The Ecclesiastical History of the second and third Centuries illustrated from the Writings of Tertullian. By JOHN, BISHOP OF BRISTOL, Master of Christ's College, and Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge. 8vo. Pp. 608. 12s. 6d. London. Rivingtons. 1826.

ON few subjects have the opinions of the learned in modern times been more divided than on the authority of the ancient Fathers. Roman Catholic writers lavish unbounded praise upon their merits, and appeal to them with a respect, and even reverence, but little inferior to that which is paid to the inspired volume. Some among the Protestants, on the other hand, disparage them as if they fell below the common standard of human intellect, and disdain their decisions, as the decisions of the weakest and blindest of men. The truth, as often happens, lies between both extremes. To inspiration they have no claim; and as men they were not exempt from the infirmities of our fallen state, exposed likewise to some errors arising from the then state of letters and of society, and from the peculiar circumstances in which they were placed; yet they had some advantages from living in ages so near to the origin of the Christian faith, when the stream of traditionary truth was flowing in its purest channel; they were men of unquestioned piety and integrity; and therefore unexceptionable witnesses to the primitive faith. Some there are too ignorant to consult them, too insolent to peruse them, or too presumptuous to listen to the dictates of the recorded wisdom of antiquity, but to despise the authority of writers so well situated for the acquirement and transmission of truth, is not the part either of a candid or a sound mind. Granting them to be only men of common sense and common honesty, and their authority as witnesses to the Apostolical doctrines and practices is undeniable; an authority which would be scarcely affected if we were to allow most of the charges preferred against them by a Whitby, a Daille, a Barbeyrac, and a Rosenmüller.

In regard to the history of the Church their testimony is essentially important, and some even of those who spurn their authority in matters of doctrine, nevertheless pay due respect to their attestation in matters of history. Without their aid it would be impossible to compose any thing which would deserve to be called an ecclesiastical history. But it is an assertion which hardly admits of doubt that their writings have never yet been so carefully examined, with a view to this particular

subject, as their importance demands. Such a task, indeed, is almost beyond the reach of any single mind to accomplish; those learned men, therefore, who search the volumes of any ancient Father for the purpose of so applying them, are performing an acceptable service to the cause of letters and theology. Among writers of this description, the Right Reverend author of the work before us holds a conspicuous rank. His design was to illustrate the ecclesiastical history of the second and third centuries from the writings of Tertullian, which he has accomplished with great ability and judgment, and has thus brought the testimony of this Father to bear upon the history of this period in a manner the most full and complete.

The scattered hints relating to the biography of Tertullian, preserved in the ancient writings have been collected by the assiduity of Du Pin, Cave, Tillemont, Lardner, &c.; and in a preliminary chapter the Bishop of Bristol prefixes an account of the life and writings of Tertullian. No precise information can be obtained respecting the date of his birth, or any of the principal occurrences of his life; it is certain, however, that he flourished during the reigns of Severus and Antoninus Caracalla, or between the years 193 and 216. Lardner places him at the year 200. He was married, as appears from two Treatises among his works addressed to his wife, and it is asserted by Jerome that he was a Presbyter of the Church.

The most remarkable incident in Tertullian's life was his adoption of the errors of Montanus, which Pamelius and others have imputed to disappointed ambition, in being defeated in his pretensions to the see, either of Rome or of Carthage. But probably the true cause, as the Bishop of Bristol observes, must be sought" in the constitution and temper of his mind, to which the austere doctrines and practice of the new prophet were perfectly congenial, and of which the natural warmth and acerbity were, as Jerome informs us, increased by the censures, perhaps by the misrepresentations of the Roman clergy." (P. 36.) Be this as it may, his attachment to the doctrines of Montanus is evident from his works; for he often uses the authority of the new prophecy, enforces the necessity of frequent fasts, condemns marriages, or at least gives a decided preference to a life of celibacy, proscribes second marriages, and recommends a severe and ascetic course of life. To this defection from the Church is to be attributed that dissimilitude among the treatises, those different representations, and those contrarieties of opinion which it is not difficult to discover in the works of Tertullian.

In considering these circumstances in the life and writings of

this Father, an objection naturally occurs against his authority. What reliance, it may be asked, can we place upon the judg ment of one who could be deluded into a belief of the extravagant pretensions of Montanus? What credit is due to the testimony of so violent a partisan of that heresiarch? Or what advantage can be derived from studying the works of so credulous and superstitious an author? This is an objection lying at the very groundwork of the Bishop of Bristol's inquiry in the volume before us, and it is thus excellently rebutted by his Lordship :

