Appendix V: In libros Tertulliani de baptismo et poenitentia adnotationes R. P. D. Corbiniani Thomae, O. S. B.

FIFTH APPENDIX.

NOTES ON THE BOOKS OF TERTULLIAN ON BAPTISM AND PENANCE, BY THE REVEREND FATHER DOM CORBINIAN THOMAS, BENEDICTINE MONK, OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN BAVARIA.

NOTICE.

Dom Corbinian Thomas, born at Augsburg in the year 1694, put on the monk in the imperial monastery of Elchingen, in the year 1715.

For many years in the University of Salzburg, with a great reputation for learning, he taught the mathematical disciplines. Afterwards, co-opted as professor of sacred theology, he won for himself, as before, the admiration of all. While he toiled at the due discharge of these offices, he nonetheless brought to light a great many most elegant and most learned works of various kinds, a catalogue of which D. Ziegelbauer presents in his History of the Literature of the Order of St Benedict, vol. II, p. 220; vol. IV, pp. 265, 304, 311. See also the Bibliothèque générale des écrivains de l'Ordre de Saint Benoît, vol. III, p. 134.

Nor was our Thomas content with these; for, considering, as he himself says, "that it (the reading of the holy Fathers) is supremely profitable and delightful, especially to clerics, at every age...", he took on Tertullian, and published the book On Prescriptions, and On Baptism and Penance (Salzburg, 1752, 1755). But, "as the African style of the same (Tertullian) is at times overlaid and darkened, as it were, by the ashes of that burnt Carthage, although even those who carp at him themselves admit that they are at times wonderfully captivated by him, so most of his sentences rightly demand that light be shed upon them: and this all the more because this most ancient author is one of the Latins whom posterity has claimed for itself almost entire from that most remote age, and from whom the discipline of those times, and especially

in the African churches, which owe their first origin to the Roman [Church], and indeed received it from her in the beginning, has come down even to our knowledge: a thing which in dogmatic theology is surely to be reckoned of no small moment." Hence the very many notes with which D. Thomas adorned these three books of Tertullian, and which we have had to put back to the end of this second volume, since they came into our hands too late for each to be inserted in its own place. If anyone should perhaps complain that those notes "hunt out every trifle as if with a needle-point", D. Thomas answers that he "wrote these things not for the learned but for those to be taught"; to which he adds that "even much lighter things can at times give trouble enough". Some little notes, however, we have omitted here and there for brevity's sake; but, consulting at once the profit and the pleasure of the reader, we have kept the interposed dissertation bearing on baptism and penance, and two others, on the use and authority of Tertullian, which at times even wandered off the mark, we have taken care to fold into the preface, as far as was possible, only shorter and leaner.

Why, moreover, our D. Thomas published and annotated in particular the books On Baptism and On Penance, we learn from himself, in the preface mentioned above: "This author, then," he says, "I wished to put into the hands of students, both so that what the use of the sacraments of baptism and penance, most necessary to salvation, was in the primitive Church and in its second century soon after, when the traditions were still recent and could be very little suspected,

may perceive somewhat more accurately; then, that they may learn not to pass over the writings of the ancient Fathers cursorily and too hastily, but to dwell on them a little longer, yet not to die away wholly into one and the same; for so their due esteem will come to those writings, and great profit and delight to these readers themselves.” THE EDITORS.

LIST OF THE CHAPTERS OF THE BOOK ON BAPTISM.

Chapter I. He sets out the usefulness and the occasion of this writing.

II. Unbelievers are offended by the simplicity of baptism and the greatness of its effect, which ought rather to be a cause of wonder to them.

III. He shows that a singular power and efficacy of animating was implanted in the element of water already at the beginnings of the world.

IV. He shows that the element of water, above the others, was fit to be taken up for the sanctifying of the soul.

V. He teaches that with far greater right is the power of expiating sins placed in water by Christians than by the gentiles.

VI. He teaches that we, cleansed in water through baptism, are prepared for the greater gifts of the Holy Spirit.

VII. On the anointing customarily applied after baptism.

VIII. On the imposition of hands after baptism, and its signification.

IX. Baptism is foreshown by various figures in the Old Testament, and confirmed in the New.

X. How does the baptism of Christ differ from the baptism of John?

XI. That Christ baptized, not indeed by Himself, but nevertheless through the apostles.

XII. Whether the apostles too were themselves washed, and with what baptism?

XIII. On the necessity of baptism laid upon all men.

XIV. How is that saying of St Paul, 1 Cor. 1:17, to be understood: Christ did not send me to baptize, etc.?

XV. That the baptism of water is one, and therefore cannot be repeated.

XVII [sic]. On the baptism of blood.

XVII. On the ordinary and the extraordinary minister of baptism.

XVIII. On the subject of baptism.

XIX. On the time for conferring baptism.

XX. On the preparation necessary for baptism.

Notes on the first chapter.

Aquae nostrae (‘of our water’). Common water, that is, and elemental, as being met everywhere for our daily uses, and, for baptism, so necessary to our salvation, most easily to be had.

Quia (‘because’). I would almost prefer quae (‘which’), namely of the water.

Delictis (‘of sins’). Not of original sin only (for that is one and the same in all), but of personal sins as well, as below, chapter 5.

Caecitatis (‘of blindness’). For as blindness is a kind of death of the bodily eye, bereaving it of all its vigour and as it were of its life, so on the contrary, through baptism, sight is restored to the eye of the soul blinded through sin, and it is flooded with the new light of grace, so that the Apostle’s saying in Ephesians 5:8 may truly be said of the baptized: You were once darkness, but now LIGHT in the Lord. From this that saying of Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus, Book I, chapter 6, is easily understood: Βαπτιζόμενοι φωτιζόμεθα, φωτιζόμενοι υἱοποιούμεθα, υἱοποιούμενοι τελειούμεθα, τελειούμενοι ἀπαθανατιζόμεθα, that is: Being baptized we are enlightened, being enlightened we are adopted as sons, being adopted we are made perfect, being made perfect we are rendered immortal. And soon after he calls baptism φώτισμα, illumination, “through which we behold that holy and saving light, that is, through which we discern that which is divine”; but of this perhaps elsewhere.

Liberamur (‘we are set free’). And it is for this reason that he called this Sacrament happy, because, namely, it renders us happy in this way.

Digestum (‘digest’). It is taken here as a noun, as among the jurists the Old and New Digest; so too our author, Against Marcion, Book IV, chapter 3, calls the Scriptures Digesta, because in them the teaching of our faith is held distributed and digested in its proper order.

Cum maxime (‘most of all’). That is, quam maxime, as in Cicero, Pro Cluentio, and elsewhere.

Formantur (‘they are formed’). For informantur, that is, they are imbued with a somewhat fuller knowledge of the mysteries of the faith.

Portant (‘they carry’). He speaks of those who are still raw in the faith, and can give no reasons why they believe, and do not know the springs from which faith itself flows forth, nor the ways of the traditions through which the truths to be believed have flowed down to us: and so, nursed in it from earliest childhood, they cling simply, through inexperience, that is, from want of fuller knowledge, to a faith untried (not yet sufficiently examined), yet probable (approved by others, namely by their teachers, and in very truth to be approved by all).

Istic (‘there’). At Carthage, that is, in Africa, where Tertullian was living when he wrote this.

Caiana haeresi (‘by the Caian heresy’). On this most shameless heresy see our Tertullian, On the Prescription, chapters 33 and 47. These Caianaeans, or Caianites, moreover, among others

errors of theirs had taken away all the force of baptism, as St Augustine states in his book On Heresy, to Quodvultdeus, heresy 15.

Most venomous. The most virulent reptile, called by the Latins vipera, as if vivipara [bearing live young], because, unlike other serpents, it brings forth not eggs but living offspring; or, as Martinius says in his Lexicon, because it loves thickets (vepreta) (for they say that the ancients said vipre for vepre); or because it gives birth by force (vi pariat), the offspring, as if weary of so laborious a birth, gnawing through the very womb of the mother, as though with the utmost impiety; so much so that Pierius, book 13, under the title On the Viper, testifies that sons conspiring against their mother were denoted by the Egyptian priests by the hieroglyph of the viper. And among the Greeks too some will have it that the viper is for this reason called echidna, from its having its offspring within itself until death: because it keeps its young in its womb until its own destruction. But experience, as Theophrastus long ago observed, protests against this excessive credulity of the ancients. Moreover, some punctuate that text thus, and not badly: a viper, most venomous by its doctrine, etc. Finally, the woman whom he denotes by the name of viper he presently, further below, openly reveals by her own name as well.

Seized. She snatched up, or seized to herself and to her own most pestilent heresy.

Nature. That is, of vipers.

Fere. Others read fera, which rightly displeases Junius. Therefore fere is by all means to be retained here in the sense of plerumque [for the most part].

Asps. Aspis, -idos, among the Greeks properly means a shield. And from this the Scholiast on Aristophanes thinks that a certain kind of serpent was called asps, because of its winding itself into many coils, that is, because it is accustomed to roll itself into many circles and by this coiling of its own to take on a round shape, such as shields commonly had at that time. How great the force of venom in asps is, this alone can serve as proof, which Kircher relates in his Mundus subterraneus, book 9, section 1, chapter 3, concerning one of his companions: "who, when he struck an asp sitting in a tree, was so poisoned by it, by its breath alone, as he struck it, that by a kind of stroke it rendered the man immobile for three whole years, from which, no remedy being equal to such venom, he afterwards died." So he. Indeed Suetonius, in his Augustus, chapter 17, is the authority that Cleopatra too perished by the bite of an asp, applied to her breast by her own hand, the remedies of the Psylli being of no further avail. It is no wonder, then, that in Deut. 32:33 the venom of asps is called incurable, and in Ps. 13:3, of the impious in general, it is said: With their tongues they dealt deceitfully; the venom of asps is under their lips. On the invincible power of this venom see what our most reverend Calmet has on Ps. 90:13, and Bochart in the Hierozoicon, part 2, book 3, chapters 5 and 14.

Basilisks. The serpent regulus, called by the Greeks basiliskos, is said to have been so named because it shines with a white spot on its forehead, as with a kind of royal diadem, or because, although it is quite small, yet by its savagery

of venom, it surpasses even the other greatest serpents, and is accustomed to kill a man, unless he flees, by its breath alone, and indeed, if it has seen him first, even by its gaze. And this was the common persuasion of the ancients, as may be seen in Aelian, On the History of Animals, bk 2, ch. 5 and 7, and no less in Pliny, Natural History, bk 8, ch. 21. Certainly God, through Jeremiah, ch. 8, v. 17, threatens the Jews with this as with a very great plague: Behold, I will send among you nehashim tsiphonim (which the Vulgate renders by "basilisk serpents", but the Septuagint by opheis thanatountas, "death-dealing serpents") against which there is no charm, that is, against which no spell of the magic art avails.

They say it is hatched from the egg of a cock already advanced in years. Indeed there are exhibited in certain museums, as I myself have seen more than once, basilisks brought from abroad, two-footed, distinguished by a serpent's tail, and not very different from the form of a cock, except that they are featherless; these, however, others affirm to be ray-fish of the smaller kind, which are customarily fitted into that shape by skilful trickery. It is certainly established, however, that by the ancients, Pliny, Aelian, Solinus, etc., they are classed not among birds but among true serpents. Finally, the more distinguished physicians and philosophers of our times do not hesitate to dismiss basilisks, and especially their manner of birth, to the realm of fables.

They haunt. For they are said to make their dwelling chiefly in sandy deserts, in rocky mountains, and above all in the ruins of ancient buildings.

We are born. Among the Sibylline oracles there circulates a certain acrostic poem of the Erythraean Sibyl, or, as others prefer, of the Cumaean, comprised in twenty-seven verses, whose beginning is this:

ICHTHYS [Fish].

Since, then, ichthys signifies "fish" to the Greeks, certain ancient Fathers called Christ Ichthys: "In this name (says St Augustine, bk 18, On the City of God, ch. 23) Christ is mystically understood, because in the abyss of this mortality, as in the depth of the waters, He was able to be living, that is, without sin."

But although these oracles were highly esteemed by the ancient Fathers, Justin Martyr, Theophilus of Antioch, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, Lactantius, etc., and were hurled against the Gentiles like powerful missiles, nevertheless the Gentiles themselves too, not only Celsus in Origen, bk 5, Against the same, but also Dionysius of Halicarnassus, bk 4, Roman Antiquities, ch. 70, and he indeed relying on the authority of Terentius Varro, were persuaded that those acrostics of the Sibyls were wholly spurious; indeed the far more common opinion of the critics now holds that they were forged long after the Sibyls, namely about A.D. 130 under the reign of Hadrian, by a certain Christian, in order to commend our religion to the Gentiles (it is established from Eusebius, bk 3, Ecclesiastical History, ch. 7, and from others, that not even the Apostolic age was free of pious frauds of this kind), with the name of the Sibyl falsely attached. St Augustine, in the same book 18, ch. 45, seems to have had some doubt about them, saying: "Unless perhaps someone should say that the Christians fabricated those prophecies about Christ which

are brought forward under the name of the Sibyl, or of others," etc. He has similar things in ch. 47.

But, you will object, can this acrostic, which was cited by Cicero in book 2 of On Divination even before Christ was born, be ascribed to a Christian? I reply: Cicero did indeed know a poem of this kind under the name of the Sibyl. It was by no means the one which so clearly [foretold] Christ, however, but another, which obscurely presaged some king or other who would rule over the Romans. In the opinion of many, this was to be fulfilled in Julius Caesar, who was tacitly aspiring to the title of king. "And already a rumour had spread" (says Suetonius, Julius Caesar, ch. 70) "that Lucius Cotta, one of the Fifteen Men, would give his opinion that, since it was contained in the books of fate" (the Sibylline books, namely, whose custody and inspection were, as is agreed, entrusted solely to the College of the Fifteen Men) "that the Parthians could not be conquered except by a king, Caesar should be called king". The same Suetonius confirms this more clearly shortly after, in ch. 80. Yet it seemed incredible to Cicero that this very poem was the work of some Sibyl stirred by divine frenzy, for he says: "This belongs to a writer, not to one raving; to one applying diligence, not to a madman. And I for my part would sooner believe it to be the work of some flatterer seeking to win Caesar's favour for himself." Nor, moreover, was this acrostic kind of poem unknown at that time. It had already been practised by Ennius, who was more than sixty years older than Cicero, and it was mentioned by that same Cicero in the same place.

But what then, you say: are we to believe that those spurious oracles were adduced by the ancient Fathers against Jews and gentiles to persuade them of the coming of the true Messiah, or rather that those [Jews and gentiles] were deceived by means of them? Answer: this was done in good faith, and not ineptly, especially against the gentiles. Their purpose, namely, was not to win authority for oracles of this kind. They wished rather to use, as an argument ad hominem (as we call it), the authority which those oracles already enjoyed among them on other grounds. And finally, those first Fathers of the Church were intent solely, of course, on propagating the true religion by whatever means they could, and had no leisure to judge writings of this kind by critical examination. Hence it is agreed that they quite often made use of the books of Hystaspes and of Mercurius Trismegistus, the Acts of Pilate, and certain Gospels, all now judged apocryphal. Why then should we wonder that Tertullian too alludes to that acrostic of some supposed Sibyl? Why wonder that he calls us little fishes, imitators of our Ichthys, as it were of the great Fish, Christ, after Whose example we receive baptism and in Whose waters we are born to the spiritual life of the soul? For the rest, whoever wants more on the Sibyls will find it in Dupin, Bibl. Nov., vol. 1, p. 28 in my copy, etc.; in Cave, On Ecclesiastical Writers, under Sibylla; in Basnage, on the year 4 before Christ; and in Isaac Vossius, Blondel, Marck, Crasset and many others.

We are saved. That is, by persevering in the faith which we received through baptism and have professed; for he who perseveres to the end, he shall be saved (Matt. 24:13).

Quintilla. A woman otherwise obscure, unless her

poison, and the name itself, even men (called Quintillians, for shame!) had allowed to be smeared upon themselves. For the rest, St Epiphanius, Heresies 49, enrols this Quintilla in the company of Priscilla and Maximilla, the prophetesses of Montanus; but Basnage, in the Politico-Ecclesiastical Annals for A.D. 200, no. 5, skilfully distinguishes two women of the same name, and places the one, Montanus's, in Phrygia of Asia as teacher of the Pepuzians, but the other, our Tertullian's, in Africa alone, devoted to the Caian heresy, as he had already pointed out above.

Most monstrous. Namely, as a leader in a chorus of men, and already above compared to a viper, an asp and a basilisk.

It was a right. St Paul, 1 Cor. 14:34 ff., takes this right away from women universally, strictly imposing silence on this talkative sex, which would otherwise greatly disturb the sacred assemblies of the faithful: « But let women keep silent in church; for it is not permitted to them to speak, but to be subject to their husbands, etc., » so that he does not permit them the office of teaching even "with integrity", that is, otherwise uncorruptly. See below, Chapter 17, near the end. Moreover it is clear from this passage that Tertullian, when he wrote this, was not yet among the Montanists, among whom women were granted, even with applause, the power of prophesying publicly and of teaching men themselves (a shameful thing!), as we showed in Critical Question 5, which we prefixed to Tertullian's book On the Prescription.

Taking away. Withdrawing baptism, without which, however, no one can become a Christian.

Notes on Chapter II.

It is established. This sentence is that of one marvelling at the perversity of heretics, and is therefore to be taken θαυμαστικῶς (as an expression of wonder), namely that they labour to forge weapons for themselves against us out of the very elements of our faith.

Should harden, i.e. should render them obstinate and refractory.

In act, that is, in the action itself and the outward work.

In effect. Namely the interior and spiritual one, which is Sacramental Grace, surpassing all the power and comprehension of the whole of nature.

Is promised again. Simply for "is promised", just as our author habitually uses, here and there, retractare for tractare, and other compounds of this kind in place of the simple forms.

In water. Others think "into water"; but what forbids keeping "in water"? For Tertullian is speaking of baptism by immersion, in use at that time not only in the African Churches but almost everywhere, in which those to be baptized were accustomed not only to be put into the water but also to be let down in it with the whole body. But [we shall speak] of this baptism elsewhere.

Dipped. Our author constantly says tingere for the Greek baptizare.

Rises again. For the sudden immersion, and the emergence from the water of baptism, procures not that cleanness for the body which baths otherwise usually do, but a much greater one for the soul.

Thereby, for "on that account".

Of eternity. That is, of eternal salvation, into which we are initiated through baptism.

Solemnities. According to Festus (the old grammarian), a sacrum solemne was so called because it was customarily performed at fixed times and years (whence also anniversaria, as things to be celebrated chiefly whenever a year comes round), above all on behalf of the people and at public expense, as were the Agonalia, Carmentalia, Quirinalia, etc.

Secret things. The ancients called them sacra seclusa (secluded rites), the Greeks Mysteria, that is, hidden things. An arcanum, moreover, was a certain kind of sacred rite which, again on the testimony of Festus, "was performed by the augurs, so far removed from common knowledge that it is not even made public in writing, but is celebrated through the memory of successors." Such were the rites that were celebrated with the common people shut out, as the Nyctelia, in St Augustine, City of God, book 6, chapter 9. Likewise the Samothracian rites of the Cabiri, or powerful gods, concerning which our author [speaks] in the Apology, chapter 7; the Eleusinian rites in Attica, etc., called arrheta (unspeakable) on account of their foulness: among which deserve to be counted those that were performed among the Romans for the Good Goddess. Among the secret things there were also the Mithraic rites, concerning which our author [speaks] in the book On the Soldier's Crown, last chapter, and we in the book On Prescription, chapter 11, note h, and below, chapter 5. But above all Tertullian here means those rites into which those sacrificing had to be initiated by certain ablutions: such as were those of the god Aesymnetes, concerning which Pausanias in the Achaica, chapter 226, and elsewhere passim.

On a platform. A suggestus is properly a certain raised place, made from a heap of many things or from the piling of some upon others. Accordingly the Latins called any more elevated place a suggestum, as was the one in the Campus Martius, from which magistrates addressed the people: indeed even a speech of this kind was itself called a suggestio, concerning which Vopiscus, chapter 19: "We refer to you, Conscript Fathers, the proposal of the pontiffs." It is also taken generally for apparatus, as in our author, book On the Shows, chapter 7: "The somewhat more showy display of the circus games, before which, properly, goes what bears this name, the procession," etc. And in the same place, chapter 12: "We shall interpret the same of the apparatus to be assigned to the display of the honours themselves," etc. Likewise in the book On Idolatry, chapter 18: "But now the matter of the mere display and apparatus of office must be reconsidered," etc. So too the gold and silver images of the Caesars, which were fixed one above another on a pole and carried before the legions, went under the name of suggestus, as again in our author, Apology to the Nations, chapter 16: "All those distinguished displays of images are necklaces of crosses." It is also taken for women's adornment in clothing, as in the book On the Veiling of Virgins, chapter 12: "But these alone carry their whole womanhood around in manifest finery ..... denying by a single garment what they profess by their whole display." And in the book On the Dress of Women, chapter 2: "Know that now not only the display of a feigned and elaborated lust is to be refused by you," etc. But in particular it is used for an adornment of the head, and for curls of the hair rolled together, as in that [line] of Statius, Silvae, book 1:

Behold from afar the honour of the lofty brow, and the raised pile of the hair.

Sometimes it is also taken for "supplying", as again in Tertull., book Against Hermogenes, ch. 16: "If He Himself Who made it is the author of evil, matter is plainly His partner through the supplying of substance."

They pile up. Here, however, he chiefly points to that enormous luxury of games, garments, banquets, etc., which was customarily employed in certain rites of the gentiles.

Power. Indeed these are attributes of God which most greatly commend one another, since in infinite Power there shines forth so great a simplicity of the divine works, and in so great a simplicity infinite Might. Truly the Author of nature uses the shortest way and no great apparatus of instruments, does nothing in vain, does not multiply entities without necessity, etc., but restricts His Power to the fewest possible means; indeed even those very things which seem to have been created for the mere adornment of the universe nevertheless have their own simplicity; nor does God apply to His works more even of adornment itself than is necessary for attaining the end fixed beforehand by the Supreme Wisdom. But in human affairs almost everything happens the contrary way; for weakness of power is betrayed by the very lack of simplicity and by a great apparatus of instruments. The larger a house is to be built, the greater the accumulation of material and the greater the number of workmen it requires: but this whole machine of the world was established by its Architect out of nothing, without the help of another, without tumultuous labour, by a single Fiat. Nature perfects gold by silent and most simple ways: Art, among so many attempts undertaken, has perhaps with difficulty and rarely, or more truly never, been able to produce genuine gold (I say nothing of diamonds, etc.). Mechanical Art assists the motive forces, as they call them, in a wonderful manner, but only by means of multiplied pulleys and other laborious machines, and with all the greater slowness of result. How many drugs are needed to drive out the stubbornness of a graver disease? How many diseases are there that cannot be overcome by any art of physicians? Yet Christ (to mention even these few things) restored to health the leper with two little words: I will, be cleansed (Matt. 8:3), the daughter of the Canaanite woman by a single Fiat (Matt. 9:25), the man blind from birth by the mere anointing with clay and washing in the pool of Siloam (John 9); Peter's mother-in-law sick with fever (Matt. 8:15), the two blind men (Matt. 20:34), by touch alone, and the centurion's paralytic even while absent (Matt. 8:13); nay, He restored to life itself the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, wholly dead, holding the girl's hand (Mark 5:41 ff.), by means, that is, entirely out of proportion [to the effect].

Death. For who is ever read to have raised the dead by human powers and by a bath poured over them? But to raise the soul through baptism, in water met with anywhere, simple, etc., from the death of sin to the life of grace, this is much simpler, and of greater strength than all human weakness.

It is not believed. For men are accustomed to marvel at those things which surpass our understanding; therefore we ought to believe these things the more, the more of Divinity shines forth in them, which are also so much the further removed from human power and manner of acting.

He does not believe. Marvelling, then, is twofold. One arises from faith, when we do not in the least doubt about the existence of a thing, its properties, etc., yet wish to know and perceive more inwardly how that thing stands, or its causes, as surpassing our understanding, and are not able to, so that we must do no more than marvel at it. And in this sense marvelling (as Aristotle said somewhere) is the daughter of ignorance. The other is without faith, when we marvel that something is believed or proclaimed by another which surpasses our belief, because we refuse to submit it to the authority of another, indeed of God Himself.

Vain, that is, empty; for unbelief is accustomed to measure all things by the senses: therefore what appears simple outwardly, it judges to be such inwardly also.

Impossible things. Things which are said to be magnificent within, or to produce great effects, the unbeliever does not believe can even happen, since they cannot be reached by the senses; for, as the Apostle says, 1 Cor. 2:14, the natural man does not perceive the things which are of the Spirit of God, for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand. Such men, then, are again those who judge by the senses alone, but with little sense.

With God. He alludes, of course, to that saying of Christ in Matthew 14:26: With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. Which our Vulgate renders word for word: With men (that is, in the opinion of men) this (to be saved, or to attain eternal salvation) is impossible; but with God all things are possible. Perhaps, however, Tertullian read "exceedingly difficult" in his manuscript, namely on the same principle by which Cicero translated that passage of Plato in the Timaeus, "it is impossible to disbelieve the children of the gods", thus: It is a difficult thing to do, not to put faith in those sprung from the gods (the sons of the gods). And indeed things which are exceedingly difficult, or very difficult, morally, that is, in the estimation of men, we are accustomed to call impossible. And the things that are presently added make this meaning of Tertullian plain.

Passing it by, that is, considering it incidentally, and as if in passing.

By adversaries, or contraries.

Cause, that is, the being of a cause, or, if we speak in the manner of the Schoolmen, causative power. It can also be taken for the cause or reason why a thing is or exists, that is, for its principle or origin. The same manner of speaking occurs also in our author in the book On the Shows, ch. 12: "It is necessary that whatever is administered under the name of a dignity should also share the stains of that from which it has its causes." Although what forbids taking "cause" here for the state and condition of a thing? For in this sense Cicero too used it in On Ends: "Those who have been visited by death are in the same condition as before they were born"; and no less in the book On Duties he says,

when "he was being killed by being kept awake, he was in a better condition than if at home, an old man and a captive," etc.

Provocatur ("is called forth"), that is, is brought about, and as it were is summoned out of a state of possibility into existence itself. The sense therefore is that every work receives its state and condition from him by whom it is begotten, and that accordingly the efficacy of Baptism is to be measured not from its outward apparatus but from the Wisdom and Power of God, working inwardly and spiritually.

Notes on Chapter III.

Reformari ("to be re-formed"). We are said to be re-formed through water when we afterwards recover in Baptism the form of Divine grace, which had been lost through sin.

Quid ("what"). For cur ("why"), as Ovid in the Epistle of Oenone to Paris:

Why do you entrust seeds to the sand?

Auctoritas ("authority"). A certain pre-eminence, and as it were an inborn dignity.

Exigenda est ("is to be required"). To some this whole sentence seems entangled, and therefore with Junius they judge that it should be read thus: "we treat of being re-formed by water, why indeed, etc., it has deserved the office. As I think, the authority, etc." But what necessity is there to punctuate it so? Or why should we not rather take these little words "as I think" ironically, for "forsooth", so that the sense is: as if God could do nothing that was beyond the powers and the capacity of water, or of any other creature?

A primordio ("from the beginning"), namely of the world itself.

Suggestum, that is, adornment, or unfolding into its own species. Suggestus: see the preceding chapter, col. 1205, C.

Impolita ("unpolished"). That is, still rough and formless.

Penes Deum ("in God's keeping"). For "with GOD", or "in GOD's power and will" lay what He might wish to make out of any thing; in nearly which sense our same author says in the book On Patience, ch. 1: "What is supremely good, that is supremely in GOD's keeping, and no other than He Who possesses it dispenses it, as He deigns to each.

Quiescebant ("they were at rest"). As if still inert, and endowed with no faculty of acting.

Inquit ("he says"). Moses, namely, Gen. 1:1.

Invisibilis ("invisible"). The Hebrew tohu, in the Vulgate inanis ("empty"), is in Aquila kenōma, "emptiness"; in Symmachus argon, "idle" and inert; in Theodotion kenon, "void"; but the Seventy render it by aoratos, "unseen" or "invisible" (being, that is, still wrapped in sheer darkness): just as our same Vulgate rendered a certain passage, Wis. 2:18, thus: "He created the orb of the lands out of UNSEEN matter", where the Greek has ex amorphou hylēs, "out of FORMLESS matter".

Incomposita ("unordered"). The Hebrew word bohu our Vulgate renders by vacua ("void"); Aquila and Theodotion by outhen, "nothing"; Symmachus by adiakriton, "undistinguished" or "confused"; the Seventy by akataskeuastos, "unprepared", "unwrought", "UNORDERED", or "confused".

Abyssum ("the abyss"). The Hebrew tehom is to all the Greeks abyssos, that is, as Eustathius interprets this noun, "excessive water having infinite depth", or lacking a bottom, or, as Cornelius a Lapide explains it, a mass

of the waters which then covered the whole earth; and finally, for our Most Reverend Calmet, it is the matter of the waters, still mixed with earth, or mud.

The Spirit of God. But who is this רוח אלהים, the SPIRIT OF GOD? This difficulty, no small one, has given birth to three principal opinions.

The first holds that what is to be understood here is the wind, or the air stirred up rather violently over the waters. So thinks Severian, bishop of Gabala, a writer of the 4th century, whom Theodoret, Question 8 on Genesis, sets out rather more clearly: "I should rather think that here he calls the air spirit; for since he had said that God created heaven (that is, the Empyrean, named from fire, which for the Greeks is πῦρ) and earth, and had mentioned the Waters under the name of the abyss, he necessarily made mention of the air," etc. Nor is this opinion disapproved by Saints Basil, Ambrose, Augustine, etc. And indeed it is well established that the Hebrews, whose language lacks superlatives, among other aids for expressing them are not seldom accustomed to use some name proper to GOD, as in Gen. 35:5, חתת אלהים, the TERROR OF GOD (that is, the greatest terror, and as it were sent by GOD Himself) fell upon all. So in Ps. 35:7 we have: Thy justice is כהררי־אל, LIKE THE MOUNTAINS OF GOD, that is, the highest mountains. And in Ps. 79:11: Its shadow covered the mountains, and its branches ארזי־אל, the CEDARS OF GOD, that is, the most lofty and tall ones. Added to this is the fact that Isaiah too, at Isa. 40:7, uses the same words as Moses in Gen. 1:2: The grass is withered, because רוח יהוה, the SPIRIT OF THE LORD, has blown upon it: which is plainly to be understood of the wind.

The second opinion is that of many who, as St Augustine testifies in On Genesis according to the Letter, Unfinished Book, ch. 4, understand by that spirit "the vital creature by which the whole visible world and all corporeal things are held together and moved," etc.; or, as St John Chrysostom affirms in Homily 3 on Genesis, "that there was present in the waters a certain effective and vital operation (namely a hidden fruitfulness impressed upon them for bringing forth living creatures, that is, fishes and birds, Gen. 1:21), and that it was not simply water standing still and motionless, but mobile, and having a certain vital force."

The third opinion explains it of the Holy Spirit; to this I am driven by the far greater number of the holy Fathers. "It is truer," says St Basil, Homily 2 on the Hexaemeron, "and approved by our forebears, that that spirit is called the Holy Spirit of God," etc. And St Ambrose, book 1 on the Hexaemeron, ch. 8, says: "We, agreeing with the judgement of the saints and the faithful, take it as the Holy Spirit," etc. No less does St Jerome affirm in Hebrew Traditions on Genesis: "that it is said not of the spirit of the world, but of the Holy Spirit, Who is also called the Giver of life to all things from the beginning." And he confirms this very thing in the Letter to Oceanus, saying: "He was pressing down the unformed and invisible matter with the vastness of the abysses and with shapeless darkness: the Spirit of God alone was borne over the waters in the manner of a charioteer, and was bringing to birth the nascent world in the figure of baptism." And what of St Augustine? Here too, splendidly, in book 13 of the Confessions, ch. 3, the mind

of his own he lays open: "I was already holding," he says, "the FATHER in the name of God, Who made these things" (heaven and earth), "and the SON in the name of the Beginning, in Whom He made these things; and seeking the TRINITY, I was seeking in the utterances of His Scriptures: And behold, Thy SPIRIT was borne above the waters," etc. Hence it is no wonder that, from so great an agreement of the Fathers, the Church has adopted this opinion too in the Blessing of the baptismal font, singing thus: "O GOD, Whose Spirit in the very first beginnings of the world was borne over the waters, so that even then the nature of the waters might conceive the power of sanctification," etc.

But what forbids us to join these three opinions as it were into one? Let us say, then, that by the SPIRIT OF GOD is understood first of all the wind, or elemental air, and that this, set in motion by a singular power of GOD, by flowing through the waters was as it were incorporated into them, and so made them fruitful for bringing forth living things; and that the Holy Spirit, lying invisibly hidden beneath this air, in a certain manner initiated those same waters with the power of sanctifying the soul one day through Baptism.

Was borne. The Hebrew merachepheth, which the Septuagint renders by epephereto, "was borne above", is said to carry among the Hebrews a somewhat more hidden meaning. Indeed St Basil, in the Hexaemeron, ch. 1, adducing the testimony of a certain Syrian interpreter (whom they commonly think to have been St Ephrem, Basil's distinguished friend), speaks thus: "That epephereto, then, 'was borne above'," says (that Syrian), "he interprets as synethalpe, 'was cherishing', after the likeness [of] ezoogonei, 'was animating', after the likeness of a bird brooding, of a hen sitting on eggs and imparting a certain vital power to the things being warmed, namely those eggs." Diodorus of Tarsus agrees, on the aforesaid passage of Genesis, reasoning thus: "For the Hebrew word (merachepheth), answering to the verb epephereto, means to signify that, just as a hen sits on eggs, touching them gently with her wings as things to be animated, so too the Spirit was borne above the waters, imbuing them with vital heat." And this very thing St Jerome, in the Letter to Oceanus and in the book of Hebrew Traditions, and no less St Ambrose, book 1 on the Hexaemeron, ch. 8, confirm, as may be seen more fully in Natalis Alexander, vol. 1, Age of the World 1, dissertation 1, art. 2, prop. 2. And finally St Augustine, On Genesis according to the Letter, ch. 4, explains it still more subtly: "As the will of a craftsman is borne above the wood, etc., or even above the very members of his own body, which he moves to work." And so too the inseparable follower of Augustine, St Thomas, expounds it, part 1, q. 66, a. s.

Substance. Understand "be".

Dignationem ("condescension"), for dignitatem ("dignity").

Seat. Therefore Tertullian already carried the torch before those Fathers of whom [we spoke] above, [on the words] The Spirit of God, suggesting the same opinion no less in book 4 Against Marcion, 26; although, if we wish to speak the truth, not very consistently; for in the book Against Hermogenes, ch. 32, on that [verse] of Amos 4:13 (as indeed the Septuagint reads) stereon bronten, "Who makes firm the thunder", kai ktizon pneuma,

and makes the spirit, etc., he discourses thus: « He shows that spirit to be made which was assigned to the lands that had been made, which was borne over the waters, the balancer and breather-upon and animator of the universe; not, as some think, that the very spirit of God is signified (for indeed the waters would not have sufficed to sustain the Lord); but he speaks of that Spirit from which the winds also consist, » etc. Either, then, forgetful of his former opinion, he wrote these things, or, to gratify his Montanus (for by then, alas! he had already given himself over to him entirely), who by the account of certain people is reported to have sacrilegiously boasted himself to be the Holy Spirit, and who is indeed even greeted by Tertullian himself, in I. On Monogamy ch. 1, with the title of Paraclete, he perhaps struck out his old opinion.

Liquor. The liquid element of the air.

Always. That is, from the very beginning of its creation.

Joyful. It is set against the gloomy abyss.

Simple. Of a substance uniform throughout.

It placed beneath. On which the Holy Spirit was carried over the waters in the manner of a charioteer, as St Jerome explains in Ep. 83 to Oceanus. See above.

Measuring. To measure out is to arrange a thing harmoniously, according to a fixed measure, or to a more elegant proportion and dimension. Hence the waters are here called measurers, since from them, as if measuring out and furnishing prescribed proportions to every kind of thing, this Universe was set in order and coordinated.

It stood by God. Others read: it stood from God. Yet there is no reason for me to condemn the ordinary reading altogether. For "by God", in the Greek idiom, can be understood for "through God", and "it stood" for "it stood firmly", or rather for "it was established".

Divided in the middle, that is, separated in the middle by this very firmament. For so the sacred text says at Gen. 1:6-7: Let there be a firmament בתיך המים IN THE MIDST OF THE WATERS, ריהי מבדיל AND LET THERE BE A DIVISION, or, as our Vulgate has it, let it divide the waters from the waters. And GOD made the firmament, and divided the waters, etc. Gen. 1:6-7.

Should suspend, namely at the centre of the Universe; for there GOD hung the mass of the earth on three fingers. Isa. 40:12.

Apt, that is, workable, or suitable, for receiving shapes of this kind.

Sappy, for juicy, as the same Varro says, bk 2, ch. 11: « Wool freshly shorn is called sappy from the sweat of the sheep. »

Into mud. In the Greek idiom for "into the mud", into which the earth had been softened by the remaining watery moisture.

Or grace. As Cicero says, bk 2, letter 3 to Quintus: « The other things in our affairs are of this sort, full of dignity and grace, » that is, of charm.

Natures. Nature is said also of inanimate things, at least improperly, for the power innate in them, or begotten within, which we are also accustomed elsewhere to call disposition. But I suspect that for natures one should read inborn, i.e. engendered.

An instrument, for almost infinite uses and effects.

Parere, for apparere ["to appear"], as in the book On the Shows, ch. 8, our same author says: "Before these, three altars appear for triple gods." See also the book Against Marcion, ch. 15, and elsewhere.

Aeternam ["eternal"]. From the context I strongly suspect that terrenam ["earthly"] should be read. Yet I would judge that aeternam can be tolerated, so that the sense is: "On whose nod, as it were, eternal life depends," etc., since it obtained the power of sanctifying in some manner even in its very beginning, as was said above, and as will in part be set out more fully in the following chapter. But that water is a kind of symbol of eternal life, Christ Himself showed beforehand to the Samaritan woman, John 4:10 etc., and especially verse 14, saying: The water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life.

In caelesti ["in a heavenly thing"], that is, through something heavenly, namely the Sacrament of Baptism, as a means supremely necessary to our salvation, which we finally attain in the heavens.

Notes on chapter 4.

Ipso habitu ["by the very condition"], that is, through that initial power of sanctifying which it had received into itself soon after its creation.

Super aquas ["over the waters"]. As in the notes on the preceding chapter: Spiritus and ferebatur.

Reformaturum ["about to reform"]. In the same place, the note: Reformari.

Mutuabatur ["it borrowed"]. So too in Exod. 3:2 Mount Horeb, on which the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire from the midst of the bush, drew a certain holiness from the singular presence of GOD, and therefore GOD said to him: Loose, He said, the shoe from your feet; for the place on which you stand is HOLY GROUND. Ibid., verse 5. A similar example occurs at Josh. 3:5, and many more elsewhere.

Rapiat ["it may snatch"]. It may draw together, as though seizing to itself by a kind of force.

Insidere facilem ["easy to settle in"]. It is a Hellenism; for so a Greek would say, εἰσδῦναι καὶ ἐγκαθέζεσθαι πρόχειρον ["ready to enter and settle in"], whereas a Latin would say, "easily penetrating and settling in".

Subtilitatem ["subtlety"]. He seems to use a certain bodily likeness, adapted to the senses: that of certain oils and dyes, which penetrate even the most solid substances. But how a spiritual substance or quality is received in a bodily subject is indeed far more difficult for philosophers to explain.

Concepit ["it conceived"], perhaps for incepit ["it began"]; or the sense is: it conceived the power of sanctifying, that is, received it into itself.

Ex ea parte qua ["in that respect in which"], that is, so far as, inasmuch as the genus indeed, etc.

In specie ["in the species"]. Perhaps in speciem should be read.

Diluatur ["it is washed"]. Some manuscripts have deluatur; for the ancients said deluere for eluere, and, in Festus, deluvium for diluvio.

In Tiberi ["in the Tiber"]. That is, at Rome, which he certainly designates by the Tiber, the river flowing through this City. That Peter, therefore, was at Rome and suffered there with Paul, Tertullian assumes not only here but in other places too, as a thing wholly beyond doubt. For thus in book 4 Against Marcion, ch. 5, he says: "We see,

what the Romans too proclaim from close at hand, to whom both Peter and Paul left the Gospel sealed with their own blood." Twin to this is what he has in the book On Prescription, chapter 36: "But the Church of the Romans too publishes that Clement was ordained by Peter (where indeed but at Rome? for Clement had been Roman by birth, and had not left Rome until he was already bishop of the Romans and had been driven into exile by Trajan)." Again, in the Scorpiace, chapter 15, he speaks thus: "Nero was the first to stain with blood the rising faith at Rome. Then Peter is girded by another, when he is bound to the cross; then Paul obtains birth into Roman citizenship, when he is reborn there by the nobility of martyrdom." Therefore already at the beginning of the third century this tradition had grown strong in the Church of Carthage, and indeed far and wide throughout the whole of Africa, while no one, not even among the heretics whom Tertullian had pursued so fiercely and everywhere, had dared to shake it in any way.

But neither was Carthage so cut off from the Romans that matters somewhat more notable and newly done could only be carried back and forth slowly and by uncertain rumour; for a whole colony of Roman citizens had been brought there by Julius Caesar, and Africa itself had been handed over to the authority of the senate by his successor Augustus, and thereafter administered as a Roman Province by annual proconsuls, and it had been constantly frequented by Italian ships, both on account of the almost daily export of grain (for that Africa was called the granary of Italy in those times is all too well known from Tacitus, Histories book 3, chapter 48, and from most writers of Roman history, Greek as well as Latin), and for the sake of other merchandise. I ask, therefore, and I adjure you: at whose instigation would not Carthage alone but the whole of Africa have suffered so great and so persistent a lie to be smeared upon it, or how could there have been such carelessness about the truth itself, which could better be investigated on countless occasions, that not even Tertullian, otherwise by no means sparing of abuse against the Roman Church, especially after he had deserted, an impious renegade, to his Montanus, would have torn its lying mask from that tradition, he who would certainly not have ceased to throw this imposture in the face of the Roman clergy, had he ever been brought even to suspect it? Or would not the proconsuls themselves, and above all Clodius Mater, who, as Tacitus attests, Histories book 1, chapter 7, governed Africa in the last times of Nero, or those who followed him, Vipsanius Apronianus, Vigellius Saturninus, etc., and most of all Scapula, the persecutor of the African Church, to whom Tertullian had written so boldly on behalf of the Christians, would they have hesitated, once its falsity was detected, to uproot a tradition so glorious to them and so powerful for confirming them in their faith? And then, if Peter [died] elsewhere, is he to be believed the only one of the apostles to have undergone martyrdom in so obscure a place that not even a rumour of it reached Tertullian, or anyone else before or after, whether living at Carthage, or at Rome, or anywhere at all?

Or, finally, is the Roman Church alone of so unknown an origin that, while the first founders of almost all the others, even far less noble ones, are identified from at least probable information, the whole of antiquity should have been deceived in assigning the origin of that Roman Church?

Therefore it must be believed without doubt that this tradition of the Church of Carthage did not arise there at random, nor was it craftily invented, but that, having been handed down to posterity by all those who had seen Peter at Rome, had heard him preaching, and had been present as eyewitnesses at his martyrdom, it was brought to Carthage and thence to the remaining African Churches together with the Gospel, which these had received from the Roman Church, as St Augustine testifies in Epistle 162; and that it was so firmly established throughout all the Churches everywhere in the world that it could never afterwards waver against the testimony of so many witnesses, and of public monuments, stones, temples, etc.

You see, then, that even this testimony of Tertullian alone (for I will say nothing now of the wholly unanimous consensus added to it of other most ancient Fathers, some of them even contemporaries of Peter himself) [suffices] to draw this tradition from its very sources, and to break the audacity of the sectaries, by which they now drag into controversy a matter so plain, and one which no one even of the heretics or schismatics otherwise ever dared in the least to contradict before the sixteenth century of the Church. Evidently our moderns are at last so keen-nosed, or rather so keen-nosed in their little way, that what all the ancients had been unable to scent out, they themselves now begin to smell. And indeed, if it pleased me to proceed at greater length against such men, or if it were worth the effort, I would bring forward in a long column even those who, as they are most alien to our sacred rites, so are otherwise of the greatest authority among them: Pearson, Grotius, Ussher, Chamier, Blondel, Pierre du Moulin and others, by whose names alone a few others, and those lately born, could easily be overwhelmed. For now let it suffice to have adduced even two of them, Samuel Basnage and William Cave: the former of whom, although in his Politico-Ecclesiastical Annals, at the year 42, no. 8, he stubbornly denies that Peter was bishop of Rome, nevertheless at A.D. 64, no. 9, firmly affirms that he was at Rome, in these words: « There was never any tradition surrounded by a greater number of witnesses; so that one cannot doubt the coming of Peter to the City without overturning all the monuments of history. » The other, in his Literary History of Ecclesiastical Writers, p. 5, speaks thus: « That Peter was at Rome, and held his see in it for some time, we fearlessly affirm together with the whole company of antiquity. » Then, after he had produced witnesses beyond all exception, and drawn from the remotest antiquity, and had cited St Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of St Peter himself, Papias of Hierapolis, Irenaeus, the disciple of St Polycarp, an apostolic man, Dionysius of Corinth, Tertullian, Caius, a Roman presbyter, and Origen, he continues thus: « After so many venerable names, such clear monuments of earliest antiquity,

who will call into doubt a thing handed down so clearly and so constantly? Surely, if so dense a cloud of witnesses, so harmonious an opinion of the ancients, is to be picked at according to the itch of anyone's wit, it will be all over with the memory of the first centuries, and no one will be permitted to know anything beyond his own age.» Thus indeed certain of our heterodox, while they everywhere thrust their own judgements forward as the truth, while they scrape together from all sides so many insulting fables against our religion, and in part even invent them themselves, demand that credence be given to them at once, though the whole of antiquity is not equal to obtaining credence from them in return. But since we have been carried thus far almost beyond the limits of our undertaking, if anyone desires more besides, he will find it in abundance in our Calmet, in his special Dissertation on the Roman journey of St Peter.

Philip, who is more commonly believed to have been not the apostle, but one of the seven first deacons chosen (Acts 6:5).

Fortuitous, that is, offered by chance.

He related. This statement certainly savours of irony. However, Tertullian does not here mean to make the Baptism conferred by Peter entirely equal to the Baptism of John, which had been only a kind of preceding figure and, as it were, a forerunning of the former (for below, in chapter 10, he sets down a clear, and not a single, difference between the two). He wished only to affirm this: that any water whatever, spread throughout this world of ours, being entirely the same as that primeval water, has now been equally fitted by the Holy Spirit for conferring salvation on men, in whatever manner at last. Yet it is certainly not to be denied that our baptism, being a Sacrament instituted by Christ Himself, was of far more efficacious power than the baptism of John, which did not of itself confer the remission of sins, but only stirred men to acts of penance, through which that remission came about. On this matter our interpreters and theologians may be consulted here and there, and we shall establish it more fully in its proper place.

Prerogative. That is, sharing, as if by transfusion, that privilege and the nature of that primitive water.

Sacrament of sanctification, that is, that hidden and spiritual power of sanctifying the soul.

When God has been invoked. This invocation takes place in the blessing of the baptismal font: that this rite was already in use in Tertullian's times, and probably came down from the apostles themselves, is sufficiently gathered even from this passage alone.

Is over the waters, that is, is above the waters and, as it were, floats upon them.

They drink in. Whether this power is truly real and physical, impressed upon the waters by the Holy Spirit and physically causing baptismal grace, or only moral, the Scholastics vehemently dispute in the treatise on Baptism.

To a simple act, for "to the simple act", namely of washing.

In the manner of dirt, that is, like it; or in place of dirt.

In the spirit, or in the soul; for sin is committed by the will alone, and it leaves in the soul a spiritual stain, which among the Scholastics is usually called habitual sin.

Liability. Indeed the flesh, or body, contracts no guilt properly so called, nor does that tinder by which the flesh lusts against the spirit (Gal. 5:17) have the character of sin, except of sin improperly so called; yet because, as they again say in the schools, actions belong to supposits, and accordingly not the soul alone but the whole man, as the supposit itself, consisting of body and soul, sins in the flesh and through the flesh, hence also, namely on account of the intimate union of the soul with the body, the liability both of guilt and of punishment is in some manner extended to the body itself, or the flesh, so that not indeed the body by itself and for its own sake, but the soul in the body and through the body, and thus the whole man who has sinned, is punished.

On account of its service. Therefore what was said before is true chiefly of carnal sins, or those which are accomplished with the flesh, and with the flesh concurring in whatever manner.

