of coming events. Is it a wonderful thing, if, being the gift of God to man, it knows how to divine? Is it anything very strange, if it knows the God by whom it was bestowed? Even fallen as it is, the victim of the great adversary's machinations, it does not forget its Creator, His goodness and law, and the final end both of itself and of its foe. Is it i singular then, if, divine in its origin, its rev- elations agree with the knowledge God has given to His own people? But he who does not regard those outbursts of the soul as the teaching of a congenital nature and the secret deposit of an inborn knowledge, will say that the habit and, so to say, the vice of speaking in this way has been acquired and confirmed from the opinions of published books widely spread among men. Unquestionably the soul existed before letters, and speech before books, and ideas before the writing of them, and man himself before the poet and philoso- pher.* Is it then to be believed, that before literature and its publication no utterances of the sort we have pointed out came from the lips of men? Did nobody speak of God and His goodness, nobody of death, nobody of the dead? Speech went a-begging, I suppose; nay, (the subjects being still awanting, without which it cannot even exist at this day, when it is so much more copious, and rich, and wise), it could not exist at all if the things which are now so easily suggested, that cling to us so constantly, that are so very near to us, that are somehow born on our very lips, had no existence in ancient times, before let- ters had any existence in the world — before there was a Mercury, I think, at all. And whence was it, I pray, that letters themselves came to know, and to disseminate for the use of speech, what no mind had ever conceived, or tongue put forth, or ear taken in? But, clearly, since the Scriptures of God, whether belonging to Christians or to Jews, into whose olive tree we have been grafted — are much more ancient than any secular litera- ture, (or, let us only say, are of a somewhat earlier date, as we have shown in its proper place when proving their trustworthiness); if the soul have taken these utterances from writings at all, we must believe it has taken them from ours, and not from yours, its in- struction coming more naturally from the earlier than the later works. Which latter in- deed waited for their own instruction from the former, and though we grant that light has come from you, still it has flowed from the first fountainliead originally; and we claim as 4 [Compare the heathen ideas in Plato: e.g. the story Soc- rates tells in the Gorgias, (near the close) about death and Judg- ment,] CHAP. VI.]
THF. SOUL'S TESTIMONY.
entirely ours, all you may have taken from us and handed down. Since it is thus, it matters little whether the soul's knowledge was put into it by God or by His book. Why, then, O man, wilt thou maintain a view so groundless, as that those testimonies of the soul have gone forth from the mere human speculations of your literature, and got har- dening of common use?
CHAP. VI.
CHAP. VI.
Believe, then, your own books, and as to our Scriptures so much the more believe writings which are divine, but in the witness of the soul itself give like confidence to Nature. Choose the one of these you observe to be the most faithful friend of truth. If your own writings are distrusted, neither God nor Nature lie. And if you would have faith in God and Nature, have faith in the soul; thus you will believe yourself. Certainly you value the soul as giving you your true greatness, — that to which you belong; which is all things to you; without which you can neither live nor die; on whose account you even put God away from you. Since, then, you fear to be- come a Christian, call the soul before you, and put her to the question. Why does she worship another? why name the name of God? Why does she speak of demons, when she means to denote spirits to be held ac- cursed? Why does she make her protesta- tions towards the heavens, and pronounce her ordinary execrations earthwards? Why does she render service in one place, in another in- voke the Avenger? Why does she pass judg- ments on the dead? What Christian phrases are those she has got, though Christians Why , or reeither she neither desires to see nor hear? has she either bestowed them On us ceived them from us? Why has she taught us them, or learned them as our scholar? Regard with suspicion this accord- ance in words, while there is such difference in practice. It is utter folly — denying a uni- versal nature — to ascribe this exclusively to our language and the Greek, which are re- garded among us as so near akin. The soul is not a boon from heaven to Latins and Greeks alone. Man is the one name belonging to every nation upon earth: there is one soul and many tongues, one spirit and various sounds; every country has its own speech, but the subjects of speech are common to all. God is everywhere, and the goodness of God is every- where; demons are ever)rwhere, and the curs- ing of them is everywhere; the invocation of divine judgment is everywhere, death is every- where, and the sense of death is everywhere, and all the world over is found the witness of the soul. There is not a soul of man that does not, from the light that is in itself, pro- claim the very things we are not permitted to speak above our breath. Most justly, then7| every soul is a culprit as well as a witness: in| the measure that it testifies for truth, the guilt of error lies on it; and on the day of judgment it will stand before the courts of God, without a word to say. Thou proclaimedst God, O soul, but thou didst not seek to know Him: evil spirits were detested by thee, and yet they were the objects of thy adoration; the punishments of hell were foreseen by thee, but no care was taken to avoid them; thou hadst a savour of Christianity, and withal wert the persecutor of Christians, ELUCIDATIONS.
