ecclesiis Apostolicis, quod nulla doctrina diversa. Hoc est testimonium veritatis."
Heretics advanced two "mad" objections to these rules: (a) The apostles did not know all things (c. xxii.). (b) Arguing from I. Tim. vi. 20 and II. Tim. i. 14, the apostles did not reveal everything to all men. Some doctrines they proclaimed openly and to all, others secretly and to a few (c. xxv.). Tertullian addressed himself to both these points.
C. Tertullian and Montanism.—About the end of 2nd cent. Montanism invaded Africa. Tertullian would seem to have embraced it wholeheartedly. It suited his temperament; it furnished the logical solutions to problems practical and theological which had been disturbing him. But his Montanism was not the Montanism of 172–177 or of Asia Minor; it had come to him through the purifying medium of distance and time. He knew or remembered nothing of the extravagances connected with the first deliverances of the "new prophets." Montanism was in truth to Tertullian little more than a name; development and restoration rather than novelty underlie the intention, and are stamped upon the thoughts, of every treatise which follows those hitherto considered. The practices Tertullian favoured and advocated, the doctrines he loved and enforced, had alike their roots in the existing practices and doctrines of the church. It is the manner in which he has insisted upon the one which has so much discredited it; it is the juridical fence with which he has driven home the other which has angered opponents. He defended his practice and teaching as necessary for his day. New fasts, protests against second marriages, a sterner accentuation of discipline, were conceived as absolutely necessary by the man who, beginning by tightening bonds which the church had wisely left relaxed, ended by the Pharisaic assumption that he and his were πνευματικοὶ and his opponents ψυχικοί. But if he drew his descriptive language from Gnostic codes, he burned in the spirit to depose Gnostic heresy. The merit he assigned to ecstasy, dream, vision, new prophecy, and special endowment by the Paraclete, were expansions of simpler but Scriptural teaching, with something of Pharisaic lordliness, but ever directed against the Sadduceeism, the materialism, the Patripassianism, and the Monarchianism of his day.
The career of Tertullian, his whole being and character, left him no choice when he had to make his decision. He was bound to side with the sterner party, and he did. If at first he retained his position in the church, that position before long became intolerable. The breach took place of which the de Virg. Vel. gives the ostensible cause; and the passion which animated the apologist in defence of the church was presently employed to revile, discard, and injure her. Few treatises are more painful to read than the de Monogamia, de Jejunio, and de Pudicitia. It is a relief to turn from them to the adv. Praxean. If the heart of the ascetic has been alienated from the church, he can still defend her faith with all his old loving energy, and, by his last existing writing, command respect from those whose affection he had lost.
(1) Practical Treatises.—De Corona is usually counted the first treatise which indicates traces of Montanism (cf. c. i.; Hauck places the de Virg. Vel. before it), and it was written after the de Spectac. (cf. c. vi.). Opinions were divided as to the soldier's conduct. Some blamed him as rash, as eager to die, some as bringing trouble on the Christian name about a mere matter of dress. Tertullian, with one word of laudation of the man—"solus scilicet fortis inter tot fratres commilitones, solus Christianus"—turns furiously upon his decriers.
De Fuga in Persecutione.—It may well have been that excitement threatening persecution The treatise contains two very beautiful passages, (a) the eulogy of wisdom (c. xviii.), and (b) the description of the development of cosmical order out of chaos (c. xxix.).
Adv. Valentinianos.—For a review of the opinions of this school ("frequentissimum plane collegium inter haereticos") see VALENTINUS. Tertullian's treatise does not so much discuss these opinions as state them; it is not so much a refutation as a satire, intended to provoke mirth (c. vi.). It claims no originality, but to be a faithful reflection of the teaching of Justin, Miltiades (cf. Eus. H. E. v. 17) Irenaeus, and Proculus.
De Carne Christi.—This is Tertullian's principal contribution to the Christological problem of the time: Was the flesh of Christ born of the Virgin and human in its nature (c. xxxv.)? In his de Resurrectione Carnis (c. ii.) he himself specifies the tenets he opposes here to be those of Marcion, Basilides, Valentinus, and Apelles. These "modern Sadducees" (c. i.; de Praes. Haer. c. xxxiii.) were apprehensive lest if they admitted the reality of Christ's flesh, they must also admit His resurrection in the flesh, and consequently the resurrection generally. It was necessary to discuss, therefore, His bodily substance. (i) (a) Marcion's views are examined (cc. ii.–v.); then (b) those of Apelles (cc. vi.–ix.) ; then (c) that of the Valentinians (cc. x.–xvi.). (ii) The second part of the treatise deals more especially with the single point—"Did Christ receive flesh from the Virgin" (cc. xvii.–end)?
