples took place earlier too. But these things could not be ascribed to the made-up gods whose temples they were, but to the impiety of the men who worshipped them, and who, either ignorant or scornful of the true God, the fount of all good things, had defiled themselves with every kind of vice and crime. Add to this that from the time when the religion of Christ arose, public calamities of this kind were beyond doubt lighter. For the innocence of His followers tempered the iniquity of the age. And indeed, when the world was pressed by some calamity, then the heathen wrongly wearied their false gods with their customary rites, while the Christians by continence, fasts and other acts of penance won over the mercy of the true God. Not these worshippers of the true God, therefore, but the heathen who spurned Him were the cause of the public calamities (ch. XXXIX, XL).

Tertullian further presses that the gods of these men are most unjust if, on account of the crimes of the Christians, they afflict and wear them down with such great evils. Nor does he allow this weapon to be turned back against the Christians, whom God suffered to be oppressed by the same calamities as the gentiles. For, as He Himself declared, He will not separate the just from the unjust save in the last judgement after the end of the world. Wherefore He willed all things in this course of human life to be common to all, adversities indeed for warning to the good and for chastisement to the wicked. Besides, the Christians were harmed by no adversities, for nothing was more desirable to them than to depart from this world. And by whatever affliction they were shaken, they refreshed their hope and confidence by the preaching of the divine Scriptures. But the heathen, on the contrary, having no comfort in adversity from their gods, either in this life or in the life to come, certainly worshipped gods unjust and ungrateful (ch. XLI).

What, moreover, is more absurd than another complaint of the heathen about the Christians, in which they grumbled that they were unfruitful and useless to the State? For they were not Brahmins or forest-dwellers, but had all kinds of dealings everywhere with these same heathen, and, excepting only their superstitious ceremonies, so mingled their crafts and labours with them as to live with them and from them. But, said the gentiles, the revenues of our temples are diminished. To whom, says Tertullian? To your begging men and gods? Do not the Christians always bring help to them when they ask, and does not their mercy give more street by street than the gentiles give temple by temple? And the other taxes these same Christians pay with as much good faith as the heathen show dishonesty in defrauding them (ch. XLII).

But who, our author goes on, complained of the uselessness of the Christians? Was it not the pimps,

procurers, bath-attendants, assassins, poisoners, magicians, and other men of the same stamp? But to be unfruitful to them is fruit. Besides, if the Christians brought any harm to the State, they compensated for it amply and more by casting demons out of the bodies of the heathen themselves. But the gentiles killed the Christians with as much cruelty, surely, as loss to the State, though their innocence ought to have been known to all, if only from this, that while the prisons were full of criminals, no Christian was found there except solely on account of his name (ch. XLIII, XLIV).

Nor is the integrity of their life and morals proved from this alone, but also from their divine laws, which in holiness and authority far surpass all human ones. For these [human laws] forbid murder, those anger; these adultery, those concupiscence; these evil-doing, those evil-speaking; those enjoin that injury be avenged, these forbid the returning of injury for injury. Add to this that everything that is approved in the human laws of the gentiles has been drawn from the divine statutes of the Christians. Further, that the authority of the latter is greater than that of the former is plainly concluded from this, that human law can easily be broken, whether because of the hiding-places of the guilty and the necessity of sinning, or because of the shortness of the punishment, which cannot be inflicted beyond death. But nothing at all can be hidden from God, Who exacts eternal punishments from any who are guilty of crimes. What wonder, then, if, as has already been shown, the innocence of the Christians who fear Him was so great, and the perversity of the gentiles who fear a proconsul (ch. XLV, XLVI)?

But our philosophers, said these men, professed the same innocence, justice, patience, sobriety and chastity as the Christians. If that is so, Tertullian answers, why are many philosophers who scorned the superstitions of the gentiles praised and rewarded with statues and stipends, while the Christians for that very reason are tortured and killed? Was Socrates, who made use of the services of a demon always attending him, and sacrificed to Aesculapius, better than the Christians, who put demons to flight and drive them out? Is the knowledge of Thales, who when asked about God gave no answer, or of Plato, who said that God is hard to find and hard to declare, greater or better than that of any Christian workman, who has found God and at once explains Who He is? Is the chastity of the Christians, who keep continence or desire no woman but their wife, less or worse than that of Plato, the corrupter of youths, or of Diogenes, desperately in love with Phryne the harlot, or of Speusippus dying in adultery, or of Democritus blinding himself so as not to see women with corrupted eyes! And what was the modesty either of Diogenes, trampling the pride of Plato with another pride, or of Pythagoras and Zeno, aspiring to tyranny? What the equity of Lycurgus, who put himself to death because his laws were amended? Why say more? Did not Aristotle drive Hermias from his place as shamefully as he flattered Alexander? Was not Plato sold for his belly's sake, Aristippus given to luxury,

Hippias killed in the ambush he had laid for another, as they are related to have been? But the Christian, wholly a stranger to all these things, has never attempted anything like them. For if anyone has departed from the rule of discipline, he has thereby ceased to be a Christian.

In vain, therefore, did the heathen boast that their philosophers were equal in knowledge to the Christians. For these very philosophers, like the poets and sophists, had indeed drawn many tenets from the sacred springs of our divine Scripture; but, despising its simplicity and its language, then obscure, they corrupted them with their own perverse opinions. From this sacred Scripture, indeed, they recognized that there is only one God; but the Platonists taught that He is incorporeal, the Stoics corporeal, Epicurus that He arose from atoms, Pythagoras from numbers, Heraclitus from fire. In like manner Plato asserted His divine providence, which Epicurus denied. Some held Him to be outside the world, others placed in it. For the same reason, surely, their opinions on the origin and duration of the world and on the nature of the human soul were various. Nor is it to be objected that the recent doctrine of Christ was adulterated by some Christians too. For these, says Tertullian, are heretics, and against their errors we enter our prescription by the most certain rule of truth, which has been handed down to us from the disciples of that same Christ.

Moreover, by the malignant cunning of the demons and at their perverse prompting, the gentile philosophers and poets devised certain fables, so that, by a false likeness to the truth handed down in the sacred Scriptures, other men might give their faith to them rather than to the Christians, whom they hated. Thus they invented a tribunal in the underworld, the river Pyriphlegethon and the Elysian fields, because they had received from ours that there would be a last judgement of all men, eternal punishments of the wicked, and everlasting happiness of the godly in paradise. But who does not know that our writings, as being older, are to be believed rather than other, more recent ones, just as the original rather than the copy (ch. XLVII)?

And certainly the entire restoration of our bodies is far truer than the Pythagorean transmigration of souls. For no one will ever deny that the human body can be remade by Him from Whom the soul is wrongly imagined to have the power of passing from one body into another. But in truth that migration of souls is plainly fictitious, since no one has ever recognized himself as re-formed into a beast. Moreover, by this passage of the soul from one body into another, one part of the man remains alive, the other for ever dead. But it is altogether necessary that the whole man return to his former life, so that he may receive from God the last judgement on the good or evil things done by him in this life. And what of the fact that the soul can suffer nothing without the body, though it did not merit anything without it? Nor should you say that this can never be done by anyone. For He Who created you out of nothing when you were not, as He did the whole world, can surely remake your very self, after you have ceased to be, whole as you were. Lastly, light, darkness, stars, the fruits of the earth, seeds and very many other things come back to life; how much more will return to life

man, who, if indeed he knows himself according to the Pythian oracle, is lord of all things that die and rise again? Wherever, then, or in whatever way he has been reduced to nothing, he will be recalled to life by the power of Him Whose is the nothing, as also the whole.

Must one then, someone will argue, always be dying and rising again? Yes indeed, says Tertullian, had it pleased God. But He Who created all things out of diverse and contrary things willed, surely, that dead men be raised to their former life once, at that middle point of time which at the end of the world lies between this temporal age and the eternity that is to come afterwards.

Then the worshippers of God will obtain the reward of eternal happiness, just as the profane and wicked will be tormented in everlasting fire. Of this fire, moreover, wholly different from our earthly one, the thunderbolts and the ever-burning mountains furnish us examples. And although the philosophers acknowledged these things, and others did not reject them, they yet derided this teaching of the Christians. Suppose, however, if it please God, that it is false. Yet surely the very hope of eternal punishment or reward is useful and necessary to all. And whatever it may be, that was still no reason to rage against the Christians with swords, beasts, crosses and fires, while the people exulted. Quite foolishly, therefore, did the heathen exult and glory in the punishments of those who, choosing rather to be condemned than to fall away from God, were celebrating an immortal triumph (ch. XLVIII, XLIX).

But again and more sharply the gentiles cried out that the Christians had no cause for complaint, if they suffered of their own accord. To these our author replies that they suffer in the manner of soldiers, who, though they pray to be spared the perils of war, yet fight with all their strength and at last, rejoicing, win booty, victory and glory. For the victory of the Christians has the glory of pleasing God and the booty of eternal life. And in this glorious contest the very instruments by which they are tortured are for them the dress of victory, the palm-embroidered robe and the triumphal chariot. Nor, then, could they be called desperate or abandoned by the heathen, who not only extolled with the highest praises the fortitude and constancy of Mucius, Empedocles, Dido, Regulus, Anaxarchus, the Attic harlot, Zeno of Elea, the Spartans and others under torture and the cruellest death, but even honoured them with statues, images and inscriptions, for a kind of recall from death to life and an eternity of glory. So far, then, is the Christian, who expects true eternity from God, for Whom he suffers, from being mad, that he rather proves thereby his own innocence and the unjust cruelty of the heathen. Did not these very men, too, by condemning a Christian woman to the pimp rather than to the lion, openly confess that a stain on chastity was reckoned by her and by other Christians more dreadful than every kind of torment and than death itself? Nor did their cruelty profit the gentiles a whit from it, since the blood of the martyrs was the seed of Christians, by which their number grew ever in wondrous fashion. For by their death they made far more disciples than Cicero, Seneca, Diogenes,

Pyrrho and Callinicus, who exhorted their followers to the endurance of pain and to death. For the gentiles first admired the unconquered constancy of the Christians. Then after this they recognized the cause of so great a constancy and the truth of the Christian religion. And having recognized it, they embraced it without any delay and were fired with a wondrous ardour for martyrdom, by which not only are all sins remitted, but the whole grace of God is also bought back. They therefore gave thanks for the sentences of the heathen, by which, condemned, they were absolved by God (ch. L).

ARTICLE II.

It is shown that Tertullian is the author of this book, and who he was, what his native country, who his parents, in whose false religions he was first instructed.

It is indeed established, and has been the common opinion of all, with no one thus far dissenting, that Tertullian is the true and genuine author of this book, the Apologeticum. If, however, anyone wishes sure proofs of this opinion to be brought before him, it is not at all hard to satisfy him abundantly. For besides a good many manuscript codices of earlier and later date in which this very book is inscribed with Tertullian's name, Eusebius, whose good faith in this matter ought to be suspect to no one, after transcribing certain words of this book, added in the same place: "These things Tertullian, a man who had mastered the laws of the Romans and was distinguished in other respects, and among the most illustrious at Rome, [says] in the apology for the Christians written by him in the language of the Romans, and translated also into the Greek tongue" (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History II, 2, p. 41). Which Rufinus rendered into Latin thus: "These things Tertullian, a man most skilled in both the laws and the institutions of the Romans, and very famous among our writers, in his Apologeticum, which he writes against the gentiles on behalf of our faith" (Rufinus, Book II, ch. 2). And not badly, to be sure, had he not omitted some words, to be rendered into Latin thus: "afterwards translated into the Greek language." Eusebius, therefore, and Rufinus himself too, were persuaded that this book was composed by Tertullian. The same Eusebius, naming Tertullian, transcribed more from this same book (Eusebius, Book III, ch. 23, p. 91), and in one place added: "The account has been taken by us from the Roman apology of Tertullian which we mentioned above, of which the translation runs in this manner." "Further, this narrative has been taken by us from Tertullian's Apologeticum, written in Latin, which we mentioned above" (ibid., ch. 35, p. 105). For so Valesius made the Greek words about Tertullian into Latin. Lastly, in yet another book, again quoting the words of our Tertullian, he set this before them (the same, Book V, ch. 5, p. 169): "A trustworthy witness of these things would be Tertullian, who addressed to the Roman senate an apology for the faith, which we also mentioned before, and who confirms the account with a greater and clearer proof." "But Tertullian too," in Valesius's rendering, "is a fit witness of the same matter in the Apologeticum, which he wrote in the Latin tongue to the senate of the city of Rome in defence of our faith, of which we also made mention above, where he confirms this account with a stronger and clearer argument."

To this, moreover, Jerome in his letter to Magnus (Jerome, Letter LXXXIII, to Magnus, p. 656): "What," he says, "is more learned than Tertullian, what more acute? His Apologeticus and his books against the nations contain the whole learning of the age." There is no need to heap up more on a matter so certain and evident, unless you would have light brought to the very sun at noon.

But before we come to examine this book in our usual manner, it is worth the trouble to inquire who its author himself was. First, then, four names of his are reported, with no one yet objecting: Quintus, Septimius, Florens, Tertullianus. Yet this crowd of so many names ought to trouble no one. For many were called by as many names, so that they might be distinguished from other men of their clan and family. The first was the praenomen, by which the one on whom it was imposed could be distinguished from all his brothers. For praenomina, as Varro has advised us, "were instituted for individual use, so that the clan names might be distinguished, as from number Prima, Secunda, Tertia, Quarta, and among men, as Quintus, Sextus, Decimus; so from other things, when there were two Terentii or more, for the sake of distinguishing them, so that they might have something individual, they marked them: so that one who was said to have been born in the morning (mane) was Manius, one born at daylight (luce) Lucius, one born after his father's death, Posthumus" (Varro, On the Latin Language, Book II, p. 126).

The nomen, then, was the clan name, that is, taken from the clan from which a man drew his origin. The cognomen, further, which many do not distinguish from the agnomen, was given so that, when there were several of the same name in one family, each might be told apart by the one from whom he had been born. Some, however, think that the agnomen was so called because it was added to the three already mentioned, either on account of some illustrious deed, or some virtue, or some vice of mind, or a blemish of the body, or some other like cause. But on these matters Sigonius, Onuphrius Panvinius and others say more (Sigonius, On Roman Names, chapter 5; Onuphrius, On Roman Names, §§ 13 and 16).

Tertullian's praenomen, therefore, was Quintus, doubtless because he was born fifth in order among his brothers. His nomen was Septimius, as he himself indicates in these words, with which he thus concludes the book On the Veiling of Virgins: "To those who read these things in good peace, preferring truth to custom, may peace and grace from our Lord Jesus overflow, together with Septimius Tertullian, whose little work this is" (Tertullian, On the Veiling of Virgins, chapter 17). And he had that name of Septimius because he sprang from the Septimian clan. But since there were many men of this family, the cognomen Florens Tertullianus was added to him, unless it be proved that the agnomen, which, as we have noted, was added to him for some particular cause, is to be distinguished from the cognomen.

However, although he had four names, he is nevertheless called by the name of Tertullian alone by Eusebius, as we have already seen, and by Jerome and others, as we shall observe below more than once. And by that name alone, too, his book the Apologeticus is entitled in our manuscript codices.

And in what province and city he was born, we are taught by

Jerome, in these words: "Tertullian ... of the province of Africa, of the city of Carthage" (Jerome, Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 53, p. 115). For this reason in the Eusebian chronicle he is called "Tertullian the African" (Chronicle of Eusebius, at the year of Christ 208), and by Optatus "Tertullian of Carthage" (Optatus, Book I, On the Donatist Schism, p. 8). But what need is there of more witnesses, when Tertullian himself indicates his homeland in these words, which we read in that very Apologeticus under discussion? "Infants were sacrificed to Saturn in Africa openly up to the proconsulship of Tiberius ... as the soldiery of our homeland bears witness, which performed that very service for that proconsul" (Tertullian, Apologeticus, chapter IX). And besides, he testifies in another book, which he addressed to the Carthaginians, that he was born at Carthage. For there he reproaches them with the fault of forgetfulness on this ground, that although they had once used the battering-ram in their wars: "Yet," he says, "when the times of their homeland were at their last, and the Roman ram now dared against walls once its own, the Carthaginians were at once astounded, as at a new and foreign device" (the same, On the Pallium, chapter I). Can it not be gathered from this, then, that by these words he designates his own homeland no less clearly than that of those whom he addresses?

