Pamelius, Paradoxa Tertulliani cum antidoto

THE PARADOXES OF TERTULLIAN, WITH THE ANTIDOTE OF JACOBUS PAMELIUS.

1. On the deserter angels who took the daughters of men. Vol. II, book On Idolatry, ch. 9, no. 47; in the book On the Dress of Women, ch. 1, no. 17; book On the Adornment of Women, ch. 10, no. 56; and the book On the Veiling of Virgins, ch. 7, no. 52. Also vol. III, book V Against Marcion, ch. 18, no. 291.

(According to Pamelius's edition, Antwerp, 1579; Paris, 1583.)

Of this paradox Tertullian is neither the first author nor the last; but, as we have partly noted on the book On the Dress of Virgins, where he treats it most expressly, before him Josephus, Antiquities book I, St Justin Martyr in both Apologies, Athenagoras in his Apology, Clement of Alexandria in books III and V of the Stromata, and after him Lactantius, Divine Institutes book II, ch. 15, St Cyprian in the book On the Discipline and Dress of Virgins, no. 54, Eusebius in book V of the Preparation for the Gospel, and Methodius in the discourse On the Resurrection. The cause of the error was that the old Greek edition of the Seventy, which they followed, read after Philo "the angels of God", and the Latin Itala, as SS. Ambrose and Augustine and Procopius testify, "Angels of God", in place of what is afterwards found read, "the sons of God", and in Latin, "sons of God"; both readings St Augustine and Procopius acknowledged in their own time. But St Chrysostom, Homily 22 on Genesis, finely refutes that opinion by reducing it to absurdity, asserting that nowhere else in the Scriptures (that is, according to the edition of the Seventy, which alone he knew) are angels called sons of God; so too St Ambrose, book On Noah and the Ark, ch. 4; St Augustine, Question 3 on Genesis, and more fully in book XV of The City of God, ch. 15; St Epiphanius in the Epitome of Divine Doctrine; and Procopius in his Commentary; of whom Chrysostom and Augustine also attack the authority of the book of Enoch, on which Tertullian seems to rely. All these interpret both the angels and the sons of God as the descendants of Seth, inasmuch as they were worshippers of God, as does also Blessed Jerome in the book of Hebrew Traditions on Genesis; and finally the Venerable Bede, our own Rhabanus and Haymo, writing commentaries on Genesis, [say] that in the sacred Scriptures faithful and just men are frequently called by the name of angels. What of the fact that Philastrius, in the book On Heresies, ch. 108, counts among the heresies those who assert that angels mingled with women before the flood, and that giants were born from that?

2. On the appearances of angels in true human flesh. Vol. III, book III Against Marcion, ch. 9, no. 61, and ch. 11, no. 72.

Those words of Tertullian do indeed seem to sound something of the kind

: "Next, know that this too is not granted you, that the flesh of the angels was putative; it was of a true and solid human substance." But in other books written at the same time he explains himself thus, as we have noted on the book On the Flesh of Christ, ch. VI, no. 60, so that he wished to assert nothing certain on the matter; for otherwise he will seem to contradict himself. "It is agreed," he says there, "that angels did not bear flesh of their own, being by nature of a spiritual substance, and, if of some body, yet of their own kind, but transfigurable for a time into human flesh, so that they could be seen and could have dealings with men." And more openly in the book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. LXII: "For the angels too," he says, "were at times as men, by eating, by drinking, and by holding out their feet to the washing; for they had put on a human surface, their own substance remaining safe within." This seemed to the Author sufficient everywhere, that he should not agree with the dogma of Apelles, who said that the angels were created out of an airy substance, so that he should not seem to agree with him in this also, that the body of Christ had its origin from an ethereal matter. Yet what sort of bodies the angels had, and whence they were assumed, is still today a matter of controversy in the Master of the Sentences, book II, dist. 8, § 4: in the place already cited we have preferred, with St Bernard, to suspend our judgement on this rather than to define anything certain. But whether the Author held what certain persons charge him with, that angels and demons are corporeal, may not without reason be doubted; above all since the author, although here he seems to attribute to angels a body of their own kind, nevertheless makes them of a spiritual substance, just as also more than once in the Apology, and by name in ch. XXII, he attributes spiritual powers both to angels and to demons, and calls them spirits. Yet the opinion more received, and the one that pleases me, is that of those who make them incorporeal, among whom are to be mentioned SS. Dionysius the Areopagite, ch. II of the Celestial Hierarchy; Athanasius, On the Common Essence of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; Chrysostom, homily XXII on Genesis; Cyril, book IV on John, chapter.

3. On the soul of the first man as being of the matter of God. Vol. III, book IV against Marcion, ch. XXXVIII, no. 611.

To this indeed seem to belong those words of the author explaining that saying in Luke 20, "Render to God the things that are God's" (Luke 20:25): "He bids, therefore, that man be rendered to the Creator, in whose image and likeness and name and matter he has been expressed." Which passage was perhaps the reason why he writes thus of that

