CHAP. LXIII. — CONCLUSION. THE RESURREC- TION OF THE FLESH IN ITS ABSOLUTE IDENTI- TY AND PERFECTION. BELIEF OF THIS HAD BECOME WEAK. HOPES FOR ITS REFRESHING RESTORATION UNDER THE INFLUENCES OF THE PARACLETE.
And SO the flesh shall rise again, wholly in every man, in its own identity, in its absolute integrity. Wherever it may be, it is in safe keeping in God's presence, through that most faithful " Mediator between God and man, (the man) Jesus Christ," ^ who shall reconcile both God to man, and man to God; the spirit to the flesh, and the flesh to the spirit. Both natures has He already united in His own self; He has fitted them together as bride and bridegroom in the reciprocal bond of wedded life. Now, if any should insist on making the soul the bride, then the flesh will follow the soul as her dowry. The soul shall never be an outcast, to be had home by the bridegroom bare and naked. She has her dower, her out- fit, her fortune in the flesh, which shall ac- company her with the love and fidelity of a foster-sister. But suppose the flesh to be the ELUCIDATIONS.
])ri(Je, then in Christ Jesus she has in the contract of His blood received His Spirit as her spouse. Now, what you take to be her extinction, you may be sure is only her tem- porary retirement. It is not the soul only which withdraws from view. The flesh, too, has her departures for a while — in waters, in fires, in birds, in beasts; she may seem to be dissolved into these, but she is only poured into them, as into vessels. And should the vessels themselves afterwards fail to hold her, escaping from even these, and returning to her mother earth, she is absorbed once more, as it were, by its secret embraces, ultimately to stand forth to view, like Adam when sum- moned to hear from his Lord and Creator the words, " Behold, the man is become as one of us!"' — thoroughly "knowing" by that time *' the evil " which she had escaped, " and the good" which she has acquired. Why, then, O soul, should you envy the flesh? There is none, after the Lord, whom you should love so dearly; none more like a brother to you, which is even born along with yourself in God. You ought rather to have been by your prayers obtaining resurrection for her: her sins, what- ever they were, were owing to you. However, it is no wonder if you hate her; for you have repudiated her Creator.'- You have accus- comed yourself either to deny or change her existence even in Christ ^ — corrupting the very Word of God Himself, who became flesh, either by mutilating or misinterpreting the Scrip- ture,^ and introducing, above all, apocryphal mysteries <z«^ blasphemous fables. s But yet - In this apostrophe to the soul, he censures Marcion s heresy.
3 Compare the De Came Christi.
* See the £>e Prcescript. flieret. ch. xxxviii. supra, for in- stances of these diverse methods of heresy. Marcion is men- tioned as the mutilator of Scripture, by cutting away from it whatever opposed his views; Valentinus as the corrupter thereof, by his manifold and fantastic interpretations.
5 See the Adv. Valentinianos, supra.
Almighty God, in His most gracious provi- dence, by " pouring out of His Spirit in these last days, upon all flesh, upon His servants and on His handmaidens,"* has checked these impostures of unbelief and perverseness, reani- mated men's faltering faith in the resurrec- tion of the flesh, and cleared from all obscurity and equivocation the ancient Scriptures (ol both God's Testaments 7) by the clear light of their (sacred) words and meanings. Now, since it was " needful that there should be heresies, in order that they which are approved might be made manifest;"^ since, however, these heresies would be unable to put on a bold front without some countenance from the Scriptures, it therefore is plain enough that the ancient Holy Writ has furnished them with sundry materials for their evil doctrine, which very materials indeed (so distorted) are refutable from the same Scriptures. It was fit and proper, therefore, that the Holy Ghost should no longer withhold the effusions of His gracious light upon these inspired writings, in order that they might be able to disseminate the seeds of truth with no admixture of hereti- cal subtleties, and pluck out from it their tares. He has accordingly now dispersed all the per- plexities of the past, and their self-chosen allegories and parables, by the open and per- spicuous explanation of the entire mystery, through the new prophecy, which descends in copious streams from the Paraclete. If you will only draw water from His fountains, you will never thrist for other doctrine: no feverish craving after subtle questions will again con- sume you; but by drinking in evermore the resurrection of the flesh, you will be satisfied with the refreshing draughts.