At Carthage, then, he was without doubt born, his father being, as Jerome says, "a proconsular centurion"; or, as we read in the Chronicle of Eusebius, he "was the son of a proconsular centurion." Yet the proconsul's centurions and soldiers were not held in great honour, inasmuch as, being his attendants, they were accustomed to perform menial services (Jerome, Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 53, p. 115; Chronicle of Eusebius, at the year of Christ 208).

Born of this his father, and of his other heathen parents now unknown, Tertullian sucked in their abominable superstitions with his milk, and afterwards openly professed them. For where he argues about the true doctrines of the Christians, he addresses those same heathens thus: "These things we too once laughed at; we were of yours: Christians are made, not born" (Tertullian, Apologeticus, chapter XVIII). And his blindness, from which he then suffered, and his ignorance of the true God, he laments in another book in these words: "Repentance, this kind of men, which we ourselves also formerly were, blind, without the Lord's light, knew only so far as nature goes to be a certain passion of the mind, which comes from displeasure at a former opinion" (beginning of the book On Repentance, chapter I).

At that time, then, as learned men have observed, deprived of the light of the true God and of the Christian religion, he took delight in profane shows. For of these he said somewhere: "I would rather not fill up the account than remember it" (On the Shows, chapter XIX). Indeed, not without grief of mind he confesses that he had fallen into the shameful vices of the flesh: "For I know," he said, "that I neither committed adulteries in another flesh, nor then" (read "now") "strive towards continence in another flesh" (On the Resurrection of the Flesh, chapter LIX). No less openly does he declare that he repented of his other sins: "You, a sinner like me, nay, less than I; for I acknowledge my pre-eminence in offences" (On Repentance, chapter IV). And again afterwards: "Since I am a sinner of every mark, and for nothing

born for no other thing than repentance, I cannot easily be silent on that matter" (On Repentance, chapter XII). But it will doubtless seem strange to no one if a heathen man, who worshipped gods that were adulterers and worse than adulterers, chose to follow their examples, as Chaerea does in Terence (The Eunuch, Act III, scene 5, line 43). But as great a pleasure as these crimes once were to Tertullian the heathen, so great a horror were they to him afterwards when he professed the Christian religion, as is plain from his books, and especially from this Apologeticus.

ARTICLE III.

By what reasons Tertullian was led to the Christian religion, and when he professed it.

If anyone asks by what reasons Tertullian was impelled to embrace the faith of Christ, he will hear from George of Amiens, the Capuchin, that they were these three: the innocence of the Christians, the excellence of sacred Scripture, and the wonderful power of those same Christians over the demons (George, Vindication of Tertullian, Part II, questions 1 and 2). But these very weights of reason, however strong, he pulls down with the same hand with which he had built them up. For he went straight on to add that heathens and Jews, such as Ulpian and Suetonius, Josephus and Philo, and other most learned men, having weighed these reasons with a mind no less attentive than Tertullian's, could not be brought to the profession of the Christian religion. Therefore he thinks that Tertullian, still wavering and fluctuating, gave in his name to the Christian religion impelled by some singular and divine vision. But whence, I ask, did George learn that those proofs of the Christian religion were weighed and pondered by the Gentiles and Jews he has named with as much attention of mind, fairness and sincerity as by Tertullian? Whence, too, did he gather that Tertullian was gifted with that singular vision, without which he could never have been brought to the Christian religion by other reasons, however very strong? Is a Christian and religious man, then, thus permitted by a mere and most flimsy conjecture to weaken the force and strength of those arguments by which the truth of the Christian religion, as we shall show below, is most invincibly demonstrated? But that learned man had doubtless not paid enough attention to those words of Tertullian in the Apologeticus on the endurance of the martyrs: "Who is not stirred by the contemplation of it to inquire what there is within the matter? Who, when he has inquired, does not draw near? When he has drawn near, he longs to die" (Tertullian, Apologeticus, chapter L). And again he ends another book thus: "Everyone who beholds such great endurance, as though struck by some scruple, is both fired to inquire what is the cause, and, when he has learned the truth, himself too follows at once" (To Scapula, last chapter). But if any Gentile at all, neither wholly obstinate nor an unfair judge of things, having thus recognized the truth of the Christian religion, embraced it, how much more Tertullian, who far surpassed others in keenness and fairness of mind?

And what of the fact that he, most of all, the Christians' power over

the demons he was an eyewitness, or at least so persuaded of it that he challenges the heathens to make trial of it before all, and is willing that the blood of these Christians be shed unless the demons, adjured by them, confess that they are not gods? "But what," he says, "is plainer than this work, what more trustworthy than this proof? The simplicity of truth is set in the midst" (the same, Apologeticus, chapter XXIII). He had therefore proved the force of this reason and experience, which he judged could be resisted by no one except one wholly blinded by false prejudices.

No less clearly did he perceive the authority of sacred Scripture, of which he says: "Whoever approaches it will find God; whoever also strives to understand it will be compelled also to believe" (ibid., chapter XVIII). Did not he too, then, find God there, and recognize that the gods of the Gentiles are false, and that the Christian religion is true? For this truth shone with such great lights that it was at once received by all who were not blinded by wilful obstinacy. But I would have you hear him relating these things: "It is a testimony of ignorance, which condemns iniquity even while it excuses it, when all who formerly hated, because they did not know the nature of what they hated, as soon as they cease to be ignorant, cease also to hate. From these Christians are made, assuredly from knowledge, and they begin to hate what they had been, and to profess what they had hated" (ibid., chapter I). But surely, if so many Gentiles, as Tertullian himself admits, were made Christians by all these reasons, or by each of them, how much more he, to whom the falsity of the heathens' religion and the truth of the Christian were so well known. To reject the one, then, and embrace the other, he had no need of that divine vision which George invented.

When, however, he gave his name to the Christian religion, you could not so easily say. For Pamelius was of the opinion that the book On the Pallium was brought out into public light by him in the year of Christ 195, and as soon as he had been initiated into the Christian religion. But this writer's opinion in assigning the date of this book is false; the more expert now judge that it was written long afterwards, namely after his defection from the Catholic Church, and about the year 211.

The beginning of the profession he took up must therefore be sought in another way. Now we learn from Jerome that a treatise on the troubles of marriage was published by him "when he was still a young man" (Jerome, Against Jovinian, Book I, p. 157). And although he said that he had played with this subject at a youthful age, he nevertheless urges the virgin Eustochium to read this book, as also others of Cyprian, Damasus and Ambrose: "And now," he says, "I give the same advice, that if you wish to know by how many troubles a free virgin, by how many a bound wife is held, you should read Tertullian To a Philosophic Friend" (the same, Letter XVIII, to Eustochium, p. 37). But it may not unreasonably be called into doubt whether this book, which we have long since lost, was composed by Tertullian as a heathen or as a Christian. "But to whom," someone will say, "will it seem likely that Jerome wished to be the author and persuader to a Christian virgin that this, like those of Cyprian, Damasus and

Ambrose, he should turn over, if he had seen anything in it against the established laws of the Christian religion? And how could Tertullian have composed a book of this kind unless he had been amply instructed in those same laws? Yet no one, on his own testimony, came to know the Christian religion and its laws without wishing at once to profess it. Besides, Jerome has further recorded this of him: "He remained a presbyter of the Church up to middle age" (the same, Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 53, p. 115), that is, of the Catholic Church, and therefore before he had been infected with the heresy of Montanus. Then indeed he added in the same place: "He is said to have lived to a decrepit age," that is, to the eightieth year, or, if you will, the ninetieth. He remained an orthodox presbyter, therefore, to about the fortieth year of his age. Yet he does not seem to have been raised to this sacred order either then for the first time or immediately after making profession of the Christian religion. Therefore he seems to have become a Christian from a heathen at a youthful age. But of how much weight there is in this whole argument, let each expert pronounce.

ARTICLE IV.

On Tertullian's marriage, and his supreme love of continence; on his priesthood; whether, having been made a presbyter, he lived with his wife after the manner of husbands, and did not distinguish those initiated into sacred orders from the laity; what was his manner of life, and how harsh his morals; how and when he fell into the heresy of the Montanists, and in what year of his age and of Christ he ended a rather long life.

Tertullian certainly had a wife, and she a Christian, as is most evidently shown by the two books which he wrote to her. But writers of our age dispute whether he, while still a Gentile, or as a Christian, married her as a Gentile or as a Christian. For it was indeed the custom among Christians at that time, as Tertullian himself testifies, to enter into marriages with heathen women; and no trace survives in his writings or those of others by which it could be discovered whether he, having already married a wife, hastened to the camp of Christ. But if from what we said a little before it may be inferred that he swore to the laws of Christ while still a young man, may it not also be concluded from this that he married his wife afterwards? For when he became a Christian he always burned with too great a zeal for observing the Christian law for him, a Christian, to take any other in marriage than a Christian. And indeed in the books To His Wife cited above he tries to persuade her that, if he should depart this life first, she should either remain in the state of widowhood or marry a Christian man, if she wished to be bound by a second marriage. Is it not, then, altogether likely that he obeyed the laws which he prescribed to his wife? But we leave these conjectures to the judgement of others.

Further, Tertullian was without doubt living with his wife in the usual manner of spouses when he addressed to her the books just cited. For he thus exhorts her, should he die first, to keep continence in widowhood: "And what we could not do in marriage," he says, "let us pursue in widowhood. The opportunity is to be embraced which takes away

what necessity imposed" (Tertullian, To His Wife, Book I, chapter VII). For to what end did he address these words to her, if he and his wife had always restrained themselves from the customary use of marriage? Yet there is no one who does not understand from this with how great a zeal for continence and chastity Tertullian was always inflamed.

It ought, however, to seem less strange to all that he exhorts his wife to continence in these books, if the opinion of certain persons, heterodox as well as Catholic, about the time at which they were written is true. For they suspect that they were published by him when his own age was already advancing while his wife's was still flourishing and vigorous. Therefore they think that in them were drawn up, as it were, the tablets of his will. But they bring forward no other proof of their opinion than these words of Tertullian, which are read thus at the beginning of the first book: "For we are busy about worldly things, and wish provision to be made for each of us. If we make arrangements for such things, why ought we not rather to provide for our posterity concerning divine and heavenly things, and in a manner bequeath beforehand as a legacy an admonition and demonstration of those things which are allotted from the immortal goods and from the inheritance of the heavens" (ibid., chapter I)? But because in the codex of Agobard, as Rigaltius informs us, talibus is read twice, he wished it corrected, and read: "for such we draw up tablets"; and from this he gathers that these books were composed by Tertullian, after the manner of a will, when he was already far advanced in age (Rigaltius, Note 1 on this book).

But even if the matter were so, have wills never been made and sealed by men except when age was already advancing? Has no prudent man, and especially no Christian, even while his age was still flourishing, ever thought, being always uncertain of death, about drawing up his will? Certainly Tertullian ought with all the better right to have thought of making one at any age of his, because, with the heathens then raging against the Christians, he could not be unaware that his life was in danger daily. Could not he, too, always burning, as we have said, with so great and so singular a love of continence and chastity, have exhorted his wife at any time of his life to preserve it should she ever be a widow? Besides, if she was still vigorous, as they say, when Tertullian was engaged in publishing these books, can it be concluded from a meaning feigned for certain of his words that he was an old man or decrepit? Nor are they to be listened to who object that many things occur in these books by which Tertullian reveals that his mind was already inclined towards the Montanists. Is it, forsooth, because he exhorts his wife to continence? But did not the Apostle Paul himself also exhort Christians to the same virtue? It is enough for us that they grant that Tertullian, when he was writing these books to his wife, had not yet fallen into the error of the Montanists. For up to middle age, as Jerome, cited by us, testifies, he was a presbyter of the Catholic Church. Therefore he had composed those books long before his old age.

But just as his marriage is certain, so it seems to be quite beyond doubt that he was consecrated to the sacred order of the presbyterate. For Jerome,

and the author of the book on the heresy of the Predestinarians, without hesitation call him a presbyter of the Church (Jerome, Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 53, p. 115; Predestinarians, chapter 26, p. 28). For this reason Allix subscribed the more willingly to the opinion of Rigaltius already mentioned, about the books written to his wife by Tertullian when already worn with age, because he thought it could be inferred from it that this same Tertullian, after he was made a presbyter, lived with his wife in the usual marital manner. But this view rests, as we have noted, on an altogether ruinous foundation, and on the false prejudices of the Calvinist heresy. And certainly, the greater the zeal for continence with which Tertullian burned, as we have often said, the less probable it is that, after he was enrolled in the order of the presbyterate, he did not walk in the footsteps of the other priests of the Latin Church, who kept themselves from the accustomed intercourse with their wives. For you would find very few, at most two or three, who acted otherwise. And no one will ever show by any reasoning that Tertullian set before himself the examples of these rather than of those for imitation.

But some other person, perhaps, an assailant of sacred orders, will demand of us why Tertullian, if he was a presbyter, at one time counted himself among the number of the laity. For in the book On Prayer he says: "We, men of no rank at all, above all others" (Tertullian, On Prayer, chapter XIV). But even if this were the sense of these words, as they suppose, nothing can be concluded from them against Tertullian's priesthood. For it is not certain whether, when he wrote this, he was not then still in the flock of the laity.

But some will doubtless object to us that he took away every distinction between laity and clergy, where he speaks of both in this manner: "Whence come bishops and clergy? Is it not from all? ... But when we are exalted against the clergy, then we are all one, then He has made us all priests to God and the Father; when we are challenged to an equality of priestly discipline, we lay down our fillets, and are unequal." So indeed he speaks in the book On Monogamy (the same, On Monogamy, chapter XII). In a like manner, too, in another, On the Exhortation to Chastity: "The authority of the Church," he says, "has established the difference between the order and the people, and the honour sanctified through the bench of the order; so that where there is no bench of the ecclesiastical order, you both offer and baptize, and are a priest to yourself alone" (the same, On the Exhortation to Chastity, chapter VII).

But it is unknown to no one that while he was writing this he had already drunk in with his mind the errors of the Montanists, following which he added in the same place: "But where there are three, there is a Church, even though they be laymen" (ibid.). Therefore, after the manner of those who err, either he was not consistent with himself, or he took the name of priest not in its proper and stricter, but in an improper and broader sense, as it is taken more than once by John in these words, to which he seems to allude: "He has made us a kingdom and priests to God and His Father" (Rev. 1:6). And again afterwards: "Thou hast made us a kingdom and priests to our God" (Rev. 5:10). Indeed this same Tertullian himself, although then a follower of Montanus, speaks thus in another book: "There is today a sister

among us who has been allotted gifts of revelations, which she undergoes in the Church amid the Lord's solemn rites through ecstasy in the Spirit ... When the rites are over and the people dismissed, by her usual custom she reports to us what she has seen" (Tertullian, On the Soul, chapter IX). Here certainly he separates himself from the people, that is, from the whole flock of the laity.

He led a private and solitary life, and testifies that, having cast off the common dress of all and taken up the philosophers' pallium, he withdrew himself from the tumult of public affairs. For these are his words, put in the name of that same pallium of his: "I owe nothing to the forum, nothing to the Campus, nothing to the senate-house; I keep watch for no office, I seize on no rostra, I attend on no praetor's court; I do not sniff the gutters, I do not adore the bar, I do not pound the benches, I do not confound the laws, I do not bark out causes, I do not judge, I do not soldier; I have withdrawn from the people; my one business is with myself; I take care of nothing except not to take care" (the same, On the Pallium, chapter V).

In his morals he was as chaste and holy as he was assuredly hard and harsh. Of the stricter discipline he was not only a follower, but also its fiercest defender and patron, even beyond the fixed bounds of fairness. Nor indeed does it seem at all unlikely that, deceived by the false show of severity which the Montanists displayed, he threw himself headlong into their heresy. But, inclined that way by the inborn hardness of his mind, he was drawn on by the false visions and predictions of certain women steeped in the poison of that heresy. "At length," says Jerome, "through the envy and insults of the clergy of the Roman Church, having slipped into the doctrine of Montanus, he makes mention of the new prophecy in many books, and especially against the Church" (Jerome, Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter LIII, p. 115).