Gennadius, in the book On Ecclesiastical Dogmas: "Let us believe that nothing has been derived from the essence of the Trinity into the nature of creatures, as Plato and Tertullian [held]." But since St Augustine, who so often argues that the soul cannot be called a part of God, attributes nothing of the kind to him, I too judge that he is to be cleared of so absurd a heresy; and indeed that he meant to say nothing else than that the origin of the soul is from the breath of God, according to that saying of Gen. II: "And God breathed the breath of life into the face of man, and man became a living soul" (Gen. 2:7), as he himself very often urges, but above all in the book On the Soul, ch. XI. In that place, as also on the book On Baptism, ch. V, no. 43, we have shown that this interpretation agrees with SS. Irenaeus, Prudentius, Chrysostom, Augustine and Theodoret. Of whom the last says: "By the name of breath we do not understand some part of the divine essence, according to the madness of Cerdo and Marcion, but that the nature of the soul is denoted by it, because the soul is a rational and intellectual spirit." These words also suggest another conjecture to me: that the Author speaks not from his own opinion but from Marcion's, especially since it is established from the Fragments of the book On the Census of the Soul, against Hermogenes, that he held the soul to be far inferior to God, being passible, although immortal. And indeed we must also repeat what we have noted in both places, that St Augustine, in the book On Heresies, rightly judged that Philastrius listed many heresies which are not heresies; such is the one, not a heresy but the Catholic opinion of the Fathers, that interprets "breath", or the breathing of life, of the rational soul.

4. On the souls of Adam's descendants as being from a shoot [ex traduce]. Vol. III, book On the Soul, ch. IX, no. 123; ch. XIX, no. 256; ch. XXII, no. 294; and in whole chapters, XXVII and XXXVI.

This paradox is ascribed to Tertullian by Rufinus in the Apology for Origen, and by St Jerome in books II and III of the Apology against the same; of whom the former thinks nothing is to be defined, the latter speaks rather doubtfully, although he seems rather to hold that the opinion is condemned. For above all in the Apology to Pammachius, against the Errors of John of Jerusalem, he says in express words that it is the Church's opinion that God daily infuses new souls into bodies already conceived, alleging for this the Scriptures John V, Zechariah XII, Psalm XXXII; although meanwhile in letter 99, which is to Marcellinus and Anapsychia, he speaks more mildly, and writes indeed that this seems so to him, but refers them to St Augustine, as one wishing to define nothing certain, because he had read that he still held his opinion in suspense as doubtful: alluding to his letters written to him, and to letter 157, to Optatus, on the origin of souls, in which he condemns Tertullian not so much because he made souls come from a shoot as because he made them corporeal, of which paradox more at length a little later. "For those too," he says, "who assert that souls are propagated from that one which God gave to the first man, and so say that they are drawn from the parents, if they follow Tertullian's opinion, surely contend that they are not spirits but bodies, and arise from corporeal seeds. What can be said more perverse than this?" Nor is it to be wondered that Tertullian dreamed this

who holds that even God the Creator Himself is nothing but body. But of that paradox too more at length below, from the same Augustine. Gennadius, however, in the book of Ecclesiastical Dogmas [who, even from this, is plainly not St Augustine], having set out the opinion of Origen, and the one already mentioned, as he says, of the Luciferians, of Cyril, and of some Latins (among whom no doubt Tertullian), defines that the soul is created and infused by God once the body has been formed. Nor otherwise the author of the Dialogue on the Origin of Souls between SS. Jerome and Augustine. We, however, have preferred to teach nothing as of faith, since the Church too, in so many Councils held from then on, has left nothing expressly defined, so far as I know. It will be enough to have added some things in the Annotations, in which we have both indicated that the opinion of St Jerome is in no way more approved, and replied in a few words, from St Augustine and Lactantius, to the absurd arguments of Tertullian, who holds that the soul arises from corporeal seeds.

5. On the sex of the soul. Ibid., ch. XXXVI.

This indeed Tertullian infers from the aforesaid paradox. For if the soul is sown together with the body, that seems to follow; but the contrary opinion is defined in express words by St Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis IV, and by St Augustine, book I On the Soul and its Origin, to Vincentius, ch. VIII. Some words of the latter we have adduced in our annotations, to which we refer the reader. The former has this: "All souls, of men as of women, are beautiful and alike; only the members of the body make the difference."

6. That the soul is the sinner rather than the flesh. Vol. III, book On the Soul, the whole of ch. XL, and ch. LVIII, no. 650; and book V against Marcion, ch. X, no. 165.

To this paradox Peter Lombard alludes in these words, and by the same labour refutes it, in words also cited by us there, book II of the Sentences, ch. XXXI: "Some," he says, "have thought that original sin is drawn according to the soul, not only according to the flesh, because they judged that not only the flesh but the soul too is from a shoot [ex traduce]. And therefore, just as flesh is sown from corrupt flesh, so also a sinful soul, infected with original corruption, is drawn from a sinful soul by those who beget. But this," he says, "the Catholic faith rejects, and condemns as contrary to the truth, for it admits that not souls but the flesh alone is from a shoot." We alleged in the same place, no. 455, for the contrary opinion, passages of SS. Ambrose and Augustine cited by the same Lombard.

7. On the soul as corporeal. Vol. I, Apology, ch. XLVIII, nos. 608 and 609; and vol. III, book On the Soul, in whole chapters V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, XXII, XXXVI, XXXVII; book On the Flesh of Christ, ch. XI, no. 98; book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. XVII, no. 131; ch. XLV, no. 320; and ch. LIII, no. 381; book V against Marcion, ch. X, no. 158, and ch. XV, no. 248. That it is therefore not properly a spirit: ibid., book On the Soul, ch. XI; and vol. IV, in the Fragments of the book On the Census of the Soul, against Hermogenes.

