himself as a thinker and as a teacher, Tertullian was a compact ethical personality. What he was he was with his whole being. Once a Christian, he was determined to' be so with all his soul, and to shake himself free of all half measures and compromises with the world. It is not difficult to lay one's finger upon very many obliquities, self-deceptions and sophisms in Tertullian in matters of detail, for he struggled for years to reconcile things that were in themselves irreconcilable; yet in each case the perversities and sophisms were rathercthe outcome of the peculiarly difficult circumstances in which he stood. It is easy to convict him of having failed to control the glowing passion that was in him. He is often outrageously unjust in the substance of what he says, and in manner harsh to cynicism, scornful to gruesomeness; but in no battle that he fought was he ever actuated by selfish interests. What he did was really done for the Gospel, as he understood it, with all the faculties of his soul. But he understood the Gospel as being primarily an assured hope and a holy law, as fear of the fudge who can cast into hell and as an inflexible rule of faith and of discipline. Of the glorious liberty of the children of God he had nothing but a mere presentiment; he looked for it only in the world beyond the grave, and under the power of the Gospel he counted as loss all the world could give. He well understood the meaning of Christ's saying that He came not into the world to bring peace, but a sword: in a period when a lax spirit of conformity to the world- had seized the churches he maintained the “vigor evangelic us ” not merely against the Gnostics but against opportunists and a worldly-wise clergy. Among all the fathers of the first three centuries'Tertullian has given the most powerful expression to the terrible earnestness of the Gospel.
(3) The course of Tertullian's personal development fitted him in an altogether remarkable degree to be a teacher of the church. Born at Carthage of good family-his father was a “ centurio pro consular is ”-he received a first-rate education both in Latin and in Greek. He was able to speak and write Greek, and gives evidence of familiarity alike with its prose and with its poetry; and his excellent memoryf-though he himself complains about it»-enabled him always to bring in at the right place an appropriate, often brilliant, quotation or some historical allusion. The old historians, from Herodotus to Tacitus, were familiar to him, and the accuracy of his historical knowledge is astonishing. He studied with earnest zeal the Greek philosophers; Plato in particular, and the writings of the Stoics, he had fully at command, and his treatise De Anime shows that he himself was able to investigate and discuss philosophical problems. From the philosophers he had been led to the medical writers, whose treatises plainly had a place in his working library. But no portion of 'this rich store of miscellaneous knowledge has left its characteristic impress on his writings; this influence was reserved for his legal training. His father, whose military spirit reveals itself in the whole bearing of Tertullian, to whom Christianity was above everything a “ militia, ” had intended him for the law. He studied in Carthage, probably also in Rome, where, according to Eusebius, he enjoyed the reputation of being one of the most eminent jurists. This statement derives confirmation from the Digest, where references are made to two works, De Castrensi Peculio and Quaestionum Libri VIII., of a Roman jurist named Tertullian, who must have flourished about 180 A.D. In point of fact the quondam advocate never disappeared in the Christian presbyter. This was at once his strength and his weakness: his strength, for as a professional pleader he had learned how to deal with an adversary according to' the rules of the art-#to pull to pieces his theses, to reduce him ad absurdum, and to show the defects and contradictions of his statements, -and was specially qualified to expose the irregularities in the proceedings taken by the state against the Christians; but it was also his weakness, for it was responsible for his litigiousness, his often doubtful shifts and artifices, his sophisms and argumentation es ad hominem, his fallacies and surprises. At Rome in mature manhood Tertullian became a Christian, under what circumstances we do not know, and forthwith he bent himself with all his energy to the study of Scripture and'of Christian literature. Not only was he master of the contents of the Bible: he also read carefully the works of Hermas, Justin, Tatian, Miltiades, Melito, Irenaeus, Proculus, Clement, as well as many Gnostic treatises, the writings of Marcion in particular. iIn apologetics his principal master was Justin, and in theology proper and in the controversy with the Gnostics, Irenaeus. As a thinker he was not original, and even as a theologian he has produced but few schemes of doctrine, except his doctrine of sin. His special gift lay in the power to make what had been traditionally received impressive, to give to it its proper form, and to gain for it new currency. From Rome Tertullian visited Greece and perhaps also Asia Minor; at any rate we know that he had temporary relations with the churches there. He was consequently placed in a position in which he could check the doctrine and practice of the Roman church. Thus equipped with knowledge and experience, he returned to Carthage and there laid the foundation of Latin ~Christian literature. At first, after his conversion, he wrote Greek, but by and by Latin almost exclusively. The elements of this Christian Latin language may be enumerated as follows:—(i.) it had its origin, not in the literary language of Rome as developed by Cicero, but in the language of the people as we find it in Plautus and Terence;(ii.) it has an African complexion; (iii.) it is strongly influenced by Greek, particularly through the Latin translation of the Septuagint and of the New Testament, besides being sprinkled with a large number of Greek words derived from the Scriptures or from the Greek liturgies; (iv.)' it bears the stamp of the Gnostic style and contains also some military expressions; (v.) it owes something to the original creative power of Tertullian. As for his theology, its leading factors were—(i.) the teachings of the apologists; (ii.) the philosophy of the Stoics; (iii.) the rule of faith, interpreted in an anti-Gnostic sense, as he had received it from the Church of Rome; (iv.) the Soteriological theology of Melito and Irenaeus; (v.) the substance of the utterances of the Montanist prophets (in the closing decades of his' life). This analysis does not disclose, nor indeed is it possible to discover, what was the determining element for Tertullian; in fact he was under the dominion of more than one ruling principle, and he felt himself bound by several mutually opposing authorities. It was his desire to unite the enthusiasm of primitive Christianity with intelligent thought, the original demands of the Gospel with every letter of the Scriptures and with the practice of the Roman church, the sayings of the Paraclete with the authority of the bishops, the law of the churches with the freedom of the inspired, the rigid discipline of the Montanist with all the utterances of the New Testament and with the arrangements of a church seeking to set itself up within the world. -At this task he toiled for years, involved in contradictions which it took all the finished skill of the jurist to conceal from him for a time. At last he felt compelled to break off from the church for which he had lived and fought; but the breach could not clear him from the contradictions in which he found himself entangled. Not only did the great chasm between the old Christianity, to which his soul clung, and the Christianity of the Scriptures as juristic ally and philosophically interpreted remain unbridged; he also clung fast, in spite of his separation from the Catholic church, to his position that the church possesses the true doctrine, that the bishops per succession em are the repositories of the grace of the teaching office, and so forth. The growing violence of his latest works is to be accounted for, not only by his burning indignation against the ever-advancing secularization of the Catholic church, but also by the incompatibility between the authorities which he recognized and yet was not able to reconcile. After having done battle with heathens, Jews, ” Marcionites, Gnostics, Monarchians, and the Catholics, he died an old man, carrying with him to the grave the last remains of primitive Christianity in the West, but at the same time in conflict with himself.
(4) What has just been said brings out very clearly how important in their bearing on Tertullians development were the circumstances of the age in which he laboured. His activity