The first part of his life, then, which was without doubt the longer, he spent in the Catholic Church; the other, by a truly pitiable and never sufficiently lamented fall, among the Montanist heretics. For, as the same Jerome continues: "He remained a presbyter of the Church up to middle age" (ibid.). And that most learned writer adds in the same place that he flourished chiefly under the emperor Severus and Antoninus Caracalla, and, as is reported, reached an extremely old age. But if we trust the more expert writers of our own time, he had been born about the year of Christ 160, and died about the year 245. Further, no one will deny that the course of his life was longer than its middle part; by spending the last part of it in championing the absurd errors of heretics, he harmed both himself and very many others. Therefore Jerome, whom we have already cited, rightly says: "In Tertullian we praise the genius, we condemn the heresy" (the same, Apology against Rufinus, Book III, p. 463). But of his genius we must treat a little more fully.

ARTICLE V.

On Tertullian's genius and manifold learning; whether he was a jurisconsult, and the same as Tertyllianus; on his style and manner of writing, and the celebrity of his name.

With a severe kind of morals and of life Tertullian followed

the inborn impulses of his genius, which was indeed most acute and keen, but no less harsh and vehement. For this reason he is called by Jerome "a man of keen and vehement genius" (Jerome, Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 53, p. 115). But even had he kept silent about it, that hard and impatient genius flashes out everywhere throughout his works. What wonder, then, if he was very often unable to keep himself within the lawful bounds of patience, gentleness and moderation? And he himself certainly confessed openly, with a mind as sincere as it was penitent, that he was not at all endowed with the virtue of patience. For he begins his book on that same patience with these words: "I confess to the Lord God that I have dared rashly enough, if not even shamelessly, to compose on patience, for the practice of which I am not at all fit, being a man of no good; since it behoves those who have undertaken the demonstration and commendation of any thing to be first found in the practice of that thing, and to direct the constancy of their admonishing by the authority of their own conduct, lest their words blush at their deeds falling short" (Tertullian, On Patience, chapter I).

But if he was not always able to soften the keener impulses of his mind by the virtue of patience, he was certainly strong in a genius most apt for acquiring easily any knowledge whatever. How greatly he abounded in every kind of learning, gather from these words of Vincent of Lérins: "As Origen among the Greeks, so this man among the Latins is to be judged easily the first of all our writers. For who was more learned than this man? Who more practised in things divine and human? For with a certain wonderful capacity of mind he embraced all philosophy, and all the sects of the philosophers, the founders and champions of the sects, and all their teachings, all the variety of histories and studies. And did he not excel in a genius so weighty and vehement that there was scarcely anything he set himself to storm which he did not either break into by keenness or crush by weight? Further, who could recount the praises of his speech? It is knit together with such an indefinable necessity of reasons that those whom it could not persuade it drives to assent. Almost as many words as he has, so many are his sentences; as many senses, so many victories. This the Marcions know, the Apelleses, the Praxeases, the Hermogeneses, the Jews, the Gentiles, the Gnostics and the rest, whose blasphemies he overthrew with the many and great masses of his volumes, as with so many thunderbolts" (Vincent of Lérins, Commonitorium, I). With such great praises he heaps up that doubtless all-embracing learning of Tertullian, with which above all he sprinkled throughout his books written in defence of the Christian religion and of orthodox doctrines. For this reason, besides Eusebius and Rufinus, already cited by us, and many others, he is called by Jerome "a most learned man" (Jerome, Against Vigilantius, p. 285, and Letter LXXXIII, to Magnus, p. 656), than whom indeed nothing is more learned and more acute. And he affirms without hesitation that this shines out in that very Apologeticus of his, about which we are now disputing, and in his other books against the nations. It would therefore be labour altogether useless to prove this, easy as it is, by the testimonies of illustrious writers of every age, since by no one

is it unknown, and the author's own writings make it most manifest to all.

Yet we cannot pass over a certain singular kind of learning which Eusebius praised in Tertullian in these words: "Tertullian, who had an exact knowledge of the laws of the Romans, a man distinguished in other respects and among the most illustrious at Rome" (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book II, chapter 2, p. 41), that is, in Valesius's rendering: "Tertullian, most skilled in the Roman laws, and most celebrated among the Latin writers." Long before Valesius, Rufinus had gone before him in almost the same manner: "Tertullian," he says, "a man most skilled both in the laws and in the institutions of the Romans, and very famous among our writers" (Rufinus, Ecclesiastical History, Book II, chapter 2). But they are far from the truth who hold that it can be concluded from this that our Tertullian was a jurisconsult by profession, and that he is the very Tertyllianus who in fact taught and interpreted the laws publicly. For each is sufficiently distinguished by his own names. And then, who does not know that a man can be abundantly steeped in the rights and laws of the Romans, even though he has never professed their science in the public schools? It is not, then, Tertullian's profession that Eusebius praises there, but his perfect learning and skill in the Roman laws.

His style was not equal to so great a learning. And if you want fair and fit judges on this matter, here at hand for you is the judgement of Lactantius, who is called the Christian Cicero: "Septimius Tertullian was skilled in every kind of letters, but in expression not very fluent, rather unpolished, and very obscure" (Lactantius, Divine Institutes, Book V, chapter 1, p. 459). Nor should you say that Lactantius there speaks of Tertullian's Apologeticus and the other books written against the heathens rather than of his other works. For Jerome's judgement of all his treatises is the same, which he pronounced in these fewer words: "Tertullian is dense with thoughts, but difficult in expression" (Jerome, Letter XLIX, to Paulinus, p. 567). And there is no one who does not at once detect the faults, noted by both, of a difficult, unadorned and rather obscure style.

Others, again, find fault with the uneven variety of the arguments which he uses. For with the weightiest and most invincible arguments, they say, he sometimes mixes many others, devised by the keenness of a too rapid genius, which are of the slightest weight or of none at all.

But nearly all confess that this faulty manner, whether of speaking or of arguing, wherever it occurs, is softened and made good, as by a kind of wonderful compensation, by the altogether shining weight of his thoughts and by the supreme force and weight of his other arguments. And indeed, if you would hear again Vincent of Lérins, no unfit judge at all, already cited by us: "His speech," he says, "is knit together with such an indefinable necessity of reasons that those whom it could not persuade it drives to assent. Almost as many words as he has, so many are his sentences; as many senses, so many victories." For that reason, surely, as the author of the Eusebian Chronicle said, "he is celebrated in the speech of all the Churches" (Chronicle of Eusebius, at the year of Christ 208).

And he speaks of the Churches not only of the West, but also of the East. For certain of his books, on account of the great value at which they were esteemed, were turned into the Greek tongue, as we noted a little earlier, and were read by Greek men no less eagerly than by Latins.

Cyprian, moreover, valued them so highly that for that reason he called Tertullian his master, and would not let a single day pass without reading from one of his books. Of this so assiduous reading our witness, worthy of all credit, is Jerome, who relates thus from whom, and how surely, he received it: "I myself saw a certain Paul of Concordia, which is a town of Italy, an old man, who said that, when he himself was quite a youth, he had seen at Rome the secretary of blessed Cyprian, already of great age, and that he used to report that Cyprian never let one day go by without reading Tertullian, and would often say to him: Give me the Master, meaning, that is, Tertullian" (Jerome, Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, ch. LIII, p. 115). Indeed he plainly asserts that this is sufficiently attested from Cyprian's own books. For to Pammachius and Oceanus he wrote in these words: "Blessed Cyprian uses Tertullian as his master, as his writings prove; and though he delights in the genius of that learned and ardent man, he does not follow Montanus and Maximilla with him" (the same, Letter XLII, p. 342). Nor is there indeed any doubt that very many others, as Cyprian did, turned over the books of Tertullian. For of him we read this again committed to writing by Jerome: "He wrote many volumes, which, because they are known to most, we pass over" (Jerome, ibid.). But how could they have been so well known to them, unless they had read them again and again?

CHAPTER II.

On the date of the book of the Apologeticum; to whom it was addressed and dedicated; whether it was first inscribed with the author's name; what its title is, or what its argument; by whom it was divided into chapters and the summaries of the chapters prefixed; with what applause it was received; by whom it was turned into the Greek tongue; and in what style it was written.

ARTICLE I.

At what time Tertullian brought the Apologeticum out into public light.

It is beyond all doubt that Tertullian, as we have already shown, is the true and genuine author of this book, the Apologeticum. But as to the time at which he composed it, there is not one agreement among all. For George of Amiens thinks that it was published by Tertullian in the first years of the Emperor Severus, that is, a little after the year of Christ 193 (George, Defence of Tertullian, part III, § 1, p. 20), in which he began to guide the reins of the Roman empire. And he tries to confirm his opinion from this, that he judges that Tertullian, where he speaks of the surviving gleanings of the parricides who had brought death upon emperors, was there speaking of the murderers of Pertinax (Tertullian, Apologeticum, ch. XXXV). But since he saw that the name of Albinus, who conspired against the Emperor Severus, a name which is read in Tertullian's text in the same place, stood against this view,

he declares that it is intruded, and carried over to this place from the book To Scapula (the same, book To Scapula, ch. II). Thus he wished the knot of the difficulty to be cut by the excision of a single word. But by what reasoning, pray? By none at all, and against the authority of all the manuscript codices. The foundation of that vain opinion being thus overturned, it must itself collapse entirely. Indeed its falsity will appear still more clearly from what is about to be said.

But Scaliger and Alix were of opinion that this book came out into the light only after the death of the same Emperor Severus, which happened in the year of Christ 211, in the month of February. Yet they give no other reason for their opinion than that they judge these words of Tertullian, "The Papian laws Severus, most steadfast of princes, yesterday excluded" (the same, Apologeticum, ch. IV), cannot be understood otherwise than of this emperor as already dead. Does the adverb "yesterday", then, signify him dead rather than still living? And further, Severus is there adorned with the glorious title of most steadfast prince. But how could Tertullian grace him with this praise, unless before he had stirred up by public edicts a dreadful persecution against the Christians? Yet he is said to have set it in motion at the end of the year of Christ two hundred and two. Tertullian must therefore be said to have finished this book before this year, and consequently before the death of this emperor. Nor indeed could it be proved any less surely by these words of his, "No Severus imposed laws against the Christians", which are read in certain manuscript and printed codices of this Apologeticum (ibid., ch. V). But since in other editions and in seven manuscript codices of ours it is written "no Verus imposed", we have thought that these words, of which more later, should not be pressed further than is fitting.

But Alix presses on: Tertullian seems to be alluding to his own book On the Prescriptions of Heretics, where in the Apologeticum he argues thus against them: "We readily prescribe against our adulterers that that is the rule of truth which comes from Christ, handed down through His companions, to whom these diverse commentators will be proved to be some while later" (ibid., ch. XLVII). But can this argument against innovators and corrupters of Christian doctrine not be used by anyone else, except by him who published the book On the Prescriptions of Heretics? And further, if he wished there to aim at this book, why does he not point it out in clearer words, and why does he use words which, as others think, can be understood of it as well while it was being made as when already composed? Finally, it is not agreed among the learned at what time Tertullian brought out into public light this book On the Prescriptions. The more skilled critics, however, judge that it was published by him when he had not yet fallen away from the Catholic Church.

No one, moreover, as we think, will be moved by what Alix further objects, that there seems to him to be indicated by Tertullian the unusual eclipse which occurred in the year of Christ 210 (ibid., ch. XX). For in the chapter of the book of the Apologeticum which he cites there plainly exists no singular

and unusual eclipse indicated, nor any sign of one.

Others therefore judge that this book was worked out by Tertullian while Severus was ruling the Roman world. For he would not have adorned him with the praise of a most steadfast Emperor, as we said a little before, unless he was still reigning and not yet openly raging against the Christians. And further, where he afterwards discourses of rebels, men guilty of treason, and public enemies: "Whence," he says, "the Cassii, and the Nigri, and the Albini", ibid., ch. XXXV; men, that is, who had contended with the lawful Emperors for the supreme power of the empire. Now after the Emperor Pertinax was slain in the month of May of the year 193, C. Pescennius Niger assumed the purple and the empire in Pannonia, and Cassius Clemens went over to his side. But Niger, defeated by Severus, his forces routed in a third battle, tried in vain to save himself by flight. For he was killed by those who pursued him in his flight, towards the end of the year 194 or the beginning of 195. After this Severus made war on Albinus, whom he had deceived with false blandishments lest the number of his enemies should be increased. When at length battle was joined near Lugdunum, Albinus, broken and routed at the beginning of the year 197, is said to have taken his own life.

Yet the civil war was not even then wholly finished. For supporters of this faction survived, of whom our Tertullian says in the same place: "But those too who now, partners and applauders of the criminal factions, are daily being uncovered, the gleaning that survives after the vintage", ibid., ch. XXXVIII. But this is explained more clearly by Aelius Spartianus in this manner: "Many indeed after Albinus, keeping faith with him, were overcome in war by Severus" (Spartianus, in the Life of Severus, p. 323, col. 1). "He therefore avenged the defection of Albinus severely, very many being slain and his family also wiped out; angry with the people and the senators, he came to Rome." Then afterwards, having recounted the various journeys of Severus, he added this: "Meanwhile he hunted down the remnants of Pescennius's party, at the instigation of Plautianus, so that he attacked even some of his own friends as plotters against his life" (ibid., same page, col. 2). And from these latter words some think it can be concluded that Tertullian's Apologeticum came out into the light not only after the extinction of the remnants of the rebels of whom he discourses, but also after the slaying of Plautianus, who was put to death at the order of Caracalla in the year of Christ 204 or 205.

In confirmation of this opinion there could also be adduced the following words of the same Spartianus about this very Emperor: "He also put to death many, on the ground that they had consulted Chaldeans or soothsayers about his welfare, holding especially suspect every man fit for empire, since he himself still had small sons, and he either believed or heard this said by those who foretold empire for themselves" (ibid.); for Tertullian said in the same chapter cited by us: "The same duties," namely at the solemnities of the princes, "are paid by those too who consult astrologers, and haruspices, and augurs, and magi about the life of Caesar" (Tertullian, Apologeticum, ch. XXXV).

It cannot indeed be denied that this argument

would certainly be of no small weight if the heathen, wishing for the speedy death of the Emperors, had only once consulted magi and others skilled in the art of divining about the welfare of the Emperor Severus alone. But Tertullian certainly indicates, not obscurely, that this consultation was put forward and repeated quite often. Moreover, if we weigh with closer attention these words of his about the same seditious factions, "But even now ... are daily being uncovered", can it not rightly be gathered from them that he is speaking of them as not yet wholly extinguished, but at most lulled to sleep, and no longer daring to raise their head? Severus, then, did not yet appear to have had open enmity with Plautianus. Now Plautianus gave his daughter Plautilla in marriage in the year 204 to Caracalla, the son of the same Severus. And in the following year, as Herodian witnesses, fearing the open audacity and fury of Caracalla, his son-in-law, who at that time hated his wife, he set about seizing his empire by plots (Herodian, book III, in the Life of Severus, p. 244 and following). But when these were uncovered, Caracalla ordered him to be killed in the presence of his father Severus. Before this year, therefore, but not much earlier, Tertullian's Apologeticum seems to have been written. For to what purpose would he have spared the name of Plautianus rather than that of Albinus and the other rebels? After the year 197, then, in which Albinus laid violent hands on himself, and before the year 204 or 205, in which Plautianus was put to death, Tertullian composed this book.

Yet to some it seems probable that it issued from Tertullian in the later year in which the decennalia of the Caesarship of Antoninus Caracalla were celebrated, and the fire of the persecution stirred up against the Christians was blazing more fiercely. For Tertullian discussed these quite often in this Apologeticum (ch. II). And further, he records many laws passed against the Christians by other Emperors, but none by Severus. Did not Tertullian, then, publish this book, the Apologeticum, before this man's edicts against them were promulgated?