Because with waters medicated, that is, imbued with healing power, as among natural things are hot springs and mineral waters. Elsewhere it is also, though more rarely, taken for "poisoned", as Suetonius relates that the emperor Claudius was removed from among the living by a medicated mushroom, and Silius in book 6 sings of weapons medicated with poison.

Intervention. He alludes to the Sheep Pool, concerning which see John 5, and our author more openly in the following chapter.

Is washed, namely on account of that guilt which it incurs through the body, and through bodily and sensible pleasures.

Is cleansed. Namely from that stain which it has contracted in the soul, intimately bound to itself.

Notes on Chapter V.

Of spiritual things, that is, destitute of all understanding, etc., and savouring nothing but carnal things. Perhaps this sentence could be punctuated thus: "Strangers to all understanding, the power [or virtue] of spiritual things with the same efficacy," etc.

They supply, or they attribute.

Widowed, that is, empty, and destitute of all power of that kind.

They are initiated. To initiate, a word used chiefly in sacred matters, is to consecrate, or to imbue with sacred rites, or rather to render fit for them. "There were (says Casaubon on Athenaeus, book 6, chapter 15) certain degrees to be observed in participation in the mysteries. First of all was the katharsis (a certain purification, to be performed namely by certain washings), then followed the lesser mysteries, by which they were instructed and prepared for the greater; the last was the act of the greater mysteries, and those things which were called epopteia,"

that is, the inspection of certain secret rites, to which the initiated were admitted only after a full year had passed, as Plutarch states in the book On the Decline of Oracles.

What has been said so far Clement of Alexandria confirms excellently in book 5 of the Stromata, reasoning thus: "Not without reason, then, in the mysteries too that are held among the Greeks, the first place is held by the purifications (purifications, or lustrations), just as among the barbarians too by the bath, the washing. After these, however, come the lesser mysteries (the small mysteries, which have some foundation of teaching and of preliminary preparation, that is, of preparation or initiation) for what is to come," etc. And in book 7 of the Stromata he says: "Before the handing on of the mysteries also [or sacraments], they think it right to apply certain cleansings to those who are about to be initiated, that is, to employ certain expiations [or purifications] for those who are to be initiated into the mysteries," etc. Cicero, moreover, in book 2 of On the Laws says that those mysteries were called initia. Indeed, among us Christians too it is commonly said that someone is initiated into Holy Orders, and the first tonsure is called a kind of initiation into them.

Of some Isis. Io, daughter of Inachus, after giving birth to Epaphus, her son by Jupiter, was turned into a cow through the doing of the jealous Juno, and, after she had recovered human form, was married to Apis, king of the Egyptians, under the new name of Isis; on account of the very great benefits she bestowed on that nation, she was after her death, together with her husband, received by the Egyptians into the number of the gods. Some believe that this utterly fabulous goddess (because Isis in the Cimbric tongue means est, est, "is, is") was a shadowy figure of the infinite Wisdom of God, which in Proverbs 8:14 says of itself: Mine IS counsel and equity, mine IS prudence, mine IS strength. Certainly Plutarch, in the book On Osiris and Isis, records that the following inscription was once found in a temple of Isis.

I am all that has been and is and shall be.

I am all that was, and that is, and that shall be.

Others believe that under Isis lies hidden the Earth, or the Moon, or the star of the Dog (because at its rising the Nile is wont to flood Egypt), or Ceres, or Minerva, or some other of the goddesses; but some, as reported by the most illustrious and most learned Huet, bishop of Avranches, in the Demonstratio Evangelica, proposition 4, chapter 10, number 1, paying no regard now to sex, confound her entirely with Osiris, Astarte, Saturn, Cybele, etc. What, moreover, of the fact that the same Huet contends that among the idolatrous Egyptians Moses passed into Osiris, and his wife Zipporah, and indeed his sister Miriam too, into Isis?

However, whoever this Isis may have been, it is nevertheless established that sacrifice was once offered to Isis not only by the Romans and many other peoples, but, as Tacitus reports in On the Customs of the Germans, also by the Suevi, her idol having been brought from Egypt into the Euxine Sea, and from there up the Danube to that region. You will find more in Plutarch in the book On Isis; Pitiscus in the Lexicon; Natalis Comes, Mythology,

book 8, ch. 18; Dempster, On Roman Antiquities, book 2, ch. 22, and others.

Now as regards the rites of Isis, they are said to have been very secret, and only nocturnal, and customarily performed by women alone. Herodotus, moreover, in Euterpe, book 2, testifies that the priests of Isis were accustomed to wash daily in cold water, three times by day and twice by night, and that among her mysteries an amphora of water was customarily carried. Lucian relates this in On the Syrian Goddess. And Juvenal too, satire 6, sings of such a woman, a priestess of Isis:

She will go down into the wintry river when the ice is broken, three times will she plunge into the Tiber in the morning, and in its very eddies wash her fearful head....

And soon afterwards:

....... If white Io commands it, she will carry waters from Meroë, to sprinkle them in the temple of Isis, which rises next to the ancient sheepfold.

Of Mithras. "Those who hand down the initiations (or mysteries) of Mithras (says St Justin Martyr in the Dialogue with Trypho) relate that he was born from a rock, and they call 'the Cave' the place where they say those who believe in him are initiated." Hence on a certain ancient marble Rosinus, in the Paralipomena to Dempster's Roman Antiquities, book 2, ch. 8, reads:

To the god Sun Mithras, Flavius Septimius Zozimus, v. p., priest of the god Bronton and of Hecate, established this cave.

These Mithraic rites, which used to be performed in hidden caves, were peculiar to the Persians, who, as Macrobius testifies, Saturnalia book 1, ch. 17, were accustomed to worship the Sun under the name of Mithras, and to sacrifice to him a bull, led out of a cave by its horns, amid the harmony of hymns. This idol, then, had the face of a lion, with a tiara, in Persian dress, gripping with both hands the horns of a struggling bull, as we learn from Statius, Thebaid book 1, where:

....... whether it pleases you to be called rosy Titan after the rite of the Achaemenian race, or fruitful Osiris, or Mithras, twisting beneath the rocks of the Persean cave the horns that are indignant to follow.

Further, concerning the ablutions that were customarily employed in the initiations of this deity, Tertullian testifies in the book On the Soldier's Crown, last chapter, and in the book On the Prescription, ch. 40, where we [say] more in the Notes.

But moreover, that ablutions of this kind generally preceded the sacrifices of the gentiles, the records of the ancients testify everywhere. For thus Hesiod:

Never pour red wine to Jupiter or to the gods above before you have washed your hands in the pure water of a river.

Thucydides too must be heard, Peloponnesian [War] book 2, speaking thus: "They used the spring Callirrhoë also in matters of the greatest moment, and even now, from those ancient times, that water is customarily employed before nuptial rites and in other sacred rites." And Pausanias as well, in the Eliaca, book 1, ch. 164, testifies on the same matter thus: "Neither the sixteen women (these were in charge of the rites and games of Juno in Elis) nor the aediles of the Eleans undertake any part of their office before they purify themselves with a particular pig and with water (drawn from the spring Piera)."

And certainly Timarchides, cited by Natalis Comes, Mythology book 1, ch. 4, records that a certain Asterius perished struck by lightning, because he had touched the altar of Jupiter with impure (that is, unwashed) hands. And what of the fact that prayers might not be poured out to the gods except after such washings had first been performed? Among the Romans, when a sacrifice was to be made (as Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities book 8, ch. 71, is a reliable witness), “having washed their hands and purified the victims with pure water, etc., they afterwards prayed, and only then ordered the attendants to slaughter them.” Lactantius, Institutes book 5, ch. 20, wittily mocks such people: “Defiled,” he says, “with every vice, they come to pray, and think they have sacrificed piously if they have washed their skin: as though any rivers could wash away, or any seas purify, the lusts shut up within the breast.”

But see the origin of this superstitious rite, and you will read that those wicked spirits are everywhere excessive apes of the divine Spirit! “When the demons,” says St Justin Martyr in Apology 2, speaking of our Baptism, “had heard of this washing proclaimed through the prophet, they brought it about that those about to enter their shrines and to approach them, etc., should purify themselves with a sprinkling of water; indeed, they also see to it, by their prompting and agency, that people going forth are washed over the whole body before they come to the temples where they are placed.” Moreover, that part of the temple in which those about to sacrifice washed themselves off, or washed themselves clean (see the preceding chapter, note on in specie), was properly called delubrum, the meaning being afterwards extended to the temple itself. Although others think otherwise about the etymology of that word.

They carry out. Thus it is established from Ovid, Fasti book 4, and from Lucan, On the Pharsalian War book 1, that this was regularly done with the Mother of the gods (whom the Greeks, and following them our author, On the Spectacles ch. 8, called μεγάλην Μητέρα, the Great Mother; the Phrygians by the name of Rhea and Cybele; the Assyrians, on the testimony of Macrobius, Saturnalia book 1, ch. 23, Adergatis; the Egyptians, on the authority of Servius on Aeneid 8, Isis; the Africans, according to St Augustine, City of God book 2, ch. 4, the Heavenly Goddess; and the Germans, according to Tacitus, Histories book 7, ch. 20, Hertha (Erde)) at the river Almo. Likewise there is a notable passage in Tacitus, Annals book 15, ch. 44: “Juno was propitiated by the matrons, first on the Capitol, then at the nearest sea. Water was drawn from there and the temple and image of the Goddess were sprinkled.”

Moreover, to carry out seems here to mean to bring the idols out of the temple and, after they had first been washed with water, to carry them round through the streets and squares of the city in public supplications, or processions (of which the gentiles had many, and which there still are in Asia).

Country houses. Villae, as if vehillae, was at first the name given to certain huts in the fields, built only of turf or some other material that necessity dictated, for carting in and storing the crops there, for receiving the tenant farmers at night, and the shepherds with their flocks, etc.; afterwards, when they had passed into fixed dwellings of country folk, they were built somewhat more solidly, and at length also into the nobles' pleasure and summer retreats

they passed, and were accustomed thenceforth to be inaugurated all the more solemnly with lustral sacrifices of that kind, and with sprinklings.

To this also belonged the festival of the Palilia, customarily celebrated in the month of April in honour of the god Pales, concerning which Ovid, [Fasti] IV, line 735:

Let the shepherd purify his sated sheep at the first twilight, / from which he may first sprinkle, etc.:

there being employed, evidently, that rustic and fitting formula found in Cato, On Agriculture, ch. 141, for invoking that rustic god: "That you may forbid, ward off and avert diseases seen and unseen, barrenness and devastation, calamities and bad weather," etc. Indeed the shepherds themselves also had to be purified both with fire and with water, concerning which Ovid, in the same place, line 725:

Certainly I have leapt three times over flames set in a row, / and the laurel rod has sprinkled dripping waters.

But what prevents us from referring to this also those ambarval sprinklings, during which the ambarval victim was led around the fields, as though going round the ploughlands? etc.

Houses. On this matter I adduce Theocritus alone, Idyll 24, where the seer Tiresias, ordering the house of Amphitryon to be expiated from the serpents which Hercules in his cradle had strangled, squeezing them with both hands, says,

With pure sulphur fumigate the house / first, and then, as is the custom, sprinkle with a wreathed branch / harmless water mixed with salt.

Temples. On the lustration of temples there is again a notable testimony in Tacitus, book IV, ch. 43, where, when the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, destroyed by the soldiers of Vitellius, was to be restored by the emperor Vespasian, in order that its site might be dedicated with solemn rite, "the Vestal Virgins, with boys and girls whose fathers and mothers were living, washed (that whole site) with water drawn from streams, springs and rivers," etc. But this rite is traced, far more ancient, from King Numa himself, of whom Plutarch says in his Life, "that he assigned the spring which waters the place (namely the plain where he used to consort with the nymph Egeria) as sacred water to the Vestal Virgins, so that drawing from it they might purify and sprinkle the sacred shrine."

Cities. There were also the sacred rites of the Amburbalia, when, that is, the city and its pomerium were purified, as in Lucan, Pharsalia I, line 593:

Presently he orders the whole city to be gone around by the fearful citizens, / and the walls to be honoured with a festal lustration, / and the sacred pontiffs to encircle the long pomerium / along its outermost bounds, etc.

This lustration, moreover, took place every year in the month of February, for Numa dedicated this second month (as Macrobius says, Saturnalia book I, ch. 13) to the god Februus, who is believed to have power over lustrations; and "in that month" it "was necessary" for the city to be purified (which for the ancients was februari) "so that it might pay the due rites to the gods Manes."

Aspergine. Junius thinks aspargine should be read. But what need is there of this change? The more polished Latin writers say aspergo, as Virgil, Aeneid III:

the rocks foam with salt spray

I find, indeed, in law 4 of the Digest on the Rhodian law concerning jettison, that Callistratus says asparginem, but in another sense, namely for damage to a thing contracted from water, especially rain; although there are those who read aspergine there too.

Apollinaribus. These games were first celebrated by decree of the senate, when Hannibal was in Italy, at the prompting of the verses of the seer Marcius, which had then by chance been found, as is established from Livy, book 25, chapter 12, and Macrobius, Saturnalia book 1, chapter 17. Here, however, our author rather has in view that most celebrated rite among the Egyptians which was performed for Horus (for, as Herodotus testifies in Euterpe, Apollo was designated among them by this name) at Buto, on the island of Chemmis; or else the games consecrated by the Dorians to Triopian Apollo, about which the same Herodotus [speaks] in Clio.

Pelusiis. Pelusium, now Damietta, is situated at the easternmost mouth of the Nile. It was once a famous city, founded, as is said, by Peleus, the father of Achilles. He had been ordered to be purified in a neighbouring lake because he had killed his brother Phocus, and he founded the city after he had returned to a sound mind from the Furies, by whom he was driven on account of that slaughter. Herodotus again recounts at length, in Euterpe, chapter 49, that in that place most celebrated games were once held every year in honour of Diana, who in the language of the Egyptians was called Bubastis, and from whom the city itself was called by another name. I am not unaware, however, that our common Interpreter, at Ezekiel 30:16-17, distinguishes between Bubastis and Pelusium: Pelusium (Sin) shall be in pain like one in labour; the young men of Bubastis (Phibeseth) shall fall by the sword.

Tinguntur. Without doubt these games, like all others of the kind, were accompanied by sacrifices, preceded of course by ablutions and lustrations.

Praesumunt. Philosophers of no mean authority in former times, and chief among them Thales of Miletus, believed that the generation of all things proceeds from Water as from a first principle. In the same way perjurers, who were as good as dead already because of the vengeance of the angry gods that threatened them at any moment and in any place, seemed to themselves to return to a new life and its security, and as it were to be reborn, by such ablutions. They falsely believed that these ablutions expiated those crimes, and so they had obtained, as it were, impunity. Since, then, perjuries were very frequent among the Greeks, before the games they were especially anxious to propitiate the gods beforehand by ablutions of this kind, so that they would not shamefully succumb in the games, as if to a public vengeance upon them.

Se expiabat. Very many examples of this practice are found above all among the Greeks. Thus in Herodotus, book 1, chapter 7, Adrastus, who was guilty of fratricide, was purified by Croesus, king of the Lydians. Likewise, as Pausanias records in Corinthiaca, chapter 51, "they relate that Apollo and Diana, after Python was slain, came to Aegiala to purify themselves." The same Pausanias, book 1, chapter 74, reports: "Before Orestes had washed away the stain of his mother's blood by expiations, none of the Troezenians was willing to receive him under his roof," etc. But, if we believe Virgil, this rite already prevailed among the Trojans; for thus Aeneas [speaks] to Anchises, Aeneid 2, line 717:

Do you, father, take the sacred things in your hand, and our ancestral household gods: for me, come from so great a war and from fresh slaughter, it is unlawful to touch them, until I have washed myself in a living stream...

And Seneca in Hercules Furens, act 4, scene 1, line 918:

...Son, first cleanse your hands, dripping with bloody slaughter, and that of an enemy.

This custom of the gentiles Ovid himself indeed ridicules, Fasti 2:

Ah! too easy-going, you who think that the grievous crimes of bloodshed can be taken away by river water.

And yet it is established that by the name of expiations and lustrations nothing but washings made with water used to be understood at that time.

A remarkable example, however, is that which is found in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities book 5, chapter 58, where, when by decree of the Senate a public and just slaying of conspirators had been carried out at Rome, "a decree of the Senate was passed that the whole city should be purified, because it had been compelled by necessity to become the author of the slaughter of citizens: since it was unlawful to approach the sacred rites and to sacrifice victims before the deed had been expiated and the pollution abolished by lustrations."

Water of nature, that is, natural water, left to its own nature.

Of cleansing. That is, of a cleansing to be performed under good auspices, and to be undertaken happily, with heaven itself assenting. Therefore I do not see why with Junius one should read "of auspice and of cleansing".

To be medicated, that is, to be imbued with healing power. Although I would think it should be understood in another sense as well, which is more common and better here, as in Aeneid book 11:

But he was not able to medicate (heal) the wound of the Dardanian spear-point.

The rival of God, namely the devil.

By the sacrament, or mystery, and also outside the use and application of water to the ablutions described thus far.

They know. Others [read] "they are", and not badly; although "they know" seems to me more elegant, and therefore to be retained.

And whatever springs. Springs bursting forth from caves or other shady places were believed to possess something of divinity, or rather of diabolical power; hence divine honour too used to be paid to them by blind gentilism. Of these Seneca, Letter 41, says: "We venerate the sources of great rivers: a sudden eruption from a vast hidden depth has altars: springs of hot waters are worshipped, and the darkness or immense depth of certain pools has made them sacred." There was also at Rome a spring of the Nymph Egeria, at the foot of the Aventine hill, sacred, of which Livy, book 1, chapter 19, relates: "There was a grove, the middle of which a perennial water watered from a dark cave: because Numa very often betook himself there without witnesses..., he consecrated that grove to the Camenae." Plutarch adds in his Numa that the Vestal virgins were put in charge of the care of this spring by the same man, etc., as we reported above in the note Temples.

Therefore springs of this kind, from a certain awesome, I know not what, majesty of the places from which they gushed, they placed altogether among

the gods, and indeed instituted certain particular rites in their honour, such as were at Rome the Fontinalia, customarily celebrated on 3 October, and many others elsewhere.

Nor did they believe that some secret divinity dwelt only in beneficent springs. They believed it dwelt in malignant ones too, and that it was to be propitiated with divine worship, so that they might avert the deadly force of those springs, a force which they nevertheless had implanted in them by nature. Of this kind were the waters of the Alcyonian marsh, in Pausanias, On Corinth, towards the end, by which those swimming in them were dragged down to the very bottom. Likewise the springs of the river Acidas, rising from Lapithas, a mountain of Arcadia, which gave off so foul a smell that it was capable of killing men by its exhalation alone, as the same Pausanias testifies, On Elis 1. I pass over many others of this kind, concerning which Polemon wrote in the book On the Wonders of Sicily. Others who wrote of them are the author of the book On Marvels, who is commonly believed to be Aristotle, Pliny in book 31, Solinus in chapter 31, and others.

Streams. "A stream," says Festus, "is commonly the name for a slender flow of water, made not by expectation or design, but by its own natural impulse." Others use this name in another sense.

Pools. The name piscinae was given not only to ichthyotropheia, that is, fish-ponds. It was also given to cold waters collected for swimming or for pleasurable bathing in a fairly spacious place enclosed on every side, like a kind of artificial lake, even though otherwise without fish. Thus Lampridius, in the Life of the emperor Alexander, writes of him: "He bathed after being anointed, so that he never, or rarely, used the hot baths, but always the pool." And Victor, bishop of Tunnuna, says in his Chronicle of the Arian Olympius: "In a pool of cold water he ended his life impiously." Such too was that Probatic pool, of which John speaks in chapter 5, and the pool of Siloam in the same writer, chapter 9, of which we [shall speak] below.

Furthermore, Tertullian himself, in the book On the Shows, chapter 8, states that baths were sacred to the gods, that is, to evil demons and to idols. He says the same of pools, which were a certain part of the baths and nothing other than cold baths. "Both the streets, and the forum, and the baths, and the inns, and our very houses are not altogether without idols. Satan and his angels have filled the whole age (the world)." Indeed, in the book On Idolatry, chapter 15, he also testifies: "We see even the doors in the baths being worshipped... Whatever you do to a door, you will have done to an idol." Therefore, among the other filth of idols, the heathen also had lares of the bath and of the door, and I know not what other muddy deities. Under their most shameful auspices they would wash themselves, or, more truly, would be defiled with a much fouler filthiness.

Euripi. Euripus was properly the name of that whirling strait between Euboea and Attica which ebbs and flows seven times by day and as many times by night, that is, by turns spewing out its waters and sucking them back again. Aristotle, having investigated its causes in vain, is said to have wasted away from grief. Others relate (but with little truth) that he actually threw himself into it. Afterwards this name began to be extended

"to ditches and drains (as Lipsius says on Seneca, Letter 83) with water, such as were customary for gardens and country houses"; indeed, and in general the receptacles of waters from aqueducts were called euripi (from euripizesthai, "to be tossed to and fro", because through them the waters were readily hurled down to that place and whirled round in tumultuous eddies, or rather, flowed round some portion of land like an island), of which Pausanias speaks in the Laconica, chap. 96: "The field in which the ephebes join their fights is girded all round by a euripus, just as an island is by the sea." And Dionysius of Halicarnassus, book 3, chap. 91, describes the Circus Maximus, built by Tarquinius, thus: "A euripus has been dug to receive water, ten feet in depth and in breadth"; that is: "The euripus has been dug round to receive the waters, ten feet in depth and equally in breadth." Of this likewise Suetonius, in the Julius, chap. 39: "At the circus games, the space of the Circus having been extended at both ends and a euripus added in a ring, the noblest young men drove four-horse and two-horse chariots and vaulting horses." In these also naval games were put on, water being let into the circus itself through euripi (for so the larger channels and aqueducts were also called); indeed the luxury of certain emperors had grown to such a pitch that Spartianus records of Heliogabalus: "He is said to have exhibited naval circus games in euripi filled with wine." Moreover these euripi too were consecrated to certain gods, and Tertullian, in the book On the Spectacles, chap. 10, states: "She therefore (the Great Mother, namely Ops, Tellus or Cybele) presides there over the euripus."

Cisterns. So are called the underground receptacles of rain-water, which Festus thinks were so named because they are cis, that is, below, the earth (terra).

Wells. Wells are deep receptacles of living water, welling up continually from certain hidden veins, which the Aeolians once called poteria, from poton, "drink"; whence they would have it that our wells (putei) too were named from potus, "drink", as if poteoi, that is, supplying us with a most wholesome drink: such was that well in Homer, Odyssey 10, from which Ulysses was to call up from the underworld the shade of the seer Tiresias.

To seize. Those, namely, who, as St Justin Martyr says in Apology 2, are seized and thrown down by the shades (or spirits) of the dead, "taken hold of and hurled to the ground", whom all call daimonioleptoi, "possessed", and mainomenoi, "raving".

Of the harmful one. Over all these springs, streams, pools, euripi, cisterns, wells, etc., certain particular genii had been set by the heathen, who, since the demons appeared there in womanly guise, were also worshipped in this form, and were believed to dwell in those caves watered by the gushing of springs. Hence Virgil, Aeneid 1, calls that Libyan

cave beneath the overhanging crags,

the home of the Nymphs. So too Pausanias in the Boeotica mentions a certain cave of the Cithaeronian Nymphs. And in the Phocica, describing the Corycian cave, he says: "Many here and there from living springs flow

streams. The dwellers about Parnassus consider it sacred to the Corycian Nymphs." So too, as the same [author] again reports in the Boeotica, the Libethrid Nymphs were worshipped at the Libethrian spring. There were also at other springs altars of their own, shrines, or indeed temples, consecrated to the Nymphs, which were also called Nymphaea, like the one above the spring of the river Cytherus in Pausanias, Eliaca 2. In particular, however, those Nymphs who were guardians of rivers, pools and wells were called Naiads, or Ephydriads, etc. And Comatas too, in Theocritus, Idyll 5, swears by the Nymphs λιμνάδας, of the marshes. And as Orpheus calls the Nymphs daughters of Oceanus and Thetis, so Virgil, Aeneid 8, considered them mothers of the rivers, because rivers arise from the sea:

Nymphs, Laurentine Nymphs, from whom the rivers have their race.

But these Nymphs were by no means always held to be propitious divinities; rather, they had to be appeased with sacrifices so that they might not do harm; hence for Theocritus, Idyll 13, they were Δειναὶ θεαὶ ἀγρώταις, dread divinities to country folk, as we shall see shortly. Meanwhile, if anyone perhaps wants more, he will find it in Natalis Comes, Mythologia, book 5, chapter 2, and also in our most learned Montfaucon, L'Antiquité expliquée, volume 1, part 2, book 4, chapter 7.

Enectos. Laurentius Valla, book 4, chapter 27, calls enecti those who have not yet been killed and are dead, but who are nearly so. Hence, when our author in the book On Fasting, chapter 7, mentions that severe fast of the Ninevites, which was kept even by the beasts enectis, Junius rightly explains these words as referring not to those already dead, but to those so wasted by hunger through this fast, which, according to Dan. 3:7, by the edict of the king of Nineveh was extended even to the cattle, that they were nearer to the dead than to the living; and he says that this is properly signified by the verb enecare.

Lymphatos. Daniel Heinsius in his Lectiones on Theocritus, Idyll 5, says thus: "Whenever antiquity made mention of the Nymphs, they prayed to avert their wrath, that is, madness, or βλεπεδαιμονιαν (for those to whom these goddesses were seen were thought to have fallen from their soundness of mind), which they held also to befall seers, whom they called νυμφολήπτους (these, however, our Latins are accustomed to call not nymphati but lymphati)." Hence our author too says in the book On the Soul, chapter 50: "The demonic spring of Colophon makes men frenzied." On this see Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, book 2, chapter 5.

Hydrophobos. They are called Ὑδροφόβοι from φοβεῖσθαι τὸ ὕδωρ, because they fear water. And this befalls above all those bitten by a rabid dog, for whom it is most wretched to be tormented by an extreme fear of water and at the same time by an equal thirst. For the terrible effects of this disease, and the rest that pertains to it, see Kircher, Mundus subterraneus, book 9, section 2, chapter 5. All these things, however, the heathen once imputed to evil spirits dwelling in water.

Profanus. In Holy Scripture קדש, holy, and חול, profane, are usually opposed; therefore here that man is called profanus,

who has nothing whatever in common with holiness.

Pool. In the Greek text it is κολυμβήθρα, by which a pool is signified, in the sense in which, in the Note Aspergine above, a bath or swimming-place [is signified].

Bethsaida. The Greek text of John 5:2 has thus: "Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep [pool] a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes," etc., which our Vulgate renders thus: "Now there is at Jerusalem the Probatic pool, which is surnamed in Hebrew Bethsaida, having five porticoes," etc. Here it is to be noted that this pool is called probatic not from proving, but from the sheep (ἀπὸ τῶν προβάτων), that is, from sheep; for τὸ πρόβατον signifies a sheep among the Greeks. To say probatic here, therefore, is the same as to say ovine or of sheep. And it was called the pool of the sheep because in it the sheep and other animals destined for sacrifices were customarily washed, or the entrails of those already slaughtered were cleansed. Others say that not the pool itself, but the gate by which it was situated, was called probatic (for in the Greek is read ἐν, or, as other codices have, ἐπὶ τῇ προβατικῇ, in or rather by the probatic [gate], perhaps the same which in 2 Esdr. 3:1 is called the Flock Gate). But this [is said] in passing.

Moreover, this pool, which in the Greek text is called Bethesda (other Greek copies have Bethseda), house of mercy, is in the Latin copies called Bethsaida, house of fishing, perhaps because it was once a fishpond.

Stirred. Some have believed that this archangel was Raphael, which is interpreted Medicine of God, who, as he was once sent specially by God to free Tobias from his blindness, so was appointed also to cure the graver infirmities of other men. Whoever he was, he is to be thought not to have descended in some visible form, but only to have imbued the water, by the singular command of God, with a healing power impressed upon it as it were in passing, and so to have given a visible sign of his presence.

Go before. For a figure must always be better known and better suited to the understanding; hence, to prefigure spiritual things, we are always accustomed to choose carnal, that is, sensible signs, by which we are as it were led by the hand to the understanding of spiritual things and of higher mysteries, which otherwise exceed all human comprehension.

But that this pool was a figure of our baptism, among the other holy Fathers St Ambrose especially asserts, in book 1 On the Holy Spirit, chapter 7: "You have also in the Gospel that an angel descended at a certain time into the swimming-pool, and the water was moved, and whoever had first gone down into the swimming-pool was made whole. What did the angel in this type announce, if not the descent of the Holy Spirit, which was to take place in our times and, invoked by priestly prayers, would consecrate the waters (of baptism, that is)? That angel, therefore, was the messenger of the Holy Spirit, because through spiritual grace a medicine was, to the languors of our soul and mind,

to be brought." And in the book On Those Who Are Being Initiated into the Mysteries, ch. 4, he says no less elegantly: "To them an angel descended (into that pool), to you the Holy Spirit. For them a creature was moved, for you Christ Himself works, the Lord of the creature. Then one was cured; now all are healed. Therefore that pool too was a figure, so that you may believe that the Divine power descends into this Font. Lastly, that paralytic was waiting for a man. Whom, if not that Lord Jesus born of the Virgin, at Whose coming no longer a shadow would heal individuals, but the truth would heal all?"

The grace of God. That is, after the coming of Christ, the Author of grace.

They used to remedy. Our author also uses the same verb in To Scapula, ch. 4: "How many honourable men have been remedied either of demons or of illnesses." See also in the book On the Prescription, ch. 38. And although this verb is not Ciceronian, St Jerome is nevertheless known to have used it in the Life of Hilarion.

The spirit. Some read: they heal for the spirit. But what forbids keeping spiritum? For Terence too has in the Phormio: "Which, when things are adverse, you could less easily heal."

They reform. Simply for "they form", just as he quite often uses retractare for tractare, and other compounds of this kind for the simple forms.

They used to free. So that angel, as Tertullian holds, descended only once each year; and so he takes those words of John 5:3, κατὰ καιρὸν, "according to the season", for the yearly revolution of time.

Death being removed, that is, the spiritual death of the soul.

That is, by guilt. Reatus (a word unknown to Cicero, and first used by Messala, as Quintilian testifies, book 8, ch. 3) designates some debt, namely that of which someone is reus, that is, liable. Theologians, however, are accustomed to distinguish a twofold reatus, namely of fault, to be satisfied for by making satisfaction; and of penalty, to be satisfied for by suffering. Whence it is commonly said: "Whoever has nothing in bronze (with which, that is, he can make satisfaction), let him pay in his skin, by which he may suffer satisfaction."

The penalty. Our author can here be understood in two ways, namely of the guilt of penalty, which once removed, the penalty itself certainly has no further place; or, as I judge more truly, of the guilt of fault; and then this statement is by no means to be understood generally, since it is certain among all theologians that, when mortal fault has been blotted out through penance, the guilt of penalty nevertheless remains; yet, whereas it had previously been eternal, [it is] only to be paid off temporally in purgatory. But it is proper to baptism alone that, when the guilt of all preceding fault has been removed through it, all guilt of penalty is at the same time taken away.

To the image of God. He alludes without doubt to what God said in Gen. 1:26: Let us make man בצלמנו to Our image, and כדמותנו to Our likeness. — And God created man בצלמו to His image, בתלם to the image of God He created him. Where all the Greek interpreters צלם by εἰκόνα

image, and דמות by ὁμοίωσις, likeness, render. Now that between these two, if we wish to speak strictly, there is a difference, St Augustine long ago noted in the book of Eighty-three Questions, q. 51, saying: "There are some who not without reason understand that two things were said, 'to the image' and 'likeness': since, if it were one thing, one name could have sufficed." And first of all, as St Thomas explains in Part I, q. 93, art. 9, in the §, "Likeness is considered as a preamble to image, inasmuch as it is more common than image." For he says in the cited question, a. 1, in the §: "It must be said, as St Augustine says in the book of Eighty-three Questions, q. 74: Where there is an image, there is at once a likeness; but where there is a likeness, there is not at once an image. From which it is plain," St Thomas continues, "that likeness belongs to the notion of image, and image adds something over the notion of likeness, namely that it is expressed from another. For an image is so called from the fact that it is made in imitation of another. Hence an egg, however much it may be like and equal to another egg, yet because it is not expressed from it, is not called its image." But indeed he discloses yet another meaning of likeness in the cited q. 93, a. 9, speaking thus: "It is considered also as following upon image, inasmuch as it signifies some perfection of the image; for we say that someone's image is like, or is not like, him whose image it is." And thus צלם in Ps. 38:7 is taken for a certain fleeting, that is imperfect, image: Nevertheless בצלם in an image man passes by. But דמות, likeness, is customarily taken among the Greeks for an image which closely and, as it were, to a nicety expresses its prototype. Hence also in Gen. 5:5 those words are employed to express the perfect likeness that exists between father and son: Adam begot בדמותו בצלמו to his image and likeness, and called his name Seth.

Man, therefore, was made to the image, not as regards the body (for this he has in common with the other animals, which nevertheless were not created to the image of God), but as regards the soul, which by its nature is spiritual, simple, immortal, endowed with intellect and will and with the freedom of the latter, etc. Thus the soul displays the attributes of God shining back within itself, as in a kind of mirror. Hence St Augustine, book 2, On Genesis against the Manichaeans, ch. 7, finely observes: "When God formed man from the slime of the earth, 'to His image and likeness' was not added for this reason, that it is now the formation of the body that is spoken of. But the inner man (that is, the soul which is within the body) was signified when it was said: God made man to the image and likeness of God."

And this likeness is, as it were, the perfection and completion of that image; since it expresses not only the perfections of God, but also, as it were, their very last lineaments, and it stands as a kind of symbol even of the Most Holy Trinity itself, as the author of the Book on the Dignity of Man, ch. 2, who was formerly ascribed to St Ambrose, elegantly explains. Now he says: "Just as the Son is begotten of the Father, and from the Father

and from the Son the Holy Spirit proceeds, so from the intellect the will is generated, and from both of these likewise memory proceeds," etc. But what is more splendid than that which St Augustine has in Book 13 of the Confessions, chapter 2? "Who understands the Trinity, he says, the Almighty? And who does not speak of it, if indeed he understands it? Rare is the soul which, when it speaks of it, knows what it is saying. — I would that men would consider these three things within themselves: to be, to know, to will. For I am, and I know, and I will; I am, knowing and willing; and I know that I am, and that I will that I may be; and I will to be, and to know." A golden confession!

There is, moreover, another image of God in the soul, and that far more excellent, because wholly supernatural, by which, namely, we draw near to God much more perfectly than through the endowments naturally inborn in us: that is, sanctifying grace, which, as our scholastics show, is a formal participation in the divine essence and nature, through which we are called sons of God, and are so; and besides, by faith our intellect knows, and by charity embraces, Him towards Whom it tends by hope. And it is of this image that the Apostle is to be understood, in Colossians 3:9 ff., when he says: Stripping off the old man with his deeds, and putting on the new, him who is renewed unto knowledge, according to the image of Him Who created him. Further, St Ambrose discourses beautifully and copiously on both images in Book 6 of the Hexaemeron, chapter 8.

Finally, man was made in a singular way after the image, namely of Christ, Who, as St Thomas notes (Part 1, q. 93, a. 1, ad 2): The Firstborn of every creature is the perfect image of God, perfectly filling out Him Whose image He is: Man, not like God, but God Himself; and therefore He is called the image, and never after the image. For the Apostle says in Romans 8:29: But those whom He foreknew and predestined [to be] made conformable to the image of His Son. And likewise in 1 Corinthians 15:49 he speaks thus: As we have borne the image of the earthly (Adam), let us bear also the image of the heavenly, namely of Christ, Whom shortly before, in verse 49, he had called the last Adam [made] into a life-giving Spirit. Thus, then, through baptism man is restored to the image of God: not that natural image (which he could not lose through sin in Adam), but the supernatural image of Grace, which he lost through the sin of Adam.

Is reckoned in eternity. We men are the image of God in likeness of form, so long as we see Him through a mirror in an enigma; we are made His likeness when [we see Him] face to face (1 Cor. 13:12). For we know (says John, 1 John 3:2) that when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is; namely then, when we all, beholding the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor. 3:18). And it is thus, finally, that this saying of Tertullian is to be understood: The image in form, the likeness in eternity.

From His breath. Without doubt he alludes to that passage, Genesis 2:7: So God formed man from the slime of the earth, ויפח באפיו, and breathed into his face (to

the letter, into his nostrils, as the principal organ of respiration) נשמת חיים the breath of life, and man became לנפש חיה a living soul. Moreover, by "living soul" the life of the body is understood literally; but some of the holy Fathers expound it in a mystical sense of the life of the soul, which is sanctifying grace, as St Ambrose in the book On Paradise, ch. 5: « Now the life was, as the Apostle (Col. 3:3) said, hidden with Christ in God. Man therefore was either in the shadow of life, on account of the figure to come, etc., or he was in a certain pledge of life, because he had the in-breathing of God, etc.

Notes on Chapter VI.

Under an angel. He seems to hint at the minister of baptism, alluding to that angel in the pool of Bethsaida, in the preceding chapter.

We are prepared. But had he not said a little before that we receive through baptism the Holy Spirit, Whom we had lost through sin? But here it must be carefully noted that in Holy Scripture a distinction is often made between the Holy Spirit and sanctifying grace, which, having lost it through sin, we receive in baptism. First of all it is certain that the apostles before the day of Pentecost had already been baptized, or at any rate had obtained the grace of the Holy Spirit from some other source; and yet only on the day of Pentecost is it said of them, Acts 2:4: They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in various tongues as the Holy Spirit gave them to speak. Then Acts 5:14 and following: When the apostles who were at Jerusalem had heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John. And when they had come, they prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for He had not yet come upon any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord. They had been baptized, therefore, and cleansed from their sins through baptism; certainly they had the grace of the life-giving Holy Spirit; and yet they are said not yet to have had the Holy Spirit. Then they laid their hands upon them and they received the Holy Spirit. The apostles, therefore, on the day of Pentecost received the Holy Spirit not in just any manner, but His fullness, which not only flooded the soul but overflowed into the body itself through certain visible signs: They were filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in various tongues, as the Holy Spirit gave them to speak. So too those Samaritans, Acts 5:17, already baptized, received the Holy Spirit through the imposition of hands, that is, His fullness.

And this is that Holy Spirit Whom that impious Simon had wished to buy for himself with money, ibid., v. 18: But when Simon had seen that through the imposition of the hand of the apostles the Holy Spirit was given, he offered them money, etc. So too another passage, Acts 19:5 and following, is to be explained: Having heard these things they were baptized (certain of the Ephesians) in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid (after baptism, of course) his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied.

Moreover, that imposition of hands, performed upon the newly baptized, was the very sacrament of confirmation. For just as through baptism we are initiated into the faith by the Holy Spirit through certain first-fruits, as it were, of His grace, so through confirmation, made now more grown in faith as by a new grace, we obtain the very Strength of faith and the fullness of that Spirit. That Spirit, therefore, who through baptism had been given invisibly, was through confirmation by the apostles given visibly as well, namely with graces annexed, which we call graces freely given, to wit of healing the sick, of prophesying, of interpreting, of speaking in divers tongues, etc., and other gifts of that kind, which at that time adhered to sacramental grace. That these signs [named] before persevered in the Church for a long time afterwards too is attested by St Justin, who [suffered martyrdom] in A.D. 166, and St Irenaeus, who underwent martyrdom 12 years later, the former in Apol. 1 and in the Dialogue with Trypho, the latter in book 5 Against Heresies c. 6 and elsewhere. But it is well enough established that even towards the end of the 2nd century graces freely given of this kind still flourished in some Churches; and that many who were too credulous, or otherwise incautious, because they had not rightly distinguished between true prophecies and false prophecies, were led astray by Montanus and his silly women, who rashly and deceitfully boasted of the gift of prophecy and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit; and that our Tertullian himself above all fell most foully into the heresy of Montanus, as we have shown in the Critical Questions prefixed to the book On Prescription, q. 4. See also what we have said in the Theological Spicilegium on the Church of Christ, Diss. 6, no. 13 and following.

Thus, therefore, the Holy Spirit having already been received through baptism, but invisibly, we are cleansed from sins through the infusion of grace, and at the same time we are prepared to receive the same [Spirit] more fully in the sacrament of Confirmation (not indeed now under visible signs of that kind, but with an invisible fullness and with strength of faith against internal and external temptations).

Arbiter of baptism. By this I understand the minister, in whose discretion, as it were, and power the administration of baptism is placed. In which sense in the book On Monogamy c. 6 our [author] says: You have Moses, God's arbiter from close at hand. Here, moreover, he again alludes not obscurely to the story, already mentioned rather often, of the Sheep Pool, John 5, in that, just as the angel there came down from heaven, stirring the waters, etc., and just as St John the Baptist was sent as an Angel to preach and administer the baptism of penance in the river Jordan, so now the priest, as another angel deputed, or sent, by his office for this, through the ministry of baptism prepares the way for the Holy Spirit, who is to be infused more fully, as we have said, through confirmation.

Faith obtains. Not [the faith] of the baptizer himself, or of the one to be baptized (for the effect of baptism does not depend on the work of the one performing it, or of the receiving subject; for who will be able to require faith, or an act of faith, of a little child?) but the faith intrinsic to the sacrament itself, or to the work

performed, inasmuch, that is, as baptism was instituted by Christ to be administered in the faith and name of the whole Holy Trinity: and this faith is the intrinsic form of this sacrament.

Spiritu sancto. Therefore, for the substance and validity of this form, a distinct invocation of the three persons of the Godhead is required, by which that Faith is sealed in baptism, as our same author says in the book On Idolatry, chapter 12. Hence, from its sacramental form, baptism is called by the ancient Fathers the seal, the sign, the sealing of faith, the sacrament of the Trinity, of faith, etc., as may be seen in Tournely, in the Treatise on Baptism, q. 1, a. 1, p. 146. Moreover, it is clearly gathered from this passage that already in Tertullian's time the three divine persons had necessarily to be expressed in the form of baptism, and that baptism was by no means conferred then in the name of Christ alone, as the same author has it in the book Against Praxeas, chapter 26, saying: "Not once, but three times, are we dipped into the several persons at the several names."

Per benedictionem. By the name of "blessing" he understands the sacramental form of baptism.

Arbitros fidei. Some interpreters labour a great deal here over this word, drawing on Tertullian himself; for in the Apology against the Gentiles, chapter 7, he seems to take arbitri for witnesses who are present at some business being transacted, saying: "Even impious initiations always keep away the profane (that is, those who are strangers to those same impious superstitions) and beware of onlookers (namely, lest they be present at them as witnesses). And in the same work, chapter 16, he says: "It feared outside onlookers (witnesses, or inspectors) of its vain worship." And in the book On the Flesh of Christ, chapter 24, speaking of Christ transfigured, he says: "in the seclusion of the mountain, within the compass of a cloud, shining before three witnesses." But in the same book, chapter 21, he seems to take arbiter for author, speaking thus of Christ: Of this grace, then, of this discipline. "The Arbiter and Master, and Enlightener, and Guide of the human race, the Son of God, was being announced." See also what we said above about this word arbiter. However, in this passage he seems to take arbitri for witnesses, alluding perhaps to that text of 1 John 3:7: There are three who bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit.

Sponsores salutis. In that sense, namely, in which in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb. 7:22) Jesus is said to have been made the Surety of a better Testament. Therefore the Father too, sending the Son, and the Holy Spirit, sent by the Son, will be Sureties; for the Father through the Son, and the Son Himself in the Holy Spirit, promised us salvation.

Nominum divinorum, that is, of the divine Persons, lest anyone should try to hammer out Sabellianism from this, as though in divine things there were a distinction of names only and none of realities. Now, just as the number of the persons is threefold, so also is that of the names, that is, in the grammatical sense; but in the theological sense there is one name, that is, in those three persons one and the same dignity and authority. Therefore baptism would be invalid in three

names of the Father, of the Son, etc., when conferred: it is therefore necessary that it be done in the Name of the Father and of the Son, etc. On this matter the theologians are to be consulted, where they treat of the form of baptism.

Pignerentur. Not wrongly for pignorentur; for I find it also in Cicero, Philippics 4, and indeed in an active sense: "Mars himself is wont to pignerari (that is, to claim for himself and, as it were, to take as a pledge) every bravest man. But here it is taken by our author in a passive sense, for oppignorari, so that the sense is: that both the attestation of faith and the promise of salvation are made firm through baptism, to which these two are, as it were, bound, as by a pledge already given.

Ecclesiae mentio. Perhaps it is to be understood thus: that an implicit mention of the Church is also necessarily made, as being the one to whom this pledging is made.

Trium corpus est, that is, [a body] united in the three divine Persons and in faith in them.

Notes on chapter VII.

Unctione. He is by no means speaking here of the Unction of confirmation (for of this [he speaks] in the following chapter); but of the rite which even today follows immediately upon baptism. For after it the kiss of peace is given, then the baptized person is anointed with chrism on the crown of the head. Indeed, Saint Jerome, in the Dialogue against the Luciferians, says that it is not lawful for presbyters to baptize without the unction of chrism being added.

I cannot, however, refrain from setting down here the rite of this unction, as it is found in the ancient Pontifical of the Metropolitan Church of this place, in our Edmund Martène, On the Ancient Rites of the Church, book 1, chapter 1, article 13, § 6: "When the infants have been lifted from the font, the bishop or presbyter, asking for the chrism, shall make a cross with the thumb on the crown of their heads, saying thus: May God the Father Almighty — may He anoint you with the chrism of salvation in C[hrist] J[esus] our L[ord] unto life eternal. Peace be with you."

There was also another unction preceding baptism, by which those to be baptized were anointed with oil on the breast and the shoulders. This unction is already mentioned by the author of the Books of Recognitions (whoever he may have been, certainly very ancient) in book 3: "Let each one of you be baptized in ever-flowing waters, the name of the Threefold Blessedness having been invoked over him, having first been anointed with oil sanctified through prayer." This unction is also mentioned by Saint John Chrysostom, homily 6 on chapter 2 of the Epistle to the Colossians, saying: "The one to be baptized is anointed in the manner of athletes who are about to enter the stadium." See also the author of On the Sacraments, book 1, chapter 2 and book 2, chapter 7, among the works of Saint Ambrose. Yet this unction was not made with chrism, but with the oil of catechumens. Concerning this twofold unction the same Martène, in the same place, will supply abundant material from the ancient so-called Ordines and Rituals of the Latins, and also from the Euchologia of the Greeks.

Moreover, that that unction added to baptism did not have the character of sacramental confirmation is clear even from this, that confirmation was conferred by bishops alone (at least among the Latins), whereas that unction, though with chrism, was given also by presbyters, and not on the forehead but on the crown of the head.

He was anointed by Moses. For thus did God Himself, in Exod. 29:7, command Moses concerning the consecration of Aaron as priest: You shall pour the oil of blessing upon his head, etc. Moreover, the ancients formerly used horns in the manner of vessels. So too the anointing of kings was done with oil from a horn. Fill your horn with oil, etc., said God to Samuel in 1 Sam. 16:1, sending him to David to anoint him as king. Samuel therefore took the HORN OF OIL, and anointed him in the midst of his brothers (ibid. v. 13). So too Solomon had been anointed by Zadok, the high priest (1 Kgs. 1:39).

From the chrism. Christus [is derived] from κέχρισται, the 3rd person of the perfect passive of the verb χρίω, I anoint; while χρίσμα is said from the 1st person of the same perfect, κέχρισμαι, and from τοῦ χρίσματος is formed χριστός, anointed. Hence Isa. 45:1: Thus said the Lord (למשיחו, TO MY ANOINTED, from משח, he anointed) to my anointed Cyrus, etc.

Anointing. Elsewhere χρίσμα signifies the ointment itself with which the anointing is done; whence the Latin theologians too, in the sacrament of confirmation, distinguish between the chrism and the chrismation itself, or inunction, and the application of the chrism, which elsewhere is properly called χρίσις by the Greeks. Yet I find that τὸ χρίσμα is taken by the Fathers indiscriminately for ointment and for anointing. Thus Clement of Alexandria, in Stromata book 1, says of the ancient Lacedaemonians that they rightly regarded and called deceitful garments deceitful, and deceitful (τὰ χρίσματα) anointings too. And in the Paedagogus book 2, having said a little before: Οὐ θέμις δολερὰ εἵματα, καὶ χρίσματα εἰς τῆς ἀληθείας εἰσιέναι πόλιν, It is not lawful for deceitful garments and ointments to enter the city of truth, a little later he has this: Let a woman always τῷ τῆς σωφροσύνης χρίσματι συναλειφέσθω, be anointed with the divine anointing of chastity, delighting in the holy μύρῳ, ointment, namely the Spirit. And in book 4 he speaks of τὸ χρίσμα τῆς εὐαρεστήσεως, the anointing of good pleasure (that is, of a mind well pleasing to God). But why say more, when even in the New Testament τὸ χρίσμα is taken for anointing? as in 1 John 2:20: And you have χρίσμα, an anointing, from the Holy One. And again at verse 27: And as for you, the anointing (τὸ χρίσμα) which you received from Him abides in you.