This paradox is charged against the Author by SS. Augustine

his Works LXXV; finally, our annotations on Tertullian on the fragments of the book On Baptism, and in his Life, also ours, at the year of the Lord 201. To which I add that it ought not to seem strange to anyone if Agrippinus with his fellow bishops issued such a decree about baptizing those who were returning from heresy to the Catholic [Church], and Tertullian approved it by writing the book in Greek already mentioned. For most heretics up to that time either did not confess the same Christ, and so did not agree in the Rule of faith handed down by the Apostles (which the later Fathers down to this very day call the Symbol of faith), although it was always the solemn custom to seal (as the Author puts it) faith in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, with mention of the Church necessarily added, as may be seen more fully in our Annotations on the book On Baptism, no. 2, among the ceremonies of Baptism, and ch. 6, nos. 45, 46 and 47. Certainly Carolus Bovius interprets in the same way the 47th Apostolic canon, and the 5th [?] of Clement of Rome's Apostolic Constitutions, book 6, ch. 15. Hence too the first Synod of Nicaea, Canon 19, and the Synod of Laodicea of the same period, canon 8, and the Second Council of Arles, Canon 17, decree that Paulianists and Cataphrygians must be baptized; to whom the Second Synod of Constantinople, Canon 7, adds the Eunomians, Sabellians and Galatian heretics; finally the Sixth Synod, held in Trullo, the Manichaeans, Valentinians, Marcionists and the like. But in Tertullian's time there flourished above all the Hermogenians (who, St Augustine relates in the book On Heresies, ch. 41, 44 and 45, held the same as the Praxeanists), the Praxeans, Cataphrygians, Valentinians, Marcionites and his followers the Apelletians, and finally the Quintillianists, against whom the Author expressly wrote the Latin book from which the fragments of the Greek book are taken, namely On Baptism. Of them is true that saying of the Author in the book On the Prescription against Heretics: Among them all things are foreign and contrary to our truth, and that in the book On Baptism: The same God is not ours and theirs, nor the same Christ, therefore not [the same] baptism, because it is not the same. Which is well established of the Hermogenians, Praxeans, Cataphrygians and Quintillianists, who either acknowledged a single person in the Godhead, or were Patripassians. Of the Marcionites, Valentinians and Apelletians even Augustine himself doubts, in book III On Baptism, ch. 15, whether they baptized with the words of the Gospel, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, because they thought wrongly both of God and of Christ. Wherefore we too may believe (as Blessed Augustine writes of the Paulianists) that they did not hold the rule of baptism, and (according to what the Second and Sixth Synods say) baptized with a single immersion only. Although meanwhile St Augustine, in book 6 On Baptism, ch. 25, acknowledges even that one as true baptism into whose prayers some things contrary to the Catholic faith are inserted, provided it is consecrated with the words of the Gospel. And so to similar words of St Cyprian, such as the author's, because he alleged them in general against all heretics, he is accustomed to bring an Antidote in the seven books On Baptism against the Donatists, who attacked the baptism of all heretics. First, to what was said: that baptism is one, and that the baptism of heretics is not of the truth, which he has in the book On Modesty,

book II, ch. 3, St Augustine also replies, book 5, ch. 21 and 29; book 6, ch. 8, 9, 12, 13. To this: No one can be built up from that by which he is destroyed: no one is enlightened by him by whom he is darkened, book 4, ch. 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17; as also to those words mentioned above: The same God is not ours and theirs, nor the same Christ, ibid. and book 5, ch. 26. To this: Among heretics all things are foreign or hostile to the truth, book 6, ch. 40. To this, finally: Baptism, since they do not have it rightly, they cannot receive either, because they do not have it, book 7, ch. 29, 33, 35 and 47. But this one thing must be repeated here, which Augustine admits more than once: that neither Agrippinus nor Cyprian with his own would have issued so general a Decree against the baptism of heretics, if anything had been defined by some plenary Council, as was afterwards done, with the sole exception of the Paulianists, by the first general [Council] of Nicaea, as has already been said.

13. On Christ the Spirit of God. Vol. I, Apology, ch. 21, no. 314. Vol. II, book On Prayer, ch. 1, no. 2. Vol. III, Against Marcion, book I, ch. 19, no. 127; book III, ch. 6, nos. 38, 39, and ch. 16; book 4, ch. 21, no. 314; and the book Against Praxeas, ch. 26, no. 155.

On this phrase of the ancients we have noted the words of St Jerome, on chapter IV of the Epistle to the Galatians and in the Letter to Pammachius and Oceanus on the errors of Origen, on St Cyprian's book On the Vanity of Idols, no. 71. Many, he says, through ignorance of the Scriptures (as Firmianus also does in the eighth book of Letters, to Demetrianus), assert that the Holy Spirit is often named the Father, often the Son. Which is so far true that, besides Lactantius, the same is to be found in the Authors of the books On the Mountains Sinai and Sion, and Against the Jews, which follow [the] Christ [section] in our works of St Cyprian. To the same, beyond doubt, belongs the fact that Tertullian so often calls Christ the spirit of God, and that in the same sense in which God is called spirit, John 3 and 1 John 4. Otherwise, that three persons in the Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are distinguished by him, as also by the other Ancients, is clear from the same book Against Praxeas, ch. 2, no. 24; ch. 4, no. 40; ch. 8, no. 90; ch. 9, no. 61; ch. 13, nos. 75 and 78; and that very ch. 26, no. 158; ch. 30, no. 183; finally ch. 30, no. 182. Among which places this is by far the most open, when he calls the Holy Spirit the third deity of the Godhead, and the third name of the majesty.