But although in this book he inveighs most sharply against the heathen, who kept the festivals of the Princes with a rite no less wicked than superstitious, yet he discourses of the solemnities of Severus and the other Princes rather than of Caracalla's. As for the persecutions of the Christians, and the laws written against them, we readily grant that Severus at the beginning of his reign did in fact favour them. Tertullian himself, indeed, is witness of this favour, of which he gave this reason: "Severus himself too," he says, "the father of Antoninus, was mindful of the Christians" (Tertullian, book To Scapula, ch. IV). "For he sought out the Christian Proculus, who was surnamed Torpacion, the steward of Euhodia, who had once cured him by means of oil, and kept him in his palace until his death; whom Antoninus also knew very well, having been brought up on Christian milk." We also admit that no mention is made in the Apologeticum of any law enacted against the Christians by the same Severus.

But we do not think it can be concluded with certainty from this that it was published after Caracalla had begun to rule alone in the year 211, and the heathen, while he was already reigning, in

raged and ran riot most cruelly against all the Christians. For so great was the fury of the heathen against them that this sole and empty pretext of the old laws sufficed them for tormenting any whomsoever without ceasing. Nor is this rashly invented by us. For our Tertullian addresses those same Gentiles in these words: "How often do you rage against the Christians, partly following your own impulses, partly obeying the laws! How often too, passing you by, does the hostile mob attack us of its own right with stones and fires! With the very frenzies of the Bacchanals they do not spare even dead Christians, but tear them from the rest of the grave, from the sort of sanctuary that is death, already other than they were, already not even whole; they cut them up and drag them apart" (Tertullian, Apologeticum, ch. XXXVI, p. 439). And a little before he had said: "Nor are any greater ravagers of the Christians than the mob" (the same, ch. XXXV, p. 451); the blind and insane mob, that is, which was carried on to harass and kill the Christians by its own madness without doubt, and as it were by an inborn fury, but by no prescription of the laws. To this is added that the heathen threw back upon them the cause of all public calamities. Whenever, therefore, any such had occurred, at once, as Tertullian again witnesses, they cried out together: "The Christians to the lion!" (ibid., ch. XL).

Yet we seem to hear someone who will still insist that these and many other things could not have been written down by our Author in this Apologeticum so long as the Emperor Severus favoured the Christians and had given no law against them. But if our Author makes mention of no law passed by him, others think that this was done on purpose, so that he might not further provoke the mind of the Emperor then living, but might more easily recall him to a sounder mind.

These, then, are the weights of reasoning on which the different opinions about the date of this book rest. But when they are carefully weighed, if this latter seems to you to be preferred to the others, it must be admitted that this book was made public after the persecution stirred up by the same Severus against the Christians; not indeed in the year 197 or 198, as some vainly think, but in the year 202, in which the same Severus actually framed laws against them and was passing the tenth year of his reign, as Eusebius says (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book VI, ch. II, p. 101 and following).

But if anyone judges that the supports of this opinion are not strong enough, he certainly will not deny that from what we noted a little before it can quite rightly be gathered that this book of Tertullian's was brought out into the light by him at some time after the death of Albinus, that is, after the year of Christ 197, as we observed. And since Tertullian indicates in the same place that the greater onsets of that faction had been put down, and that only certain remnants of them survived, it must surely be concluded from this that the date of this book seems to be assigned to the year 199 or rather 200.

Someone will finally urge that Tertullian at that time, as has often been said, had not reached the forty-fifth year of his age. Yet the consummate learning which shines out in a wonderful way and everywhere throughout this Apologeticum of his seems to call for a more advanced age. Nay rather, as others reply, a heavenly

help of divine light and grace. Moreover, Tertullian was endowed with so excellent and penetrating a mind that in the fortieth year of his age he could without difficulty have been imbued with this very learning and with greater besides, and have filled this whole book with it.

ARTICLE II.

To what Prelates and governors Tertullian dedicated this book, the Apologeticum.

The more openly and clearly Tertullian declared at the very beginning of the Apologeticum that it was addressed by him "to the Prelates of the Roman empire, presiding in an open and lofty place, at almost the very summit of the city" (Tertullian, Apologeticum, ch. I, p. 257), the greater the contention of minds with which it is disputed among the learned who, and of what city, those governors were. With very many, indeed, the opinion had long since prevailed that the Roman senate is meant by these words; to others, however, it seemed later that the governors of Carthage are designated; to others, finally, all the governors there were in the whole Roman empire.

The supporters of the first opinion rely on these very words of Tertullian which we have cited. For they judge that no other city than Rome is indicated. And certainly, they say, what else can that open and lofty summit of the city be but the Capitol of the Romans, which Tertullian thought should be named by a periphrasis rather than by its own name? Could not this too be brought forward in confirmation of this view, that we read written by him about the eclipse of the sun which occurred when Christ was dying: "You have that disaster of the world recorded in your archives" (ibid., ch. XXI)? For what are those but the archives, or record-offices and charter-chests, of the Romans, in which the public acts were laid up? For there he relates that Pilate reported to the Emperor Tiberius not only this eclipse but also all those extraordinary things which had happened before and after the death of Christ. And who will not readily grant that Tiberius ordered these to be deposited and kept in the same archives, to search which Tertullian challenges the Romans?

What he touched on more obscurely, Eusebius related more clearly in these words, which are wrapped in no obscurity: Tertullian, "having addressed" his Apology "to the Roman senate": "he wrote it to the Roman senate" (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book V, ch. V, p. 169). And they maintain that no small strength is lent to this view by the fact that Tertullian stayed long at Rome. For again Eusebius left this handed down in writing to posterity about him: "and among the most illustrious at Rome": "And he was most celebrated at Rome" (the same, ibid., book II, ch. II, p. 41). To this is added Jerome (Jerome, Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, ch. LIII, p. 115), who testifies that he was harassed by the envy and insults of the Roman clergy. But where, unless while he was living at Rome?

But nothing, others say, prevents Tertullian from having been pricked by those stings of envy and slander even while he lived at Carthage. For so frequent was the intercourse between the Romans and the Carthaginians that the reputation for consummate learning and

teaching which Tertullian had earned could be torn to pieces by envious clergy of the Roman Church. And Eusebius certainly seems to have looked to nothing else than this fame of his in the very words just cited. Nor indeed does he mark by them any residence of Tertullian in the city of Rome, but the very great celebrity of his name and fame among the Romans, on account of his singular learning and his writings.

Others, however, could urge that no one at all can deny that he came to Rome at least once. For who would dare to deny what Tertullian himself most expressly asserted? "We have seen at Rome the nobility of gems, from that disdain of the Parthians and Medes and the rest of their countrymen, blushing before the matrons, except in so far as they are generally kept for display" (Tertullian, On the Dress of Women, book I, ch. VI). But certainly, as he could go to Rome once, so he could go more often and stay there. Others will reply very well indeed: But how could other journeys of Tertullian to this city be proved, or that he really stayed there when he was composing the Apologeticum?

For this reason most think that it was certainly published at Carthage and presented to the governors of this city. For from its opening, as we have already seen, he calls them "presiding at the open and lofty summit of the city" (the same, Apologeticum, ch. XVI, p. 259). And again elsewhere: "In this city", he says, the city in which he was working out his Apologeticum. But Rome was not a "city" but "the City", and was customarily called by that name of "the City" alone, by antonomasia. For are not these his very words: "Liber ... the consuls, by the authority of the senate, banished not only from the City but from all Italy" (ibid., ch. VI, p. 305)?

Then Tertullian himself indicates, not obscurely, that he was at that time absent from there. For after the words of his just cited he said: "Behold, in that most religious city of the pious descendants of Aeneas", that is, Rome, "there is indeed a Jupiter" (ibid., ch. IX, p. 317). You see that it is called by him "the city", and that by these words, "in that", it is indicated that he was far removed from it. Besides this, where he reviews the ancestral and native gods of certain nations: "I have named, I think," he says, "Roman provinces, and yet not their gods as Roman, because they are no more worshipped at Rome than those who are reckoned throughout Italy itself by municipal consecration" (ibid., ch. XXIV). But surely, if he had dedicated this book to the Roman senate, he would certainly have used not these words, "Roman", "Romans", "at Rome", but rather these: "your", "yours", and "by you". Yet he has spoken in the same manner elsewhere besides (ibid., ch. XXI, p. 392; ch. XXXV, p. 451).

They insist besides that no mention is made of the Roman senate in this book, but that, as at the beginning "prelates and presiding men", so also at the end "governors" are addressed. You have already heard his earlier words; now I would have you hear the later ones: "But go on with this, good governors, much better in the people's eyes if you sacrifice the Christians to them" (ibid., ch. L, p. 530). But by that name he does not address Roman senators or magistrates, but others presiding and in authority in the city and province in which he lived, namely Africa and Carthage.

And what of this, that after he has shown that human victims were sacrificed to the gods among various nations, and by the Romans themselves, and that human blood was tasted in the conspiracy of Catiline, he then added this: "I range too far: today here", that is, in the very city where he was writing these things, "blood from a gashed thigh, caught in the palm of the hand and given to be eaten, seals those consecrated to Bellona" (ibid., ch. IX, p. 321). Who then, they will say, does not see that his own city is openly distinguished by him from Rome?

Finally, he sets against the heathen the Christians, "fearing God, not the proconsul" (ibid., ch. XLV). The heathen, therefore, feared the latter, but by no means the former. Now the proconsul held this first dignity of magistracy not at Rome but in the provinces. But the other supports of the former view, by which we showed that Roman prelates are addressed, are neither destroyed nor weakened by these weights of reasoning.

The third opinion, then, midway between the two set out by us so far, is that of those who think that this book, the Apologeticum, was addressed by Tertullian to the governors not of one city or province only, but of the whole Roman empire, as far and wide as it extended. And if it can be proved, the champions of the others could easily be reconciled with one another. But whether it is true must be inquired into more carefully by us, because it has not been demonstrated accurately enough by its advocates. First, then, it is clear that this book was sent and presented to governors not by name, but in general. For if any were called by their name, and no others besides them, there could be no dispute or controversy. For with them named in this manner the case would indeed have been settled and complete.

And further, all admit that in this book Roman governors are addressed, and not just once. For how could that be denied which has already been proved, and is confirmed again by these words: "To look to those lords of the nations: Numa Pompilius was a man" (ibid., ch. XXI)? Nor yet does he address these governors only, but the Quirites, and even the Roman common people itself, thus (ibid., ch. XXXV): "I call upon the Quirites themselves, the very native populace of the seven hills", that is, of the city of Rome, "the commons: does the Roman tongue spare any Caesar of its own?" But, you will say, it is one thing to address some persons in one's book, another to send and dedicate one's book to them. Quite right. But why, pray, did he call all the Roman governors, Quirites and plebeians by their names, unless because he knew for certain that his book was to be sent to them?

But we have shown clearly enough that not only Roman but other governors too are addressed in this book of Tertullian's. For the arguments set out in defence of the second opinion prove no less openly that this book was written to others than to the Roman senate or the Roman governors.

To this is added that our author in this Apologeticum, as in the two books To the Nations, pleads the common cause of all the Christians, as many as there were in the whole world. As, then, he directed these to all the nations, so the book, the Apologeticum, to all

governors of the Roman empire was sent by him: to whom will this not seem most likely?

Nor should you say that he also wrote, in defence of the Christians, another "little book", as he himself calls it, which he addressed to Scapula, with his name set at its head. For why, I ask you, did he inscribe the Proconsul's own name on this little book which you bring up against us? Why does he everywhere in it indicate that he is writing to him in particular? Why, on the contrary, in the Apologeticum, a much weightier and longer book, did he nowhere insert the name of any individual man at all, nor of any particular governors? Is not this the very reason: that he thought the Apologeticum was to be written to all the heathen governors in general? And certainly this seems to be the sense of the first words of that book: "If it is not permitted to you, Prelates of the Roman empire", that is, you who are the chief men, princes and governors throughout the whole Roman empire, "presiding in an open and lofty place, at" (this last particle is lacking in all our codices and in the older printed ones) "almost the very summit of the city", namely of each one. For there he said indefinitely: Prelates of the Roman empire, who preside to judge others in the open and lofty place at the very summit of any city whatever. And this interpretation, the third opinion, has at least this advantage, that it easily removes the difficulties put forward by the patrons of the other views, and reconciles those different views themselves with one another. For from this it is easily understood why in this book, which he was writing at Carthage, he addressed some governors at one time and others at another. All the arguments of those three opinions, then, whether put forward by others or added by us, we have set out in our candid and simple manner, so that all may easily recognize which are of greater and weightier import, and embrace the opinion which they judge the truer.

ARTICLE III.

Whether Tertullian inscribed his name on this Apologeticum: on its title, its argument, its division into chapters, and the summaries of the chapters.

Learned writers of our age dispute whether Tertullian set his name at the head of this book. For to some it seems more likely that it was suppressed by him, since from its opening he openly complains that the way to a public defence is shut against himself and the other Christians. For these are his words, word for word: "If, finally, as happened lately, hostility to this sect, too busy with domestic informations" (our manuscripts, and the printed codices of better note, "judgements"), "has blocked its defence" (in certain printed ones "obstructs the way" is added), "let it be permitted to the truth to reach your ears at least by the hidden way of silent letters" (Tertullian, Apologeticum, ch. I, p. 259). If, then, it was not permitted to the Christians to defend their cause publicly and before the judges, how much less to Tertullian, attacking the errors of the Gentiles so sharply, that he should rashly expose his head to certain and inevitable danger by putting forward his name? For at that time he had not yet put on the proud and more audacious spirit of the Montanists, but, obedient to the Catholic Church

in the precepts by which any Christian was forbidden to expose himself of his own accord to horrible tortures and a most cruel death.

But what, say others, if, inflamed with the desire of martyrdom, he feared punishments and death for the confession of Christ the less, the more ardently he longed for it? What too, if he was wholly convinced that his name could not long lie hidden from others, but that by his very manner of speaking it would at once become plain to all? Although, then, he did not dare to present himself openly before the judges, he could nevertheless set his name at the head of the hidden way, as he himself puts it, of silent letters, since he could not long conceal it. Nor does there seem to be any reason why he should have kept back his name in the title of this book rather than of the others, To the Nations and To Scapula.

But whatever is decided about Tertullian's name being suppressed or expressed, it should be plainly doubtful to no one that it at least was not long unknown to the Christians. For it did not escape Eusebius, nor Lactantius, who, as we have seen, cited this book without concealing his name. They had at hand, then, certain codices of this book, without doubt copied in Tertullian's own time, in which his name was set at the head. And in two very ancient manuscript codices of ours this is its title: The Apologeticum of Tertullian; and at the end these words are read: Here ends the Apologeticum of Quintus Tertullian. In all the other codices too, manuscript as well as printed, this book is entitled Apologeticum or Apologeticus. And that this inscription is genuine is proved not only by their testimony but also by that of Lactantius, by whom this book is called the Apologeticus, and of Eusebius, by whom it is cited in these Greek words (Lactantius, Institutes, book V, ch. IV, p. 470; Eusebius, in the place cited above): "apology on behalf of the Christians", that is, the apology and defence of the Christians. To cite more on a matter so certain and approved would be as long for us as tiresome for others.

However brief this title may be, it nevertheless embraces the whole argument of the book itself. For in it Tertullian undertook the defence of the Christians, and plainly demonstrates that, against all the prescriptions of every law, natural, divine and human, they were condemned and killed for their name alone, their case never heard, by heathen who were guilty of all the crimes of which they accused those same Christians most falsely. From these things, then, which have been more fully explained in the analysis of this book set out by us, it is most plainly concluded that its whole argument is presented by that title.

But although this very book is divided into various chapters in all the printed and even in the most ancient manuscript codices, yet that division did not proceed from Tertullian. For who, however little learned, does not detect even at first glance how inaccurate and how imperfect it is? But most of those who prepared new editions of it were so persuaded of this that they did not

doubted. We think there is no one who would disapprove of their endeavour. But no one, either, will deny that they have not yet reached the mark, and that this book could still be divided into chapters better.

Furthermore, if it is certain that this book was not divided into chapters by Tertullian, it is far more certain still that the summaries or arguments of those same chapters were not published by him. And indeed in the books written out by any ancient hand they are so inept and preposterous that nothing worse could have been made. For this reason those in charge of the later editions of this Apologeticum have striven to emend them; and their correction has not been wholly useless, but it is not so complete that they do not still need a more exact revision.

ARTICLE IV.

With what applause this book was received, by whom it was turned into the Greek tongue, in what style it was written, and whether Tertullian duly discharged the office he had taken up as defender of the Christian religion.