By God the Father. Now Christ was anointed as Prophet, Priest and King; for these three kinds of men alone were accustomed in ancient times to be anointed. But this anointing was made not with some visible chrism, but with a spiritual one, by the Holy Spirit Himself, namely when Christ, having been baptized in the Jordan, at once went up from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw THE SPIRIT OF GOD descending like a dove, and coming upon Him. And behold, a voice from heaven saying: THIS IS MY SON, THE BELOVED, IN WHOM I AM WELL PLEASED (Matt. 3:16 ff.). This is not, however, to be understood as though the Holy Spirit had anointed Christ with the fullness of His grace in the baptism (for He had this already from the first instant of His conception, so that it was no longer capable of any increase), but that the Holy Spirit willed to show by some visible sign the anointing of Christ, consisting chiefly in the grace of HEADSHIP and of the HYPOSTATIC UNION, as having already been made long before.

And in this sense Christ applied to Himself, in Luke 4:18, that saying of Isaiah 61:1: The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me. So too Peter, in Acts 18:8, preached of Christ: How God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit, etc.; which St Augustine, Book 15 On the Trinity, ch. 26, explains thus: "Not indeed with visible oil, but with the gift of grace, which is signified by the visible ointment with which the Church anoints the baptized. Nor indeed was Christ anointed with the Holy Spirit at the time when He descended upon Him, after His baptism, as a dove. For then He deigned to prefigure His body, that is, His Church, in which the baptized especially receive the Holy Spirit: but He is to be understood as having been anointed with that mystical and invisible anointing at the time when the Word was made flesh," etc. See the same author further on.

We are set free: with this difference, however, that baptism is a sacrament which washes away sins as stains of the soul, whereas that anointing belongs only to the rite following upon this sacrament, displaying, merely as in a symbol of a thing already past, that liberation brought about by the power of baptismal grace, which anoints spiritually, and does not itself confer any new increase of grace.

A passage parallel to this is in the book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. 8, where our author says: The flesh is washed, that the soul may be cleansed of stain. The flesh is anointed, that the soul may be consecrated. The flesh is signed, that the soul may be fortified. The flesh is overshadowed by the imposition of hands, that the soul too may be illuminated by the Spirit. But of these things more fully presently.

Notes on Chapter VIII.

Is imposed. Formerly two impositions of hands were performed in baptism: one preceding not only baptism but also that very anointing which is among the rites preliminary to baptism (see the preceding chapter, note Unctione), mention of which occurs frequently among the Latin Orders of Baptism which Edmond Martène sets out in On the Ancient Rites of the Church, book 1, ch. 1, v. 8. The other followed baptism and was to be performed only by a bishop.

Here it must be known that in the first centuries of the Church baptism, namely the solemn baptism, which was given only on Holy Saturday and on the vigil of Pentecost, was administered by the bishops themselves, and that immediately afterwards the sacrament of confirmation was joined to it by the same bishops, as a kind of completion. Hence St Paulinus writes of St Ambrose in his Life: "In the fulfilling of divine duties too his labour was most vigorous, so much so that what he was accustomed to fulfil concerning those to be baptized, five bishops afterwards, from the time when he died, could scarcely fulfil." That custom persisted in the Church for many centuries; but when the crowd of the faithful had increased excessively in the individual Churches, and the bishops had become all too necessary for preaching the Gospel, and that also had begun to hold good which Paul said in 1 Cor. 1:17: Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the Gospel, it thence came about that bishops, not always at baptism, even solemn baptism, to be present

were able, who would confirm the baptized immediately. Hence the manuscript Pontifical of the Church of Apamea in Syria, written in the year 1214, which our Martène presents in On the Ancient Rites of the Church, bk. 1, ch. 2, art. 1, § 3, prescribes after all the rites of baptism that, if the bishop is present, it is fitting that he (the baptized) be confirmed with chrism immediately, etc. Indeed, already in the seventh century few bishops had been performing the office of baptism, being, namely, too much distracted by other cares. Meanwhile this practice of confirming the newly baptized immediately was carried on in some Churches at least, even Latin ones, almost down to our own centuries, as the same Martène testifies in the place cited, § 1. As for the Greeks, the same custom still persists among them, that the sacrament of confirmation is joined directly to baptism, not however by the bishop but by the very presbyter who baptizes: on which matter see Juenin, diss. 7, On Confirmation, q. 5, a. 2, § 1 and following.

Through the blessing, that is, a certain definite form of words, such as must also be used elsewhere in almost all the sacraments by the command of the Saviour, which our author also expressed above, ch. 6, by the word "blessing".

Invoking the Holy Spirit. However, this whole passage seems to favour the opinion of those who maintain the imposition of hands alone (not also the anointing with chrism) as the matter of confirmation: a matter about which the dogmatic-scholastic theologians dispute at length, and especially Tournely, Treatise on the Sacrament of Confirmation, q. 1, a. 3.

By ingenuity, that is, by some invention skilfully devised: as our same author says in the book On the Spectacles, ch. 10, "that the demons, providing for themselves from the beginning, among the other defilements of idolatry, including those of the spectacles, also inspired inventions of arts of this kind." Clearly in the same sense in which, in the book On the Pallium, ch. 1, he says that the Carthaginians were astounded at the Roman ram (a machine of war) as a new foreign ingenium, that is, invention.

It will be permitted a spirit. Certainly not a good one; for he is speaking of the hydromancers, who took prophecies of future things from water. King Numa Pompilius is said to have been most devoted to this art; being about to order the affairs and rites of religion among his Romans, since he seemed unable to provide for himself otherwise, "he was compelled to practise hydromancy, so that he might see in the water images of the gods, or rather mockeries of demons, from whom he might hear what he ought to establish and observe in sacred rites." So St Augustine, City of God 7.35, and in the same place, after some other things: "Because, then, Numa Pompilius carried out (egesserit), that is, carried away, water with which to practise hydromancy, he is therefore said to have had the nymph Egeria (a frigid nomenclature indeed) as his wife. For thus deeds done are wont to be turned into fables by a sprinkling of lies."

Their incorporation together, that is, their most intimate union, namely of the water and of that spirit.

With hands applied from above. That is, with hands laid on from above; for this rite was that of the hydromancers

who enchant waters and, as it were, hand them over to the power of an evil spirit.

To animate. This whole sentence savours of irony and alludes to the magical rites by which hydromancers are accustomed to employ water for magical uses. He says, moreover, by another, that is, by some higher and more powerful spirit, of such great brightness (just as hydromancers are, namely, accustomed to boast that such glorious and illustrious effects are produced by that spirit), the soul [animam], that is, to stir it up and render it, as it were, living.

To an instrument. That is, to a minister, as to an instrument subject to it, obedientially, as the Scholastics say, with a view to bringing about any effects whatever.

Through holy hands, namely through the imposition of the same.

To modulate. To modulate is to compose something according to a definite mode and measure, as we have already said above, at chapter 3, note Modulatricibus. By spiritual sublimity, moreover, he readily understands the power of producing the sacramental grace of confirmation, as if placed in and inhering in the hands of the confirming bishop.

I shall relate here, since it seems not wholly foreign to our purpose, what Eunapius of Sardis also, a pagan, who about A.D. 380 was a not uncelebrated sophist among his own people, narrates in the Lives of the Philosophers concerning Iamblichus, a distinguished follower of the Platonic philosophy: "Some time afterwards it pleased them all, at a fixed season of the year, to go to Gadara, which is a place of hot baths in Syria, etc. While he (Iamblichus) was bathing there, and the others likewise were giving their attention to bathing, a discussion having arisen about the baths, Iamblichus said with a smile: Although I am prevented by religious scruple from disclosing these things, yet for your sake it shall be done. And at the same time he ordered his disciples to ask the local inhabitants by what names two of the hot springs, smaller than the rest but more elegant and more charming, had long ago been called. When they had done what was commanded, they reported that the one was named Eros, the other Anteros, the god who avenges the wrongs of lovers. At once he, having touched the water with his hand and murmured a few little words, called forth from the bottom of the spring a fair-skinned little boy, of moderate stature, his hair tinged with tawny gold, the skin of his back gleaming, who was entirely like one bathing or bathed. While his companions were astonished at the novelty of the thing, he said: Let us go over to the next spring; and at the same time, rising, he went ahead, absorbed in thought and with an intent countenance, and there, performing the same things as before, he called forth Eros, in all respects like the former, except for his hair, which in this one was darker and reddish and spread over his neck. Both little boys, wrapping themselves around Iamblichus in close embraces, clung to him as to their natural father; and he at once restored them to their own proper seats, and, having bathed, departed," etc. So he.

These, no doubt, were vanishing images of infernal spirits, and however much they pretended to be washed and baptized, drawn out of the waters by the hands of that magician, yet he was not able to lay upon them hands by which he might confirm them in some solid state.

Deformantes, for praeformantes, that is "figuring", or simply formantes, "forming". Certainly I find this word used in this latter sense in Vitruvius too, book 6: "The tragic scenes are deformantur (to be taken not in the worse sense, but rather for exornantur, "are adorned") with columns, statues," etc. For the rest, this whole passage is drawn from Gen. 48:13 ff., where (Joseph) placed Ephraim at the left of Israel (that is, of Jacob, who had received that name, laid upon him by the angel with whom he had wrestled, Gen. 32:28), but Manasseh on his own left, that is, at the right of the father (Jacob), and brought them both to him. He, stretching out his right hand, laid it upon the head of Ephraim, the younger brother, but the left upon the head of Manasseh, who was the elder by birth, exchanging his hands, and Jacob blessed the sons of Joseph, etc. Joseph, that is, set both his sons before Jacob his father, and indeed the firstborn Manasseh at his own left, which of course looked directly towards the right of Jacob; but Ephraim at his own right, and consequently at the left of the same Jacob, not doubting at all that Jacob would lay his right hand upon the one who had also been placed at his right side, namely Manasseh himself, and the left upon the other, namely Ephraim. But when Jacob, having exchanged his hands crosswise, that is, intersecting one another, had thus laid the right (which is by its nature the worthier, because stronger) upon Ephraim, the second-born, but the left upon Manasseh the firstborn, Joseph, as if to correct what he thought an error, strove to remove his father's right hand from the head of Ephraim and to transfer it to the head of Manasseh: but Jacob, doubtless aware of a higher mystery, persevering in his purpose, completed by the same rite the blessing once begun.

In Christum futuram, "that would be unto Christ". Those hands, then, crossed in the form of a cross, foreshadowed the very cross of Christ. MANASSEH, namely, was a figure of the Old Testament, as being (in time, namely) the firstborn: and since that very [Testament] was a figure of the New Testament, so Manasseh was FOR A FIGURE of Christ Himself, Who in Col. 1:15 is called the Firstborn of every creature. But EPHRAIM, the second-born, represented the New Testament, and was a FIGURE of Christ Himself, and of the Church, as being later (but again only in time) and as it were second-born in Christ, but far greater in merits and privileges, in which there would be not a figure of the cross but the cross itself, CHRIST CRUCIFIED. Therefore, although others read IN CHRISTO futuram, "that would be in Christ", I firmly retain in Christum futuram, that is, [a blessing] which would overflow UNTO CHRIST, or to His Church THROUGH CHRIST.

Emundata, "cleansed". Namely through the washing which takes place in the baptism of Christ.

Benedicta, "blessed", that is, both sanctified through baptism and its sacramental form, and thereafter confirmed through the imposition of hands. For the rest, this sentence will perhaps not wrongly seem to contain a tacit comparison, so that it can thus be expounded: Just as

the Holy Spirit in a certain manner came down upon the sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh, who were blessed by Jacob through the laying on of hands: so too the grace of confirmation descends upon the baptized when the bishop lays his hands upon them.

Descends. The copulative "and" seems to have fallen out, and must therefore be supplied here.

Dove. Some of the ancients indeed believed so; but of the ancients themselves Aristotle, book 2 of the History of Animals, and Pliny, book 11, chapter 27, and all the more recent anatomists assert the contrary. Yet although doves too, like other animals, have gall, the source of all anger and bitterness, it is well established that this is very moderate in them, and boils over only when they are vehemently provoked. And in this sense St Augustine, Tractate 7 on the Epistle of St John, says: "The dove has no gall, yet it fights for its nest with beak and wings; it rages without bitterness."

Figures. For that descent of the Holy Spirit was prefigured by another dove, that of Noah in the Old Testament, and this was at the same time a kind of foreshadowing figure of our baptism.

Of the world. Thus he elegantly names that flood of Noah, which by St Gregory Nazianzen, oration 40, On Baptism, is truly called the flood of sin: because the whole world, previously filled and as it were inundated with sins and crimes, was cleansed of the filth of sinners when the flood came upon it under Noah and almost the whole human race was wretchedly drowned in the waters. So too through the baptism of Christ we are washed clean of original sin and of all the other sins as well that are present before baptism. That this very baptism of ours was indeed prefigured by that flood is clear from the Holy Scriptures themselves, 1 Pet. 3:20 and following: In the days of Noah, when the Ark was being built, in which a few, that is, eight souls were saved through water. Which now saves you too (the Apostle continues) in like form, BAPTISM, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience towards God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And St Augustine explains this more fully, Against Faustus, book 12, chapter 14, speaking thus: "Noah with his own is delivered through water and wood (the ark): just as the family of Christ is sealed through baptism by the passion of the cross." And in the same place, chapter 17, he says: "Seven days after Noah entered the ark, the flood came, because we are baptized in the hope of future rest, which was signified by the seventh day." And St Basil the Great too, homily 1 on Psalm 28:10, compares baptism to the flood, saying: "Therefore (the prophet) calls the grace of baptism a flood, whereby it comes about that the soul, washed and purged of sins, having cast off from itself the old man, thereafter becomes a dwelling fit for God in the spirit." And he has similar things in homily 2 on the same Psalm.

Herald of heavenly wrath. This passage is very knotty; for was the dove, bringing the olive of peace, a herald of heavenly wrath? Some therefore think that in place of "wrath" (irae) we should restore "grace" (gratiae). For since in certain manuscripts it is found abbreviated as grae, the little word was by an unskilled copyist corrupted into irae

they say. Yet I would think that irae too can be upheld, if we read thus: "The herald (of that same wrath, now pacified), the dove (announcing, namely, that same [wrath], and proclaiming it to the whole world like a herald), announced to the lands the peace of the heavenly wrath (that is, the pacified wrath of heaven, which had of course been angry before)."

Praetenditur ("holds out"). Nothing is more commonly known than that among the gentiles themselves of old the olive was a figure of peace; and to this that line of Maro belongs above all:

And in his hand he holds out a branch of peace-bearing olive.

So too on a certain coin of the emperor Hadrian a figure is seen on bended knee, stretching out her right hand to the emperor himself and holding forth an olive branch in her left, with the inscription: TO THE RESTORER OF SPAIN, that is, to him who rendered her pacified. Likewise a certain coin of Severus Pius Augustus shows a figure in a toga, similarly with an olive branch, with the legend added: TO THE FOUNDER OF PEACE. No less on the coins of Maximian, and of Philip the father, a figure of this kind is seen, and the former is inscribed PEACE OF THE AUGUSTUS, the latter ETERNAL PEACE. Very many examples of this kind could be heaped up here, if there were room.

Eadem dispositione ("by the same disposition"), for "in the same way", or "by the same ordering".

Carni nostrae ("to our flesh"). For this, since it was formed from the earth (for the Lord God formed man from the slime of the earth) (Gen. 2:7), is rightly called earth.

Pacem Dei adferens ("bringing the peace of God"). Of this dove St Ambrose, book 2 on Luke, chapter 3, says: "The grace of the laver requires simplicity, that we may be simple as doves. The grace of the laver requires peace, which in the ancient type the dove once brought to that Ark, which alone was immune from the flood. He has taught me Whose type that dove was, He Who now has deigned to descend IN THE FORM OF A DOVE. He has taught that in that branch, in that Ark, there was a type of the Peace of the Church; because amid the very floods of the world the HOLY SPIRIT brings fruitful PEACE to His Church." Thus St Ambrose. This dove, then, at that time, when the earth had now been cleansed of its filth, brought an olive branch; now the Holy Spirit brings to those washed through baptism peace and grace of soul in the sacrament of confirmation, and, anointing the soul with oil, strengthens it for the struggle.

Arca figurata ("the figured Ark"). And in this allegorical meaning of the Ark the ancient Fathers and interpreters everywhere agree; of whom I shall bring forward at least two, Origen and St Augustine. The former, then, in Homily 2 on Genesis confirms it at length, from which I pluck only a very few words: "Just as it was then said to that Noah that he should make an Ark, and bring into it not only his sons and his kin but also animals of every kind, so also to our Noah, our Lord Jesus Christ, at the consummation of the ages it was said by the FATHER that He should make Himself an ARK of squared timbers, and give it measurements filled with heavenly sacraments," etc. And St Augustine in book 15 of The City of God, chapter 26, discourses thus beautifully: "That God commands Noah, a just man, to make an ark, in which with his own

he might be freed from the devastation of the flood, is without doubt a figure of the City of God sojourning in this world, that is, of the CHURCH, which is made safe through the WOOD on which hung the mediator of God and men, the Man CHRIST JESUS." See further the same author both in this and in the following chapter, ch. 27. Likewise in the Exposition of the Gospel of St John, tractate 6, the Questions on the Gospels, book 2, question 44, the book On Catechizing the Uninstructed, ch. 19, but above all book 12 Against Faustus, ch. 11 and following, where he expounds the Ark most copiously as a figure of the Church. On the same subject one may also read St Gregory the Great, homily 16 on Ezekiel, Rupert of Deutz, book 4 of the commentary on Genesis, ch. 71 and following, and many others here and there.

To the flood. To Junius this passage seems corrupt, and he therefore believes it should be restored thus: "If the world too has sinned again, whereby baptism is ill compared, it is therefore destined for a flood of fire," etc. So that he accordingly attributes this sense to the passage: "But if the world, after the singular grace of God offered in Baptism, is carried into sins and rushes headlong into them altogether, by which deed it is most unjust towards Baptism, and Baptism is ill compared: therefore, that is, for that reason, the world is destined for a flood of fire, so that, just as it once perished by overflowing waters, so too it will one day be consummated by the fire of the Divine judgement."

But I for my part would prefer to keep the text, somewhat obscure indeed, but which can be understood in this sense, certainly quite a suitable one: But the world nonetheless sinned again, relapsing into its former sins (above all in the progeny of Ham, who was so insulting towards his own father, whose son Canaan and his descendants the Canaanites had been cursed by God Himself (Gen. 9:25)), whereby (that is, for which reason, or so that) it is ill compared (not that the former comparison is bad or inept, but that baptism is not only well compared, as purging the filth of all sins from the soul of any man, just as the flood did from the whole world, but also in an evil sense, that is, it is rightly to be compared to another flood, of fire, which is to come upon the world at the Last Judgement). It is therefore (or for that reason) destined for a flood of fire, etc. Recall what we said above (note on Mundi).

It is destined for fire. The world, that is: on which matter St Justin Martyr, in Apology 2, p. m. 51, speaks thus: "And both the Sibyl and Hystaspes said that there would be a consumption of corruptible things by fire. And those called Stoic philosophers teach that God Himself is dissolved into fire, and say that the world comes into being again by change." That is: "And both the Sibyl and Hystaspes said that a consumption of corruptible things through fire would come. And those who are called Stoic philosophers teach that even God Himself will be dissolved into fire, and say that there will be a new world through change."

What, indeed, of the fact that Josephus, Jewish Antiquities book 1, ch. 3, affirms that "Adam foretold a universal destruction of things, one by CONFLAGRATION, the other by FLOOD"? The rest, about the two pillars, one of brick, the other of marble, and that at least one or other of them would escape either the fire or the waters,

I gladly pass over, since it is all too commonplace and rests, as far at least as is known, almost solely on the testimony of this Josephus.

Meanwhile, however, it is certain that this opinion about the destruction of the world by fire pervaded almost the whole of Antiquity, and was spread even by the gentiles themselves, by Zeno, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Sophocles, etc.

But see this matter resting on weighty testimonies of Holy Scripture: of which I bring forward at least one, clearer than the rest, from 2 Pet. 3:5: The heavens were of old, and the earth, standing out of water and through water by the word of God: by which the world that then was, flooded with water, perished. But the heavens which now are, and the earth, have been stored up by the same word, reserved for fire against the day of judgement and of the perdition of ungodly men. And a little after: But the day of the Lord will come as a thief; in which the heavens will pass away with great violence, and the elements will be dissolved with heat, and the earth, and the works that are in it, will be burned up. Most learned on this subject is our most reverend Calmet in his Prolegomena, Dissertation on the End of the World, etc.

Restores. For so it will be at the consummation of the age. The Son of man will send His angels, and they will gather out of the kingdom all stumbling-blocks, and those who do iniquity: and they will cast them into the furnace of fire. Matt. 13:40 ff.

Must be received. Those very figures of our baptism, namely both the FLOOD and the FIRE, ought to remind us what awaits in the other life those who have fallen after BAPTISM and have not afterwards been restored through penance (for we must by no means agree with Montanus or Novatian that sins committed after baptism are likewise unforgivable).

Notes on Chapter IX.

Patronages of nature, that is, natural endowments, commending Water above the other elements, concerning which see chap. 3, throughout.

Privileges of grace. Freely given, and added over and above that same nature, concerning which see chap. 4, likewise throughout.

Solemnities of discipline, that is, the rites customarily used in baptism by the ordinance of the Church: as above, chaps. 7 and 8.

Prestructions, or preparations, and preceding ceremonies. For in this sense our author uses this word in the book Against Hermogenes, chap. 16: Therefore in the prestruction of this article," etc. No less in the book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, chap. 4: "Then the heretics begin straight away from there, and from there build their groundwork." See also the book On Prescription, chap. 15.

Prayers, formulas of prayers customarily used especially in the blessing of the baptismal font, or in baptism itself. See above, chap. 4 (note Invocato Deo).

The religion of the water. By religion he here means that holiness which is in the baptismal water itself, as a sacred thing appointed for the sacrament of baptism.

Expeditus. We properly call expediti those whose feet have been released and freed from bonds, as from impediments.

Sacramento. The sentence, whatever objection Junius may raise, is to be read ironically.

De saeculo. Here he takes saeculum in the worse sense, as St James does (Jas. 5:4): Whoever wishes to be a friend of this world is made an enemy of God. And St Paul to the Galatians (Gal. 1:4) says of Christ: He gave Himself for our sins, that He might rescue us from the present wicked world.

Dominatorem pristinum: as it were another, and far more cruel, Pharaoh, who through sin lorded it most savagely over the human race, and still lords it over individual sinners, until they have been freed from his tyranny through the water of baptism. When you were slaves of sin, says the Apostle (Rom. 4:20), you were free of righteousness. Read this whole chapter of the Apostle.

Derelinquunt: that is, renouncing Satan and his pomps in Baptism. Moreover, that the crossing of the Red Sea was a figure of our baptism the Apostle himself declares clearly enough (1 Cor. 10:1 ff.): Our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized in Moses in the cloud and in the sea; on which words St Augustine, Against Faustus, book 20, ch. 29, says: "The cloud and the Red Sea are certainly Baptism. The enemies follow from behind: past sins die." And St Ambrose, in the book On Those Who Are Initiated, etc., ch. 3, has this: "Do you notice that in that crossing of the Hebrews a figure of holy Baptism already then went before, in which the Egyptian perished and the Hebrew escaped? For what else are we taught daily in this sacrament, except that guilt is drowned and error is abolished?" And so Christians pass through baptism, as through the Red Sea, to a new life. The sea (says Theodoret, cited in Calmet on 1 Cor. 10:2) represented the sacred LAVER, which those to be baptized enter; the cloud, the GRACE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT; Moses, the PRIEST who baptizes; the rod of this lawgiver, the CROSS of Jesus Christ; the Israelites in the sea, the CHRISTIANS who are baptized; the Egyptians drowned, and their leader Pharaoh, the demons cast down from the dominion which they exercised over us.

Commodum. Latinius reads in usum commodum, which I do not resist. But the common reading too, though somewhat harsh, can be retained, and in suum commodum understood as in suam utilitatem, the benefit which [water] is wont to bring to men by its sweetness and clearness.

Mosei, for Mosis, in the genitive case.

Remediatur. On this word see above, ch. 15. Moreover, this story is narrated thus in Exodus (Exod. 15:23 ff.): And they came (מרתה) INTO MARAH, and they could not drink the waters (ממרה) OF MARAH, because they were מרים BITTER; whence he also gave the place a fitting name, calling it (מרה) Marah, that is, bitterness.... And He (the Lord) showed him a tree, and when he had cast it into the waters, they were turned into sweetness.

Retro, for antea, as often elsewhere.

Remedying. So too the ancient Fathers explain it, and among them St Ambrose, book On Those Who Are Being Initiated, ch. 3: "Marah," he says, "was a most bitter spring; Moses put the Wood into it, and it was made sweet. For water without the preaching of the Lord's cross (behold the wood) is of no use for future salvation; but when it has been consecrated by the saving mystery of the cross, then it is tempered for the use of the spiritual laver and of the saving cup. Just as, therefore, Moses, that is, the Prophet, put wood into that spring, so the priest puts the preaching of the Lord's cross into this spring, and the water becomes SWEET unto GRACE."

Junius, however, thinks this passage of Tertullian should be read thus: "remedying the most unwholesome veins, namely the waters of Baptism, of itself." But I firmly retain our reading; for it was not the water of baptism that was remedying those bitter waters, or most unwholesome veins, but the wood (or Christ crucified on the wood) that turned those waters, destined for baptism and otherwise unwholesome, or containing nothing salutary and profitable for our salvation, into sweetness, of itself, that is by its own proper power, into a remedy for sins and the salvation of our soul.

Was flowing down. For when the people of Israel had come out of the desert of Sin to Rephidim, and on account of the sharp thirst by which they were tormented had murmured against Moses, God ordered him to take up that very rod with which he had earlier divided the Red Sea, and to strike the rock in order to draw water from it, etc. (Exod. 15:1 ff.). A like prodigy also happened at Kadesh, as may be seen in (Num. 20:13 ff.). St Paul had both in view in (1 Cor. 10:4), explaining thus: All drank the same spiritual drink (for they drank from a spiritual rock that followed: they drank, moreover, from the spiritual rock following them: and the ROCK was CHRIST); but not in the greater number, etc. And hence not the Rabbis only, but also not a few interpreters among the Christians, contend that that Rock, or at least the waters of that rock, thereafter always accompanied the Israelites in the desert. For so our author says in the book On Patience, ch. 5: "After the edible rain of manna, after the watery following of the rock," etc. But what need is there here to assert so enormous a prodigy, one in no way indicated by Moses? For the Apostle here speaks not of that material rock which was at Rephidim, but of the spiritual rock (and therefore also in a solely spiritual, or mystical, sense), namely Christ, prefigured by that rock, Who as a LIVING ROCK continually accompanies Christians (the better Israelites) through the desert of this world, having become for them a spring of water leaping up into eternal life (John 5:14). And therefore our author rightly places this water flowing from the rock at Rephidim among the figures of our baptism.

To be blessed. A truly obscure passage. Something seems to have dropped out, which must by all means be supplied. And so I think it should be read thus: "Water in Christ, in Whom we see Baptism blessed"; which sense is plain enough. But what is this, that Baptism is blessed? Indeed

truly, it can be understood either of that most ancient rite, which has persisted down to our own times, namely the blessing of the baptismal font itself, which is customarily performed on Holy Saturday and on the Vigil of Pentecost (see above, chap., note Invocato Deo), or of the very form of baptism (as in chap. 6, note Per benedictionem).

"The grace of water": for beauty or dignity, as in chap. 3, note Aut gratia; or for kindness, favour, or esteem with or before God, to Whom water was always more acceptable than the other elements, etc.

"Confirmation": that is, that through water, as through its matter, baptism may be established or the more commended.

"He makes His beginning with water": by changing it into wine, which had been His first miracle. This beginning of signs Jesus made in Cana of Galilee, etc. (John 2:11).

"He invites to His water": for thus Jesus discourses to the Samaritan woman (John 4:44): The water which I shall give him will become in him a spring of water leaping up into eternal life. And (John 7:37): If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, out of his belly rivers of living water shall flow.

"Of agape": Ἀγάπη signifies love among the Greeks. Elsewhere also Agapae signify those feasts of charity of the first Christians, which they used to celebrate before the consecration of the holy Eucharist, both in memory of the Last Supper of Christ, in which He instituted that sacrament, and to foster mutual love: the abuse of which among some Paul sharply rebukes (1 Cor. 2:20 ff.).

"He approves": for thus in Matt. 10, commending brotherly charity, He says in the last verse: Whoever gives to drink to one of these least ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, amen I say to you, he shall not lose his reward.

"Gladly": And in the fourth watch of the night He (Jesus) came to them (His disciples), walking upon the sea (Matt. 14:25).

"He crosses over": And going up into a boat He crossed over and came into His own city (Matt. 9:1). Likewise, when they (the disciples with Jesus) had crossed over, they came into the land of Gennesaret (Matt. 14:34).

"The lance": One of the soldiers opened His side with a lance, and at once there came out blood and water (John 19:34). That baptism was prefigured by this water St Ambrose teaches, on Luke 23: From that body, incorrupt indeed but dead, the life of all was flowing. For water and blood came out: the former to wash, the latter to redeem. And St Augustine, Tractate 120 on John, says that the side of Christ was opened on the cross for this reason, that there in a certain manner the door of life might be thrown open, whence the SACRAMENTS flowed, without which there is no entering into the life which is true LIFE. That blood was shed for the remission of sins: that water mixes the saving cup: it provides both the BATH and the drink.

Notes on Chapter X.

"Constantly": namely for "at once", or "immediately": as

our same author, in the book On Patience, chap. 3, says of Christ: "It is a small thing, if He did not also have His betrayer with Him and did not steadfastly (constanter) denounce him." But elsewhere he uses it for "boldly" and "fearlessly", for example in the book On the Shows, chap. 26, where the demon, [driven] out of a certain possessed woman, says: "I acted boldly (constanter) and indeed most justly."

Believing. He is clearly alluding to what is found in Isa. 7:9, where the Hebrew text reads thus: [Hebrew]: literally, "If you do not believe, neither will you be faithful", or "be confident". Symmachus, however, translates it thus: "If you do not believe, you will not endure"; and from this our Vulgate: "If you do not believe, you will not remain." Theodoret somewhat differently: "nor will you by any means be believed"; and finally the Septuagint: "If you do not believe, neither will you understand", "If you do not believe, you will by no means understand"; and according to this wording John Chrysostom, Cyprian, Augustine and other Fathers quite often cite this passage. With this too that passage of John 6:9 [sic] seems to agree, where Peter says to Christ: "And we have believed, we have known, etc.", "And we have believed and have known that You are the Christ", etc. And John 10:38: "If you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, etc.", "If you will not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me."

Therefore, if we wish to understand the mysteries revealed by God, we must first believe, so that faith must precede, and from faith understanding must follow; which Tertullian also confirms elsewhere, as in the book On the Soldier's Crown, chap. 2, where [he says]: "I praise the faith which believes that a thing must be observed before it has learned [why]." And in book 4 Against Marcion, chap. 20, where, having made use of that testimony of Isaiah in the same way, he presently adds: "This was the faith which had also conferred understanding." Finally, in the same work, chap. 25, he confirms the same thing: "He hid them," he says, "having first set forth the prophetic instrument of obscurity, the understanding of which faith was to merit: for unless you believe, you will not understand." But what of our Protestants? They wish, of course, first to understand and then to believe, measuring their faith by the light of their own reason, and paying no heed whatever to that common saying: "The learner must believe", that is, before he understands what he is learning. See, then, what difference there is between us and them. They do not believe unless they understand: we believe in order that we may understand. And this is what the Apostle admonishes us in 2 Cor. 10:5, that we should be destroying (human) counsels and every height that exalts itself against the knowledge of God (that is, against those things which become known to us about God through faith), and bringing every understanding into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

Yet the commands (mandata). Mandatus, -us, of the fourth declension, is found among the jurisconsults: which word therefore could easily have clung to Tertullian from civil jurisprudence; for we have shown, in the Epitome of his Life which we prefixed to the book On Prescription, that he was exceedingly skilled in the civil laws.

By condition. That is, according to its intrinsic nature,

or, as we say elsewhere, according to substance. That baptism, then, was divine only extrinsically, that is, as regards that command of God by which it was administered by John: but not intrinsically, and as regards its own nature; rather, it was destitute of all power implanted in itself.

It conferred. The baptism of John, then, had no efficacy for producing anything supernatural in the soul, in the way that Christ implanted in His baptism a power for producing sanctifying grace, and for sins to be abolished through it. This difference between the two baptisms John himself clearly indicated (Mark 1:8), saying: I have baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

It ministered beforehand. For just as John himself was only the Forerunner of the Lord, preparing, that is, His way (Mark 1:2), so too the baptism of John was only a kind of forerunner of the Baptism of Christ, as it were calling men away from sins towards it through the acts of penitence it aroused and disposing them to a better life, not conferring that life itself. For thus the author 22 of the Responses to the Orthodox, at 2, 37, says: "The baptism of John was the prelude of the grace of the Gospel." And St Basil, Homily 13, On the Exhortation to Baptism, says: "The Baptism of John was for beginners, but this one is for the perfect. And that one called away from sin; this one joins with God and makes [one] His familiar."

By power, or by freedom, that is, assisted by the strength of grace.

To need. For faith, as the Council of Trent, session 6, On Justification, chapter, teaches, is a certain disposition necessarily preceding penitence itself, as is set out more fully there. Since, then, in Luke 7:29: All the people hearing, and the publicans, justified God (believing, that is, Christ, Who so signally commended the endowments of John), having been baptized with the baptism of John. And presently the Evangelist continues: But the Pharisees and the lawyers spurned the counsel of God against themselves (unbelieving, that is, towards John, who preached the baptism of penitence, and towards Christ Himself, Who so effectively urged the same), not having been baptized by him, nor being worthy of this baptism of penitence, since they were destitute of faith, which, that is, they had so obstinately rejected.

Human. That is, a thing necessarily dependent on the will of man and on his free acts.

It is necessary. That is, likewise human, as he said above. See the note Condition. The baptism of John, then, did nothing but rouse to penitence, by bestowing the aids of grace necessary for it, not by blotting out sins themselves: inasmuch as this had to be accomplished through an act of perfect penitence or contrition, as the work of the one performing it.

If it had been heavenly. Just as baptism conferred sanctifying grace itself and the remission of sins by a Divine power intrinsic to itself, or, as we say, ex opere operato, as we have already said elsewhere.

God alone. And this indeed is to be understood of principal and authoritative power. But otherwise, that this [power], to men also, as instruments,

through whom sins are forgiven in the name of Christ and the Holy Spirit is conferred, is communicable, and that it was accordingly communicated by Christ to the apostles, and to their successors the bishops, and through these to the presbyters, is established from John 20:22 ff., where Christ breathed upon the apostles and said: Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them, etc. Nevertheless, as St Pacian says in his first letter, to Sympronianus, "What Christ does through His priests is His own power." And in the third letter: "What I do, I do not by my own right but by the Lord's; for we are God's helpers. Therefore," he continues, "whether we baptize, or compel to penance, or grant pardon to those who ask it, we handle it with Christ as its author." And these things had to be noted against our Protestants, who assert that priests have not a true power of forgiving, but only a merely declarative one of a forgiveness already made by God.

Would descend. If I do not go away (says Christ, John 16:7), the Paraclete will not come to you: but if I go away, I will send Him to you. Tertullian uses this testimony to prove that the baptism of John could not yet confer the grace of the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet poured Himself out upon the Church before Christ's Ascension into the heavens. From this not a few even of our own contend that neither did the baptism instituted by Christ possess the efficacy of conferring grace before the Passion and Resurrection, nay, even His Ascension. But on this matter rather in the following chapter.

They had not known even by hearsay. In Acts 19:2 ff. Paul says to his disciples: Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? But they said to him: We have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit. And he said: Into what then were you baptized? They said: Into John's baptism. And Paul said: John baptized the people with a baptism of repentance, etc. From which it is easily inferred that the baptism of John was not conferred in the name of the Holy Trinity; for otherwise they could not have been ignorant of the Holy Spirit, since they would have had to believe in Him beforehand, as the One through Whose grace the remission of sins was to take place and the sanctification of the soul to be conferred. These, then, were some of the Ephesian Jews who had at some time been baptized by John in the Jordan and had meanwhile returned to Ephesus, and who, before Paul arrived there, had heard nothing whatever of the baptism of Christ, conferred hitherto by the apostles, nor of the imposition of hands, or the sacrament of confirmation, which was then added immediately after baptism, nor of the gifts of the Holy Spirit accompanying it. And indeed Paul himself by no means thought that the baptism of John had sufficed, because through it they had not yet been initiated into the Church of Christ. Therefore, in the place cited, vv. 5 and 6, it is added: On hearing this they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. See, then, how much weaker the baptism of John was compared with the other, that of Christ.

The spirit of prophecy. For John was a Prophet, indeed (as Christ said to the crowds, Matt. 11:9) more than a Prophet. See also ch. 21, v. 26. For he prophesied, not as those ancients did, that Christ would come long afterwards, but that He would come soon after himself.

The transference. That is, when Christ, baptized by John, saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon Him, Matt. 3:16.

That he inquired. Namely Matt. 9 [11], v. 3, when John, sending two of his disciples to Christ, said to Him: Art Thou He Who is to come, or do we look for another? From this, however, Tertullian believed that John, concerning Christ, Whom he had so often and so openly preached as the Messiah to come, afterwards, when Christ Himself was carrying out His own office of preaching, began to doubt concerning Him whether He were the true Messiah, as our same author sufficiently reveals in the book On the Prescription, ch. 8, and signifies still more openly and at greater length in [book] 4 Against Marcion, ch. 18, where he speaks in these words: "When the Lord of powers Himself was working and preaching on earth by the word and the Spirit of the Father, it was necessary that the portion of the Holy Spirit which, after the form of the prophetic measure, had in John effected the preparation of the Lord's ways, should now depart from John, being brought back (recalled), that is, into the Lord, as into its own total mass (in Whom indeed the whole mass and fullness of grace resided). Therefore John, now a common man (since now left to himself by the prophetic spirit) and now one of the crowd," etc. Thus far and further Tertullian.

But others, both of the Fathers and of the Interpreters, judge more probably that John never doubted concerning Christ, but that he sent to Christ his disciples, whom he had found reporting to him the miracles of Christ, yet perhaps doubting His Divinity, so that they might question Him; that thus, from His presence and the miracles performed before them, they might be fully convinced of His Divinity. See also St Ambrose on Luke, ch. 7, where he further offers mystical and allegorical meanings of that sending.

A candidate for remission. Those among the Romans who aspired to public honours and went round the individual tribes at the assemblies, begging votes for themselves, were called Candidati, from their white (candida) garment. Hence Tertullian in the book On Idolatry, ch. 18, says: "Those who enjoyed the intimacy of kings were called the purple-clad of kings, just as among us, from the white toga, [they are called] Candidati." This name afterwards began to be extended more widely, not indeed on account of a likeness of garment, but of office. For thus those who read out the emperor's letters and decrees in the senate were likewise called Candidati, because through this office they had access to higher honours and to the magistracies themselves, as Ulpian teaches in the single law, § 4, Digest, On the Office of Quaestor. So too those younger in age who were being trained in their apprenticeship, about to pass shortly out of the ranks of the ephebes, were called Candidati; in which sense, roughly, Quintilian, Institutes book 5, speaks of candidates of eloquence. Accordingly our author too, in the book On Prayer, ch. 3, calls those candidates of the angels who "had deserved the heavenly

voice, that one, towards God, and learn by heart the office of the future glory"; because such, according to the promise of Christ, Matt. 22:30, will be as the angels of God in heaven. So too in the book To His Wife, ch. 7, he calls one who is engaged as it were in the apprenticeship of the fear of God a Candidate of Fear, and elsewhere he has other things of this kind. Thus, therefore, our author also calls the baptism of John a candidate of remission, because those initiated by it were prepared and disposed for the baptism of Christ, through which the full remission of sins takes place. Moreover, in a worse sense too, in the book On the Crown, ch. 7, he calls idolaters candidates of the devil, and in the book On the Soul, ch. 39, he calls certain offspring still in the mother's womb candidate brood of demons.

In Christ. That is, in the Baptism of Christ.

It was announced. Namely, [a remission] which would take place not by the power of the baptism of John itself, but of the baptism of Christ, which was to follow afterwards; for in this way it alone, ex operato, that is by its own intrinsic power, remitted sins, as we have already often said elsewhere.

With the Spirit and with fire. For thus, Luke 3:16, John says: I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I will come, He will baptize you in the HOLY SPIRIT and in FIRE. He certainly did not exclude water from the baptism of Christ, but John intended to signify only this, that his own washing was merely simple, made outwardly, that is, with simple water; but that this, in the future baptism of Christ, would be raised to a higher mystery and also to an inner washing of the soul, which cannot take place without the grace of the Holy Spirit.

But what that baptism "in the Holy Spirit and fire", in the Holy Spirit and in fire, may be has exercised many, and indeed has given some an occasion of grievous error. For there were some of the ancient heretics who thought that fire was to be understood simply, and of our true and elemental fire, and that therefore in baptism fire no less than water was to be applied. For so Clement of Alexandria, or whoever else is the author of this writing, testifies in the Prophetic Eclogues: "But some, as Heracleon says, marked the ears of those being sealed with fire", that is: Some, as Heracleon says, burned the ears of the sealed (the baptized) with fire. And the author of the Poem against Marcion, book 1, also records a certain fiery baptism of Valentinus the heresiarch, as one who "taught men to be dipped twice, the body being passed through flame."

St Augustine too, On Heresies, to Quodvultdeus, heresy 59, reports that the Seleucian heretics conferred Baptism with fire. But whatever may be the case with these, it is certain that fire was never applied to Baptism by the apostles, and therefore that it was by no means commanded by Christ, and hence that the Church has always shrunk from this practice.

Wherefore some Catholic interpreters more rightly think that by that phrase "in spirit and fire" is denoted the very baptism of Christ, upon Whom the Holy Spirit came down in the form of a dove, and at the same time (as St Justin Martyr reports in the Dialogue with Trypho, p. m. 246) "when Jesus had gone down into the water, fire also was kindled

in the Jordan", that is, When Jesus had gone down into the water, a fire too was kindled in the Jordan. But in our baptism also a certain invisible fire is kindled, when the grace of the Holy Spirit glides into our hearts and, as St Ambrose says in the book On Elijah and Fasting, last chapter, consumes our sins and purges the soul of their dross. Then there are those who, with St Augustine on Ps. 65, understand it of the exorcisms which are commonly placed before our baptism; for he says: "Whence do unclean spirits often cry out: I burn, if that is not fire? But after the fire of exorcism one comes to baptism." Others, with the author of the Unfinished Work on Matthew, homily 3, take that baptism of fire to signify (metaphorically, to be sure) the tribulations and persecutions by which the constancy of the faithful righteous in faith and their patience in adversity are tested, like gold in a furnace of fire. St Basil, in the Homily on Baptism, contends that that fire is to be understood of the word of doctrine, which both convicts the wickedness of sinners and makes manifest the grace of justifications: these expositions are fitting enough, but they are nothing more than metaphorical. Finally, our Tertullian expounds it of the day of judgement and the infernal fire of the damned, as we shall see a little later.

Meanwhile, I confess, I much prefer the opinion of those who understand it literally of the visible descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of fire, not upon the apostles only, but also upon their disciples, newly baptized, of which a quite brilliant and illustrious example is found in Acts 11:11, where St Peter speaks thus: But when I had begun to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them, JUST AS ALSO UPON US AT THE BEGINNING, and so also in the form of fire, just as He fell upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost. The sense, therefore, of the words of St John the Baptist seems here to be the best and plainly literal one: I indeed baptize you with water (that is, with a barren element, not having the power of grace in itself), etc. But He will baptize you (not with water alone) but in the Holy Spirit (Who makes the water of baptism fruitful for bringing forth grace) and with fire, that is, with the graces of the Holy Spirit which were to come upon them in fire through the imposition of hands. And this is that fiery baptism which Christ Himself foretold in Acts 1:5: John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the HOLY SPIRIT not many days from now. And a little after, v. 8: You shall receive the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon you, etc., which we know to have been exactly fulfilled soon after, ten days later, when the days of Pentecost were being completed.

The faith of the water. That is, that faith which is directed towards the water, or the baptism of water, is stable, firmly persevering, and perpetually bestowing that which is necessary for our salvation. Or: that water is faithful, keeping its promises, namely in the sense in which it was said in Isa. 33:16: His waters are faithful. Or finally the sense is: only faith that is true and sincere is that in which we are washed for salvation, etc., but faith that is feigned and unstable, or not serious, and soon to be abandoned again, is dipped unto judgement.

Unto judgement. Of the text expounded more at length above, this

sense Tertullian seems to have drawn from that passage of St Paul, 1 Cor. 3:13 and following: The work of each one will be made manifest; for the DAY of the LORD will declare it, because it will be revealed in FIRE; and of what sort the work of each one is, the FIRE will test. If anyone's work remains, he will receive a reward; if anyone's work burns, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as THROUGH FIRE. And this is the very thing that had been foretold by Isaiah, ch. 4:4: The Lord will wash away the filth of the daughters of Zion, by the SPIRIT OF JUDGEMENT and the SPIRIT OF BURNING, that is, of fire; on which passage St Basil says: "The baptism of John was a purging of filth, but this is regeneration itself through the Holy Spirit, that which is the testing made through the FIRE OF JUDGEMENT." And in the book On the Holy Spirit to Amphilochius, ch. 35, he says "that the BAPTISM OF FIRE is that testing which will take place at the JUDGEMENT."

Notes on Chapter XI.

Quasi revera ("as if in truth"). My edition indeed has quia, with a sense certainly obscure and faulty; I have therefore preferred to restore quasi from other editions, so that this sentence may rather express irony.

Praedicasset ("had foretold"). That is, when John in Matthew, ch. 3, v. 11, said of Christ: He will baptize you, etc., he by no means added: by Himself, or with His own hands.

Proposuit ("set forth"), that is, promulgated, or affixed to the doors of the senate-house, etc., the sense of which is of course: he ordered it to be promulgated or affixed, or did so, namely through another.

Dicitur facere ("he is said to do"). According to that well-known rule of the jurists: "What one does through another, he is deemed to do himself." Moreover, our author uses praeministratur in the same sense in which, in the book On Prayer, ch. 1, he called John the forerunning minister (praeminister) of Christ, as it were going before Him, or ministering in advance. So too Apuleius in the Apology called the tongue the forerunning minister (praeministra) of lies and bitterness.

Per ipsum ("through Him"). That is, in His name and by His authority.

In ipsum ("into Him"). That is, into His power and name, so that you pass over into the name of Christ, to be called Christians thenceforth. For thus St Paul says, Gal. 3:27 and following: Whoever of you have been baptized in Christ (in Greek eis Christon, into Christ) have put on Christ. — For you are all one in Christ Jesus. See more in St Basil, in the Homily on Baptism cited above.

Non ipse tingebat ("He Himself did not baptize"). There are, however, some among the Fathers who plausibly hold that the apostles, or at least their chief, Peter, were baptized by Christ with Christ's own hand. For thus St Augustine, in that most elegant letter 108 (now 265) to Seleuciana, on the Baptism and Repentance of Peter, says: "For He did not fail in the ministry of baptizing, so as to have baptized servants through whom He might baptize others, He who did not fail in the ministry of that memorable humility, when He washed their feet, and to Peter, who asked that He wash not only his feet but also his hands and head, answered, HE WHO HAS BEEN WASHED has no need," etc. The whole letter certainly deserves to be read on this matter.

Verbo dabat ("He gave it by word"). For not by any other outward rite

applied did He absolve the paralytic (Matt. 9:2), nor the woman (Luke 7:28), except with a few simple words, saying: Your sins are forgiven you.

He concealed by humility. For thus Christ, when speaking directly of Himself, never openly called Himself the SON OF GOD, but the Son of man, as in Matt. 8:20 and 9:6, and elsewhere throughout. Hence when, in Luke 4:41, demons went out of many, crying out and saying: Because Thou art the SON OF GOD, rebuking them, He did not allow them to speak. And in John 8:54 He said: If I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing.

They had built. For this had first been built up by the apostles after they had received the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, when, after Peter's first preaching, those who received his word were baptized, and there were added on that day about three thousand souls (Acts 2:41).