"These are questions easily asked and answered without hesitation by men who take the royal road to theological knowledge; who either through want of the leisure, or impatience of the labour, requisite for the examination of the writings of the Fathers, find it convenient to conceal their ignorance under an air of contempt. Thus a hásty and unfair sentence of condemnation has been passed upon the Fathers, and their works have fallen into unmerited disrepute. The sentence is hasty, because it speaks great ignorance of human nature, which often presents the curious phenomenon of an union of the most opposite qualities in the same mind: of vigour, acuteness and discrimination on some subjects, with imbecility, dullness, and bigotry on others. The sentence is unfair, because it condemns the Fathers for faults, which were those, not of the individuals, but of the age; of the elder Pliny and Marcus Antoninus, as well as of Tertullian. It is moreover unfair, because the persons who argue thus in the case of the Fathers, argue differently in other cases. Without intending to compare the gentle, the amiable, the accomplished Fenelon, with the harsh, the fiery, the unpolished Tertullian, or to class the spiritual reveries of Madame Guyon with the extravagancies of Montanus and his prophetesses, it may be remarked that the predilection of Fenelon for the notions of the mystics betrayed a mental weakness, differing in degree, rather than in kind, from that which led Tertullian to the adoption of Montanism. We do not, however, on account of this weakness in Fenelon, throw aside his works as utterly undeserving of notice, or deem it a sufficient ground for questioning the superiority of his genius and talent; we regard with surprise and regret this additional instance of human infirmity, but continue to read Telemachus with instruction and delight. Let us shew the same candour and sound judgment in the case of the Fathers; let us separate the wheat from the tares, and not involve them in one indiscriminate conflagration. The assertion may appear paradoxical, but is nevertheless true, that the value of Tertullian's writings to the theological student arises in a great measure from his errors. When he became a Montanist he set himself to expose what he deemed faulty in the practice and discipline of the Church; thus we are told indirectly what that practice and that discipline were, and we obtain information which, but for this secession from the Church, his works would scarcely have supplied. In a word

whether we consider the testimony borne to the genuineness and integrity of the books of the New Testament, or the information relating to the ceremonies, discipline, and doctrines of the primitive Church, Tertullian's writings form a most important link in that chain of tradition which connects the Apostolical age with our own." P. 37.

The works of Tertullian are commonly distinguished into two classes, namely, those which he wrote before, and those which he wrote after, he became a Montanist; but the Bishop of Bristol more accurately arranges them into four classes-those written while he was a member of the Churchthose after he became a Montanist-those probably written after he became a Montanist-and those respecting which nothing certain can be pronounced. Of the genuineness of the works ascribed to Tertullian there can be no reasonable doubt, being ascertained by the testimony of writers in succession from the times in which he lived. Yet a chain of testimony so abundantly satisfactory did not satisfy the sceptical mind of Semler, who, in a dissertation inserted in his edition of Tertullian's works, endeavours to prove that they, as well as the writings of Justin Martyr and Irenæus, are spurious. This theory, so evidently wild and preposterous, and built upon grounds equally subversive of all historical testimony, is combated, and solidly refuted by our learned author. (P. 71-90.)

It is well known to every reader of Mosheim, that, in imitation of the Centuriators of Magdeburg, he divides the history of the Church into two branches, external and internal; and he has been partly followed by the acute, but fanciful Semler. Indeed all ecclesiastical historians have attended to these branches, but no one has kept them so distinct as Mosheim, whose outline it is the object of the Bishop of Bristol to fill up from the writings of Tertullian.

Agreeably to this plan the Right Rev. Author commences the second chapter with the external history of the Church; and, after shewing the explicit testimony which Tertullian bears to the wide diffusion of Christianity in his day, proceeds to consider the question, whether the exercise of miraculous power existed at that period. Few of our readers can be ignorant of the controversy carried on in the last century on this subject by Dr. Middleton and his opponents; a controversy which excited much curious research and learned discussion, and which would have been productive of very beneficial results had it been conducted with more temper and moderation. Our

* The notion of Hoffmann that all the works of Tertullian extant were written after he embraced Montanism, is refuted by the different characters discoverable in the works themselves, See Jablonski Inst. Hist. Eccles. Secul. ii. cap. ii. §. 4.

author's opinion is that the power of working miracles was confined to the Apostles and to those on whom they laid their hands *, and that they consequently ceased when the last disciple on whom the Apostles laid their hands expired. This opinion is certainly as probable as any, and agrees remarkably well with the language of the ancient Fathers on the subject; but to decide with undoubted confidence on a matter involved in so much mystery would be a mark of equal folly and presumption †.

The accusations, the calumnies, the opposition, and the persecutions to which the Christians of that age were exposed are next touched upon with a masterly hand; but we shall pass over this part of the work to the third chapter, which, according to the order of Mosheim, treats of the state of letters and philosophy in that century.

The Right Rev. author collects and discusses at length Tertullian's notions concerning the Deity, concerning the nature of angels and demons, and concerning the origin, nature, and destiny of the human soul; but the most important part of the chapter perhaps is that in which he comments on the prevalent disposition to undervalue the argument a posteriori. Every attempt to prove the existence and attributes of God from the visible works of creation, is treated by many as vain and idle, nay, even as presumptuous, and almost impious. The assertion of such persons, that man never did by reasoning a posteriori discover the existence of God, may be admitted without much danger, for the question is, not whether man has ever so discovered the existence of a Supreme Being, but whether, if he had so reasoned, he would have reasoned correctly. Now that such arguments are not fallacious appears from this, that, allowing the knowledge of a God to be derived from revelation, yet the arguments for his existence and attributes derived from the course and constitution of nature, are no sooner proposed, than they command the assent of the understanding: and, as his lordship observes, "the same series of proofs by which we establish a known truth, might surely have conducted us to the knowledge of that truth." (p. 185.) This is the only way by which a sceptic can possibly be convinced of the existence of a God. Denying as he does the authority of Revelation, we have no other arguments to oppose to him, than those which

• Acts vi. 6. (compared with vi. 8. and viii. 6.) viii. 17, 18. xix. 6.

Yet Semler, speaking of miraculous powers in the second century, says, "Nos quidem talibus narrationibus, etsi olim forte fuerunt satis probæ, atque recentiores earum non defuerunt amatores, nihil hodie historiam Christianorum adjuvari statuimus." Hist. Eccles. Select. Capita. secul. ii. cap. 2. Such is the pert and contemptuous language of the rationalizing divines!