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

put a long space of time between, and could not bear delay, but must, by pleading the cause of the Christians before their governors, judges and magistrates as he had before all the nations, make their innocence plain to all. If, then, the book of the Apologeticum was sent out into public light about the year of Christ 200, as we have said, these two books To the Nations had been published a little before (ibid.).

ARTICLE VI.

On the subject of these books, and whether it is treated more fully and more perfectly in them than in the Apologeticum.

In the preceding article we quoted several words of Tertullian, in which he testifies that he had passed over in these books To the Nations many things which he had decided to explain more fully in the Apologeticum. But these things plainly contradict the opinion of those who contend that the subject of these treatises is handled more copiously, more perfectly and in better order in the books To the Nations than in the Apologeticum. For by I know not what reasoning they had persuaded themselves that the author's keen, vehement, sharp genius and his fiery acumen sparkle everywhere throughout these books, but that, carried away by its violent impulse, he wrote many things that are not sufficiently thought out, polished and refined. But this opinion plainly collapses if the Apologeticum came from him after the books To the Nations, as we have seen.

Moreover, it is certain that many things of great weight indeed are argued in the Apologeticum which are omitted in the books To the Nations, although some things in turn are read in these books and not at all in that. And so that these things may become plainer and clearer to all, we have thought it right to set out an index of the chapters in which the same things are treated. For from it everyone will easily judge in what respects these books differ from one another.

INDEX OF THE CHAPTERS

In which the Apologeticum and the books To the Nations agree with one another.

First book To the Nations. — Apologeticum.

Chapter 1. — Ch. 1.

Chapter 2. — Ch. 2.

Chapter 3. — Ch. 2 and 3.

Chapter 4. — Ch. 3 and 46.

Chapter 6. — Ch. 4.

Chapter 7. — Ch. 7 and 8.

Chapter 8. — Ch. 8, not the whole.

Chapter 9. — Ch. 40 and 41.

Chapter 10. — Ch. 12, 13, 14 and 15.

Chapters 11, 12, 13 and 14. — Ch. 16.

Chapters 14, 15 and 16. — Ch. 9.

Chapter 17. — Ch. 35.

Chapter 18. — Ch. 50.

Chapter 19. — Ch. 47, 48, 49.

Second book To the Nations. — Apologeticum.

Chapter 12. — Ch. 10.

Chapter 17. — Ch. 25.

You see indeed from this index that with the Apologeticum there agrees

the first book To the Nations, if you except its fifth chapter, in which the argument drawn by the heathen from certain bad Christians is refuted, and its last chapter, which is the conclusion of the whole book. The second book To the Nations, however, is divided into seventeen chapters, of which fifteen have nothing in common with the Apologeticum. In the first eight of these fifteen chapters Tertullian assails and hisses off the threefold kind of gods devised by Varro, physical, mythical and plebeian, and in the seven later ones the vaunted gods of the Romans.

But of the fifty chapters of the Apologeticum not even half agrees with the two books To the Nations. It differs from them in the rest, in which Tertullian explains and asserts how true are the teachings of the Christians, how chaste and uncorrupted their morals, how pious and holy their solemn assemblies, and how religious their synaxes. But of these things there is nothing in the books To the Nations. In a word, in these books there is shown the innocence of the Christians, most unjustly harassed, and the injustice, depravity, corruption and perversity of religion of the heathen, and nothing more. But in the Apologeticum all these things indeed, and besides them the holiness and truth of the Christian religion. Who, then, from this comparison of these books, will be able to deny that their subject is explained and demonstrated far more fully and perfectly in the Apologeticum than in the books To the Nations?

ARTICLE VII.

On the title of the books To the Nations; why they were written by Tertullian, and to whom they were addressed; on their single manuscript codex, the various editions, and the notes and observations of certain persons on them.

It was observed by us that these books are entitled To the Nations in Agobard's codex (above, this chapter, art. 3), but are cited by Jerome under the name of books To the Gentiles, and that the meaning of both titles is the same. Since, however, those to whom these books are addressed are called by Tertullian himself Nations, or wretched or pitiable nations, the inscription prefixed in Agobard's codex certainly seems preferable on this account (Tertullian, Book I To the Nations, ch. 1, and Book II, ch. 1).

But some think it can be gathered from this heading that these books were addressed to the people and common folk of the heathen, but the Apologeticum to their magistrates, judges and rulers. And as to this Apologeticum, the matter is certain and placed beyond controversy. Yet what prevents the two books To the Nations from having been written to all the heathen whatsoever, to the peoples as well as to the judges and governors? Does not Tertullian in them inveigh not only against the common people of the Gentiles but also against the judges who, against the prescribed form of equity and of all the laws, condemned the Christians undefended and unheard? Can it not be said, then, that Tertullian, when he saw this injustice and extreme cruelty of the heathen, first addressed these books To the Nations, that is, to all Gentiles whatsoever, so as to recall them, if it could be done, to a sounder mind. But because he had achieved nothing, or certainly little, then to

the judges and governors by name he sent his Apologeticum, to compel them to examine the cause of the Christians, so that they might not condemn the innocent with that cause unheard. How much weight these reasons have, let fair judges of things weigh and pronounce.

As many and frequent as are the books of the Apologeticum, so rare are the manuscript codices of these books To the Nations (above, ch. II, art. 1). For only one survives to us, which Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, as they say and as we have already noted, had offered at the altar of St Stephen. But that codex is so corrupted in most of its margins by mould, filth or rainwater that the last letters of the lines can no longer be read. Quite often, therefore, unless a more correct codex is found, no healing hand can be brought to the corrupted places, nor the author's sense be plainly grasped.

In that old codex, moreover, the whole work is written in one continuous course and without any division into chapters. But Jacques Godefroy divided it into various chapters and added arguments and summaries of the chapters. Rigault, however, omitting these, kept only the division into chapters, marked in the margin by their numbers alone. Anyone, therefore, is free, if he so judges, to change this division of the chapters and their arguments.

First of all, the same Godefroy in the year 1625 had these books printed separately, just as they are written in the aforesaid codex of Agobard. Afterwards Rigault published them with the other works of Tertullian, and asserts that he corrected them seventy-eight times. But he would certainly have done us a kindness had he deigned to say whence he received all these corrections. For he did not take them from Agobard's single codex, which, though printed in perfect good faith by Godefroy, Rigault seems never to have read. For, to pass over more, between these words, "to its lover among you", he left an empty space, as Godefroy did, as if something were missing (Tertullian, Book II To the Nations, ch. 10). But in the manuscript codex nothing is missing, and all is sound and entire. He did not, therefore, examine this codex, but only the edition of the same Godefroy. From the latter's conjectures, then, which he had deliberately added in his notes, Rigault drew these emendations, as he calls them, and boldly thrust them, and many others devised by himself, sometimes well, more often badly, into the text of these books, just as if they were his own. It would indeed be too long to set out here all those which one of our brethren is seriously planning to present with a new edition of the works of Tertullian. Several, however, which are of greater weight, we shall note below in a more suitable place. Finally, about the last edition of these books, prepared by Priorius, we have nothing more to say, since he followed Rigault's step by step.

Further, by those whom we have mentioned as in charge of the editions of these books To the Nations, notes and observations were written on them. And Godefroy published more than the others, with which he [strove] to explain the copyist's errors and Tertullian's words, though sometimes not so very obscure, or to confirm them by similar sayings of his own and of others

strives. Fewer were written by Rigault, in his own manner and fashion, of which we have said enough above; Priorius had them reprinted, and added to them one from Pamelius and others of his own devising. And how much weight they have, learned men have pronounced more than once.

CHAPTER V.

On Tertullian's book To Scapula.

ARTICLE ONE.

Analysis of this book.

This book, or rather petition, Tertullian addressed to Scapula, proconsul of Africa, to deter him, if it could ever be done, from torturing and butchering the Christians against all right and law (Tertullian, To Scapula, ch. 1). First he declares that this petition was written by him not because he feared for the Christians, who bore their punishments with a willing and eager mind, but for the Gentiles, their enemies, whom the same Christians were bound, on this ground alone, to love and to pray to God for them. Therefore he considered it his duty to make plain to all that the Christians were wholly innocent, and that the Gentiles were in truth offending in that very kind of crimes for which they falsely blamed them.

For they do not worship fictitious gods, as those do, but the true and only God, Whom all naturally know and revere. Christians, therefore, ought not to be compelled to worship another, since it is not for religion to compel religion. Nor can any gods that are feigned desire sacrifices from the unwilling. The Christians, then, who refuse to worship the gods, are quite undeservedly accused of impiety or sacrilege, or theft, or sedition. But the heathen, who plunder the temples of their gods with impunity, despise and mock them.

And what of the fact that in the Albinian, Nigrian and Cassian seditions, at that very time, the only men found were those who swore by the genii of the Emperors and immolated victims and made sacrifices for their safety? But the Christians are plainly nobody's enemies, much less the emperor's, whom they know to be appointed by God, and therefore sincerely honour, and wish to be safe and unharmed together with the whole Roman empire. Yet they do not venerate him after the manner of the Gentiles, as a god, but because he is greater than all the false gods, and less than the true God alone, Whom therefore they entreat for his safety with a daily sacrifice of prayers. Besides, although the multitude of these same Christians is very great, they are nevertheless individually recognized hardly otherwise than by their modesty, silence and amendment of their former vices (ch. 2).

Nor, says Tertullian, do they bear with a restless or impatient mind the punishments inflicted on them by the heathen, vengeance for which they await from God. But they grieve indeed that signs of that vengeance, already imminent, have already been sent before: namely the harvests lost lately under the governor Hilarianus, excessive and unseasonable rains, nocturnal fires hanging over the walls of Carthage, unwonted thunders, and a wholly extraordinary eclipse of the sun. And Vigellius Saturninus, who first in Africa had ordered Christians

to be killed, was deprived of the light of his eyes. In Cappadocia too Claudianus Herminianus died of a plague, with worms swarming out of him, even though by a repentance far too late he had almost become a Christian. Finally Caecilius Capella, when at the exitus, or rather the ruin, of Byzantium he had cried out in insult to the Christians, "Rejoice!", paid the penalty of his shamelessness and cruelty. And if any governors of this kind escaped unpunished, they will be punished at the last judgement of God. Scapula, then, says our author, had reason to fear, because shortly before that ruin of Byzantium he had condemned Mavilus of Hadrumetum to the beasts (ch. III).

Yet he earnestly warns him that he recalls these things not because he himself fears anything, nor in order to frighten this same Scapula, but because he wishes all to be saved. Therefore he exhorts him to comply with the laws, which direct that no accused person be punished unless he has confessed to crimes or been convicted of them. He then sets before him the examples of Cincius Severus, Vespronius Candidus, Asper and Pudens, who had refused to condemn innocent Christians. And how he might imitate them, his advocates could suggest to him, on whom the Christians had conferred benefits that were certainly not the least. For they had not only cast out demons from their notary and from another of their relatives, but had also wonderfully healed others afflicted with diseases.

Moreover the emperor Severus, father of Antoninus, who had been reared on Christian milk, having once likewise been healed with oil which Proculus Torpacion, a Christian and steward of Euhodia, had given him, not only kept him in his palace until his death, but never harmed women and men of the highest rank who were likewise followers of the Christian religion, and he withstood the populace when it raged openly against the Christians. Marcus Aurelius too, on the German campaign, obtained by the prayers of the Christians rain utterly necessary to his army, they who had obtained it on other occasions too in a like case.

What, then, is more unjust than to order that Christians, who devote diligent effort to all the virtues, be not only struck with the sword, as by the governors of the legion and of Mauretania, according to the prescription of the ancient laws, but even burnt alive? But Tertullian openly declares that these punishments are more desired by the Christians than feared. For when Arrius Antoninus was raging more cruelly against them, and all in a city of Asia were offering themselves to him of their own accord, he answered: "If you want to die, you have cliffs or ropes." What then will Scapula do with the almost countless Christians of Carthage, with men of his own rank, with relatives and friends, who will offer themselves to him of their own will to be killed? Wherefore he exhorts him to spare Carthage and the province, which he has laid open to the extortions of soldiers and enemies. For God alone is the master of the Christians, Who was before him, and Who can suffer no harm from men; whereas those whom Scapula has as masters are men, who will one day die. Finally, whatever he does, the sect of the Christians will not fail; it grows even at the time when it seems to be cut down. For whoever investigates and recognizes why they so steadfastly [endure] whatever torments

endure, he then recognizes the truth and embraces their religion (ch. IV).

ARTICLE II.

It is shown that Tertullian is the author of this book; by what reasons he was driven to publish it after the Apologeticum and the books Ad Nationes; at what time he wrote it; and concerning certain heathen proconsuls and prefects who dealt with the Christians either more cruelly or more mildly.

All indeed acknowledge, with great and unanimous consent, that Tertullian is the true parent of this book. And who would dare to deny what the book itself, the whole of it, openly attests? For there is in it the same manner of speaking as in the Apologeticum and in the books Ad Nationes, the same peculiar expressions proper to Tertullian, the same singular words, for the most part the same arguments in the defence of the Christians against the heathen. And just as the Apologeticum and the books Ad Nationes were sent either to all the heathen or to their governors, so it is quite certain that this book was addressed to Scapula, prefect of Carthage and of all Africa, whom Tertullian tried to call away from torturing and slaughtering Christians who were wholly innocent.

But what need was there, someone will say, for Tertullian to write another treatise or book against the gentiles and for the Christians besides the Apologeticum and the books Ad Nationes? The monstrous savagery, we say, of Scapula, governor of Africa, against the Christians drove him to present, not indeed this book, but a petition. For although Severus, made emperor in the year of Christ 193, greatly favoured the Christians through the first years of his reign, yet after he had defeated Cassius, Niger and Albinus, and after his solemn entry into the city of Rome in the year 197, he was quite changed in mind. For then, first with his own assent, or at least without his forbidding it, a dreadful persecution against the Christians began to break out afresh. Then, grown angrier, in the year 202 he made new laws against them, by whose authority, says Eusebius, martyrdoms took place everywhere throughout the churches. Africa, therefore, no less than the other provinces, was ravaged by that heat of most cruel harassment (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book VI, ch. II, p. 201; Jerome, Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, § 54, p. 115).

But Tertullian, ever anxious for the safety of the Christians, had, as we have said, published the Apologeticum and the books Ad Nationes before these laws were given, by the reading of which the fury of the gentiles against the Christians, however inflamed, ought beyond doubt to have been calmed (Eusebius, ibid., ch. I, p. 201). But no weight of reasons whatever, clearer even than the noonday sun, could quench it, nor prevent the Christians in Africa from being tortured to death under the most unjust laws passed by Severus. Wherefore Tertullian presented this further petition to Scapula, proconsul of that province, by which he [sought to move] him both by the heaviest weight of arguments, and by the domestic and illustrious [examples] of other governors, and also of emperors

examples, he might call him away from harassing and torturing the Christians.

This book, moreover, supplies us with several arguments by which it is quite plainly established that it was written after the persecution of the emperor Severus against the Christians had arisen. For the examples are set out there of certain governors who, having inflicted various punishments on the Christians during that time, had already paid the penalty of their cruelty. And Tertullian begins thus with Hilarianus: "Under the governor Hilarianus, when they had cried out about our burial grounds, 'Let them have no areae', they themselves had no areae; for they did not gather in their harvests" (Tertullian, To Scapula, ch. III). There, by an antithesis not at all inept, he sets the area, that is, the empty place or barren field in which the dead were buried, against the area, the threshing floor on which the crops are threshed and beaten out. He said, therefore, that at the time when the heathen were raging more fiercely against the Christians and crying out that a burial ground must be denied them, those same heathen then lacked the harvests and the grain to thresh on their own threshing floors. And he openly asserts that this barrenness happened when Hilarianus was governor of Africa. Now from the Acts of the holy martyrs Perpetua and Felicity, which have been printed as true and genuine by many, and lastly by the associates of Bolland and by our own Thierry Ruinart, we learn that these most holy martyrs were exposed to the beasts by order of the procurator Hilarianus, "who then", as is read there, "had received the right of the sword in the place of the deceased proconsul Minucius Firmianus" (Bollandists, 7 [March], Martyrs, p. 633 ff.; Ruinart, Acts of the Martyrs, ch. LXXXV ff.). Some think they were crowned with martyrdom in the year 202; others, 203; others, 205; beyond doubt after the persecution had been set in motion by the emperor Severus. Moreover, Tertullian himself recorded this of Perpetua in another book: "Perpetua, most valiant martyr, on the day of her passion, in a revelation of paradise saw there only her fellow martyrs" (Tertullian, On the Soul, ch. LV). We learn too from Augustine, who quite often mentions her and Felicity, that the feast day of both was celebrated every year in Africa. Is it not, then, plainly enough established from this that these women won the palm of martyrdom in Africa while Hilarianus was discharging the office of proconsul there? (Augustine, Sermon 280 ff., p. 1134 ff.).