With the baptism of John. Tertullian was therefore of the opinion that before the Passion and Resurrection the apostles dispensed only the baptism of John, but that the Baptism of Christ was first instituted afterwards, as he affirms more explicitly a little further on.

Indeed there were not lacking among the holy Fathers those who followed this opinion of Tertullian, above all St Chrysostom, homily 28, on chapter 3 of the Gospel of St John. Likewise St Leo the Great, who in letter 4, to the bishops of Sicily, writes: "The Lord Jesus Christ Himself, after He rose from the dead, handed on to His disciples, in whom all the prelates of the Churches were being taught, both the form and the power of baptizing, saying: Go, teach all nations, etc. Concerning which He could certainly have instructed them even before the Passion, had He not specifically wished it to be understood that the grace of regeneration began from His resurrection." And some of the theologians afterwards followed this view, and the most illustrious Melchior Cano, book 8 of On Theological Places, chapter 5, leans strongly towards the same.

But St Thomas Aquinas, part 3, question 66, article 2, teaches the contrary, following his Augustine, who in the cited Letter to Seleuciana speaks thus: "Christ baptized, not by Himself, but by His disciples, whom we understand to have been already baptized, either with the baptism of John or, which is more credible, with the baptism of Christ"; the latter of which he also affirms absolutely in tractates 5 and 13 on John and in the book On the Origin of the Soul, book 3, chapter 9. If therefore the apostles had received the baptism of Christ while He was still living, there is no doubt that they in turn washed others too with no other than the same baptism. Therefore he holds that the apostles also dispensed to their own people in turn this baptism of Christ which they had received, even before the Passion.

Nor equipped. That is, the washing of water not yet being equipped with its efficacy and power of washing away sins through baptismal grace.

The resurrection. For baptism was instituted by Christ as something to be a memorial of His Passion and Resurrection, as we shall presently confirm.

Without His resurrection. For thus the Apostle says in Rom. 6:3 ff.: Do you not know that whoever of us were baptized

were baptized INTO His DEATH? For we were buried together with Him through Baptism, INTO DEATH, so that just as Christ ROSE FROM THE DEAD through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk IN NEWNESS OF LIFE, etc., etc. See also Col. 2:12 and following. Whence also Christ, in John 11:25, says of Himself: I am the RESURRECTION and the LIFE. For us, indeed, the resurrection was from the death of sin to the Life of grace. But on this matter it is also pleasing to hear St Ambrose, On the Holy Spirit, book 1, chapter 6, discoursing so elegantly: "In that element of waters we are buried, so that, renewed through the Spirit, we may rise again. For in the water is the image of death, in the Spirit is the pledge of life, so that through the water the body may die, which encloses the body as it were in a kind of tomb, and through the power of the Spirit we may be renewed from the death of sin." See more there.

Notes on Chapter XII.

Except Paul. Who is recorded as baptized by Ananias, Acts 9:18. But concerning the other apostles we do not find this handed down in the Holy Scriptures. However, see what we said in the preceding chapter, in the note Struxerant.

Induerit. For already in the preceding chapter, note Baptismo Joannis, our author had taught that the other apostles baptized not with the baptism of Christ but with that of John alone, and consequently that they too could have obtained only the baptism of John.

De caeterorum periculo. The passage is to me rather obscure, yet perhaps it may be somewhat elucidated from 1 Tim. 5:21, where the Apostle says thus: I testify before GOD... that you keep these things (χωρὶς προκρίματος) without prejudgement, doing nothing (κατὰ πρόσκλησιν) by inclining to one side. Now πρόσκλησις properly signifies advocacy, by which one party is assisted more than the other, which happens in the acceptance of persons. Here indeed it must not be concealed that in very many copies, on the testimony of Calmet, πρόσκλισιν is read, which properly signifies inclination, or propensity, above all of the mind, and is equally to our purpose. For in this very sense the passage seems able to be understood: that the other apostles, by a certain prior judgement and a singular propensity of mind and favour, were exempted from that common law, so that their salvation was now, on other grounds, not endangered by the lack and absence of baptism, and therefore that the prescription, or that law concerning baptism in John 3:5, never affected the apostles, inasmuch as they had already been exempted beforehand by God, but remains unmoved only with regard to others thereafter. But what need is there of so anxious a circuit of words? Or why may praejudicatum not rather be understood as standing for praecautum, that is, that provision was made by a certain singular privilege against the danger to salvation?

Rescindi. That is, that that law be weakened and torn away.

Statuta est. The force, then, of the whole argument raised against baptism seems to be this: if the apostles did not receive baptism, and nevertheless attained salvation, either they must have been specially exempted by Christ (of which exemption, however, we read nowhere in the Gospel), or else

the door of salvation must be open to others who are not baptized, and thus that law about receiving baptism must have no force.

Of this kind. Men, that is, who had evidently hammered out this argument to overturn the necessity of baptism.

The wantonness of the pen, i.e. that I should, as it were out of the petulance of an innovation-craving wit, invent arguments of this kind of my own accord.

To be drenched, to one willing. For I much prefer this to "unwilling", which my codex has; for although at the beginning he had refused, as being, of course, unworthy, soon afterwards he assented all the more readily.

They were destined. For after the resurrection Christ was going to command the apostles: Going, teach all nations, baptizing them, etc. And the Baptism of Christ was the door to the Church, and a nearer and more direct way to salvation than the baptism of John.

He was dipped. And indeed with the baptism of John, which in others was nothing but a Baptism of repentance for the remission of sins (Mark 1:4); but now it was raised by Christ its institutor to the character of a sacrament, as our theologians more commonly hold.

It was not necessary. For the apostles, being of course men, are not to be said to have been free at that time from every sin that could be washed away through Baptism, so that they themselves were not a subject for the Baptism of repentance.

Rivals, i.e. adversaries, enemies, or envious men, whom soon afterwards he calls those opposing the Lord. So too our author in the Apology, ch. 21, speaks of fables as rivals for the destruction of the truth; and so more often elsewhere. Elsewhere, however, it is agreed that this word is also taken in a good sense, for diligent imitators.

Is suggested, i.e. an argument is supplied, namely one taught from the contrary, much as, according to what was breathed forth by Jesus Christ, the exception confirms the rule in the opposite case.

By the discipline of religion, i.e. according to the discipline, or rite, or ordinance of religion. To discipline, moreover, belongs whatever has been ordained for the worship of God for common observance, whether by men set over the governing of the Church or by God Himself; although those things which are only of human ordinance are called matters of mere discipline. And although in Tertullian elsewhere discipline also signifies doctrine, yet it seems that, in a stricter sense, that is called doctrine which proceeds from the one teaching, but that this, once received in the learners and formed into their morals, is called discipline.

Through forbearance. The overlooking and permission by which He suffers, or allows, these things to happen. In this sense Tullius says in Action 8 against Verres: I will not bear it, I will not suffer it, I will not allow it; and in On Duties 1 he speaks of those who suffer those whom they ought to protect to be deserted.

In the last things. It is a Hellenism; for thus the Greeks say

habitually ἐπ' ἐσχάτων, "in the last things", which the Latins are accustomed to express by tandem, ultimato or denique.

Should look only. For Christ said to Peter, John 13:10: He who is WASHED has no need except to wash his feet, showing perhaps that we have need of only one washing of the body, or baptism, and that Baptism once received cannot thereafter be repeated.

To assess. He seems to use the verb aestimare here for judicare or decernere; as if it would be rash to judge anything unfavourable about the salvation of the apostles (even if perhaps they had not received Baptism).

Of the election. That is, of the taking up to the apostolate.

A short cut to baptism. That is, that singular prerogative would thus be for them the equivalent of Baptism, and, as by a short cut and a briefer way, would supply its place in advance.

Could confer. Junius considers that this whole passage has been wonderfully dislocated by an unskilled copyist through an inept transposition of the words, and that it should therefore be restored thus: "And thereafter the prerogative of inseparable intimacy WITH HIM could confer a short cut to baptism. I think, they followed Him," etc. But although I would judge that his remedy for this passage is by no means to be rejected, I think nevertheless that the common reading can also be upheld, so that the sense of the new sentence is: "With that (namely the abridged supplement of Baptism) they followed Him," etc.

Has saved. For He had used these words to the woman whom He had freed from the flow of blood, Matt. 9:22: Take heart, daughter, your FAITH has saved you. With these too He had addressed the Samaritan cleansed of leprosy, Luke 17:19; and soon after, ch. 18:42, that blind man of Jericho, to whom He restored sight. And these indeed obtained the salvation not only of the body, but much more of the soul, through that faith so living, to which salvation had already been promised by Christ elsewhere and many times, as in John 3:16: God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that everyone who believes in Him may not perish, but may have eternal life. And ibid., v. 36: He who believes in the Son of Man has eternal life. Nor is this surprising; since salvation had been promised to the very baptism of Christ only when received with faith: He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe (even if already baptized) will be condemned.

Though not dipped. For nowhere do we read that they had previously been baptized by Christ or by the apostles.

Whose faith. That is, in whom, or with what others, faith is to be required. And presently he adds examples.

Raised. Junius reads thus: Who by one word, etc. And indeed the context seems to require that this little word at least be understood, in this way: He who was raised by one word of the Lord, etc.

Tax office. Τελώνιον, or, as Suidas has it, τελωνεῖον, taken strictly, is the place ἐν ᾧ, as the same writer says, καθέζεται ὁ τελώνης, in which the tax collector, or telonarius, sits, so called ἀπὸ τοῦ τέλους (for among the Greeks τέλος sometimes also signifies a toll or tribute) and

ōnein, which for the same [people] means "to buy"; for in those times they held the revenues, bought up for themselves, mostly under annual assessments, and hence they were properly called telōnai, "Purchasers of the revenues", but among the Romans Publicani, as being either the overseers of the public money, which was of course to be paid into the public treasury or to be bought up from it, or the collectors under them: which latter class of men, on account of their importunity and avarice and the very wicked practices joined to it, was hated almost everywhere, but most of all by the Jews, who believed themselves above others to be freeborn and born to liberty, John 8:33, crying out against Christ Himself: "We are the seed of Abraham, we have never been slaves to anyone." And hence such toll-collectors or publicans were held as public sinners, nay as heathens, from whose communion one must likewise abstain. And from this the Pharisees rose up against Christ and His disciples, Matt. 9:11, saying: "Why does your Master eat with publicans and sinners?" And in the same [evangelist], ch. 18:17, Christ Himself, speaking to His disciples about fraternal correction, says: "If he does not hear the Church, let him be to you as a heathen and a publican."

Father. He alludes here to Peter and Andrew, to whom, when Christ had said: "Come after Me, and I will make you become fishers of men", they at once, leaving their nets, followed Him, Matt. 4:20. But most of all when He had called James and John, they immediately, leaving their nets and their father, followed Him, ibid. 4:22. Indeed they had at the same time left their mother too, who afterwards, Matt. 20:20, was so very anxious on their behalf about obtaining the first place in the kingdom of heaven.

He despised. Clement of Alexandria, in book 3 of the Stromata, believed this man to have been St Philip the apostle, who, when the Lord called him, Matt. 8:21 ff., said: "Lord, allow me first to go and bury my father." But Jesus said to him: "Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead." But what prevents us from adding here that whole passage of Tertullian from the book On Idolatry, ch. 12, which also agrees with the examples adduced above? "Already then," he says, "it was shown to us that both pledges [of affection], and crafts, and business are to be forsaken for the Lord's sake, when James and John, called by the Lord, forsake both father and ship; when Matthew is roused up from the toll-house; when even to bury a father was too slow for faith." Nor, I promise, will one regret having read this whole chapter.

Which he heard. For that earlier calling of the disciple had already taken place before (namely Matt. 8:21); but only afterwards (that is, Matt. 10:37) was this saying, "He who [loves] father", etc., uttered by Christ.

Notes on chapter XIII.

They provoke, that is, they stir up, or entice forth.

Unless. It would be clearer [to read] "but only".

He pleased. "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." Gen. 15:6. In which very words

the Apostle says to the Galatians (Gal. 3:6): Know therefore that those who are of faith are sons of Abraham, etc., etc. But this faith was certainly not a Sacrament properly so called.

They prevail. This serves as a reply to the argument raised as an objection. It rests on the common rule of Law: "Later things derogate from earlier ones."

Increased, that is, enlarged and more widely extended, namely to more objects.

And His resurrection. That is, as no longer future but already past.

By the sacrament, that is, by the mystery, or by faith.

The sealing of baptism. For by this same author of ours, in the book On the Shows, ch. 24, it is called the SEAL OF FAITH. And in the book On Penitence, ch. 6, he says: "That washing is the sealing of faith," and so, reciprocally, faith also is the sealing of baptism; for, as St Basil says in the book On the Holy Spirit, to Amphilochius, ch. 12: "Faith is perfected through baptism, while baptism rests on the foundation of faith," etc. And in book 3 On the Holy Spirit, against Eunomius, he also calls Baptism the SEAL OF FAITH,

A kind of garment of faith. Thus St Gregory Nazianzen, in Oration 40 On Baptism, calls this Sacrament the ἀφθαρσίας ἔνδυμα, the garment of incorruption, or, as he puts it a little later, the αἰσχύνης κάλυμμα, the covering of disgrace. And St Cyril of Jerusalem also calls it a white garment: partly from that whiteness which it puts upon the soul once the soot of sins has been wiped away, and partly from that rite by which the baptized were at once clothed in a white robe, which they were to wear for a certain time; just as even now, in the baptism both of infants and of adults, the Rituals prescribe this in a certain manner, and this custom is retained in the Church to this day.

Formerly. For "before", namely in the Old Testament.

Bare. For that faith of the Old Law was in itself bare, empty and void, and destitute of all intrinsic force towards eternal salvation.

Power, that is, virtue and efficacy.

Without its own law. That is, before that old Law was fulfilled through the new [Law] of Christ.

Into the name. Matt. 28:19, where the Greek text certainly has εἰς τὸ ὄνομα, into the name, but the Vulgate: in the name. It is well known, moreover, that among the Greeks εἰς is sometimes put for ἐν, as in Aeschines: Εἰς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν καθέζομαι, I sit in the assembly; and no less in Demosthenes and Xenophon. In this sense, therefore, our Vulgate translator also understood εἰς τὸ ὄνομα, and with him the Theologians and interpreters generally.

But it might be asked here: would Baptism conferred under this form, I baptize you into the name of the Father, etc., be valid? Answer: it may at least seem doubtful, and therefore, without grave sin, the matter being likewise grave, the words "in the name" cannot be changed into "into the name"; hence such a Baptism would have to be repeated, at least conditionally.

Besides, some think that a fault lies hidden here, and that in other copies ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι, in the name, is in fact found, so that all the difficulty

vanishes of its own accord. Moreover, that law of baptism was laid by Christ not only upon the apostles, that they should administer it, but upon the gentiles also, that they should receive it, Mark, last chapter, verse 16, in these words: He who believes and is baptized will be saved; so that the sense is that under the new law salvation can be obtained by no other means than through baptism.

Notes on Chapter XIV.

The household of Stephanas. For a little before he had stated: I give thanks to God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius; but I also baptized the household of Stephanas. 1 Cor. 1:14 and 16. This Stephanas, moreover, had been among the disciples of St Paul.

Deputat, that is, he ascribes his baptism, as to its author or bestower. In nearly this sense he says in the book On the Exhortation to Chastity, chapter 16: "There was an old dispensation, which is assigned in the Gospel." And Solinus: "Because of its odd number of days January is dedicated to the gods above; February, as ill-omened, is assigned to the gods below."

Apollos. Since some in the Church of the Corinthians had been baptized by Paul, others by Peter, others by Apollos, a contention, and as it were a schism, had arisen among them, while some preferred their own baptism to that of others, as given by a more excellent man, saying: I indeed am of Paul, but I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ. 1 Cor. 1:12. But Paul rebukes them all quite sharply, contending that the efficacy of baptism is to be ascribed not to the ministers but to Christ alone, as its one author and institutor: Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? And he presses these things much more strongly in chapter 3, verse 4 and following. Now this Apollos, as he is described (Acts 18:24 and following), was a certain Jew, an Alexandrian by birth, an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures. Although he had been initiated not yet with the baptism of Christ but only with that of John, he nevertheless spoke fervent in spirit, and taught diligently the things that concern Jesus; afterwards Aquila and Priscilla expounded to him the way of the Lord more diligently (Acts 18:25–26), and in all likelihood also initiated him with the baptism of Christ. Accordingly, when he had afterwards gone on into Achaia and to Corinth (ibid. 27 and 19:1), and had there joined many to the Church through baptism, on this occasion some of the Corinthians contended for his glory more zealously than was fitting. This so displeased Apollos himself that, offended by it, he rather took refuge in Crete with Zenas the lawyer (as St Jerome testifies, Commentary on the Epistle to Titus, chapter 3), and would not return from there until the dissenting Corinthians had been reconciled with one another; he is believed to have afterwards been given to them as bishop, although others would have it that he was made bishop of Caesarea, or of Iconium, or of Dura, etc.

Moreover, this name Apollos is not the same as that of the god Apollo; for the latter among the Greeks is Ἀπόλλων, -ωνος, of the fifth declension, but the former is Ἀπολλὼς (for so in the Greek copies written

it is found) of the fourth [declension] of the Attic forms, whose genitive is Ἀπολλώ. Indeed, in the accusative too, at Acts 19:1, it is found to keep the same ending: "And it came to pass, while Apollo was at Corinth". And to Titus 3:13: "Send Zenas the lawyer and Apollo on their way diligently." Or perhaps it was wholly indeclinable.

Peacemaking. For his rebuke aimed solely at restoring peace and harmony of minds among the Corinthians.

To defend. Here it is readily taken for "to claim" or "to ascribe". It can also be explained as "to protect oneself and one's own cause". So, lest he might seem to be doing this, he therefore gives thanks to God that he baptized no one. See above, the note "the household of Stephanas".

To dip. For in the last chapter of Matthew, v. 19, Christ Himself commands the Apostles: "Going therefore, TEACH all nations, BAPTIZING", etc. And in the last chapter of Mark, v. 15: "PREACH the Gospel to every creature. He who believes and is BAPTIZED", etc. Therefore teaching comes first (in the dignity and authority of the institution), baptizing afterwards; but otherwise the excellence of baptism is greater, as being that towards which preaching itself solely prepares.

Notes on Chapter XV.

Is aired, that is, if anything further can be raised against baptism, namely beyond those questions which we have already stirred up and discussed.

I shall reweave. "Retexere" here is not to unravel a web again, as we read was once repeatedly done by Penelope, but to weave anew, or to weave through to the end, that is, to carry on in a matter once begun and broken off for a while.

I left off. I think [he means] chapter 12, where he had begun to speak of the unity of Baptism. For there he left off, or interrupted it, in the sense in which Horace said in the book On the Art of Poetry:

Let him defer most things, and leave them aside for the present.

To cut through. That is, lest I should wholly sever the thoughts at hand, or the things still to be said, and so break off the whole web, as it were by cutting through it.

Baptism. As the Greeks [say] τὸ βάπτισμα, so too some of the Latins, not only our Tertullian but also St Ambrose here and there, are accustomed to say "baptismum, -i" in the neuter gender.

One Church in the heavens. He alludes without doubt to what the Apostle says in Ephesians 4:5: "One LORD, one FAITH, one BAPTISM." For, as the same Apostle says in 1 Corinthians 12:13, "in ONE SPIRIT we have all been baptized into ONE BODY." And hence also Clement of Alexandria, Stromata book 4, p. 326 of my edition, says: "The Lord has washed believers by one baptism unto a habit perfect in every part, He Who also comprehended the many baptisms of Moses in one baptism."

But our author has here used some transposition of words, mentioning baptism in the second place, and Faith (which he seems to denote through the Church, of which the former is indeed as it were the soul, while the latter is the proper seat of true faith and religion) in the third place.

It is no wonder, moreover, that he said "the Church in the heavens," since it is everywhere in the Gospels called the Kingdom of the heavens, as in (Matt. 13:44): The kingdom of the heavens has become like a man who sowed, etc., etc.; and v. 31: The kingdom of the heavens is like a grain of mustard, etc. And so quite often in the same chapter, where it is certain that our Church is meant, which, ordained by God in the heavens from eternity, planted by Christ on earth, and gathered together in the unity of baptism, is at last brought to completion in the heavens through vision and enjoying love.

"For it was put forth to us." Some understand it thus: for that pronouncement of holy Scripture (namely concerning the Unity of baptism, as just above) is directed to us, that is, it concerns us, the faithful of Christ.

"Of communion." Even from this passage alone it is plain that the custom of abstaining from communion with heretics is very ancient in the Church. Add also the book On the Prescription, ch. 30.

"To us and to them." Here he taunts Cerdo, Marcion, Apelles, Hermogenes and others of the same bran, who put forth from their deranged brains two gods, or indeed, like Valentinus, a whole swarm of them. See the book On the Prescription, ch. 7, ch. 30, ch. 33, ch. 40 towards the end, and in the Appendix ch. 49 throughout.

"That is, the same": here he attacks Valentinus in particular, who most impiously asserts that Christ was brought forth from the Demiurge and Sophia; again On the Prescription, ch. 7.

"They do not have." There are indeed those who strive to clear Tertullian here of every stain of error, as though his discourse had concerned only those heretics who corrupted the lawful form of baptism, as in Tertullian's times were the Gnostics, the Marcites, the Cataphrygians, etc. But it is clear that he speaks of heretics universally, and he confirms the same in the book On Modesty, ch. 19: "With us," he says, "a heretic, as being equal to a heathen, indeed even beyond a heathen, is admitted through the baptism of truth (the true baptism), cleansed in both men, namely the heathen one and the heretic superimposed," that is, to the Church.

It remains, therefore, that Tertullian erred gravely in this passage which we have in hand; nor does his argument even hold. For although those heretics spoken of above erred enormously concerning God and Christ, yet so long as they did not err in administering the sacrament itself, but employed the same matter and form which our true Christ instituted in His true Church, this was the same baptism, consisting of the same essential parts, as we call them, and having the same Author. Our same baptism, therefore, can be conferred even outside our Church, if it is conferred duly and in the same manner as in our Church. For, as St Augustine argues in book 5 Against the Donatists, ch. 26: "Just as there is said to be one Church, one baptism, so there is said to be one hope" (the holy Doctor has in view that passage of (Eph. 4:1): One body and One Spirit, as you were called in the One Hope of your calling, and what follows shortly after: One Lord, One faith, One baptism, etc.) "And yet," he continues, "nevertheless

they had one baptism, who did not have one hope; for how did they have one hope with the saints and the just, they who said: Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die, saying that there was no resurrection of the dead?"

Those, therefore, who do not have one faith, and are not in the one Church with us, can nonetheless have and give the one baptism; for baptism is the gate and door of the Church, through which alone entrance to her lies open; it is therefore given not to one who is in the Church, but so that he may be in the Church. And just as a wicked minister of baptism does not have grace in himself, and yet confers it on another through baptism, so also a heretic, even if perhaps he himself has not validly received baptism, can nevertheless validly confer it on another, and unlock for him that door of the Church, and through it let another in, while he himself remains outside the gate. But on this matter we shall speak more fittingly and more exactly in its proper place.

Meanwhile, however, it is clear from what has been said that the contrary opinion arose in the Church of Carthage as early as the close of the second century, and was afterwards taken up by Agrippinus, bishop of that same Church, and confirmed much more strongly by Saint Cyprian: the history of those times is full of this matter, and it is customarily set out at greater length by our dogmatic theologians.

But here a new doubt arises: whether Agrippinus drew this error from Tertullian, or the latter from the former (for it is established that they were contemporaries)? And although this matter cannot be determined clearly enough, given such great uncertainty about Agrippinus as he was entering upon his episcopate, we nevertheless judge it more probable that Tertullian was led into this opinion by Agrippinus, and that therefore the latter was the first author of that error in Africa whom we know. Indeed, because Vincent of Lérins, a writer of the fifth century, in chapter 9 of his Commonitorium, expressly testifies of Agrippinus in these words: "First of all mortals (I understand: in Africa; for it is established that in the East the practice of rebaptizing heretics had flourished long before) against the divine canon, etc., he held that one must be rebaptized." 2° There is the further point that Saint Cyprian too, in the Letter to Jubaianus, mentions Agrippinus as the first of all, saying: "But among us it is not a new and sudden thing that we judge that those who come to the Church from the heretics are to be baptized; since it is now many years and a long age since very many bishops, meeting together under Agrippinus, decreed this," etc. 3° Saint Augustine, book 2 On Baptism, chapter 7, speaking of the ancient custom of the Churches, says: "It is more truly believed that it began to be corrupted through Agrippinus than corrected." Yet this corruption would rather have had to be imputed to Tertullian, if he had published this error before Agrippinus. 4° Finally, Tertullian himself, right at the beginning of this chapter, by those words, "For it has been issued to us," signifies clearly enough that he received this as established in the African Churches by some solemn decree, and therefore did not devise it by his own ingenuity.

But others object to the contrary that, since Tertullian wrote his book On Baptism while still a Catholic, and, as we said in the Critical Questions on the book On the Prescription, chapter 7, about A.D. 197 (at which time Agrippinus had perhaps not yet been raised to the see of Carthage), and since the persecution begun against the Christians in the year 202 lasted almost to the year 213, [the council] certainly could not have been held before this year (for under the persecution itself the public assemblies of Christians had been forbidden with great severity by imperial edict), and so not until about eighteen years after the publication of the book On Baptism, when peace was at last restored to the Church.

But what forbids us, in so great an uncertainty about the African prelates, to set the beginning of Agrippinus’s episcopate, and the council itself held under Agrippinus, before the year 196? This certainly seems to agree better with the testimony of Cyprian cited above: for in that letter to Jubaianus which we cited he expressly testifies that it had been many years now, and a long age, since the bishops meeting under Agrippinus, etc. Yet if this council was first held after the persecution, namely in the year 215, and that letter was written only in the year 256, not so very many years (only 41, in fact), nor therefore a long age, would have run on from that council of Agrippinus at Carthage. But if we set this same council back to A.D. 194, it will be removed from the time when Cyprian was writing by at least 62 years, which may at length make up an age. But it is better to bring the whole matter, following the Chronology of Pagi, which we have already adopted elsewhere in the book On the Prescription, as it were under a single view.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE HISTORY OF THE REBAPTIZERS.

YEARS OF CHRIST. | PONTIFFS. | EMPERORS. | MATTERS PERTAINING TO THE HISTORY.

193 | St VICTOR, continuing from the year 185. | Septimius Severus. |

195 | (the same) | (the same) | Agrippinus becomes bishop of Carthage about this year.

196 | (the same) | (the same) | Council of Carthage.

197 | St ZEPHYRINUS | (the same) | Tertullian writes the book On Baptism.

198 | (the same) | Septimius Severus with his son Antoninus Caracalla. |

201 | (the same) | (the same) | Tertullian gradually falls away to Montanus.

202 | (the same) | Beginning of the persecution of the Christians. |

208 | (the same) | Severus with his sons, Caracalla and Geta. |

211 | (the same) | Caracalla and Geta alone. |

213 | (the same) | Caracalla alone. |

217 | St CALLISTUS. | Macrinus. |

218 | (the same) | Heliogabalus. |

222 | St URBAN. | Alexander Severus. | About this year Donatus made bishop of Carthage.

230 | St PONTIAN. | |

235 | St ANTERUS. | Maximinus. |

236 | St FABIAN. | |

237 | (the same) | Balbinus and Pupienus. |

238 | (the same) | Gordian. |

244 | (the same) | Philip. |

247 | (the same) | Philip with his son Philip. | About this year St Cyprian becomes bishop of Carthage.

248 | (the same) | (the same) |

249 | (the same) | Decius. |

250 | The see is vacant. | |

251 | St CORNELIUS. | |

251 | St LUCIUS. | Gallus, Volusianus and Hostilianus. |

253 | St STEPHEN. | Valerian and Gallienus. |

255 | (the same) | (the same) | The [dispute] over the rebaptizing of heretics is revived. First Council of Carthage under St Cyprian.

256 | (the same) | (the same) | Second and Third Councils of Carthage under the same. St Cyprian writes the Letter to Jubaianus.

257 | St SIXTUS. | |

258 | The see is vacant. | (the same) | St Cyprian is crowned with martyrdom.

You see then, kind reader, that in this scheme Agrippinus is neither brought too near to Cyprian nor removed further from him than is right, and that the interval could easily have been filled by Donatus, the bishop between them (though perhaps one or two more had also come in between). Finally, just as this error brought no stain upon St Cyprian and Agrippinus, so neither did it upon Tertullian: since that dogma concerning heretics not to be rebaptized had not yet been defined by the Church; indeed this matter seemed to other Fathers too, men distinguished for holiness of life, to belong to the Church’s discipline alone. Hence even after the death of St Stephen the pontiff and of St Cyprian, this opinion and practice of rebaptizing heretics, or those coming from heresy to the Church, did not die out at once, nay, not even after the First Council of Arles, held in the year 315, and the Council of Nicaea, celebrated in the year 325 (one or other of which, however, is believed to have been that plenary council in which, as St Augustine says, On Baptism, Book I, chapter 7, and elsewhere, this dispute was fully settled); since even St Basil, who died only in the year 379, left it free to each Church, himself still following the practice of the rebaptizers in his own Church, as Tournely, in his treatise On the Sacraments in General, question 7, article 2, page 100 of my copy and following, acknowledges. But of this matter we [shall treat] elsewhere in its own time.

In Greek. There can indeed be no doubt that Tertullian was exceedingly skilled in the Greek language as well, and that he had already earlier written another book On Baptism, in which he had treated chiefly of that same [baptism] when invalidly received from heretics, and therefore to be repeated when they wished to come over to our Church. Moreover, in the book On the Soldier's Crown, chapter 6, he testifies that he had also satisfied the subject (of the Spectacles) in the Greek language for the sake of the lovers of the games, and soon afterwards, at the beginning of the book On the Veiling of Virgins, he plainly intimates that he had already treated this very argument in Greek before. It is indeed to be lamented that these and other Greek works of his have long since perished, consumed by age.

Sins are washed away. Namely through baptism; but those committed thereafter must be washed out, to be sure, by the tears of penance.

Israel the Jew. ISRAEL, as our same author interprets it in book 4 Against Marcion, chapter 39, is: growing strong with God; or, according to others, as though שרה אל, he has had dominion over God. And the context itself of Gen. 32:28 agrees exceedingly well, where the angel says to Jacob: By no means shall your name be called Jacob, but (ישאל) ISRAEL; for if (שרית) YOU HAVE BEEN STRONG, or have prevailed (עם אלהים) AGAINST GOD, how much more will you prevail against men!

Is defiled. The Jews had countless washings prescribed, both in the book of Exodus and in that of Leviticus, which it would truly be a superfluous labour to enumerate one by one. But all these washings could of themselves do nothing towards cleansing the soul; they remedied only legal and bodily stains and impurities. Besides these, however, they had very many others, drawn from the emptiest traditions and customarily observed even to the point of ostentation, as is found in Mark 7:6 and following: The Pharisees, and all the Jews, unless they wash their hands often, do not eat, holding the tradition of the elders; and when they come from the market-place, unless they are baptized, they do not eat; and there are many other things which have been handed down to them to observe, baptisms of cups and of pitchers, etc. Against these accordingly, in the same place, verse 6, Christ Himself inveighs: Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: This people honours Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me... For leaving the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men, the baptisms of pitchers and of cups, etc. And the Apostle, in Hebrews 9:9 and following, speaking of the old tabernacle and of the gifts and sacrifices offered in it, says: Which cannot, as regards the conscience, make perfect him who serves, only in foods and in drinks and in various baptisms and justifications of the flesh, etc.

Which is not a mockery to sinners. The sense seems to be: which does not mock sinners, that is, by a vain effect, namely by forsaking those who hope in it and deservedly exposing them to ridicule, as was done by those squalid ablutions of the Pharisees.

Defiles. Superstitious washings of this kind cleansed the body, but at the same time stained the soul with a new blemish, hypocrisy. See the note Is defiled.

Notes on Chapter XVI.

One and the same. For it cannot be repeated.

To be dipped with a baptism. Luke 12:50, where He speaks of His impending Passion, which He also designates by the name of Baptism in Mark 10:38, saying thus to the sons of Zebedee: Can you drink the cup which I am to drink, or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?

He wrote. 1 John 5:6, where: this is He Who came by WATER and BLOOD, Jesus Christ, not in Water only, but in WATER and BLOOD. Here certain codices have: δι' ὕδατος, καὶ αἵματος, καὶ πνεύματος, that is, by water, and blood, and spirit. But others consider this last word superfluous and rightly omitted, because there follows soon after: And it is the Spirit Who testifies that Christ is the Truth. For there are three who give testimony in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. And there are three who give testimony on earth: the Spirit, and the Water, and the Blood, and these three are one.

Should be glorified. For thus St Peter, Acts 3:13, reproaching the Jews with their faithlessness, says: God has glorified His Son Jesus, Whom you delivered up..., and you killed the Author of life, Whom God raised from the dead, etc. And indeed with these there wonderfully accord the words which St Ambrose, Commentary on Luke, ch. 22, has embraced in an elegant summary: "There are three witnesses, water, blood, and spirit: water for the washing, blood for the price, spirit for the resurrection." And likewise in book 1 On the Holy Spirit, ch. 6: "Water is the witness of burial; blood is the witness of death; spirit is the witness of life." And these things he without doubt drew from the Apostle himself, who in Romans 6:4 speaks thus: For we have been buried together with Him through baptism into death, so that, as Christ rose from the dead, so we too may walk in newness of life. And in ch. 2:12 he addresses his Colossians thus: You have been buried together in baptism, in which you have also risen again through faith in the working of God, Who raised Him from the dead. Thus therefore only after the passion and the shedding of His blood was Christ glorified in the Resurrection, as He Himself declared to the disciples going to Emmaus, Luke 24:26: Was it not necessary that Christ should suffer these things, and so enter into His glory?

The chosen. He is certainly alluding to that saying of Matthew 20:16 and 22:14: Many are called, but few are chosen.

He sent forth. Namely when one of the soldiers opened His side with a lance, and at once there came out blood and water. John 19:34. See above, ch. 9, note Lance.

Because. For "so that".

They had washed, that is, had washed away their sins. But see what difference there is (if we wish to speak strictly) between lavare and lavari. "In the baths (says Varro, book 7, On the Latin Language) we both lavamus and lavamur. But since custom held either one to be sufficient, for the whole body we rather use lavamur, for parts lavamus, as we say lavo manus, and likewise the feet, and the rest. Wherefore

in the baths they do not say lavi [I washed] correctly: lavi manus [I washed my hands] is correct, but, since in the baths I am washed, lavatus sum [I was washed]."

That they should drink blood. To me at least there is no doubt that the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist is alluded to here, in which we drink the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, not a figure of blood; for we are not said to be given figures of liquids to drink. Tertullian therefore held that in that sacrament blood is truly drunk by us, that very blood which flowed forth in the passion of Christ, especially from His most sacred side; for of this He Himself said, John 6:55 ff.: My flesh is truly food, and My blood is truly drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, etc. The passage from the book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. 8, also deserves to be adduced here, where our author says: "The flesh feeds on the body and blood of Christ, that the soul may be fattened on God." He also presupposes the same in the book On the Flesh of Christ, ch. 13.

Baptism. For when the mouth is given eucharistic blood to drink, the soul too is washed inwardly. But rather he here understands the baptism of martyrdom, in which our blood is poured out, and which, in the power of the blood of Christ shed for us in the passion and on the cross, cleanses the soul from all stains of guilt and punishment, no differently from baptism of water itself: "The shedding of blood for Christ (says St Thomas, III, q. 66, a. 12, in the body of the article) and the inward operation of the Holy Spirit are called baptisms, inasmuch as they produce the effect of baptism of water; but baptism of water has its efficacy from the passion of Christ and from the Holy Spirit."

Represents. Not in a mere image and symbol, but in present effect, for this is properly to repraesentare, that is, to render a thing present; whence also money is said by Jesus Christ to be repraesentari when it is produced and counted out in person. And our author himself too, in the book On the Soldier's Crown, last chapter, sets repraesentatio against vision, or mere appearance, saying: "If such are the images in vision, what will the realities be in the representation?"

But how the baptism of blood supplies the place of baptism of water and produces its effect, we said just before in the note Baptism. Add that the baptism of martyrdom shares in the power of the passion of Christ far more efficaciously. For this (says St Thomas, III, q. 66, a. 12, in the body of the article) "operates in baptism of water through a certain figurative representation, but in baptism of blood through imitation of the deed"; which is certainly not a simple representation, but a wonderfully efficacious showing forth of the thing itself in its power and effect. To this belongs that saying of Rev. 7:14: these are they who have come out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Restores. Baptism is lost as regards its effect, that is to say its own, when the baptized person loses again through mortal sin the innocence which he obtained in baptism; but it is recovered through martyrdom,

by which the original innocence is fully restored, as we said above in the note Baptismus.

Notes on Chapter XVII.

Materiolam. This very brief treatise.

Accipiendi. Concerning the minister and the subject, though he speaks of the latter in the following chapter.

Episcopus. That is, one who holds the supreme priesthood in his own Church and outshines all the rest in the dignity of his power. For since the bishops alone are the true and genuine successors of the apostles, they have also passed into the right of those to whom it had been specially entrusted by Christ: Going, teach all nations, baptizing them, etc. (Matt. 28:19). Accordingly, in the first centuries of the Church the bishops administered baptism as a right proper to themselves alone, namely publicly, that is, in the church itself, for as long, that is, as baptisteries had been erected only in the cathedral churches. Although even then presbyters are read to have assisted, and indeed to have baptized themselves (namely when too great a multitude of those to be baptized had flocked together to be dealt with by the bishop alone), the bishop, that is, expressly commanding it, and soon afterwards imparting the sacrament of confirmation to the baptized. But after, as the multitude of the faithful grew still more widely, access to the cathedral baptistery became more difficult for some, especially in the larger dioceses, then, so that the salvation of souls might be provided for the more surely, baptisteries were erected also in the individual parish churches, assigned to the care and administration of each pastor, the bishops reserving to themselves only solemn baptism, to be conferred only twice a year, while at other times the full right of baptizing was left to the parish priests.

Thus this discipline was always varied at various times, and indeed at the same time in different places. So in the 2nd century St Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, says in the Letter to the Smyrnaeans: It is not permitted without the bishop either to baptize or to offer, etc. That is: It is not lawful without the Bishop (that is, his presence or mandate) to baptize, nor to make the oblation, etc. Therefore already at that time presbyters baptized, but only when furnished with the authority of their bishops. In the 4th century St Ambrose, as Paulinus testifies in his Life, held so tenaciously to this custom "that what he had been accustomed to fulfil alone with regard to those to be baptized, five bishops afterwards, at the time when he died, could scarcely fulfil." Likewise in the 5th century, in the Instruction of the clergy of Edessa to Photius and Eustathius, bishops, which is found in the Council of Chalcedon, act 10, they ask that Ibas, their bishop, be sent back to them as quickly as possible, "especially since the saving festival of the holy day of Easter is imminent, on which, both on account of the catechizings" (and on account of those deemed worthy of holy baptism there is need of his presence), and on account of those who are worthy of holy baptism, his presence is needed. Likewise in the 6th century, in the Letter written by the Clergy of Italy to the envoys of the Franks in the year 552, Dacius, bishop

of Milan, at length after 15 or 16 years requested that he be sent back, "because, since almost all the bishops whom he is accustomed to ordain have died, an immense multitude of the people is dying without baptism." In the same century St Gregory the Great, in his Letter to Romanus the Patrician, complains gravely against him that Blondus, bishop of Orte, has already been detained by that same man at Ravenna for a long time. And the chief cause of this complaint was that in that place infants were dying in their sins without baptism. So too in the seventh century, in the Second Council of Seville, held in the year 619, canon 7, it was decreed "that it is not permitted to presbyters to enter the baptistery in the presence of the bishop, nor to dip an infant when the bishop is present," etc. We see, therefore, how excessively tenacious of their own right the bishops of certain Churches were in those times, so that they did not judge that this should be shared with presbyters even in their absence, perhaps for this reason, that they considered that baptism was not rightly conferred without confirmation, or the imposition of the bishop's hands.

Meanwhile, however, it gradually came about that public baptisteries were erected in the parish Churches as well, and the bishops now everywhere reserved to themselves the power of conferring solemn baptism alone, namely on Holy Saturday and on the vigil of Pentecost, while to presbyters they granted a certain general right of conferring baptism outside those seasons, as though annexed to the sacred ordination itself which they received from the bishops. Yet not even this form of discipline lasted long; rather, at length, when the dioceses had been enlarged and the multitude of catechumens had grown exceedingly, etc., solemn baptism too was transferred to the presbyters, and thereafter remained with the bishop almost only in the Church of Milan (perhaps in memory of that singular zeal and example which St Ambrose, as we mentioned above, so signally displayed there), as our most learned Edm. Martène reports, book 1 of On the Ancient Rites of the Church, chapter 1, article 3, no. 3, from the Fourth Council of Milan, held in the year 1575 under St Charles Borromeo, Constitution 2.

And deacons. Although the office of baptizing was laid by Christ upon the apostles alone, it is nevertheless established from Acts 8:12 that Philip, though only a deacon, baptized in Samaria, the apostles themselves, of course, entrusting that office to him. But that it was not lawful for deacons, as those who are immediately subordinate to presbyters, to baptize without their command, the records of the ancients testify. For thus in the fifth century Pope Gelasius, in Letter 5, to the bishops of Lucania, chapter 5, says concerning deacons: "Let them not dare to baptize without a bishop or presbyter, unless, the aforesaid officers perhaps being stationed too far away (further, that is, than that timely recourse could be had to them for obtaining permission), extreme necessity compel them." For in those more ancient centuries there was not so great an abundance of priests that someone was always at hand for every particular gathering in villages and towns, nay even in any cities whatever. But what, even when such a one was present, but sick,

or otherwise prevented, or in sudden and extraordinary cases, needed to be done? Certainly the deacons (of whom at least one, on the testimony of Martène, book 1, chapter 1, article 3, was obliged to reside in the church together with the presbyter) were bound to undertake that office, the presbyter readily entrusting it to them.

Honour. That is, the honour which every church had conferred upon the bishop as its Hierarch, or more truly had of its own accord acknowledged as an honour bestowed upon him by God.

Peace is kept safe. But peace would not be kept safe if their authority were not preserved to the bishops, with presbyters presently seizing indiscriminately upon any of the church's functions by their own authority; for it is the bishops whom the Holy Spirit has placed to rule the Church of God, etc. Therefore in the times of Tertullian this authority, as having issued quite recently from the apostles, had been preserved to the bishops, and in them rather to the apostles themselves, so that nothing was permitted concerning the administration of the sacraments (which are the treasures of the Church, deposited by Christ through the apostles themselves and to be guarded by those successors) except at the commission of the lawful and, as we say, immediate and direct successors of the apostles, that is, the bishops, most of all in baptism, concerning which it had been said to the apostles alone: Go, teach, baptize.

Otherwise, that is, "else", or "but if"; so that the sense is: "But if its honour is not preserved to the church, and the authority of those who have been called and appointed to the divine offices, that right will equally have to be granted to laymen, all order now being thrown into confusion, etc.

It can be given. For laymen do not receive a less perfect baptism than bishops, etc., who baptize, had received before.

To be hidden from anyone. Latinius, intending to heal this miserably broken passage, reads it thus: "Unless bishops now, etc., are called learners, or disciples (that is, unless they have been singularly called to this office, as disciples of the Lord, or at least their true successors), the word of the Lord ought not to be hidden from anyone, but that precept of the Lord will pertain equally to all (Matt. 28:19): Going, teach all nations, baptizing them, etc. And this conjecture of Latinius is not unapt, etc." Junius, however, retaining the word dicentes, only changes the punctuation, beginning thus: "Unless bishops now, etc., are called those saying: the word of the Lord ought not to be hidden from anyone; therefore baptism also, and God's revenue, can be exercised by all. But how much more," etc. And so he wishes this whole context to be understood thus: Unless perhaps (which is absurd) it should be thought fit to hold indiscriminately as bishops, presbyters and deacons all those who say and affirm thus: To whom it belongs to bring forth the word of God and not to hide it, to them it belongs also to baptize; but it belongs to all to bring forth the word of God: therefore also to baptize, etc." This conjecture indeed seems to me happier and more acute than that former one of Latinius. Thus therefore the word dicentes would have to be referred to the laity, as if Tertullian were introducing us as speaking, and claiming baptism for ourselves equally with

the preaching of the divine word, and perhaps even thinking that the saying of Christ in Matthew 10:27 was spoken to them too: What you hear in the ear, preach upon the housetops; as though that word of the Lord also, Go, teach all nations, baptizing them, which was spoken singly to the apostles alone, had applied to any others whatever after the manner of a precept, and so it had been preached to these too by a mandate of that kind.

Equally. That is, the word of God and its preaching.

God's census. Census properly is not an annual revenue, but the valuation of anyone's goods, entered in the public registers, according to which, with a fixed proportion observed, taxes were imposed. Later, however, this word had also been transferred to those very taxes that were to be paid. Hence in Matthew 17:25 there is that saying of Christ: The kings of the earth, from whom do they receive (τέλη ἢ κῆνσον) tribute or census? Similarly where, in Luke 20:22, the Pharisees, tempting Christ, ask: Is it lawful for us to give φόρον, tribute, to Caesar, or not? in place of φόρον, in Matthew 22:17 and Mark 12:14, κῆνσον (census) is found, and likewise it is rendered by our Vulgate as tributum.

In another way too census signifies the assessment itself, or the review of anyone's goods, in which each person declared his name and his goods, as is said in Luke 2:1: A decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled (should be assessed, or entered in the censors' registers). And shortly after, v. 3: All went to declare themselves, each into his own city. And since from that census, or review, arose the proportioned imposition of taxes, hence census is also taken by our author, in the book Apology, ch. 7, for rise or origin or profession: "The discipline of this census is from Tiberius." And in Book 1 Against Marcion, ch. 21, similarly: "But you will find no Church of apostolic census which does not Christianize in the Creator." See also the book On the Prescription, ch. 32. Likewise in Book VI Against Marcion, ch. 40, speaking of the tribe of Judah, he says: "From whose tribe the census of Christ's flesh was to proceed," etc. And again, Apology, ch. 10, he says: "From him (Saturn) is the census of the whole, or of the more powerful, or of the better known divinity." It is agreed that it is sometimes also taken for number, which used to be determined by a review; in which sense, in the book On the Veiling of Virgins, ch. 4, he says: "The whole census of the elements," etc.

Finally it is taken for substance or means, or goods proper to someone, as in the book On the Flesh of Christ, ch. 25, he says: "Thus the census of each substance showed forth man and God"; for there follows shortly afterwards: "This property of the conditions, divine and human, has been determined by the equal truth of the nature of each." And in this sense of census our author can certainly be understood fittingly, when he calls baptism God's census, as something to be numbered among the goods proper to God.

Dedicated. Proper to the bishop, and assigned peculiarly to him, and sanctified by God Himself.

The bishop's office. The force of the argument lies in this,

that laymen ought all the less to claim the right of baptizing, since it does not belong either to deacons or to presbyters themselves without the authority of the bishop.

Rivalry. Some think this passage should be punctuated thus: "The office of the episcopate dedicated to bishops. Rivalry of schisms," etc. But to others this tautology is rightly displeasing. The arrangement of this text, therefore, which I have restored against my manuscript, is to be retained.

It is the mother of schisms. Very many, and sad enough, are the examples of this thing on display in the Church, which it is not the place here to recount. See also our Tertullian, in the book On Prescription, Q. Crit. 4.

To be expedient. As if he meant to say: "Even if the power of baptizing belongs to laymen also, it is nevertheless not expedient that they use it, to the prejudice of the honour owed to bishops, but it is better that they abstain from its exercise out of reverence for the pre-eminence of bishops."

You may use. Junius thinks these words were said to presbyters and deacons alone. Indeed, St Basil, in the first Canonical Epistle to Amphilochius, canon 1, seems to have judged that baptism given by laymen is wholly invalid and therefore to be repeated. For from this very argument he strives to prove that the baptism of heretics is invalid (for he had adhered to this opinion, after St Cyprian, together with other Easterners), namely that these, having broken away from the Church (even if otherwise bishops or presbyters, etc.), have fallen back into the state of laymen. "But those who have broken away," he says, "having been made laymen, have the power neither of baptizing nor of ordaining." Wherefore they ordered that those who had been baptized by them, as "baptized" by laymen, when they came to the Church should be cleansed with the true baptism of the Church. But that those earlier words were said by Tertullian of laymen even the context itself proves, since soon afterwards he excludes only women from baptism administered in necessity. And certainly it has always been a most ancient custom in the Church that in a case of necessity, in the absence of the bishop, presbyters and deacons, etc., laymen also should baptize.