(Recognition of the Supreme God, cap, ii., p. 176.)
The passage referred to in the note, begins thus in Jowett's rendering: *' The Ruler of the Universe has ordered all things with a view to the preservation and perfection of the whole etc." So, in the same book: " Surely God must not be supposed to have a nature which he himself hates." Again: "Let us not, then, deem God inferior to human work- men, who in proportion to their skill finish and perfect their works...or that God, the wisest of beings, who is willing and able to extend his care to all things, etc." Now, it is a sublime plan which our author here takes up, (making only slight reference to the innumerable citations which were behind his apostrophe to the soul if any one should dispute it) to bid the soul stand forth and confess its consciousness of God.
i8o ELUCIDATIONS.
II.
(Daemons, cap. vi. p. 176.)
Those who would pursue the subject of Demonology, which Tertullian opens in this admirable treatise, should follow it up in a writer whom Tertullian greatly influenced, in many particulars, even when he presents a remarkable contrast. The Ninth Book of the City of God is devoted to inquiries which throw considerable light on some of the startling sayings of our author as to the heathen systems, and their testimony to the Soul's Conscious- ness of God and of the great enemy of God and the inferior spirit of Evil.
IX.
A TREATISE ON THE SOUL.'
[TRANSLATED BY PETER HOLMES, D.D.]
CHAP. I. — IT IS NOT TO THE PHILOSOPHERS THAT WE RESORT FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THE SOUL BUT TO GOD.''
Having discussed with Hermogenes the single point of the origin of the soul, so far as his assumption led me, that the soul con- sisted rather in an adaptation ^ of matter than of the inspiration* of God, I now turn to the Other questions incidental to the subject; and (in my treatment of these) I shall evidently have mostlyto contend with the philosophers. In the very prison of Socrates they skirmished about the state of the soul. I have my doubts at once whether the time was an opportune one for their (great) master — (to say nothing of the place), although that perliaps does not much matter. For what could the soul of Socrates then contemplate with clearness and serenity? The sacred ship had returned (from Delos), the hemlock draft to which he had been condemned had been drunk, death was now present before him: (his mind) was,^ as one may suppose,* naturally excited* at every emotion; or if nature had lost her in- fluence, it must have been deprived of all ' [It is not safe to date this treatise before a.d. 203, and per- haps it would be unsafe to assign a later date. The note of the translator, which follows, relieves me from any necessity to add more, just here.]
= In this treatise we have TertuUian's speculations on the origin, the nature, and the destiny of the human soul. There are, no doubt, paradoxes startling to a modern reader to be found in it, such as that of the soul's corporeity; and there are weak and inconclusive arguments. But after all such drawbacks (and they are not more than what constantly occur in the most renowned speculative writers of antiquity), the reader will discover many interesting proofs of our author's characltr for originality of thought, width of information, lirm grasp of his subject, and viva- cious treatment of it, such as we have discovered in other parts of his writings. If his subject permits Tertullian less than usual of an appeal to his favourite Holy Scripture, he still makes room for occasional illustration from it, and with his characteristic ability; if, however, there is less of this sacred learning in it, the treatise teems with curious information drawn from the secular literature of that early age. Our author often measures swords with Plato in his discussions on the soul, and it is not too much to say that he shows himself a formidable opponent to the great philosopher. See Bp. Kaye, On Tertullian, pp. 199,200.
sSuggestu. [Kaye, pp. 60 and 541.]
4Flatu " the breath.
5 Utique.
*' Consternatapower of thought.' Or let it have been aa placid and tranquil so you please, inflexible, in spite of the claims of natural duty,® at the tears of her who was so soon to be his widow, and at the sight of his thenceforward orphan children, yet his soul must have been moved even by its very efforts to suppress emotion; and his constancy itself must have been shaken, as he struggled against the disturbance of the ex- citement around him. Besides, what other thoughts could any man entertain who had been unjustly condemned to die, but such as should solace him for the injury done to him? Especially would this be the case with that glorious creature, the philosopher, to whom injurious treatment would not suggest a crav- ing for consolation, but rather the feeling of resentment and indignation, Accordingly, after his sentence, when his wife came to him with her effeminate cry, O Socrates, you are unjustly condemned! he seemed already to find joy in answering. Would you then wish me justly condemned? It is therefore not to be wondered at, if even in his prison, from a desire to break the foul hands of Anytus and Melitus, he, in the face of death itself, asserts the immortality of the soul by a strong as- sumption such as was wanted to frustrate the wrong (they had inflicted upon him). So that all the wisdom of Socrates, at that mo- ment, proceeded from the affectation of an assumed composure, rather than the firm con- viction of ascertained truth. For by whom has truth ever been discovered without God? By whom has God ever been found without Christ? By whom has "Christ ever been ex- plored without the Holy Spirit? By whom has the Holy Spirit ever been attained without the mysterious gift of faith?» Socrates, as none can doubt, was actuated by a different spirit. For they say that a demon clave to 8 Pietatis.