The treatise fully responds to the intention of the writer. It examines the arguments employed and the Scriptures advanced (see esp. c. xviii.) ; and does so, on the whole, in a style moulded by the recollection that the subject was a grave and solemn one. There are bursts of irony (e.g. cc. ii. iv.); paradoxes (see c. v., perhaps the most famous of Tertullian's many paradoxes) and retorts; but the total result is a valuable contribution to the literature of the subject. His line of argument and his statement of the church's doctrine is that of Irenaeus. For a general view of the opinions attacked see APELLES, MARCION, and VALENTINUS.
De Resurrectione Carnis.—Tertullian wrote this (c. ii.) in fulfilment of the intention expressed in the de Carne Christi (c. xxv.), against those who allowed that the soul would rise again, but refused resurrection to the flesh on account of its worthlessness. It was a logical sequence to their fundamental position that the works of the Demiurge, or the god who created the world and was opposed to the supreme God, were marked by corruption and worthlessness, and that the flesh of man was consequently so also. Tertullian grants that his subject was invested with uncertainty; but it was too important to be passed over. The question affected the very Oneness of the Godhead. To deny the resurrection of the flesh would be to shake that doctrine, to vindicate the resurrection of the flesh would establish it. In contrast to the unseemly language (spurciloquium) of heathen and heretic, he will adopt a more honourable and modest style (cf. de Anima, c. xxxii.); and he has kept his word. There are few sentences which grate upon the ear, while there are many passages of considerable beauty and profound Christian faith.
Adv. Marcionem, bks. i.–v.—This work in its present form is assigned to the 15th year of Severus (bk. i. c. xv.) or c. 208; and comes to us as a work touched and retouched during many years (cf. i. c. xxii.). Tertullian had in other cases felt dissatisfaction with his writings of an earlier period, or altered his arguments to meet the ever-altering phases of false belief. Thus in the earlier work, de Praes. Haer. c. xix., he declines to allow appeal to the Scriptures in the discussion of heresy; in a later treatise, de Resurr. Carnis, c. iii., he demands of heretics that they should support their inquiries from Scripture alone (cf. adv. Prax. c. xi.). So now, his earliest edition of this treatise, if placed (conjecturally) c. 200, would have seemed to him very defective when writing c. 208. He had separated from his old friends, now branded as the "Psychics" (iv. c. xxii.), to find among the Montanists the true church (i. c. xxi.; iv. c. v.). To him "the new prophecy" was now the highest authority, the Paraclete the sole guide unto all truth. The doctrinal controversy between Tertullian and Marcion turned principally on questions of anthropology and Christology. All that Tertullian has to say upon it has been summed up under MARCION.
De Anima.—In the treatise de Testimonio Animae Tertullian had sought to prove that the soul of man bore natural testimony to the truth of the representations given in Holy Scripture of the unity, nature, and attributes of God, and of a future state. In the treatise de Anima, written some ten years or so later, he deals with the soul itself. Between these surviving treatises is to be placed one now lost, de Censu Animae, in which he had combated the opinion of Hermogenes that the origin of the soul was to be found in matter by the counter-opinion that it was formed by the afflatus of God (cf. de Anima, cc. i. iii. xi.; adv. Marc. ii. c. ix.). The attributes of the soul (animae naturalia) pointed, in his opinion, to propinquity to God and not to matter (cf. de Anima, c. xxii.), an opinion supported by the views of Plato, who had taught the divinatio animae (cf. de Anima, c. xxiv.). The discussion of its origin is followed by a general inquiry respecting the nature, powers, and destiny of the soul. An admirable analysis is that of Bp. Kaye (pp. 178–207; cf. also Neander, the careful analysis of Böhringer, and Hauck). In c. xxii. Tertullian gives his definition of the soul as deriving its origin from the breath of God (iv. xi.). The soul is immortal, corporeal (v.–viii.), and endowed with form (ix.); simple in its substance (x. xi.); possessing within itself the principle of intelligence (xii.); working in different ways or channels (xiii.–xv.); endued with free will; affected by external circumstances, and thus producing the infinite variety of disposition observable among mankind; rational (xvi.); supreme over man (xvii. xviii.); and possessing natural insight into futurity (xix.). The Gospels, in (e.g.) the history of the rich man in torment (Luke xvi. 23, 24), proved the corporeity of the soul (c. vii.; also a Stoic opinion), and medical science, "the sister of philosophy," in the volumes of a