14. On Christ revealed through preaching in the 12th year of Tiberius Caesar, having suffered in the 15th year of the same. Vol. I, book Against the Jews, ch. 8, no. 82, and vol. III, book 1 Against Marcion, ch. 15, no. 102.

Although the copies of Tertullian vary in the former place, yet Eusebius in the Chronicle asserts that this was his opinion, and it is plain from the latter place; indeed from the former too, the same ch., no. 92, where he places the Passion of the Lord in the consulship of Rubellius Geminus and Rufius or Fusius Geminus, whose consulship fell in the 15th year of Tiberius. In this he was imitated by Julius Africanus, in the book On the Times, cited in St Jerome's Commentary on Daniel; by Lactantius, book IV, ch. 10; and by Paulus Orosius, book VII, ch. 10. But since this is against the express words of the Gospel, Luke 3, where He is read to have been baptized in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, it must be

that something befell the Author and those men here, humanly. Wherefore more correctly Clement of Alexandria, near the end of book I of the Stromata, Eusebius in the Chronicle, Jordanes in the Annals, Honorius, Bede, and Nicephorus in the Chronicle write that Christ suffered in the 18th year of Tiberius, that is, in His own 33rd year of age, already begun. Concerning the consulship in which the passion of Christ took place, not all agree in the same way. St Augustine, book XVIII of the City of God, last chapter, and Severus Sulpicius, Sacred History, book II, led perhaps by the authority of Tertullian, without examining the Consular Fasti, place it under the two Gemini, as do also the Authors written above in the former place. Some more recent writers, who write that the Lord suffered in the 34th year of His age, assign as Consuls Galba and Sulla, who held the consulship in the 19th year of Tiberius. But more conformable to the Gospel is the opinion of those, and in particular of the more correct Cassiodorus, who assign the year of the passion to the Consuls Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, son of Lucius, grandson of Lucius, and A. Vitellius, son of Publius, grandson of Quintus; with whom indeed all those named above agree who write that Christ suffered in the 18th year of Tiberius. Whoever wants more, let him see Paul of Middelburg, Bishop of Fossombrone, in his 33 books On the Year and Day of the Lord's Passion. This one thing I will add, which St Augustine has in book II On Christian Doctrine: Ignorance of the consulship in which the Lord was born, or in which He suffered, has driven some into error, so that they thought the Lord suffered at the age of forty-six years, because the temple was built over so many years, which bears the image of the Lord's body. Where perhaps he tacitly refers to St Irenaeus, book II, ch. 39 and 40, who strives to prove that Christ suffered at about His fiftieth year, and at least after the fortieth year of His age, from that [word] of John 8: Thou hast not yet fifty years (John 8:57). And indeed it is likely that this ignorance of the consulship arose from the various copies of the Consular Fasti. Citing some of these, quite different from those that exist today, Epiphanius, Heresy 51, writes that the Saviour suffered in the consulship of Vinicius and Cassius, whose consulship falls only in the 13th year of Tiberius according to the more correct Fasti. On the same side stands that manuscript book of Consulships, in which Cuspinian noted on Cassiodorus that the two Gemini are placed as Consuls in the 18th year of Tiberius.

15. On God being bodily, [and] that nothing is incorporeal. Vol. II, book On Penance, ch. 3, no. 12. Vol. III, book Against Hermogenes, ch. 35, no. 124; book On the Flesh of Christ, ch. 2, nos. 97 and 98; book II Against Marcion, ch. 16, no. 100; and most openly the book Against Praxeas, ch. 7, no. 54.

This error was ascribed to Tertullian long ago by St Augustine in places presently to be cited, by St Fulgentius, book II On the Faith, to Peter, and by Gennadius in the book On the Dogmas of the Church. But St Augustine excuses him in these words, book X On Genesis according to the Letter, last chapter: Fearing that it would be nothing if it were not a body, he could not think otherwise even of God. Who indeed, although (for so I read, instead of: since) he is sharp, is sometimes overcome, against his own opinion, by the truth once seen. For what truer thing could he have said than what he says in a certain place (namely the book On the Soul, ch. 7, 98): Everything bodily is passible? He ought therefore to have changed the opinion by which he had said elsewhere (namely

the mother of James the Less, and of Joseph, and of Jude, whom we read called in the Gospel the brothers of the Lord; for the whole of Scripture shows that cousins are called brothers. Here he alludes both to the Scriptures about Lot, the brother of Abraham (Gen. 13), and to Matthew 17, where Mary, the mother of James and of Jose or Joseph, is said to have stood beside the cross: which Euthymius rightly noted cannot be understood of the mother of the Lord. For the rest, see the Church's definition on this matter in St Fulgentius, in the book On the Faith, to Peter, among the works of Blessed Augustine.

21. On the thousand years after the resurrection of bodies.

Book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, chapter 25, number 203; Against Marcion, book I, chapter 29, number 203; book III, chapter 24, number 191 and following; book IV, chapter 29, number 471; and volume IV, in the Fragments of the book On the Hope of the Faithful.