Next Tertullian says: "Vigilius Saturninus, who first drove the sword against us here, lost his sight" (Tertullian, To Scapula, ch. III). And they judge this to be the proconsul of Africa who in the year 200, or, as others prefer, 205, condemned Speratus and the other Scillitan martyrs to death at Carthage. For we read this set down in writing in the acts of their martyrdom, which, as true and sincere, were brought out into public light first by Baronius, and afterwards, enlarged and corrected, by our own Ruinart (Baronius, at the year of Christ 202, § 2 ff.; Ruinart, Acts of the Martyrs, p. 77 ff.). But Tertullian's addition, that Saturninus was the first in Africa to drive the sword against the Christians, must beyond doubt be understood there [as meaning] after the persecution had been stirred up by the emperor Severus. For beyond all controversy

it seems that many had been put to death before. Tertullian's meaning, therefore, is that the Christians were tortured by Saturninus before [they were] by Hilarianus, and that accordingly in reviewing there the prefects of Africa who were butchers of the Christians he does not follow the order of time.

Less certain, therefore, seems the opinion of those who supposed that Cincius Severus, Vespronius Candidus, Asper and Pudens are named in the same place by our Tertullian, after Hilarianus and Saturninus, in the same order in which each was proconsul of Africa (Tertullian, To Scapula, ch. IV). For he mentions these because they dealt with the Christians as much more mildly as the others did more cruelly. And why should he be said to have kept the order of time in naming these rather than those? Besides, there is room to doubt whether these were governors of Africa; for to Hilarianus and Saturninus, the most dreadful torturers of the Christians, he joined Claudius Herminianus, prefect of Cappadocia. Yet if anyone proves that our author presents the true succession of these men in the proconsulate of Africa, we shall not unwillingly agree with him.

For the rest, he set these examples of milder governors before Scapula's eyes for no other reason than that the governors of Africa, after the laws enacted by the emperor Severus against the Christians, were raging and running riot against them more bitterly (ibid., ch. III). For besides the aforesaid Saturninus and Hilarianus, Scapula himself, as our author testifies in the same place, had not only condemned Mavilus of Hadrumetum to the beasts, but also Christian Africa, with him not restraining it, or ordering it, "was laid open", he says, "to extortions, both of the soldiers and of each man's own enemies" (ibid., ch. IV). And although we cannot determine in what year the aforesaid proconsuls governed Africa, yet from what has been argued so far it can be gathered that this book to Scapula was published by Tertullian after the persecution against the Christians had been set in motion by the emperor Severus.

It remains, then, to inquire whether it was published immediately after that fire was kindled or after it was put out. Some think that it came out to the public after the year 210 and the death of the emperor Severus. For Tertullian there, they say, speaks of a certain eclipse of the sun in this manner: "The sun, at the assize of Utica, its light all but extinguished, was such a portent that it could not have suffered this from an ordinary eclipse, being placed in its hypsoma and house" (ibid., ch. III). And this eclipse, they say, happened in the year of Christ 210, on the eleventh day of April, and at the very hour of noon. But to others the whole foundation of this opinion seems to totter altogether. For those men note an ordinary eclipse of the sun; but Tertullian another altogether extraordinary, which, as he says, had been a portent. For then the sun, he says, was in its hypsoma, that is, its summit, height and peak. For this is what the Greek word ὕψωμα means. But no eclipse of it can happen when it is placed there, since it suffers one only when it passes near the nodes, which occur at the Dragon's head and tail.

And although our Tertullian had been altogether a stranger to the science of astronomy, yet from his words it can be gathered that this failing of the sun was not an ordinary one, but so extraordinary that the astronomers, to whom he sends us, could not deny it.

Therefore Scaliger, setting that reasoning aside, thinks that this book was composed after the death of Caracalla, and when Heliogabalus was already reigning, who was created emperor in the month of May of the year 218. For Tertullian, as we have seen, speaks these words of Severus: "the Christian Proculus ... he kept in his palace until his death, whom Antoninus Caracalla had known very well" (Tertullian, To Scapula, ch. IV). But no one of sound mind, says Scaliger, would think that this was said of Antoninus Caracalla while he was still living (Scaliger, Animadversions on the Chronicle of Eusebius, p. 129).

But those whose mind is sound and whole do not recognize Scaliger's sound mind in this argument. For what prevents Caracalla from having known Proculus as a youth and a young man, and from being still alive when Tertullian was committing these things to writing? Moreover, he uses the word "had known" precisely because Proculus, not Caracalla, was by then in fact dead. So those are no longer to be heeded who, relying on that weak reasoning of Scaliger's yet departing a little from his opinion, suspect that this book was published in the year 217, in which Macrinus reigned. For once the foundation of this opinion is overthrown, the opinion itself also collapses.

Nearer to the truth, therefore, seem those who assign the date of this book to shortly after the year 211, in which Severus is said to have laid down his life and his empire at York in England, in the month of February. For of him Tertullian beyond doubt speaks in this book where he said: "Severus himself too, the father of Antoninus Caracalla, was mindful of the Christians" (Tertullian, To Scapula, ch. IV). For why, they say, is he called "father of Antoninus", unless because he had already departed from this life, and his sons Caracalla and Geta had been put in his place? Does not our Author also allude afterwards to them as already reigning, when he asserted that Scapula had masters of his cruelty against the Christians? And after the death of Severus, or certainly not much later, when Tertullian saw that the fury of Scapula and of others against the Christians had been softened, he seems to have presented this petition to him. For he did not judge that it should be presented while Severus, whose very great clemency towards the Christians in the first years of his reign he had, as we have seen, praised, was raging atrociously against them even to death. But once he had died, it is more likely that he at once seized the opportunity offered him of deterring the proconsul Scapula from harassing the Christians.

ARTICLE III.

On the manuscript and printed copies of this book, on the observations of various scholars on it, and on some variant readings and notes.

Several copies of this little book are pointed out. The first is the Gorze manuscript, which Rhenanus used for his edition of it. Another is called the Angelicus, and besides these three Vatican

manuscripts are mentioned. Gelenius, following the former, and Pamelius, following the latter, revised and corrected the earlier editions of this little book. Rigault further testifies that he saw another in the possession of Pierre Belin, S. C., of Dijon, whose readings differing from the printed ones had fallen into the hands of Pierre Pithou.

This book, moreover, is said never to have come out into public light from the printers' workshops alone, but always with the other works of Tertullian. So there have been as many editions of it as of them. And since we have already discussed these at length, there is no need to repeat it now. Rigault followed Pamelius everywhere, who emended the old editions from three Vatican manuscripts, as he says. For although he had seen the Dijon manuscript, he noted only one variant reading, which he rejected outright. It occurs where we read these words of Tertullian about Proculus in all the editions: "whom Antoninus Caracalla too knew very well, reared on Christian milk" (Tertullian, To Scapula, ch. IV). But in the Dijon manuscript it is written: "whom Antoninus too had known, reared among Christians". By which it is signified that this Proculus, and not Antoninus Caracalla, had been reared on Christian milk.

But Rigault rejects this reading of the Dijon manuscript, because those words of Tertullian must be referred to Antoninus, who, as Spartianus relates, as a boy of seven, "having heard that a boy, his playfellow, had been severely beaten on account of the Jewish religion, for a long time would not look at his own father, nor the boy's father, nor those responsible for the beating" (Spartianus, Life of Caracalla, p. 351, col. 1). And by the name of the Jewish religion Spartianus means the Christian, because the heathen confused the two. Let us add, if you please, that Proculus had been called a Christian by Tertullian himself a little before. So that ought not to have been repeated in these words, "reared among Christians", which appear plainly enough to be corrupt in the Dijon manuscript.

Further, at the beginning of this book, in Pamelius's edition and in others after it, we read this: "We indeed do not take fright ... since we have come to this sect, having of course accepted its terms, on such a compact that we enter these fights even with our lives pledged." But in the first editions it had been written: "We indeed do not take fright ... since, when we come to this sect, having of course accepted its terms, having first covenanted with our life and being pledged, we enter these fights." Laurentius de la Barre alone, however, testifies that he emended these words from the Gorze manuscript. But he ought to have written out the words of the old editions whole in his notes, so that all might more easily recognize whether they are rightly corrected; for they do not seem to be wholly without some sense. For the rest, Tertullian uses there the word auctorati, as he does elsewhere too: "Some", he says, "had hired themselves out to the fires" (Tertullian, To the Martyrs, ch. V, p. 158). And the verb auctorare means to bind oneself either for wages or by oath. In the first words of Tertullian this verb is taken in the second sense, in the later ones in the first. But if you demand that this be proved to you by the testimony of certain writers, first

hear Cicero: "The very wage", he says, "is the bond of servitude" (Cicero, On Duties, book II, p. 274, line 4). And Suetonius relates that Tiberius Caesar gave a show of gladiators with a hiring fee of a hundred thousand [sesterces] (Suetonius, book III, § 7). Seneca too said: "I have handed him over to the ghosts, and to place him next among the newly hired" (Seneca, The Jest on the Death of Claudius, p. 919). And soldiers bound to service by the military oath are quite often called auctorati, and when discharged exauctorati, by Livy and other writers. The other variant readings of this book we shall note below, when the occasion offers.

The notes and observations on this book were written by the same men, and in the same way, as on the Apologeticum. So the same judgement must be passed on all of them as we gave above. Nothing, then, is to be added, except that in these words of Tertullian to Scapula: "When you had condemned Mavilus of Hadrumetum to the beasts, this affliction too followed at once" (Tertullian, To Scapula, ch. III), Rigault thinks the torment of some very acute illness is meant, by which Scapula himself, he says, was afflicted anew for his renewed savagery against the Christians. For Tertullian added straight after: "And now, for the same cause, the interpellation of blood", that is, as the same Rigault thinks, the blood of the Christians had cried out to God and had broken in upon the delays of His patience. But our author said plainly no word, not even the least, about a first or second illness of Scapula. And indeed, if he had suffered once and again from a very acute illness, as Rigault would have it, he would have pressed him far more sharply on that score, so that he might the more easily be brought back to a sounder mind. But leaving this out, he presses and urges him with the examples of other governors and proconsuls who had paid the penalty of their cruelty towards the Christians. We shall therefore more easily be persuaded that those words of Tertullian are to be referred to the ruin of Byzantium, which he mentions in the same place, by which the heathen openly confessed that they had been punished by God for their most unjust cruelty towards those same Christians.

Rigault seems to have departed less from the truth where, in these words of Tertullian, "Proculus, steward of Euhodia" (ibid.), he approves the emendation of Pithou, who suspected that Evodi should be read. But these observations, whether of Rigault or of others, are to be discussed more fully below.

CHAPTER VI.

New observations on Tertullian's Apologeticum, the two books Ad Nationes and the one To Scapula, in which it is first shown that the Christian religion is supported by the sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament, and how these Scriptures came to the Christians, the successors of the Jews, and how great their authority is.

ARTICLE I.

How Tertullian shows that the Christian religion, brought into the world in the reign of Tiberius, is supported by the sacred Scriptures of the Jews, and that the Christians, although they differ from those same Jews in name, in the use of certain foods, in feast days and in circumcision, were nevertheless in truth put in the place of the Jews, who had been driven from their native soil for their crimes.

Tertullian had no other purpose in these books of which we are treating than, in pleading the cause of the Christians, to show that their religion is true and that of the gentiles false, and that the latter were in fact guilty of all the crimes of which they falsely accused those same Christians. But because these things are not treated by him with enough distinctness and order, and many difficult matters arise, we shall strive, so far as in us lies, to bring them into better order and to examine and explain them in our usual manner.

Tertullian admits that the Christian religion is not very old, since it was founded by Christ the Lord in the reign of Tiberius Caesar, before whose time the name of the Christians had never been heard. "For the census", he says, that is, the origin and beginning, "of this discipline, as we have already set out, is from Tiberius" (Tertullian, Apologeticum, ch. VII). And earlier he had said: "Tiberius, in whose time the Christian name entered the world" (ibid., ch. V). And if anyone is eager to know where and when it was first introduced, he will learn from the Acts of the Apostles that Paul and Barnabas taught a great crowd in the Church of Antioch: "so that the disciples were first named Christians at Antioch" (Acts 11:25). Wherefore our Tertullian says in another book: "Of our age not yet two hundred and fifty years", and afterwards: "Our age is not yet three hundred years" (Tertullian, Ad Nationes, ch. V and ch. IX). And in the Apologeticum too he says: "We are of yesterday", that is, born not a long time ago, but as it were yesterday, if we are compared with others. And there he wished us to be reminded that it came about not without a great miracle that the Christians, although they had arisen so few years before, filled every place in the world except only the temples of the heathen (the same, Apologeticum, ch. XXXVII).

But although the Christian religion, as even its followers admit, was, as Tertullian says, so new that it was "of the time of Tiberius", as he puts it (ibid., ch. XXI), that is, it was brought into this world, as we have just said, in the reign of Tiberius Caesar, it is nevertheless certain that it is supported, as he further says, by "the most ancient documents of the Jews", that is, by the sacred scriptures of the Old Testament. And not only does it rest on them, but they also belong now no less to the Christians than once to the Jews. For a little above our Author had written: "The book-chest of a single prophet", that is, the books of Moses, "surpasses the books of all others by many ages, in which is seen to be laid up the treasure of the whole Jewish mystery, and thence of ours too" (ibid., ch. XIX); but in our manuscripts, "and thence now also of ours". By these words Tertullian plainly signifies that in this and the other books of the Old Testament the divine treasure of our mystery, as formerly of that of the Jews, is truly laid up.

Yet the heathen objected on the other side that this was a futile and absurd presumption and boast of the Christians, who wished to hide themselves "under the shade of a most illustrious religion" (the same, ch. XXI), and to protect the impious worship which they paid to a crucified man. For great, they said, between them and the Jews

was the difference, not only in name but in the very things themselves. For first, just as no one was unaware how great the antiquity of the Jews was, so no one at all was ignorant that Christ was a man, whom the Jews themselves, not a long time before, as we noted just now, judged and put to the punishment of the cross. Next, they differed among themselves "in the exceptions of diet", that is, in certain kinds of food from which the latter abstained but which the former used. Third, they disagreed with each other "in the solemnities of days", which were wholly different with the two. Lastly they differed "in the very seal", or, as Minucius Felix says, "in the mark of the body", which the Apostle calls "the sign of circumcision, and the seal of the righteousness of faith in the foreskin" (Minucius Felix, p. 376; Paul, Epistle to the Romans IV, ch. IV). Yet all these things ought to be common to Christians and Jews, if they were bound over to the same God.

But this argument against the Christians was not new, whether of the gentiles or even of the Jews. For Justin Martyr in his Exhortation to the Greeks presses it thus in the name of the gentiles: "But if anyone of those accustomed to contradict rashly should say that these books belong not to us but to the Jews, because they are still preserved in their synagogues, and should say that we claim in vain to have learned the worship of God from them" (Justin Martyr, Exhortation to the Greeks, p. 14). [Latin:] But if any of those who are accustomed rashly to contradict should object to us that these books are not ours but the Jews', and say that we boast out of vanity that we have drawn our religion from them. And in another book he brings in a Jew raising these objections against the Christians in the same way as Tertullian: "But this is what perplexes us most: that you, who say you are pious and suppose that you differ from the others, are in nothing separated from them, nor do you make your life different from the gentiles, in that you keep neither the feasts nor the sabbaths, nor have circumcision, and moreover set your hopes on a man who was crucified" (the same, Dialogue with Trypho, p. 227). [Latin:] This indeed, in our doubt, we wonder at most in you, who boast a true religion and wish to excel other men, while you differ in nothing from them, and in the conduct of life differ in nothing from the gentiles, since you keep neither feast days nor sabbaths, nor have circumcision, and moreover place your hope in a crucified man.