This book was received and read with the very highest applause and the common approval of all Christians, Greek as well as Latin. Nor do we need any other witness to prove this than Eusebius, who has recorded that it was held in such esteem among the Greeks that it was turned by them into their own vernacular tongue. For it is cited by him in these very words: "Tertullian . . . in the Apology for the Christians, written by him in the tongue of the Romans, but translated also into the Greek language" (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book II, chapter 2, page 41). "Tertullian . . . in the Apology, written by himself indeed in Latin, but afterwards translated into the Greek speech."

But certain writers of our age, conspicuous for their learning, disagree among themselves about the author of this Greek version. For some think that it is Eusebius himself. But others deny this. For where the same Eusebius transcribed from this book several things which Pliny had reported to Tiberius concerning the miracles of Christ, there he passed over many things which nevertheless served his purpose very well. But this argument is of no great weight. Of greater weight seems this: that several testimonies, taken further from this book by the same Eusebius, were not turned into the Greek speech accurately enough. But it matters little to the Church to know who translated this book into Greek. We, however, shall be more easily persuaded that it was rendered into Greek before the times of Eusebius, and when the tyrants were raging against the Christians in the greater heat of persecution. For he seems to indicate to us, not altogether obscurely, that this book was not read by him before it was published in the Greek idiom. However the matter may stand, from this it is plainly clear how highly this Apology was esteemed by Greek men.

What then, someone will say, did not Lactantius pass a judgement on it far different, in these words? "Septimius Tertullian was skilled in every kind of letters, but in expression he was not very easy or polished, and he was very obscure. Therefore not even he found enough celebrity", that is, fame and praise (Lactantius, Institutes, Book V,

Divine Institutes, chapter 1, page 459). But whoever raises this objection, let him, I beg, turn his mind to what we said above, and first that the all-round learning of our Tertullian is praised by Lactantius (above, chapter 1, article 5). Then, his saying that he did not find enough celebrity ought not to be understood as if he had pleaded the cause of the Christians with less valid weight of reasons, but on account of his difficult, unpolished and very obscure diction and manner of speech. And indeed we think there is no one who has touched this book with the tips of his lips, as they say, who would not at once admit that it is sprinkled with frequent thorns, roughnesses and asperities of words foreign to good Latinity, and is quite often wrapped in great obscurity. But we believe too that there is no one who will not admit that Tertullian, if in this book he does not soothe and delight his readers with the charms of words, the grace of speech and the sweetness of a polished and elegant style, nevertheless shakes them with the wonderful sharpness of his style and the weight of his sentences, and that nearly all his arguments are of such moment and weight that by them the fairer-minded are convinced, or the more obstinate are crushed and overwhelmed. Yet we cannot conceal that, carried away at times by the impulse of a rather harsh temperament, he used certain arguments which seem to many either weak or even false. But we shall show below that they have not attended diligently enough to how much he consulted brevity in this book, and that many things which they think false are found to be true indeed, if they are compared with attentive mind with other things which he himself relates more fully elsewhere.

Not without right, however, and by no means undeservedly, may a better disposition and order of the arguments be missed in this book, which would have brought greater light to the whole work, and by which Tertullian would more easily have won for himself the goodwill and approval of the reader.

But someone will still object to us Lactantius, who passed this judgement on the same Apologeticum of Tertullian: "Although Tertullian pleaded this same cause of the Christians fully in that book which bears the name Apologeticum, yet since it is one thing to answer accusers, which consists in defence or denial alone, and another to instruct, which is what we are doing, in which the sum of the whole doctrine must be contained" (Lactantius, Institutes, Book V, chapter 4, page 470). For he declares that two things had to be done by those who undertook the defence of the Christian religion against the heathen. The first was to answer those who charged the Christians with many crimes. The second, so to set out and demonstrate the doctrine of the Christian religion that anyone might be fully and perfectly instructed by it. And he admits that the first part of this cause was fully pleaded by Tertullian, but by no means the second. But Tertullian thought it enough for his purpose to have overturned the senseless accusations of the heathen, who charged the Christians with every most grievous crime, and to have vindicated their innocence and the integrity of their morals. How rightly he demonstrated this will become manifest to all from the analysis of this book already given and from other things to be said below.

Then, moreover, he did not leave wholly untouched the Christian

instruction in doctrine and its explanation. For its chief heads he explains briefly indeed, but so sincerely and candidly that it can easily be understood by all that nothing is more in agreement both with the divine institutions and with right reason, as we shall show later. But Lactantius doubtless wanted a longer exposition and proof of these teachings. But in our earlier dissertations we have shown that this complaint is not at all just (Dissertation on Minucius, chapter 2, article 2, and on Lactantius, chapter 3, article 2).

CHAPTER III.

On the manuscript codices of this book, the Apologeticum, its editions, and the paraphrases, scholia and observations of various writers upon it.

ARTICLE ONE.

On the various manuscript codices of this book.

Many manuscript codices of the Apologeticum published by our Tertullian have come down to our own age. For Beatus Rhenanus points to two, by whose help he prepared his edition of this and other books of the same Tertullian. The first, the Payerne codex, was kept in the library of the monastery of Payerne beyond the Jura, the second in that of the monastery of Hirsau. But both so teem with very many faults, nearly all the same, that one seems to have been copied from the other. Sigismund Gelenius, moreover, obtained another codex of Tertullian's Works, very ancient and, as he himself says, of the best stamp, from the monastery of Masbury; but he did not explain to us clearly enough whether this Apologeticum is one of the books of Tertullian that are missing in this codex. There are besides three codices of the same books in the Vatican Library, from which, supplied to him by the most illustrious Cardinal Sirleto, Alan Cope collected readings differing from the printed ones and sent them to Pamelius, who used them to put together a new edition of Tertullian's works. But three more copies of them were furnished to him as well, two indeed from the monasteries of St Amand and of St Bavo, the third an English one, which John Clement, an Englishman, had in his keeping. But neither Pamelius nor anyone else has told us of what kind or of how great antiquity they are.

In our own France, however, other manuscript codices of these books of every age are found, of which several seem to yield to no others either in venerable antiquity or in elegant script. Of these, one, formerly belonging to the brothers Dupuy, is kept in the library of our Most Christian King. Another Jacques Bongars possessed. And against both Didier Hérault corrected a separate edition of the Apologeticum.

Nicolas Rigault, however, complains with no small indignation that the very correct first and genuine copies of Tertullian's Works were long ago so corrupted by those who could not grasp the expressions of this African writer that scarcely any hope of restoring

of the true text remains. Yet he admits that very much light and ornament came to his edition from the variant readings collected and published by Rhenanus, and from other, better ones by Fulvius and Junius. He tells us besides that he had at hand the codex of the brothers Dupuy mentioned above, and another of Pierre Pithou, and the variant readings of the Fulda codex, copied, as he himself says, from the autograph into a book of the most illustrious Montchal, Archbishop of Toulouse. And he boasts that with the help of these codices, and above all of these readings sent to him, he emended the text of the Apologeticum in 250 places. But he kept entirely silent about what stamp and antiquity those two codices are, and that autograph from which the Fulda readings were drawn.

We, however, have obtained not only those first two codices but several others as well, and it must be explained which and of what kind they are. The first, then, the Dupuy codex, seems to the more expert to have been copied in a most beautiful hand about the year of Christ 900. In it only Tertullian's book, the Apologeticum, is contained, and it is kept, as we have said, in the library of our Most Christian King, marked with the number 3971; the most illustrious Abbé Le Tellier, with the very great kindness that is his custom, ordered it to be shared with us by Nicolas Clément.

The second belonged formerly, as we have said, to Pierre Pithou, and, given as a gift to the college of the Reverend Fathers of the Oratory of Jesus at Troyes and kept in their library, it was sent to us by their quite singular kindness. Men more practised in examining old codices judged from the form of the letters that it was written about the eleventh century. But through the unskilfulness of the first scribe it is disfigured here and there by various faults, which another, more learned hand, by adding obeli and notes in the margin, either corrected or showed to need correcting.

Several treatises of Tertullian are copied in that codex, and their index is given on its first page. But in this index this book, the Apologeticum, is passed over. There seems therefore room to suspect whether it was written out afterwards, following the other books, by some scribe. For that index is written in the same hand as the other books. But he who next copied the Apologeticum, less skilled than the others and ignorant of the Latin language, left the frequent errors with which that codex teems everywhere. A different contraction of words, too, is seen in it from that in the other books. Some, however, quite competent judges of old writing, think that this book, like the others, was written out by the same scribe. In it, however, the Apologeticum is not given entire, but only as far as the beginning of the thirtieth chapter: the rest, which makes up a quarter of the whole book, is wholly missing.

The third manuscript codex was supplied to us by a most illustrious man, greater than all praise, Achille de Harlay, who, after he had presided for many years over the Parlement of Paris with quite admirable knowledge of law, equity, probity and other excellent virtues, resigned this dignity with as great fortitude of mind as was the common regret of all, and died having always kept the same evenness of life. And that codex, in the elegance of its script,

does not yield to the Dupuy codex, nor does it seem to us to have been copied a hundred years later. And we find in it most of the same good and bad readings as in that one.

The fourth and fifth codices belong to the Colbert library, and are marked with the numbers 989 and 5,271. The older seems to have been committed to writing about 700 years ago, and the more recent not before 400 years ago. The keeper of that library, the distinguished Charles Duchesne, at the bidding of the most illustrious Abbé Colbert, gave us access to both codices.

We received variant readings besides from two other manuscript codices, the first of which belongs to the monastery of Murbach, at whose end these words are read: "Pray for the lord abbot of Murbach." And he is Bartholomew of Andlau, who, set over this monastery in the year 1455 and after, wished the very many manuscript codices gathered from every side to be marked with the same subscription. But these words placed beneath the Apologeticum are written in a far more recent hand than the book of the Apologeticum itself, which appears to have been written 600 or 700 years ago. Its variant readings were extracted with the greatest diligence and to a scruple by a monk of the same monastery, who sent them to us, and to whose kindness we owe no small thanks.

The other manuscript codex, whose readings differing from the printed ones were sent to us, is one of those with which the most illustrious Abbé Giusto Fontanini, well enough known for his learning and never to be named by us without due praise, enriched his library at Rome. He supplied this codex to our Claude Devic, who, though given to greater studies, saw to it that the variant readings of this codex drawn out by him were conveyed to us.

The five codices mentioned, moreover, the Dupuy, the Pithou, the Harlay and both Colbert codices, we have diligently collated with the edition prepared by Rigault, and from this collation we have gathered very many variant readings which by him, very often with no reason given, but, as it seems, on his own authority, were very often either cut out altogether or changed. For he admits that he used only two codices, as we have said, the Dupuy and the Pithou, and the variant readings of the Fulda codex. But these readings were found in a quite foreign place, and Rigault could not know by whom or with what diligence they were collected. Nor did he ascertain any better, or at least he informed no one, of what stamp and age that Fulda codex is, on whose authority for the most part he changed the text of Tertullian. For from the Dupuy, the Pithou and the other codices mentioned, collated with new care after him, and from the variant readings of others, we have plainly observed that they are entirely opposed to Rigault's corrections. And who would say that the doubtful credit of one Fulda codex is to be preferred to the authority of so many others, both better and older? But lest anyone think that we are to be believed less than he, some examples of such amputations and changes

of the changes are to be set out. In the first chapter of the Apologeticum, then, only these words are read in Rigault's edition: "All who formerly hated, because they were ignorant, at the same time cease to be ignorant", etc. (Tertullian, Apologeticum, chapter I, page 262). But in our manuscript copies and in the earlier editions: "All who formerly hated, because they were ignorant of what that is which they hated, at the same time cease to be ignorant", etc. Do you see that these words, "what that is which they hated", were thrown out by Rigault? Nor would you say that they were omitted by the printers. For then you would accuse that same Rigault of the greatest negligence, not to be pardoned in anyone who is put in charge of the edition of a work of this kind. Later, again, this and no more is found in the same edition of Rigault: "Venus wounded by a human arrow, Mars", etc. (ibid., chapter XIV). But in the same printed and manuscript books: "Venus wounded by a human arrow, because she wished to snatch away her son Aeneas, almost slain by the same Diomedes: Mars", etc. Is this too, then, to be put down to the drowsiness or haste of the printers? But if Rigault thought that these words had been intruded into the text from the margin or from elsewhere, why did he not inform us of this addition? But come, and you will recognize other things likewise cut out of our author's text. For elsewhere Tertullian, as our codices attest, had left written: "I will indeed call the emperor lord, but in the common usage" (ibid., chapter XXXIV). But it pleased Rigault to remove these last three words. And not much later he gives: "So far is it from being right that the emperor should be called God, that not only", etc. But in the same older copies it is written: "So far is it from being right that the emperor should be called what cannot be believed, that not only", etc. Who, then, removed these words, "what cannot be believed", from the text, if not he who judged them useless and superfluous?

What, moreover, of the fact that these words of Tertullian were not only cut out by him but transposed: "The Epicureans were allowed to decide on some truth of pleasure. In what do we offend you, if we presume other pleasures? If we do not wish to know how to be delighted, it is our injury, if perhaps not yours. But we reject what pleases you; nor do our things delight you" (ibid., chapter XXXVIII). But in other older printed and handwritten codices: "In what do we offend you, if we presume other pleasures? If we wish to know how to be delighted, it is our injury, if perhaps ours, not yours. But we reject what pleases you, nor do our things delight you. But the Epicureans were allowed to decide on some truth of pleasure, that is, equanimity of mind and the ample affairs of the Christian." But this last word, "Christian", is not found in the printed editions. What then? Was it right for anyone, on account of this one word, wrongly added by a drowsy scribe, to change, pervert and mutilate the text of Tertullian? Yet in a similar manner Rigault deleted elsewhere these words of Tertullian: "we touch God" (ibid., chapter XL).

If you want yet another example of changes of this kind, it need not be sought far. For not much later he changed in the same text of Tertullian these words of the printed editions and the manuscript codices: "I am not washed at dawn", where he ordered to be written: "I do not wash towards nightfall". Many other places of this book by Rigault likewise

interpolated and badly mauled could easily be brought forward. But we have thought it best to refrain from reviewing them now, so that the same things are not repeated. Those which are of greater moment will have to be dealt with when occasion is given below. We had indeed resolved to set out at the end of our dissertation absolutely all the variant readings of this book excerpted either by us or by others. But because one of our brethren, who is giving diligent work to preparing an edition of all the books of Tertullian, asked that this task be entrusted to him, we judged that his very fair wishes ought to be satisfied. For our purpose, therefore, we think it enough to point out in this dissertation the chief and noteworthy corrupted, interpolated, excised and changed words of Tertullian, so that his mind and meaning may be more easily understood by all.

ARTICLE II.

On the various editions of this Apologeticum and of the other books of Tertullian.

You would find few works indeed of the ancient Fathers of the Church that have been committed to print more often than this Apologeticum and the other studies of Tertullian. Nor was it made public only together with them, but separately as well. For it alone came out from the printers' workshop into public light by the zeal and care of Giovanni Battista Egnazio.

Another edition of this Apologeticum was made at Paris in the year 1613, by the labour and work of Didier Hérault, who, as we noted in its place, added to it the Octavius of M. Minucius Felix (Dissertation on the Octavius of Minucius, chapter 2, article 3).

Before and after, however, this book, the Apologeticum, was given to public light together with others of Tertullian's works, either very many or all. To review their chief editions briefly: first Beatus Rhenanus had them printed at Basel in the year 1521, and then in the year 1528. From these editions others were published in exactly the same manner in the years 1525, 1536 and 1538; another, again, came out to the public in the year 1562 through the care of Sigismund Gelenius. Then in the year 1580 René Laurent de la Barre procured another for us, in which the treatises of Tertullian were emended, as he himself says, by collation of old and more recent copies. But no edition of these books was more multiplied than that which was sent out into public light in the year 1579 under the care of Jacques de Joigny de Pamèle. For it was printed again in the years 1579, 1584, 1596, 1597, 1599, 1608, 1616, 1627, 1658, 1662 and 1664 in various cities of Europe.