6Joel ii. 28, 29; Acts ii. 17, 18. [See last sentence. He im- proves upon St. Peter's interpretation of this text (as see below) by attributing his own clear views to the charismata, which he re- gards as still vouchsafed to the more spiritual.]
7 We follow Oehler's view here, by all meaos.
ELUCIDATIONS. I.
The Schoolmen and middle-age jurists improved on Tertullian's etymology. He says, — "a cadendo — cadaver." But they form the word thus: Caxo data, z'ljrmibus ^= Ca-da-ver. On this subject see a most interesting discourse of the (paradoxical and sophistical, nay the whimsical) Count Joseph de Maistre, in his Soirees de St. Peter sbottrg.^ He ' OEuvres, Tom. v. p. iii.
ELUCIDATIONS. 595 remarks on the happy formation of many Latin words, in this manner: e. g., Ccecus ut ire = Cacutire^ "to grope like a blind man." The French, he says, are not without such ex- amples, and he instances the word ancttrc = ancestor, as composed out of ancicn and etre, i.e., one of a former existence. Courage, he says, is formed from cceur and rage, this use of rage being the Greek i)vuoq. He supposes that the English use the word rage in this sense, but 1 recall only the instance: " Chill penury repressed their noble rage," from Gray's Elegy. The Diversiotis of Fur ley, of Horne-Tooke, supply amusing examples of the like in the formation of English words.
IL (His flesh, the Bread, cap. xxxvii. p. 572.)
Note our author's exposition. He censures those who understood our Lord's words after the letter, as if they were to eat the carnal body. He expounds the spiritual thing which gives life as to be understood by the text: "the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." His word is the life-giving principle and therefore he called his flesh by the same name: and we are to "devour Him with the ear and to ruminate on Him with the understanding, and to digest Him by faith." The flesh profits nothing, the spirit imparts life. Now, was Tertullian ever censured for this exposition? On the contrary, this was the faith of the Catholic Church, from the beginning. Our Saxon forefathers taught the same, as appears from the Homily of Ailfric,^ a.d. 980, and from the exposition of Ratramn, a.d. 840. The heresy of Transubstantiation was not dogmatic even among Latins, until the 'I'hirteenth century, and it prevailed in England less than three hundred years, when the Catholic doctrine was restored, through the influence of Ratramn's treatise first upon the mind of Ridley and then by Ridley's arguments with Cranmer. Thus were their understandings opened to the Scriptures and to the acknowledging of the Truth, for which they suffered martyrdom. To the reformation we owe the rescue of Ante-Nicene doctrine from the perversions of the Schoolmen and the gradual corruptions of doctrine after the Ninth Century.
III.
(Paradise, cap. xliii. p. 576.)
This sentence reads, in the translation I am editing, as follows: "No one, on becoming absent from the body, is at once a dweller in the presence of the Lord, except by the pre- rogative of martyrdom, whereby (the saint) gets at once a lodging in Paradise, not in Hades." But the original does not say precisely this, nor does the author use the Greek word Hades. His words are: " Nemo enim peregrinatus a corpore statim immoratur penes Dominum nisi ex martyrii proerogativa Paradiso silicet non Inferis diversurus." The passage therefore, is not necessarily as inconsistent with the author's topography of the invisible world, as might seem. " Not in the regions beneath Paradise but in Paradise itself," seems to be the idea; Paradise being included in the world of Hades, indeed, but in a lofty region, far enough removed from the hiferi, and refreshed by light from the third Heaven and the throne itself, (as this planet is by the light of the Sun,) immensely distant though it be from the final abode of the Redeemed.
> See Soames' Anglo Sa.xon Church, cap. xii. p. 465, and cap. xi. pp..^23-430. See also the valuable annotations of Dr. Routh's Opuicula, Vol. II. pp. 167-186.
VII.
AGAINST PRAXEAS;' IN WHICH HE DEFENDS, IN ALL ESSENTIAL POINTS, THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY TRINITY.^^ [TRANSLATED BY DR. HOLMES.]
CHAP. I. — Satan's wiles against the truth.
HOW THEY TAKE THE FORM OF THE PRAXEAN HERESY. ACCOUNT OF THE PUBLICATION OF THIS HERESY.