What Tertullian thought on this matter I consider I have sufficiently set out in volume IV, on the Fragments of the book On the Hope of the Faithful, from his own words, namely: that a kingdom of Christ is indeed promised to us on earth, before heaven, after the first resurrection, but yet in such a way that in it the saints are refreshed with an abundance of all spiritual goods. This opinion, though erroneous, Blessed Augustine nevertheless admits to be in some fashion tolerable (book XX of The City of God), as I suppose because it is also to be found in St Irenaeus (book V Against Heresies, chapters 32, 33, 34, 35) and in St Justin Martyr (in the Dialogue against Trypho) and in Melito, who in this followed Papias, or so St Jerome reports. With them agree also Apollinarius, who strove in vain to attack the books of Dionysius of Alexandria against Nepos; Lactantius (book II, chapter 13, and book VII, chapter 24); Victorinus on the Apocalypse, before he was corrected by St Jerome; and, on the same witness, Severus in the dialogue Gallus, on the Life of St Martin. Although Gennadius, in the book On the Dogmas of the Church, also imputes to them (as also to Tertullian, but, as far as appears, not rightly) that the saints would enjoy delights of drink and food. Otherwise, certainly, it is plain that the heresy of Cerinthus, Marcus and Nepos was far different, of whom he himself [speaks] in the same place, and Eusebius (book III, chapter 22, and book VII, chapter 20), and after him Nicephorus somewhere; and [so too that] of the other Chiliasts or Millenarians, against whom St Epiphanius deals (Heresy 76). For they (as also certain Anabaptists of today) expected in that [kingdom] even the union of marriage; indeed Cerinthus and Marcus expected every kind of lust, and, as St Jerome asserts, according to the δευτερώσεις of the Jews, the injury of circumcision, the restoration of the temple, victims of bulls and rams, the rest of the Sabbath, and the servitude of all nations, and so too wars, armies, triumphs, the slaughter of the vanquished, and the death of the sinner a hundred years old. Further, since all of them were misled by that [passage] of the Apocalypse of St John the Apostle (for they all ascribe it to him), chapter XX, This is the first resurrection; blessed is the holy one who has part in the first resurrection; in these will be priests of the Lord and of Christ, and they will reign with Him a thousand years (Rev. 20:5–6), something must be added here about the understanding of that place. Blessed Jerome, in the Preface to book XVIII on Isaiah, says that the Apocalypse is to be expounded not according to the letter, as by the Judaizers, but spiritually, as it was written; which very thing is done in express words by the Comm.

In the manuscript of Victorinus on the Apocalypse as corrected, following, I think, Dionysius of Alexandria in the books he wrote against Nepos. St Augustine, more plainly, in book II of The City of God, chapters 7, 8, 9, interprets the first resurrection as the resurrection of souls, which is also acknowledged in the Scriptures, and the second as that of bodies; and the thousand years either as the time of grace, which will remain until the end of the age, by that manner of speaking in which the part is signified by the whole, or as standing for all the years of this age, so that the very fullness of time is denoted by a perfect number. Him follow the Commentary ascribed to Ambrose, Primasius, Andrew, and Bede in their commentaries on the Apocalypse. Nor does what is read in Apocalypse XXI about the City of Jerusalem coming down to a new earth tell in their favour either. For the Apostle John himself shows that he is speaking of a Jerusalem that is not earthly, when he adds: And I saw no temple in it (which, however, some of them, as was said above, held would even be restored): for the Lord God almighty is its temple, and the Lamb (Rev. 21:22). Accordingly the other Fathers more rightly interpret it of the Church, both militant in this age, whose foundations are the twelve Apostles, and reigning afterwards in heaven. So too that [passage] of Galatians IV about the free Jerusalem, which is our mother; where the contradiction lies in the very qualifier: which is above (Gal. 4:26); which is also in that [passage] of Philippians III, our πολίτευμα is in heaven (Phil. 3:20), and so not on earth, so that it is surprising that these are cited by our Author in support of the said opinion. More seemed to tell in his favour the things found in Isaiah LXV and LXVI, and Jeremiah XVI and XXXI, and lastly Ezekiel XX, XXVII, XXVIII, about the restoration of Judaea (to which the Author alludes only in these words), which are cited by name partly by St Irenaeus, partly by St Justin Martyr; but Jerome in his Commentaries finely interprets all of them allegorically of the Church confessing Christ and of her mysteries, everywhere mocking those fables of the thousand years; and to him, for brevity's sake, we refer the reader. Easier is the answer to the Scriptures of Genesis XIII and XV which the Author (imitating Irenaeus) cites for himself, about the first and second promise made to the seed of Abraham, first unto the multitude of the sand, then also after the likeness of the stars, as it were the auspices of an earthly and a heavenly dispensation; for it is agreed that the first promise was fulfilled by the multiplication of the children of Israel in the land of the Canaanites, or Palestine, while the second the Apostle Paul interprets of the Church of the gentiles (Romans IX and Galatians III); in which way our Rhabanus also distinguished these two promises in his Commentary on Genesis. Nor is it less easy [to answer] that [passage] of Genesis XXVII, where to Jacob, whose figure we know Christians from the gentiles bear, the first promise is of the dew of heaven, the second of the fatness of the earth; for that blessing is interpreted as earthly even by Jacob himself in his words afterwards uttered to Esau, where he said: With corn and wine and oil I have established him (Gen. 27:37); and, if we wish to take it allegorically, Procopius in his Commentary interprets [it] of the heavenly dew which is instilled into the souls of the godly, and of the fatness of the earth, which it has when it receives the seed and returns it a hundredfold. Lastly, [the answer is] easiest to that [passage] of Luke XII: Seek first the kingdom of God, and the rest shall be added to you (Luke 12:31):