Or of place. When in that place neither a bishop, nor a presbyter, nor even a deacon is present, or, held back by some other hindrance, cannot be called.

Or of time. That is, when in delay there would be present danger, the one to be baptized being likely to die in the meantime.

Condition. That is, if some other lawful cause urges that baptism be imparted immediately.

Constancy. Constancy seems here to be taken for boldness, firmness of mind, so that the sense is: "For then it will be permitted to come to the rescue boldly and fearlessly," etc., just as, namely, in book 5 Against Marcion, chapter 1, he says: "To proclaim another god with such constancy." It can also be taken for freedom or fittingness: a sense which plainly agrees with what is added soon after. See also what we said above, on chapter 10, about the word constanter. But whatever may be the case with these, I would certainly prefer to take constancy here for a stable and canonically established order and rule, pertaining to the person of the minister; which

rule certainly has no place in a case of necessity, just as other ecclesiastical and human laws have none.

To teach. He alludes again to what he mentioned above in chapter 1 about Quintilla and her venomous doctrine. He likewise complains bitterly of this impudence of women in the book On the Prescription, chapter 41.

For the rest, some gather from this passage, not without reason, that this book On Baptism was written by Tertullian while he was still truly orthodox, because afterwards, having become a Montanist, he showed far greater indulgence, and indeed an excessively soft deference, towards that talkative sex which Paul himself, 1 Cor. 14:34, condemned to perpetual silence in the Church, and even so could not restrain it enough. To this also belongs what we said in the Critical Questions on the book On the Prescription, questions 4 and 5.

She will give birth for herself. A metaphor not inelegant, yet not without sarcasm, against women who everywhere bring forth novelties in sacred matters. For the rest, since he is speaking of right, he does not at once exclude from women every faculty of baptizing, at least in a case of extreme necessity; rather, they are indeed permitted to baptize, and are bound to do so, namely if a man is not present, or if modesty forbids baptism to be administered by him. And that a case of necessity (at least extreme necessity) was not excluded even in those ancient times is clear enough from John Moschus (who flourished in the seventh century), Spiritual Meadow, chapter 3, where he asserts that it is against the canons for deaconesses to baptize, except, that is, for a cause of the strictest necessity; in which that very principle of Tertullian must certainly come in: "Since he will be guilty of a lost man," etc.

Notes on Chapter XVIII [so printed, the notes that follow are on Chapter XVII].

Of the former. That is, of Quintilla, whom he lashed a little before, but now calls "former" because he had spoken of her just at the beginning of this book, and she herself had dared to attack baptism a good while before,

Was taking away. That is, had tried to remove it altogether.

By herself. By her own right: which until then had not been tolerated even in lay men.

Wrongly written, that is, pseudepigrapha, or falsely inscribed with his name, the Travels of Paul and Thecla, which no critic any longer doubts to be spurious. These acts contain certain things wholly contrary to the doctrine of Saint Paul, and very many others utterly fabulous, for example that Thecla was called by Paul to the apostolic office of preaching the Gospel and of baptizing, and exercised both more than manfully, etc.; of which, however, Saint Jerome, On Ecclesiastical Writers, speaks thus: "The Travels of Paul and Thecla, and the whole fable of the baptized lion (but whose it was is so far unknown), we reckon among the apocryphal Scriptures"; and we know that they were rejected into that very class by Pope Gelasius in the Roman council held in the year 494.

But this spurious book must be carefully distinguished from other books, commonly ascribed to Basil, bishop of Seleucia, who flourished in the middle of the fifth century: in which, as for the whole of the deeds and miracles of Saint Thecla,

the narrative, Basnage, in his Politico-Ecclesiastical Annals at A.D. 46, wishes to see it utterly overthrown, although it was long ago very firmly established by Baronius at A.D. 47. But to investigate these matters at greater length is by no means the business of this place.

Of his own, that is, heaping it up by the invention of his own wit.

Heaping up. I for my part hold that this was not done by him out of malice, but by a pious fraud and an excessive zeal, that is, one too little discerning, which had also seized others around those times, especially the writers of certain Gospels, who, in order to win authority for them, had hung upon them the names of certain apostles, as though these would give a price to such rotten wares.

Withdrew from his place, that is, was removed from the presbyterate and in some manner reduced to the order of laymen. For the rest, Tertullian was the first to make this story public, and it was afterwards affirmed by very many others.

Nearest. He here calls "nearest to belief" that which has great likelihood, so that it may prudently be believed with human faith.

Steadfastly, or freely and fearlessly. See above, the note Constantia, and chapter 10, the note Constanter.

Let them consult. Let women be silent in the Church: for it is not permitted to them to speak, but to be subject, as the law says. But if they wish to learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in the Church. So says Saint Paul (1 Cor. 14:34 ff.). Therefore, if they have learned anything in the Church, they are sent off to their husbands, to be more fully instructed by them wherever they have been in doubt, or to be made more steadfast, against their native fickleness, in doctrine otherwise duly received.

Notes on Chapter XVIII.

To be entrusted rashly, or to be administered to anyone without consideration. For it is like a pledge for salvation, which is customarily given both as security for a debt and to a creditor who will keep it safely.

It is the office, namely, to administer the same to others.

Give to him who asks. Give to everyone who asks you, says Christ (Luke 6:30).

Title. A title is otherwise a certain mark and as it were an inscription of any work, by which it is rendered honourable and praiseworthy. So, then, in order that both the asking and the bestowing may become praiseworthy, each must have a title, that is, a reason and cause both of asking and of giving. Now the title for giving is the asking of the needy, the title for receiving is the need of the one who asks. And so baptism too ought to be conferred only on those who ask, and not simply on those who ask, but on those duly prepared to receive it, both by instruction in doctrine and by fervour of will, desiring it ardently.

With regard to alms. It is clear enough from what has just been said that, as alms, so also baptism is to be given to the needy, but the latter only to those who ask in earnest. And this indeed is necessary in the case of the baptism of adults, namely in order that it may be lawfully administered to anyone; but as to

validity nothing is required except the intention of receiving, which they call habitual. But on this matter more fully elsewhere.

Exsertam, i.e. "open"; for thus our author says in the book On the Spectacles, chapter 3: "Plainly we nowhere find it, just as it is openly laid down, You shall not kill, etc., so expressly defined, You shall not go to the Circus," etc.; and in book 2 To His Wife, chapter 1, he has this: "Now he does not advise, but expressly commands." And likewise he says: "The opinion has been thoroughly handled and made explicit."

Dignationem. He seems to have put it for "favour", after the example of Livy, book 2, who speaks thus of Appius: "Not much later he attained to the esteem of the leading men."

Intercessisse. See the whole sequence of this story carefully woven together in Acts chapter 8.

Praetendere. But the angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying: Rise and go towards the south, to the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. Acts 8:26. Moreover, praetendere here is to go first or to set out beforehand, and as it were to take the road in advance from the opposite direction so as to meet him: or it is put simply for tendere, as our author is quite often accustomed to use compounds for simple words.

Impressus. He had come to worship in Jerusalem, and was returning, sitting in his chariot and reading the prophet Isaiah. Ibid. v. 27 ff. He was therefore fixed upon the reading of it with the greatest attention, and as it were pressed into it, so that the Scripture received him as he read it, as it were, most closely into itself. In almost the same sense the same author of ours said in the Apology, chapter 18: "But so that we might approach more fully and more impressively both Him (God) and His dispositions and wills," etc. And in the book On the Exhortation to Chastity, ch. 3, he says that the will of God must be pondered deeply and with close impression.

Apostolum. From this very passage some have asserted that this Philip was an apostle; but others more commonly place him among those seven deacons who, Acts 6:5, had been chosen by the apostles. For why, if he had been an apostle, was it necessary that Peter and John should be sent to the inhabitants of Samaria, lately converted by this Philip, so that they might lay hands upon them, and they might receive the Holy Spirit? Acts 8:17. For could not Philip himself, if he was an apostle, equally have given it, the Sacrament of Confirmation, the administration of which was at that time proper to the apostles alone, or to bishops, by imparting it to them through the imposition of hands? He had therefore been called an apostle as one particularly dispatched by the apostles properly so called, in that sense, namely, in which Andronicus and Junias too are called by Paul, Rom. 16:7, distinguished among the apostles.

Jussit. And the Spirit said to Philip: Approach, and join yourself to that chariot. Acts 8:29.

In tempore. Now the passage of Scripture which he was reading was this: As a sheep He was led to the slaughter, etc. Ibid. 32.

Exhortatus. Who, indeed? Is the eunuch taken up by Philip for baptism after the exhortation? Or rather Philip by the eunuch into the chariot? If we understand the former,

the word exhortatus will have to be taken in a passive sense; nor is this so unusual, since I read in Cicero too, in the Cato: "He was exhorted at a banquet by a harlot to strike with the axe," etc. But I would prefer the latter [sense]: for after Philip had exhorted the eunuch, the latter asked Philip to come up and sit with him. Acts 8:31.

Is shown. And Philip, opening his mouth and beginning from this Scripture, proclaimed Jesus to him. Ibid. 35.

Does not delay. See, water: what prevents me from being baptized? And Philip said: If you believe with your whole heart, it is permitted. And answering, he said: I BELIEVE that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Ibid. 36 and following.

Is awaited. And they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. Ibid. 38.

Is snatched away. And when they had come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, etc. Ibid. 39.

Was dipped. That is, soon, three days after his conversion, as is clear from Acts 9:9 and 18.

Host. For Ananias had been ordered to seek him in the house of Judas. Ibid. 11. But who this man was, nothing further is known.

Notes on Chapter XVIII.

Dignatis, that is, by grace. See above.

Prerogatives, that is, singular prior dispositions and wonderful circumstances, from which it may easily be perceived what God wills to be done by men outside the common order and rule, and how.

To be deceived. For one who seeks baptism in a disordered way can deceive its minister, namely by approaching without the lawful disposition, and not with a true but only with a feigned mind. He can also himself be deceived, when he approaches out of immature zeal and believes himself impelled by God Himself, yet is not yet furnished with the necessary knowledge of the things to be believed, so as to receive it fruitfully.

Is more useful. Formerly baptism was deferred by very many into adult age, and sometimes almost to extreme old age. Thus Saint Martin, made a catechumen already in the tenth year of his age, was baptized only eight years afterwards, as Sulpicius Severus testifies in his Life, book 1, chapter 2. Some deferred it to the thirtieth year, relying on the example of Christ, as may be seen in Saint Gregory Nazianzen, Oration on Holy Baptism. Concerning the emperor Constantine it is now the common opinion that he was baptized at Nicomedia a little before his death. So too the emperor Constantius wished to be baptized by Euzoius of Antioch only at the very end of his days. And what of the fact that Theodosius the Great also, after overcoming very many dangers in wars, at last, falling into a grave illness, asked to be washed by Ascholius, bishop of Thessalonica? Perhaps this same author of ours, by ordering that baptism be deferred for a longer time through delay, had been the cause that many, out of excessive scrupulousness and conscience's

fear, refused baptism beforehand, and indeed in good faith.

There were, however, those who delayed receiving baptism in worse faith, namely so that they would not thereafter be bound by the severity of the ecclesiastical laws, and so might meanwhile sin the more freely. This design, as a rash one, the saints Gregory of Nazianzus and the other of Nyssa, and likewise Saint John Chrysostom and other Fathers, rightly and most sharply censured.

As for the examples of others, who for other reasons once put off baptism far too long, these are by no means set before us for imitation. Let it suffice us to measure from them the gravity of the matter, into which one ought not to rush suddenly, nor receive those who rush in this way, but to defer it until the desire has grown sufficiently and a sufficient probation has gone before. But to do this same thing when someone already feels himself sufficiently prepared is not free from danger, whether of drowsiness creeping in meanwhile, or of the opportunity being lost thereafter. We know for certain that the Emperor Valentinian the Younger, overtaken by a violent death after he had deferred baptism too long, was snatched from this life still a catechumen.

Finally, on this matter Saint Basil must be heard, in the Exhortation to Baptism, where among many other things he speaks thus: "If the Church were distributing gold, you would certainly not say: 'Send tomorrow, you will give tomorrow'; rather you would diligently and swiftly ask for your portion, and would take it ill to be put off. But since it is not the gloss of some material thing, but the purification of the soul that the munificent King promises you, you weave delays and excuses, you bring forward hindrances and pretexts, you who ought to run to this gift." And after other things: "Indeed, if you were liable to public taxes, and a remission of debts were proclaimed to the debtors far and wide, and then someone tried to deprive you of this public bounty, you would grieve and cry out that you were being unjustly deprived of your share in the common favour. But now that not only the remission of past things but also the gifts of things to come are openly set forth, you do not listen, but you harm yourself as much as perhaps not even enemies would harm you." And again shortly after: "If some physician undertook to make you young from old by certain devices and contrivances, you would surely take care with all eagerness to arrive at that day on which you would see yourself restored to the flower of youth. But now, when it is announced that your soul, which you have rendered defiled with every crime, is to be renewed and regenerated through baptism, you despise so great a benefit, and neither hasten of your own accord nor go to meet him who promises it." And finally: "Delay of baptism seems to cry out nothing other than: 'Let sin reign in me first, until at some time the Lord also reigns; let the members of injustice and the weapons of iniquity be mine, and then I will take up also the weapons of justice for God.'" etc. And these things Basil says against those who, already duly instructed beforehand, as regards baptism (and the same holds

also for the sacrament of penance) intend constantly to put it off.

Concerning little ones. This opinion was indeed peculiar to Tertullian alone (who, even while still a Catholic, was always inclined to excessive scrupulousness and severity), and it had not been adopted by any of the ancient Fathers; much less had the Henricians, Peter Abelard, Peter of Brescia or the Anabaptists, or other heretics, placed any support in it, since they held infants to be wholly incapable of validly receiving baptism, and therefore thought that it must be repeated when they had come to the use of reason. That voice, moreover, had been only that of Tertullian dissuading, and by this very fact indicating unambiguously the contrary custom, even in the African churches themselves and at those very same times, with Tertullian alone, so far as we know, resisting it, and that on grounds approved by none of his contemporaries, nor indeed by any other of the holy Fathers, not even by Saint Cyprian, otherwise so scrupulous regarding baptism, who nevertheless is said constantly to have turned over the pages of Tertullian as his master. For he, when Fidus, a bishop, had raised a question on this matter and had contended that little ones should be baptized only after the eighth day, taking no further account of Tertullian's reasoning, concluded thus in the Council of Carthage of 66 bishops, in the year 253: "That infants ought to be baptized only after the eighth day from birth, no one agreed; rather we all judged that the mercy and grace of God is to be denied to no human being that is born." So he says in his Letter 69, To Fidus.

Furthermore, that paedobaptism, or the washing of little ones, has come down from the very practice and tradition of the apostles, Saint Augustine is a weighty witness, who in Sermon 10 On the Words of the Apostle, speaking of little ones, says: "They are carried to the Church, and if they cannot run there on their own feet, they run on the feet of others, that they may be healed; Mother Church lends them the feet of others that they may come, the heart of others that they may believe, the tongue of others that they may confess; so that, since being sick they are weighed down by another's sinning (namely Adam's), so when they are healed they may be saved by another's confessing on their behalf (namely the godparent's). Let no one, therefore, whisper strange doctrines to you. This the Church has always had, always held; this she receives from the faith of our forebears; this she guards perseveringly even to the end." And in Book 10 of On Genesis according to the Letter, chapter 23, he confirms the same, saying: "The custom of Mother Church in baptizing little ones is by no means to be spurned, nor in any way to be reckoned superfluous, nor to be believed at all were it not an apostolic tradition." Of this there is also a much more ancient witness, Origen, who on chapter 13 of the Epistle to the Romans says expressly: "The Church received from the apostles the tradition of giving baptism even to little ones."

Wherefore it was most salutarily decreed in several councils, and indeed under heavy penalties, that the baptism of little ones (since, namely, often sudden

dangers of death can come upon them) be put off for a longer time. And in particular Saint Charles Borromeo, in the First Council of Milan, laid down "that those who have charge of a newborn infant should see to it that it is brought to the Church to receive baptism before the ninth day. And if they neglect this, let them undergo the penalty of excommunication."

Necesse. Junius thinks that these words, "if it is not so necessary", can safely be left out, and he attests that they are in fact missing in many copies. But why could they not just as well be retained? For indeed they make quite a suitable sense: "if necessity does not press from some other quarter."

Sponsores. Elsewhere they are called godparents, since they are, of course, as it were spiritual fathers, or sureties, of whom Saint Chrysostom says on Psalm 14: "At once the priest demands from the weak age agreed pledges, and questions the receiver as surety for the one under age," etc. This is because they must, of course, pledge and answer for the infant, etc.; whence the aforesaid name of sponsors was also given to them.

From this passage of Tertullian it is plainly evident that godparents were customarily employed in baptism already by most ancient usage, and from the very cradle, as it were, of the Church, as Saint Basil, Letter 128, and Saint Augustine, in a great many places, and others here and there also attest.

Possunt. That is, if the sponsors themselves should die before the baptized infant has reached the use of reason, so that he could be reminded by them what obligation he contracted in baptism, or what those godparents pledged on his behalf.

Falli. If the infant, having meanwhile become an adult, should drive out the grace of baptism by a depraved life, and further should refuse to fulfil those pledges by himself when he was now able, etc.

Christiani. They are to become such through baptism, through which, that is, initiation among the Christians takes place.

Innocens aetas. But indeed that age is guilty enough, being of course answerable for original sin, which the soul contracts at once with its first infusion into the body. Nor is it likely that Tertullian intended by this to make little ones free from that sin, he who in the treatise On the Testimony of the Soul, chapter 3, says so expressly: "Man, circumvented from the beginning (by the devil) so that he transgressed the precept of God, and on that account given over to death, thenceforth made THE WHOLE RACE, infected from his seed, the transmitter also of his condemnation."

Peccatorum. Therefore, then, he called the age of little ones innocent because they are free from actual sins, that is, sins committed by one's own will, in the remission of which, as regards both guilt and penalty together, he had believed the chief end and power of baptism to lie. Since, then, there is only one baptism, and it cannot afterwards be repeated (chapter 15, note Non habent), and consequently in adults all guilt can indeed be blotted out by penance, but not, however, the penalty in the same way (chapter 5, note Poena), Tertullian judged it better,

that baptism should be reserved to the time of adult age, so that then, together with the original [sin], all actual sins also, and all liability to the penalty owed to them, might be taken away at once, for the removal of which there would otherwise be need of long labours of penance and works of satisfaction. Meanwhile, however, our same author does not consider that from little ones who die without baptism all hope of salvation is thenceforth taken away, a loss certainly no longer repairable by any means.

In secular matters, that is, in the things of this world, or temporal things.

Earthly substance, that is, the administration of an inheritance and of temporal goods, is not committed [to them], nor indeed can it be committed.

Let the divine be entrusted. Junius approves Latinius, who reads these words ironically, and with him I readily agree. But this argument of Tertullian is weak; for the administration of their own affairs cannot be committed to wards, since they are wholly incapable of it; and yet goods from an inheritance pass to them. "As long as the heir is a little one," says the Apostle (Gal. 4:1), "he differs in nothing from a servant, though he is lord of all; but he is under tutors and stewards until the time fixed beforehand," etc. Their goods, however, need administration above all in the meantime, and it is in every way necessary that there be someone to guard them, someone to defend them from the injuries of others, etc. But grace, once entrusted to a little one, which rests secure as a sovereign against all force, what administration does it need? For who will take away from a little one the grace once received? Who will do it violence? For nothing is contrary to grace, nothing opposed to it, except sin committed thereafter by one's own will; but how will that have place in a little one, as long as he lacks the use of reason? There are therefore no snares against grace in a little one, but such are to be feared in the meantime for his temporal goods; wherefore these, and his very person, which is certainly greatly exposed to the injuries of others, need to be committed to the guardianship of another.

You may seem to have given. Why not even to one who does not ask, as long as he cannot ask by himself, yet needs the same for his salvation just as much as the adult who can ask? Shall food, then, likewise be denied to a little one because, however necessary it is to him, he cannot ask for it?

Of delaying. This opinion of Tertullian is unusual and shows his rigid disposition; it was never asserted by anyone else, and it rests on the same weak argument which we set out above.

Full maturity. That is, when they are marriageable and ripe for a husband.

Wandering about. I do not follow, unless Tertullian means it thus: that she, deprived of a companion and, as it were, of the safeguard of her chastity, is alone, and so wanders about among the living.

Be strengthened, that is, if she has remained a longer time in widowhood and has set another guard about herself, namely by withdrawing herself wholly from company,

and by keeping the state of her widowhood for a longer time has acquired a firmer habit of continence, and has, moreover, earnestly and thoroughly renounced marriage.

Weight, that is, the importance and gravity of the matter.

The consequence. Those things which can follow upon baptism, namely the danger of losing grace through sins (which, particularly by reason of the ingratitude attached to them, will be graver when committed after baptism than before it), and the difficulty of recovering that same grace. And perhaps our author here had in view that saying of the Apostle in Heb. 6:4: "It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit ..... and have fallen away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify for themselves the Son of God afresh and hold Him up to contempt." That is, it is impossible that those who have once been ENLIGHTENED (or baptized, as in chapter 1, note "Of blindness"), have also tasted the heavenly gift, and have been made partakers of the HOLY SPIRIT, .. and have fallen away, should be renewed again to repentance, crucifying again for themselves the Son of God, and holding Him up to display. Where "the impossible" signifies not what is absolutely impossible, but what can come about with difficulty (that is, not indeed by human means, but yet by divine means, though somewhat more hardly, and with danger of relapse), as in Mark 10:17, where, when the disciples asked who could be saved, Christ answered: "With men it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God," that is, With men (namely by human strength) this is impossible, but not with GOD; for all things are possible with God; where He did not say "to GOD", but "with GOD", that is, by the strength of divine grace, aided by which nothing is now so arduous for us that it cannot be overcome and accomplished by us. "All things are possible to him who believes," says Christ, Mark 9:22. For the rest, then, for those who are baptized while still infants, the attainment of grace through baptism is surely safer than its deferral would have been: since in this [deferral] there is the danger of losing salvation and of no longer recovering it, whereas in the baptized grace is lost with more difficulty, and when lost can at least be restored through penitence.

Entire, that is, obtained through baptism and thereafter preserved entire and without contamination.

Concerning salvation "But he who has persevered to the end will be saved," Matt. 10:22.

Notes on Chapter XIX.

It is preferable. At the beginning of the Church no time had been appointed for baptism. "At first all were teaching (says the author of the Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians, ch. 4) and all were baptizing, on whatever days or at whatever times there was occasion. For neither did PHILIP (Acts 8) seek a time or a day on which to baptize the eunuch. Nor did PAUL and SILAS (Acts 9:10) put off the time when they baptized the keeper of the prison with all his household. Nor did PETER seek a day when Cornelius

(Acts 10:47 ff.) he baptized with all his house. So, in order that the people might both grow and be multiplied, it was granted to all in the beginning both to preach the gospel and to baptize, etc. But when the Church had embraced all places... the Church began to be governed by another order and providence. Hence, then, it is that now neither do deacons preach among the people, nor do clerics or laymen baptize, nor are believers dipped on any day whatever, except the sick." And so from these things we see that it is not surprising that in other matters too, here and there, the discipline which had obtained in apostolic times, and had been ordained by the apostles themselves and then put into practice, was nevertheless in most things (namely those to which a divine precept was not attached) changed by the Church in the course of time, or else increased by the addition of other ordinances besides; adapted, that is, variously and wisely to the conditions of the times and of other circumstances, while those things which concern the substance of the sacraments, inasmuch as they are known to be of a far higher and wholly divine institution, were always kept unshaken.

But, to return to our argument, already from the most ancient times it prevailed that solemn baptism should be celebrated at the seasons of EASTER and PENTECOST: that this observance proceeded from the very apostolic times themselves is attested by Saint Siricius and Saint Gregory the Great, supreme pontiffs. The former indeed, in his letter to Himerius, bishop of Tarragona, alleges the custom of all the Churches; the latter, in letter 136 to the bishops of Sicily, sets it down as a rule instituted by the apostles and handed down in the Church by continuous succession. This so widely extended usage lasted, on the testimony of Theophylact, Commentary on Luke 10, almost to the end of the eleventh century, and, being at length entirely abrogated, it placed baptism at the discretion of the ministers, so that they should impart it whenever it seemed good to them for a reasonable cause: and this custom at length prevailed among the Greeks too, and that many centuries ago.

The Passion of the Lord. Our author thought, in the book Against the Jews, ch. 10, that Pascha is of Greek origin, derived from the Greek πάσχω, "I suffer": in which matter he had Saint Irenaeus going before him, in the book Against the Jews, ch. 23, and some followers, especially Lactantius in book 4 of the Institutes, ch. 26, where he says thus: "The sacrifice of the beast (the paschal lamb) is named PASCHA by the very people who perform it, from πάσχειν, because it is a figure of the PASSION," etc. But that they were greatly deceived in this etymology of the name, and that this word must be claimed for the Hebrews, no one doubts. For in Exod. 12:11 it is פסח (PESACH), from the root פסח, and thence the Chaldeans, by suffixing their א, as they frequently do, made פסחא, PISCHA or PASCHA, which word the Seventy also adopted, writing πάσχα, chiefly because its ending is Greek, to be declined in the genitive with -ατος. Our Vulgate, however, set PHASE, since the harshness of the guttural letter ח is little pleasing to Latins; whence the same Vulgate

also in other proper names, especially disyllabic ones, cut it off here and there, as for נח NOACH, תרח THARAC, קרח CORACH it put Noe, Thare, Chore, etc.

Moreover, pesach, phase or pascha signify a PASSING OVER: whence Aquila too rendered pascha as ὑπέρβασιν, a stepping over or a passing across, while Symmachus rendered it ὑπερμάχησιν, a defending: but none of the Greek interpreters rendered it "passion". And finally our Latin [translator] at Exod. 12:11 interprets thus: "For it is the PHASE (that is, the PASSING OVER) of the Lord," in memory of which, namely of the angel striking the first-born of Egypt and passing over, or going past, the houses of the Hebrews alone, leaving them untouched, the Pasch was to be celebrated yearly by the Hebrews.

Tingimur ("we are dipped"). That the baptism of Christ has all its efficacy from His Passion we have already shown at chapter 16, note Baptismus, 1188 A. See also chapter 11, note Resurrectionem, 1178 B; and the note Sine resurrect., ibid.

Interpretabitur. It is taken here in a passive sense, as in the Author to Herennius, book 2.

Pentecoste. Πεντηκοστή (understand ἡμέρα) signifies the fiftieth day. For from the day after the Sabbath (Lev. 23:15), that is, from the second day of unleavened bread, seven weeks were to be counted, which make 49 days: and on the fiftieth day was to be celebrated the חג שבעת, the FEAST OF WEEKS, which in our Church is called the FEAST OF PENTECOST; and just as it was formerly celebrated by the Jews in memory of the law given to Moses on Mount Sinai (which is believed to have taken place on the fiftieth day from the feast of the Pasch, that is, from the going out from Egypt, Exod. 19:1 and 11), so now too in our Church the feast of Pentecost is celebrated, that is, the fiftieth day from the feast of the Pasch, in memory of the Holy Spirit descending upon the apostles in tongues of fire. Acts 2:1, etc.

Therefore, since baptism is the work of the Holy Spirit, Who descended in the form of a dove upon Christ when He had been baptized in the Jordan, and Who in a singular way sanctifies the waters (see above, chapter 10, note nn), it is no wonder that the season of Pentecost, no less than that of the Pasch, was appointed by the primitive Church for the solemn conferring of baptism. "And let all priests keep this rule," says Pope Siricius (cited above in the note Praestat), "who do not wish to be torn away from the solidity of the apostolic ROCK, upon which Christ built the universal Church."

However, since this was a matter of mere discipline, it is no wonder that even after the times of Siricius a different custom was kept elsewhere, both on the DAY OF THE LORD'S NATIVITY, on which Clovis, the first king of the Franks, was baptized, as Avitus, bishop of Vienne, attests in his letter to him; or on the EPIPHANY of the Lord (because on this day Christ Himself was baptized by St John); and again in other places on the feast of St John the Baptist, for a similar reason; and indeed on the birthdays of the Apostles and Martyrs, not without

the resistance of the Roman Church, [baptism] was administered, until at length, the times evidently so allowing, freedom in this matter had been given to any Churches whatever, yet tied, by the usage of almost the whole Church, to the blessing of the baptismal font on the holy Sabbath of Easter and on the Vigil of Pentecost. But on this matter one may see more fully Martène, On the Rites of the Church, book 1, chapter 1, article 1; Juenin, On Baptism, question 10, chapter 2; and others here and there.

With waters. That is, so that they may first be solemnly blessed (chapter 4, note on When God has been invoked) and always ready, for baptism to be administered to all in due order.

It is a space. From this it seems rightly inferred that throughout that whole intervening time, namely from Easter up to Pentecost, baptism was formerly accustomed to be administered; which I think should be understood thus: that at Easter and Pentecost it was conferred solemnly, but in the intervening time only those were washed who had previously been held back by some hindrance, for example sickness and so on, or were absent for some other cause, or also infants born in that intervening time, and so on.

It has been frequented, that is, the yearly memorial of it has been celebrated with frequent and livelier remembrance.

Dedicated, that is, consecrated, or celebrated with religious worship amid hymns, prayers, thanksgivings, and so on. From what has been said so far we clearly perceive that the feasts of Easter and Pentecost were instituted by the apostles themselves, but under rites other than those among the Hebrews, and with other symbols, as being, that is, of things already past: Easter, indeed, to be celebrated in memory of the Resurrection of Christ, Who raises us again from the death of sin to the life of grace; but Pentecost in commemoration of the Holy Spirit first poured out upon the apostles into the Church.

The coming. This is to be understood of the second Coming of the Lord, at which He will come to judge the living and the dead.

Hinted at. That is, shown somewhat more obscurely, and as it were more remotely.

Recovered. Some prefer reciperato, which is said from recipiendo [receiving]. But it is better to leave this dispute of the grammarians undecided. It is enough that here the Ascension of Christ, that is, His reception into the heavens, is signified.

At Pentecost. For our author this name also signifies the whole span of 50 days between Easter and Pentecost, and therefore in the book On Idolatry, chapter 14, he says: "Pick out the several solemnities of the nations and weave them into a series, they will not be able to fill up a Pentecost." And in this sense too it seems it should be understood here; for Christ did not ascend the heavens at Pentecost, if you understand the day, but rather in that intervening time, namely on the fortieth day after the Resurrection.

For the rest, that the day of judgement will be at Pentecost is a conjecture of Tertullian, resting weakly on the words of Acts 1:11, cited above; for there it is only said in like manner, where the manner of coming, not the time, is signified. For just as He ascended in glory, and a cloud received Him (Acts 1:9), so one day they will see the Son of Man coming

in the clouds of heaven with much power and majesty (Matt. 24:30). But why should we labour over determining that [day], of which no one knows, not even the angels of the heavens, but the Father alone (ibid. 24:36)?

On a feast. Jer. 31:8, where the Septuagint adds "en heortē Phasek", "at the solemnity of the Phase", or Pasch; these words are absent from the Hebrew text and from all the other Greeks (as St Jerome himself notes, Commentary on Jeremiah at this place), and accordingly also from our Latin Vulgate; nor is it established by any testimony of Ezra, or Nehemiah, or any other sacred writer, that the Jews returned from the Babylonian captivity, as once from the bondage of Egypt, at the feast of the Pasch; and yet it is of this return from Babylon that Jeremiah speaks here. Therefore that addition of the Seventy Elders seems to have been made only for the sake of some mystical meaning, fulfilled, to be sure, in the Pasch and Passion of Christ, etc.

Festal. For it was called the SOLEMNITY OF WEEKS, as was noted above at Pentecost.

It makes no difference. For the time adds nothing to the effect of baptism, that is, of grace, and takes nothing away, nor does he who receives baptism on a feast day obtain more grace than he who receives it on any other. "One time is suited to one thing, another to another: one is proper to sleep, another to waking, and likewise to war and to peace. The time for baptism is the whole life of a man," says St Basil, Homily 13, On the Exhortation to Baptism.

Notes on Chapter XX.

With frequent. Adults were admitted to baptism (outside, that is, the case of urgent necessity) only at the point when they had first, through various works of piety and especially of penance, during their catechumenate (this was a time of probation, and as it were a kind of novitiate before baptism), shown themselves worthy of this heavenly gift, and had also given great hope of their future perseverance in the grace once received. Of the catechumens, however, and their classes we have already spoken in the book On Prescription, chapter 41, which there is no room to repeat here. The catechumens were permitted, moreover, to pray within the church and with the rest, and there to set forth before God their burning desire for baptism, etc. Then they were dismissed from the church, the deacon, as is related in book 8 of the Apostolic Constitutions, chapter 5 (whose author is not St Clement, but nonetheless another very ancient one), praying to God for them: "May the Lord graciously hear their entreaties and prayers, and receiving their supplications grant them help, and grant the petition of their heart for their benefit," etc.

With fasts. Thus again the author of the Apostolic Constitutions, book 7, 23, has: "Before baptism let him who is to be baptized FAST." And below: "But he who is initiated into His (Christ's) death (to be buried with Him in baptism) ought first to FAST, and afterwards be baptized." And St Augustine, in the book On Faith and Works, chapter 6, says: "Without doubt they would not be admitted to baptism if during those very days in which, being about to receive that same grace, they, by abstinence,

by FASTS, and by exorcisms are purged." etc. And the Council of Carthage IV, can. 85, also decrees: "Let those who are to be baptized, having been examined over a long time by abstinence from wine and meats and by frequent imposition of the hand, receive baptism." For the more the body, worn thin by fasts, is constrained, the more the soul is enlarged and becomes more capacious, so as to receive the grace of baptism all the more abundantly.

By kneelings. Kneelings are what the Greeks call γονυπετείαι or γονυκλισίαι, genuflexions, which were customarily used in prayer from the most ancient times. Hence in the book On the Soldier's Crown, ch. 3, our author speaks of worshipping on the knees. And in the book To Scapula, ch. 5, he says: "When have not even droughts been driven away by our kneelings and our fastings?" etc.

Kneeling, then, is a sign of reverence, of submission, or of adoration; and thus St PETER, when about to raise Tabitha, kneeling down prayed (Acts 9:40). St PAUL, about to depart from Miletus, having knelt down prayed with them all, etc. (Acts 20:36). And the same says in the Epistle to the Ephesians 3:14: For this reason I bend my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed in the Old Testament too knees were bent during prayers. For SOLOMON also, while making that long prayer at the dedication of the temple (3 Kgs. 8), had fixed both knees on the ground (ibid. 54). And DANIEL (6:10), praying, bent his knees, and worshipped, and gave thanks before his God, just as he had been accustomed to do before. So too ESDRAS (6:5) says of himself: I bowed my knees, and spread out my hands to the Lord. So too those in the New Testament who came to Christ to ask for the grace of healing made their request on bent knee, as in Matthew 17:40: There came to Him a man γονυπετῶν αὐτῷ, falling on his knees before Him, etc. And in Mark (1:40): There came to Him a leper, beseeching Him, and γονυπετῶν αὐτὸν, with knee bent, said to Him, etc. And so others elsewhere. And what of the fact that Christ Himself on the Mount of Olives (Luke 22:41) θεὶς τὰ γόνατα προσηύχετο, having knelt down, prayed? And this is He Whom God has exalted... that at the Name of Jesus πᾶν γόνυ κάμψῃ, every knee should bend, etc. (Phil. 2:10).

It is therefore most fitting that those to be baptized too should fall upon their knees and pray to God for so illustrious a gift, through which, though they had formerly fallen into sin, they are raised up again to salvation; for, as the author of the Questions to the Orthodox says in the Reply to Question 115: Γονυκλισία σύμβολόν ἐστι τῆς ἐν ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις πτώσεως, the bending of the knees is a sign of the fall into sins.

By all-night vigils. A pervigilium, in Greek παννυχισμός, is, properly speaking, a vigil lasting longer and drawn out through the whole night, or at least a great part of it; whereas a vigil simply so called is the holding off of sleep even for a shorter time. Martial accurately noted the difference between the two, book 5, epigram 70:

For to keep watch is light, to keep watch all night is heavy.

Hence Arnobius too, in book 4 of the Institutes, says: To which holy

those vigils were consecrated, and the solemn all-night festivals," etc.

Here, however, we are by no means speaking of the vigils of the gentiles, of which Cicero says in book 2 of On the Laws: "New gods, and night-long vigils in their worship, Aristophanes thus mocks," etc. Of these Tacitus too speaks (book 5 of the Annals, ch. 44): "The women who had husbands celebrated banquets of the gods and vigils." But away with those things, joined for the most part with the greatest obscenities! For we have to treat of far holier vigils, already frequented in the first Church, as we learn sufficiently even from our Tertullian himself. Now these vigils were either public, which were celebrated by the whole assembly of any Church, or private, which were celebrated by individuals in their own homes. The former were held before each of the more solemn feasts, and also before the commemorations of the martyrs; the latter were among the private works of penitents, and were to be undertaken especially, and more frequently, by those who were to be baptized: whence St Gregory Nazianzen, in his Oration on Holy Baptism, instructs the catechumen thus: "Good aids will be yours for obtaining the things which you desire: vigils, fasts, chameuniae (sleeping on the ground), prayers, tears, hardships, help to the needy," etc. And to these vigils in the ancient Church fasts were always joined; but afterwards, when the vigils had been abolished on account of abuses creeping in, the fasts were retained, together with the mere name of the vigils.

Of sins. Just as sins are remitted to no man in this dispensation without a prior retraction of them through some act of penance, so also for adults, for the remission of actual sins which baptism afforded, and therefore for receiving this very baptism fruitfully, certain acts of penance were necessary, and indeed manifested by some outward sign, namely by public confession of sins; for so the most ancient records also testify. For thus St Justin Martyr, in the Dialogue with Trypho, p. 177 of my edition, says that even in the Old Testament ablutions were of no profit except to those who had first repented, saying thus: "This was that saving washing of old which followed those who repented," that is, "This was formerly that saving bath which attended those who did penance." And when he had confirmed this with a lengthy testimony from Isaiah, he adds: "This is that baptism which alone is able to cleanse those who have repented," "This is that baptism which alone can purify penitents." And how much more rightly does he require this for our baptism in Apology 2, p. 73 of my edition, saying thus: "They are taught to pray and to ask God, while fasting, for the remission of their former sins, with you praying and fasting together with them; then they are led by us to where there is water," etc. "Moreover, they are taught, while fasting, to pray and to ask of God the remission of their preceding sins (but how will they ask, unless confessing them?), with us praying and fasting together with them. Then they are led by us to that place where there is water." And this is in conformity with what the most ancient author (who formerly

was believed to be St Jerome) has, in the Sermon on Psalm 41 to the Neophytes: 'Throughout the whole of Lent they gave themselves to prayer and to fasts, they slept in sackcloth and ashes, seeking the future life (through baptism) by the confession of their sins,' etc. And Eusebius, in the Life of the same, ch. 61, relates that Constantine the Great, emperor, likewise came thus prepared to receive baptism: 'When he had considered these things with himself, kneeling and prostrating himself on the ground, he begged pardon of God as a suppliant, confessing his sins in the martyrium,' etc., that is to say, in the place in which the monuments, or tombs of the Martyrs, were to be seen.

And lest we should think that so august an example was left without a following, let us hear Socrates, a writer of the fifth century, who in book 5 of the Ecclesiastical History, ch. 17, treating of the overthrow of the temple of Serapis, says: 'Many more betook themselves to the Christian religion, and, confessing their sins, received the baptism of Christ.' But whether this confession, which adults had to make before baptism, was of sins in particular, or only general, is still disputed among the critics. It is certain, however, that our Sacramental penance had no place in those being baptized, since baptism itself is a kind of initiation into the remaining sacraments of our Church, conferring on a man the capacity to receive them validly and to confect them.

Exponant, that is, let them display in themselves an example, 'the metaphor being taken,' as Junius says on this passage, 'from retailers setting out their wares.' Thus in our baptism the baptism of John too must be displayed by us, as the forerunner of the baptism of Christ. See above, ch. 10, note Praeministrabat.

Delicta sua. Junius reads nunc for non here, as also in book 1, On the Veiling of Virgins, ch. 1, where most manuscripts have: 'Those who have heard Him (Christ) prophesying NOT up to a time long past veil the virgins,' he judges that NUNC should be substituted: which reason itself certainly seems to demand, especially because this error of copyists is wont to occur very often in other writings as well, as the critics relate.

Enim. This particle makes me approve the emendation of Junius; for what other struggle of flesh and spirit is there, if there is NOT need of that public confession? But besides, from this very point I am almost led to believe that that confession at that time was not merely general but also particular, at least of sins otherwise already committed publicly; for what difficulty would there otherwise have been in it? See above, note Delictorum.

Conflictatione, that is, by mortification, which from that very struggle produces grievous distress for our nature; For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to one another (Gal. 5:17). For this humiliation befalls both as grievous: the spirit indeed on account of its native nobility and excellence, nay, and the pride born in it from sin; but the flesh on account of its native sluggishness, shrinking from a noble venture of this kind;

for to these too the spirit is sometimes willing, but the flesh weak. Matt. 26:41.

Would attain. For thus Christ, preaching on the mountain, "called them blessed who will suffer persecution for the sake of justice, since theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you (so He continues) when they curse you and say every evil against you, etc. Rejoice and exult, since your reward is abundant in heaven; for so they persecuted the prophets," etc., Matt. 5:10 ff. And this is the teaching which Paul and Barnabas so earnestly impressed upon their own: Since through many tribulations (temptations) we must enter into the kingdom of God. Some believe that Tertullian here rather has in view that passage, Matt. 19:20: The rich man will enter with difficulty into the kingdom of heaven.

From the washing, or after the washing.

One must fast. Just as Christ began His fast not before, but after baptism.

Of salvation. He means here the feast of Easter, which immediately follows Holy Saturday, as the day once specially appointed for solemn baptism (preceding chapter); for the Easter rejoicing itself is the mutual congratulation on our salvation, which we, having died in Adam but rising with Christ to new life, have recovered. Behold, then, the most ancient origin of Easter greetings, which, once a token of mutual charity among Christians, the crafty spirit of this age is wont for the most part to wrap up in lying formulas of words and empty ceremonies.

Moreover, the sadness of fasts accords poorly with the Easter joy, and so the Church willed fasts to be struck out of these solemnities, indeed out of the whole Easter season. Furthermore, the Church also established that any Sunday whatever (since it willed this too to be sacred to the memory of Christ rising) is by no means to be clouded with fasting, as is evident from canon 15 of St Peter of Alexandria, who flourished at the close of the third century, in which, having approved the fasts of Wednesday and Friday, he says: "But as for the Lord's day, it is a day of gladness, because Jesus Christ rose on that day." What indeed of the fact that in the Council of Gangra, held in A.D. 370, canon 18, we find even those struck with anathema "who, pretending a more austere life, fast on the Lord's day"? Nor ought this to seem surprising, since they were deemed to have joined in communion with the Manichaeans and Priscillianists, who appointed Sunday as a proper day for fasting. Hence St Augustine, in Letter 86, to Casulanus, treating of fasting on the Sabbath, etc., calls such fasts a great scandal and horrible.

Against him, namely the tempter, the devil.

With divine supplies, that is, the manna rained down daily from heaven. Exod. 16:4 ff.

Than God's. That is, when that ungrateful and gluttonous people repeatedly lamented: Who will give us meat to eat? ... Our soul is dry: our eyes look at nothing else but manna. Num. 11:4 and 6.

Water, that is, His baptism in the Jordan.

Of God. This word was rightly considered superfluous by Junius.

Word. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Matt. 4:4. Now this saying had been transferred here by Christ from Deut. 8:3, where Moses, recounting to the people the benefits of God and the afflictions sent upon them in the desert, [says]: He afflicted you with want, and gave you manna as food .... that He might show you that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that goes forth from the mouth of God. And this is that figure of Israel, from which our author says above that the reproach was turned back by Christ upon the devil.

To be strangled. An elegant metaphor! Those are properly said to be elisi whose greater veins of the neck (which are otherwise called lisae, and by the Greeks are usually called sphagitides) are cut. For thus Celsus says, book 4 On Medicine, chapter 1: "Now the lisae, on the testimony of Donatus, are the greater veins of the throat, which being cut the animal dies at once; whence elisum, that which has died from such a cause." And so also of others carried off by a violent death we say that they were elisi, as Suetonius in Caligula, chapter 26, says: "And more than twenty Roman knights were crushed to death in that tumult." Indeed Tullius too, in the Tusculan Questions, book 5, has "to be crushed by sickness".

Birth. For it is the washing of regeneration, according to that saying of Christ to Nicodemus: Unless one is reborn anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God (John 3:3). Man's first birth, therefore, is from his mother, as to the body; the second from God, as to the soul, which, dead through sin, is reborn through baptism. And these are they who are born not of blood, etc., but of God (John 1:13).

Mother. The Church may fittingly be understood here: the Jerusalem which is above, which is our mother. To the Galatians 4:17.

Brethren. But we, brethren, are children of the promise according to Isaac. Ibid., verse 28.

Possessions. Not only temporal but above all spiritual ones, new [goods] necessary for sustaining this life, or wonderfully conducive to it.

It is opened to you. Matt. 7:10 ff. And at length Christ there adds: If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father, Who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask Him.

Of a sinner. A remarkable example of humility! But how different from himself was Tertullian afterwards, swelling with the spirit of his Montanus (not inspiring, indeed, but inflating)!

DISSERTATION

ON THE AFFINITY BETWEEN BAPTISM AND PENANCE, ON THE AUTHOR OF THE FOLLOWING BOOK, AND ON THE TIME OF THE SAME WRITING.

I. Now that we have finished Tertullian's book On Baptism, we are brought, not indeed in the straight and common order of our sacraments, yet not by a leap either, to the same author's book On Penance, which is likewise to be illustrated with some notes; for the Author himself did not pass over entirely the intermediate sacraments, Confirmation and the Eucharist, but the former he treated, not perfunctorily, in chapters 6 and 7 of his earlier book, as a kind of complement of baptism, while the latter he at least touched on lightly in chapter 16 (as we noted there).

II. There is, moreover, a singular connection between baptism and penance, by reason of necessity itself. For when God, the Creator of all things, had launched the first man into this universe as into a most open sea, and had given him to the whole human race thereafter as a kind of admiral, and he, swept away by the waves of his own harmful desire, had dashed his ship upon the hardest rock of original sin, and had made a most wretched shipwreck not of himself alone but of us all, the boundless GOODNESS of our SAVIOUR held out to us a first plank, BAPTISM, by seizing which we might come up again into the harbour of salvation. But since He foresaw that in this very harbour there would be very many shipwrecks of men, who would again be caught up in new waves, Christ, the same institutor of the sacraments, threw out to our weakened and all too unstable will a second plank after shipwreck, PENANCE, so that, helped by it, we might swim once more to a safe shore. And this indeed is that BAPTISM which the Council of Trent, session XIV, chapter 2, calls LABORIOUS; in it one must truly labour hard through the arduous works of Penance, so that we may wash away our offences no longer in another's fount of waters, but in our own tears.

III. The following book, then, is joined by us to the former the more fittingly because the former ended on penance itself, as the preparation necessary for baptism in adults, while this one, as by a suitable joint, pursues the same more broadly, and treats more thoroughly also that Penance which remains for those who have relapsed after baptism.

IV. Between baptism and penance, however, there is more than one difference: 1st, by reason of the end; for baptism was instituted chiefly to blot out original sin, and, in adults, the other [sins] clinging to it; next, so that through it a man may be gathered into the people of God and become a member of the Church; for no other entry to the same lies open than through this door of baptism,

the first of all the sacraments and necessary above all. Penance, on the other hand, is to be applied to blot out actual sins, and above all those which have been committed afterwards, after baptism. 2nd, by reason of the effect; for in baptism, together with the guilt, all liability to punishment, both eternal and temporal, is also taken away; but penance has not the same efficacy with regard to the latter: for temporal punishment remains, to be paid in purgatory, unless full satisfaction for sins has been rendered in this life through works of penance. 3rd, by reason of its intrinsic nature; for baptism is a regeneration, a spiritual one, namely, and according to the soul, which, like carnal generation, can be done only once; and therefore baptism cannot be repeated in one who has once validly received it, being sealed from then on as by a kind of seal impressed, namely the character. But penance takes place in the form of a judgement, in which a man, as defendant and at the same time his own accuser, is absolved of his offences. And just as a defendant can be dragged before a human tribunal after any new offence and relapse, so for one who has lapsed after baptism, when he has once done penance, the same is to be repeated for him as often as he relapses again, and therefore it is never sealed with any character, since the mercy of GOD is not closed to him thereafter either. 4th, by reason of necessity; for baptism is necessary for salvation to all men, even to little children (who yet are stained with original sin only): but penance only to adults, who are liable for sins committed by their own will, whether before or after baptism; nor can true penance, properly so called, be done for original sin, but only in a wider sense, namely that of any displeasure and detestation of past evil. I deliberately pass over other differences, since for the present I have it in mind to leave aside the sacrament of penance.