In various ways has the devil rivalled and resisted the truth. Sometimes his aim has been to destroy the truth by defending it. He maintains that there is one only Lord, the Almighty Creator of the world, in order that out of this doctrine of the unity he may fab- ricate a heresy. He says that the Father Himself came down into the Virgin, was Himself born of her, Himself suffered, indeed was Himself Jesus Christ. Here the old ser- pent has fallen out with himself, since, when lie tempted Christ after John's baptisnri, he approached Him as " the Son of God; " surely intimating that God had a Son, even on the testimony of the very Scriptures, out of which he was at the moment forging his temptation: *' If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." ^ Again: "If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence;" for it is written, He shall give His angels charge concerning thee" — referring no doubt, to the Father — " and in their hands they shall bear thee up, that thou hurt not thy foot against a stone." ^ Or perhaps, after all, he was only reproaching the Gospels with a lie, .saying in fact: " Away with Matthew; away with Luke! Why heed their uiords t In spite of them, / declare that it was God Himself that ' The error of Praxeas appears to have orijjinated in anxiety to maintain the unity of God; which, he thouy^ht could only be done by sayinj;; that the Father,.Son, and Holy Ghost were one and the same. He contended, therefore, according to TertuUian, that the Father himself descended into the Virgin, was born of her, ■suffered, and was in a word Jesus Christ. From the most start- ling of the deductions from Praxeas' general theory, his opponents ijave him and his followers the name of I'atripassiuns: from another point in his teaching they were called A!oiiarc/iians. {Probable date not earlier than a.u. 208I.
- [Elucidation 1.]
I approached; it was the Almighty Himself that I tempted face to face; and it was for no other purpose than to tempt Him that I ap- proached Him. If, on the contrary, it had been o?ily the Son of God, most likely I should never have condescended to deal with Him. " However, he is himself a liar from the be- ginning, ^ and whatever man he instigates in his own way; as, for instance, Praxeas. For he was the first to import into Rome from Asia this kind of heretical pravity, a man in other respects of restless disposition, and above all inflated with the pride of confessorship simply and solely because he had to bear for a short time the annoyance of a prison; on which oc- casion, even " if he had given his body to be burned, it would have profited him nothing," not having the love of God, ^ whose very gifts he has resisted and destroyed. For after the Bishop of Rome ^ had acknowledged the pro- phetic gifts of Montanus, Prisca, and Maxi- milla, and, in consequence of the acknowledg- ment, had bestowed his peace ^ on the churches of Asia and Phrygia, he, by importunately urging false accusations against the prophets themselves and their churches, and insisting on the authority of the bishop's predecessors in the see, compelled him to recall the pacific letter which he had issued, as well as to desist from his purpose of acknowledging the said gifts. By this Praxeas did a twofold service for the devil at Rome: he drove away prophecy, and he brought in heresy; he put to flight the Paraclete, and he crucified the Father. Prax- eas' tares had been moreover sown, and had produced their fruit here also,'° while many * John viii. 44.
8 Probably Victor. [Elucidation II.]
9 Had admitted then to communion.
"> " The connection renders it very probable that the Ate quogue of this sentence forms an antithesis to Rome, mentioned before, and that TertuUian expresses himself as if he iiad written from the very spot where these things had tran.spired. Hence we are led to conclude that it was Carthage." — Neander, Aniig- Htstikiis, ii. 519, note 2, Bohn.
AGAINST PRAXEAS.
[chap. III.
were asleep in their simplicity of doctrine; but these tares actually seemed to have been plucked up, having been discovered and ex- posed by him whose agency God was pleased to employ. Indeed, Praxeas had deliberately resumed his old (true) faith, teaching it after his renunciation of error; and there is his own handwriting in evidence remaining among the carnally-minded, ' in whose society the trans- action then took place; afterwards nothing was heard of him. We indeed, on our part, sub- sequently withdrew from the carnally-minded on our acknowledgment and maintenance of the Paraclete."^ But the tares of Praxeas had then everywhere shaken out their seed, which having lain hid for some while, with its vitality concealed under a mask, has now broken out with fresh life. But again shall it be rooted up, if the Lord will, even now; but if not now, in the day when all bundles of tares shall be gathered together, and along with every other stumbling-block shall be burnt up with un- ([uenchable fire. ^ CHAP. II. — THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY AND UNITY. SOMETIMES CALLED THE DIVINE ECONOMY, OR DISPENSATION OF THE PERSONAL RELATIONS OF THE GODHEAD.