Besides, Luis de la Cerda, principal professor of theology among the Reverend Fathers of the Society of Jesus, published most of Tertullian's works with new labour and new care; but he omitted especially those which were written by him against Marcion and against the Catholic Church. He comprised them, however, in two volumes, which came off the press in the years 1624, 1630 and 1641.

In the year 1634, moreover, Nicolas Rigault, with new

zeal and new type, had all the works of Tertullian too published, comprised in one volume. But as regards the book Apologeticum, about which we are now disputing, we have already observed that many things in our African writer were changed by him at his pleasure and on his own authority in various places, transposed, and even cut out altogether.

In the following year, 1635, however, another edition after the same Rigault came out at Paris from the printers' workshop. He who was put in charge of it, using no further manuscript codex, wished Tertullian's book De Pallio and the Apologeticum to be reprinted after the measures of Pamelius, and all the rest after those of Rigault. But the author of the preface goes plainly astray in this, that he thinks the books De Pallio and Apologeticum published by Rigault to be so perfect that they could seem to have been given to public light by him for the first time. For from what we noted a little before, and shall note afterwards, who does not see that this book was in many places rather corrupted by Rigault than emended? Nevertheless in the year 1641 that whole edition was printed again by the printers just as it had been prepared by the same Rigault.

The editions which followed these were thereafter prepared on the authority of no manuscript codex, but only of Rigault's. The first of them was procured by Georges of Amiens, a Capuchin Friar Minor. He divided it into three volumes, of which the first was published in the year 1646, the second in the year 1648 and the third in the year 1650. And he prefixed to the whole work the remarkable title Tertullianus redivivus, just as if he had recalled to life the dead works of that most learned African. There is certainly no need for us to interpose our judgement on this title and on the whole edition, since very many others have given theirs abundantly, and that not very honourable. Some learned men, however, judge many things in it to be worthy of praise, and not undeservedly, as will be said a little later.

Finally, over the second edition of all Tertullian's works after Rigault presided Philippe Le Prieur, who completed it in the year 1664. But he added nothing new to it, except a short little dissertation on the life and blemishes of Tertullian, the text interrupted by an untimely mass of notes, and new printers' errors.

ARTICLE III.

On the scholia, paraphrases, notes and observations of various writers on Tertullian's Apologeticum.

Many writers, conspicuous for varied learning, who spent care on editing the books of Tertullian or were engaged in something else, have tried either to explain and illustrate, or to confirm, the more obscure or more noteworthy places of that book, the Apologeticum, by their observations, scholia, paraphrases and commentaries. First, Beatus Rhenanus prefixed to this book, published by him, an argument, but far shorter than was fitting. But he thought this brevity could be made good by appending new summaries, as they call them, of the chapters, by which he strove to emend the others given in the manuscripts. Besides this, in the same, though very brief,

argument of this book he tried to hold out some light to a very few of its obscure places.

After this, François Zéphyr, having observed of how great use this book could be to all, and so that studious young men should not be deterred from reading it by the obscurity of its language and the places corrupted by the carelessness of scribes, composed and published a paraphrase of it. In it, which is interwoven with Tertullian's text, not very conveniently indeed, he endeavours to explain many places hard to understand and to remove various hindrances of obscurity. Pamelius, moreover, valued this paraphrase so highly that he judged it should be inserted into the text of our author in exactly the same manner as in the earlier edition.

Yet this very paraphrase was plainly and wholly rejected by others who were afterwards put in charge of the various editions of this book, and above all by Luis de la Cerda. But that learned man, so that no one could ever complain of this omission, published a new interpretation of Tertullian's text. To each chapter, too, he added his own notes, by which, though otherwise worthy of praise, the same text can hardly be read easily without the reader's attention being interrupted. But many also complain of certain useless and over-long notes, and of digressions foreign to Tertullian's purpose. By others nevertheless they are praised and preferred to the rest published so far. In them, then, they miss only this: that he did not correct Tertullian's text against the manuscript codices; that he did not publish all his works; that he did not, as his learning allowed, explain and confirm the teachings of the Christian religion handed down by him.

By Hérault, moreover, after he had published this Apologeticum of Tertullian, a book was added, where it is called by him a commentary, which he composed of notes only, quite disconnected from one another. And so that in them he should not run out too far from Tertullian's purpose, he appended to it two books of digressions, by which he strives to smooth the difficult and rough places of the work. In all these the author's profane learning is detected, but you would look in vain for an explanation of the sacred and more obscure dogmas of the Christian religion handed down by Tertullian. Many other things, too, he left untouched which beyond doubt needed explanation and confirmation.

Laurent de la Barre also published many observations on all the works of Tertullian, which he declares he excerpted from those in which Bérault, Alciati, Crinito, Turnèbe, Vetranius, Homanus, Cujas and others, in places outside their subject, strove to explain certain expressions of Tertullian hard to understand. But because these concern grammar, he added in the same place Rhenanus's notes, which indeed, since they had not escaped the censure of the Romans and the Spaniards, he indicates had first been corrected by him. But since he added very few, and those very brief, and gave scarcely any on this book, the Apologeticum, you see plainly what you ought to expect from him on theological matters.

Of greater value, therefore, are reckoned Pamelius's

annotations on this and the other books of Tertullian. For they are sprinkled, as they say, with no small sacred and profane learning, which can profit readers. But they blame in them this: that Pamelius too often digresses from his purpose, has heaped up many useless things, and, by inserting Zéphyr's paraphrase, as we have said, has interrupted the text of Tertullian, which he ought, in this and the other books, with the help of better codices, to have restored, if it could be done, to its original integrity.

Rigault, therefore, despising all these and setting them aside, wrote new notes and observations on this Apologeticum and the other works of Tertullian. But since he passed over very many, coming from learned men, wholly without right and undeservedly, these were again made public in one volume, which was published in the year 1635. They were collected from Pamelius, Latino Latini, Beatus Rhenanus, Jean Mercier, Edmond Richer, Théodore Marcile, Jan van der Wouwer, and Gabriel de l'Aubespine, Bishop of Orléans.

Some learned men were persuaded that, with this volume joined to the edition of Tertullian's works published by Rigault, this edition would be more perfect than all the others. But besides the fact that in that volume of notes the no less useful notes and explanations of others, such as la Cerda, are omitted, what, pray, is to be hoped of Rigault, who for emending Tertullian's text took care neither to read nor to follow either those very codices which, as we have said (article above), he had in his hands, or other manuscript codices? And then his boldness in writing his notes was not the least, which he was compelled to excuse in his preface. But you would find very few to whom his excuse is at all acceptable.

Less rash indeed, but no more approved, are the very long observations of Georges of Amiens, heaped up even to nausea. For into them he crammed everything that he had gathered for another reason, and, as it seems, for public sermons. Some, however, admit that there are some useful things in them, and especially in the scholia on the chapters which he gives on the facing side of Tertullian's text.

Finally, Le Prieur selected various observations of learned men, of Rhenanus, Pamelius, la Cerda, Saumaise, de l'Aubespine and certain others; among which he also inserted from time to time some thought up by himself. But these are of such slight moment that scarcely anyone is found to approve of them. In this, however, he is somehow to be praised, that he wished all those observations and notes to be printed in the lower margin of the pages, without any interruption of Tertullian's text. For in that way the reader's convenience is better served. But who will ever pardon the fault of negligence in him who, having set about reprinting the works of Tertullian in new type, collated no manuscript codex at all with the printed editions, but followed Rigault's edition alone, word for word?

From what has so far been argued by us, moreover, about so many and such various editions of Tertullian's works

are, who will not admit with us that there is none at all which may rightly be called perfect and complete in every respect? He will therefore without doubt deserve well of the republic of letters who, steeped to no small degree in sacred and profane learning, prepares a new edition of the Apologeticum and of Tertullian's other works. But before all else its text must be checked and corrected, with the utmost fidelity and diligence, against the French, Italian, German and English manuscript codices and the old editions. For there survive at least several codices of the Apologeticum of the best quality, which no one has so far collated with the printed editions. But if he presents in good faith the variant readings worth noting, drawn from them, a surer judgement can be passed on the true and genuine text of Tertullian.

CHAPTER IV.

On Tertullian's two books To the Nations.

FIRST ARTICLE.

Analysis of the first book To the Nations.

In the two books To the Nations Tertullian pleaded the cause of the Christians once more, and he divided each book quite plainly into two parts. In the first part of the former book he shows that the Christians, neither heard nor defended, were harassed by the gentiles with most false and most unjust prejudgements, condemned, and put to death most cruelly (Book I, ch. 1 ff.). In the second part he makes it plain to all that the crimes of which the Christians were accused were wholly false, and that the gentiles were in truth guilty of them (ch. 9 ff.). In the first part of the second book he demonstrates how empty and absurd is the threefold theology of the heathen devised by Varro, which he calls physical, mythical, and popular or gentile (Book II, ch. 1 ff.). In the second part he demonstrates that the gods of the Romans are false and plainly fabricated (ch. 9 ff.). But these things must be set out a little more clearly.

First, then, he reproaches the heathen for persecuting the Christians with implacable hatred, although they were wholly ignorant who or of what sort they were, and had never been willing to know. For as soon as they came to know them, they at once ceased to hate them, and of their own accord embraced the Christian religion. Nor could this be denied, for their own daily complaint about the multiplied number of the Christians proclaimed it. Our author, however, does not allow it to be objected to him that these had been changed for the worse, as sometimes happens. For the profession of the Christian religion bears no mark of evil; no one is either ashamed of it or repents of it, and all rejoice and glory in it (Book I, ch. 1).

But if the Christians had had any crimes, the heathen ought certainly to have compelled them by inquisition and torture to declare them. On the contrary, since they at once believed them when they denied their name, whether of their own accord or under compulsion, they ought also to have admitted that nothing evil could be found in their religion. Moreover, any judges whatever were bound by their own laws to question those accused of any crimes what these were, of what kind, and how great,

who were their accomplices and harbourers, and finally to state these by name in the written sentence of the condemned. But nothing of the kind was ever done in the condemnation of the Christians, nor was anything else pronounced in their sentence but the name of Christian. The only crime, therefore, was that of the name; but this very name sounds nothing barbarous, ill-omened or dishonourable, but rather anointing, or at least sweetness or goodness, when they were corruptly called chrestiani by the gentiles themselves (ch. 2, 3).

But those were plainly out of their minds who alleged that they hated the sect of the Christians solely because of its founder's name (ch. 4). For they did not hate Platonists or Pythagoreans for the name of Plato or Pythagoras, nor physicians for that of Erasistratus, nor grammarians for that of Aristarchus. Who, moreover, does not know that it is wrong to hold any sect in hatred unless one has first observed what in it is worthy of hatred? Yet the heathen neither knew the Christian sect nor its founder, nor were they willing to learn. Besides this, they allowed any heathen to embrace whatever sect of the philosophers he wished, even of those hostile to the State and to the princes. They harassed only those philosophers who, teaching the truth in part, spurned their gods. So indeed they condemned Socrates, although he had been declared by the oracle of Apollo the wisest of all mortals. No wonder, then, if the truth begot their hatred against the Christians. But see, I pray, with what fury of a mind gone mad. They admitted that all had become better who, having forsworn the worship of false gods, had given their name to the Christian religion. Yet for this name alone they raged more cruelly against them, and preferred them to be guilty and criminal rather than Christians.

On the other hand, however, the heathen objected that some among the Christians were very wicked and abandoned to vices and crimes (ch. 5). But these, says Tertullian, were very few; and they, like blemishes on a body, showed forth the excellence of their sect. Moreover, whoever and however many these may have been, disgracing their sect by shameful deeds no differently from the philosophers, they were true deserters, Christians in name only, nay, unworthy of this name.

The gentiles insisted that the sect of the Christians was in fact evil, inasmuch as it had been condemned by the laws of the emperors (ch. 6). But, our author retorts, did not those same just laws of the emperors and of others lay down that no one was ever to be condemned unless he had first been duly convicted of some crime? Why, then, did the heathen condemn the Christians neither heard nor convicted? Were not many most unjust laws also given by the lawgivers of these same heathen, afterwards amended or repealed? Finally, an unjust law, such as had been passed against the Christians, demands no honour or obedience.

Nor could the heathen press the point that the laws against the Christians had been enacted by those who had learned of their crimes by common and popular report. For is not report, as these same heathen admit, an evil than which none is swifter? But it lives only so long as it is uncertain, false and lying. For where the matter is certain, there this report ceases. Its origin must therefore be traced, and one must wait for

time, which reveals all things. But who, from the very beginning of the Christian religion, ever detected, exposed or betrayed the infanticides, incests and other crimes laid against the Christians in their assemblies? Was it the Christians themselves? But they covered their mysteries in the deepest silence, and could not have betrayed such horrible crimes, had they been aware of them, without peril of their lives. Was it the gentiles? By no means. For although they beset the Christians in their assemblies daily, yet no one testified that he had detected these things, nor did any servant, corrupted by a bribe, ever testify that he had either seen or concealed them.

Moreover, the Christians promised eternal happiness to their followers who diligently kept the laws of Christ. But tell me, I pray, whether it could be believable to any man not wholly insane that it was ever promised to those who had committed such great crimes? No gentile either, endowed with even the least sense of humanity, would ever have dared to commit them. Therefore neither would any Christians, whose nature was the same as that of other men: they were neither Cynopennae, nor Sciapodes, nor Antipodes (ch. 7).

But who would not laugh at the heathen, who strove to prove, by the ridiculous fiction of a boy brought up by a dumb nurse and pronouncing βέκκος with the first sound of his voice, that the Christians were later than the Phrygians and other nations? For who does not know that the Christian people, which took its origin from the Jews, is older than the rest? And even if it were more recent than others, still, as the third race after the Greeks and Romans, it was not given over to most inhuman superstitions (ch. 8).

The heathen insisted that the Christians, because of their contempt for the gods, were the authors of all disasters, and were therefore to be exterminated (ch. 9). But Tertullian shows by various examples that the world had been thrown into turmoil and overwhelmed by the gravest calamities, such as floods of waters, fire from heaven and a general deluge, before the heathen themselves had fashioned their gods, and before the cities were founded in which these were born, dwelt and were buried. And what of this, that afterwards these excellent gods could not rescue their worshippers from other disasters?

In the second part of this book our author shows that the gentiles themselves were guilty of the same crimes of which they vainly tried to accuse the Christians. For those who complained without cause that ancient but impious rites had been repudiated by the Christians had themselves departed from the laws and established customs of their ancestors in dress, in diet and in their very speech, and had cast off the antiquities they never praised enough.

Then again, the Christians could not hold in contempt gods whom they knew to be none at all. But the heathen utterly spurned those whom they boasted to be true and to be worshipped by them. For, many being scorned and repudiated, they honoured only some selected by themselves. Were not the god Alburnus, Liber, Serapis, Harpocrates and Anubis even ejected with insult by the senate, and their statues overthrown? What could be more insulting still to the gods than that they could not

be worshipped without a decree of the senate? What more ignominious than that household gods should be pawned by any private man whatever, and public ones put up for sale at the auction-house? What more shameful than that a fee should be exacted for the ground of a temple, for entry, for its posts and doors? What greater disgrace to the gods than that an old man should be consecrated in Saturn, a beardless youth in Apollo, a soldier in Mars, a smith in Vulcan; than to make dead men equal to the greatest gods; than to punish those who swear by the gods, but not those who swear by the genius of Caesar; than to sacrifice to them all the worst parts of the victims? What, finally, is more unworthy of the majesty of the gods than that Homer and other poets should sing with impunity of Venus wounded, Mars bound, Jupiter provoked by other gods, weeping, wanton and counting over his adulteries? Why say more? Were not these same gods mocked in the theatres and in the comedies of the Lentuli and Hostii, where, amid the applause of all, mimes and actors played the plainly ridiculous part of Cybele sighing for a shepherd, or sang the praises and disgraces of Jupiter? Were not the gods defamed by abandoned men who represented in the arena Atys castrated, Hercules burned, Dis leading the funeral procession of the gladiators, and Mercury examining the dead? Who, then, will deny that gods of this sort were despised and derided far more by those very gentiles who had fashioned them than by the Christians (ch. 10)?

