all of his polemic writings, except the Præscriptio adversus Hæreticos, to this period. Of the close of his life we know nothing. It is not likely that he suffered martyrdom, since we have not even a legend, as in Justin's case, pointing to such an event. That God was not pleased to grant him such great honor must have been a sadder thing than death to his great, passionate soul. He would have asked no higher boon, and nothing could seem more fitting, than that a harsh death should end so harsh a life, -that, having lived in battle, he should pass in storm.

The writings of Tertullian which relate to the connection of Christians with the heathen world are deeply interesting in their character. Now with fiery rhetoric and no mean logic he vindicates the cause of the first, and attacks the vices of the second. Again, from the fountains of his own abiding faith, he pours forth healing waters to refresh and strengthen the souls of those who waste in dungeons,

"Longing, and yet afraid to die.”

*

And here most strongly do we feel, in considering the method of his consolation, that, since we cannot ascribe the work to the Montanistic period of his life, there must have been Montanism in the very fibre of his soul. Anon he summons the soul as an unconscious witness of the Christian's doctrines and the Christian's God:

"I summon thee, not such as when formed in the schools, exercised in libraries, nourished in the Academies and Porches of Athens, thou utterest thy crude wisdom. I address thee as simple and rude and unpolished and unlearned, such as they have thee who have only thee; the very and entire thing that thou art, in the road, in the highway, in the weaver's factory."

The tract Ad Martyres is the first writing of this class in order of time. The occasion of it was, no doubt, the persecution attendant on the refusal of Christians of the stricter sort to participate in the public festivities with which Severus celebrated his final triumph over Piscennius in the East and Albinus in Gaul. As the rescript of Trajan had never been

*The tract Ad Martyres.

repealed, Christianity still remained a religio illicita, and its followers were liable, at any time and for the most fanciful reasons, to be subjected to popular outrage, or imprisonment and death at the hands of unfriendly magistrates. "If the Tiber overflows the walls, if the Nile does not irrigate the fields, if the skies are shut, if the earth quakes, if there is a famine or a pestilence, immediately the cry is raised, Christianos ad leonem!" Such abuses called out the two Apologies of Justin under Marcus Antoninus; such, under Aurelius, some thirty years later, summoned him to "witness a good confession"; and now again, in A. D. 197, similar outrages filled the prisons with the condemned, and furnished occasion for Tertullian's earnest words of encouragement and consolation. Many expressions throughout the tract show us how strong was his mental relationship to Montanism; as, for instance, his comparison of the world to a prison, and his condemnation of those whom he considered too anxious to supply the bodily wants of their imprisoned friends. The former of these passages is quite remarkable:

"For if we only reflect that this world itself is a prison, we must think that we are rather come out of a prison than entered into one. The world has greater darkness, with which it blinds the hearts of men. It imposes heavier fetters, fetters which bind the very souls of men. Darkness is in the prison, but ye yourselves are light. It has fetters, but in God's sight ye are free. Its air is noisome, but ye are a sweet-smelling savor. Ye are waiting for the judge; but ye shall judge the judges themselves. Shall he be sad there, who sighs for the enjoyments of the world? Outside the prison, the Christian has renounced the world; but in prison, the prison also. It matters not where ye are in the world, who are not of the world."

And again:

"The prison is to the Christian what the desert was to the prophets. The Lord himself frequently retired into solitude, that he might pray more freely, and be apart from the world: lastly, he manifested his glory to his disciples in solitude. Let us discard the name of prison, and call it retirement. Though the body is shut up, though the flesh is detained, yet all things are open to the spirit."

It is possible, though by no means certain, that the writing De Spectaculis was called out by the festivities, for refusing

to participate in which the persons addressed in the tract Ad Martyres were cast into prison. It deals with a most difficult question, which could not be blinked, however, by any earnest Christian in Tertullian's time,-"How far the Christian may venture to place himself on a level with the world, and adopt its existing manners and forms of life; and how far this may be done without doing violence to Christian principles and the Christian spirit." We feel at once that there is no danger of Tertullian's erring on the side of a too pliant accommodation. Rather he will advocate the rejection of every heathen usage, to the most absolute extent. Very few old bottles will he find worthy of his new wine. Not one jot of sympathy will he have with anything that looks like appropriation of the world. And we are not disappointed. Did we not feel certain that, if he had been a Montanist at this time, he would have fallen back on the specific commands of the Paracletic revelation, we should certainly class the writing among his Montanistic works. But he is obliged to defend himself on the ground that the Scripture must be interpreted with reference to its general principles, particular applications of which often render it obligatory to do certain things not specially commanded. The clearness with which he distinguishes between the theatres themselves and the use that is made of them, goes far to absolve him from the charge of superstition.