In the course of time, then, the Father forsooth was born, and the Father suffered, — God Himself, the Lord Almighty, whom in their preaching they declare to be Jesus Christ. We, however, as we indeed always have done (and more especially since we have been better instructed by the Paraclete, who leads men indeed into all truth), believe that there is one only God, but under the following dispensa- tion, or o'lKovofiia, as it is called, that this one only God has also a Son, His Word, who proceeded* from Himself, by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. Him 7L'e beliene to have been sent by the Father into the Virgin, and to have been born of her — being both Man and God, the Son of Man and the Son of God, and to have been called by the name of Jesus Christ; we believe Him to have suffered, died, and been buried, according to the Scriptures, and, after He had been raised again by the Father and taken back to heaven, to be sitting at the right hand of the Father, a«^/that He will come to judge - [This statement may only denote a withdrawal from the com- munion of the Bishop of Rome, like that of Cypnan afterwards. That prelate had stultified himself and broken faith with Ter- tullian; but, it does not, necessarily, as l!p. Bull too easily con- cludes, define his ultimate separation from his own bishop and the Nor1h-.\frican church.]
< The Church afterwards applied this term e.xclusively to the Holy Ghost. [That is, the Nicene Creed made it technically applicable to the Spirit, making the distinction marked between the gtHtration of the Word and x\\t. /•recession of the Holy Ghost.]
the quick and the dead; who sent also from heaven from the Father, according to His own promise, the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, ^ the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost. That this rule of faith has come down to us from the beginning of the gospel, even before any of the older heretics, much more, before Praxeas, a pretender of yesterday, will be apparent both from the lateness of date* which marks all heresies, and also from the absolutely novel character of our new-fangled Praxeas. In this principle also we must hence- forth find a presumption of equal force against all heresies whatsoever — that whatever is first is true, whereas that is spv.rious which is later in date. ' But keeping this prescriptive rule inviolate, still some opportunity must be given for reviewing (the statements of heretics), with a view to the instruction and protection of divers persons; were it only that it may not seem that each perversion of the truth is con- demned without examination, and simply pre- judged;* especially in the case of this heresy, which supposes itself to possess the pure truth, in thinking that one cannot believe in One Only God in any other way than by saying that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are the very selfsame Person. As' if in tliis way also one were not All, in that All are of One, by unity (that is) of substante; while the mystery of the dispensation » is still guarded, which distributes the Unity ijito a Trinity, placing in their order '° the three Persons — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: three, however, not in condition, " but in de- gree;'^ not in substance, but in form; not in power, but in aspect; '^ yet of one substance, and of one condition, and of one power, inas- much as He is one God, from whom these de- grees and forms and aspects are reckoned,, under the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. '* How they are suscept- ible of number without division, will be shown as our treatise proceeds.
CHAP. III. — SUNDRY POPULAR FEARS AND PREJUDICES. THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY IN UNITY RESCUED FROM THESE MISAPPRE- HENSIONS.
The simple, indeed, (I will not call them unwise and unlearned,) who always constitute 5 The " Comforter."
7 See his Dc Prescript,.xxix.
3 Tertullian uses similar precaution in his argument elsewhere, .See our Aiiti-Marcion, pp. 3 and iig. Edin.
'-Sec The Apology^ ch. xxi. '3 Specie.
■4 See Bull's De/. Fi,l. Nic, and the translation (by the traos- lator of this work), in the Oxford."^erics, p. 202.