V. We must now come to the author of this book: that he is Tertullian, no one either doubted formerly or doubts now. Erasmus of Rotterdam alone tried to take it away from Tertullian, and only Beatus Rhenanus followed him, both resting on this one argument, a rather weak one at that: the difference of style. And this [style] I do not deny is somewhat more florid in this book, but its difference from the others, even those he wrote at almost the end of his life, is not great, and consists only in certain somewhat more striking allegories and metaphors. But if I had leisure to pluck similar little flowers from other garden-beds of the same [author],

I could easily weave whole garlands.

VI. Moreover, other critics of the best mark have long since perceived that from a mere discordance of style, of whatever kind, unless the support of other, and indeed weightier, arguments concurs, an author can hardly be made suspect, not to say that anything can be decided against him; of these I cite just one, William Cave, who in the Prolegomena to his Literary History, section 4, number 64, says that an argument of spuriousness, or substitution, is furnished only then, « if the style, and the texture of the whole discourse, is VERY DIFFERENT from that character of speaking which the author used in his genuine works. » But anyone reading will find [this book] so far from very different that, rather, apart from a few somewhat more excited phrases, scarcely occurring in Tertullian's other writings, that African and concise kind of eloquence, proper almost to Tertullian alone, then that certain majesty, as it were, of style, and that richness of meaning in almost every single word, that grand eloquence which, hard though it is, can yet somehow carry the reader away to itself even against his will, triumphs no less in this book: to say nothing of other phrases, so carefully copied from other books of the same author, which I shall diligently note in their places.

VII. Next, Beatus Rhenanus himself admits that the author of this book uses the same words and figures, and that, whoever he was, he was undoubtedly of his [Tertullian's] century and a most zealous follower of Tertullian; » but why not Tertullian himself? For what other man could have reproduced his style, a singular one assuredly and scarcely imitable by anyone, so skilfully that he passed for Tertullian himself with St Pacian, a writer of the IV century, and with all others through more than XI centuries down to Erasmus, and that nobody ever caught any scent, from a difference of style, of another author of this book?

VIII. Finally, then, we judge that from that discordance of style, whatever it amounts to, nothing more can be argued than that Tertullian undertook this writing while he was still of a more vigorous age and livelier wit. For wits of this kind, fervent and nimble, are wont to fly about like bees among various flowers, and to suck allegories and metaphors even from things foreign [to their subject], and to carry them into their own hive, etc. Likewise style is wont, as age gradually advances, to settle, and to become more tempered and robust. So too TULLY himself, the prince of orators, seems to some to have sprinkled his speeches for P. Quinctius and for Roscius of Ameria (the former of which, and the first of all, he had delivered in court at the age of 26, as A. Gellius, Attic Nights, book XV, chapter 28, reports, and the other soon after in the following year) with florid elegances of this kind, the latter especially somewhat too immoderately (his so lively and flowering wit having been restrained from this abundance of speech in vain, namely by Molo, his last teacher), while by others he is even praised for it; for as his age gradually matured, and this ornament of flowers fell off of its own accord, he ripened into fruits the more steadfast,

and the gravity and majesty of his eloquence, more manly from then on, became, as it were, consolidated.

IX. And finally, one will not easily find a writer who is always consistent with himself, especially if he has not drawn out [his writing] in one continuous work, but has led his pen around through various and unconnected subjects, interrupted by various times and by years themselves. For there is a certain kind of subject, by its very nature, rather gloomy or lowly, and drier, which sufficiently blunts and depresses the vigour even of a youthful wit, and before which the otherwise juicy eloquence of men dries up: but there is again another subject, sweeter and more pleasant, and better suited to the author's own genius, which can sufficiently rouse and spur a wit otherwise rather languid: there is, finally, one so lively and diffusing something so radiant, that it can set the writer thoroughly on fire and inflame him, and indeed can at times stir up little sparks long laid to sleep by an old age already turned to ashes. There are, further, other things too that come to the writer from elsewhere, and as it were obliquely, which yet at times are of great power to alter his wit, so to speak. What wonder, then, if Tertullian too is not consistent with himself in every respect, but, when he first applied himself to writing, though already at a more mature age, used a somewhat livelier style, which afterwards in his other books settled down somewhat more and, as it were, made up for the ornament with a greater apparatus of learning? But let these things be said in passing, though somewhat more at length.

X. But if now the very TIME of the writing is to be indicated somewhat more closely (although this cannot be done precisely), I think thus: that this treatise was committed to writing certainly before A.D. 200, and probably in the year 197, or perhaps earlier, but that certainly the time of both this and the other writing, on baptism, are not far apart from each other.

XI. But whether, in the order of writing, he added the book on baptism to this one on penance, or this one to that, can scarcely be determined at all. It seems more probable to me, however, that he added [this one]; for if he had put this one on penance first, he would, I believe, in the last chapter on baptism, where he treats of penance as something to be put before baptism by way of preparation, have made some mention of it, as having already been treated more fully elsewhere. And certainly, in the book on baptism itself, at the end, in chapter 15, he skilfully refers his readers to another treatise on the same matter, already composed earlier in the Greek tongue. Who then will seem to judge badly if it is said that this subject of penance, which he had touched on somewhat more briefly at the close of the book On Baptism, he afterwards took up, with a new plan and in a separate book, in a fuller treatment, and indeed partly for the sake of the catechumens, so that they might conceive the greater esteem for the value of baptism, as they understood that it was to be obtained by such laborious works of penance? Why then should they not thereafter exercise themselves in these with the more ardent zeal, so that the reward of baptism so generously held out, and its grace,

might obtain the more surely, and keep the more safely thereafter?

XII. Finally, we must hear the excellent judgement on this book which Beatus Rhenanus himself, a man of great judgement, delivered in the argument prefixed to it, namely “that this treatise is of such a kind that theologians ought to learn it by heart to the last detail; for,” he goes on, “it is an outstanding monument of antiquity; so holily does it teach, so piously does it persuade, so urgently does it press a matter of ecclesiastical discipline

THE BOOK ON PENANCE.

Chapter I. That penance ought to be for evil works only, not for good.

II. That true penance is that which is for evils, that is, for offences against GOD.

III. That penance must be done for all sins, whether outward or purely inward.

IV. He exhorts to the embracing of penance, as necessary as it is useful to those who sin.

V. That penance is not to be blotted out by new sins, and is to be fulfilled not in the mind only but also in deed itself.

VI. That catechumens are not without need of penance on the ground that their sins are at last to be blotted out through baptism itself.

VII. That those who have fallen after baptism must do penance again.

VIII. It is confirmed by examples from Holy Scripture that penance must be done as often as one has sinned.

XI [sic]. What exomologesis is, and what are its chief works.

X. That public confession of sins is not to be blushed at nor put off.

XI. That we ought not to be frightened away from doing penance by the hardships of the body.

XII. The exhortation to penance is confirmed by examples set forth.

Notes on the first chapter.

Poenitentiam (‘penance’). Penance, [says] St Isidore, bishop of Seville, Etymologies, Book IV, chapter 19, “was called as it were punientia, because a man by repenting punishes in himself what he has wrongly committed.” The author of the book On True and False Penance (once ascribed to St Augustine), chapter 19, says almost the same, saying: “To repent (poenitere) is the same as to hold punishment (poenam tenere), namely that a man should always punish in himself, by avenging, what he committed by sinning.” In Greek it is called μετάνοια, change of mind, that is, of one’s former judgement, from μετανοεῖν, which is to understand afterwards, or to grow wise after the deed. In this same sense it is also called μετάγνωσις, μετάγνοια and μεταμέλεια.

Hoc genus hominum (‘this kind of men’). He censures the gentiles here, and especially their philosophers.

supremely necessary: exomologesis, that is, the act and ministry of penance.” And certainly, as we learn here and there from Tertullian the traditions and discipline of the ancient Church, so here too, with signal profit against our innovators, we are taught, finely and soundly, the manner of doing penance as it was customarily done already in the first centuries and, assuredly, by apostolic institution. But let us now rather proceed to the matter itself.

Retro fuimus (‘we were formerly’). For Tertullian, born of gentile parents and brought up in paganism, betook himself to the Christian rites only when already well advanced in age, as we pointed out in the Epitome of his Life prefixed to the book On the Prescription, from his own testimony drawn from the Apology, chapter 18.

Dei lumine (‘by the light of God’). By faith, that is, which is the supernatural light of the soul.

Natura tenus (‘as far as nature goes’), that is, according to the guidance of natural reason only, or as far as that light inborn in our intellect itself extends.

Sententiae prioris (‘of a former judgement’). This is a general definition, taken from moral philosophy. He says, then, that penance is a certain motion, alteration or affection of the mind, joined with a certain distress, and arising from aversion to the former judgement, or opinion, from which something was done. For when someone now understands that he acted less rightly before, and so has also incurred some loss or harm, there then rises in his mind a certain motion, born of the sense of that distress, or offence. So he now changes and retracts his former judgement, having conceived a displeasure towards it and a certain hatred, and in this those philosophers think the true nature of penance consists. And thus (as certain men in Aulus Gellius say, Attic Nights, Book XVII, chapter 1) “we are wont to speak of repenting when the things we ourselves have done, or that were done by our own will and counsel, afterwards begin to displease us, and we change our judgement about them.”

Ratione (‘by reason’), that is, by the true notion and definition.

Auctore (‘the Author’). Supply: by rightly knowing. And how could they know Him, who were of so blinded an understanding as to place the Godhead in stars, men, beasts, and any of the vilest creatures whatever?

Ordinavit (‘He ordained’). For He made all these things according to the counsels of His infinite [wisdom].

Extraneis (‘to strangers’), that is, to those placed outside the knowledge of the true God, and estranged from it.

Procellam (‘the storm’). We have already spoken of this florid allegory in the Interposed Dissertation.

Deversentur (‘they lodge’). He uses this word also in the book

Against the Valentinians, ch. 30, where: "Who sojourned in the world," etc. But other manuscripts, and certainly better, have diversentur. However, whichever of the two we believe Tertullian said, this expression will always be rendered in better Latin by conversentur.

Expedire. For "to refute," or "to place beyond doubt."

In ingratiam, that is, it falls out unwelcome, troublesome or unpleasant. Ingratia, then (an obsolete word), is taken here for displeasure at another's deed. He uses this word again shortly, in ch. 2. Moreover, there is a passage twin to this one, Book II Against Marcion, ch. 24, which runs thus: "For if a man repents mostly from the remembrance of a fault, and sometimes also from displeasure at some good work, it does not follow that God does likewise."

Irrogatur. For "is applied," or "is expended," or "is imposed," "is inflicted," etc., as Plautus in the Captivi:

On these I shall fix a day, and I shall impose malice.

And Cicero in On His House: "The Twelve Tables forbid that laws be imposed on private persons." Tacitus too, Annals Book IV, ch. 10, says of Drusus that, the poison having been drained, he had increased suspicion, "as if he were inflicting on himself the death which he had contrived for his father." Again Cicero, in For Rabirius, spoke of "the imposition of a fine." Others take irrogare for erogare, whose sense is almost the same as the former. Of the word erogare we have already spoken, in the book On the Prescription, ch. 2, note In actu, but in another sense. But let these things be left to the grammarians.

Contra, to be marked by all means with an accent, so that it may mean "on the contrary," or "from the opposite side."

Notes on Chapter II.

Rationis. For reason is a thing of God, and given to us by divine gift, as our author said above.

Merita, that is, the weighty points; in which sense jurists are accustomed to speak of the merits of a case. It can also be taken here for usefulness, or for benefit.

Exponerent. That is, as it were weighed on a balance.

Tenerent. Not preparing for themselves matter for repenting so often and for so long.

Saluti. "The sorrow which is according to God works REPENTANCE unto steadfast SALVATION." (2 Cor. 7:10)

Auspicata. Elsewhere too our author uses this verb auspicor in a passive sense, as in the book On Patience, ch. 5, he says: "Since it is plain that impatience was begun together with malice, or malice from impatience." And in the book On the Soldier's Crown, ch. 1: "There he laid down his very heavy cloaks, having begun to be relieved." Now auspicari is properly aves spicere, "to look at birds" (for so the ancients said for aspicere), when they took auspices from their flight, song or feeding, or took the auspices; for they were accustomed to undertake nothing except after consulting the birds, and only then did they reckon that they had begun their business auspiciously and happily, with good auspices and birds.

The active auspico is also found among the ancients, as in Plautus in the Persa: "I have begun this day with auspices"; and in Cato, On his Consulship: "After I had taken the auspices, and the army," etc. But I am certainly overlong in these grammatical trifles.

Dowry. By this he understands Paradise and the other temporal gifts conferred on Adam.

Maturavisset, that is, God would have taken [him] back to Himself maturely, or seasonably, and at a fitting time. Between maturare and properare, or accelerare, there seems to be this difference, that the latter signifies mere speed, but the former speed with deliberation. Thus no delay is mixed with speed, but it is mixed with maturing. So too speed sometimes does harm, maturing never; whence that Greek saying of Augustus Caesar: SPEUDE BRADEŌS, MAKE HASTE SLOWLY. He evidently thought that maturing grows together, as it were, out of two things otherwise opposed to one another, the speed of industry and the slowness of diligence; and when both of these have been duly tempered together, we say that the business is mature and is now being done seasonably. So also fruits that are too quick, and pushed forth as it were by nature in haste, we call precocious, rarely tasty and lasting; but those which grow with slower increments than would be fitting more rarely ripen, but for the most part remain raw, and are fit neither for use nor for eating.

Yet for all that I do not deny that maturare is sometimes taken for properare and acting quickly. That elegant saying deserves to be adduced here which St Cyprian has in the Letter to Donatus: "Receive what is perceived before it is learnt, and is not gathered by long acquaintance through the delays of time, but is drawn in by the short way of hastening grace."

Dedicavit. On this word see the book On Baptism, ch. 19, note Dedicata. Our author, moreover, mostly uses this word when he wishes to signify some new thing, as in the Apology, ch. 12, he says: "On the gibbet the body of your god is first dedicated"; and in the book On the Soul, ch. 19, of an infant newly born: "Dedicating, he says, all the senses at once, both sight by light and hearing by sound," etc. Likewise in the book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. 11, he says that the universe (this world) was dedicated by God. In these and similar places, therefore, it seems to be taken for "initiate"; in which sense he says that God dedicated repentance in Himself, as it were for an example to us.

But "to repent" is said of God, like other such things proper to human affections, anthropopathically: "In men (says St Augustine, book 2 To Simplicianus, q. 2) there is the work of repenting when the will is found to need changing; but in man it is with pain of mind; for he reproves in himself what he did rashly. Let us therefore take away these things, he continues, which come from human weakness and ignorance, and let there remain only the willing that something should not be as it was; thus it can be intimated to our mind by what rule it is to be understood that God repents. For when He is said to repent, He wills that something should not be, as He had made it to be; yet that thing, when it was, ought so to be, and when it is no longer allowed so to be, it ought no longer so to be, by a certain perpetual and tranquil judgement of equity, by which God disposes all changeable things by an UNCHANGEABLE WILL." And again on Psalm 131: "When He changes His works through His unchangeable counsel, on account of that very [change], not of counsel,

but of work, change, He is said to repent." You will find similar things in the same [author] in the book of Eighty-three Questions, q. 52, and in the author of the book On the Essence of the Divinity among the works of St Augustine.

Of angers. For indeed God too is angry, but by no means as a man is. "The anger of a man (St Augustine says again, book 2, To Simplicianus, in the question cited) is turbulent; but the anger of God, while He abides continually in TRANQUILLITY, exercises vengeance upon the subject creature with admirable equity... From the anger of a man I take away the turbulent motion, so that the vigour of vengeance may remain, and thus I rise in some fashion to the knowledge of that which is called THE ANGER OF GOD." Would you have me also add what he has in book 1, Against the Adversary of the Law and the Prophets, chapter 20: "When God repents, HE IS NOT CHANGED, and He changes [things]; just as when He is angry, HE IS NOT CHANGED, and He avenges."

To His image, that is, to man created after His image, Gen. 1:26 ff. Recall, if you please, what we said fully enough on chapter 5 of On Baptism, in the note To the image of God, 1159.

He gathered. As in Exod. 6:7: "God said: I will take you to Myself for a people, and I will be your God," etc. So too in very many places elsewhere.

He exhorted. The books of sacred History are full of these; but especially the Book of Exodus and that of Judges abound in examples of this kind.

By prophesying. Rhenanus says that it is a dative, and that it is the same as for prophesying.

He sent forth. To send forth signifies for our author either simply to send, or, with greater emphasis, to send out from Himself, so that they might prophesy in His name, that is, God's.

About to illuminate. This was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost through those fiery tongues, when Peter presently discoursed to the assembly in these words, Acts 2:17-18: This is what was foretold through the prophet Joel: And it shall be in the last days (says the Lord), I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, etc. This very thing had been foretold before in Isa. 44:3, where God [says]: I will pour out My Spirit upon your seed, etc. Moreover, to illuminate the whole world seems to be drawn from a Greek phrase, which occurs in the Canticle of Zachary, Luke 1:79: Ἐπιφᾶναι τοῖς ἐν σκότει καὶ σκιᾷ θανάτου καθημένοις, that is, TO ILLUMINATE (to bring light to) THOSE who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

The dipping, that is, the baptism of repentance which John preached for the remission of sins, Mark 1:4.

Destined. Namely Gen. 12:3, where God [says] to Abraham: In you shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed. And Isa. 41:8: The seed of Abraham, My friend, in whom I took hold of you from the ends of the earth..., and I said to you: You are My servant, I have chosen you and have not cast you off, etc. And so very often elsewhere.

The undersigning, that is, the subscription, which was attached to that promise in the manner of a condition, so that the people of Israel too should likewise bind itself to keep that covenant.

Should compose, for should arrange, or should adapt, as is admonished by

St John: Prepare the way of the Lord, etc. (Mark 1:3).

Will draw near. For thus in Matt. 3:2 John [says] to the people in the desert: Do penance, for the kingdom of the heavens has drawn near.

Ancient error. Original sin.

Ignorance. Sins committed through ignorance (that is, through vincible and culpable [ignorance]).

Sweeping. As it were cleansing out with brooms (for it is with these that we properly sweep); as it is said in Matt. 12:24: He finds it cleaned with brooms.

Scraping. Those stains, or other things, which have settled in somewhat more deeply are scraped away; hence we also speak of shaving the beard, etc.

Lies open. Whether to receive Him in baptism, but more fully through the subsequent Imposition of Hands,

Gladly. Finding nothing now unseemly in this His lodging, but rather all things clean and worthy of Himself.

Cause, that is, the final [cause].

This work. Opera is taken here for labour, as our same [author] in the book On Patience, ch. 16: 'This is the principle of patience, this its discipline, this its heavenly and true work,' etc. And in the book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. 15: 'Let them deny the partnership in the works, so that they may with justice also deny the reward.'

Profits man, i.e. conduces to his advancement, as in the book On Baptism, ch. 7.

Its principle. That is, of penance.

We learn. For when this is not known, the true principle of penance must necessarily be unknown. See above, ch. 1, where: 'Therefore all who are ignorant of God,' etc.

Is cast upon. By twisting penance violently, and against its own nature, even towards good works, [these being] thereafter to be hindered through it.

And, for even.

Let it see to it. A form of speech frequent everywhere with our [author]; as in the Apology, ch. 16, he says: 'Let the appearance see to itself, provided the quality of the material is the same; let the form see to itself, provided it is the very body of God,' etc., and in the book On Patience, ch. 16: 'Let them see to their own.' Book On the Shows, ch. 15: 'Let the principal heading, idolatry, see to itself,' etc. Thus we mostly use this phrase when we forewarn another, who has been brought into some danger, to be on guard about it, so that he may take care of his own affair. So Cicero in the Brutus says: 'You will see to this'; i.e. I leave the care of this matter to you, lest, if anything should turn out otherwise, you impute it to me. And Terence in the Adelphi: 'I will see to that'; as if he were saying: 'That will be my care.'

Into disfavour. See ch. 1, note Ingratia. But what if I should explain the sentence thus: 'Let the perverse opinion of men see to it, unwelcome indeed to others? etc. Or if those to whom we have done good begin to displease us, and to be disagreeable or hateful [to us].'

Forces penance. The sense seems to be: 'If it even forces, drives and twists penance, as though reluctant and against its own nature, towards evil deeds.'

Its courting. The courting of favour is the desire of winning for oneself another's favour and goodwill, so that another

may be pleased by us, and we may be pleasing to him, that is, accepted. For rarely is anyone found who, when he does a kindness to another, either does not wish to please or does not hope for something and seek some profit to come back to himself. So much, everywhere and excessively, are we lovers of ourselves.

Mortal, i.e. temporal, and destined at some time to cease, namely both favour and disfavour.

Of gain. That is, of profit and lucre, as the best authors commonly have it.

Debtor, namely of a reward.

Evil, that is, of punishment.

Remunerator, i.e. one who repays.

Sanctions, for "establishes"; now to sanction is to establish something that cannot be violated with impunity.

Must be rendered. That is, by repairing through satisfaction His supreme right, injured by sins.

Private. Latinius deletes "private", as bringing obscurity to a passage otherwise remarkable; but I think it can be kept without difficulty, and I understand "private" here as "proper", as our author says more explicitly in the book On the Shows, ch. 10: "which are private and proper to the stage", etc. And Cicero in book 3 On Ends says: "Yet in speaking they use words as if private, and their own."

Office. But what office can there be for malice, except among those of whom Tullius says in book 1 On Duties, near the beginning: "There are some schools which, by the ends of good and evil they propose, confound every duty"? Here, however, our author seems rather to have followed the etymology of the noun, of which St Ambrose says in book 1 On Duties, ch. 8: "We think officium is named from efficiendo, as if officium", etc.; in which sense malice too has its office, but improperly, and only so called according to the name, empty in reality. Although I would rather think, as what immediately follows suggests, that it should be understood thus: "The office proper towards malice (namely, that we repent of evil) he also devotes to goodness, that is, to good works and kindnesses bestowed on another."

Is neglected. See what was said at ch. 1, towards the end.

Notes on Chapter III.

Spirit. The soul, or its intellect.

Regard. As if by rays sent forth upon him from God, the source of all Light.

Precepts, namely to be known.

To be reckoned. To be counted among sins.

Is man. As consisting of body and soul.

The two make one. For thus the soul joined to the body makes one man.

Of the materials. That is, of the component parts, which are as it were the matter of the whole.

A thing of God. As he said above, ch. 1: "Reason is a thing of God."

Moulded. For God formed man (that is, his body) from the slime of the earth (Gen. 2:7).

At His breath. "And He breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul" (ibid.).

Offends. Tertullian did not on that account mean that sins

all are equal, as the Stoics thought, but only this: that from the fact that some are carnal and others spiritual, that is, some are committed by the body while others subsist in the soul and its will alone, a greater gravity of one sin over another is not on that account to be measured.

Into judgement. That is, of the eternal fire; for here he sets judgement against life, namely eternal life. See what we said on the book On Baptism, chapter 10, note Into judgement.

Eo. For eapropter [therefore].

To expend. Therefore the body too must concur in penance, namely through perceptible and external acts and bodily afflictions; the soul, however, through inward sorrow, etc.

It belongs to both. For just as actions are said to belong to supposits, so neither does the body sin alone, nor the soul alone, but Man, who is composed of body and soul, rising into one supposit, or person; for to him actions, good as well as bad, are imputed.

It is done. That is, by some external and perceptible deed.

It is thought. And is kept purely within the mind.

It has to be touched. Touched is taken here not for the sense of touch alone, but also for the perception of the other senses. For the rest, contingi habet, for contingi potest [can be touched], is a Hellenism; for the Greeks are accustomed to say, e.g. Gr. Οὐδεὶς εἰπεῖν ἔχει, No one can say.

Nor is it grasped. That is, it is reached by no sense.

Offences of the will. That is, purely internal ones.

Mediocrity. Which, placed as it were on the borders, cannot penetrate further and reach the very heart of the matter. This, then, is human mediocrity: that it discerns only external acts (and not even these always, or with sufficient certainty), but is not able even to look into internal ones.

It is not equal. For he too, "the praetor, does not judge of internal things."

Under God. That is, with no regard had for God.

Whence, that is, through which, and in whatever way at all.

Should decree into judgement. For He first decrees to go into judgement before He decides in the judgement itself and passes sentence. Or perhaps he takes judgement here for the condemnation itself and the punishment of eternal fire, as an example occurred above; or finally it agrees with what is found at the beginning of the following chapter: "He appointed punishment through judgement."

It is the origin. For otherwise it cannot be reckoned to be ours and be imputed to us.

When therefore. Understand will.

It is freed. This can be understood of the will, which is freed, that is, absolved, from guilt; or of the guilt itself, which is discharged, that is, taken away. So too we are said to discharge promises when we remove and void their obligation by fulfilling them.

Intercepts. That is, so that it cannot go out into the deed itself and be consummated; for he 'perpetrates', as

Festus says, who carries out and completes the work itself. It is said chiefly of evil things, although we find it sometimes said of good things too.

Suum fuerat ("had been its own"). As far as it lay in the will itself, which effectively wills something, it already accomplishes it. And hence, as our theologians commonly say, the external act does not add a new species of sin to the internal one; rather, the former is the mere completion of the latter.

Adjectionem legis ("the addition to the law"). For to the sixth precept of the Decalogue, by which adulteries and the like are forbidden, He also added a new one, by which even the internal will is made subject to guilt, although it has not been completed in deed.

Cominus ("at close quarters"). That is, by the act itself.

Contaminasset ("had defiled"). Everyone who has looked at a woman so as to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart, says Christ, Matthew 5:28.

Administrare ("to carry out"), that is, to act, or in any way whatever to concur in acting.

Expungit ("discharges"). This word, which our author frequently uses, must be weighed somewhat more carefully, since unless it is rightly understood it can repeatedly create great obscurities. First of all it should be noted that creditors formerly wrote down the names of their debtors on wax tablets with a stylus, and when those debts had been paid off and the creditor's claim thus dissolved, they used to pierce those names with points or erase them with the reversed stylus, and so expunge them. Hence it came about that, by a metaphor drawn from this, the word was employed for "to fulfil" and "to accomplish".

But let us now bring forward examples from our Tertullian himself, and first of all the one he has in the book Against the Jews, ch. 11, which is clearer than the rest: "Let them not call into doubt, or deny, the scriptures which we bring forward, so that the things which were foretold as to come after Christ may be recognized as fulfilled. For neither (he continues) would the dispensation be found discharged unless He had come after Whom the things that were announced, which were also to be proved to have been completed, had to be discharged." So too in the same work, ch. 4, he has: "The abolition of carnal circumcision and of the old law is shown to have been discharged (fulfilled and consummated) at its own times." And again, ch. 9: "The prophecy is as much understood to have been announced as it is believed to have been discharged", that is, fulfilled. Likewise ch. 12: "They will not have been prophesied of any other than Him through Whom we regard them as discharged." And in the Apology against the Gentiles it also recurs several times, as in ch. 2: "The guilty man is to be discharged by the debt of punishment" (that is, that debt is to be fulfilled by him, or the sentence passed upon him is to be committed to execution), not "exempted". And in ch. 15 he says that lust is "discharged", that is, satisfied or accomplished. Likewise ch. 20: "There is one time for divination, which foretells future things among men, if perhaps it is distinguished, while it is being discharged", etc. And in ch. 21 he says of Christ, "Who has already been discharged (has fulfilled [it]) in the lowliness of the human condition." "And also ch. 35: For why do we, chaste and sober" and upright, "discharge the vows and rejoicings of the Caesars?" Finally ch. 48: "Then

all mankind will be restored for the settling of what it has deserved in this age, whether good or evil."

But let us likewise look at the remaining [passages] of his Books. Thus, then, in the book On Patience, ch. 14, he has: "He discharged every kind of patience against every force of the devil." And in the book On the Soldier's Crown, ch. 1: "The laurelled soldiers were being checked off in the camp;" for when they passed through by their ranks in due order, about to receive the donative, once it had been received the names of the individuals were either marked with a point or struck out entirely, as men in whom that largess was now finished and complete. In the book Exhortation to the Martyrs, ch. 6: "How many have been put to death by robbers with the sword, and by enemies even with the cross, having first been tortured, and indeed made to undergo every insult in full?" that is, every insult having been, as it were, consummated in them. And in book 2 Against Marcion, ch. 20: "He satisfied His people, in the straitened time of the expedition, with some solace of tacit compensation," or fulfilled [it]. So in the book On Prayer, ch. 1, he calls the Gospel the completer of the whole antiquity that went before, since, namely, in it through Christ all those things were fulfilled and consummated which had been prefigured in the Old Law. Finally also in the book On Idolatry, ch. 16, he says: "If there is neither in invocation nor in sacrifice any title of office and discharge of my service" (that is, performance, and fulfilment of the office), "what then?" etc. Here you see that all these passages come back to almost the same meaning. Therefore by this phrase too, per voluntatem expungit effectum, he meant to say that the very will to accomplish something is held as already fulfilled in place of the deed itself, as the context itself shows. See also On the Prescription, ch. 10.

1216. Saturans: for "filling up" and "completing". Pro facto cedat, that is, let it be held as a deed done.

Notes on Chapter IV.

Spopondit. He therefore excludes no kind of sin, however grave, from the hope of pardon and the fruit of penitence; which is again a clear indication that Tertullian, when he wrote this, had not yet been corrupted by Montanus. For here he makes no distinction, as he does in the book On Modesty, ch. 2 (by then an open Montanist), between remissible and irremissible sins. "And according to this difference of offences (he continues), the condition of penitence also is distinguished. One will be such as can obtain pardon, namely in a remissible offence; another such as can in no way obtain it, namely in an irremissible offence." And so he goes on further to examine the various kinds of sins. However, we shall perhaps treat this matter more fully elsewhere.

Poenitere, that is, do penance; for according to this expression our Vulgate translator twice uses poeniteor in the sense of a deponent verb, namely Mark 1:15, where Christ [says]: Repent (the Greek has μετανοεῖτε), and believe the Gospel. Likewise Acts 3:19, where St Peter [says] to the people: Repent (μετανοήσατε) and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out. The Latins use the verb poenitet as impersonal, more rarely as personal, hardly ever as deponent.

"I live." The formula of God, who quite often swears thus by Himself.

"Pre-eminence." He uses this word in a bad sense for "excellence", in the sense, namely, in which St Paul, 1 Tim. I, 5, called himself "first" among sinners, as though surpassing all others in the gravity of his sins.

"I acknowledge." This was the voice of Tertullian while he still thought humbly of himself, not of the proud Montanist rising insolently against the Church herself.

"Faith", that is, faithfulness in saving. And hence penance was thereafter called "the second plank after shipwreck". St Ambrose, or another author, in the Letter to a Fallen Virgin, beautifully imitated this passage, addressing her thus: "But you, who have already entered the contest of penance, press on bravely, wretched one; cling to it as a shipwrecked man to a plank." But no less St Jerome, in Letter 8, to Demetrias, likewise speaking of penance: "That is, as it were, the second plank after shipwreck for the wretched," etc. And so thereafter other holy Fathers adopted this phrase.

"Will lift up." Some codices read "will wash thoroughly": quite foolishly; for is one who has sunk down submerged in the waves to be washed thoroughly besides, and not rather lifted up and drawn out?

"Will draw onward." To "protelare" is to move forward or drive something on by a "protelum", that is, by a continuous draught, as oxen, namely, bound to the same yoke, are wont to advance with like and equal thrust. Hence also that long strap which binds them to the yoke was formerly called a "protelum". And hence is that saying of Cato, On Agriculture: "In a team, three oxen will draw one plough." There is no doubt, moreover, that this word is of Greek origin, and indeed, as Donatus will have it, derived from πρό and ἑλεῖν, that is, "before" and "to draw". Others, however, derive it from τῆλε or τηλόθι, that is, "far off", because by a protelum a somewhat longer draught is made. There are, besides, various transferred senses of that word, concerning which, if there is leisure, the grammarians should be consulted.

"Unexpected." For a plank is sought in vain by a shipwrecked man unless it offers itself suddenly to those already despairing.

"Of minds", that is, of wills. For will anyone reckon as a servant's compliance that which is at odds with his master's will?

"Through this", that is, on that account. Other codices have "for this", that is, for so great a breadth of the subject.

"Narrow limits." Namely of talent, or of time, or of a treatment fixed beforehand in any way whatever.

"It is good." And useful to us.

"To listen." He takes it here for "to obey". But I warn the reader of this in vain.

"The advantage of the one who serves." Advantage, then, is to be put after the precept. Although this very thing too is far more full of infinite advantage and reward: to have obeyed GOD when He commands, even with no regard to advantage.

"You turn it over", or you deliberate with yourself too anxiously; for so the scrupulous are wont to do.

"He has commanded beforehand." What can be more powerful than these two little words, and more effective

for subduing us thoroughly so that we fulfil His commandments?

He exhorts. But is "to exhort" (so popular a word) greater than "TO COMMAND"? Yes indeed; for he who commands acts by his own authority, whereas he who exhorts, even when he commands, is at the same time kind: pressing, indeed, but at the same time adapting that very command to our weakness, and showing along with it that in the very thing He has commanded He is ready to help us, so that it may be fulfilled.

Salvation. This indeed can be wholly DIVINE and proper to the CLEMENCY OF GOD alone.

Saying, "I live". Passages of this kind are countless, especially in the prophets.

By a swearing. For "by an oath".

By an asseveration, i.e. by a promise, or perhaps better for "attainment".

Notes on Chapter V.

To be unsealed. That is, after that penitence has been ratified and sealed by God through His grace, that seal ought never again to be broken through new sins, by driving out that grace once more.

Pretext. He also says praetextum in the neuter gender in the book On the Apparel of Women, ch. 9, where [he writes] to the same women: "Lest with reins fully loosed you claim licence on the pretext of necessity," etc. And in the book Against the Valentinians, ch. 9, he says: "Under the pretext of love towards the father," etc.

You separate yourself, i.e. you withdraw from it, namely as regards the knowledge of God.

You cling. Made the more obstinate, the less they are ignorant.

To fear. For just as the fear of the Lord is the beginning of WISDOM (Ps. 110:10), so is it also of penitence. For thus the Council of Trent, session 6, On Justification, ch. 6, speaks of it: "They are disposed to penitence when, understanding themselves to be sinners, they turn from the fear of divine justice, by which they are profitably shaken, to consider the mercy of God," etc. And again in session 14, ch. 4: "That attrition, conceived from fear of punishments, is an impulse of the Holy Spirit, by which the penitent, being helped, prepares for himself a way to justice."

Contumacy. He here calls contumacy perseverance in evil, by which the heart gradually grows stiff and drives out the fear of God completely. For (as is said in Sir. 27:4), If you do not hold yourself earnestly in the fear of the Lord, your house will quickly be overthrown; would that it were to be restored from these most wretched ruins as easily and as quickly.

It may not be unknown. You will certainly read nothing more elegant on this subject than our Tertullian's little book On the Testimony of the Soul, truly weighty in its mass of meaning.

By the gift of God. He looks back again to what he had said above in ch. 1: Reason is a thing of God.

By His rival. He meant the unhappy and exceedingly shameless ape of God. But how this plotter against the human race long ago strove to imitate the mysteries of God, you will read in the book On Prescription, ch. 40.

By going back. Or by relapse into former sins.

The Evil One. The devil is so called as it were par excellence (κατ' ἐξοχήν), as among the Greeks he is called Ponēros. So also in the book On Patience, ch. 11, he says: "Glad and widespread is the working of the Evil One"; where the context suggests that the devil is meant; and in the same place, ch. 14, again of the same: "The Evil One was being torn apart, whom Job... held in check with great equanimity." And so elsewhere too. No less in the Lord's Prayer, where at Matt. 6:13 Christ Himself taught us, among other things, to pray: but deliver us from evil, the Greek text has ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ, by which word most of the Fathers, both Latin and Greek, understand the devil.

It is dangerous. As if it could scarcely be uttered without offence and scandal to those who read it.

Edification. This is the opposite of scandal; for what the latter destroys, the former repairs.

With judgement given. It seems to be the same as "in judgement", which ought to be done only after serious deliberation has gone before and the matter has been weighed on both sides.

Repentance. By which one now repents of the very repentance done before.

In act. Namely in outward act, as above, ch. 3, note on Agitur.

With faith, i.e. with the fear of God and fidelity unharmed and retained, and without prejudice to these.

With fear kept safe. Bitter mockery!

It is a defence. Up to this point he has woven out that sarcasm.

Of hypocrites. Hypokrisis is otherwise the feigning of an actor imitating the gestures of another person; whence such an actor is also called hypokrisis. But in the phraseology of Holy Scripture he is one who by his conduct displays uprightness, but within and under the skin, as they say, is worthless, a dishonest pretender; of men of this sort the Poet [says]:

Who feign to be Curii and live Bacchanalia. Such above all were those against whom Christ forewarned us at Matt. 7:15: Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the garments of sheep, but inwardly are ravening wolves; of whom the Evangelists [say] more.

Notes on Chapter VI.

Mediocrity, i.e. our mediocre talent, as those who think modestly of themselves are accustomed to say. See also above, ch. 3.

That all. Junius wants omnis here to be taken for omneis, as the ancients used to say for omnes. But those who think omnis is to be referred to the word salutis defend themselves by another passage of Tertullian (book On the Veiling of Virgins, ch. 8): "'All' is the whole, and and entire, lacking in no part of itself."

To the little novices. He means catechumens here, recently admitted to the first grade, and therefore still weak in faith.

Hangs over these, or is destined for and directed at the same.

To water the ears. A rather florid metaphor for those who had been admitted into the Church to hear the word of God

placed among the catechumens in the grade of hearers, concerning whom [we speak] a little further below.

Catuli. Catulus is properly a smaller dog or little dog; although I would find it rightly said of all brute animals (but only the viviparous ones) while they are still tender.

Perfectis, that is, with sight not yet perfected, just as indeed it is in the proverb: A hasty bitch gives birth to blind pups."

Reptant. It is, moreover, a Hellenism, as from the Greek ἄδηλα ἕρπουσι, "they creep uncertain things," that is, "into the uncertain" (nowhere fixing sure and firm footsteps). Of the same kind is also that in the book On Patience, ch. 1: "Who live blind things" (for "blind").

Quidem. Either se is to be understood, or it should certainly be inserted here.

Includere, that is, to shut in, and as it were to fortify. For thus dogs are eager to keep their pups within their lairs, lest, slipping away heedlessly, they run through their blindness into some obstacle and be hurt by it.

Desiderandi. Because they are shortly to make an end of their evil desires, being about to renounce them in baptism, and to be transformed from the old man into the new.

Senescere. An apt and elegant simile for repentance.

Adulantur, that is, they flatter the comeliness of the fruits, which in part they have still retained, pleasing themselves in it. See the book On Baptism, ch. 3, the note Aut gratia, 1147, and ch. 9, Aquae gratia, 1171.

Intinctionis, that is, of Baptism, as elsewhere throughout.

Medium tempus. Or intervening, namely between their conversion and baptism itself, that is, while they are still living among the catechumens.

Commeatum. A military word, signifying the leave granted to soldiers, by which they are permitted to be absent from the camp for some time on account of health or of other business. Sometimes it also denotes that very space of time during which a soldier, having set out somewhere, is absent from the camp; indeed it is sometimes taken even for the rations themselves, given as provision for the journey. Several examples are found in our author; as Apology, ch. 32: "The greatest violence threatening the whole world... we know to be delayed by the furlough of the Roman Empire (the space of time which God, as supreme commander, is going to grant it)." In the same sense it is taken in the book Against Praxeas, ch. 1: "But it will be uprooted again during this furlough," etc. So in the Apology, ch. 46, he speaks of "a furlough for deliberating often frustrated." And in the book On Flight in Persecution, ch. 9, "He wishes us to gain a furlough." And again in book 2 Against Marcion, ch. 10, he says: "By measuring out a furlough to his operations, He acted on the principle of His goodness." Finally in the book On the Soul, ch. 30: "Because this furlough would not have matched (would not have been equal and fittingly proportioned to) the milestone of life, being of course far shorter in time." For the rest, after commeatum understand magis or potius; and perhaps this little word has dropped out of this comparison, or it is absent by an ellipsis frequent among the Greeks.

Which penance. This particle quam seems to need deleting; it was perhaps the work of a drowsy copyist.

To sustain. It seems to be put for to await, as in the book Against the Jews, ch. 6, where he says of the future coming of Christ: "If He has not yet come, He is to be sustained (awaited), so long as (until) His coming be made manifest."

To send forth the hand. This example (here also carried further) could easily occur to Tertullian, inasmuch as he had formerly been an advocate and was diligently practised in legal matters.

To adjudge. Put for to give. It is again a word proper to the courts, as Samuel Pitiscus in his Lexicon, on that solemn formula of praetorian law, do, dico, addico, quotes a certain law from the ancients: "Whatever magistrate shall preside over the administration of justice in that colony, to that magistrate shall belong the jurisdiction in that matter, and the appointing of a judge, and the adjudging." Otherwise, however, addicere properly belongs to a seller.

He instituted. Put for he established.

By compensation. Indeed, through penance the divine right, injured by sin, is repaired, and the injury done to it is compensated, namely in so far as the act of penance has the very satisfaction of Christ for us, and His merits, intimately joined to itself. Indeed, many of the Scholastics thereafter taught, nor are they lacking today, that the formal reason, as they call it, of penance consists in the compensation for the aforesaid injury.

Lest an adulterer. By ellipsis sit is certainly to be understood.

The truth. As something to be examined further below.

We are absolved. This expression is ironical; as if, forsooth, absolution itself were a demonstration of true penance, either already performed or yet to be performed.

Pending, that is, still in suspense.

It is looked forward to. As something still impending.

He has been changed. Transferred now into another state. In this sense our same author, in the book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. 57, says: "I ask you, if you have changed your servant by freedom," etc.

He imputes it to himself. As acknowledging himself further guilty of these things, and on that account about to do penance. But what was once more frequent in this thievish and runaway class of men?

Sent forth. Soldiers, having completed their lawful service (namely of a fixed number of years), were sent out of the camp, or discharged from military service, released thenceforth from their military oath; this was an honourable discharge; another, made on account of disease or some other bodily defect, was called a discharge for cause, and was held equal to the honourable one.

For the marks, that is, military offences, by which he had been badly marked. If you prefer, you will take marks here for those punctures, or brands, with which recruits newly enrolled in the army were marked, so that, if they should flee anywhere, they might be recognized by them and dragged back under their standards and banners, to be subjected to military punishment according to the laws of the service.

Concerning these marks Vegetius, book 2, ch. 5, has as follows: "With marks that will live (that will endure and can no longer be erased)

pricked in the skin, soldiers enrolled and entered on the rolls are accustomed to swear their oath.» And Aetius, a certain Greek physician, quoted by Lipsius, On the Roman Military, book I, dialogue 9, speaks thus: "They call stigmata the marks inscribed on the face or on some other part of the body, such as those of soldiers on the hands." That is: "They call stigmata those things which are inscribed on the face or on another part of the body, such as are those of soldiers on their hands." By these marks, then, soldiers, for as long as they had to serve, were continually reminded of their duties, and for those who transgressed them the heaviest penalties were certainly to be feared.

"To those about to enter the water", that is, to those to be baptized. At that time, moreover, baptism was commonly performed by immersion, as our dogmatic theologians [show] at length. The water, therefore, was then not to be approached but actually to be entered.

"Safe": secure and certain.

"Sprinkling". Some prefer asparginem. We have said more about this word on the book On Baptism, chapter V. For the rest, Tertullian seems to allude to baptism as conferred in former times also by sprinkling, especially on the clinici or bedridden: on which matter the dogmatic theologians should again be consulted where they treat of the proximate matter of Baptism. It can, however, also be understood thus: «Even a single sprinkling only (that is, water sprinkled drop by drop), not to say a whole abundance of water», etc.

"Will lend", for "will be imparted"; for it is used here not in the legal sense, in which someone lends his property to another for a time, to be returned later, but as it signifies to render another a benefit or useful service.

"By theft", for "furtively" and "secretly".

"To be led round", that is, to be covered over by deceits and cunning, in which sense also someone is said to be circumscribed or circumvented by another: «For every petition (as he says in the book On Baptism, chapter XVIII) can both deceive and be deceived.»

"God is light". An elegant sentence indeed!

"The symbol of death", that is, baptism, instituted by Christ as a sign commemorating His death and burial, and indeed His resurrection too, so that we also, dead in Adam, buried together with Christ through baptism, might be raised from the death of sin to the LIFE OF GRACE. See the book On Baptism, chapter XI, the note "Without His resurrection", and chapter XVI, the note "He should be glorified".

"Permits". Junius rightly reads "promises", although I consider that "permits" too, which is in my manuscript, can be tolerated.

"They fall away", namely from the grace obtained in baptism; since we know that many, not seldom forestalled by death, have also been disappointed of obtaining it. See the book On Baptism, chapter XVIII, the note "It is more useful".

"Having set about", that is, [a] faithless and inconstant [penitence], and therefore doing penance neither earnest nor sincere.

"Bound to fall". Such a one, namely, «will be like a foolish man who builds his house upon the sand», etc. (Matt. 7:26).

"Of the hearers". Here a certain grade of catechumens

is, concerning which [we spoke] above, and elsewhere perhaps at greater length. Although here I would think this word is to be taken simply for catechumens, since he repeats it so often in the same sense.

Eo. That is, "for that reason", or "on that account".

Simul. For "as soon as possible".

Simul inspexeris. That is, as soon as you have come to know Him more closely and more thoroughly.

Incubas. And further, you lean upon [it], as though from an excessively tenacious habit and custom. See the book On Baptism, ch. 11, note Resurrectionem.

Ignarus, that is, when you had not yet come to know God.

Separat. Pamelius, on the testimony of Junius, reads from three manuscripts a perfecto Dei verbo. But what would that be? Is it not rather better to keep the reading of my codex, which may be explained quite suitably thus: What separates you, that is, distinguishes and sets you apart, from a servant of God already made perfect through baptism? Nor indeed does the catechumen have anything special over the baptized, as though he could rush straight into baptism without penitence for his own personal sins: for he at least needs a preceding attrition in order to receive it fruitfully.

Fide, that is, by faithful and true penitence, not as in the preceding chapter, note Hypocritarum.

Loti sumus. Inwardly, that is: which, however, is not always a perfect washing, but for the most part only a begun one. For that penitence which proceeds from fear, which we call attrition, does not of itself justify before baptism is actually received, but only perfect contrition, [proceeding] from the love of God above all things. Yet in so long a penitence as formerly had to be made by catechumens before baptism, it could scarcely happen that it did not at some point pass, as if by certain steps, into perfect contrition, so that someone, his sins having been blotted out, was already inwardly justified before he actually received baptism itself. One may see here what the Council of Trent, cited above, sess. 6, On Justification, ch. 6, clearly sets out.

Integer. Sincere and perfect, [the fear] which he calls the first, that is, the initial and begun, as we said just before, dipping, or baptism.

Quoad. For "as soon as", as above.

Senseris, that is, "you have come to know".

Ab aquis, that is, after baptism, or after we have come up again out of the waters.

Induimus. For this is the necessary effect of baptism and, as we call it, ex opere operato; for the sacraments, like natural causes, operate necessarily in a rightly disposed subject.

Obstructi, that is, hindered on every side.

Alligatus. To the New Law of Christ, namely, after the « renunciation of the devil and all his pomps » made by the baptized.

Qui enim optat. Truly remarkable antitheses follow.

Timidiorem. Somewhat more shaken by the fear of God. See above.

"Should promise in return". Simply for "should promise", as our author [uses] similar compounds everywhere.

"About to perform" (praestaturus). Quite rightly for praestiturus, since praestare is taken for "to fulfil" or "to accomplish".

Notes on Chapter VII.

"To the hearers". The Author indicates clearly enough that what he has set out so far concerns the penitence to be done before baptism by the hearers, that is, by the catechumens. Now, however, he turns to that kind of penitence which remains to be embraced by those who have relapsed after baptism, as now, as we said above, the second plank after shipwreck.

"Nothing now". Either "nothing now" refers to those who after baptism are conscious of nothing further worthy of penitence; or it is to be referred to little children, incapable of actual sin and therefore of penitence.

"Handling again", that is, "handling": so that it is now tiresome to have noted it so often.

"To point out", that is, as it were to mark out, as though to people invited to sin further.

"Thereby". For "so far" or "on that account".

"Let it now lie open". Understand "space" (that is, of time), or "door", or something similar.

"Will have of escaping": the way of escaping, that is, being shut off.

"Will not have": he himself, namely, setting himself no end of offending.

