majority in every city, yet their conduct was always marked by silence and modesty. Their "discipline" enforced a patience which was divine; if they were known at all among men, it was for their reformation of the vices which once degraded them. Tertullian does not write to intimidate, but to warn—μὴ θεομαχεῖν. "Perform your duties as proconsul, but remember to be humane." If the Christians of Carthage should see fit to come to Scapula, how many swords and fires would he need for such multitudes of every sex, age, and rank! He would have to slaughter the leading persons of the city, and decimate the noble men and women of his own rank, friends and relations of his own circle. "Spare thyself, Scapula, if thou wilt not spare us. Spare Carthage, if thou wilt not spare thyself. Spare thy province, which the mere mention of thine intention has subjected to the threats and extortions of soldiers and of private foes [cf. de Fuga, cc. xii. xiii.]. As for us, we have no Master but God. Those whom you reckon your masters are but men, and must one day die. Our community shall never die. The more you pull it to the ground, the more it will be built up."
De Monogamia.—Some years passed, of peace from without but not from within; and a third time (c. 217) Tertullian returns to that question—marriage—which had occupied him in the ad Uxorem and de Exhortatione Castitatis. The third treatise is the bitterest. Tertullian now claims for his party that they and they alone were guided by the Paraclete. From Him they had received their teaching on monogamy. He had come to supersede the teaching of St. Paul by yet higher counsels of perfection. Much of Tertullian's argument—e.g. from Scripture—is repeated from his former treatises, and much of it is strained and conjectural, as he felt it would be said to be (c. ix.); but no one will dispute Tertullian's earnestness. Immorality was prevalent and contagious, and in monogamy—supposing celibacy and widowhood to be impossible—he saw a counteracting agency. Discipline and spirituality would be at least practicable to those who would rally round the standard of monogamy.
De Jejunio Adversus Psychicos (al. de Jejuniis).—Another great subject of difference between churchmen and Montanists had reference to fasts. Tertullian's paper is most distressing to read, scanty in argument, plentiful in abuse. Both sides indulged in unmeasured invective; both had lost their temper. The charges of luxury, gluttony, and immorality unhesitatingly and almost exultingly brought by Tertullian against church ecclesiastics and laymen are so gross as almost to refute themselves by their very exaggeration. They are more than the retort of a man infuriated by unjust accusations and meeting them by counter-charges. The ascetic has become a fanatic, and in his mad hatred besmirches and calumniates the church he had once so tenderly loved.
De Pudicitia.—This work has been placed before the de Monogamia and the de Jejunio, but internal and negative evidence, if slight, seems to assign it a place after them. An edict (c. i.) of the bp. of Rome (Zephyrinus, 202–218, or Callistus, 218–223) lashed Tertullian into fury, and completely dissolved the last links of union between him and the Psychics. The treatise is marked by intense bitterness from beginning to end.
Adversus Praxean.—For the history of Praxeas, the nature of his views and Tertullian's answer, see PRAXEAS.
Tertullian was the first who, in the controversy against the Monarchians, introduced prominently the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Praxeas did not touch it. Hence the value of such chapters as viii. ix. xxv. xxx. He fully maintains the personality of the Third Person of the Trinity (cf. ad Mart. c. iii.) if his language is occasionally ambiguous (cf. c. xii., his comment on Gen. i. 26). He bases as usual his arguments on Scripture (cc. xxi. to end), and if not always free from his well-known tendency to read into them what he wants, the passages are as a rule well and wisely handled either in defence of the Catholic position or in refutation of that of Praxeas. He gives (c. xx.) the 3 texts especially valued by this teacher in support of his heresy (Is. xlv. 5; John x. 30, xiv. 9, 10), and refutes his views at length (cc. xxi.–xxiv.).
IV. SUMMARY.—The brief sketch here presented of these powerful writings will have indicated the investigation of many a doctrine and the record of contemporaneous practices heathen and Christian, as well as illustrated the mind, character, and style of their writer.
(a) Tertullian and Heathenism.—On its moral side, extravagance, luxury, immorality, and cruelty were to all external appearance as rampant in his day as ever. Tertullian knows heathenism only in its coarseness and repulsiveness. Yet a reformation was proceeding, religious in origin and intention, which must not be forgotten in any true estimate of the age. Tertullian lived when old pagan traditions and new tendencies were co-operating; when there had risen that religious movement which, owing its impulse to the eclecticism of a Julia Domna, passed through the stirring phases successively represented in the neo-Pythagoreanism of her salon, in the subordination by Elagabalus of every other cultus to that of the Oriental sun-god, and in the equalization by Alexander Severus of all worshipful beings in his common cultus of the heroes of humanity. That movement was the product of a real awakening.
The main centre of these changes and developments was Rome, but Tertullian's writings against heathenism prove that Carthage at least felt the effects of this great tidal wave of religiousness. They are as full of attack as of defence. He strikes at a vigorous paganism as much as he beats off the charges alleged against Christianity. Every page teems with allusions which reflect without effort the firm foothold acquired by all forms of heathen cultus. Ridicule of the worship of the ancient deities of Greece and Rome, of the cultus of the emperors, of the "genius," and of demons is found allied with contempt of the gods of Alexandria (Isis and Serapis), of Phrygia (the Magna Mater and Bellona), of Syro-Phoenicia (the Dea Syra), and of Carthage (the Juno Coelestis). The very fierceness of his invective and scorn against the