N Ciiw. I V.J AGAINST PRAXEAS.
tiie mfijority of believers, are startled at the dispensation' (of the Three in One), on the ground that their very rule of faith withdraws ^Rieni from the world's plurality of gods to the ^|Rne only true God; not understanding that, ^although He is the one only God, He must yet be believed in with His own wKovo^ia. The • numerical order and distribution of the Trinity they assume to be a division of the Unity; whereas the Unity which derives the Trinity out of its own self is so far from being de- stroyed, that it is actually supported by it. They are constantly throwing out against us that we are preachers of two gods and three gods, while they take to themselves pre-emi- nently the credit of being worshippers of the One God; just as if the Unity itself with ir- rational deductions did not produce heresy, and the Trinity rationally considered consti- tute the truth. We, say they, maintain the Monarchy (or, sole goi'ernmcfU of God).'' And so, as far as the sound goes, do even Latins (and ignorant ones too) pronounce the word in such a wa?y that you would suppose their understanding of the novapx'ia (or A/onarchy) was as complete as their pronunciation of the term. Well, then Latins take pains to pro- nounce the fiovapxin (or Mouarf/iy), while lireeks actually refuse to understand the o'lKovo/iia, ox Dispe7isatio7i (of the Three in One^. As for myself, however, if I have gleaned any knowledge of either language, I am sure that /lovapxia (or Monarchy) has no other meaning than single and individual ^ rule; but for all that, this monarchy does not, because it is the government of one, preclude him whose gov- ernment it is, either from having a son, or from having made himself actually a son to himself,* or from ministering his own mon- archy by whatever agents he will. Nay more, I contend that no dominion so belongs to one only, as his own, or is in such a sense singu- lar, or is in such a sense a monarchy, as not also to be administered through other persons most closely connected with it, and whom it has itself provided as officials to itself. If, moreover, there be a son belonging to him whose monarchy it is, it does not forthwith become divided and cease to be a monarchy, if the son also be taken as a sharer in it; but it is as to its origin equally his, by whom it is communicated to the son; and being his, it is quite as much a monarchy (or so/e empire'), since it is held together by two who are so in- separable.^ Therefore, inasmuch as the Di- vine Monarchy also is administered by so many 1 OtKOfOfXtO 2 So Bp. Kaye, On Tertullian, p. 499. jUnicum.
< This was a notion of Praxeas. See ch. s. 5 Tam unicts.
legions and hosts of angels, according as it is written, "Thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thou- sand stood before Him;"*^ and since it has not from this circumstance ceased to be the rule of one (so as no longer to be a monarchy), because it is administered by so many thou- sands of powers; how comes it to pass that God should be thought to suffer division and severance in the Son and in the Holy Ghost, who have the second and the third places as- signed to them, and who are so closely joined with the Father in His substance, when He suffers no such (division and severance) in the multitude of so many angels? Do you really suppose that Those, who are naturally members of the Father's own substance, pledges of His love,'' instruments of His might, nay. His power itself and the entire system of His monarchy, are the overthrow and destruction thereof? You are not right in so thinking. I prefer your exercising your- self on the meaning of the thing rather than on the sound of the word. Now you must understand the overthrow of a monarchy to be this, when another dominion, which has a framework and a state peculiar to itself (and is therefore a rival), is brought in over and above it: when, e.g., some other god is introduced in opposition to the Creator, as in the opinions of Marcion; or when many gods are introduced, according to your Valentinuses and your Prodicuses. Then it amounts to an overthrow of the Monarchy, since it involves the destruction of the Creator.^ CHAP. IV. THE UNITY OF THE GODHEAD AND THE SUPREMACY AND SOLE GOVERNMENT OF THE DIVINE BEING. THE MONARCHY NOT AT ALL IMPAIRED BY THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE.
But as for me, who derive the Son from no other source but from the substance of the Father, and (represent Him) as doing nothing without the Father's will, and as having re- ceived all power from the Father, how can I be possibly destroying the Monarchy from the faith, when I preserve it in the Son just as it was committed to Him by the Father? The same remark (I wish also to be formally) made by me with respect to the third degree intheGod- head, because I believe the SjMrit to proceed {xo\\\ no other source than from the Father through the Son.' Look to it then, that it be not you rather who are destroying the Monarchy, when you overthrow the arrangement and dispensa- '1 " Pijrnora " is often used of <lii/ii>-e)i and clearest relations, ** [The first sentence of this chapter is famous for a controversy between Priestly and Bp. Horsley, the latter having translated idiotte by the word idiots. See Kaye, p. 498.]
9 [Compare Cap. viii. iu/ra ] 6oo AGAINST PRAXEAS.
[chap. v.