for the beginning of that discourse of Christ makes it plain that Christ is speaking of this life, not of that future one after the resurrection: Therefore I say to you: Do not be anxious for the soul about food, nor for the body about clothing (Luke 12:22). For the rest, we have noted on the book On the Soul, chapter 30, number 376, that this error of the Millenarians was taken partly from Plato, in the dialogue On the Republic and in the Phaedrus; and since there the Author treats it as fables, it is surprising that he afterwards stumbled into it: but, as St Jerome sufficiently shows, he followed Papias, Melito, and the other authors mentioned above, and above all St Irenaeus.

25. On second marriages condemned as debaucheries.

Volume II, book I To His Wife, chapter 1, number 11, and the book On the Veiling of Virgins, chapter 10, number 84, and chapter 11, number 98. Volume III, the book Against Hermogenes, chapter 1[1], number 7; the book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, chapter 8, number 82; and the book Against Marcion, chapter 15, number 245; lastly volume V, the whole books On the Exhortation to Chastity and On Monogamy, and the book On Modesty, chapter 1, number 15.

Into this Montanist heresy Tertullian slipped little by little. First, out of love of chastity, he wrote a book To His Wife on a single marriage, in which he does indeed dissuade from [second marriages], but does not reprove them as debaucheries: indeed, since in book II To His Wife he argues at length that if they wish to marry they ought at least to marry in the Lord, that is, a Christian, he does not seem at that time to have wholly condemned second marriages. Although meanwhile these two books are not free of all error. Above all, since in book I, chapter 4, number 11, he calls second marriages a confusion, and in chapter 4, number 23, an outrage, and in chapter 5, number 34, detestable, and elsewhere too foul, and a voluptuous disgrace; and of the same kind are also those places already cited from the book On the Veiling of Virgins. For that in these places he spoke of second marriages and not of first, even these words of St Augustine in book I On the Good of Widowhood prove, which also serve here in place of an antidote: Not because, he says, the Apostle called the good of the unmarried honourable, ought we therefore to think the conjugal bond base; otherwise we shall condemn even first marriages, which neither the Cataphrygians nor the Novatians, nor their most eloquent supporter Tertullian, dared to call base. Next, in the book Against Hermogenes he discloses his error more plainly in these words: That he defended the law of God in favour of lust; and, wholly an adulterer, both of preaching and of the flesh; he stinks with the contagion of those who marry. Lastly, in the books On the Exhortation to Chastity and On Monogamy, following Montanus, he not only calls second marriages debaucheries and adulteries and fornication, but also strives to prove it by various arguments; but in vain, as will be clear to the reader from the antidote of our Annotations on both, to which, lest we be too long-winded here, we refer the reader. There, moreover, for the Catholic opinion that second marriages are not forbidden, we have cited Blessed Jerome's Letter on Monogamy to Ageruchia, commonly Gerontia, and on Widowhood to Salvina, and to Pammachius; St Augustine's book On the Good of Widowhood, and book II Against the Adversary of the Law and the Prophets; St Epiphanius against Montanus (Heresy 59) and against the Cathari; and the commentaries of the ancients on the Epistles of Paul, Romans VII, I Corinthians 7, and I Corinthians V. To which

may be added also that [passage] of Blessed Jerome, Letter 54, to Marcella (who otherwise seems at times rather unfair to them), in favour of second marriages: We do not so much desire second marriages as allow them, since Paul bids young widows to marry; they (namely the followers of Montanus) think repeated marriages so wicked that whoever has done this is held an adulterer. Likewise that [passage] in the Letter to Titus, also cited by us elsewhere: Tertullian too wrote a heretical book On Monogamy, which no one who has read the Apostle will fail to know runs contrary to the Apostle. Likewise that [passage] of St Augustine, Heresy 126, in the book On Heresies: Tertullian became a heretic because, passing over to the Cataphrygians, whom he had earlier demolished, he began also to condemn second marriages as debaucheries, against the apostolic teaching.

26. On Montanus as the Paraclete.

Volume II, the book On the Veiling of Virgins, chapter 1, number 6. Volume III, the book On the Soul, chapter 51, number 613, and 58, number 652; the book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, chapter 11, number 98, and the last chapter, last number; Against Marcion, book I, chapter 29, number 203, and book V, chapter 15, number 247; and the book Against Praxeas, chapter 1, number 11, chapter 2, number 22, chapter 8, number 59, chapter 13, number 78. Volume V, the book On Monogamy, the whole of chapter 2, and more than once in the following books, On Flight in Persecution, On Fasting and On Modesty.