Tertullian therefore answers that the favour of the Jews with God was once very great, "on account of the signal righteousness and faith of their original founders" (Tertullian, Apologeticum, ch. XXI), that is, of the first patriarchs, from whom they drew their origin. Therefore they then flourished happily, both in the greatness, as he says, of their race and in the loftiness of their kingdom. But their descendants, "puffed up", he goes on, "with confidence in their fathers, straying from the discipline into a profane manner", despised the warnings of God and, having trampled on His laws, rushed into every kind of vice. But the God Whom they scorned as most good, they experienced as a severe judge. And this is proved most evidently by their present fate, by which, our Author says, "scattered, wanderers, exiles from their own sky and soil, they roam through the world without a man or God as king" (ibid.). And this whole [passage] of the master

passage Cyprian plucked from his master, and even borrowed some of his very words in this manner: "To the Jews first belonged favour with God. Thus they were once righteous, thus their forefathers obeyed their observances. Hence for them both the loftiness of their kingdom flourished and the greatness of their race came forth. But having afterwards become negligent, undisciplined and proud, and puffed up with confidence in their fathers, while they despise the divine commandments they have lost the favour given them. And how profane their life was, what offence they incurred by violating religion, they themselves also testify, who, though they are silent in voice, confess it by their fate. Scattered and wandering, they roam about, fugitives from their own soil and sky, tossed from one foreign lodging to another" (Cyprian, On the Vanity of Idols, p. 15). But we have already related this in our dissertation on the book of Minucius Felix, who beats back Caecilius's obstinacy from it (Dissertation on Minucius, ch. VI, art. III).

But not only do the Jews stray and wander hither and thither through the whole world; but neither, Tertullian goes on, "is it granted to them, even by the right of strangers, to greet their native land even with a footstep" (Tertullian, loc. cit.). And where in another book he disputes against those same Jews by name, he further asserts openly that this was not only not permitted them but even forbidden, as had been foretold long before by the holy prophet, namely Isaiah. Hear, I pray, his words: "We observe now that no one of the race of Israel has remained in the city of Bethlehem, and that from then on it has been forbidden for any of the Jews to linger within the bounds of that region, so that this too might be fulfilled through the Prophet: 'Your land is deserted, your cities burnt with fire', that is, what would happen to them in time of war (Isa. 1:7); 'strangers shall devour your country in your sight, and it shall be deserted and overthrown by foreign peoples.' And in another place it is said thus through the Prophet: 'You shall see the King with glory', that is, Christ doing mighty works in the glory of God the Father, 'and your eyes shall see the land from afar' (ibid., Isa. 33:17). For it has been permitted to you, forbidden for your deserts to enter your land after the storming of Jerusalem, only to see it with your eyes from afar" (the same, Against the Jews, ch. XIII). That former passage of Isaiah is also cited by Cyprian for the same reason (Cyprian, Against the Jews, book I, § 6, p. 22).

Further, that prediction, and the ban on entering their homeland that followed, are confirmed by the author of the Eusebian Chronicle in these words: "The Jewish war which was being waged in Palestine came to an end, the affairs of the Jews being utterly crushed; from which time the liberty of entering Jerusalem was also taken from them, first by the will of God, as the Prophets had foretold, then by Roman prohibitions" (Eusebius, Chronicle, at the year of Christ 135).

Earlier, however, Justin Martyr cites the same former prophecy of Isaiah as Tertullian, on the casting out of the Jews from their homeland (Justin, Exhortation to the Gentiles, p. 14), and, having brought forward yet another, at once added: "But that it is guarded by you, so that no one may be in it, and that death has been decreed against a Jew caught entering." [Latin:] And that you take care and keep watch that no one is there, and that capital punishment has been set against a Jew entering there,

you know well (Justin, Apology I for the Christians, p. 84). And Jerome: After the final devastation public laws also were in force, and the Jews were forbidden to enter the land from which they had been cast out (Jerome, on Isaiah chapter VI, verse 11, p. 65). And again elsewhere: None of the Jews is permitted by law to enter the land and city once holy (the same, on Ezekiel chapter XVIII, verse 16, p. 617).

And if you ask at what time and by which emperor that law was passed, you can learn it from Eusebius, who relates that in the twelfth year of the emperor Hadrian, after the overthrow of the city of Berthera, which lay not far from Jerusalem: From that time the whole nation is forbidden altogether to set foot on the land around Jerusalem, by the decree of a law and by the ordinances of Hadrian, who commanded that they should not look upon their ancestral soil even from afar, as Ariston of Pella relates. The whole nation of the Jews was forbidden to set foot in the region lying around Jerusalem, so that they were not permitted even to look upon their ancestral soil from a distance, as Aristo of Pella writes (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book IV, chapter 6, p. 118). But in Hilary's time something of the severity of this law was relaxed, as he indicates in these very words: Even now indeed they are barred by the edict of the Roman king from entering that same city. And when they recall that the holies of the saints are deserted, that the prophecies are silent, that the victims of propitiation have ceased, and that the whole dignity of the Levitical ministry is disfigured, they, now turned back and touched by hunger for the word of God and for saving food, are accustomed to go round the city for the solace of their present miseries (Hilary, Tractate on Psalm LVIII, § 7, p. 130). But that unhappy people could not enjoy even this solace of its miseries, such as it was, freely, but was compelled to buy it at a price. Hear, I pray you, Jerome, the fullest witness of this matter: Down to the present day the faithless tenants . . . . . . are forbidden to enter Jerusalem; and that they may be allowed to weep over the ruin of their city, they buy it at a price, so that those who once bought the blood of Christ buy their own tears . . . . . . still the weeping on their cheeks, and their arms livid, and their hair dishevelled, and the soldier demands a fee that they may be allowed to weep longer (Jerome, on Zephaniah chapter I, verse 15, p. 1655).

Yet it was not these things alone, as has been said, that had been foretold by the sacred voices of the prophets: but the same voices, says Tertullian, all of them constantly urged that it would come to pass that in the last courses of the age God would choose for Himself, out of every nation and people and place, keepers far more faithful, to whom He would transfer His grace, fuller indeed because of the capacity of the Author of the discipline (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 21). In our manuscripts we read eadem for eaedem, and auctioris for auctoris, and not altogether badly. Cyprian too touched on these things in like manner, as on the earlier ones we mentioned a little before: God had foretold that, as the age declined and the end of the world was now near, He would choose for Himself out of every nation and people and place worshippers far more faithful and of better obedience, who would draw from the divine gifts the favour which the Jews had received and, having despised their religious observances, had lost (Cyprian, book On the Vanity of Idols, p. 15). But neither indicates there what those were

oracles of the sacred seers; but Tertullian cited some in another book, and Cyprian more, and later Lactantius too, as has been shown by us in its place (the same, book Against the Jews, chapter 12; Cyprian, book I Against the Jews, § 11, p. 23; Dissertation on Lactantius, chapter 10, article 1).

So for the Christians, grafted as it were into the olive of the Jews from the wild olive, as Tertullian further puts it, and put in their place, the treasure of the sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament became common with those same Jews (Tertullian, book On the Testimony of the Soul, chapter 5). And earlier the holy martyr Justin had firmly asserted that the teaching handed down in the sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament belongs to the Christians, to whom they were passed on, not without divine providence, by the Jews themselves (Justin, Exhortation to the Gentiles, p. 14).

But although these books became common to Jews and Christians, it does not follow from this that the latter ought to have received all the rites prescribed in these books. For Christ, rightly and deservedly, abrogated many of them, such as the sabbaths, the feast days, circumcision and the like, which had been prescribed to the carnal Jews. For all these were shadows and figures, and given as a sign, which, as Tertullian clearly shows in another book, were bound to vanish and become obsolete at the coming of the truth, that is, of Christ (Tertullian, book Against the Jews, chapters 3 and 4).

So the Christian religion, although introduced into the world by Christ in the reign of the emperor Tiberius, yet substituted in the place of the Jewish, received its divine Scriptures as if by right of inheritance, and, as we have said, is supported and upheld by them. But this will become clearer still once we have weighed, in our manner, what our Tertullian lays down about those same sacred Scriptures of the Jews, or of the Old Testament.

ARTICLE II.

When and how the books of the sacred Scriptures, first written in Hebrew, were translated into the Greek language by the seventy-two interpreters; whether in separate cells; where [it is treated] of Aristeas, Ptolemy Philadelphus, Pisistratus, and the libraries of these and of the Attalid kings, and of Demetrius of Phalerum, most approved of grammarians.

Tertullian observes that God from the beginning sent men conspicuous for justice and innocence, who both acknowledged and proclaimed that He is one (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 18). And these taught that all things were created by this one God, that man was formed from the soil, that the successions of the seasons were ordered, that signs of His divine majesty were given forth, that laws of morals and of living rightly were established, and that at the end of the age all men are to be raised again to life and judged, so that according to their deserts they may be visited with either eternal punishment or eternal happiness. But there in Tertullian's text we read these words: What disciplines He has laid down for winning His favour, which you either do not know or abandon; and these indeed seemed so obscure and corrupt to Herald that he does not dare to pronounce anything about them. But not so great was the timidity of Rigaltius,

who, against the plain testimony of all the manuscript and printed copies, wished the particle qui to be written for quas, and then quas for quae, yet without giving any reason. We will gladly admit, however, that this conjecture does not seem altogether unhappy, but that it lacks this: that it is confirmed by the authority of no copy whatever. But Herald, grown bolder afterwards, suspects that in place of the word producto should be substituted prodacto, that is, consumed and completed. And he tries to prove his emendation from other passages of Tertullian where prodactum is read in the same sense. But he could also have cited the fifth book of our Tertullian against Marcion, where he used the same word in like manner. Yet what can you do against the protest of all the copies, and where the author uses barbarous and improper words? But whatever his manner of speaking was, by it he plainly means the end and close of the world (the same, book V Against Marcion, chapter 6).

But the men distinguished for piety and justice named by him were not only preachers, as he says, but are also called prophets from the office of foretelling, that is, of announcing things to come (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 18). Moreover they performed mighty works, that is, miracles, to establish faith in the Godhead. Lastly, flooded with the divine Spirit (these are still his own words), that is, they were so full that He flowed over and was poured out beyond them.

And the wonders done by them beyond the order of nature, and the things foretold by them under the breath of the divine Spirit, all these, says Tertullian again, remain in the treasuries of writings (ibid.); but of which writings, I ask you? Without doubt of none other than the Hebrew. For he himself relates in the same place that Ptolemy Philadelphus received from the Jews, who were once Hebrews, their books, their own native writings (ibid.), that is, written in the Hebrew tongue, because, as he further says, the prophets had always addressed themselves to them (ibid.). So the books of Moses and of the other sacred seers, written in the Hebrew speech, had remained with the Hebrews and Jews, who certainly preserved them whole and uncorrupted with the greatest care.

But lest so great a treasure should always lie hidden with them alone, it was shared, through the most celebrated translation of the seventy-two elders, first with the Greeks, and then with the other nations. Hence Tertullian says: Nor do these sacred writings now lie hidden (ibid.). And so it reads in Rigaltius's edition. But in the older printed editions, and in our manuscript copies, the adverb nunc is absent; and not altogether without reason. For Tertullian means that they had no longer lain hidden, not only from his own time, but, as we have said, from the very time of the Greek interpreters.

And when and how this Greek translation of the sacred books was prepared by them he explains in this way: When Ptolemy, surnamed Philadelphus, wished to enrich his library with a store of books of every kind,

he asked from the Jews, at the suggestion of Demetrius of Phalerum, and obtained, their sacred books written in Hebrew, and seventy-two men, who translated them into the Greek language. Then in the same place our Author added: Whom Menedemus too, the philosopher, champion of Providence (wrongly, in one Vatican manuscript, judge of the province), looked up to for their agreement of judgement (ibid.). But what is meant by these last words, looked up to for their agreement of judgement, there is no small disagreement among the learned writers of our age. Some indeed think that they mean that Menedemus shared the judgement concerning the divine providence that governs all things. But, say others, Tertullian is not there discussing this providence of God, but only the Greek translation of the sacred Scriptures. To what purpose, then, would he have inserted this mention of that providence of God? Hence these judge this to be Tertullian's meaning: Menedemus examined the completed Greek translation of sacred Scripture, and admired it as made by the common agreement of the interpreters in exactly the same way. So he was the champion and witness of the divine providence, by whose truly wonderful guidance he openly testified that the Hebrew text of Scripture had been rendered into Greek by those same interpreters in exactly the same way.

But this, you will say, could not have come about so unless the interpreters, placed apart and in separate cells, each translated this Hebrew text into Greek. Yet that opinion about those separate cells is false. But what follows from that, if Tertullian followed earlier writers who, after Justin Martyr, as we have shown elsewhere, steadfastly defended this opinion about the cells of the interpreters (Volume 1, Apparatus, book II, dissertation 2, chapter 7, § 3, p. 390 and following)? For is it not for this reason that Menedemus is called by him the champion of Providence: because he looked up to these interpreters for their agreement of judgement, since, though separated from one another, they had translated the sacred Scriptures into Greek in one and the same way?

But does not the divine providence, someone will argue, shine out sufficiently in this, that those interpreters translated them into the Greek language together indeed, yet in the same way? Who does not know how hard they are to understand, and that it must surely seem a wonder that in translating them into Greek so many interpreters were of one and the same judgement? But who will deny that the divine providence would have shone forth far more wonderfully if they composed their translation separated from one another?

You will press that these separate cells of the interpreters are indicated only in obscure words, and that Aristeas too is cited as witness, who said nothing about them. But it could be answered that Tertullian's words were clear enough to the men of his age, and that a single guarantor was given by him, because this opinion about the separate cells of those interpreters was then common and all but undoubted. Who will deny, moreover, that more is related by him than is contained in the narrative of Aristeas? But whether this was Tertullian's true meaning, we shall gladly hear you pronounce. Furthermore, about Aristeas

his history, the various opinions of the learned about it, and Menedemus we have discussed elsewhere (the same, book I, dissertation 2, chapter 1, p. 223 and following, and book III, dissertation 2, chapter 3, article 5, p. 922).

Philadelphus, then, who procured the Greek translation of sacred Scripture, is called by Tertullian not only most learned but also most keen-scented of all literature, where certainly a substantive noun is understood to correspond to this adjective most keen-scented (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 18). And it seems to be nothing other than tracker or searcher. For keenness of scent is spoken of with respect to finding or searching out. Further, that keenness of Philadelphus for all literature was a most diligent search everywhere for all books written on any matter whatever. And with the greatest zeal for preserving them, says our author, and in like manner Eusebius in the Chronicle, he had assembled a library from every kind of literature (Eusebius, Chronicle, at the year 1734). With how great a number of books it was furnished we shall show in the following article. But if anyone asks who Pisistratus is, whose zeal in this matter Philadelphus is asserted by Tertullian to have emulated, he can learn it from these words of Aulus Gellius: Pisistratus the tyrant is said to have been the first to place books of the liberal disciplines at Athens publicly for reading. And of the tyranny of Pisistratus, which, as Herodotus relates, he recovered three times, there is frequent mention in various writers, Laertius, Pausanias, Thucydides, Aelian, Valerius Maximus and others. We, for our part, have dealt with this tyranny of Pisistratus in the earlier volume of our Apparatus. Besides, we read it written by the Pausanias cited that the poems of Homer had once been scattered, and that from them, collected by Pisistratus, as Aelian says, the Iliad and the Odyssey were put together. But it is better to hear Cicero: Who in those same times was more learned, he says, or whose eloquence was better furnished with letters, than Pisistratus's? He is said to have been the first to arrange the books of Homer, previously in confusion, as we have them now. He was not indeed useful to his fellow citizens, but he so flourished in eloquence that he excelled in letters and learning (Gellius, Attic Nights, book VI, chapter 17, p. 393; Herodotus, book II, § 59 and following; Laertius, Life of Solon, § 53 and following, 65 and following; Pausanias, book I, pp. 3 and 21; Thucydides, History, book VIII, p. 446; Aelian, Varied History, book VIII, chapter 13; Valerius Maximus, book I, § 2, book VIII, chapter 9, Foreign examples, § 2; Apparatus, volume I, p. 1176; Pausanias, book VII, p. 235; Aelian, Varied History, book XIII, chapter 14; Cicero, On the Orator, book III, p. 194, line 37).

Yet Tertullian does not dare to pronounce with certainty whether Philadelphus really emulated this man's zeal in furnishing a most rich library; he said only: I think, that is, as seemed to him more probable. But if you believe Vitruvius, who flourished in the age of Augustus Caesar, Ptolemy Philadelphus imitated the Attalid kings in this zeal. Hear, I pray you, his words: When the Attalid kings, drawn by the great delights of learning, had furnished an excellent library at Pergamum for the common enjoyment, then Ptolemy likewise, stirred by boundless zeal and by eager desire, had striven with no less industry in the same manner at Alexandria

to assemble (Vitruvius, preface to book VII). But in this he is charged with error by others. For the Alexandrian kings, they say, were older than the Attalids. Yet nothing can be concluded from this against the conjecture of our Tertullian. For Pisistratus and many others, praised by Athenaeus and Epiphanius, had furnished libraries, and Philadelphus could have imitated them (Athenaeus, Deipnosophists, book I, p. 3; Epiphanius, On Weights and Measures, p. 166).