Come now: the heathen, deceived by the lying Tacitus, falsely asserted that the head of an ass was adored by the Christians (ch. 11). But the gentiles themselves in truth adored whole asses together with their Epona, and consecrated beasts together with their stalls. And on what ground did they charge the Christians with the crime of worshipping the cross of Christ, when they themselves venerated the Attic Pallas and the Pharian Ceres, which did not differ from the post of a cross? Did they not also build their gods upon the upright part of a cross, and [fit] to whole crosses their victories, cantabra, siphara and military standards, which they held in the greatest honour (ch. 12)?

Some of them wrongly supposed that the Sun was adored by the Christians, because they prayed to their true God with their face turned towards that same Sun, and gave themselves to spiritual joy on the Lord's day (ch. 13). But these wicked slanderers could not deny that it was the custom of the heathen to pray in a similar manner to their own manufactured gods, and to dedicate to them one day of the week, the one next to the Lord's day, which they celebrated with a rite far different from the Jews'.

Then next Tertullian inveighs sharply against a certain beast-fighter, a deserter from the Jewish religion, who had carried round in the Circus a picture of the God of the Christians in the form of an ass, with this inscription: Onochoetes (ch. 14). For the further this was from the truth, the more certain it was that the heathen adored gods horned, goat-born and wholly like monsters.

Nothing more false, too, could be invented than that an infant was killed by the Christians amid their sacred mysteries and its blood drunk. But it was plainly established that newborn infants were slaughtered by the heathen against their own laws, or exposed with the utmost cruelty to be killed by the harshness of the weather,

or that their blood was drawn off and they were devoured whole while still unripe (ch. 15).

What, indeed, is more shameless than that the Christians should be accused of an entirely false nocturnal incest by those who could not deny that the gentile Persians openly lay with their mothers, and who praised and urged on with great applause Oedipus when he represented that crime in the theatre? Nay more, these very men, with their own children, whom, as we have said, they had exposed as infants and no longer recognized, were quite often joined in infamous incest (ch. 16). And lest anyone object that this was invented without ground, our author confirms it by a celebrated instance, which had happened in the time of Fuscianus, prefect of the City, and not long before he wrote these books.

He goes on, and makes it plain that the Christians were proclaimed public enemies by the heathen to no purpose because they did not adore the images of the Caesars nor swear by their genius (ch. 17). For he plainly shows that this very charge is rightly brought against those rebellious nations which, conquered by the emperors, had won for them the surnames Parthicus, Medicus, Germanicus. Were not those Romans also public enemies who conspired against their emperors and lately slew them in their palaces in Gaul? Are not those also to be called public enemies who harassed them with every kind of insult at the circus games, or with defamatory libels hung on their statues? Finally, who were public enemies: the Christians, who would not call the Emperor a god; or the gentiles, who against their conscience called him a god, not without mockery, and, swearing by his genius, did not fear to swear falsely?

Moreover, they laid a new crime upon the Christians, namely a wonderful constancy in bearing any torments whatever for the truth of their religion (ch. 18). But with what face, I pray, and what audacity? For they themselves extolled with the highest praises Regulus, who first ended his life by the punishment of the cross; the queen of Egypt, who did so by the bite of beasts; the wife of Hannibal, who, like Dido, did so by a voluntary fire. Did they not also praise the Attic woman who, after the bitterest torments, spat her tongue at the tyrant lest she betray a secret? Did they not also count it to the praise of gladiators that they steadfastly endured being killed by one another or by beasts, of some that they endured being burned alive, of the Spartans that they endured being beaten and torn with scourges?

But surely the unconquered fortitude of the Christians in horrible torments was all the more to be praised, because they endured them not, like the heathen, to court the empty glory of men, but because they most certainly awaited the future resurrection of bodies, the last judgement of God, and an eternal reward according to merits (ch. 19). Nor were they to be hissed off by the heathen for this expectation, since these asserted that the souls of men would pass into other bodies, even those of beasts, that there would be a judgement of Minos and Rhadamanthus, and that afterwards the wicked would spend eternal life in eternal fire, but the pious in a pleasant place.

Finally, Tertullian concludes from what has been argued so far that the Christians, even if they had been guilty of all the crimes of which they were falsely accused, were nevertheless not to be punished and harassed by the heathen, who are shown to have in truth committed the same (ch. 20). Lastly, even if the Christians had said that they were guilty of crimes, the heathen ought none the less to have investigated with the greatest diligence whether these things were true, and to have heard and examined lawful witnesses and accomplices of these crimes. But they would not observe these provisions of their own laws, lest, the innocence of the Christians being recognized, they should love those whom they had resolved to hate and to remove from their midst. By a wilful ignorance, therefore, they loved their errors and hated the truth.

ARTICLE II.

Analysis of the second book.

In the second book, also divided into two parts, Tertullian shows that the gods of the gentiles are false, and their worship depraved and to be rejected (Book II, ch. 1). For whatever authority of the ancestors they may seem to be established by, their falsity is so manifest that it is very easily recognized by all who have not blinded themselves of their own accord. So, to break the untamed obstinacy of these men, Tertullian first refutes what Varro, easily the foremost of all the men of his time distinguished for learning, had handed down in his books on religion. There he distinguishes a threefold kind of gods: the first physical, or of the philosophers; the second mythical, or of the poets; the third gentile, or of the peoples. But the first, says our author, rests on uncertain conjectures, the second on mere fables, the third on ridiculous adoptions of gods and on an insane and most shameful worship. All these, therefore, are as false as the judgement of all men concerning the true God, and their unanimous consent, ought to be common and one.

For the disagreement of the physicists or philosophers about the nature of God was very great, and it arose from no other source than ignorance of Him (ch. 2). So they professed wisdom in vain, the beginning of which is the fear of God. And how could they have feared Him of Whom they did not know who and of what kind He is? Yet it was easy for them to know this true God from our sacred Scriptures. But what they had drawn from these pure springs they corrupted with various subtleties, led by a blind lust for glory, and thereafter were split into various parties. For the Platonists taught that all things are governed by the providence of God; the Epicureans, on the contrary, denied it plainly and utterly. The same Platonists asserted that God is placed within the world, but the Stoics outside it. Diogenes confessed that he did not know what goes on in heaven, or who the gods are; and earlier Thales of Miletus could answer nothing at all to Croesus when he questioned him about the gods. Socrates, for his part, did not indeed believe that they existed, yet he ordered a cock to be sacrificed to Aesculapius.

Why say more? Dionysius divided the gods three ways: first into those that fall under our sight, as the sun and moon; second into others that are not seen, as Neptune; third into others that have been taken up from

among men, as Hercules and Amphiaraus. Arcesilaus also devised a threefold but different kind of gods, namely the Olympians, the Stars and the Titans. Xenocrates, on the other hand, admitted only the latter two, just as most Egyptians [admitted] no more than the sun and moon, heaven and earth. Democritus supposed that all the gods arose together with the fire above, and Zeno held nature to be like it. Hence Varro taught that the soul of the world is fire, at whose extinction, indeed, we die.

Yet all these opinions, however different, seem to agree in this one point, that those philosophers thought the gods to be nothing other than the elements of the world, or what arises from them (ch. 3). But Tertullian shows that these are the dreams of waking men. For God is from Himself, unbegotten and eternal, Who has no beginning and will never have an end. But the elements are parts of the world, which Plato confesses was created, and which Epicurus alone had dreamed to be uncreated.

Moreover, if the world and the elements are gods, they must be living beings, and by that very fact they are mortal and lacking divinity. Nor is Varro to be heeded, who prattled that they are indeed living beings, but such as are moved of themselves, and are therefore to be reckoned immortal gods. For in whatever way these elements are moved, they are certainly bodily, and therefore, since they can be destroyed, they cannot be gods. Then again, even if they moved themselves, they nevertheless received the principle of their motion from another, Who, though He is not seen, is the first author of all motions, and therefore the true and only God.

Nor does Tertullian allow it to be objected to him that the Greek name Θεὸς is in fact derived from the running and motion with which the elements are endowed (ch. 4). For the true name of God signifies, not some quality that is seen by our eyes, as running and motion are, but supreme majesty and substance. And what of this, that many heathen proclaimed a good many of their gods to be immovable? Moreover, no one will ever deny that the elements are composed of matter, which the most simple nature of God cannot admit. And indeed Zeno separated the matter of the world from God, and thought that He passes through it as honey through the combs. But tell me, please, on what ground the physicists assert that the world and the elements contained in it are gods? For Plato holds that this world is round and without a head. Epicurus, on the other hand, said: What is above us, is it nothing to us? and blurted out that the sun is only a foot across; the Peripatetics, on the contrary, supposed it to be far larger than the whole circle of the earth. Is it not, then, the height of madness to fashion such gods? Finally, Thales of Miletus, while searching the sky, fell into a well. And what does that fall show, if not that the curiosity of the physicists was vain, who, searching into the nature of things to no purpose, did not know its true Maker, the almighty God?

Varro insisted that divinity must be ascribed to the elements, by which they either bind men to themselves with the greatest benefits or oppress them with misfortunes (ch. 5). But Tertullian answers that the elements are only the instruments of prosperous or adverse things, and that the true

God, Whom they serve, is the author of those things. For just as the healing of a sick man is to be attributed not to the medicines but to the physician, and the death of a man not to the sword or the lance but to the robber or the enemy, so prosperity and adversity are to be ascribed not to the elements but to God, the just judge of merits. It is moreover certain that the elements are diminished, perish, and are ruled by someone (ch. 6). But the true God can neither be diminished nor suffer anything, and He rules and governs all things.

Tertullian then passes to the second kind of gods, which Varro was pleased to name mythical, or of the poets (ch. 7). The poets fashioned these gods to be heroes who, after passing through the mortal life of men, obtained by illustrious deeds the reward of divinity. On this very bad precedent the Romans likewise proclaimed their kings gods, while others swore falsely [to it]. But who, pray, had those gods of the poets been? Men, assuredly, begotten of base or criminal origin, who throughout the course of their life wallowed in every kind of crime. For this reason Plato judged that the poets, and Homer himself, should be driven from the city as wicked accusers of the gods. Indeed the heathen, however shameless, when the Christians reproached them with such great infamy of their gods, answered nothing else than that these were mere fables of the poets. But though they cried out that they did not believe the poets, yet they not only venerated the gods fashioned by them, Ceres, the Idaean Mother, Saturn, Hercules, but also offered horrible sacrifices to them. Who, then, will not admit that these gods of the poets were worshipped and paraded by the heathen not without the utmost impiety?

Certainly no less foolish was the third kind of gods, which Varro taught to be gentile, or popular (ch. 8). For these gods were none other than those which certain peoples adopted at their own will and pleasure, and which others did not distinguish by sight, nor by hearing, nor even by name. Such Tertullian records: Atargartis, Caelestis, Versutina, Obodas, Dusares, Belenus, Delventinus, Visidianus, Numentinus, Ancharia, Praeveris and Nortia. And he thinks it came about by the same licence that the Egyptians, who worshipped beasts, held and honoured the patriarch Joseph as a god under the name of Serapis. Rightly, then, he concludes from what has been said that those gods of the peoples are most false; since the only true God, present everywhere and Lord of all, is to be worshipped and adored by all alike.

In the second part of this book he explodes and overturns the gods of the Romans in particular (ch. 9). Varro had divided them preposterously into doubtful, certain and chosen. For who, says our author, unless out of his mind, honours an uncertain and doubtful god? And he who holds and venerates certain and selected gods surely spurns and rejects the others. That division of the gods is therefore absurd; they could have been distinguished a little better into common and proper. But the first, or common ones, are the same as the public and adventitious gods, who are comprised in the physical or mythical kind of gods which we have just mentioned and refuted. There remain, therefore,

only the proper gods of the Romans, who either had been carried off from conquered enemies and brought to Rome, or were the penates and lares which each man worshipped in his private house with his own particular rite. But these were all men, who on account of certain outstanding deeds were made gods after death by a plainly foolish consecration. But what, says Tertullian, were the merits of one of them, Aeneas for example? Was it piety towards his father and son? But he either betrayed his country, as Antenor did, or, by deserting it in flames and leaving Priam and Astyanax behind, did not imitate the Punic woman who threw herself with her sons into the fires of her burning city. Was he better than the Romans, who swore for the safety of the princes against their children and wives? Moreover, if he merited anything by carrying his father on his shoulders, did not the Argive youths draw their mother like yoked beasts, lest she should commit an offence in the sacred rites? If he fed his father, did not a certain daughter, with greater piety, put her breasts to her father when he was in prison? Those, then, were more worthy of divine honours than the cowardly and timid Aeneas, who never appeared again after the battle of Laurentum. Did Romulus too merit the honour of divinity, who killed his own brother and carried off other men's maidens? Ought Hercules, for clearing out the dung of Augeas, Penelope for her chastity, Sanctus for his hospitality, to have obtained the rights of divinity rather than Sterculus, than the daughter of Faunus, than Ulysses?

And what is to be said of other gods far more shameful? What divinity, I beseech you, is there in Larentina, a public harlot and the nurse of Romulus? What in the woman who, violated by the temple-keeper of Hercules after a ridiculous game, boasted that she had been lain with by Hercules himself, though he was already dead? Who could patiently bear that the infamous Antinous should be held a god by the Romans? Yet they devised other gods no less shameful, whom they most foolishly proclaimed to preside over marriages and the begetting of children. Such are Consevius, Fluvionia, Vitumnus, Sentinus, Diespiter, Candelifera, Prosa, Farmus, Albana, Runcinia, Potina, Edula, Abeona, Domiduca, Volumnus, Voleta, Paventina, Venilia, Volupia, Praestitia, Peragenor, Consus, Juventa, Fortuna, Barbata, Afferenda, Mutunus, Tutunus, Pertunda, Subigus, Prema, and others whose offices even the least sense of shame forbids us to call by their names (ch. 10, 11).

Further, in order to cut down all the gods of the Romans at one stroke, Tertullian attacks their very origin, which Varro begins from Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, but which must be traced back to Saturn, their parent (ch. 12). He, however, could never have been a god, much less his sons, since he, born of Caelus or Chronos and of Earth, is said to have castrated his father. Nor is it to be said that these things are explained allegorically of time and the fruitfulness of the earth. For the most famous writers, Cassius Severus, Cornelius Nepos, Tacitus, Diodorus and others, assert most plainly that Saturn was in truth a man who, having travelled through various parts of the world, was received in Oenotria or Italy, and to the mountain and the city where

he had fixed his seat, and to the whole of Italy, gave his own name. And because he had landed as if unexpectedly, and his parents were not known, he was said to have fallen from heaven. And so that the heathen should not dare to mutter anything, he confirms this by the testimony of the Sibyl, which they accepted.

Since, therefore, no room is given for doubting that Saturn was a man, it is with certainty inferred that those whom the heathen confessed to have sprung from him, and afterwards to have died and been buried, were in fact men (ch. 13). But dead men cannot be gods unless they have received their divinity either from themselves or from others. From themselves they do not have it. For they would not have allowed themselves to be men first, subject to so many and so great human infirmities. Nor were they endowed with supreme divinity by any other, unless by one more powerful than all the other fictitious gods, who therefore ought to be called the only true God. Next, no cause whatever can be assigned why the true God should have made other gods. Not, surely, that they might be a help or an ornament to Him. For the almighty God needs no one's aid or adornment. Nor did He make any men gods on account of their merits. For what did Saturn merit, the devourer of his own sons; or Jupiter, withdrawn from his father's fury, the adulterer with his sister, who is said to have put on the form of a bull, of a golden shower, of a swan and other forms in order to commit other debaucheries and adulteries more safely? Men of this sort, so impious and wicked, therefore never merited divinity.

Nor, again, are those gods whom Dionysius the Stoic distinguishes into born and made (ch. 14). For Tertullian overturns this most foolish opinion by the single example of Hercules, but one that plainly suffices. For Hercules was not worthy of divinity because he slew wild beasts, since more are killed by gladiators; nor yet because he ran through the circle of the earth, for Asclepiades the Cynic and many philosophers, with the greater toil of beggary, travelled through all the parts of the whole world. Is he a god, then, because he went down to the underworld? But to whom among them is the way not open? Let us go on, if you please. Did not that excellent Hercules debauch women? Did he not desert the expedition of the Argonauts because he had lost a boy? Did he not, ensnared by the poisons of a wanton wife, kindle a pyre and bring death upon himself! What man in his senses, then, would believe him to be a god? And how could Aesculapius be proclaimed a god, who, as the Argive Socrates relates, was born of an uncertain father and, for his skill in medicine, was struck by the thunderbolt of Jupiter, as his mother was? Yet the Athenians adore him and his mother, as they do Theseus.