Against this by far most absurd heresy Tertullian's own words before his heresy may suffice, in the book On the Prescription against Heretics, chapter 52, heresy 21, number 327, where he calls it a blasphemy of those heretics who were called Cataphrygians, because they said that the Holy Spirit was indeed in the Apostles, but the Paraclete was not, and because they said that the Paraclete had spoken more things in Montanus than Christ had brought forth in the Gospel. And yet the wretched man, perhaps led astray by them because they detested second marriages, in so many places already cited calls Montanus the Paraclete, and repeatedly cites his words under the title of the Paraclete. Indeed he twists to this heresy of his that [passage] of John 16: I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When that Spirit of truth comes, He will teach you all truth, and the things that are to come He will announce to you (John 16:12–13). Yet this very [passage] he interprets in a Catholic sense in the said book On the Prescription against Heretics, chapter 8, number 62, speaking of the Apostles: Who were soon to receive the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, who would lead them into all truth; and again: The Apostles, appointed for the nations, were themselves also to receive the Paraclete as teacher. There he takes the Holy Spirit and the Paraclete as the same, whereas they wrongly distinguished (as has been said even from Tertullian himself) the Holy Spirit and the Paraclete: and the very context of the Evangelist would prove it, and so indeed all the ancients interpret that place, and expressly against this heresy St Augustine, in three tractates on the Gospel of John: to which, for brevity's sake, we refer the reader.

27. On penance to be refused to adulterers.

Volume V, the whole book On Modesty.

As we noted in the Life of the Author, since altogether

Montanus and his followers the Cataphrygians did away with all penance (on the witness of Blessed Jerome, in the letter to Marcella cited more than once, and of St Pacian in his tract against the Novatians); Tertullian dissents from them in this, that he held it should be refused to adulterers alone, perhaps led astray at first by those bishops of his time who, on the witness of St Cyprian in the book On the Lapsed, did not think penance should be given to adulterers. But besides the fact that in the same place [Cyprian] establishes the contrary opinion from the Scriptures, concerning the power of pardoning all sins in the Church, the Author, while still a Catholic, in volume II, the book On Penance, which [Cyprian] imitates in the same place, shows in express words that penance is necessary for all offences. And this is what he says in the book On Modesty, chapter 1, number 9: against the fellowship of my own opinion formerly held among them; and not unlike it, in words cited more than once elsewhere, St Pacian, addressing the Novatians: Tertullian after his heresy is yours, for you have taken many things from there. You will hear him himself, in his letter, and in the one he published as a Catholic, confessing that the Church can forgive sins. Likewise St Jerome too, when he says that Tertullian, in the book which he wrote On Modesty against Penance, dissolved the old opinion by a new view, in this following his mad and blasphemous women. To these the reader may add all those writings of the ancients on Penance which we have mentioned in volume II, in the said book On Penance, chapter 1, and what we have said both on that book and on the other one On Modesty, where we answered each of the Author's arguments to the contrary, mostly from Pacian, adducing besides for this purpose an explanation of several Scriptures, often from Tertullian himself. We also cited, on chapter 9, numbers 72 and 73, St Jerome's Letter to Damasus on the two sons, where he deals expressly against the Author, and among other things also maintains that the publicans were not heathens, as [the Author] would have it, but Jews; and this by examples: Matthew, an Apostle from the circumcision; the publicans baptized by John; and the publican praying in the temple (Luke V, VII and XVIII); for if they had been heathens, Christ would not have shared a meal with them, lest He break the law, nor would this one have been admitted into the temple. And indeed, whenever they remarked this in Christ, that He shared company with publicans, sinners and publicans are almost always joined together: and so He was blamed not because He feasted with heathens but because [He feasted] with sinners. To this belongs the murmuring of the Pharisee (Luke VII) about the sinful woman, in whom Tertullian himself recognizes penance and pardon (book IV Against Marcion, chapter 18, number 265); yet the Author nowhere dares to call her a heathen, since it is agreed that her village was near Jerusalem (John XI). Nor does that [passage] tell at all for the author: There shall be no tribute paid from the children of Israel; for even if they were not bound to pay tribute before they became subject to the Romans by God's disposing, and although it is well enough agreed that the publicans' trade was odious and infamous, yet that it could also be carried on without sin appears from those words of John the Baptist to them (Luke III): Nothing more

than is appointed you, do (Luke 3:13), or, as it is rendered from the Greek, exact. On the rest, let the studious Reader consult our said Annotations.

28. On the Psychics, the name by which he slandered the Catholics.

Volume III, Against Marcion, book IV, chapter 22, number 325; Against Praxeas, chapter 1, number 17. Volume V, the book On Monogamy, chapter 1, numbers 4 and 5, and chapter 11, numbers 86, 87, 88, and chapter 16, number 120; the whole book On Fasting, against the Psychics; and the book On Modesty, chapter 1, number 8, chapter 6, number 47, chapter 10, number 83, and chapter 21, number 190.

That by Psychics are understood animal men we have sufficiently proved, even from the Apostle (1 Cor. 2), at the beginning of the book On Fasting, against the Psychics, number 2; a name which, having already fallen into heresy, he fastens on the Catholics, calling his own Montanists, on the contrary, spiritual, because they followed Montanus as the spirit Paraclete; slandering the others as if they were wholly animal and followed passiritas, that is, licence of life, as passing on to second marriages, avoiding martyrdom by flight, and disapproving of the Montanist fasts. But the wretched man did not notice that Montanus led an animal life, seeing that Priscilla and Maximilla, who left their husbands and followed Montanus, were harlots, and that their adherents escaped martyrdom by denying Christ; and if they suffered anything, they endured it for robberies done before; lastly, though they kept three Lents (of which more fully shortly), yet for the rest of the year they indulged their appetites. Yet it was nothing new for heretics to call the Catholics by the name of Psychics, and themselves spiritual; for the author mocks this very thing in the Valentinians, in the book Against the Valentinians, chapters 29 and 30, following St Irenaeus: which after these Blessed Epiphanius also wrote, in the book On Heresies.