But although Tertullian's opinion was certain, he is nevertheless beaten by Scaliger for having adorned Demetrius of Phalerum with no other title than most approved of grammarians. Indeed, he says, the gifts of Demetrius were little known to Tertullian (Scaliger, notes on Eusebius's Chronicle, at the year 1724, p. 133). Why, then? Did he, by mentioning some of Demetrius's gifts, deny others? And who will believe Scaliger even on oath? Has not Suetonius somewhere reminded us that the name of men of letters was given at first to grammarians because they could say or prove something acutely and knowledgeably (Suetonius, On Illustrious Grammarians, § 4, p. 821)? And Tertullian praised Demetrius chiefly under this name because he was treating of the charge of the library entrusted to him by Philadelphus. To whom could it better have been committed than to the most approved of grammarians, that is, to a man endowed with varied learning, who knew all books and their worth exceedingly well?

ARTICLE III.

In which library of Philadelphus the books of the sacred Scriptures were deposited; where that library was built; how great the number of books in it; whether it was wholly consumed by fire; how the sacred books came to the Christians; and of the taxed liberty of the Jews to read them publicly.

After Tertullian had woven together that whole account of the books of sacred Scripture, written whether in the Hebrew or in the Greek tongue, he then at once relates where all those books were kept: Today, he says, in the Serapeum, in the libraries of Ptolemy, they are displayed together with the Hebrew writings themselves (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 18, p. 19). By these words he plainly declares that these Hebrew and Greek books of the Old Testament had been deposited in the Serapeum, that is, the temple of Serapis, which had been built at Alexandria. For Chrysostom states expressly that they were placed by this Ptolemy Philadelphus into the temple of Serapis (Chrysostom, Oration 1 Against the Jews, volume I, p. 394, Morel's edition). And in it, which in its magnificence yielded, as Gellius and Ammianus Marcellinus relate, to the Capitol alone, there were beyond doubt many buildings separate from one another (Gellius, Attic Nights, book VI, last chapter). And in one of them the single or double library of Philadelphus was deposited. Our Author indeed mentions very many in the words just cited; as does Ammianus Marcellinus, who, after describing the splendour of the Serapeum, continues thus: In it there were libraries beyond price; and the concordant testimony of ancient records declares that seven hundred thousand volumes, brought together by the unwearied vigilance of the Ptolemaic kings, in the Alexandrian war, while the city was being sacked under the dictator

Caesar, were burnt (Ammianus Marcellinus, book XXII, chapter 16, p. 343).

But Athenaeus mentions only one; after reviewing certain men renowned for amassing books, he says: Our king Ptolemy, surnamed Philadelphus, bought them all, and together with those he had bought at Athens and Rhodes, he carried them over to fair Alexandria; he had them transferred to the fair Alexandrian library (Athenaeus, Deipnosophists, book I, p. 3). Likewise the author of the Eusebian Chronicle: Ptolemy Philadelphus, he says, had the divine Scriptures translated from the Hebrew tongue into the Greek speech by the seventy interpreters, and kept them in the Alexandrian library, which he had assembled for himself from every kind of literature (Eusebius, Chronicle, at the year 1734).

But Epiphanius, although he points to two libraries, yet dissents from our Tertullian and Ammianus Marcellinus in this, that he asserts that the books of sacred Scripture were placed in the Bruchium, and the translations of Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion in the lesser Serapeum. For he concludes his account of their Greek translation in these words: The books, set forth in Greek, were deposited in the first library, the one built in the Bruchium; and later there came to be another library also, in the Serapeum, smaller than the first, which was also called its daughter, in which were deposited the translations of Aquila and Symmachus and Theodotion and the rest, after the two hundred and fiftieth year. Those books, translated into Greek, were deposited in the earlier library, which was founded in the Bruchium. After this another library was again established in the Serapeum, much smaller, which was called the daughter of this one, into which the editions of Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion and others were gathered after two hundred and fifty years (Epiphanius, book On Weights and Measures, § 11, p. 168). You see that he agrees with the others in this, that he asserts that the Alexandrian library was twofold; but differs in this, that he would have one founded in the Bruchium and the other, smaller, in the Serapeum. Whether this opinion of his alone should be preferred to the others, be that your judgement.

And if you extricate yourself from this difficulty, you will at once fall into another far greater. For Tertullian speaks of the Greek books of the Old Testament as still kept and extant in that Alexandrian library in his own time. But on the contrary Ammianus Marcellinus, as we have seen, expressly asserts that this very library was burnt in the Alexandrian war under the dictator Caesar (Marcellinus, book XXII, chapter 16, p. 344). Aulus Gellius too testifies that some seven hundred thousand volumes were then burnt by the auxiliary soldiers (Gellius, Attic Nights, book VI, chapter 17, p. 394). Dio seems to support both, who says that Achillas came straight to Alexandria, and that various battles were joined by him with Caesar the dictator, and many fires were set. And that the storehouses both of grain and of books, very many and very excellent, as they say, were burnt; and that the storehouses or cells of grain and of very many and very excellent books, as it is reported, were burnt (Dio, Roman History, book XLII, p. 228).

Moreover, Epiphanius too has recorded that the library

which was in that quarter of the city of Alexandria which they call the Bruchium was deserted in his time (Epiphanius, On Weights and Measures, § 10, p. 166). Yet he had said, as we have seen, that the books of sacred Scripture were deposited in it. But if this library was deserted, and much more if the Alexandrian libraries were already burnt in the very age of Caesar, on what ground, I beg you, could Tertullian say: Today in the Serapeum, in the libraries of Ptolemy, they are displayed together with the Hebrew writings themselves, and the Jews read them openly (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 18)? Some answer that there were at least two libraries in it. One, they say, could have been burnt, and the other, in which those books had been deposited, have remained wholly intact. But that answer plainly runs against Epiphanius himself, who asserts that this library, in which these books had been stored, no longer existed in his time; for which reason others answer that, even if this and all the other Alexandrian libraries were burnt with fire, yet not all the books were consumed, and that the Hebrew and Greek books of sacred Scripture were snatched from this fire.

And in confirmation of this opinion there can be brought forward the testimony of Seneca, and after him of Paulus Orosius, who record that only four hundred thousand books were then consumed (Seneca, book On Tranquillity of Mind, chapter 9, p. 663; Orosius, book VII, chapter 15). Yet if we believe Marcellinus and Gellius, cited by us earlier, seven hundred thousand books had been stored in that library. Three hundred thousand, therefore, were withdrawn from the flames. And among their number, beyond doubt, were these Hebrew and Greek volumes of sacred Scripture, God so providing.

What, moreover, of the fact that Chrysostom steadfastly asserts that the Greek translation of the prophetic books was preserved down to his own time in the Serapeum, or, as he himself puts it, in the temple of Serapis? These are his Greek words: And to this day the translated books of the prophets remain there (Chrysostom, Oration 1 Against the Jews, p. 595, volume I).

But even if someone should prove clearly, against this judgement of Chrysostom and others, that these books were burnt, he will not be able to deny that before that fire copies of them had been multiplied, and that many were transcribed in Hebrew by the Jews and in Greek by others, which were carefully preserved. Indeed there is no room for doubt that many reached the Christians. For not a few Greek testimonies are found cited in the books of the New Testament.

Moreover the Hebrew copies were kept most diligently by those same Jews. For of those who lived in his time our Tertullian said: The Jews read them openly: a liberty that pays a tax: they are commonly resorted to every sabbath. Do you hear how clearly he affirms that the Jews, gathered in their synagogues every single sabbath, read these sacred books, written in their native tongue, openly and in the hearing of all? And that custom had grown up before and after Christ the Lord, and from ancient times.

For of Paul and his companions it is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles: But they, passing through Perga, came to Antioch of Pisidia, and going into the synagogue on the sabbath day, sat down. And after the reading of the Law and the Prophets, Paul, at the request of the Jews, addressed a discourse to them (Acts 13:14 ff.). And after this you will find this committed to writing in the same book: Moses from ancient times has in every city those who preach him in the synagogues, where he is read every sabbath (ibid. 15:21). But that certainly could not have happened unless the Jews had previously possessed these books and had spent the greatest care in keeping them uncorrupted and wholly intact.

But what, you will say, does Tertullian mean when he said that the Jews had a taxed liberty of holding their assemblies every sabbath and of reading their books there? Some think that these words denote a permission granted them by Philadelphus, provided they paid a modest annual tax. But by what argument will it be proved that this tax was exacted by Philadelphus, who valued the sacred books of the Old Testament so highly and had loaded their translators with the greatest gifts? So it seems to others far more probable that Tertullian means the tribute which the Roman emperors had imposed on the Jews, so that they might be allowed to assemble, according to their custom, every sabbath. And some think that these words of Suetonius, treating of the emperor Domitian, are to be understood of this tribute: Beyond the others the Jewish treasury was administered most harshly; to it were reported those who either lived the Jewish life within the city as avowed adherents, or, concealing their origin, had not paid the tributes imposed on the nation (Suetonius, book VIII, Life of Domitian, § 12). But there he indicates that the Jews, in order to buy the free profession of their sect, had indeed to pay a tribute, but one that had then been increased rather than first imposed. For in the Epitome of Dio Xiphilinus relates that the emperor Titus, after the capture of Jerusalem, ordered that the Jews who professed their ancestral laws should pay a didrachm yearly to Capitoline Jupiter (Xiphilinus, Epitome of Dio, Life of Vespasian, p. 318). Do you wish to hear his Greek words? Here they are: And from that time it was ordained that those who kept their ancestral customs should pay two drachmas yearly to Capitoline Zeus.

Further, they think that Juvenal alluded to that tribute in these verses:

Now the grove of the sacred spring and its shrines are let out / to Jews, whose household goods are a basket and hay. / For every tree has been ordered to pay rent to the people, / and, the Muses cast out, the wood goes begging. / (Juvenal, Satire 3, verse 13 and following)

Rightly, then, is this called by Tertullian a taxed liberty, because they could not, unless the tribute were paid first, gather their assemblies and read openly, in their synagogues dispersed everywhere, their sacred books most carefully preserved. From these Jews, then, their most bitter enemies, the Christians had received those books of the Old Testament, of whose truth and integrity no man of sound mind will ever doubt. For, as the ancient author of the book Against Five Heresies, once ascribed to Augustine, rightly argues against the heathen:

The book in which these things are found written, the Jews keep in their book-chest. My enemy is witness. Ask of him, open, read, believe (Augustine, Appendix, volume VIII, book Against Five Heresies, chapter 7, p. 9). The Christians therefore had these books such as they had been handed down to them by the Jews. For they could alter nothing whatever in their text without being at once convicted of falsification by the Jews, their enemies, who read them daily. And what their authority is, and how great, let us now investigate with our Tertullian.

ARTICLE IV.

How Tertullian demonstrates the authority of sacred Scripture from its very great antiquity; what are the substances and materials of the veteran pen, the cities distinguished for histories, and the hoary [ones] of records.

Tertullian openly vindicates the supreme authority of sacred Scripture by a twofold argument. The first he draws from its very great antiquity, of which we have often [spoken] in the earlier volume of our apparatus; the second from its divinity, that is, from the divine Spirit by whose breath all its books were committed to writing. The former argument he presses against the heathen all the more willingly because, recognizing its force and weight, they tried from it to defend and confirm their own religion, however false. For he addresses them all in these words: With you it is as good as a religion to establish credibility from dates (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 19), that is, you strive to defend your religion and the worship of false gods by its antiquity.

Yet if this reasoning is of any weight, you cannot detract from the credibility of our Scriptures. For the book-case of one prophet, says Tertullian (that is, the books of Moses), surpasses by ages all the substances and materials . . . of every veteran pen of yours (ibid.), that is, absolutely all your writings and their subject matter. Indeed it surpasses, he says, the origins, that is, the beginnings and causes, the orders and veins, that is, the passages and channels by which they have come down to you.

Moreover by their antiquity they precede most nations, which arose later, and cities distinguished for histories, and hoary with records. So it reads in our manuscripts and the older editions, except that in them causas is written for canas. But Rigaltius, whom others have since followed, kept indeed the word canas, but deleted the preceding historiarum on his own authority, as it seems. For neither he nor the others gave any reason for this omission. But they doubtless persuaded themselves that there was here a very grave error against the rules of grammar, where a substantive noun is put for an adjective and an adjective for a substantive. But is it not a Grecism, used more than once by authors of the better Latinity? For did not Horace say: Whole of life and pure of crime? The sense of our Author, then, is that the Hebrews are older than the cities which were distinguished by monuments of histories and by hoary records, that is, writings, which by their hoariness and age displayed an origin older than all others. So too Theophilus

[Theophilus of] Antioch had said that these same Hebrews were older than the cities that were most famous among the Egyptians (Theoph., To Autolycus, Book III, p. 130). We shall not conceal, however, that in another book of Tertullian it is written: "Who have collected the grey hairs of antiquities" (Tertull., To the Nations, Book II, ch. 12). But of this book only a single manuscript codex survives, whereas of the Apology there are very many. Whichever you decide, however, the sense will always be the same. Moreover, the noun "memorials" is used by our Author for "monuments", as can easily be confirmed from Augustine (August., On the Care to Be Had for the Dead, ch. 4, p. 519, vol. VI). In the same sense again Tertullian himself, in the book just cited, said: "Saturn, as a being of human condition on earth, is recounted in the ancient memorials" (Tertull., To the Nations, Book II, loc. cit.).

Then next, in the Apology, he added that the books of Moses, by their very age, precede "the very forms of letters, the indicators and guardians of things" (the same, Apology, ch. 19), that is, that they were written in characters and letters plainly the most ancient of all others. For a little before he had written that they were inscribed in Hebrew letters, which he held for certain to be older than any others whatever. And he adds that letters are "guardians of things", inasmuch as they rescue the things themselves and their history from destruction. But these matters are explained more fully by Josephus, whose words, a little too lengthy to be reported here, you will not regret having read in his book (Joseph., beginning of Book I Against Apion, p. 1034 and following).

Lastly Tertullian added: "And, I think, we are still saying too little: [they precede] your very gods themselves, I say, the very temples, and oracles, and sacred rites" (Tertull., loc. cit.), that is, the books of Moses are far older than the gods, temples, oracles and sacred rites of the gentiles. For he holds that the origin of the gods is to be traced back to Saturn, as we shall say below. It is no wonder, therefore, if he affirms that these gods are later than the books of Moses. But with those words of his, "we are still saying too little", he seems to reproach the heathen for boasting, as ignorantly as falsely, that their gods and their worship were older than the books of Moses.

ARTICLE V. How clearly Tertullian proved the antiquity of the books of Moses from his age, he who was contemporary with Inachus, and by several centuries preceded Danaus, the destruction of Troy and Homer; where [we treat] of Manetho, Berosus, Iromus or Hieronymus, and Josephus.

No one, surely, will deny that the antiquity of the books of Moses cannot be proved more clearly than from his age. Therefore Tertullian, relying on the testimony of ancient writers, explains in these words at what time he lived, and before whom: "He is," he says, "equal in age to the Argive Inachus; by almost four hundred years (for it is seven fewer) he came before Danaus, himself the most ancient among you; he precedes the destruction of Priam by about a thousand; I could even say [that he precedes] Homer by more than five hundred" (Tertull., Apology, ch. 19). First, therefore, he teaches

that Moses was contemporary with Inachus. Now in the first volume of our Apparatus we showed that this was the common opinion of the ancient writers down to Eusebius, one which some have striven to defend even in this century (vol. I of the Apparatus, pp. 385, 531, 836, 909 and 1312). Our Author, indeed, affirms emphatically that he had many guarantors and patrons of his opinion. And lest anyone should think this asserted by him without grounds, he names these very men, as we shall see a little later, one by one and each by his own name.

Further, supported by the authority of these writers, he asserts that Moses preceded Danaus by 393 years. But consider, I pray, whether Tertullian took this from Josephus, who is cited by him in the same place after other Writers. For indeed, after Josephus had reviewed the chronology of the Egyptians published by Manetho, he concluded it with these words: [Greek] "Those who were called shepherds, that is our forefathers, freed from Egypt, inhabited this province three and ninety and three hundred years before Danaus came to Argos, although the Argives trust that he is the most ancient" (Joseph., Against Apion, Book I, p. 1041). In copying the text of Theophilus of Antioch, therefore, who cites the same Manetho, the copyist seems beyond doubt to have erred, in writing that the Hebrews went out of Egypt [Greek] "three hundred and thirteen years before" (Theoph., To Autolycus, Book III, p. 131) Danaus arrived in Greece. For Theophilus, as is clear from what has been said, had without doubt written [Greek] "three hundred and ninety-three". But it was easy for a not sufficiently skilled scribe to write "ten" for "ninety". On this conjecture, nevertheless, we shall await the judgement of others. But certainly from these words of Theophilus you will easily recognize why Tertullian called Danaus the most ancient among the heathen.