"Thus far". "Thus far", that is, "so far". Or shall we Christians perhaps wait for the gentiles themselves to set before us their god Terminus (bah! not to be named without impiety!) as a limit to our sins?

"Perilous". Others read "perils": that is plainer indeed, but not of such weight that I should be compelled on that account to abandon my manuscript.

"They say to the sea". "He wrongly accuses Neptune who suffers shipwreck twice", says Publius the writer of mimes.

"They honour it by the memory of the peril". A most elegantly put saying indeed!

"To be a burden". Emphatic, that is, suited to rousing the feelings.

"To trample in". To tread upon it. But why many words? I take inculcare here simply for calcare, that is, to insult with the heels in the utmost contempt: and who will object?

"Measure", that is, restraint or curbing.

"While it is extinguished". A most beautiful antithesis.

"Works of death": namely of that death which among deaths themselves is the most terrible of all, the death of the soul.

"Behind its own". "Before its own", that is, the sinner's,

"Is to judge". For thus Saint Paul says (1 Cor. 6:3): Do you not know that we shall judge angels? Which the interpreters commonly understand of the evil or damned spirits. "These, namely, are they (says our author in the book On the Dress of Women, chapter II) whom we are to judge: these are the angels whom we renounce in the font." And in the book On Flight in Persecution, chapter X, he speaks thus: "You fear a man, Christian, you who ought to be feared by the angels (since you are to judge angels), you who ought to be feared

by the demons," etc. It is of these angels, then, that Tertullian too speaks here.

Traditionibus. Others read conditionibus, which I cannot approve. Junius reads traductionibus, a word which our author uses in the book On the Prescription, ch. 22. And indeed this reading seems to suit the context better, for we properly say that someone is led across from the road, or from the straight path, into pathless places, etc.

Sera obstructa. The word obstructa is to be referred not to seram but to januam, so that the sense is: the door barred by the bolt of dipping, that is, of baptism. And this is rightly said, because baptism cannot be repeated, and so this door no longer lies open to one once baptized for pardon and remission of sins, so that he might enter through it twice.

Frustra. This expression is rather harsh: as if penance too could not be repeated by the baptized after repeated relapses, and so all hope of obtaining pardon again were thereafter shut off. But perhaps Tertullian meant to say no more than that the more often someone has sinned, the more difficult does serious penance become, and penance worthy of pardon so many times. And indeed in what follows he soon speaks more kindly. But see rather below, ch. 9, Patrocinia naturae, 1169.

Quod acceperas. A weighty sentence indeed, and one to be impressed deeply on the mind.

Accommodat. For commodat, that is, he grants it for your use.

Restituas, that is, recuperes, or restaures.

Nedum ampliato. Nedum is here to be explained as "much more". I know, however, that other meanings too, and sometimes a negative one, are attributed to this little word, which is otherwise ambiguous enough. But let these things be the grammarians' concern. Ampliato, moreover, anyone will readily take here for aucto or extenso. Why many words, then? Nedum will here be for me the same as ne dicam ampliato.

Quam dare. Because he who restores gives twice, by setting the other once more in the same condition from which he fell.

Non accepisse. For nothing could be taken away from him who has received nothing, and therefore he feels no misery from any loss.

Iteratae. That is, of ill health; for no one is unaware that valetudo is an ambiguous noun. So too in the book On Baptism, ch. 5, he says: "Those who complained of their health kept watch."

Notes on Chapter VIII.

Id. For de eo.

Idolothyta is the name for the flesh of victims immolated to idols, from εἴδωλον and θύω, which means "I immolate", that is, "I sacrifice". Whoever, then, had eaten of these immolated things were held to be partakers of that sacrifice and thereby polluted, as having communion with the gentiles in that so sacrilegious religion too. Therefore at the Council of Jerusalem, Acts 15, among other things the eating of idolothyta was also forbidden, since at that time it could scarcely be done without scandal; but with this removed, to eat such foods privately had in no way been forbidden; since these in truth by

idols could never be polluted or contaminated by impurities. And this is the very teaching of St Paul, 1 Cor. 10:27 ff., who speaks thus: If anyone of the unbelievers invites you (to a banquet, that is) and you wish to go, eat whatever is set before you, asking nothing for conscience' sake. But if anyone says: This has been sacrificed to idols, do not eat, for the sake of him who pointed it out (so, namely, that he may not think it is eaten in honour of his idols) and for conscience' sake: but conscience, I say, not your own, but the other's, that is, lest you become a stumbling-block to the other and wound his conscience.

Doubtful. I understand [as implied] "it would be", or "it could seem". For in former times the Apocalypse of St John had not yet been received everywhere in the Church among the canonical books, or those of undoubted faith; since even in the fourth century Eusebius himself still had doubts about it, Ecclesiastical History, book 3, ch. 33, believing with certain others that the author of this book was not John the Evangelist, but a certain other John, surnamed the Theologian. Since, then, it had not been sufficiently established about this, who [its author was], or whether he had been inspired by the Holy Spirit, most Churches long hesitated to number the Apocalypse among the divine Scriptures. Indeed, even the Council of Laodicea, held about A.D. 372, had not yet dared to receive it into its canon, and this was first done by the Council of Carthage in the year 397, Pope Innocent I afterwards at last setting forth the complete canon of Holy Scripture.

Had laboured in wandering. The little sheep, that is, wearied with wandering about.

Relieves, that is, Lessens.

Dissimulation. It seems to be put here for reticence.

Exaggerates. For increases.

Notes on Chapter IX.

One. But just before, in ch. 8, indeed already in ch. 5, Tertullian mentioned only one penance after baptism granted by the Church, strictly excluding any further one: and since he inculcates this again in this place, it seems that it should be weighed somewhat more accurately, though according to the modest measure of our undertaking.

But let no one suppose that this severity of discipline flourished either only in the times of Tertullian or in the African Churches alone. For first of all St Augustine, that great light not of the African Church only but of the whole Church, says in Letter 54 to Macedonius: "Although for them (he is speaking of those who, as he said a little before, even after penance has been performed, after reconciliation at the altar, commit similar or even graver things) the place of most humble penance is not granted in the Church, God nevertheless does not forget His patience towards them." And again a little further down: "Although it has been cautiously and salutarily provided that the place of that most humble penance be granted ONCE in the Church, lest the medicine, being cheap, be less useful to the sick, which will be so much less contemptible," etc. Therefore even in the fourth

and fifth century, not only in the Church of Hippo but in the remaining Churches of Africa as well, the rigour had been such that no one who had relapsed into grave sins was admitted to perform a second exomologesis, publicly, that is, and in the face of the Church, and in the manner which our author describes further on in this very chapter, and which St Augustine above called most humble.

And what does Clement say about his own Church of Alexandria and the others subject to it? For thus indeed he speaks in Book 2 of the Stromata: "God, since He is of great mercy, has given to those also who through faith (after faith has been received in baptism) fall into some sin, metanoian deuteran, a second penance, so that, if anyone has been tempted after his calling, driven by some violence and cunningly deceived, mian eti metanoian ametanoēton labēi, he will receive one more penance, one not to be repented of (after which penance, if he sins again, he will thereafter be able to do penance no more)." Even Origen himself, the disciple of Clement, allowed no place for a second penance after baptism, as Dupin testifies in his Bibliotheca of ecclesiastical writers, vol. 1, p. 216 of my edition.

But to speak also of the Churches of the West, St Ambrose, in Book 2 of On Penance, chapter 10, declares as follows: "Rightly are they censured who think that penance is to be performed often, who grow wanton in Christ; for if they truly performed penance, they would not think it was to be repeated afterwards; because, just as there is one baptism, so there is one penance, that, however, which is performed publicly."

Accordingly, to those guilty of certain graver crimes absolution, that is, solemn and public absolution (according to the discipline of most Churches), had customarily been granted only at the point of death (indeed, as some with probability suppose, not even then).

Nor, however, ought this rigour, when the character of the times and of other circumstances is considered, to seem excessive, or as if bearing an appearance of cruelty; for the greater vigour of nature at that time, and its excessive depravity, especially among peoples recently converted to the Church of Christ, and the inclination, especially in hotter regions, towards certain particular kinds of offence, needed to be restrained by a certain salutary terror from committing them further and from performing penance too sluggishly, which otherwise a laxity of the Church, harmful as it would then have been, and the hope of obtaining pardon from her more often, could have encouraged towards new and more frequent relapses, since examples of this kind would easily have produced pernicious scandals among others too.

Then, moreover, the penance of those who had relapsed after it had once been performed was judged not to have been serious and effective enough, and therefore the heads of the churches thought that a second penance, by whatever works it was demonstrated, could no longer be safely trusted. Dokēsis toinun metanoias, ou metanoia, to pollakis aiteisthai sungnōmēn, eph' hois plēmmeloumen pollakis: For it is a semblance of penance (says Clement of Alexandria, again in Book 2 of the Stromata), not penance, often to seek pardon for those things by which we often sin. And for this reason it came about

that to such relapsed persons absolution was granted only at the end of life, and indeed, in some churches at least, as many quite probably suppose, not even then. Yet sinners of that kind, already relapsed a second time, were not on that account to be despaired of as though they must necessarily perish; for, as we read above from St Augustine, they were left to the patience and mercy of God, to be freed from their sins and thereafter saved, namely through perfect contrition still, if they had truly and earnestly repented. Indeed, it is quite probable that they were assisted by private sacramental absolution, not only in their death-agony but also while still sound and in good health, according to the nature and demands of the circumstances.

Doubtless, however, these remained in a condition still wretched enough and not to be envied by others; for they were henceforth also to be deprived of the public prayers of the Church, which were otherwise poured out over the public penitents, and above all of the communion of the Holy Eucharist, and were going to have to make satisfaction by suffering [hereafter], unless they had applied themselves to this all the more zealously, so as to make satisfaction while still in this life through interior acts of penance and exterior works of penance, undertaken voluntarily or by the judgement of the priests.

Moreover, that severity of discipline, just as it had not been the same in all Churches, so neither had it endured equally. And indeed, when in the Eastern Church, at the close of the 4th century, public confession and penance for hidden sins had been abolished by Nectarius, patriarch of Constantinople, and the same thing, though later, had come to prevail in the Western Church, hidden sins were also subjected to secret confession alone, which could be repeated quite often, even after any relapses whatever, with the hope of obtaining private absolution once again.

At length, however, the practice of public penance had almost entirely fallen out of use, when even for public and more atrocious offences only a private and hidden penance was prescribed in Holy Confession, as the character of the times demanded, while those [offences] were otherwise left to be punished by the ecclesiastical judge with canonical censures, etc. Clearly, since that primitive fervour of the faithful had by now grown very cold, and their slackened conscience had broken through those barriers of public penance, and the former rigour of the Church no longer seemed capable of being adapted to the political order, and especially to the condition of rulers, because of hardness of hearts, the Church, a pious and provident Mother, judged that the salvation of her disobedient children must be assisted at least by leniency, and especially by the treasury of indulgences, by which that public penance could be supplied and compensated for, that treasury being now opened the more liberally. And let it suffice to have said these few things, within so great an extent of this subject, in keeping with the purpose of our little writing, and as the occasion arose, the rest to be learned more fully from our dogmatic theologians.

From these things, moreover, it is now manifest that that ancient severity of the Church, which excluded a second penance, in no way lent any support to the errors either of the Montanists or of the Novatians; for these, the very power of the Church of forgiving after

baptism the sins of those who had relapsed, had attacked, and had striven to overthrow it utterly: but she, who had received from Christ (Matt. 18:18, and John 20:23) the POWER both of loosing and of binding, governed only the USE of each as something placed in her own discretion, so that then, and as often, and in that manner, as, and when, and as often as she judged it expedient, she would by her own authority, and through her priests, either remit or retain the sins duly set forth by penitents, all the other things which were required for this sacrament by the institution of Christ Himself being inviolably observed.

"Quanto in arcto", for "quanto arctius" [by how much more narrowly].

"So much the more laborious is the proof", that is, it must be demonstrated by so many more and harder works of penance, that it may be able to create belief that it is serious and sincere.

"By conscience alone", that is, by the mind alone, or by an internal act.

"Proferatur." Junius reads "perferatur": which I cannot reject; I prefer, however, to retain the common reading.

"By some act also." External, that is, and perceptible; for he takes "act" here for "deed", as is gathered from chapter 3, note "Agitur".

"Exomologesis." Exomologesis is so called from exomologeo, which in the sacred writers properly signifies "to confess". It is, moreover, as the same Tertullian defines it (On Prayer, ch. 6), a petition for pardon; because he who asks pardon confesses his offence. It is helpful, however, to bring forward some examples: thus in Ps. 27:7, where in the Hebrew we have [the words cited], Aquila translates thus: "And from my song I will confess to Him", "And of my song I will confess to Him"; but the Septuagint: "And out of my will I will confess to Him", which our Vulgate [renders]: "And out of my will I will confess to Him." It does not say IN, but OUT OF my will, so that the confession is not merely kept within the will, but is also manifested outwardly. So in Ps. 29:10, where the Hebrew [has the words cited], Symmachus renders thus: "Shall dust confess to Thee, or declare Thy truth?", "Will the dust confess to Thee, or announce Thy truth?" Here, therefore, it signifies a confession which is a kind of announcement, consisting in an external act, and applied by metaphor to dust. On which matter many other examples might be brought forward from the Old Law.

But to come also to the New Testament, in Matt. 3:6 it is said of John: "They were baptized by him, confessing (exomologoumenoi) their sins"; which was certainly a kind of external confession, demonstrated, that is, by external acts; for John did not administer his baptism indiscriminately, but only to those whose serious penitence could be recognized from external works. So also in Acts 19:18 we have: "And many of the believers came, confessing (where again exomologoumenoi [is used]) and announcing (externally, to be sure) their deeds." But what is clearer than that in which the Apostle says (Rom. 10:10): "With the heart one believes unto righteousness, but with the MOUTH CONFESSION IS MADE (stomati de homologeitai) unto salvation." Although, however, I am not unaware,

that it is sometimes taken in another sense among profane writers, yet in Holy Scripture ἐξομολόγησις is regularly expressed by confession, which is accomplished with the mouth. Moreover, it is taken in a particular sense for the confession of sins in 1 John 1:9: "If we confess our sins," etc. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just, to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all iniquity." Likewise James 5:16: "Confess your trespasses to one another." "Confess your sins to one another," etc. Hence among the Greek theologians too exomologesis, set down without qualification, is for the most part taken for the confession of sins, indeed for the whole action of penance, inasmuch as it also includes the works of satisfaction; and in this very meaning it passed over to the Latins as well, and has been retained in the same usage up to now.

But in the eighth century it began to be extended somewhat more widely, to Litanies too, that is, public supplications, as St Isidore bears witness, Etymologies, book VI, chapter 19, near the end: "Between LITANIES and EXOMOLOGESIS," he says, "there is this difference: that exomologeses are performed for the confession of sins alone, whereas litanies are so called for the sake of entreating the Lord and obtaining His mercy in some matter. But now both words are held under one meaning, and in common speech it makes no difference whether they are called litanies or exomologesis." Meanwhile, however, among the Orientals that ancient meaning remained, as is gathered from chapter 2 of the first letter given by Jeremiah, patriarch of Constantinople, to the Lutherans in the year 1574; indeed it is in frequent use among our Latin theologians to this day.

Nor have we dwelt on this word somewhat at length without reason; for since our theologians are accustomed to use this term above all against the Calvinists, "one must proceed cautiously and prudently," as Petavius observes in his Animadversions on Epiphanius, on Heresy 89, "in the interpretation of this word, so that from the very context of the account we may judge in what sense it was used by the Fathers."

By confession, that is, through confession; for this goes before satisfaction. For the injury of another who has been wronged is not repaired through satisfaction unless this very satisfaction has proceeded from a penitent heart and a confessing mouth.

Penance is born. He speaks here of the works of penance, which he enumerates more exactly shortly afterwards.

Of prostrating. There were formerly four orders, and as it were grades, of Penitents: namely of the Weepers, the Hearers, the Prostrate, and the Bystanders.

Those were called WEEPERS (προσκλαίοντες) who, outside the door of the church, under the portico or some lower roof of it, clothed in haircloth, sprinkled with ashes, etc., kneeling, or, according to the gravity of their crimes, even prostrate with the whole body, amid bitter tears, sometimes amid sobs and wailing, implored from those going in and out the help of prayers, by which they might intercede with the bishop for their reception into the church.

HEARERS (ἀκροώμενοι, or listeners) now within

the church door, being admitted to that place which was called the narthex or ferula (as though appointed properly for those who were still under the rod of ecclesiastical discipline), and which was separated from the church itself by certain boards or railings, they stood, having been let in there to hear the divine Scriptures and the other sacred readings, but at the beginning of the Mass of the catechumens they were to be driven out again, as not yet worthy to take part in the prayers of the rest of the faithful.

The Prostrate (hypopiptontes) were those to whom a place was granted within the church itself as far as the ambo (the place appointed for reading the Epistle and the Gospel), in such a way that they both joined their prayers with the rest of the faithful and received frequent impositions of hands (of which some think that at least the last was sacramental, that is, absolving from sins) kneeling or prostrate on the ground, but at the beginning of the Oblation, which we call the Offertory, they were compelled to leave the church. And this Order of the Prostrate was often called by the Latin Fathers absolutely and simply "penance", and the Prostrate themselves "penitents", because the first two classes were regarded only as preparations, as it were, for penance itself; but in this third the satisfaction itself was carried out through the laborious works of penance, fasts, vigils and other things that torment the flesh, to be undertaken no longer of one's own accord and by one's own choice, but by the ordinance of the Church herself, as she measures them out to fit their offences, as may be seen in that most beautiful Exhortation to Penance of St Pacian, and in Juenin, in the treatise On Penance, chapter 4, article 3, and others.

Finally, those were called the Standers (synestotes) who, standing between the ambo and the sanctuary, were themselves also permitted to be present at the sacrifice together with the rest of the faithful, being shut out only from partaking of the sacred table, that is, of the Eucharist, in order to prove their constancy.

And when the penitents had at length passed through these orders, they obtained public and solemn absolution from their offences, which was at last sacramental, to be given by the bishop or, at his command, by a presbyter, and were thereafter restored to the sacred table and to the communion of the whole Church.

Now, just as there is no doubt that already from the times of the apostles all the Churches everywhere used great severity, so as to receive only those whom they had over a long time proved to be truly and heartily penitent, so it is certain that the manner, or order, of receiving them was not always nor everywhere the same. Certainly our Tertullian, otherwise so careful in recounting the traditions of his own times and the observances of discipline, especially of the Churches of Africa, which even then were stricter than the rest, nowhere makes an open distinction of those 4 classes.

Nor do they seem to have been in use at that time in the Roman Church either; for Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History book 5, chapter 27, speaks of the penitent Natalius only thus: "In the morning

he rose up, clothed in haircloth and sackcloth, sprinkled with ashes, and with great grief and tears threw himself as a suppliant at the feet of the pontiff Zephyrinus (he had sat, in the very times of Tertullian, from the year 197 to 217), and fell prostrate not only at the knees of the clergy but also at those of the laity, so that the Church of the merciful Christ, greatly pitying him, gave herself up to lamentations together [with him]." Yet he (see the rigour of the discipline of those times), "although he used many prayers and showed the weals of the stripes which he had endured (for he had been so sharply chastised by an angel one night, while he was keeping company with heretics), was scarcely at last received into communion in the Church." But no order of the aforesaid classes is read to have been observed here.

But see what custom of doing penance flourished in the Church of Carthage in the time of St Cyprian, who came after Tertullian. Thus, then, he says in the treatise On the Lapsed: "One must pray more earnestly and entreat, pass the day in mourning, spend the nights in vigils and weeping, fill all one's time with tearful lamentations, lie stretched on the ground and cling to ashes, roll in haircloth and filth, after losing the garment of Christ wish for no clothing any more, after the devil's food prefer fasting, apply oneself to just works by which sins are purged, persevere frequently in almsgiving," etc., where again no succession of those classes is observed, which St Cyprian would certainly not have passed over in silence, speaking as he does so skilfully in other places too, and indeed of set purpose, about the practice of public penance. It is more probable, however, that those classes of penitents were introduced around the very times of Cyprian, not indeed in Africa but in the East; for St Gregory, bishop of Neocaesarea in Pontus (who is commonly called Thaumaturgus on account of the holiness of his life and the multitude of miracles performed by him), departed to heaven in AD 265, and is found to have been the first to enumerate them, in his Canonical Epistle: if, that is, its last canon is by Gregory himself (which some wish to doubt), and was not rather stitched on by some later Greek.

At least, however, from St Basil the Great, bishop of Caesarea, Canonical Epistle to Amphilochius, last canon, it is established that that division of penance into four degrees (πρόσκλαυσις, weeping; ἀκρόασις, hearing; ὑπόπτωσις, prostration; and σύστασις, standing together) already prevailed in the fourth century (for St Basil is known to have departed to those above in the year 379). But the occasion so fell out that once again, beyond the plan of this little work I have undertaken, I have been somewhat more long-winded. Yet our dogmatic writers will supply far more, and above all that most learned Historical Commentary on the Discipline of Penance, etc., of Father Jean Morin, priest of the Congregation of the Oratory, by which he seems almost single-handed to have exhausted this most vast subject.

Humilificandi. One would say more properly in Latin humiliandi.

Conversationem. It is taken here for the manner and mode

of dealing with men and of acting among them, which the Greeks are accustomed to call ὁμιλία.

An enticer of mercy, that is, one able to entice and call forth the mercy of God. Now illex, illicis, is a word derived from illicere, as Festus says. And in this sense our author, Apol. ch. 41, calls the gentiles enticers of evils; and in the book On the Pallium, ch. 13, he says that patience draws out the clemency of God. One is also called illex, illegis, who lives without law: but this is not to our purpose.

By dress, or by clothing.

With sackcloth. Saccus was a ragged garment woven from the rougher hairs of goats, asses or camels, which was put on as a sign of mourning. The word itself is of Hebrew origin, in which language such a mourning garment is called שק. Thus in 2 Sam. 3:31 David said to Joab and to all the people: "Tear your garments, and gird yourselves with (שקים) sackcloths." And in 1 Kgs 21:27, Ahab, having heard the words of Elijah the prophet, covered his flesh with שק haircloth, and fasted and slept בשק in sackcloth, etc. See also 2 Kgs 16:1 and Neh. 9:1, and in many other places.

Further, this word flowed down from the Hebrews to the Greeks, and thence to the Latins. For thus St John the Evangelist (writing, of course, in Greek), Rev. 6:12, says: The sun became black as σάκκος τρίχινος, or, as our Vulgate renders it, a sackcloth of hair. What then? Is it not a singular thing that the same word should have made its way to the Italians, French, Spaniards, English, Flemings, Hungarians, etc., and that the same Hebrew word שק should have poured itself even into Germany itself?

To lie upon ashes. That ashes too, that is, the dust of the earth, were employed as a public sign of mourning, almost innumerable examples, of the Old Testament as well, show, especially those found in the book of Esther, as in ch. 4:1 is that passage about Mordecai: He tore his garments and was clothed with שק sackcloth, scattering ואפר ashes upon his head. And ibid. v. 3: There was great lamentation among the Jews, fasting, wailing and weeping, many using שק ואפר sackcloth and ashes for a bed. Likewise Neh. 9:1, where: The children of Israel assembled with fasting in sackcloths, ואדמה and earth (that is, dust of the earth) upon them.

To darken the body with filth, by darkening its brightness.

The things in which it has sinned. Nor is it unusual for the Latins to join the verb peccare with the accusative case. For thus in Plautus, in the Bacchides: "If you had sinned in a single syllable," etc. Similar is the passage in Cicero, On Duties book 1, where he says: "In the commonwealth many sins are committed." And in the Paradoxes: "Whatever sin is committed, it is committed in a disturbance of reason," etc.

To change by handling, for to reconsider, as frequently elsewhere.

Pure, that is, simple; for thus in the book On the Pallium, ch. 13, he says: Content with simple fodder and a pure drink of water.

To nourish prayers with fasts. An elegant metaphor, joined to fasts by way of antithesis. And indeed, the things which are withdrawn from the body,

serve all the more to nourish and, as it were, to fatten the soul.

To bellow. Bellowing, otherwise proper to oxen, is taken here for wailing, expressing the utmost force of grief.

To the dear ones. Some have "to the altars"; but I have kept charis, or, as the ancients were accustomed to write it, caris, that is, to the friends of God, namely the pious faithful, above all the Confessors and Martyrs.

To enjoin the embassies of his entreaty. That is, that they might intervene as it were before God for the penitents. And why should those not be able to do this the more, who, beyond this mortality, are now nearer to God, nay rather intimately joined to Him? Or why should they not hear our prayers? Why should God hear their prayers for us less than those of the living?

Let him honour the Lord by fear. For he had already said above, chapter VII: "The fear of man" (of one who fears, to his salvation, the God he has offended) "is the honour of God."

Pronouncing sentence, as one to be passed upon a defendant.

Let it act in place of God's indignation, that is, let it fill the part of God's wrath and vengeance by forestalling it.

By affliction. Affliction affects the mind; affliction, as Cicero says, Tusculans IV, is sickness of mind together with the harassing of the body.

Not only evade it, but expunge it. He evades who avoids and turns aside; he expunges who wholly blots out and abolishes, every return being shut off. But how elegant are the antitheses that follow shortly after! For the rest, we have spoken more fully of the verb "to expunge" above, chapter III, note "Expunges."

Notes on Chapter X.

I presume is put here for I suppose, or I assume, or I judge in advance. So our author says in the Apology, chapter II: "Since you presume concerning our crimes from the confession of the name," etc.

Consciousness, that is, knowledge drawn from disclosure.

Drawn out, that is, rashly cast away, or squandered. For so he says in the book On the Soul, chapter XLVIII: "They affirm that more certain and clearer dreams are dreamt in the last parts of the night, as though the vigour of souls were now emerging, the sleep being drawn out."

To be reformed, namely unto salvation, by restoring it in oneself.

Truly you are good in your modesty. A rather bitter irony.

Spreading out the brow. The brow, the index of the mind, is spread out by boldness.

But withdrawing it for entreaty. The same is let down by dejection and faint-heartedness.

From its loss. It is a hysterologia, to be restored to its order thus: "I gain more loss from it," or "more of the loss which is usually inflicted by it."

In mockery. What the Greeks are accustomed to call σαρκασμός or εἰρωνεία, the Latins call derision.

He is climbed over when prostrate. Nothing indeed more vile, more ignoble

can be said than to wish to grow through the abasement of others, when one cannot do so by one's own virtue.

Spes. So I resolutely read instead of species, a word that must certainly be expelled from here and is excessively absurd in this place.

Plausores, that is, mockers. For thus he also has it in the Apology, ch. 35: "Applauders are revealed daily."

Ad remedium conlabor et necesse est. He certainly alludes to that saying of Paul, 1 Cor. 12:26: If one member suffers anything, all the members suffer with it. But you are the body of Christ, and members of a member.

Ecclesia vero Christus. For, as the Apostle again says, Eph. 5:23: Christ is the head of the Church; and in Col. 1:18 he says: He is the HEAD of the body, the CHURCH.

Christum exoras. For sometimes Christ is taken not for the head of the Church alone, but for the head and the members together, that is, for the whole body of the Church. For thus St Augustine says in the book of Eighty-three Questions, q. 69: "Christ is also rightly called the whole, that is, the head with His body, which is the Church." Hence the same author says in the Letter to Honoratus on the Grace of the New Testament, ch. 7: "The Church suffered in Christ when He suffered for the Church; just as He Himself suffered in the Church when the Church suffered for Him." And again, on Psalm 88, he discourses thus: "When He was already seated in heaven, He did not cry out from heaven, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute My servants; nor: Why do you persecute My saints; nor: Why do you persecute My disciples; but, Why do you persecute Me? So, then, though no one was persecuting Him as He sat in heaven, He cried out: Why do you persecute Me? since the head recognized its members, and love did not separate the head from the framework of its body: so," etc. Just so, I say with respect to our matter, the things that are done to the brethren, to the members of the Church, are done to Christ. For does He Himself not say, Matt. 25:40: As long as you did it to one of these My least brethren, you did it to ME?

Pollicetur. Irony, continued also through the following sentence.

Conscientia, simply for scientia.

Pervenire. It is the anticipation of a certain small objection.

Malo, that is to say, through sin.

Cauterio. Cauterium is not derived from cavere, but is of Greek origin, kautērion, named from kaiein, "to burn", because it has the power of burning, like the powder by which flesh is usually eaten away when issues (fontanelles) are to be made in the human body. Hence also that is called cauteriatum which is, as it were, burnt in and cut away with a cautery. Thus the Apostle says in 1 Tim. 4:2: kekautēriasmenoi tēn syneidēsin, having a cauterized conscience, which, since it had been rotten and corrupted by sins, has been burnt with a cautery and cut away. See Calm. on this passage.

Commendat. Than which he certainly could have said nothing more elegant.

Notes on Chapter XI.

Potiorem, that is, the chief cause, which from repentance

could deter, as pertaining to the soul, which is far more delicate, and is often irritated far more sharply by certain lighter things than the body is by pains, even far heavier ones, and by tortures themselves.

Sordulentos ("squalid"). A word somewhat rough indeed to Latin ears. But who would so greatly execrate it, when he finds in Plautus, in the Poenulus, even sorditudo for sordities?

Deversari. Simply versari ("to be engaged in"), as we have already often noted elsewhere concerning compounds of this kind.

In asperitudine ("in roughness"). The more refined soil of Latium will hardly tolerate the roughness of this noun, as one born in the scorched deserts of Africa. No doubt, as the proverb has it, Africa always [brings] something new, even long ago carrying its monstrosities of words across the seas, sometimes into foreign lands.

Vanitate ("by wasting"). For when leanness is contracted from excessive fasts, all beauty is wont, as it were, to vanish from the thinned face, or to become evanescent. But what loss is this, when to the soul, as if by alluvion, so much the more beauty accrues?

In coccino ("in scarlet"). In a garment dyed with coccus: although this word otherwise among the Greeks signifies in general any grain, yet specifically it denotes the fruit of a certain tree not unlike the holm-oak, in whose grains they say a little worm of red colour is born, from which wool or silk is wont to be steeped in a scarlet or purple colour.

Certainly, however, the scarlet and the purple colour seem to be confused in the Gospel; for when Matthew, chapter 27, 28, had said of the Jews mocking Christ as their king: They put around Him χλαμύδα κοκκίνην, a SCARLET cloak, Mark, chapter 15, 7, says: ἐνδύουσιν αὐτὸν πορφύραν, they clothed Him in PURPLE; and John, chapter 19, agrees with him: They put on Him ἱμάτιον πορφυροῦν, a purple garment.

But otherwise, if we speak more strictly, there is no doubt that purple and scarlet are distinguished; for we call purple that which is of a red colour, but suffused with violet, whereas scarlet is more vivid and cheerful, such as is wont to bloom especially in the blood of young men.

Tyrio ("with Tyrian"). This colour is properly purple, once the most precious of all. Concerning its inventor Pollux, as cited by Sam. Pitiscus in his Lexicon under the word PURPURA, has this: "The Tyrians relate that Hercules was seized with love for a native Nymph. The Nymph's name was Tyro. Now a dog followed Hercules, which, having caught sight of a purple-fish (a kind of precious shellfish) creeping over the rocks, seized its projecting fleshy part with its teeth and used it as food, and the gore stained the dog's lips with a crimson colour. When its master returned to the girl, she, having seen the dog's lips stained with the unaccustomed dye, declared that she would have nothing more to do with him thenceforth unless he brought her a garment more splendid than the lips of that dog. So therefore Hercules, having found the creature and collected the gore, brought the gift to the girl, being, as the Tyrians are wont to say, the first inventor of the crimson

dye." But Saint Gregory Nazianzen, in Oration 3 Against Julian, attributes the discovery of this purple to a certain shepherd, speaking thus: "What? Will you not leave it to the Tyrians, from whom [Greek] (it was that shepherd's dog which, having eaten a murex and having its lips drenched with gore, made the flower known to the shepherd) has through its mouth held out to you wicked emperors that mournful and proud cloth?"

Moreover, the purple garment had formerly been proper to kings, and was afterwards shared also with their family and with the nobles of the realm, so that it might be a sign that these had been admitted to a share in the royal majesty. That the kings of Midian used purple garments, and that similar ones were sent by them as a gift to Gideon, judge of the Israelites, is clear from Judg. 8:26. Daniel, when by his prophetic spirit he had revealed to King Balthasar the hidden meaning of the writing shown to him in a dream, himself testifies, in chapter 5:4, that purple and a golden collar fell to him as a royal gift. Thus, to pass over other examples of this kind, Alexander Balas, king of Syria, is read to have rewarded Jonathan Maccabeus with a golden crown and purple, 1 Macc. 10:20.

Cedo. Used adverbially for "give", or "show me".

A pin for parting the hair. An implement of women's adornment, called from its function the hair-pin (acus crinalis), and devised for fixing the curls of the hair: on which Martial, book 14, epigram 24:

Let the pin fix the scattered tresses and hold up the hair.

And book 2, epigram 66:

One ringlet out of the whole circle of tresses had gone astray, not well fixed by the inserted pin.

There was also another, the discriminalis, so called from parting the hair as it were strand by strand, with a wicked and indeed reprehensible industry. Now this was the difference in hair between virgins and married women, that the former wore it curled, the latter parted from the forehead. Hence our author, in the book On the Veiling of Virgins, ch. 12, says: "And as soon as they have understood themselves to be women... they turn (I should almost have written 'sweep') their hair, and with a more wanton pin put the hair in upon themselves (why not rather 'insert'?), openly professing womanhood with hair parted from the forehead."

For polishing the teeth. Formerly too it was customary to clean the teeth with powder; and hence come those little verses in Apuleius, which he recites in Apology book 1, drawn from Catullus:

I have sent, as you asked, cleansers of the teeth, a fine, whitening, noble little powder, a smoother of the slightly swollen little gum, a sweeper-out of yesterday's leftovers, lest any foul stain of dirt be seen, if perchance you should laugh with lips drawn back.

Bisculum. He means shears, an iron or bronze implement, two-pronged, etc., borrowed from tailors.

For re-digging. A rustic word, and most proper to vine-dressers, who say repastinare for digging over a field again with a pastinum (an implement likewise two-pronged, but of a far different kind), den Acker umhacken. Since

indeed, by repastination a field is cleared, once foreign shrubs or stones have been dug out, any kind of clearing away, and even the paring of the nails, is customarily called repastinatio by a transfer of the word. In roughly this sense the usage is also found of the cutting away of superfluous or harmful things, in the book On the Apparel of Women, ch. 9: "How shall we be able [to show] humility, not cutting back the use of your riches or elegances," etc. And likewise in the book On the Soul, ch. 50: "No one will grant so much to magic that it may exempt from death, or renew [repastinet] life after the manner of a vine (that is, in the likeness of one), with its age restored." Likewise, book 2 Against Marcion, ch. 18: "That the committing of injury might be cut back through fear of a requital that would at once meet it." And in the Exhortation to Chastity, ch. 6, he uses the word repastinatio for a tearing away or a cutting off.

Of a forced blush. Here he taunts the paints of soft and effeminate men, with which they are accustomed to smear over with a new falsehood their beauty, old (nay, already aged) and as it were worn out, and so with rouge to force and as it were wring out a redness that is by now unwilling.

Baths [balneas]. Cicero himself also uses this noun in the feminine plural, as in the Speech for M. Caelius, where he mentions the Xenian baths [balnearum Xeniarum].

Hortulani, for hortensis [of a garden]. In this adjectival sense, however, the word hortulanus will scarcely occur among other ancient writers.

The old age of wine. An elegant metaphor for signifying aged wine, which on account of its mildness, its sharpness now put off, the ancients called toothless, as though lacking teeth, as again Plautus in the Poenulus, Act 3, scene 3:

You may water your life with wine toothless from age.

Moreover, so that the age of a wine might be known, tablets were hung from the wine vessels, displaying in what year or under which consuls each wine had been laid down. And hence comes that line of Tibullus:

Now bring out for me the smoky Falernian of an old consul.

Hence "consular wine" is found used for the oldest and best wine: among which the Opimian above all, [named] from the consulship of L. Opimius (under whom, as Pliny testifies, book 14, ch. 14, there was a most excellent yield of wine), had once been celebrated, and especially by Petronius Arbiter, ch. 34; which Cicero too mentions in the book On Famous Orators, ch. 83, "treating of Falernian wine; but of one neither so new that he would want it born under the latest consuls, nor again so old that he would seek Opimius and Anicius as consul." But since the consulship of Opimius fell in the year 632 of the City, 119 before Christ, and Petronius died about the year of Christ 66, or 818 of the City, it is plain that in Petronius' time that wine was easily 180 years old.

But what is this compared with that wine which is kept in the ancient castle called Schrofenstein, near Landeck in the county of Tyrol, and is said to bear an age of more than 400 years? Certainly the cask

is, they report, already overcome and eaten away by decay, and the wine itself enclosed on every side by its own tartar crust, so that it cannot flow out anywhere. And this wine (for I was allowed to taste it, offered to me by a certain distinguished friend in the neighbourhood) has the smell and taste of tartar, so that one could rightly say of it that remark of the same Cicero, in the place cited: "Excessive age neither has that sweetness which we seek, nor is it any longer really tolerable"; I except spirits, which are plainly heroic and fit for rekindling once more the last sparks of old age. And I have been pleased to mention these things by way of a digression arising from the occasion.

You would be lavish to the soul. That is, you would be so liberal and lavish towards it. It is, however, clear from elsewhere that Tertullian held too crude a view of the soul, since in the book On the Soul, throughout and especially in ch. 38, he asserts that it grows up at puberty no less than the body does; and in ch. 9 he affirms that there is also in the soul a desire for food, and that it is visible by a certain colour, etc.

Injured by sinning. These words are without doubt ironical, spoken against those who think that they can make satisfaction for their sins even at the very time when they indulge the body in everything.

They go round in canvassing, that is, they walk through, or walk around.

Magistrates. A magistracy is a certain office in the commonwealth with the power of administering justice; and among the Romans it sometimes also signified the persons themselves who were distinguished by such power. Now the kinds of magistrates were manifold: there were the urban ones, who administered justice in the City itself, and then the provincial ones, who administered justice in the provinces subject to the Roman commonwealth, such as proconsuls, propraetors, legates of proconsuls, and the provincial quaestors of propraetors, etc. Likewise, among the urban ones there were the greater, who were elected in the centuriate assemblies, such as consuls, censors, praetors, etc. Others, the lesser, were customarily elected in the tribal assemblies, such as the urban quaestors, the tribunes of the plebs, the aediles of the plebs, etc. Of each of these kinds there were ordinary and extraordinary ones. Thomas Demsterus treats of these at length and accurately in book 5 of his Roman Antiquities, ch. 5 throughout.

They are neither ashamed nor sorry. We have already touched on some things concerning candidates in the book On Baptism, ch. 10, note "Candidate for remission"; but now it seems that a few things should briefly be said about them, as if traced back to their origin. Since, then, it was the custom for magistrates to be elected in the assemblies by the votes of the people, and since most of the people did not know the very persons who aspired to those honours by their face and merits, it was necessary for them to win the votes of the people by recounting their merits and by showing their own person. First, therefore, so that they might be distinguished, clothed in a gleaming white garment (and there was this difference between it and a plain white one, that the former had been polished to a certain brilliant and greater lustre by means of a certain chalk), during the trinundinum (which was a period of 27 days, for market days were customarily held in the forum every ninth day) they appeared in the Campus Martius, sitting upon the hill called the hill of the gardens, so that they might be more conspicuous; and then, as the people approached, they went round, those they met

every one, by greeting them and winning them over by services of every kind.

Now this method of winning the people over to oneself was carried out chiefly in 4 parts: naming, flattery, assiduity, and liberality.

Naming consisted in this, that they should know how to address any one of the citizens by his own name (for otherwise these could complain that they had hitherto been neglected, or that account had not been taken of them on a par with others). But since this was too arduous in so great a multitude of people, every candidate took to himself men of his own who were to prompt the canvasser with the names of the individual passers-by; they were called nomenclators, but by Cicero in the Speech for Murena "monitors", and by Festus "stuffers", because they, as it were, secretly stuffed the names of the citizens into the candidates' ears. It was called flattery when they greeted people not only by their own name but also by a more flattering form of address, that of fathers, brothers, patrons, etc., as though they were bound to them most closely. Assiduity consisted chiefly in going round, in grasping hands, and in asking. They went round, or circulated, also in the streets and quarters, and not only at Rome but also in the other cities of Italy in which they knew many citizens to be staying for the sake of business. And they circulated either in person, or through other friends taken on for a share of this duty and sent there, or else stationed in those very places. Hand-grasping was done by taking hold of the right hands of individuals, kissing them, kissing them fondly, etc. It was called asking when, amid entreaties not seldom quite disgustingly humble, they recalled the favours already received from the people on other occasions, and even bared their scars, which they had perhaps received with breast turned to the foe in battle for their country, etc., and then begged that in view of such things they would confer their votes on them, etc. And since in these matters they could not suffice by themselves, they also employed other distinguished men, called supporters, who recounted to the people the virtues of the canvassers, etc. To these services was added also liberality, by which they won over the people through largesses, gifts thrown among the crowd, banquets, gladiatorial games, distributions of moneys previously deposited with trustees for the sake of good faith, etc.; and it has been found that by gifts of this kind some sometimes exhausted their entire patrimonies.

But lest anyone think that these things have been too much exaggerated by us, it certainly seems not beside the point to bring over here some things from Cicero, [he] instructing Q. Tullius, his brother, in the book On Seeking the Consulship, thus: « Many men of the city, industrious men, many freedmen, influential and energetic, are active in the forum, whom you will be able to take up through yourself, through common friends: take care that they are eager for you: work at it, seek them out, send to them, show that you are affected by the greatest favour. Next, take account of the whole city, of the colleges, of all the districts, of the neighbourhoods: if you join their leading men to your friendship, through them you will easily hold the rest of the multitude. After that, see to it that you have all Italy set out tribe by tribe (by tribes) and grasped in your mind and memory, so that any municipality,

colony, prefecture, in short any place of Italy, you do not allow there to be one in which you do not have as much support as can be sufficient. Seek out also and track down men from every region, and get to know them, court them, strengthen them, and take care that they canvass for you in their own neighbourhoods and be, as it were, candidates in your cause. » Do you really suppose that with these things at last this business was duly completed? On the contrary, a great many more things remained, which you will learn more exactly from the same Cicero, in the same place, whom it will be a pleasure to have read.

But to what end all these things, and recounted at such length? Clearly so that the force of the argument which Tertullian presses so hard here may be able to penetrate all the more. These things, namely, so grave, so troublesome, so long-lasting, so nearly insurmountable, had to be undergone by men of the greatest weight in the Roman commonwealth, who had already otherwise long and very well deserved of it, and were endured so diligently, so laboriously, and also so willingly, the hope of honours easily overcoming all sense of shame, [a hope] invited by no other reward than an earthly one, both inconstant and soon passing all too quickly, and surrounded by so many and such grievous troubles and adversities, and, so to speak, crowned with them; we Christians, on the contrary, are ashamed to follow Christ, Who had to suffer these things and so to enter into His glory, Luke 24:26. And yet, whereas those candidates had committed no offence against the commonwealth, having rather deserved very well of it, we must treat of the pardon of sins, of grace to be restored in us, of heavenly glory to be attained through it and to be possessed for ever.

With insults. For who would believe that these candidates were not at times treated rather insultingly or rather disdainfully by certain people, perhaps enemies or less friendly persons (given the licence of the people at that time), or else rather neglectfully by friends, amid such great and such divided partisanships? But let us hear Saint Cyprian, in the Letter to Donatus, describing these things most elegantly, as is his custom: "He who, conspicuous in more splendid attire, seems to himself to shine in purple, with what degradations has he bought this, that he may shine! What disdain of the arrogant has he first endured! What proud doors has he besieged as a morning caller! How many insolent footsteps of the puffed-up has he gone before, thronged in front by wedges of clients, so that afterwards a procession of callers might also go before him as companion, a procession beholden not to the man but to the power?" And so on further in the same place.

Of vows, i.e. of desires.

Ignobilities of garments. But I for my part find nothing ignoble in this kind of dress itself; indeed, even on other occasions, those who were reckoned of more honourable condition among the Romans, and not from the common people, were accustomed to be in white garments, which were customarily used not only in the seeking of magistracies, but also in sacred rites, in more solemn banquets, in weddings, in military service, in triumphs, as a symbol of purity of morals, of innocence, of joy, of integrity, and of victory, as one may read at length in Johann Wilhelm Stucki, Antiquities of Banquets, book 2, chapter 26. Rather, therefore

I should believe either that the rest of the form of this garment, which the candidates used, differed in other respects from that of others, or that it was of a cheaper cloth, such as the ignoble common people used to use, or, what I indeed judge more likely, that Tertullian is speaking of those times in which the condition of candidates had already become cheap among the Romans themselves and had come to be held ignoble, as though ambition were by now depraving everything excessively and declining into a public corruption of the commonwealth, which it had become necessary to punish also by public laws passed against canvassing.

They covet. It is one thing altogether to be affected towards some thing and to seek it with moderation; it is another to covet it, that is, to be carried towards it by an immoderate desire and to press that very affection with excessive eagerness beyond the bounds of what is fair, as those are wont to do who bring neither merits equal to what they desire nor suitable endowments, and yet strive by every means to obtain what they desire, not unlike the chicks of birds which, with wings not yet sufficiently fledged and clapping for themselves out of season, and with an all too premature confidence, are seen to covet flight.

They besiege with salutations. Thus, then, they pursued their patrons with nocturnal and excessively persistent zeal as well, even pouring themselves into the halls, if they found any open, or rather thrusting themselves in, and all but bursting in. Moreover, he calls the salutations raw, that is, poured forth, or rather belched out, while the food from supper was not yet well digested.

Shrinking. No longer with the head only but with the whole body as well, diminished from their very selves by its deep bowings, and, like chameleons, gaping to catch the breeze of the people.

Renowned for no banquets. Indeed, already above, in the note on Neque pudet, neque piget, we indicated that the candidates (while, namely, their condition was still flourishing) at times laid on lavish and sumptuous banquets for the people, etc. But afterwards, when plebeians too had begun to mingle with the candidates, in their slenderer and all too hungry fortune even the kitchens themselves were colder.

Fellows of the herd. As he is called segrex who is not in the herd but lives solitary, so here he calls congreges those who are gathered together with others, that is, who are in the herd, as Apuleius has in book 8 of The Golden Ass: "The excellent herdsman at length allowed me to be one of the herd."

The fleeting joy of a single year. For it is established that magistracies among the Romans, after the example of the Athenians, were only annual, and were prolonged to several years rarely, and as a rule only under the emperor Tiberius (see Tacitus, Annals book 1, ch. 80). "For the alternation of commanding and obeying," (says Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities book 4, ch. 79) "and the laying down of power before it corrupts the mind, restrains contumacious dispositions and does not allow the characters (of those in command) to become intoxicated with excessive licence."

The seeking of axes and rods, that is, the seeking of the consulship or of other magistracies; for here, by metonymy, the sign is put for the thing.

Now the rods were a number of smooth, rounded sticks, with a thong

bound into a bundle, in which an axe was fixed, projecting from it. These fasces, then, were given as insignia to the greater magistrates, and by them was signified their power of life and death through the axe, and through the rods the chastisement of lighter crimes and of those who had deserved the lash. And when the consuls had to go out in public, fasces with axes were carried before them by as many lictors, while, when they gave judgement in the forum, these stood behind: a custom which Vetulonia, a city of Etruria, is believed to have been the first to use, concerning which Silius Italicus, book 8:

And Vetulonia, once the glory of the Maeonian race, / she first granted twelve fasces to go before, / and joined to them as many axes with silent terror.

Of eternity. That is, of the eternal punishment to which we are to be consigned, unless we come to our senses in time through penance.

Chastisement of food. Which is done through more frequent fasts.

Of dress, i.e. of the adornment of garments, which is restricted by sackcloth and haircloth.

They impose on themselves. Thus, then, we Christians are sometimes accustomed to be much more liberal, and indeed prodigal, in lavishing our goods on men to whom we are often bound by no tie of gratitude and by no debt of repairing an injury, so that they may seem not so much heaped with our benefits as burdened by them; nay, we are an excessive burden to ourselves, meanwhile bearing all too impatiently, or refusing altogether, that sweet yoke and light burden of Christ (Matt. 11:30). Nor, however, if anyone has become a debtor to God for an injury, ought that same man to despair, as though he were not able to pay. For indeed, "he who owes to God (as St Ambrose says, On Penance, book 2, chapter 9) has more means of paying than he who owes to a man. A man demands money for money, which is not always at hand for the debtor: God requires affection, which is in your power. No one who owes to God is poor, except one who has made himself poor. And if he has nothing to sell, he has something with which to pay. Prayer, tears and fasts are the wealth of a good debtor, and much richer than if someone should bring money from the price of estates without faith." Therefore no condition of debtors is better than that of us who are bound to God. It is not, on that account, necessary that you and all that is yours be sold in order to satisfy God as creditor. But God is to be entreated with the servant in the Gospel, Matt. 18:26: But that servant, falling down, entreated him, saying: Have patience with me, and I will repay you everything. What then? But the lord of that servant, moved with pity, released him, and forgave him the debt. How, then, was he going to repay, who did not have the means to repay? He was going to repay not from his own, but from another's, from the merits and satisfaction of our Christ, and yet not another's, but what He willed to be ours.