Nor were the Castors, Perseus, Erigone, Jupiter's catamite, that is Ganymede, any more worthy of heaven and divinity, just as neither were the dogs, scorpions and crabs which the Romans transferred to the stars. And who will hear without laughter those names of gods whom the Romans thought set over certain places of cities and houses? For by them they are called Viduus, Caeculus, Orbana, Arguis, Lana, Ascensus, Levicola, Forculus, Cardea, Limentinus, and others set over each several office of life. But these, known almost to the Romans alone, if they were gods

had been, there was no need of all the others (ch. 15).

"But we are plainly ungrateful," said the Romans, "if we deny the honours of divinity to those who discovered for us the necessities of life." Then these honours must be granted, says Tertullian, to Cato, who first brought the green fig to Rome, and to Pompey, who first brought cherries. But nothing is more futile than this reasoning. For God is not the discoverer of fruits, but their true author and creator. And certainly new arts are discovered by men every day; yet no one would say that their discoverers are gods (ch. 16).

The Romans insisted that by their piety and religion towards the gods they had merited dominion over the whole world. Is that really so, says Tertullian? Did foul Sterculus extend the bounds of the Roman empire? Did Jupiter, forgetting the Idaean cave, Crete his fatherland, and the most pleasant odour of his nurse, prefer the Capitol to these? Did Juno, wholly unmindful of Carthage, which she had once set above Samos, wish it to be overthrown by the Romans? But these and the other unwarlike gods had no power at all against the fates, nor could they defend their own cities and provinces against the arms of their enemies.

Moreover, the Roman empire was founded before there were any images, worship and rites of the gods, which were introduced afterwards by Numa Pompilius. That empire therefore grew by wars, and consequently by an equal slaughter of priests and citizens, an equal ruin of things sacred and profane, and by as many sacrileges as trophies and triumphs. Finally, who does not know that the kingdoms of the Assyrians, Medes, Persians and Egyptians were utterly overthrown, though they worshipped their gods with no less piety than the Romans? God alone, therefore, one and almighty, disposes kingdoms, and by no means the gods of the Romans or of other nations, who are agreed to be as much man-made as are the false and vain religions of those by whom they are worshipped (ch. 17).

ARTICLE III.

By various weighty reasons it is shown that Tertullian is the author of these books, and the novel opinion of Hoornbeek, who denies it, is refuted.

Jerome has testified to us that, besides the Apologeticum, other books To the Gentiles were published by Tertullian, about which he wrote to Magnus in these words: "What is more learned than Tertullian? What more exact? His Apologeticum and his books against the Gentiles contain the whole learning of the age" (Jerome, Letter 83 to Magnus, p. 656). And who would not see that the books we are dealing with are meant, and are distinguished from the Apologeticum? For although in Agobard's codex, of which we must speak below, they are entitled To the Nations, who will deny that the title is the same as To the Gentiles?

To this is added Augustine, who, in refuting an opinion of our Tertullian, cited these books under his name, albeit somewhat obscurely: "I do not say," he says, "what Tertullian said perhaps more wittily than truly: If gods are selected like bulbs, then surely the rest are judged rejects." (Augustine, City of God, Book VII, ch. 1, p. 162.) We know indeed that to some it has seemed that his Apologeticum is cited there. But others have held it as settled that no other books are cited there than

the books To the Nations; so that they wished to correct the text of those books from it. And certainly we shall show later that Augustine there had in view these books of our author rather than the Apologeticum.

Moreover, these books in the old manuscript codex of Agobard are more than once inscribed with Tertullian's very name. For on its second page we read this: "Here are the books of Tertullian: To the Nations, Book I. Likewise To the Nations, Book II." At the end of the first book too: "Tertullian's To the Nations, Book I, ends. The second book To the Nations begins." Further, the scribe of this codex wrote on its first page in larger letters: "Book offered at the altar of St Stephen by the vow of Agobard, Bp.", that is, Bishop. This, they say, is that same Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, who flourished in the age of Charlemagne and his sons, at the beginning of the ninth century. That codex was therefore copied at that time from another, doubtless older one, in which, and undoubtedly in several others, these books likewise had Tertullian's name prefixed. It was therefore the common opinion, not only in that age of Agobard but in earlier centuries too, that Tertullian was the author of these books To the Nations.

But even if we lacked a reason of such strength, yet the subject of these books, their age, and above all the kind of style and writing, and their very great affinity with the Apologeticum, demonstrate that they came from Tertullian. For from the very analysis of them already set out by us it is most evidently plain that their writer is wholly bent on this, to make it manifest to all that Christians were most unjustly harassed by the heathen against the provisions of all the laws, and falsely accused of those crimes of which the Gentiles themselves were in truth guilty. These books were therefore written in Tertullian's own age, when the heathen were still raging against the Christians with a fury as blind as it was unbridled. Finally, nothing is said in them, whether about the Christians or about the Gentiles, that does not suit Tertullian's age and point to his very time.

The singular style of these books, too, and their unusual kind of expressions and words, plainly show that Tertullian is their true parent. For his peculiar diction, his own and unlike that of others, flashes out everywhere in them, and is detected very quickly by any reader whatever. Moreover, there occur in them quite often not only the same peculiar and unusual words of Tertullian as in the Apologeticum, but even the same whole periods. Nor is there need to prove this by a long induction, since it is readily evident and will become manifest to all from what is to be said later. And does not so great an affinity and connection of the two sets of books show clearly enough that they were composed by one and the same writer, namely Tertullian?

We are therefore astonished at a certain more recent writer, a man of great name certainly among his own people, who boldly pronounces that it plainly does not seem to him that Tertullian is really the author of these books. But by what weighty reasons, do you think? By hardly any others than the very ones by which they are chiefly claimed for him: "Tertullian does not seem to me," he says, "to be the author; neither his style and matter,

which, being almost the same as in Tertullian's Apologeticum, were rather drawn from there, and shaped after him by some imitator of Tertullian, perhaps, or some admirer" (Hoornbeek, Book I on the theology of the Fathers, ch. 1, § 10, p. 106). Truly new and strange is that kind of argument! The style, says that learned man, and the matter of the Apologeticum and of the books To the Nations are the same; therefore these books were composed not by Tertullian, but by an imitator or admirer of his. What if we likewise conclude from this that the Apologeticum was produced not by him but by an imitator or admirer of his? Will he answer that this book is assigned to Tertullian by other writers? But we have just shown that those books To the Nations are also ascribed to him by others.

Then again that learned man admits with us, what he cannot deny, that the style of these books and of the Apologeticum is the same. But neither he nor anyone else will ever deny that Tertullian's style and manner of speaking are so proper and peculiar to him that hardly, or not even hardly, could anyone ever have imitated it. Must it not, then, be concluded from this with far better right, as the more skilful critics are wont to do, that the same Tertullian is truly the parent of these three books?

Hoornbeek insists that their matter and their subject are, moreover, the same. But what follows from that? Could not the same Christian author compose two different books on the same subject, and above all in defence of the Christian religion, harassed by the heathen with as much injustice as cruelty, or, revising what he had written, remake, correct, enlarge or shorten it? He who objects these things to us will certainly never deny it. For he himself, like all the others, openly confesses that Tertullian is the true author of the book To Scapula. Yet in this book the subject is the same as in the Apologeticum and in the two books To the Nations, namely the cause of the Christians most unjustly harassed, though it is treated more briefly. Moreover, the books To the Nations are addressed to other persons than the Apologeticum and the book To Scapula. And what of the fact, which we shall show a little later, that many other things are treated in the Apologeticum than in the books To the Nations, and vice versa? Finally, we shall show that Tertullian was compelled by strong reasons to write these books after the Apologeticum.

Hoornbeek presses, however, that the author of the first book To the Nations said that two hundred years had not yet elapsed since Christ was born, whereas in the book On Monogamy about a hundred and sixty (Tertullian, On Monogamy, ch. 3). But he strives in vain to confirm very light reasons with another far lighter. For even if it were established that no error of the copyists lay beneath the copying of the numbers, and it were certain that the beginning of these years is reckoned from Christ Himself, it still cannot be concluded from this that the books To the Nations are to be denied to Tertullian. For in the very first of them we read: "Not yet CCL years of our age" (the same, Book I To the Nations, ch. 7). And not much later: "As we set forth above, not yet three hundred years of our age" (ibid., ch. 9). Would you then say that this book was not published by one and the same author? Who

man of sound mind ever argued thus? Who would not see that it could truly be said by the same writer, when not acting as a chronographer, that 200 years had not yet run since Christ, and elsewhere that about CLX years had elapsed? But we should indeed be ashamed and weary to refute so empty and singular an opinion, if some had not later seemed to subscribe to this new author, whom they extol with great praises.

ARTICLE IV.

At what time these books came out into public light.

At exactly what time Tertullian applied himself to composing these books To the Nations is neither ready nor easy to say. Yet certain marks and indications of date present themselves to us in them. For in the first book we read of a sentence passed a little before by Fuscianus, prefect of the City, against a certain father who, having exposed his newborn son, afterwards, when time had passed, debauched him, no longer known to him and bought by himself (Tertullian, Book I To the Nations, ch. 16). Now Capitolinus mentions Fuscianus, prefect of the City, whom Pertinax next succeeded (Capitolinus, Life of Pertinax, after the beginning). And this man, made emperor at the beginning of the year 193, was killed after about three months. Tertullian must therefore be said to have published these books not long after the death of Pertinax.

Nor should you object that he wrote in the same book: "Not yet 250 years of our age," that is, from the rise of the Christian religion (Tertullian, Book I To the Nations, ch. 7). For later still he wrote: "As we set forth above, not yet three hundred years of our age" (ibid., ch. 5). Nothing at all certain and settled can therefore be concluded from it. For he doubtless preferred to assign the larger number of years, so as to give the heathen no room for cavilling. Besides, from those two numbers, "not yet 250" and "300 years", so unequal, what certain thing can be gathered? And if you wish to gather anything from it, you will first have to determine in what year Tertullian placed the beginning of the Christian era.

Some therefore think that the date of these books can be recognized more certainly from other words of his, in which he addresses the heathen thus: "From you nations come daily Caesars, and Parthici, and Medici, and Germanici" (ibid., ch. 17). But these words, they say, look to Caracalla, who, having conquered the Germans and Parthians, was distinguished in the year 216 with the surname of Germanicus and Parthicus. Not badly indeed, if these honorific surnames had been given to Caracalla alone.

More clearly, then, the date of these books is indicated by these following words of our Author: "Syria still breathes with the stench of corpses; Gaul still washes in its Rhône" (ibid.). For there, beyond doubt, Pescennius Niger and Clodius Albinus are meant, who, having revolted from the Emperor Severus, the one in Syria, the other in Gaul, were routed and slain with their forces. Now these things, which are recorded in the Apologeticum of the same Tertullian, happened in the year 194 or 195, or rather in the year 197, as we explained more fully above

(above, ch. III, art. 2). Tertullian must therefore be said to have published these books To the Nations, like the Apologeticum, a little after this year.

But some, from his following words, "The character of the times of [ancient] robu[stness] may have demanded harder temperaments; but now the tranquillity of peace has also [made] temperaments milder" (ibid., ch. 18), think it can be concluded that these things were written by him when the Christians, at the beginning of Severus's reign, were enjoying the longed-for tranquillity of peace and leisure. But that Severus stirred up a persecution against them by edicts issued in the year 202. Before that, therefore, they say, Tertullian had composed these books.

But it must be observed that with these words he brought in the heathen wrongly objecting that the temperaments of their ancestors had been harder, being more prepared to bear patiently any tortures, even the bitterest, than other men of his own age, whose temperaments the tranquillity of peace and leisure had made milder. If, however, you contend that these very words of our Author are to be understood of a true peace of the Christian Church, and prove it, we shall readily agree with you. Yet no one will deny that from what has been said above it is more certainly gathered that these books To the Nations and the Apologeticum came out into public light not long after the year 197. But which of them came out first is another controversy among the learned, which we must now examine.

ARTICLE V.

Whether these two books To the Nations were written before or after Tertullian's Apologeticum.

Those who maintain that the two books To the Nations were written after the Apologeticum try to establish their opinion by a threefold reason. First, they suspect that the Apologeticum was published about the year two hundred, at the beginning of the persecution stirred up by the emperor Severus against the Christians, but the books To the Nations when Caracalla's reign was already advanced, and after this emperor had received the name of Parthicus and Germanicus. But we have already shown that the foundation of this latter assertion about Caracalla totters completely.

Their second reason is that the defence of the Christians, which comprises the whole subject both of the Apologeticum and of the books To the Nations, is treated more fully in these than in that. But we shall show later how little like the truth this conjecture is.

The third reason they take from words and periods which occur in other books that Tertullian published after his defection to the Montanists. As if other things similar to these were not also found in his other books, and especially in the Apologeticum, where they admit that far more of the same things occur as in the books To the Nations.

But as weak as these reasons are, so strong seem to us others which can be drawn from these very books To the Nations. For in them Tertullian more than once promises that he will explain many things elsewhere. But lest some allege that something doubtful and uncertain is being brought forward, we shall not press what Tertullian added straight after he had proved that the Christians were harassed solely for their name: "But while this reason is shown in its place,

do you set out the reason which you pursue for the overthrow of the name" (Tertullian, Book I To the Nations, ch. 3). For there he expressly promises nothing to be treated by him later, but seems to us to have indicated that the matter itself had been sufficiently explained by him.

But in clearer words indeed he pledges that elsewhere he will set up a longer disputation on the future resurrection of bodies and on the eternal rewards or punishments of men after death. For he speaks in this manner: "We shall see about the credibility of these things when they are set out in their place" (ibid., ch. 7), that is, when they are arranged and prepared to be committed to writing. And where did he set out and deliver this against the follies of the heathen? Not in these books To the Nations, but towards the end of his Apologeticum, which you would not undeservedly say he meant rather than any other book (the same, Apologeticum, ch. 48 and 49).

Then, next, where he refutes other calumnies of the heathen, who kept crying out that the Christians were the cause of every public disaster: "Afterwards," he says, "they will be beaten down by the exposition of our whole discipline" (the same, Book I To the Nations, ch. 10). But tell me, I pray, where he set out this Christian doctrine to wash away these accusations of the Gentiles. Certainly not in these books To the Nations, but in several chapters of the Apologeticum, as is plain even from the analysis of this book alone which we gave above (the same, Apologeticum, ch. 17, 18 and following).

Moreover, he promises that he will at some time prove false the teachings about God not only of the heathen poets but also of those who profess the art of divination: "For this point," he says, "is to be touched on lightly now; an account of it will be rendered in its place" (the same, Book II To the Nations, ch. 5). In which book, then, did he render that account by which the foolish accusations of the Gentiles are refuted? Was it not in the Apologeticum, where we read it set out at length (the same, Apologeticum, ch. 21 and 22)?

What more? Where he again beats back the audacity of the Gentiles, who most shamelessly charged the Christians with infanticide, he addresses them in these words: "If it has gone from your memory what [you are said] to have done by the slaughter of a man and what by infanticides, you will recognize it in its order. For now we defer most things, lest we seem to go over the same things everywhere" (Book II To the Nations, ch. 15). You certainly see two things expressly stated there by our Author. First, that it was to be demonstrated more fully by himself that the Gentiles were guilty of homicide and infanticide. Yet nowhere does he demonstrate this more at length than in the Apologeticum. Secondly, he openly declares that he has deferred many things, to be worked out more fully by him elsewhere, so as not to repeat and go over the same things in other books. But where, I ask, did he argue these things against the Gentiles more copiously than in the Apologeticum?

Who then, when all the things we have related are accurately weighed, will not admit that Tertullian, when he was writing these books To the Nations, sent us to his Apologeticum, which he was then planning to compose (above, ch. III, art. 1)? The books To the Nations were therefore published by him before the Apologeticum. And from the date we have assigned to the latter it can be gathered clearly enough that he, to discharge the pledge he had given of writing the Apologeticum, did not