Then afterwards he says: "Moses precedes the destruction of Priam", that is, the fall of Troy, "by about a thousand years" (Tertullian, Apology, ch. 19). Here again he follows in the footsteps of Josephus, who asserts that the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt was so ancient [Greek] "that it precedes the Trojan war by nearly a thousand years" (Joseph., Against Apion, Book I, p. 1042). Both, indeed, added the adverb "about", and not without reason. For there is, as we have seen elsewhere, a great variety of opinions on this interval of time. But whichever is nearer the truth, it is more certain than certain that Moses is far more ancient than the Trojan times (vol. I of the Apparatus, pp. 1345, 1347 and following).

Greater still is the disagreement over the age of Homer, who, our Author declares, flourished five hundred years and more after that same destruction of Troy, and therefore 1500 and more years after Moses. These differing opinions of the writers are reviewed by Tatian

(Tatian, Oration against the Greeks, p. 166 and following), and Eusebius, who reported his words (Euseb., Preparation for the Gospel, Book X, ch. 11, p. 492 and following), and also Clement of Alexandria (Clem. Alex., Stromata, Book I, p. 326 and following), and others both ancient and more recent, who undertook discussions of the ancient writers, or of the chronologers and poets, and by name of the life or age of this same Homer, whether of set purpose or while dealing with something else. We too have discussed these disagreements of the authors elsewhere (vol. I of the Apparatus, pp. 1278, 1347 and following).

However, at whatever time Homer flourished, it is plainly established, as Josephus rightly argues, that there is no writing among the Greeks older than the works of this poet (Joseph., Against Apion, Book I, p. 1034). Indeed, if you believe the same Josephus, his poems were not committed to letters but recited in song, and since they were gathered by others only from memory, many discrepancies are found in them. Besides this, he had said a little before that other nations boasted that they had had the most ancient use of letters from the Phoenicians and Cadmus, as we have also noted elsewhere (vol. I of the Apparatus, p. 385 and following). "But nobody," Josephus continues, "will be able to show any writing that has been preserved from that early time, either in the temples or in the public votive offerings." The books of Moses, therefore, preceded all the others by a long interval of time, indeed of centuries.

"Nothing," says our Author, "was easier to prove" (Tertullian, Apology, ch. 19). But because this was too lengthy, and could not be done without a very great digression from his purpose, he judged that it should be deferred. Whether with these words he promises another treatise on that subject, and kept his promise, who will dare to assert with certainty? Yet lest anyone should say that he had put this forward rashly, he himself makes plain to all whence, and from which writers by name, it may be evidently proved. For first he cites the most ancient archives, or repositories, of the Egyptians, the Chaldaeans and the Phoenicians, in which their writings, or books, were deposited. And he calls those nations by their names because the Greeks, as Josephus testifies (Joseph., ibid.), acknowledged that the most ancient tradition of affairs was held among them. But, since this investigation could still seem very difficult, he says: "We must call upon their fellow citizens, through whom the knowledge has been supplied" (Tertullian, ibid.). Now properly those were called "municipes" who, received into Roman citizenship, enjoyed the privileges of the Romans. But he uses that name loosely to mean inhabitants of the same region. For he calls by name both the nations and the writers: from the Egyptians Manetho, from the Chaldaeans Berosus, cited by Josephus, as we shall note a little later; and from the Phoenicians Iromus, king of Tyre, of whom we must treat more fully later. And if these were not sufficient, he adds their followers: Ptolemy of Mendes, who as a priest, says Clement of Alexandria (Clement Alexandr., Stromata, Book I), and after him Eusebius (Euseb., Preparation for the Gospel, Book X, ch. 12, p. 497), [set out] the deeds of the kings of Egypt in three books

set out; likewise Menander of Ephesus, by whom, as Josephus (Joseph., Against Apion, Book I, p. 1042) and Theophilus of Antioch (Theoph., To Autolycus, Book III, p. 132) report, the acts and history of the kings of Tyre were written down. To these he joins Demetrius of Phalerum, also cited by Josephus, and three others, King Juba, Apion and Thallus, about whom we have treated in the first volume of our Apparatus and in the earlier dissertations.

Finally: "And he who either confirms or refutes these," says Tertullian (Tertullian, loc. cit.), "is the Jew Josephus, the champion of the Jewish Antiquities", namely in the books of the Jewish Antiquities, which are still in everyone's hands. Yet he "confirms or refutes those" writers, as our Author puts it (ibid.), not in these books only, but also in others, the books against Apion which we have already cited (Joseph., Against Apion, Book I, p. 1039 and following, p. 1043 and following). For in these he reported a good deal from the books of the Egyptian writers, namely of Manetho the Egyptian, and of Berosus the Chaldaean, from whom came treatises on astronomy and the philosophy of the Chaldaeans.

The greater difficulty, then, concerns the third writer, who is named by Tertullian "Iromus the Phoenician, king of Tyre". For in our manuscript codices, and in the editions older than Rigault's, one reads: "Hieronymus the Phoenician, king of Tyre". But because they thought there had been no king of Tyre named Hieronymus, they preferred that "Iromus" be written in the text of Tertullian. Yet they gave no reason for this correction except some words taken from the fragments of Menander edited by Scaliger. But with far better right they ought to have cited Theophilus of Antioch, by whom not only are those same Greek words cited (Theophil., To Autolycus, Book III, p. 131 and following), but he is also called [Greek] "Hieromus, king of the Tyrians". And he testifies that this was the man who had written many letters to Solomon, and Solomon in turn to him, which were said to be preserved among the Tyrians. Yet it cannot be concluded from this that this king handed down anything in writing about the antiquity of the Hebrews.

May it not also be gathered that the name of Hieronymus is to be read in the text of Tertullian from the fact that Josephus, in the first book of the Jewish Antiquities, where he discusses the long life of the first patriarchs, wrote this there after mentioning Manetho and Berosus, just as our Author does: [Greek] "Mochus, Hestiaeus, and Hieronymus the Egyptian, who related the affairs of the Phoenicians, agree with us" (Joseph., Antiquities, Book I, ch. 4, p. 11). And he placed this Hieronymus among those who had left something in writing about the longer life of Noah and of the earlier patriarchs. In the first book against Apion, however, he observes that Hieronymus is one of those writers who, in writing histories, made no mention of the Jewish nation (the same, Against Apion, Book I, p. 1050): "For Hieronymus nowhere in his history

made mention [of us], although he had spent his time almost in those very places." "For Hieronymus by no means made mention of us in his history, though he had been brought up almost in those very places." He admits, therefore, that Hieronymus in this work left aside the affairs of the Jews, although they were not unknown to him. But there he sets him against Hecataeus, by whom he testifies that a history of the Jews was published. He could, then, in another history or treatise, have mixed in some discourse about their life, just as about the long-lived.

But however few or many things Hieronymus may have handed down about Moses and the Jews in any book, by what reasoning can it be proved that he was king of Tyre? Did Tertullian, then, suffer some human lapse there, or were his words corrupted by the copyists, or is he to be understood, like Theophilus of Antioch, of the letters of the Tyrian king to Solomon? See, then, which seems to you more probable, or whether you can find something better.

ARTICLE VI. On the age of the other sacred prophets after Moses, and on the reckoning gestures of the fingers, and on comparing the census rolls.

On the age of our other sacred prophets after the death of Moses, Tertullian (Tertullian, Apology, ch. 19) declares thus against the heathen: "The other prophets, although they come after Moses, yet the very last of them are not found to be later than the foremost of your wise men, lawgivers and historians." But there he certainly uses several improper modes of speech (On the Resurrection of Christ, ch. 45; Against the Valentinians, ch. 35). First, he said "posthumant", that is, they lived after the death of Moses; in which sense he wrote elsewhere "posthumat" and "posthumatum". Secondly, those whom he here called "extremissimi" he elsewhere called "postremissimi omnium"; thirdly, "retrosiores", that is, later and more recent. But even though he uses these obsolete and barbarous words, his sense here is plain: our other prophets indeed lived after the death of Moses, but the last of them all are not later than the Greek wise men, lawgivers and historians.

Moreover, he proves his opinion by no other argument than by bringing forward the names of several authors: either because the gentiles could not oppose and resist their public authority, or because it would have been too lengthy to copy out each of their testimonies in this book, in which he wished to study brevity. If, however, anyone asks that it be confirmed at least by some [testimonies], let him hear Theophilus of Antioch (Theophil. Antioch., To Autolycus, Book III, p. 132 and following) arguing thus: "Zechariah," he says, "is reckoned the last of the Prophets, who reached the times of King Darius. And Solon of Athens, the most ancient lawgiver, is said to have lived in the time of the kings Cyrus and Darius. The other prophets, therefore, are older than the other lawgivers, and much more so Moses, who flourished before the Cretan Jupiter and, as we have said, before the Trojan war itself." Nor was it enough for Theophilus to have said this, but by setting out there a very brief chronology he strives to demonstrate it.

Josephus speaks of the age of the historians in this manner (Joseph., Against Apion, Book I, p. 1034): [Greek] "Those, however, who undertook to write histories among them (the Greeks), that is, Cadmus of Miletus and Acusilaus of Argos, and whatever others are said to have come after him, preceded by a little the expedition of the Persians" (of Cyrus and Darius) (vol. I of the Apparatus, p. 1165 and following, p. 1355 and following). We, for our part, have discussed the wise men of Greece and their age in the first volume of our Apparatus. Of the time of Moses, moreover, and of the other prophets we have treated not only in the same place of our Apparatus cited, but also in the earlier dissertation on the works of Lactantius (Dissertation on Lactantius, ch. II, arts. 1 and 2).

Finally Tertullian informs us that, to fix rightly the times of all those writers, both the prophets and the heathen (Tertullian, Apology, ch. 19), one must sit down "with many instruments", that is, books and chronologies, "together with the reckoning gestures of the fingers". But what, someone will ask, are those reckoning gestures of the fingers, and what is their purpose? We shall answer, then, that they are nothing other than the gestures and movements of the fingers by which the ancients used to count years or other things. For of the years of long-lived Nestor Juvenal sang (Juvenal, Satire 10, line 240):

Happy, no doubt, he who through so many ages put off death, / And now counts his years on the right hand.

Pliny, again, relates that a statue of Janus was made with the fingers shaped in such a way that the number of 365 days was indicated (Plin., Natural History, Book XXXIV, ch. 7, p. 182). We also read it written by Jerome (Jerome, Against Jovinian, Book I, p. 146): "The number one hundred is transferred from the left hand to the right, and, with the same fingers indeed but not with the same hand by which on the left married women and widows are signified, making a circle it expresses the crown of virginity." And long before, Apuleius, where he discusses the age of Pudentilla (Apul., Apology 2, after the middle, p. 375), says: "If you had said thirty years for ten, you might seem to have erred in the gesture of reckoning, having opened the fingers which you ought to have made into a circle. But when you increase by half forty, which is signified more easily than the others by the outstretched palm, you cannot have erred in the gesture of the fingers, unless perhaps, thinking Pudentilla thirty years old, you counted the two consuls of each year." Tertullian, then, indicates that more leisure, and a longer digression from his purpose, would be needed for the age of so many writers and prophets to be reckoned by those gestures of the fingers.

But besides this and other difficulties of counting years (Tertullian, Apology, ch. 19), "the census rolls of the Greeks also," he says, "must be compared." Surely everyone sees that the noun "books" or "codices" is to be understood there. And he calls "census" books those in which the acts and the annals of affairs had been written down by public scribes and notaries, or by others. We, however, [call] these books

diaries, and by a more common name call them the public registers of the scribes.

However, although Tertullian set out briefly so many arguments for proving the antiquity of sacred Scripture, yet whoever denies that he understands their weight and strength seems to have wished to blind himself. Therefore we cannot better conclude this whole discussion than with these words of his to the gentiles in another book (Tertull., On the Testimony of the Soul, ch. 5): "But since the divine Scriptures, which are in the keeping of us or of the Jews, into whose olive tree we have been grafted from the wild olive, precede secular literature by much, and not merely by some moderate age, as we taught in its place to demonstrate their trustworthiness: even if the soul has taken these utterances from literature, it will certainly have to be believed that it took them from ours, not from yours; because earlier things are more effective for instructing the soul than later ones, which themselves waited to be instructed by the earlier; and even if we grant that it was instructed from yours, yet the tradition belongs to its first origin, and whatever you happened to take from ours and hand on is wholly ours." Finally, in the Apology he still addresses the same heathen thus (the same, Apology, ch. 45, p. 499): "Know that your very laws too, which seem to tend towards innocence, borrowed their form from the divine law, as being the older." And certainly in other dissertations of ours we have shown abundantly that the heathen writers drew many things from our sacred books, which they utterly corrupted with their depraved errors. But there is no one who does not easily understand from what has been said how rightly their antiquity has been proved by our Tertullian. Let us now come to the explanation of their authority.

ARTICLE VII. How Tertullian demonstrates that the authority of sacred Scripture is divine, and that ignorance of it cannot be pleaded by the heathen.

Tertullian derives the supreme authority of sacred Scripture not from its antiquity alone, but above all from the fact that it is divine, that is, handed down in writing by those men who were inspired by the divine Spirit and foretold the future with certainty (ibid., ch. 20): "For a fit testimony of divinity," he says, "is the truth of divination." Nor could anyone deny this, not even the gentiles themselves, who tried to conclude from it that their gods were true, because they maintained that future things had been foretold by them. The Christians, however, weakened the force of this argument, as used by the gentiles, for no other reason than that such predictions of man-made gods were either false or contrived by the arts and illusions of demons. For only the true God, or the prophets filled with His Spirit, can foretell the future with certainty. "Yet very many things," says our Author, "we see already done in the same way as they had been foreshown by our sacred prophets."

And he proves this by a brief enumeration of these predictions (ibid.). For now, as he says, "the earth", as was foretold by the sacred Prophets, "devours cities", that is, by sudden

movements and gapings of the earth cities have been swallowed up and devoured (ibid.). Next: "the seas defraud [us] of islands", which, that is, we see washed away by the waves and storms of the sea (ibid.). Besides this: "wars external and internal tear [us] apart, kingdoms clash with kingdoms", that is, wars split into opposing parties not only kingdoms, provinces and cities, but also fellow citizens, kinsmen and those joined by blood (ibid.). Further: "famines and plagues, and every local disaster, and for the most part frequent [onsets] of the mountains lay waste". Better, in our copies and in the old editions, "for the most part frequent deaths lay waste" (ibid.). For in vain do some, to uphold the word "mountains", contend that it means lions, bears and other beasts of that kind with which the mountains are thronged and the fields laid waste. For our Author is speaking of the deaths of men, which happen very frequently through plague, famine and other disasters of this kind.

And he continues: "The offices of the seasons and the functions of the elements go off their course" (ibid.), that is, the customary order of the four seasons of the year and the established order of the elements is thrown into confusion, which he expressed by the improper verb "exorbitant". Moreover: "the form of natural things is disturbed by monsters and portents". Some, however, would have monsters distinguished from portents there in this way, that monsters are in men and animals, but portents in inanimate things. But beyond doubt these did not attend sufficiently to what Cicero wrote, that the notions of the gods were shaped "beyond nature, with portents of men and beasts" (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, Book II, p. 215, line 45). And elsewhere: "Or do those things frighten us, whenever some portentous things are said to have been born either of a beast or of a man?" (On Divination, Book II, p. 247, line 16). "Portent", therefore, is said no more of inanimate things than of men and beasts, in whom some limb is plainly deformed beyond nature, or is superfluous, or is lacking. If, however, it is ever proved to us that a portent is really distinguished from a monster in Tertullian's words, we shall yield at once.

What more? "The lowly," he says, "are changed by exaltation, the exalted by lowliness" (Tertullian, Apology, ch. 20, p. 390); that is, the state and condition of men is so changed that they either fall from a lofty and the highest to a lowly and the lowest, or, the other way round, climb up. Finally: "justice grows rare and iniquity grows frequent; the care of all good disciplines grows torpid", namely among the heathen, who hated or spurned the Christian religion. For later he himself, as we shall see in its place, made it plain to anyone that justice, piety, holiness and the care of all good disciplines had been cultivated and spread abroad by the Christians. Moreover, no one can deny that the disasters, calamities and disturbances of affairs which our Author reviews were truly foretold by our sacred prophets, except one who has not read the books of these and of other historians or chronologers even cursorily. But as Augustine argues against Faustus the Manichaean: "We show the trustworthiness of the prophets from the things which they sang as to come, and which are seen to have come" (August., Against Faustus the Manichaean, Book XIII, ch. 7, p. 255, vol. VIII). But him [you may read] there saying more on these matters

you can go and consult there. Of the disasters of the world, however, which Tertullian said were foretold by our sacred prophets, we must treat with him further below.