29. On two Lents.

Volume V, the book On Fasting, against the Psychics, written in their defence, especially chapter 15, number 90.

Whereas the Montanists kept every year three full Lents of seven weeks, Tertullian seems to have dissented from them in this, when he began to hold conventicles separate from them, that [he kept] only two; for so he says: How slight among us is the prohibition of foods? Two weeks of xerophagies in the year, and not whole ones, the Sabbaths and Sundays of course excepted, we offer to God. Yet those are not on this account to be judged heretics. For Amalarius, in book I On the Divine Offices, chapter 36, and book IV, chapter 37, describes the fasts of certain devout persons who kept three Lents: one before Easter, according to apostolic tradition, a second out of devotion before [the feast of] St John, or rather after Pentecost, and a third before the Nativity of the Lord; and not unlike this our Micrologus, in the book On the Observances of the Church, chapter 35, records a second Lent for penitents, which is in use even today among certain monks. To this belongs also that [passage] of St Jerome, in the Letter to Lucinius of Baetica, cited by Amalarius: Would that we could fast at all times, as in the Acts of the Apostles on the days of Pentecost, and

on the Lord's day, we read that the Apostle Paul and the believers with him did; likewise those most strict fasts of the early monks, described at length both by him and by Theodoret and Nicephorus. But this was condemned as heresy in the Montanists, that they so pressed the necessity of keeping these Lents, whether three or two, that on that very account they slandered the Catholics with the name of Psychics, that is, as has already been said, of animal men, because they would not keep them along with them. And this is what St Jerome presses against Montanus in Letter 54, to Marcella: We (he says) fast one Lent, according to the tradition of the Apostles, at the time fitting for us; they make three Lents in the year, as if three Saviours had suffered; not that it is not permitted to fast through the whole year too, Pentecost excepted, but that it is one thing to offer a gift out of necessity, another out of free will. Hence also Eusebius (according to the more correct translation from the Greek, which before had been corrupted by certain persons so as to condemn the Church's fasts in general as Montanist), book V of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 17; Theodoret, Compendium of Heretical Fables, book III, on the Montanists; and Nicephorus, book IV of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 22, write that Montanus introduced and enacted new laws of fasting beyond the custom of the Church.

30. On divorce as lawful for Christians on account of adultery, so that they may marry another.

Volume II, book II To His Wife, chapter 1, number 4. Volume III, book IV Against Marcion, chapter 34, number 537.

At first sight Tertullian does indeed seem to hold something of the sort, when he compares divorce to the decease of a husband, so as the more to prove that after the latter it is not lawful to marry another, just as it is not lawful after divorce except on account of adultery. But he explains himself in volume V, the book On Monogamy, chapter 9, number 70, and chapter 11, number 89. In the former place he speaks thus of a repudiated wife: so that altogether, whether by marriage or promiscuously, the admission of another man is pronounced adultery by God; and soon more clearly: the dissolution having been made, that is, by death, not by divorce, since the Apostle would not permit the divorced to marry, against the original precept. So farewell to Erasmus and his followers, who wrongly cite the author for themselves. Certainly the contrary has now been defined by the Council of Trent, session 34, canon 9.

31. Concerning the Trinity.

Volume I, Tertullian, Apology, chapter 21, number 316; and the book Against Hermogenes, chapter 3, number 15; the book Against Praxeas, chapter 3, number 29, chapter 3, number 34, chapter 4, number 39, chapter 8, numbers 55, 59 and 60, chapter 9, numbers 62 and 63. Likewise volume V, Novatian, the book On the Trinity, chapter 11, number 56, chapter 23, number 98, chapter 24, number 106, and chapter 31, number 141.

That Tertullian did not doubt the faith of the Trinity, that is, of three Persons, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but of one essence, is too plain from very many places of his to need proof, above all from the whole book of that argument, and indeed of that title in our edition, Against Praxeas, where, against [Praxeas] and his followers, the Montanists who were called after Aeschines, he not only proves that the same

ch. 11, "mingled with the divinity of the Word in the very concretion": even if something of the kind is found in the book against Praxeas already mentioned, we noted there, at n. 56, that it ought to be understood of the mingling of union, not of a mingling of the natures, divine and human, proving this from several other places of that book. The right faith (according to the Symbol of Athanasius) is that we believe and confess that Christ is one, not by conversion of the divinity into flesh, but by assumption of the humanity into God; one altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person. Next, the phrase in the same place, "Before Whom there is nothing except the Father", is to be taken in the same sense as what we adduced above from Tertullian's book against Hermogenes, according to what we noted on that same book, ch. 31, n. 141. Nor

otherwise than we have already said, that in the same place he calls the Son less than the Father, as being Son. Caution must also be used in reading the passage where he seems to interpret the unity of the Father and the Son as nothing other than the concord of a fellowship, wrongly adducing for his opinion the passage 1 Corinthians 3; for the catholic faith and the Scriptures too acknowledge the truth of the essence in the Father and the Son. Finally, that on the Holy Spirit he seems not to agree with the catholic tradition the Fathers drew from the Scriptures, we think came about not because he denied that the Holy Spirit is equal to the Father and the Son; but, the matter not yet having been defined, the ancient Fathers are accustomed to speak more obscurely because of the very great obscurity of the subject, yet in such a way that their words admit of some suitable sense.