9 Fidei Sacramento.
A TREATISE ON THE SOUL.
[chap. II.
him from his boyhood — the very worst teacher certainly, notwithstanding the high place as- signed to it by poets and philosophers — even next to, (nay, along with) the gods themselves. The teachings of the power of Christ had not yet been given — (that power) which alone can confute this most pernicious influence of evil that has nothing good in it, but is rather the author of all erpor, and the seducer from all truth. Now if Socrates was pronounced the wisest of m^n by the oracle of the Pythian demon, which, you may be sure, neatly man- aged the business for his friend, of how much greater dignity and constancy is the assertion of the Christian wisdom, before the very breath of which the whole host of demons is scattered! This wisdom of the school of heaven frankly and without reserve denies the gods of this world, and shows no such inconsistency as to order a " cock to be sacri- ficed to ^sculapius: " ' no new gods and de- mons does it introduce, but expels the old ones; it corrupts not youth, but instructs them in all goodness and moderation; and so it bears the unjust condemnation not of one city only, but of all the world, in the cause of that truth which incurs indeed the greater hatred in proportion to its fulness: so that it tastes death not out of a (poisoned) cup almost in the way of jollity; but it ex- hausts it in every kind of bitter cruelty, on gibbets and in holocausts.- Meanwhile, in the still gloomier prison of the world amongst your Cebeses and Phaedos, in every investi- gation concerning (man's) soul, it directs its inquiry according to the rules of God. At all events, you can show us no more power- ful expounder of the soul than the Author thereof. From God you may learn about that which you hold of God; but from none else will you get this knowledge, if you get it not from God. For who is to reveal that which God has hidden? To that quarter must we resort in our inquiries whence we are most safe even in deriving our ignorance. For it is really better for us not to know a thing, because He has not revealed it to us, than to know it according to man's wisdom, because he has been bold enough to assume it.
CHAP. II. — THE CHRISTIAN HAS SURE AND SIMPLE KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING THE SUB- JECT BEFORE US.
Of course we shall not deny that philoso- phers have sometimes thought the same things as ourselves. The testimony of truth » The allusion is to the inconsistency of the philosopher, who condemned the gods of the vulgar, and died offering a gift to one •»f them.
" Vivicomburio.
is the issue thereof. It sometimes happens even in a storm, when the boundaries of sky and sea are lost in confusion, that some har- bour is stumbled on (by the labouring ship) by some happy chance; and sometimes in the very shades of night, through blind luck alone, one finds access to a spot, or egress from it. In nature, however, most conclu- sions are suggested, as it were, by that com- mon intelligence wherewith God has been pleased to endow the soul of man. This in- telligence has been caught up by philosophy, and, with the view of glorifying her own art, has been inflated (it is not to be wondered at that I use this language) with straining after that facility of language wihch is practised in the building up and pulling down of every- thing, and which has greater aptitude for per- suading men by speaking than by teaching. She assigns to things their forms and condi- tions; sometimes makes them common and public, sometimes appropriates them to pri- vate use; on certainties she capriciously stamps the character of uncertainty: she appeals to precedents, as if all things are capable of being compared together; she describes all things by rule and definition, allotting diverse properties even to similar objects; she attributes nothing to the divine permission, but assumes as her principles the laws of nature. I could J^ear with her pre- tensions, if only she were herself true to nature, and would prove to me that she had a mastery over nature as being associated with its creation. She thought, no doubt, that she was deriving her mysteries from sacred sources, as men deem them, because in an- cient times most authors were supposed to be (I will not say godlike, but) actually gods: as, for instance, the Egyptian Mercury, ^ to whom Plato paid very great deference;* and the Phrygian Silenus, to whom Midas lent his long ears, when the shepherds brought him to him; and Hermotimus, to whom the good people of Clazomenae built a temple after his death; and Orpheus; and Musaeus; and Pherecydes, the master of Pythagoras. But why need we care, since these philosophers have also made their attacks upon those writ- ings which are condemned by us under the title of apocryphal, 5 certain as we are that nothing ought to be received which does not agree with the true system of prcphecy, which has arisen in this present age;^ because we do not forget that there have been false proph- 3 Mentioned below, c. xxxiii.; also Adv. V'alent. c. xv 4 See his PkiFdrus, c. lix. (p. 27^); also Augustin, De. Civ. Dei, viii. 11; Euseb. Pr<rp. E7uinf;. ix. 3.