We cannot conceal, however, that future things are foretold in other words of sacred Scripture that are far clearer. Such indeed are the many predictions of the Christ who was to come, and of His life, miracles, death and return to life, which are accurately reported by our Author and by Lactantius, as we showed in the earlier dissertation (below, ch. 9, art. 2; Dissertation on Lactantius, ch. 8, arts. 1 and 2). But our Tertullian himself judged, and not without good reason, that the things he now mentions were so sufficient to prove the divinity of sacred Scripture that there was need of no others, neither examples nor proofs.

Nor could it be objected that they were hidden by the Christians, and that the heathen did not have the same opportunity of reading and examining them. For although the Christians held it a matter of the highest religious duty to conceal their sacred mysteries from all others, even from the catechumens themselves, yet the books of divine Scripture they neither hid nor could hide. Therefore Tertullian addresses a heathen man thus: "Look into the words of God, our writings, which we ourselves do not suppress, and which many chances carry over to outsiders" (Tertullian, Apology, ch. 31, p. 446). And does he not by these words, "our writings", designate in general all the books not only of the old but also of the New Testament, which he somewhere called "the supplement of the old Instrument" (Tertull., Against Hermogenes, ch. 20)? The Christians, therefore, did not suppress these sacred writings; and even had they wished to hide them, they were nevertheless carried over by various chances to outsiders, that is, to the heathen.

Further, the books of the Old Testament, translated, as we have said, from Hebrew into Greek from the very time of Philadelphus, had come into the hands of these same heathen, and they could read them and recognize whether they saw the fulfilment of all the things that had been foretold in them. But even if the gentiles, through carelessness or obstinacy, had not read these sacred books, the Christians nonetheless demonstrated most plainly that the prophecies were true, which we see foretold in them a long time before. Finally, the Prophets, whose words are written down in these books, established and confirmed their words and teachings most invincibly by wonderful works of power and by miracles, as was observed above. Tertullian, therefore, from what has been said in this and the preceding articles, rightly concludes that the authority of our sacred Scriptures is divine, which for that reason he calls "divine writings" and "holy words" (Apology, ch. 39, p. 469), and he asserts that "from the trustworthiness and antiquity" of these "divine writings" the truth of our religion and of its teachings is most certainly demonstrated (ibid., ch. 46, p. 501). Now let us try to investigate and examine carefully what he has handed down and asserted in these books which we have in hand.

CHAPTER VII. On God and His divine perfections and attributes, and how many and of what kind are the disagreements and errors of the gentile philosophers about Him.

ARTICLE I. The sixfold argument is examined by which Tertullian demonstrates that God exists, namely: by the authority of the sacred Scriptures, by the agreement of the gentile philosophers, by the works of God Himself, by the inmost sense and conscience of the human mind, by the infinite perfections of God, and by the public and often repeated confession of the demons adjured by the Christians.

Such is the perfection of the Christian religion that, to demonstrate its truth and the falsity of any others whatever, the plain, simple and bare exposition of its doctrine suffices, as Tertullian rightly says. For nothing occurs in it which does not fully accord with the natural light of all men and with right reason. Our author sets out its chief heads, and begins from that which is the foundation of all the rest, namely from God Himself, Who is worshipped and adored by the Christians.

By various arguments, therefore, he shows plainly that He exists and that He is one. For first, he says, He is the One Whom almost every single page of our sacred Scriptures most openly asserts and proclaims to be the one God, and no other whatever (Tertull., Apology, ch. 17 and following, p. 375). But we have already proved that the authority of this same sacred Scripture is divine. What, then, it proclaims so often and so clearly about the one God, Who really exists, is certainly most true. For its writers, inspired, as we have seen, by the divine Spirit, can neither lie nor ever lead us into any error.

But if any heathen refuses the labour of running through some books of sacred Scripture even briefly, let him at least read their beginning and the first words of Genesis, and he will find most expressly set forth in them what Tertullian said, that there is altogether one God, "Who brought forth out of nothing this whole mass, with all its equipment of elements, bodies and spirits, by the word with which He commanded, by the reason with which He arranged, by the power with which He was able", that is, with which He was truly strong to create the world (ibid.). Minucius Felix, as we noted in another dissertation, borrowed some things from these words, but passed over these, which seem more obscure: "with the equipment of elements, bodies and spirits" (Dissertation on Minucius, ch. 21, art. 5). But these mean nothing other than that the whole world and all the things of which it is composed, namely elements, bodies and spirits, were created by the almighty God, Who therefore must altogether exist.

Moreover, Tertullian with these words alludes not only to what is written at the beginning of Genesis, as we were saying, but also to other places of sacred Scripture, in which the divine prophets [declare] that the heavens were established by the word of God, and that the whole world [was made] by His wisdom and power out of nothing

proclaim to have been made. But because Hermogenes and some other heretics, and the gentiles, dreamed that the world was founded not from nothing but from a matter pre-existing and co-eternal with God Himself, Tertullian therefore tears this false opinion up by the roots, with unanswerable weight of reasons, in a particular book composed against that same Hermogenes. But a good many arguments by which this error is destroyed by Lactantius have already been set out by us elsewhere. Rightly, then, does our Tertullian argue from this as follows: "There will be doubt, I suppose, about the powers of God, Who set up this great body of the world out of what had not been, no less than out of the death of vacancy and emptiness, animated by the Spirit, the animator of all souls" (Tertullian, Against Hermogenes, chapter 8 and following; Dissertation on Lactantius, chapter 21, article 1; Tertullian, Apology, chapter 48, page 520).

You hear, surely, that this is his argument: God created the world not from a matter pre-existing or co-eternal with Himself, but from nothing. But to create something, and, what is far greater, the whole world, from nothing belongs to supreme and infinite power. God therefore stands forth as the omnipotent Creator of the world. And this is Tertullian's first argument, by which, from the authority of sacred Scripture, which no one, as we have said, not even a gentile, can gainsay, he rightly demonstrates that God really exists.

But before we proceed to other matters, it is worth observing that in the cited text of the same Tertullian the noun animarum ("of souls") was removed at will by Rigault as superfluous, and composuit ("composed") written for imposuit ("set upon"). For all the manuscripts and the older printed copies plainly oppose this correction, for which he gave no reason. And then, could not our Author make free use of the verb imposuit, to express more significantly what he had said before, that the world was created by God out of nothing, and as it were set upon the death of vacancy and emptiness? He could also add the noun animarum for a certain emphasis, to signify more clearly that God is truly the animator and creator not only of bodies but also of souls.

Tertullian's second argument is taken from the common consent of almost all the gentile philosophers, who, though they disagree not a little with one another in defining the nature of God, as we shall show a little later, have nevertheless, willing or unwilling, confessed that He really exists (the same, chapter 47, page 516; below, this chapter, article 4; Dissertation on Minucius, chapter 4, article 1, and on Lactantius, chapter 12, article 1). But we have discussed this opinion of theirs at length elsewhere, and what we said there need not now be repeated.

The third argument for the existence of one God Tertullian seeks from His works, which, just as no one, unless he is plainly out of his mind, can fail to acknowledge, so neither can he deny that the one God is their author. For the world, as Tertullian rightly says, was made by Him "for the adornment of His majesty" (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 17, page 375). But what is that "for the adornment of the divine majesty", if not for its proof and argument, by which from the creation of the world His divine

majesty and omnipotence become manifest and are known to all, even the duller? For which reason Lactantius later said expressly: "Who kindled the sun as the brightest and singular light for human affairs, in proof of His sole majesty" (Lactantius, Divine Institutes, book II, chapter 5, page 161). And certainly the sun was not created by some chance, or by itself, being wholly bereft of reason. By its light and splendour, therefore, it shows the omnipotent God to be its author. But we have treated this argument in our dissertation on the books of the same Lactantius (Dissertation on Lactantius, chapter 12, article 1).

Nor are the duller eyes of the human mind, dazzled by this brightest light of the sun, alone compelled to acknowledge God, but from His other works too: "by so many and so great things," says Tertullian, "by which we are contained, by which we are sustained, by which we are delighted, by which we are terrified" (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 17, page 376). For what else do so many and so great works cry aloud, but that they were brought forth by the one God, Who leads men to the knowledge of Himself either by benefits or by terror? And from this, indeed, a little later he added the "signs of His majesty" put forth by Him "through rains", no doubt those of the general flood, "through fires", and those above all by which the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed. For by whom, I beseech you, could these things have been done, if not by God, the most just Judge, Who was exacting from wicked and most criminal men the penalties due to their crimes?

But there are still other things by which, as Tertullian says, "we are terrified", namely lightnings, thunderbolts, thunders, public disasters and storms, and other things like these. He seems to have added these deliberately, to meet the various subtleties of the atheists, who object that thunderbolts which fall upon mountains, for example, and other things of this kind are altogether useless, and that no cause can be brought forward on account of which they happen. To these chattering and impious men, who, having spurned or stifled the conscience of the mind, wish to be slaves to depraved lusts, he replies that these things happen so "that we may be terrified", that is, that we may fear the true God as their author, and by that fear, which he shows elsewhere to be inborn in man, may acknowledge that He really exists Who is able to chastise those same impious men and other criminals according to their deserts (the same, On the Testimony of the Soul, chapter 2).

Moreover, we have shown elsewhere that, even if the infinite greatness of God, and the cause of some of His works, is not wholly discovered by the weak and purblind mind of men, yet from His effects, which are unknown to no one, it is most manifestly demonstrated that He exists, and for what end He made all things. Now we are not asking why or how all things are done or have been made by Him, but whether He Himself exists and whether this is recognized from His works. In other dissertations of ours we have plainly shown how certainly and evidently it is demonstrated from this that God exists, and how feeble is the argument of the heathen, who denied it on the ground that God Himself cannot be seen (Dissertation on Minucius, chapter 5, article 1, and chapter 6, article 1).

The fourth demonstration that God really exists is drawn by Tertullian from the inmost sense of the human soul, or

its testimony, and the very conscience of man. "Will you have us prove it," he says, "from the testimony of the soul itself? Which, though pressed down by the prison of the body, though hemmed in by depraved teachings, though enervated by lusts and desires, though enslaved to false gods, yet when it comes to its senses, as from drunkenness, as from sleep, as from some illness, and experiences its own health, names God, by this name alone, because properly this one is the true God, good and great; and 'What God may have given' is the cry of all; it calls Him to witness as judge too: 'God sees', and 'I commend it to God', and 'God will repay me'" (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 17, page 376 and following). But in this text of our author Rigault, after his manner, changed and added some things. First, on the sole conjecture of Latinius, though perhaps not a wholly unhappy one, he wished potitur ("possesses") to be emended and written in place of the verb patitur ("experiences"), that is, he says, while it is in possession of a sound mind. And certainly the noun sanitas ("health") is sometimes taken for a good state of mind, and in good authors we read potiri gaudia ("to possess joys"). But in two more recent manuscripts pascitur ("feeds on") is written. What, though, if Tertullian, speaking less than good Latin, said patitur sanitatem ("experiences health"), that is, a health not yet entire?

Whatever the case, Rigault seems on his own private authority to have substituted, for these words, "by this name alone, because properly this one is God, good and great", the following: "by this name alone, because proper to the true God: God great, God good." But were not the words of the manuscripts clear enough, and no less plain than these? But suppose them to be more obscure: must a hand on that account be laid on the text of an ancient writer, so that it is corrected at will and is no longer his?

And our Tertullian uses this argument against the heathen not only in this book, but presses it also more fully and more sharply in the whole book On the Testimony of the Soul against the Gentiles, where he teaches that this very testimony of the soul is "better known than all literature, more discussed than any doctrine, more widely published than any edition, greater than the whole man, that is, the whole of what belongs to man" (the same, On the Testimony of the Soul, chapter 1). Other words of his we have cited elsewhere, and have made it plain that the same argument is used by Minucius Felix, Cyprian, Arnobius and Lactantius, who, keeping close to the footsteps of our Author, overwhelmed all the worshippers of false gods and the atheists by the force and weight of this argument (Dissertation on Minucius, chapter 2, article 5, and chapter 3, article 3; Dissertation on Arnobius, chapter 5, article 1, and Dissertation on Lactantius, chapter 12, article 1).

For which reason we judge that those things need not be repeated here, but only this needs to be examined: why he said that this natural invocation of God is "the testimony of the soul naturally Christian". For is the soul naturally Christian? Did he not say a little later: "Christians are made, not born" (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 17, page 377; ibid., chapter 18, page 378)? And elsewhere he addresses the soul itself thus: "You are not, so far as I know, Christian; for you are wont to become Christian, not to be born so" (the same, On the Testimony of the Soul, chapter 1). But if a man is not born but made a Christian, then his soul is not naturally Christian. Yet Tertullian, who beyond doubt did not contradict himself within a few lines, signifies by the former words nothing else than that of the human soul

the notion of the true God is naturally implanted, which is the foundation of the whole Christian religion. But all its other mysteries and teachings the soul does not know unless it is first taught by others. And thus indeed Christians are made and not born, although by nature they acknowledge and invoke the one God.

Would you have this proved to you from Tertullian himself? In To the Nations he writes that Father Liber, with his rite, was expelled from the city of Rome and the whole of Italy by the authority of the senate, and that the statues of Serapis, Isis and Harpocrates were overthrown. And from this he draws the following conclusion: "You have, therefore, in your forefathers, if not the name, yet the Christian sect, which neglects the gods" (Tertullian, To the Nations, book I, chapter 10, page 573). Do you see that on account of this deed alone certain gentiles are called by him by the name of the Christian sect? By the same reasoning, therefore, the soul could be called naturally Christian, which by the testimony of its conscience and by natural light and impulse acknowledges the true and only God. But it has already been observed by us that things plainly like these are put forward by Minucius Felix (Dissertation on Minucius, chapter 13, article 4).

With full right, therefore, Tertullian concludes thus from this, and from all that he had proved so far: "This is the sum of the offence of those who will not acknowledge Him Whom they cannot be ignorant of" (Apology, chapter 17, page 376). Plainly the same is the conclusion of Cyprian, his disciple and follower: "And this is the sum of the offence, to be unwilling to acknowledge Him Whom one cannot be ignorant of" (Cyprian, On the Vanity of Idols, page 15). For no one can plead ignorance of God, Whom he is compelled to acknowledge by so many arguments and by the inmost sense of heart and soul. The greatest offence, then, nay rather the sum of all offences, is to be unwilling to acknowledge God, Who can be unknown to no one unless he is utterly senseless and out of his mind.

The fifth demonstration of the divine existence, as they call it, is contained in these words, by which our Author draws that conclusion from the infinite perfections of God: "Therefore," he says, "God is true and so great" (ibid.). For does he not argue in this fashion? By the name of true God is understood He Whose perfections are infinite, and than Whom nothing greater or more perfect can be thought of; for He would not be the true God if He were not so great. But He Who embraces infinite perfections in Himself surely has from Himself both that He exists and that He grants to others that they be and exist; for since the series of all created things is such that the later have received from the older the origin by which they exist, there must have been before all time someone who had from no one, but rather from himself, that he exists, and who bestows on all created things all the perfections with which they are endowed: but He "is therefore true, because He is so great". And in his book against Marcion he concludes from the supreme perfection of God that He is unique, so that He would not exist if He were not one. Hear, I pray, what his argument is: "Since God is the supreme great, our truth has rightly pronounced: God, if He is not one, is not. Not as though we doubted that God is, in saying: if not one, He is not; but because we define Him Whom we trust to be, as being that which, if it is not, God is not, namely the supreme great.

Further, the supreme great must needs be unique: therefore God too will be unique, not otherwise God than as the supreme great, nor otherwise the supreme great than as having no equal, nor otherwise having no equal than as being unique" (the same, Against Marcion, book I, chapter 3).