Therefore, since those ambitious candidates of the Romans so willingly underwent such great labours to obtain a fleeting dignity, how much better and more kindly

it is dealt with us, since with the same effort, and a much lighter one, we can both make satisfaction and at the same time lay up for ourselves at interest grace, the heavenly kingdom, and everlasting glory. "Let magistrates now go their way (so I conclude with St Cyprian in the cited Letter to Donatus), and consuls, or proconsuls: let them glory in the insignia of a yearly dignity and in twelve fasces."

They bind as with a long rope. Perhaps he has in view that passage of Prov. 5:22: His own iniquities will seize the impious man, and he is bound fast with the ropes of his sins. Long indeed are these ropes, and now scarcely any longer to be broken. "From a perverse will (says St Augustine, Confessions, book 8, ch. 5, proving this all too well by his own experience) lust was made; and while lust is served, habit was made; and while habit is not resisted, necessity was made, to be overcome by no human strength at all, but only through the GRACE of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Notes on Chapter XII.

Retractas, for tractas, as very often elsewhere. Now he handles [it] in his mind who thinks about the confession of his sins, and is now on the very point of applying his mind to it earnestly and effectually.

Gehenna. Gehenna is by no means, as some have thought, a Greek name, but a Hebrew one, and the same as גיא הנום, which means the Valley of Ennom, concerning which it is found in Jer. 7:30-31: They built the high places of Tophet, which is in גיא the VALLEY of the son of (הנם) Ennom, to burn their sons and their daughters in fire, etc. Therefore behold, the days are coming, and it shall no longer be called Tophet, and גיא the VALLEY of the son of הנם ENNOM, but the valley of slaughter, etc. "Now the Hebrews relate (says St Jerome on this very text of Jeremiah) that from this place GEHENNA was named גיאהנום (ge hinnom), namely because the whole people of the Jews perished there, offending God." He comments more fully, however, on Matthew ch. 10, saying: "This valley and small level stretch of plain was well watered and wooded, and full of delights, and a grove in it had been consecrated to an idol (Moloch, so often cursed by Holy Scripture). But the people had come to such madness that, abandoning the neighbourhood of the temple (for this valley was very near Jerusalem), they offered victims there, and the delights (of that place, called Topheth from 'delights') overcame the rigour (that is, the monstrous and utterly unspeakable cruelty) of the religion (the idolatrous one, to be sure), and they burned their sons to demons, or consecrated them. And that place (he adds) was called Gehennom, that is, the Valley of the sons of Hennom." So St Jerome there. "Others report," (says the Latin translator of our Calmet in the Dictionary of the Bible, under the word Gehennom) "that in that valley there was the city's sewer, where a perpetual fire was kept for consuming carcasses and filth."

Do not hesitate. The sense is: that you should not deliberate long about seizing this remedy, or about putting it off any longer.

A treasury of eternal fire. Thus Gehenna,

or hell, he calls it, which likewise in the Apology against the Gentiles, ch. 47, he names the subterranean treasury of hidden fire for punishment. Nor is this surprising, since all things that are kept in certain repositories sometimes go by the name of treasure; for thus Cicero in On the Orator calls memory the treasury of all things. Indeed in Plautus too I find the expression "treasury of evil". For this word is otherwise proper to the Greeks, by whom θησαυρός seems to be derived, according to some, from τιθέναι εἰς αὔριον (to lay up for tomorrow, or for future times), according to others from ἀπὸ τῆς θέσεως, that is, from the laying-up of gold, because gold especially, and other precious things of that kind, are usually hidden from the eyes and knowledge of other men and guarded more closely. And I also find that ants, and other animals that prepare food for themselves for the winter and bury it, are called by the Greeks θησαυριστικὰ τῆς τροφῆς ζῶα [animals that store up food]. Moreover, that around the centre of the earth there is a huge cavern, filled with a sort of fiery ocean raging with perpetual whirlwinds, is the common persuasion of the natural philosophers. And further, that this very place is the place of Hell is intimated by all those holy Fathers who believed that the souls of the damned are tormented by a real and material fire, namely, as St Cyprian says in the book On the Praise of Martyrdom, "with tormenting flames through the horrid night of thick darkness, and the ever-savage burnings of the smoking furnace," etc. Read only St Augustine, The City of God, book 21, ch. 10.

Certainly, however, it will have to be said that that treasury of infernal fire is hidden in some subterranean place and in the very bowels of the earth, for as long as no other place more suitable occurs than this one, as remote as possible from that supreme and most radiant seat of the blessed, where nothing but the shadow of death and everlasting horror dwells (Job 10:22). And indeed, since the limbo of the fathers itself, into which Christ descended to the lower regions, was a subterranean place, why should we not assign to hell the lowest and deepest place of all within the bowels of the earth, where with material fire not only are those spirits and damned souls even now tormented in wondrous yet real ways, but where these souls too will one day, in their bodies taken back again, burn through all eternity, ever to be burned and never to be consumed?

Little chimneys. So he ironically calls the fire-vomiting mountains scattered over the earth, already terrible in Tertullian's times, Vesuvius above all and Etna, which not a few of the natural philosophers regard as chimneys of hell. For they say that the central fire of our earth is driven upwards through fire-conducting channels into various other receptacles, or fire-stores, and from there further, through other ducts of the same kind variously intertwined, is pressed on right up to the surface of our earth, until at last it finds an exit through the cavernous vents of those mountains, and sometimes with incredible force discharges itself into the open air. There are also those who say that sometimes in these mountains the wailings of damned souls are heard: which to others is entirely fabulous. But I judge that it could easily have come about that the subterranean

roarings of these mountains, often heard even from further off, struck this terrifying apparition into credulous minds stricken with terror.

But so that we may know these fumaroles thoroughly, it will be helpful to bring forward certain things from an eyewitness, the immortal man Athanasius Kircher, and from his Preface to his Subterranean World, in his own very words, lest I seem to have added anything. When, then, spurred by the desire to see the thing, after overcoming great difficulties he had struggled up to the summit of Vesuvius, a mountain of Campania, he says: « I saw the whole crater lit up with fire (horrible to tell!), with an intolerable stench of burning sulphur and bitumen. Here, utterly astounded at the unaccustomed spectacle, I believed that I was looking upon the dwelling of the underworld, in which nothing else at all seemed to be lacking except the horrible apparitions of demons. Horrible roarings and rumblings of the mountain were perceived, and an indescribable stench, with smoke mixed with dusky balls of fire, which both the bottom and the sides of the mountain continually belched forth from 11 different places. » And when he had made ready his pantometer for measuring that terrible Crater, he found that its circumference comprised nearly 30 thousand paces, and its depth 800 paces.

He then continues: « The mountain, sheer on every side, descended in the form of a hollowed cylinder, at right angles in its circuit. In the centre of the bottom nature seemed to have set up, as it were, its own hearth, truly the workshop of Vulcan's kitchen, seething with an everlasting outpouring of smoke and flames, etc., busied by some hidden labour in boiling down sulphur, bitumen and the other kinds of minerals, in melting and burning them out, and in deadly havoc to be wrought shortly afterwards; for the vapours shut up within, as if not knowing how to be contained, shook off the burden laid upon them with such great force and violence, joined with horrible crashings, that the mountain seemed to be shaken by an earthquake. Whenever this happened, the softer upper parts of the mountain, shaken and loosened by the tremor, fell like hills into the bottom of the abyss, and from the varied echoing of the sound they stirred up such a crash as any man, even one of undaunted heart, could scarcely endure. The matter which was continually belched forth from the centre of the mountain formed as it were a new mountain, endowed with a wonderful variety of streaks. With nature's ingenious brush, the varied boiling of liquefied minerals fashioned it by its flow and colour in all parts of its circumference: now green from copper, now tawny from sulphur, arsenic and sandarach, now red from cinnabar and minium, now black from vitriol mixed with water, or ash-grey from the ashes themselves, » etc. And this is what Kircher says about that Vesuvian fumarole. Nor ought it to seem surprising that the extent and internal structure of that crater have been described differently by others, since after each eruption, as was bound to happen, it was found to have put on a different face.

But see now another fumarole of this kind, Etna in Sicily, by the same Athanasius, again as an eyewitness.

described; concerning which he speaks thus in bk. 4 of the M. S., sect. 1, ch. 8 and 9: « At the topmost summit it gapes open into a crater of a most vast circuit of 12 Italian miles » (others assign 30, and others again 40 thousand paces, but some fewer, to its circumference, since this infernal crater gapes and is distended more or less according to various times and the circumstances and effects of its horrible fury) « which narrows itself inwards by a steep slope right down to Tartarus; a precipice horrible to behold, with flames and smoke bursting out both from the bottom and from the side of the mountain with a dreadful bellowing not unlike thunder, so fearsome that the mere imagination of fire and ruin now on the point of coming upon him would at once dismay at first sight anyone, however most daring and fearless, and turn him away as from some infernal abyss. »

And after another description of this immense chasm he continues thus: « The abyss is so deep that it escapes all sight, fearsome with crags rising from its sides in the manner of pyramids; and although the sides, by the straight and perpendicular course of the crags, slope downward in a parallel descent, yet according to the laws of optics, because of the excessive distance, they seem to meet at the centre, etc. At the bottom (wonderful to tell!) I remember always having observed, from the continual belching forth of mineral matter, etc., as it were a kind of pool, glittering with molten metal. The sides here and there through corresponding passages vomit forth perpetual smoke in very many places, which by night we found to be kindled flame. The abyss is never without roaring and bellowings, which from time to time it emits so dreadful that they make even the mountain itself tremble. In a word, whoever desires to behold the admirable power of God, Best and Greatest, let him visit mountains of this kind, and, astonished and stupefied by the ineffable effects of the miracles of nature, he will be compelled again and again to declare with the inmost affection of the heart: O THE DEPTH OF THE RICHES OF THE WISDOM and KNOWLEDGE OF GOD! how incomprehensible are Thy judgements, and how unsearchable Thy ways! » etc. (Rom. 11:33.)

They raise up blows. That truly terrible havoc has been wrought by mountains of this kind, which sometimes belch forth whole conflagrations and as it were vomit up hell itself (although our author more correctly speaks a little later of these as no more than sparks of hell), the histories of all past ages bear witness. For thus Diodorus Siculus, Histories bk. 5, relates that when Sicily was formerly inhabited by the SICANI, all their harvests were burnt up by an eruption of Mount Aetna, and the whole neighbourhood was covered so deep with ashes that, despairing thereafter of the cultivation of their soil, they were compelled to withdraw into the western parts of the island, far from the furies of that mountain, until many ages afterwards a new people of Italy, the SICULI, as if ignorant of the past calamities, led a new colony across the strait into the deserted neighbourhood of Aetna. See next what, about the immense force of ashes cast out from the burnt bowels of the same mountain and bringing such thick darkness upon the whole neighbourhood far and wide that for two days no man

could recognize another man, Cicero records in book 2 of On the Nature of the Gods. But St Augustine, in book 3 of The City of God, last chapter, testifies thus: "We read that among them, when the fires of Etna were running down from the very summit of the mountain right to the nearest shore, the sea so boiled that the rocks were scorched and the pitch of the ships melted, etc. Again, by the same blaze of fires Sicily was filled with so great a force of ash that it buried, crushed and threw down the roofs of the city of Catina. Moved by this calamity, the Romans mercifully remitted its tribute for that year." And how horrible the furies of Mount Etna were in the times of both Plinys, that is, in the 1st century, in the year 76, we learn from the two letters of the nephew to Tacitus (which are the sixteenth and twentieth of book 6), letters that would certainly be read not without great agitation of mind, did not the gentleness of an elegant style soften the atrocity of that spectacle.

I do not, however, record here that eruption which in the year 812 drove Charles the Great, an emperor of undaunted heart, out of Sicily into Italy; nor the other, next, which in the year 1537 spewed out so monstrous a quantity of ashes and cinders that they reached even across the sea into Italy, and, if we believe Varenius, book 1 of the Geography, chapter 10, proposition 5, "ships at sea, though they were 200 leagues distant from Sicily and were making for Venice, suffered damage." Nor do I record anything about the many other eruptions of this kind, and certainly not unequal ones. But two examples which occurred in the last century I cannot pass over. The first I excerpt from the account of Don Pietro Squillaci, a priest of Catania, who was himself present at this calamity, as it is found in Kircher, book 4, section 1, chapter 9. "When, then, the whole neighbourhood far and wide seemed on the very point of being overturned by dreadful shakings of the earth, at last, on the 11th of the month of March (and the year was 1669 from the birth of Christ), as the mountain suddenly split open into three terrible chasms, the first of them was spewing out a great deal of fire and many stones, of which even the smallest equalled the weight of 3 cantars, or as many hundredweights. And the matter of the fire, thrown up to a height of 2 miles (I always mean only Italian ones), was broken up into the minutest particles and raged in the likeness of a fiery rain upon the land lying beneath it. When the said mountain was raging and gaping open, it brought on so great a crash and earthquake that I cannot express its horror in any words." The crash was increased by the outcry of the lamenting people of Catania, to whom the world seemed to be perishing. Those chasms spewed out fire and sand in such abundance that the fields glowed red with living fire, and the town (Catania, 4 miles distant from Etna) was covered as if with blackened sands. "And all that fire went off in 2 streams" (he would more correctly have said rivers), "embracing and licking around in the middle Monpilieri" (whose circuit, however, he had earlier said was half a mile), "which stood out like an island, or a rock, in the midst of the flames. And of the principal streams one was burying the estate of Monpilieri, so that all traces of it were obliterated. The whole fiery mass extended to a breadth of 6 miles and

about the beginnings of the two, of a height of 4 canne, more or less, according to the difference of places."

But it is better to read through this whole account, which sets out at greater length many other things pertaining to this, in Kircher; and this, I promise, you will do not without trembling of soul, if there is anything devout in you, and above all if you join to it the Letters of Paolo Boccone, a Sicilian of Palermo, and of Pierre Michon, or under his changed name the Abbé Bourdelot, concerning that same conflagration. For then indeed you will confess that the Mantuan bard, not carried away by excessive frenzy, poured forth his terrible poem about this mountain, Aeneid book 3:

...... Etna thunders with dreadful ruins, / and at times it even bursts forth a cloud into the upper air, / smoking with a pitch-black whirlwind and glowing ash, / and raises balls of flames and licks the stars. / At times it heaves up rocks and the torn-off entrails of the mountain, / belching them out, and rolls molten stones together under the air / with a groan, and boils up from its lowest depth.

And yet those were nothing but rivulets of this subterranean furnace, filled with an immense force of molten minerals. What, though, if you add other mountains as well, at times no less terrible than Etna? I do not mean Vesuvius in Campania, but Strongylus and Vulcanus in the Lipari islands, and besides other thundering mountains of this kind in the Azores and the Canaries, islands of the Atlantic sea, countless others, and if finally you call up that terrible Hekla of farthest Iceland, congealed as it were with ice itself? With what immensity of fires do you think there is need to set alight so many most capacious furnaces? If you join them all into one, what else would you call Etna, what Vesuvius, but little vents of that fiery ocean raging in the more hidden recesses and inmost entrails of the earth? But how great, I pray, was the force of metals and minerals so many and so immense (each of which by itself is wont to excite the highest heat, and of other combustible materials, heaped together as it were into one mass, how great the fury and the heat of this ocean! how slight (which is truly astonishing!) is the fear of it among many sinners! But see what the fear of merely temporal death was able to do among those wretched people of Catania! 'Lamentation (for so Squillacius continues his history), the discipline, prayers, processions, fasts, abstinence, expositions of forty hours did not cease in any of the churches, and they caused such grief that the stones shed tears.' And yet the hearts of certain hardened sinners are more than stony, for they are not even moved by fear of eternal death.

But behold again another little vent, and a conflagration bursting out of it, which not even the Ocean itself was equal to extinguishing. To this incredible spectacle, however, Father Ricciardi S.J. lends the greatest credibility, who, as Kircher testifies in book 4 of the Mundus subterraneus, in these words: 'Being present, he saw everything with his own eyes, and at Rome afterwards related to me by word of mouth the outcome of the whole affair, and wished it to be made known to posterity by written testimony.' Thus indeed of Father Ricciardi, as the most praiseworthy Kircher with his own pen it to the memory of posterity

commended, the narrative has: "If ever those fires shut up in the bowels of the earth exercised their force, it was above all when, in the year 1650, from 24 September to 9 October, they shook that island" (it was Santorini, so called from St Irene, Virgin and Martyr, to whose name it is sacred) "with so many and such huge and frequent earthquakes that the people of Santorini, fearing that ruin was close upon them, threw themselves as suppliants before the altars day and night. But it can neither be told nor explained how great a fear seized everyone when, the barriers having been burst, those victorious flames strove to make themselves a way through the midst of the waves of the sea, about 4 Italian miles from the island of Santorini towards the east; for suddenly the sea swelled upwards to 30 cubits, and, spreading far and wide over the neighbouring lands, overturned everything in its way, so much so that even in the very harbour of Candia, which is nevertheless 80 miles distant from there, it shattered both galleys and ships with its sudden onrush. The air, moreover, infected with those foul-smelling and sulphurous vapours, both began to grow dark and to take on countless shapes. Here fiery lances and flame-spewing swords seemed to be brandished, there flashing arrows to be shot, here as it were terrible serpents and dragons to fly about, there thunderbolts and lightnings to be hurled," etc., etc. "And that fiery abyss," he continues, "vomited forth such a mass of pumice stones that they covered the whole surface of the sea. It is most certain that they were carried as far as Smyrna and Constantinople and filled all the shores. The force of the conflagration, moreover, was greatest in the first two months; since the neighbouring sea seemed to boil like a seething pot, and day and night huge balls of flame and very dense smoke rose up, etc., etc."

But what then? Should I think fit to pass over another catastrophe, like the former, nay by far the most savage of all, which the Ocean itself, where it flows among the Azores islands, had presented in the previous century? Here, then, once more are the words of Kircher himself, book 2 of the Mundus Subterraneus, chapter 12, § 4: "Six miles from Pico (commonly Pico delle Camerine) lies a place called la Ferreria, in whose stretch of Ocean, on a Saturday in the month of July in the year 1638, fire burst forth with such inexplicable violence, notwithstanding the depth of the Ocean at that place, often sounded before by fishermen at 120 geometric feet, that not even the Ocean sufficed to extinguish so great a conflagration. The space which the boiling fire occupied was as great as would suffice for sowing 2 modii of grain, and it burst out with such violence that, notwithstanding the said depth of the Ocean, it rose level with the clouds, carried up into the upper region of the air, bearing up with it the very water, sand, earth, rocks and other huge masses, which from a distance (a sad spectacle for those looking on!) appeared like tufts of cotton; while the liquefied matter, falling back into the sea, presented the appearance of porridge. Then the force of raging nature hurled rocks of such immense size to the height of 3 lances that you would have said not rocks but whole mountains were cast out. There was added to the horror the fact that the rocky mountains thrown on high, falling back, upon others, from

the bowels of the sea forced out, dashed [against them], burst apart with a terrible crash into 1000 pieces, which, when afterwards taken up in the hands, were ground into black sand. Furthermore, from the varied and immense multitude of ejected matter and the heaping up of innumerable rocks, a new island in the middle, and that of the deepest Ocean, at first indeed small, of 5 jugera, but increased day by day, grew to such an extent that within 14 days it occupied a space of 5 miles in length. And so great a multitude of fish perished in this conflagration that 8 Indian cargo ships could scarcely hold them; these, scattered far and wide over the island, were collected by the natives round about for up to 18 miles and buried in very deep pits, lest by their putrefaction they should cause some contagion. And the smell of sulphur was perceived over a space of 24 miles." So Kircher, from the trustworthy eyewitness account of Fathers of the Society of Jesus.

They no longer exist. Among these, certainly, was Pompeii, founded, as is said, by Hercules, and formerly a colony of the Romans, of which the same Author of ours says in the book On the Pallium, ch. 2: "From a cloud of this kind both Tuscany was burned down in its ancient Volsinii, and Campania, so that it might expect the more from its own mountains, was robbed of Pompeii." Likewise in the Apology, ch. 40, where [he says]: "But neither Tuscany nor Campania complained of the Christians when [fire] from heaven drenched Volsinii, [and] from its own mountain Pompeii." Concerning these likewise Tacitus, Annals book 15, ch. 22, testifies in these words: "By an earthquake the famous town of Campania, Pompeii, collapsed in great part." But whoever wishes to know these things more exactly will find them in Dio Cassius, Roman History book 16, in [the life of] Titus. But what prevents me, since I have once begun to be prolix and have already broken through the narrow limits of notes, from excerpting these things from the author himself, which also lend credibility to the things said above, since [readers] will see that these things are not new, but happened already almost 17 centuries since? Thus, then, Xiphilinus has from his Dio: "Then the sea at the same time roared, the whole sky resounded together, and a huge and sudden crash was heard, as if the mountains were collapsing together. Then first immense stones leapt out and reached the highest summits, then a great quantity of fire and smoke, so that it darkened the whole air and hid the sun, no otherwise than as if it had been eclipsed, etc. Some thought either that the world was being reduced to chaos or was being consumed by fire, etc., etc. And so great was the quantity of ash that it filled land and sea, and even the air itself: a thing which brought many losses, not only to men and estates and cattle, but also destroyed all the fish and birds, and utterly overwhelmed two entire cities, Herculaneum and Pompeii, while the people were sitting in the theatre (not, to be sure, for the sake of some spectacle, but for the sake of the safety they hoped for, and from trust in the place being better fortified against collapse)."

And this very [city] is now that one, whether Herculanum or Herculaneum, which Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities book 1, ch. 44, reports to have been founded by Hercules after his Spanish expedition, and when, violently shaken in A.D. 63 under Nero, it had collapsed in great part, and about A.D. 80 had been entirely swallowed up

discovered already in the year 1713, and so after sixteen whole centuries, has kindled a great light for ancient history, and has enriched the treasury of Neapolitan antiquities with most abundant additions of a new and inestimable treasure; the fullest publication of which, now sweating under the press, the whole literary world awaits with immense longing.

De die. He meant to say "by the day", or "daily", or, as we are elsewhere accustomed to say, "from day to day": in which sense our author too says in the Apology, ch. 16: "You live anew from day to day." And so too Terence, in the Adelphi, said "to prepare a banquet de die" (that is to say, on each single day).

Sperent, that is, "let them fear". For sperare (just as elsewhere hope is by its own nature joined with fear) was customarily taken among the ancients in this worse sense too: as is that line of Maro, Aeneid 1:

If you despise the human race or mortal arms, / yet expect the gods, mindful of right and wrong.

And likewise in book 4:

If I have been able to expect so great a grief as this.

Ignis intrinsecus foeta. Are the mountains themselves foeta? But who would dare to impute so great a lapse in grammar to Tertullian? Or should we read ignis intrinsecus foeti? But thus again it would be ambiguous whether foeti should be referred to the mountains, which are teeming with fire, or rather by fire, or to ignis, as if the fire itself were teeming with sulphur, etc. Or is it rather preferable, with Latinius, to read foetu, or foetura? Indeed, that is what I myself think.

Nobis judicii, that is, of punishment, or of infernal penalty. See above, ch. 3, the note In judicium.

Nunquam tamen finiuntur. There is no age whose history does not recount such ragings of mountains; thus concerning the burning of Vesuvius Kircher has a chronicle of this kind, in which he lists 18 instances of Etna in tumult from the first entry of the Janigenae into Sicily. Others indeed list more than 20 such sad instances of Vesuvius, from the times of Christ down to these of ours. But that these monstrous furnaces are kindled with perpetual fire, the continuous and dense volumes of smoke belched forth even in their quiet make clearer than any light.

For the rest, a weighty question has long occupied philosophers here: whence come those everlasting burnings of such mountains, and the inexhaustible fuel for nourishing such great fires through so many ages. For it might seem that all the subterranean fire-stores, and hell itself, however immense, would long ago have been emptied through those fire-vomiting vents. Since a longer treatment of this matter lies outside our present purpose, we disclose our mind only briefly. And 1st we note that the matter thrown out by those dreadful convulsions of Etna is heaped up chiefly on the rim of the crater itself, and sometimes to such a height that at times a new mountain, or at least no negligible part of a mountain, may be seen. 2nd This heap of ashes and other ejected matter, already of itself imbued with various salts, by new and subterranean additions also through hidden [passages],

above all from the sea, and also from the melted snows with which the summits of these mountains are white almost continually, and from the surrounding saltpetrous air, etc., is usually made fruitful, until the material, baked through by the heat of the fire beneath and liquefied as if into a pulp, is driven into the utmost fury through the subterranean vents of the winds, or even by the inflow of water from underground reservoirs, etc. How much even a single drop of water can do when sprinkled on metal molten in smelting furnaces, and how incredible a tumult it can stir up, how horrifying a destruction of all things it can produce, not a few have at times experienced, and to no small harm of their own.

Meanwhile the punishments of the mountains. He calls "punishments of the mountains" the damage inflicted by these very mountains, especially for the chastisement of sinners, etc.

Not of the judgement. He hints, not obscurely, at that last JUDGEMENT in which the whole world will burn up, as we said in the book On Baptism, chapter 8, note "Is destined for fire", and the damned are to hear that terrible sentence: Depart, you cursed, into the ETERNAL FIRE, etc., which the SUPREME JUDGE even now threatens through the conflagrations of the flame-vomiting mountains.

Will deem. Simply for "will think" or "will reckon". So our author too says in the Exhortation to Chastity, chapter 6: "There was an old dispensation, which in the Gospel is deemed new," etc. So also Plautus had said long before in the Amphitruo: "Nor let there be anything for which all may not deem me worthy." Terence too followed this usage in the Hecyra, where:

By Pollux, truly my master deems my service of little worth.

Sparks. By the same right by which he had called those immense craters of the fire-vomiting mountains "little chimneys", he now calls their conflagrations "sparks". And so indeed they are, if they are compared with that immense conflagration of HELL. Now when our sparks happen to scorch the hands, these are drawn back for pain even at the first touch; but sinners have not yet plunged their hands, I will not say into molten lead (for how light a thing that would be!), but not even into those fiery torrents of Etna or Vesuvius (that is, the sparks), in that infernal abyss and proper seat of the fiery element, where they are perhaps to be burned eternally and never consumed.

Of an inestimable hearth. That is, a heat whose immense force goes very far beyond, I do not say all our estimation, but all the powers of the imagination.

Missiles. "Missilia" was formerly the name for those gifts of coined gold and silver which were sometimes scattered among the people by the emperors, or by the senate and magistrates, so as to win for themselves, with an eye to gain, its applause and favours, and, to speak barbarously, to collect them. Indeed, missilia of other things too were made from time to time, as is found in Suetonius, Caligula: "He also scattered missilia of various things." Later, however, this word passed over to military use as well, so that weapons sent against enemies were likewise called missilia. But also

thunderbolts our author, in the book On the Pallium, chapter 2, did not hesitate to call by the name of missiles.

Training [weapons]. An exercitor is properly one who teaches another by exercising him, as is gathered from Plautus in the Trinummus: "Whoever it is, Curculio, he is trainer to these; he is teaching this man to run." Hence those weapons too which were discharged in military exercises and exercises in the shade are called exercitoria, and in Seneca, book 2 of the Natural Questions, lusoria [play weapons].

Of the Lord's dipping. That is, of baptism, instituted by Christ the Lord.

Memorials. Those things are called monimenta which are set up to admonish our mind, so that it may preserve the memory of past things. Junius reads munimenta [defences] here, because they fortify us beforehand against Gehenna.

Second reserves. Elegantly said; for among the ancients subsidia were properly that third line in the battle array, consisting of the triarii and veterans and the bravest men, who, being therefore placed at the rear, crouched down on their knees under their standards, ready to come to the aid of the army should it chance to be in difficulty, and to restore a wavering line with fresh support. See Varro, On the Latin Language, book 4.

Dumb indeed. He calls dumb those that lack articulate speech.

Souls. He here puts souls for living creatures, as a part for the whole.

They recognize. For thus, by the instinct of nature itself, implanted in them by God, they avoid harmful things, seek wholesome ones, and when they have begun to be sick, they quickly look about for remedies for themselves. And that this instinct has something analogous to human reason is not in doubt.

Delays. Among surgeons a mora is the name for a kind of channel, hollowed out by art, in which a broken leg, already bound round with bandages, is laid, so that it may remain there unmoved and make its stay. So also arrows fixed rather deep in the skin make their stay there, and sometimes irremovable ones, namely when they have lodged too deeply to be able to be drawn out or shaken off by the wounded animals themselves, and so to be called back out of the wound.

With dittany. So indeed Aristotle affirms of wild goats in book 9 of the History of Animals, chapter 6, in these words: "They say that in the island of Crete wild goats pierced by an arrow seek the herb dittany; for by it the darts are expelled from the body." And the same author confirms it in the book On Marvellous Things Heard, number 4. Hence Virgil, book 12 of the Aeneid:

Meanwhile Venus, his mother, shaken by her son's undeserved pain, plucks dittany from Cretan Ida, a stalk with downy leaves and crowned with a purple flower. Those herbs are not unknown to wild goats, when winged arrows have stuck in their backs.

But Pliny, book 8 of the Natural History, chapter 27, transfers these things to stags. But how many things are from time to time invented, or related too credulously, which are not verified! Certainly among present-day investigators of nature there is deep silence on this matter, since they have nothing, either from their own or from others' sufficient experience, by which they could properly lend credence to this belief of the ancients.

To give eyes to them, that is, to give them sight. For so the same author of ours has it in the Apology, chapter 21: "Now polished, and

deceived by the very courtesy, he might open their eyes to the knowledge of the truth"; a word otherwise scarcely used by the ancients, which St Cyprian, in the treatise On the Vanity of Idols, towards the end, borrowed from his Tertullian, speaking of the apostles, "who were to open the eyes of the blind and ignorant to the knowledge of the truth."

With its own celandine. That swallows bring forth blind young, Aristotle asserts in book 4 of On the Generation of Animals, chapter 6, but says nothing about the celandine; Pliny, however, in the place cited, affirms it, being for the most part too trusting of other people's stories. So far, moreover, did that belief pass to the common people, and so tenaciously did it stick, that even the very name of the swallows (for among the Greeks this bird is called chelidon) passed over to that plant, which is no less called by our Germans Schwalben-Kraut or Schwalben-Wurtz. But that blindness of the newly hatched, not only of swallows but of nearly all birds, if we except the aquatic species, is not properly such, but a mere covering over of the eyelids, which after a few days are wont gradually to be drawn apart and to free the eyes from their veils.

Instituted for himself, that is, instituted for him, to be restored again through penance into the grace of God.

The Babylonian king. This is not that Nebuchadnezzar (otherwise called Saosduchin, who in the year of the world 3347 routed Arphaxad, king of the Medes, in the plain of Ragau; nor the other Nebuchadnezzar, otherwise called Nabopolassar, who is believed to have founded the kingdom of the Chaldeans in the year of the world 3378: but his son Nebuchadnezzar, surnamed the Great, and his successor in the kingdom in the year of the world 3399, who reduced Joakim, king of Judah, to servitude (2 Kgs. 24:1); who, when Jerusalem was besieged, led away into captivity Joachin, who surrendered himself of his own accord with all his people (loc. cit. vv. 12 ff.); who, when Jerusalem had been taken, killed the sons of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, before his face, and dug out his eyes, and bound him with chains and led him to Babylon (2 Kgs. 25:7); and finally, through Nabuzardan, the chief of his army, set fire to the house of the Lord, and the house of the king, and the houses of Jerusalem, and burned every house with fire (ibid. v. 9), and thus utterly extinguished the whole kingdom of Judah and overthrew it from its foundations.

From this, then, and from very many other victories which he had won over the Syrians, the Phoenicians, Egypt, etc., when he had become much more puffed up and too little master of himself, at last, to chastise his pride, which could now be overcome by no other means, God showed him the future punishments of his pride through the dream of a very tall and very beautiful tree, but cut down by the hand of an angel, stripped of all its adornment, its root bound with a band of iron and bronze, etc., Daniel expounding this dream and effectively exhorting the king to penance: Redeem your sins with alms, and your iniquities with mercies to the poor: perhaps He will pardon your offences. But when the king had too stubbornly refused to obey such salutary warnings, at length, even after a space of twelve months had been granted, walking in the palace of Babylon,

said: Is this not great BABYLON, which I built as a royal house, in the strength of my might and in the glory of my splendour? What then? And while the word was still in the king's mouth, a voice fell from heaven: To you it is said, King Nebuchadnezzar: Your kingdom shall pass from you, and with beasts and wild animals shall be your dwelling; you shall eat hay like an ox, and seven times shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever He will. And what further? In the same hour the word was fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar, and he was driven out from among men, and he ate hay like an ox, and his body was soaked with the dew of heaven, until his hair grew into the likeness of eagles' [feathers], and his nails like those of birds. But when he had spent fully seven years among the beasts in this most wretched state, and had now been humbled enough, what happened next he himself then relates in verse 33: At the same time my reason returned to me, and I came to the honour and splendour of the kingdom, etc., and my magistrates sought me out, and I was restored in my kingdom, and greater magnificence was added to me.

"Nails after the manner of eagles." Our Vulgate mentions the nails of birds, namely of birds of prey, among which eagles certainly stand out.

"A lion's shagginess." Where our Vulgate has "into the likeness of EAGLES", the Seventy have λεόντων, "OF LIONS", and from this some in former times had slipped into the opinion that this king had been changed into a lion.

"Displaying." There are many things in the story of this terrible metamorphosis which are disputed rather contentiously among the interpreters, and which would certainly have to be discussed more carefully, if it were permitted to overstep once again (for this has already been done sufficiently elsewhere) the much narrower limits of our undertaking. But since our Tertullian has set forth this most grievous example before the others, so that by its terror he might drive sinners who presume too proudly of themselves to earnest penitence, we cannot altogether refrain from dwelling on it a little. Therefore as altogether certain

I suppose, 1, against Origen, who was otherwise given to allegorical senses more than is just, and was censured for this by St Jerome in his Commentary on Daniel and by the other interpreters after him, that this is not mere allegory but altogether true history; although I am not unaware that the things said in Isa. ch. 14 from v. 8 about Nebuchadnezzar (as some would have it) are mostly also to be understood in an allegorical sense, according to the mind of the holy Fathers and of the Church herself, of the most wretched banishment from heaven of LUCIFER, [once light-bearing] but soon extinguished, and now king of darkness. And again

I suppose, 2ndly, that nothing can safely be asserted in this matter except what the historical course of the narrative in Daniel itself requires, who, certainly by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote down this matter for us according to its circumstances, even the minute ones, and that accordingly God Himself did not wish more to be known by us with certainty.

3rdly, however, I say that that Babylonian king was not in reality changed into an ox or any other beast;

for neither could the very soul of the man be converted into the soul of an ox, which would certainly have been to change the essences of things; nor, once the man's soul had been expelled, did the soul of an ox enter into his body, as though by some kind of metempsychosis; for that could not have happened naturally, and the tenor of the sacred text in no way compels us to take refuge in a miracle, since it signifies only that he ate hay LIKE AN OX, not that he passed over into a real ox. For do oxen have hair like eagles' feathers, or nails like birds' claws? There is the further point that, if he had put on the real soul of an ox, Nebuchadnezzar would surely have felt no punishment from it, nor could he have been brought by it to the knowledge of the true God, surviving, that is, in body alone, with no power of understanding left. Or would anyone perhaps say that the soul of a brute was admitted by the soul of the king into partnership in the same body (by a new miracle, of course)? Or, finally, shall we say that the soul of the man, having meanwhile fled elsewhere and been somewhere an exile outside every body, or having been reduced utterly to nothing, then afterwards, either returned by right of postliminy, or reproduced, or created anew, entered its former body and restored the king to himself? Who would dare to devise such monstrosities of opinion? Therefore, finally,

4° I say: that the change of the king took place not in his imagination alone, in which, believing himself to be an ox, he ate hay, but plainly in the outward condition and shape of his body, which put on hair like eagles' feathers, and nails like birds' claws, etc.; and I set out the hypothesis of this matter thus: 1° Nebuchadnezzar, cast out from men, that is, from their company, did not on that account cease to be a man, but, seized by a sudden frenzy and madness, lost the use of human reason, and, escaping from the presence of his own people and from all guard, or breaking through it, and rushing off into the fields and forests, with his clothes soon rotted away or, as madmen are wont to do, torn off, wandered about astray; and, human food now failing him, being otherwise already wholly seized by the imagination of an ox, he turned also to its fodder, and ate hay LIKE AN OX. 2° From this constant food, and one so foreign to man, it was necessary that a most thorough change should take place in the blood and the other humours, and in the animal spirits, and in that temperament of his, and at length that the outward condition of the whole body also should be deformed, and that from so wild and so long-continued a diet it should grow savage into something horrid, namely hair like eagles' feathers and nails like birds' claws, so that thus at last Nebuchadnezzar could have terrified, as a kind of man-bull, not men only, but the very herds of oxen as well. And thus at last it seems that Daniel can be satisfied, as will be clear to anyone who weighs his fourth chapter carefully.

But what of the king during this most calamitous seven years of his? Did he meanwhile, retaining the use of reason, feel the greatness of his calamity, much as Apuleius testifies of himself in his fabulous Ass? So indeed our Tertullian seems to have thought, when FOR A LONG TIME (that is, as long as that unhappy state of the king lasted)

he says [the king] offered up penance, and performed exomologesis in seven years of squalor. But not a few others believe that at least intervals of reason not infrequently shone upon the king, so that he recognized the misery of his condition from time to time. For, they say, that state would not have been a penal one if he had felt no distress whatever from it and had not been able to compare it with the happiness of his former dignity, but rather had wandered, in this depraved state of an estranged mind, through the fields and woods among the wild animals even with pleasure.

But if I may speak my mind frankly, I incline towards this opinion: that the king was entirely deprived of the use of reason through that whole period of 7 years; for the sacred text compels us to think nothing else: Therefore, it says, AFTER THE END OF THE DAYS I Nebuchadnezzar raised my eyes to heaven (but he would have raised them more often if through certain intervals of reason he had recognized the unhappiness of his state), and MY SENSE (by which word the use of reason, or the sense and perception of the mind, is certainly denoted) was restored to me, and I blessed the Most High, etc. This same [is shown] by that moving speech in which, celebrating the praises, glory, power and kingdom of GOD, he continues: AT THAT TIME my sense returned to me, and my form returned to me, etc. Therefore only then did he come to know God, when he recovered both understanding and the former shape of a man.

It is fitting, however, to explain this matter further thus: when that period of seven years had passed, the king, waking as if from a deep sleep, once those dark spirits that had until then besieged his mind on every side were dispelled (and this could not have happened so suddenly without a miracle), and the memory of his monstrous pride and of the deeds most wickedly done out of it came back, and the whole unhappiness of so long a misery, with all its circumstances, was vividly set before his understanding, that pride of his being at last subdued, he was driven to the acknowledgement of the true God and to the profession both of His JUSTICE and of His CLEMENCY, and was at last converted, etc.

Alas for the bad treatment! This is a Hellenism; for the Greeks are accustomed frequently to join the genitive to exclamations.

God received. Whether this king performed a true penance, profitable for eternal salvation, by which, that is, his sins were blotted out, and whether, persevering in it thereafter, he at last attained salvation itself among the truly penitent, is a very doubtful matter. Indeed St Jerome in Letter 7, to Laeta, and also St Augustine in Letter 122 (now 111), to Victorianus, but above all the author of the book On Predestination and Grace (formerly ascribed to St Augustine), ch. 15, seem to favour it; but to others that penance is strongly suspect, since they measure it by the inconstant character of this king.

Certainly, when he had received from Daniel the interpretation of his dream about that STATUE cast from 4 metals, he burst out, wholly astounded, into these words: Truly your God is the GOD OF GODS, and the LORD OF KINGS, and

revealing mysteries, etc. (Dan. 3:47). But how little steadfast he was in his acknowledgement of the true God, and with how great an arrogance he afterwards also swelled, is shown by the other dream which followed, that of the most beautiful tree, soon however to be cut down, etc. (Dan. 4), and then indeed by that terrible sentence hurled against the king, of a seven years' exile among the beasts. For when God had granted him a whole year more, his sins to be redeemed by almsgiving and other good works, we read that he did none of these things, but rather, puffed up with fresh pride, boasted shamelessly of the deeds he had done. And what further? When he had spent a whole seven years among the wild beasts in that most wretched condition of body, after he had recovered not only his former shape but also the kingdom itself, and that indeed increased with greater magnificence, what then at last? We read that he finally cried out: Now therefore I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and magnify and glorify the King of heaven: because all His works are true, and His ways judgements, and those who walk in pride He is able to humble. But of penitence, of sorrow of heart, of the detestation of his past life, of the resolve of a new and better [life], etc., we read nothing. Yet these are the things in which the essence of true and sincere penitence consists.

But that acknowledgement of God too, that humility, how very short a time did it last? Behold a far greater madness, and one wholly incredible unless the prophet bore witness to it, of a mind swelling anew! Scarcely a year had passed (as the interpreters reckon) when King Nebuchadnezzar made a golden statue, sixty cubits in height, and set it up in the plain of Dura (Dan. 3:1 etc.), bearing the image either of Nabopolassar, his father, or of Bel, then the greatest of the gods among the Babylonians, or of Nebuchadnezzar himself, and by a most severe edict put forth he willed that it be worshipped; but when those three youths, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, had refused to commit the sacrilegious crime, he ordered them to be thrown into the fiery furnace; and when they had been brought out from it safe, the king, astounded by a new and enormous miracle, cried out: Blessed be the GOD OF GODS, Who has sent His angel, etc. (ibid. 95). Moreover, by a public and most severe decree he restrained those who blasphemed against the God of Israel, publicly testifying: The MOST HIGH GOD has wrought signs and wonders with me. It has pleased me therefore to proclaim His signs, because they are GREAT, and His wonders, because they are MIGHTY: and His kingdom is an EVERLASTING KINGDOM, and His POWER from generation to generation (ibid. 10). But this very edict is the one in which Nebuchadnezzar goes on to relate those things which we brought forward above from Dan. 4 concerning his so sorrowful seven years in the forests, so that it must needs be that that transformation of the king (which is to be carefully noted) happened before this story of the three youths.

Who now, I ask, could promise himself a sincere and steadfast penitence from a king so inconstant, concerning whose works, and worthy fruits of penitence, and above all a happy death itself, there is moreover so deep a silence in Daniel? But how different was the penitence of Manasseh, king of Ju[dah]! For indeed, most impious,

and perhaps even a far more wicked king than Nebuchadnezzar; yet after he was brought into straits, he prayed to his Lord, and did penance greatly before the God of his fathers, and entreated Him, and besought Him earnestly... and he took away the strange gods and the idol from the house of the Lord... Moreover he restored the altar of the Lord, and sacrificed victims upon it, and peace offerings, and praise; and he commanded Judah to serve the Lord God of Israel. What like things, I ask, do we read recorded of Nebuchadnezzar? He did indeed praise God, magnify Him, etc.; but did he pray, entreat, beseech earnestly, etc.?

And what, finally, if some eminent interpreters, and even St Jerome himself, would have the things found in Isaiah chapter 14, Hell beneath you was troubled to meet your coming... Your pride is brought down to hell, etc., etc., understood of Nebuchadnezzar? It is better to leave this king's penance and salvation, or his damnation, among those things which God, like many others of the kind, willed to be unknown to us, for a salutary fear and for the greater constancy of penance.

The Egyptian emperor. That is, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who is here called emperor in a broader sense, as exercising, like other kings, supreme command over his own people.

Long refused to his Lord. For Moses had been commanded by God to declare to Pharaoh in these words: The Lord God of the Hebrews has sent me to you, saying: Let My people go, that they may sacrifice to Me in the desert; and until the present time you have refused to hear.

By the parting of the sea. That is, by that division which the Greeks call dichotomia. And so too in the book On the Pallium, ch. 2, he speaks of the stroke of parting, and in the book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. 19, of the parting of flesh and soul. Solinus too used this word, ch. 36, saying: "The Atlantic tide sends a parting (or splitting) of the world into our sea."

It was offered as passable. Liceo, an ancient verb, has a passive meaning, and a thing is properly said licere when it is valued at a fixed price and put up for sale; liceri, however, is to value, and to set a price on it, as buyers do. Hence that line of the poet:

He is not valued at a penny by me who does not bid a penny for me.

The sea, then, licebat, since it was offered by God to the Israelites as passable for them to cross. Elsewhere Tertullian also uses licere for liquere or patere, as in the book Against Hermogenes, ch. 36, where: "But concerning motion it will be clear elsewhere too," that is, liquebit. So also above, ch. 6, for emendatos liquebit, some manuscripts read licebit.

The waves rolled back. The account of the crossing of the Red Sea, as happy and wondrous for the Israelites as it was fatal to the Egyptians and their Pharaoh, from Exodus chapter 14, is very well known even among the common people.

Restored by exomologesis. Now exomologesis differs from penance as an external act from an internal one; for penance is in the mind of the one who grieves, but exomologesis is placed in

the mouth of one confessing, and in other works which exhibit and demonstrate that inward penitence outwardly as well: of which our author [has spoken] already above, chapter IX throughout.

1249 As if by beacons [Pharis]. Pharos was the name of that very lofty tower of the Egyptians, to be reckoned among the seven wonders of the world, which, on the island of Pharos, lying seven stades from the harbour of Alexandria and joined to the mainland by either a bridge or a causeway, Ptolemy Philadelphus (or at any rate one of the Ptolemies) erected at an enormous cost, by the witness of Pliny (book XXXIII, chapter 12), of 800 talents (which, if I have reckoned the sum rightly, equal 1,200,000 of our thalers), so that it might "show fires for the night course of ships, to announce the shallows and the entrance to the harbour." From this all towers now, such as was that at Capreae in Sicily, which fell in an earthquake a little before the death of Tiberius Caesar (Suetonius, Tiberius, chapter 74), another, which had been raised by the emperor Claudius (by the witness of the same, in the Life of Claudius, chapter 21) "after the pattern of the Pharos of Alexandria" in the harbour of Ostia, which he had dug out, and however many in the end survive today in maritime cities and are customarily lit with fires by night for the sake of those sailing, are called by the general name of Phari; and this name was not, as Isidore thought (Origins, book XX, chapter 2), derived from Greek, ἀπὸ τοῦ φωτὸς ὁρᾷν, from the light to be seen there, but is more probably of Egyptian origin, transferred to that tower from the island itself, to which the name of Pharos had long since attached.

Of every mark. That is, most badly marked, namely by as many sins, branded on the soul as it were like brand-marks. See another instance of this kind of humility, which Tertullian had given out about himself at the end of the last chapter of On Baptism.

To keep silent about that. As if reluctantly [he indicates] that he himself

puts an end to this treatise, and breaks it off as if unwillingly.

1250 Adam the first [princeps], that is, the author, and first of all.

Into paradise. In the Apology, chapter 47, our Tertullian names paradise "a place of divine delight, appointed for receiving the spirits of the saints." He believed, moreover, that paradise still exists, and is situated beneath the equator, and is shut in on either side by the torrid zone as by a kind of wall of fire, and so is rendered inaccessible to mortals. From this opinion St Thomas, II-II, question 164, article 2, to the fifth [objection], seems not to differ much. This word, however, was not given among the Greeks from παρὰ and δεύω, from watering, as Suidas will have it, but is of Persian, indeed of Hebrew, or rather of Chaldaean origin, merging from פרח and הדס into פרדס, pardes, which according to the force of the words signifies a garden of myrtles, or in short any singularly delightful place.

But how was Adam restored through penitence into paradise? Not, certainly, into that earthly one from which he had been cast out, and to which all return was shut off, after God placed before the paradise of pleasure Cherubim, and a flaming and turning sword, to guard the way of the tree of life (Gen. 3:24). And so that paradise is to be understood spiritually and mystically, and of the state of grace, into which Adam was put back through penitence.

He is not silent. Preaching to us still by his example, he who in labours, among thorns and thistles, in the sweat of his face, as perpetual works of penitence, tilled the earth, and from it ate his bread, so that he might be, namely, a lesson to us that only through the works of laborious penitence can one come to the HEAVENLY PARADISE, but one to be dwelt in thenceforth for ever.