5 Or spurious: not to be confounded with our so-called Apoc- rypha, which were in Tcrtullian'"! days called Libri Ecclesiastici.
6 Here is a touch of Tcrtulli.m's.Montanism.
CHAP. III.]
A TREATISE ON THE SOUL.
ets, and long previous to them fallen spirits, which have instructed the entire tone and as- pect of the world with cunning knowledge of t\\\s {philosophic) cast? It is, indeed, not in- credible that any man who is in quest of wis- dom may have gone so far, as a matter of curi- osity, as to consult the very prophets; {Intf be /hisasitj?iav),\i you take the philosophers, you would find in them more diversity than agree- ment, since even in their agreement their di- versity is discoverable. Whatever things are true in their systems, and agreeable to pro- phetic wisdom, they either recommend as emanating from some other source, or else perversely apply ' in some other sense. This process is attended with very great detriment to the truth, when they pretend that it is either helped by falsehood, or else that falsehood derives support from it. The following cir- cumstance must needs have set ourselves and the philosophers by the ears, especially in this present matter, that they sometimes clothe sentiments which are common to both sides, in arguments which are peculiar to themselves, but contrary in some points to our rule and standard of faith; and at other times defend opinions which are especially their own, with arguments which both sides acknowledge to be valid, and occasionally conformable to their system of belief. The truth has, at this rate, been well-nigh excluded by the philoso- phers, through the poisons with which they have infected it; and thus, if we regard both the modes of coalition xvhich we have no7v mentioned, and which are equally hostile to the truth, we feel the urgent necessity of free- ing, on the one hand, the sentiments held by us in common with them from the arguments of the philosophers, and of separating, on the other hand, the arguments which both parties employ from the opinions of the same philos- ophers. A7id this xve may do by recalling all questions to God's inspired standard, with the obvious exception of such simple cases as being free from the entanglement of any pre- conceived conceits, one may fairly admit on mere human testimony; because plain evi- dence of this- sort we must sometimes borrow from opponents, when our opponents have nothing to gain from it. Now I am not un- aware what a vast mass of literature the philos- ophers have accumulated concerning the subject before us, in their own commentaries thereon — what various schools of principles there are, what conflicts of opinion, what pro- lific sources of questions, what perplexing methods of solution. Moreover, I have looked into Medical Science also, the sister (as they » Subornant.
say) of Philosophy, which claims as her func- tion to cure the body, and thereby to have a special acquaintance with the soul. From this circumstance she has great differences with her sister, pretending as the latter does to know more about the soul, through the more obvious treatment, as it were, of her in her domicile of the body. But never mind all this contention between them for pre- eminence! For extending their several re- searches on the soul. Philosophy, on the one hand, has enjoyed the full scope of her genius; while Medicine, on the other hand, has possessed the stringent demands of her art and practice. Wide are men's inquiries into uncertainties; wider still are their dis- putes about conjectures. However great the difficulty of adducing proofs, the labour of producing conviction is not one whit less; so that the gloomy Heraclitus was quite right, when, observing the thick darkness which ob- scured the researches of the inquirers about the soul, and wearied with their interminable questions, he declared that he had certainly not explored the limits of the soul, although he had traversed every road in her domains. To the Christian, however, but few words are necessary for the clear understanding of the whole subject. But in the few words there always arises certainty to him; nor is he per- mitted to give his inquiries a wider range than is compatible with their solution; for "end- less questions " the apostle forbids.^ It must, however, be added, that no solution may be found by any man, but such as is learned from God; and that which is learned of God is the sum and substance of the whole thing.
CHAP. III. — THE soul's ORIGIN DEFINED OUT OF THE SIMPLE WORDS OF SCRIPTURE.
Would to God that no " heresies had been ever necessary, in order that they which are ap- proved may be made manifest! " - We should then be never required to try our strength in contests about the soul with philosophers, those patriarchs of heretics, as they may be fairly called."* The apostle, so far back as his own time, foresaw, indeed, that philosophy would do violent injury to the truth. ^ This admonition about false philosophy he was induced to offer after he had been at Athens, had become acquainted with that loquacious city,* and had there had a taste of its huckster- ing wiseacres and talkers. In like manner is the treatment of the soul according to the sophistical doctrines of men which " mix their 4 Compare Tertullian's Adv. Hcriuog. c. viii.
6 Linguatam civitatem. Comp. Acts xvii. az.
A TREATISE ON THE SOUL.
[chap. v.