The sixth and last demonstration by which God is proved to exist was supplied to Tertullian by the supreme and wonderful power of the Christians to drive out demons, against which no gentile, however obstinate, could so much as mutter. For at that time demons, adjured by Christians in the name of Christ, were very often not only cast out of the men whom they possessed, but were also compelled to confess openly and publicly that neither they themselves nor the others whom the gentiles worshipped were gods, but that only one exists, Whom the disciples of Christ venerated. "But all this confession of theirs," says Tertullian, "by which they deny that they are gods, and by which they answer that there is no other God but the one to Whom we are bound over, is quite sufficient to repel the charge of injuring above all the Roman religion", which venerated not the true and only God but false gods (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 24, page 416). For surely all the heathen ought to have believed the demons when they confessed the truth against themselves, since they believed them when they lied. For no one, as he rightly argues, "lies to his own disgrace, but rather to his honour. Credit is nearer at hand for those who confess against themselves than for those who deny on their own behalf" (ibid., chapter 23, page 415). So public a testimony could plainly be doubtful and suspect to no one. For which reason, our Author goes on, it "used to make Christians out of heathens" (ibid.). For what man could reject so certain and clear a testimony, unless one from whom false prejudices or private interests had wholly snatched away the light of reason? With full right, therefore, our Author refutes the supreme iniquity of the gentiles, who accused the Christians of injuring the Roman religion, and strove by every kind of punishment to drive them, against their conscience and against so many demonstrations of such weight, to worship false gods and to deny the true God.

ARTICLE II.

On the perfections or attributes of God, and in what sense He is said by Tertullian to be known to men although He is invisible, incomprehensible, inestimable; what are the knowledge, wisdom and eternity of this true and living God.

That God is most perfect Tertullian rightly gathers from the fact that the world and all things that are in it were created by Him, as we saw in the preceding article (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 11). "For that which perfected all things," he says, "could not be imperfect"; that is, because God is from Himself and made all other things, He must have nothing whatever of imperfection, but all perfections without exception.

And these are so great, and so far surpass the weakness of human understanding, that "He is invisible" (ibid., chapter 17, page 375), says our Author, that is, to human eyes

He cannot be seen. For as He Himself speaks in Exodus (Exod. 33:20): "For man shall not see Me and live." But Tertullian adds, "although He is seen", that is, although men see and know with the mind that He really exists, through the arguments and demonstrations brought forward above (preceding article).

"He is incomprehensible too," Tertullian goes on (Tertullian, ibid.). For as Clement of Alexandria acknowledges (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, book V, page 548): "It is clear that no one can ever, during the time of life, apprehend God distinctly", that is, no one can ever comprehend God clearly during this time of life. By which words both signify that the infinite perfections of God cannot be plainly and thoroughly comprehended, with a clear and distinct idea and notion, by men living this mortal life. Yet he adds: "although He is represented through grace." But what is this grace, if not that of our Saviour Christ, Who, made man, taught men how they might understand that He Himself and His divine Father are the one and true God? For no one, as the author of the Epistle to Diognetus writes, has seen God or known Him perfectly (Epistle to Diognetus, page 499, edition of Justin Martyr): "But He showed Himself; and He showed Himself through faith, to which alone it is granted to see God", that is, but He Himself showed Himself; and He showed Himself through faith, by which alone it is granted to see God. And did not both aim at these words of Matthew (Matt. 11:27): "No one knows the Son but the Father, nor does anyone know the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him"? Or at those of John (John 1:18): "No one has ever seen God. The only-begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him."

Our Author goes on: "inestimable, although He is estimated by human senses", that is, He is rightly estimated by men in this, that they know Him to be inestimable (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 17, page 375). For he presently added: "This is what makes God to be estimated, that He does not admit of being estimated", just as if he had said: we estimate God rightly then, when we confess that He cannot be estimated as He deserves either by us or by any man.

If you ask him the reason for all these things, he will give it in the same place: "What can be commonly seen, what can be comprehended, what can be estimated, is less than the eyes by which it is taken up, and the hands by which it is handled, and the senses by which it is found"; that is, whatever is commonly perceived by bodily eyes, touched by hands, or falls under the other senses, is less than all these senses, and of a lower order than God (ibid.). For "what is immeasurable", as God is, "is known to itself alone" (ibid.). By the name of immeasurable Tertullian does not precisely understand what exists everywhere and in every place, but what is infinite. For in that sense good authors speak of immeasurable labour, and immeasurable pain, or immeasurable desire. God therefore, as being infinite, is known in His greatness by Himself alone (ibid.). And thus, as our Author says again, "the force of His greatness presents Him to men both as known and as unknown" (Dissertation on Minucius' Octavius, chapter 5, article 1; Dissertation on Lactantius, chapter 13,

article 1). So great indeed is His greatness, and the excellence of that divine nature, that, although men know more certainly than certain that He exists, they cannot grasp how great and of what kind all His perfections are. But all these things have already been discussed in our earlier dissertations.

Further, we observe that not only these negative attributes of God, as they call them, are asserted by Tertullian, but many others too, which are called affirmative (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 30, page 441). For he calls God true and living, and so sets Him against the false and dead gods of the gentiles.

Then he teaches that He is "the watcher over all", Whose fullness of knowledge is infinite, and from Whom nothing whatever can ever lie hidden through any difficulty of hiding-places (ibid., chapter 45, page 500). And not in the Apology alone, but in another book too, he proclaims this divine knowledge. For we read these things handed down by him in writing elsewhere (the same, On Repentance, chapter 3): "Nor, if human limitation judges of the deed only, because it is not equal to the hiding-places of the will, should we on that account neglect its crimes before God as well. God suffices for all things. Nothing is removed from His sight, whence any sin at all is committed." He therefore penetrates all the inmost and more hidden recesses of the human heart; and accordingly knows perfectly all other things, whatever they may be.

No less emphatically does he declare that He is rational from eternity, Who, as will be shown more fully below, brought forth the Word, the Discourse, Sophia, Wisdom; and that, having fashioned the world by word, reason and wisdom, He created it out of nothing, and therefore preceded all time, and is eternal (the same, Apology, chapter 17, page 375; chapter 11, page 332).

And this he confirms elsewhere in these words (ibid., chapter 26): "Who was before time, and made the age a body of times." The noun corpus ("body") is taken there for a collection of many things and a gathered multitude. So one speaks of the body of a city or of a commonwealth. And of the Christians our author himself says: "We are a body" (ibid., chapter 39). His meaning, then, is: God "made the age a body of times", or made the world to consist of the whole collection of times (ibid., chapter 18, page 377). For which reason he had said earlier: "God ordered the age by fixed dispositions and outcomes of times." But He could not do this unless He was before all time, as he himself puts it, and therefore eternal. Nor should you doubt that this is the mind of him who wrote elsewhere in the name of the Christians (ibid., chapter 30): "We invoke the eternal God." And there he proclaims Him not only eternal but also omnipotent, in Whose power all things are placed.

ARTICLE III.

It is shown that Tertullian truly believed that God is spirit and has nothing bodily, and the contrary arguments are resolved.

What has so far been set out concerning so many and so great perfections and attributes of God plainly demonstrates that they are supreme, and that God, from Himself alone, and

from no other, has whatever He Himself is. But if nothing befalls Him from another, and His perfections are infinite and could never be circumscribed by anyone, His nature is beyond doubt most simple, and therefore spiritual, and free of all bodily compounding. He has, then, no body, which in any case is composed of parts, and can therefore be dissolved, and is imperfect. But what need is there to prove this doctrine of our Author by any argument? Did he not proclaim it most openly in these words (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 21): "We have declared Him God; we inscribe spirit as His proper substance"? And a little after: "For God too is spirit."

And please do not reply that by the name of spirit he there understands some body, though one far subtler than the rest. For in the same place the Word, the Discourse and Son of God, is said by him to have come forth from the bosom of His eternal Father, "spirit from spirit, and God from God" (ibid.). But certainly that eternal bringing forth of God, before every created body, can admit nothing whatever bodily. For it is the very thought and understanding of God, which must be wholly incorporeal and purely spiritual. Truly, therefore, Tertullian believed that God the Father and His Son are spirit, having nothing at all of body or of matter, however subtle.

Some, however, protest against this, and object to us that Tertullian taught that whatever is, is either body or nothing, and that nothing at all can be assigned as a mean between the two. For these are his very words: "Everything that is, is body of its own kind. Nothing is incorporeal except what is not" (the same, On the Flesh of Christ, chapter 11). This proposition of his is beyond doubt general, and he therefore expressly defines that whatever is, whether God or anything else, by the very fact that it is, is body. Since, then, as we have seen, he proved by so many arguments that the one and true God exists, he certainly believed Him to be in reality bodily.

"But what need is there," others will say, "of this or any other argument? Does he not speak of God Himself in this fashion: 'Who will deny that God is body, although God is spirit? For spirit is body of its own kind, in its own form. And those invisible things too, whatever they are, have with God both their own body and their own form, through which they are visible to God alone' (the same, Against Praxeas, chapter 7)?"

But however general his first proposition may be, he nonetheless distinguishes some substance midway between body and nothing, which is spiritual, a spirit distinct from body. Indeed, in this book of the Apology which we are treating, he said that this mass of the world was created by God "with all the equipment of elements, bodies, spirits" (the same, Apology, chapter 17). But what need was there to add "spirits" there, if he had believed body and spirit to be one and the same? Will you reply that by the name of bodies are signified dense and grosser bodies, and by the word spirits subtler and very fine bodies? But these are only different qualities of bodies, which

could have been sufficiently designated by the name of bodies alone. But by the name of spirits he seems beyond doubt to signify not qualities of bodies, but something set apart from every body.

What of the fact that in another book he distinguishes a spiritual thing from a bodily one plainly and thoroughly? For where he discusses the sins and offences of man, who consists, as he says, of body and spirit, he openly declares: "Of offences some are carnal, that is, bodily, but some spiritual" (the same, On Repentance, chapter 3). And then a little after: "They are named spiritual and bodily for this reason, that every offence is either done or thought. That it may be bodily, it lies in the deed, because a deed, like a body, can be both seen and touched. But spiritual is what is in the mind, because spirit is neither seen nor touched. By which it is understood that offences not of the deed only, but of the will too, are to be avoided." He acknowledges, therefore, that sins are of two kinds: namely bodily ones, which are committed by the body, the mind and will not resisting; but others of the spirit alone, which are committed by thought and will alone, and without any service of the body. Indeed, he teaches that there are other acts proper to our soul as well, in no way depending on its body, to which not only punishment but reward too is due (the same, On the Soul, chapter 58). But these acts of the soul alone, good or bad, worthy of reward or punishment, they judged to be neither body nor nothing, but something in between. He thought, therefore, that there are certain things which are spiritual only and not bodily at all.

As for his second proposition concerning God, does he not, as we have said, expressly affirm that His Son is His very wisdom, His inward word and discourse, or understanding, which is wholly incorporeal and plainly spiritual? How, then, can this be, unless God is plainly incorporeal and spirit? Besides, it is quite enough that some spiritual substance, midway between body and nothing, is admitted by him. For if there is any, who will deny that God is that above all?

You will insist, however, that he acknowledges no third thing between bodily and incorporeal. For against Hermogenes he argues thus: "Unless I am mistaken, every thing must be either bodily or incorporeal (granting for the moment that there is something incorporeal, of substances only, since the substance itself of each thing is a body): certainly after bodily and incorporeal there is no third" (the same, Against Hermogenes, chapter 35). But there he seems beyond doubt rather to admit incorporeal things than to deny them. For there, as has been said, he refutes Hermogenes himself, who babbled that matter, though really existing, is both bodily and incorporeal. Tertullian, to overturn this fiction of an empty opinion from its foundations, divides every thing into bodily and incorporeal. He therefore acknowledges that there is something incorporeal. And if there is any, God certainly is so above all others.

You will perhaps press that this division did not seem to him altogether complete. For he does not declare it absolutely, but to his adversary, for the moment and freely, and asserting nothing,

he concedes that there is some incorporeal substance, which is nevertheless the body of the thing itself. He held, then, that nothing exists except what is bodily. But observe, I pray, that he sticks only at the meaning of this noun, "body". Yet in the same place he explains not obscurely what he understood by this noun: "The substance itself," he says, "is the body of each thing." By the noun body, therefore, he thinks the substance of each thing is signified. But there is no one who does not confess that there is nothing whatever midway or third between substance and nothing itself. And what wonder is it if he thought that by the noun body the very substance of each thing is to be understood, when Paul the apostle sets this very noun "body" against shadows and figures, and said that it is that which is the thing itself and the truth? For of the figures of the Old Testament he writes in this fashion (Col. 2:17): "Which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is Christ's", that is: these ceremonies are nothing else than shadows; but the body of them, or the thing itself and the truth, is Christ, in Whom they are fulfilled.

For which reason, in those passages of our Tertullian which have been objected to us, where he said that every substance is body, or that whatever is, is body, he not unadvisedly added there "of its own kind", that is, that it is substance of its own kind, either bodily or spiritual.

But someone will insist that, even if this were most evidently proved, it can nevertheless be called in doubt whether Tertullian at some time thought that God is body, and afterwards changed his mind and opinion. For Augustine speaks of him in this fashion (Augustine, On Genesis according to the Letter, chapter 26, page 273): "Tertullian believed the soul to be body for no other reason than that he could not think of it as incorporeal; and so he feared that it would be nothing if it were not body, and he would not think otherwise of God either. Yet, since he is indeed acute, he is sometimes overcome, against his own opinion, by the truth once seen. For what truer thing could he say than what he says in a certain place: 'Everything bodily is passible' (Tertullian, On the Soul, chapter 7)? He ought, then, to have changed the opinion by which he had said a little earlier that God too is body. For I do not think he was so foolish as to believe that even the nature of God is passible, so that Christ should now be believed passible and changeable not in the flesh only but in the very Word through Whom all things were made, which be far from a Christian heart."

But Petau dissents from Augustine, and does not think that Tertullian contradicts himself or changed his opinion about a bodily God, although he believed every body to be passible but the nature of God in no way passible (Petau, Dogmata theologica, volume I, chapter 1, § 5 and following). "For he attributes to a bodily thing," he says, "passions, or other motions and affections, other than those he attributes to God." For to Marcion, who denied that there is any motion of anger in God, and objected that if He were ever angry He would be subject to corruption and death, Tertullian himself replies that the passions, or motions and feelings of the mind, in God and in man are indeed called by the same names, but are as different in the two as their substance and body differ from one another. Marcion, indeed,

addresses him in these words: "Distinguish the substances, and assign to them their own senses, as different as the substances require, although they seem to share the names" (the same, Against Marcion, Book II, chapter 16) .... "As great as the diversity of the divine and the human body will be under the same names of members, so great will be the difference of the divine and the human soul, even though under the same names of members, which the corruptibility of the human substance makes as corruptible in man as the incorruptibility of the divine substance makes them incorruptible in God."

Petavius therefore gathers from this that Tertullian thought there is a body in God as well as in man, just as there are passions or senses, movements and affections, but with this distinction, that in man they are corruptible, but in God incorruptible. Nothing therefore prevents, he says, Tertullian's opinion standing, that God has a body, which he thought not passible indeed, but incorruptible. But I would have you weigh whether Petavius had fully grasped in what sense Tertullian took that word "passible" which he excludes from God. For he seems to mean nothing else by it than what carries with it something imperfect and changeable. Did not Augustine, then, rightly say that Tertullian either contradicted himself or changed his opinion, when he asserted that God is a body and that every body is passible? For God is most perfect, and most richly endowed with simplicity and with every kind of perfection. He can therefore have nothing whatever imperfect. Therefore the supreme perfection of God and a body are at war with each other, and cannot be in God.

For the rest, although Petavius had proved that Tertullian did not fall into any fault of contradiction, yet that most learned man admits that this is of greater weight, which Augustine in another book, to excuse Tertullian, set down in these words (Augustine, book On Heresies, chapter 86, page 25): "Tertullian could in some fashion be thought [to say that] the very divine nature and substance [is] a body, whose parts, some greater, some lesser, can or must be conceived, such as are all the things which we properly call bodies ... but he could, as I said, be thought to call God a body for this reason: because He is not nothing, He is not emptiness, He is not a quality of body or of soul, but is whole everywhere, and divided by no spaces of places, yet abides unchangeably in His own nature and substance."

Yet it will perhaps seem strange to some, to whom Augustine's modesty is not well enough known, why he does not dare to affirm outright that this was really Tertullian's opinion, but only that it could in some fashion be thought to have been. For we have already shown that he declared quite plainly that by the name of body he understood substance, which exists in whatever way and is opposed to nothing. We have noted besides that substance is divided by him into corporeal and incorporeal, that is, wholly free of all body, and purely spiritual. But if he ever thought that even one thing of this kind exists, he was certainly persuaded that God is spirit, and indeed far more excellent than all the rest. And certainly those supreme perfections, and the infinite knowledge and science of all things, by Tertullian, as a little

we observed above, so clearly asserted, can have nothing whatever corporeal. For no body, however thin; no matter, stirred by whatever motion; no atoms, cohering with one another by whatever concourse, can produce the knowledge of any one thing, much less of all things. Tertullian therefore could not attribute a body, or anything corporeal, to God, unless by this name, as we have seen, he understood a substance of its own kind, that is, a divine and spiritual one. But further light will be shed on these matters by what will be said in the following chapter on the divinity of Christ, and afterwards on angels and demons, and on the human soul.