"May God avert from his people such a love of destructive pleasure,” he goes on to say. "For what is it to go from the church of God to the church of the Devil? to weary those hands in applauding a player which thou hast been lifting up to God? to give a testimony to a gladiator with a mouth that has said Amen to the Holy One? to say 'for ever and ever' to any being save to God and Christ, εἰς αἰῶνας ἀπ ̓ αἰῶνος alii omnino dicere nisi Deo et Christo?"

This passage gains additional interest, as indicating that liturgical forms and responses were already in use. In conclusion, he contrasts the joys that the Christian gains with those that he abandons.

"Wouldst thou have fightings and wrestlings? Behold immodesty cast down by chastity, perfidy slain by fidelity, cruelty crushed by compassion, impudence eclipsed by modesty. Such are our contests, in

which we gain the crown. Wouldst thou also have somewhat of blood? Thou hast Christ's."

The closing passage of the tract is simply devilish. All attempts to excuse it, with the indignation heaped on Gibbon for quoting it as he does,* seem altogether absurd. It shows plainly enough that Christianity had not been able to subdue the natural harshness of his disposition, if it does not also show that that harshness had been increased by a too careful study of certain portions of Scripture, which are beacons, not to guide us into safe harbors, but to keep us from perilous shoals.

"And yet there remain other shows: that last and eternal day of judgment, the unlooked for, the scorned of the nations, when all the ancient things of the earth, and all that are rising into life, shall be consumed in one fire. What then shall be the expanse of this show! How shall I wonder, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult! beholding so many kings declared to be admitted into Heaven, with Jupiter himself and all that testify of him groaning together in the lowest darkness.”

There is more and worse. But that Tertullian should write thus in the third century seems not so strange, when we find his Oxford editor in the nineteenth commenting as follows: "A truth lies at the basis of this painful description, since Scripture says, The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance.""

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The tract De Idololatria, the Apologeticus, and the treatise De Testimonio Animal, are writings of a similar character, written before he left the Church. In the first, the attempt is made to show in how many ways idolatry may be committed. He calls upon all who get their livelihood by the manufacture and decoration of idols to resign their employment. He manifests a tendency which, if carried out, would separate the Church entirely from the world. He is hostile to commerce; he unconditionally denounces traffic in anything that may serve the purposes of heathen worship. He would not have a Christian accept any magisterial office.

* Roman Empire, Vol. I. Ch. XV. Sec. 2. His translation is slightly incorrect, but does little violence to the original.

"Who should more have used these honors than the Son of God? What faces, and how many, would have attended him! What purple would have glistened on his shoulders! What gold would have gleamed from his head, if he had not decided that the glory of the world was foreign to him and his followers! What, therefore, he would not have he rejected, and what he rejected he condemned, and what he condemned he assigned to the pomp of the Devil."

The Apology presents to us a most vivid picture of the suf fering Christian community. Hard indeed was the lot of its members, arrested without authority, condemned without a hearing, executed without judgment. Most earnestly, and most beautifully at times, does Tertullian demand that the Church shall have at least the liberty to defend herself.

"She asketh no favor for her cause, because she feeleth no wonder at her condition. She knoweth that she liveth a stranger upon earth, that among aliens she easily findeth foes; but that she hath her birth, her hope, her favor, and her worth in the heavens. One thing, meanwhile, she earnestly desireth, that she be not condemned unknown."

He contrasts the foolish charges brought against the Christians with the unconscious testimony to their purity of life. That he was not without such speculative temper as could not always be curbed by his will or spoiled by his imagination is shown when he sets forth the difference between Christianity and the philosophic systems in their relation to the world. There is in this analysis the strongest mixture of strength and weakness. Clearness and dulness have met together; bigotry and truth have kissed each other. Anselm long afterward expressed the same thought in somewhat similar language. "I strive not, Lord, to pierce thy height, but I desire to understand thy truth, which my heart believes and loves." Tertullian thought that the philosopher's attempt was the exact reverse of this. He sought truth in order that he might gratify his intellectual faculties, his interest in it being altogether subjective. But "Christians seek the truth impelled by an inward necessity, and retain it in its integrity as men anxious for their salvation." The charges against the Christians were of the most dreadful sort, no less than cannibalism and incest. The heat of Africa and the fury of her sand-storms VOL. LXXV. 5TH S. VOL. XIII. NO. II. 15