ARTICLE IV.

How many and of what kind were the disagreements of the pagan philosophers about God: of Thales, or Simonides, who, when questioned about Him, could give no answer; of the Platonists, who [taught that He cares for] all things; of the Epicureans, who [taught that He] cares for nothing; of the Platonists, who [taught that He is] within the world; of the Stoics, who [taught that He is] placed outside it; of Plato, who [taught that He is] the creator of the world; of Pythagoras, who taught that the world is uncreated; and whether Tertullian set out their opinions correctly.

Although the pagan philosophers acknowledged, either by natural reason or, as Tertullian says, from the sacred Scriptures, or could without difficulty have acknowledged, that there is only one God (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 47), yet among themselves, whether through the fault of vainglory or through a lust for disputing, they never ceased to fight it out over the very nature, quality and seat of God: "For what certain answer," to use our author's words, "did Thales, that prince of the natural philosophers, give to Croesus when he enquired about the Godhead?" Plainly nothing, but "he often frustrated the time allowed for deliberating" (ibid., chapter 46; and Book II To the Nations, chapter 2). But Cicero, and Minucius Felix, who, as we have seen elsewhere, follows him, ascribed this to Simonides and to Hiero the tyrant (Dissertation on Minucius, chapter 3, article 2). Nor should you answer that some error lurks in Tertullian's text. For Thales is called by him "prince of the natural philosophers" (ibid., chapter 4, article 1, volume I; Apparatus, page 1119 and following), that is, the first of those who, as we have also shown, began disputations on natural things. But to see whether the opinion of Tertullian is truer than that of Cicero and Minucius, the age of Thales, of Simonides and of Croesus must be examined. Now according to Eusebius's Chronicle, at the year 1266 "Thales of Miletus, natural philosopher, is recognized." But at the year 1465, "the things related of Croesus, how he tested the oracles, belonged to these times." And two years after, "Thales dies." Two men named Thales are therefore recorded, as Scaliger notes, of whom the earlier, a natural philosopher, is said to have flourished in the age of Lycurgus and Orpheus, the later almost two hundred years afterwards, in the time of Croesus (Scaliger, notes on Eusebius's Chronicle, page 74). But Tertullian speaks of Thales the prince of the natural philosophers, who, being two centuries older than Croesus, could not have lived with him, and so could not have answered him.

Simonides, however, is recorded in the same Eusebian Chronicle to have lived in the year 1531. For there we read: "Pindar

and Simonides are held to be distinguished lyric poets." But afterwards, at the year 1542, "Hiero," whom Minucius Felix mentions, "exercised the tyranny at Syracuse after Gelo." As far, then, as the earlier Thales is distant in age from Croesus, so near is Simonides said to be to that same Hiero. To this Simonides therefore, rather than to Thales the prince of the natural philosophers, the question and answer about the Godhead which were cited belong. Moreover, Minucius's opinion seems still more probable in that it is supported by Cicero's authority.

Nor should you say that there are very many errors in Eusebius's Chronicle in assigning the age of illustrious men; for whatever they may be, no one will deny that the times of Thales the natural philosopher and of Croesus are too far separated from each other for them to be said to have lived together. Nor is there reason for you to press [the point] that the answer recorded fits well with Thales, a philosopher and prince of the natural philosophers, but not at all with Simonides, who, as we have seen elsewhere, gave himself to poetry (Dissertation on the Octavius of Minucius, chapter 3, article 2; and volume I, Apparatus, page 1284). For among the pagans the poets were held in the number of the theologians.

Finally Minucius, relying on Cicero's testimony, was able to correct this opinion of Tertullian's about the first Thales and Croesus, although, as we have observed, he took a good deal from his books. And certainly how would this Thales, questioned about the Godhead, have dared to answer nothing, who, as we have noted elsewhere following that same Cicero, taught as confidently as falsely that water is the beginning of all things, and that God is the mind which formed all things out of water (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, Book I, page 199; Dissertation on Minucius, chapter 4, article 1; and on Lactantius, chapter 12, article 1)? But no one has proved to us that he either at some time doubted this opinion or ever changed it. If, further, anyone proves that that answer about God is to be attributed to the second Thales, he will show that these words must be struck out of Tertullian's text: "prince of the natural philosophers". For the rest, whichever philosopher that answer belonged to, who will call into doubt that it was asserted by him? He therefore openly confessed that the Godhead was unknown to him.

But in the second book To the Nations Tertullian put before Thales Diogenes, who, when consulted on what is done in the heavens (these are his very words), said: "I have never ascended into heaven" (Tertullian, Book II To the Nations, chapter 2). Likewise, [when asked] whether there were gods: "I do not know," he answered, "except that it is expedient that they should be," that is: I do not know, but it is useful and expedient for all that there should be gods. Not far indeed from the former answer is the one which, as Laertius relates, was given by Diogenes the Cynic to a man discoursing about heavenly things: "How many days ago did you arrive from heaven?", that is, "When did you come from heaven?" (Laertius, Book VI, Life of Diogenes, § 39). But see, I pray, whether this answer of the same Diogenes is any farther from the second, [given] to Lysias the druggist when he asked whether he believed that there are gods: "How do I not believe, when I take you to be hateful to the gods?", that is, "How do I not believe, I who think you an enemy of the gods?" (ibid., § 42). Laertius, however, warns us in the same place that this saying is attributed to Theodore, who, as we have observed more than once, was without doubt surnamed the Atheist. Yet if the things which Tertullia-

-n, our author, ascribes to Diogenes you contend were written by another of the same name, but an atheist, we have indeed Aelian, who, as some say, counted Diogenes the Phrygian among the herd of these wicked men (Aelian, Varied History, Book II, § 31). But, besides the fact that in our edition of Aelian's books "Dionysius the Phrygian" is read, no one has shown us where this Diogenes, or Dionysius, uttered the words cited by our author.

But among the other philosophers there was the greatest variety and disagreement of opinions about God: "For some," says Tertullian, namely the Platonists, "assert that God is incorporeal" (Apology, chapter 47, page 515). Would you have some witness brought forward for you? Here is Cicero, who introduced Velleius speaking thus about Plato: "But as for his wishing God to be without any body, what the Greeks call asōmaton, what kind of thing that could be cannot be understood" (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, Book I, page 200, line XIII). Laertius relates the same of this prince of the philosophers: "He holds," he says, "that the soul, like God, is incorporeal", "is bodiless" (Laertius, Book III, in the Life of Plato, § 77). And Plutarch, Eusebius, Apuleius and others support Laertius (Plutarch, On the Opinions of the Philosophers, Book I, chapter 7, page 881; Eusebius, Oration of Constantine, page 200; Plato, volume III, pages 27–28, and elsewhere; Apuleius, On God.

But however true this opinion may be, it was nevertheless rejected by other pagan philosophers. For Velleius in Cicero, as we were just saying, contended that it cannot be understood what or of what kind that is which is called incorporeal (Socrates, Cicero, place cited). Nor could other philosophers either explain what the true idea and notion of an incorporeal thing is.

"But the Stoics," our author goes on, "proclaimed that God is corporeal" (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 515; volume I, Apparatus, Book III, dissertation 1, chapter 11, article 2; Dissertation on Minucius, chapter 4, article 10). This opinion of the Stoics, which, because of their contradictions, is not without its own difficulties, we have discussed elsewhere. And we have cited a number [of writers] who testify that they did in fact fall into this error.

Tertullian continues: "Some," namely Epicurus and his followers, "chattered that God consists of atoms, others of numbers," as Pythagoras [did], "others of fire," like Heraclitus (Tertullian, place cited; volume I, Apparatus, page 435; Dissertation on Minucius, place cited; Dissertation on Lactantius, chapter 12, article 1). And all these thought that these were the first principles of all things, and that there were no other gods, as we have noted elsewhere, and not just once.

Nor have we shown less plainly that the opinions of the philosophers on divine providence, as Tertullian says, were various and opposed to one another: "For the Platonists," he says, "proclaimed [God] as caring for things; the Epicureans, on the contrary, [proclaimed Him] idle and unemployed and, so to speak, a nobody to human affairs" (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 47, and Book II To the Nations, chapter 2). If you wish more about Plato, go to Laertius and you will hear him saying: "He thinks that the gods too watch over human affairs."

"He thinks that the gods both see and care for human things" (Laertius, Book III, in the Life of Plato, § 78). Nor need many others be cited, since Plato himself also asserted this quite often (Plato, Phaedo, volume I, page 62, after the middle). For somewhere he says that God takes care of us no otherwise than of His own property and possession: "That there is a God who takes care of us, and that we are His possessions" (the same, On the Laws, Book X, page 285). And elsewhere he asserts without hesitation that the first madness is to deny the gods, and the second to assert that they have no care for men: "The second, that being [gods] they do not take thought for men" (ibid., page 899 and following). But he afterwards pursues this more fully, and routs and overturns that insane error (Dissertation on Lactantius, chapter 14, article 1). But that most absurd error is the error of Epicurus and his followers, as has been demonstrated by us.

Wherefore our author added a little after that the opinion of the Platonists on the seat of God was that He resides "within the world, who, after the example of a helmsman, remains within that which He rules" (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 47, and Book II To the Nations, chapter 2). And indeed Plato decides and proves that this world is constantly governed in a fixed and settled order by a certain wonderful mind and wisdom, which is God Himself (Plato, Philebus, volume II, page 28 and following). But in another book we read it written by him that God, the governor of the universe, after the world and all things had been created, let go the reins of ruling it and went back as it were into His watchtower (the same, Statesman, page 272 and following). But afterwards, lest the world, shaken by various storms and evils, should be utterly dissolved, He took up its helm again and, sitting at it with care, adorned the parts of that same world, and governs [them].

But the Stoics, against this opinion of the Platonists, proclaimed, as Tertullian says, that God is "placed outside the world, who like a potter turns this mass from outside" (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 47, and Book II To the Nations, chapter 2). But there is no small room for doubting whether this was in fact the opinion of the Stoics. For Zeno, their standard-bearer, and his followers, as one may learn from Laertius and Plutarch, thought that God is a mind which reaches and penetrates all things (Laertius, Book VII, in the Life of Zeno, §§ 138 and 147; Plutarch, On the Opinions of the Philosophers, Book I, chapter 7, page 882). We too have observed elsewhere that this was in truth their opinion. On what ground, then, could our author so confidently affirm that the Stoics taught that God is placed, like a potter, outside the whole mass of the world fashioned by Him (volume I, Apparatus, page 780; Lipsius, Stoic Psychology, Book I, dissertation 31, page 565, volume IV)?

Lipsius cuts rather than unties the knot of this difficulty. For without hesitation he there accuses Tertullian of error, in that he attributed to the Stoics what had been neither said nor even thought by them. But did Tertullian really err so? Was he ignorant, or had it slipped from his mind, what the Stoics had taught about the divine mind pervading the whole world? Not at all. For in another book he committed this to writing:

"The Stoics hold that God ran through matter in the way honey [runs] through the combs" (Tertullian, book Against Hermogenes, chapter 44). He ought therefore to have been charged with contradiction rather than with forgetfulness or ignorance. But beyond doubt the contradictions of the Stoics were greater than those of Tertullian; Plutarch laid them open in whole books, and we have noted them somewhere (Dissertation on Lactantius, chapter 21, article 2). Could this not, then, have been ascribed to their contradictions rather than to his?

But what if Seneca, himself also a Stoic, suggests to us a way of removing this contradiction? For he discourses about God in this manner: "What is God? The Mind of the Universe. What is God? All that you see, and all that you do not see. Thus at last His greatness is restored to Him, than which nothing greater can be thought, if He alone is all. He holds His work both within and without" (Seneca, preface to Natural Questions, Book I, page 793). For does he not signify by these words that God is both within and outside the world, because He is greater than all His work? But if that was the opinion of the Stoics, there were two parts of that same opinion. What then if Tertullian mentioned only one part, so as to set the Stoics against the Platonists?

It may be objected, however, that this same opinion is attributed by Seneca himself to the Epicureans, whom for that reason he sharply rebukes and harries: "You, Epicurus," he said, "make God unarmed .... you have cast Him out beyond fear" (others want it read "beyond the goal"). "Him therefore, fenced in by some huge and impassable wall, and separated from the touch and sight of mortals, you have no reason to fear. He has no means either of bestowing or of harming. In the middle space between this heaven and another, deserted, without living creature, without man, without anything, He avoids the ruins of the worlds falling above and around Him, not hearing prayers, nor caring about us" (the same, On Benefits, Book IV, chapter 19, page 79). In a certain letter also he thus condemns and proscribes that same error of theirs: "I do not speak of that philosophy which put the citizen outside his fatherland, the gods outside the world, which gave virtue over to pleasure" (the same, Book I, Letter 79, page 71), namely the Epicurean philosophy. He testifies, therefore, that this false opinion was not the Stoics' but the Epicureans'.

"But," someone will say, "can it not be concluded from this testimony of Seneca that Tertullian's text must be emended, and 'Epicureans' written in it for 'Stoics'?" Rightly indeed, if that were proved by some reason that is quite strong enough. But certainly the Stoics had not one view of God, but, as we have said, the greatest variety of opinions. And if some of them, like the aforesaid Seneca, dreamed that God was in some way placed outside the bounds of the world, who will ever deny that this was enough for Tertullian? For he could leave out the Epicureans, whom the pagans despised, and make mention of the Stoics. Nevertheless, whatever the genuine reading of Tertullian may be, the weight and strength of his argument will be the same. For from it, and from all that has been discussed so far, it will be clear to anyone how deservedly and rightly he asserts that it was so difficult for all the philosophers to desi-

-gnate the nature, quality and seat of God, as this was ready and easy for a Christian even of the lowest station.

But this is further confirmed by the authority of Plato, easily the chief of them all, who, as Tertullian himself records and as we have noted more than once, openly professed that "the maker of the universe is neither easily found, and when found is hard to declare to all" (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 46; Plato, Timaeus, page 28). Wherefore his followers, as our author says in another book, "Him whom they had not admitted deeply, they could neither know, nor fear, nor thence be wise, straying, that is, from the beginning of wisdom, that is, from the fear of God" (volume I, Apparatus, page 948; Dissertation on the Octavius of Minucius, chapter 4, article 2). But any Christian has found Him, "and what is sought in God, he also assigns in fact" (Tertullian, Book II To the Nations, chapter 2): namely, that He is one, almighty, infinite, the creator of the world, and that than which nothing greater or better can be thought. Therefore he fears Him, and is far wiser than these men who were wiser than the other philosophers.

Finally, those words of Tertullian still hold no small difficulty in which he noted another disagreement of the philosophers about God the creator of the world: "This whole body of the world," he says, "whether unborn and unmade according to Pythagoras, or born and made according to Plato" (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 11, page 332). For as certain as it is that this opinion about the created world was Plato's, as we have shown elsewhere, so false does it seem that Pythagoras taught that it was unborn and unmade. For in the same place we observed that it is affirmed by Lactantius that all the philosophers up to Epicurus, and by name the Pythagoreans, constantly asserted that the world was made and created (Dissertation on Lactantius, chapter 21, article 2). Indeed Plutarch too declares most expressly that the view of Pythagoras and of Plato on this matter was the same. Here are his Greek words: "Pythagoras and Plato [hold] the world generated by God", that is, "Pythagoras and Plato held that the world was made by God" (Plutarch, On the Opinions of the Philosophers, Book II, chapter 4, page 886). What then? Did Tertullian err once more, and must he himself, or a copyist, be said to have written there the name of Pythagoras for another? Or rather, since this famous philosopher is reported by the same Plutarch, by Laertius, Theodoret and others to have taught that unity is the principle of all things and that all things come to be from numbers, did our author conclude from this that it could be inferred that the world, like unity and numbers, neither arose nor was made (the same, ibid., Book II, chapter 3; Laertius, Book VIII, § 25; Theodoret, sermon 2 On the Principle, page 489)? But if the matter is so, the authors cited by us will beyond doubt be convicted of error. Can it not then more probably be said that Pythagoras, after the manner of those who err, did not remain in the same opinion? I would have you weigh these things and give your judgement.

Much truer and more certain, therefore, is what our author taught: that the world was created by God out of nothing, "by the word by which He commanded, by the reason by which He arranged, by the power by which He was able" (Tertullian, Apology, chapter 17,

and chapter 21). This indeed was repeated by him, and, as we have noted elsewhere, copied by Minucius Felix (Dissertation on the Octavius of Minucius, chapter 2, article 5). But let us now, if you please, carefully weigh what Tertullian teaches about this Word of God.