Chapter II.—The Law of Change, or Mutation, Universal.

Draw we now our material from some other source, lest Punichood either blush or else grieve in the midst of Romans.  To change her habit is, at all events, the stated function of entire nature.  The very world

Mundus.

Chapter III.—Beasts Similarly Subject to the Law of Mutation.

Beasts, too, instead of a garment, change their form.  And yet the peacock withal has plumage for a garment, and a garment indeed of the choicest; nay, in the bloom of his neck richer than any purple, and in the effulgence of his back more gilded than any edging, and in the sweep of his tail more flowing than any train; many-coloured, diverse-coloured, and versi-coloured; never itself, ever another, albeit ever itself when other; in a word, mutable as oft as moveable.  The serpent, too, deserves to be mentioned, albeit not in the same breath as the peacock; for he too wholly changes what has been allotted him—his hide and his age:  if it is true, (as it is,) that when he has felt the creeping of old age throughout him, he squeezes himself into confinement; crawls into a cave and out of his skin simultaneously; and, clean shorn on the spot, immediately on crossing the threshold leaves his slough behind him then and there, and uncoils himself in a new youth:  with his scales his years, too, are repudiated.  The hyena, if you observe, is of an annual sex, alternately masculine and feminine.  I say nothing of the stag, because himself withal, the witness of his own age, feeding on the serpent, languishes—from the effect of the poison—into youth.  There is, withal,

“A tardigrade field-haunting quadruped,

Humble and rough.”

The tortoise of Pacuvius, you think?  No.  There is another beastling which the versicle fits; in size, one of the moderate exceedingly, but a grand name.  If, without previously knowing him, you hear tell of a chameleon, you will at once apprehend something yet more huge united with a lion.  But when you stumble upon him, generally in a vineyard, his whole bulk sheltered beneath a vine leaf, you will forthwith laugh at the egregious audacity of the name, inasmuch as there is no moisture even in his body, though in far more minute creatures the body is liquefied.  The chameleon is a living pellicle.  His headkin begins straight from his spine, for neck he has none:  and thus reflection

Reflecti:  perhaps a play upon the word = to turn back, or (mentally) to reflect.

Much had to be said in order that, after due preparation, we might arrive at man.  From whatever beginning you admit him as springing, naked at all events and ungarmented he came from his fashioner’s hand:  afterwards, at length, without waiting for permission, he possesses himself, by a premature grasp, of wisdom.  Then and there hastening to forecover what, in his newly made body, it was not yet due to modesty (to forecover), he surrounds himself meantime with fig-leaves:  subsequently, on being driven from the confines of his birthplace because he had sinned, he went, skinclad, to the world

Orbi.

But these are secrets, nor does their knowledge appertain to all.  Come, let us hear from your own store—(a store) which the Egyptians narrate, and Alexander

Alexander Polyhistor, who dedicated his books on the affairs of the Phrygians and Egyptians to his mother (Rig. in Oehler).

The ingenuities, therefore, of the tailoring art, superadded to, and following up, so abundant a store of materials—first with a view to coveting humanity, where Necessity led the way; and subsequently with a view to adorning withal, ay, and inflating it, where Ambition followed in the wake—have promulgated the various forms of garments.  Of which forms, part are worn by particular nations, without being common to the rest; part, on the other hand, universally, as being useful to all:  as, for instance, this Mantle, albeit it is more Greek (than Latin), has yet by this time found, in speech, a home in Latium.  With the word the garment entered.  And accordingly the very man who used to sentence Greeks to extrusion from the city, but learned (when he was now advanced in years) their alphabet and speech—the self-same Cato, by baring his shoulder at the time of his prætorship, showed no less favour to the Greeks by his mantle-like garb.

Chapter IV.—Change Not Always Improvement.

Why, now, if the Roman fashion is (social) salvation to every one, are you nevertheless Greek to a degree, even in points not honourable?  Or else, if it is not so, whence in the world is it that provinces which have had a better training, provinces which nature adapted rather for surmounting by hard struggling the difficulties of the soil, derive the pursuits of the wrestling-ground—pursuits which fall into a sad old age

Male senescentia.  Rig. (as quoted by Oehler) seems to interpret, “which entail a feeble old age.”  Oehler himself seems to take it to mean “pursuits which are growing very old, and toiling to no purpose.”

Chapter V.—Virtues of the Mantle.  It Pleads in Its Own Defence.

“Still,” say you, “must we thus change from gown

Toga.

Chapter VI.—Further Distinctions, and Crowning Glory, of the Pallium.

“‘With speech,’ says (my antagonist), ‘you have tried to persuade me,—a most sage medicament.’  But, albeit utterance be mute—impeded by infancy or else checked by bashfulness, for life is content with an even tongueless philosophy—my very cut is eloquent.  A philosopher, in fact, is heard so long as he is seen.  My very sight puts vices to the blush.  Who suffers not, when he sees his own rival?  Who can bear to gaze ocularly at him at whom mentally he cannot?  Grand is the benefit conferred by the Mantle, at the thought whereof moral improbity absolutely blushes.  Let philosophy now see to the question of her own profitableness; for she is not the only associate whom I boast.  Other scientific arts of public utility I boast.  From my store are clothed the first teacher of the forms of letters, the first explainer of their sounds, the first trainer in the rudiments of arithmetic, the grammarian, the rhetorician, the sophist, the medical man, the poet, the musical timebeater, the astrologer, and the birdgazer.  All that is liberal in studies is covered by my four angles.  ‘True; but all these rank lower than Roman knights’  Well; but your gladiatorial trainers, and all their ignominious following, are conducted into the arena in togas.  This, no doubt, will be the indignity implied in ‘From gown to Mantle!’”  Well, so speaks the Mantle.  But I confer on it likewise a fellowship with a divine sect and discipline.  Joy, Mantle, and exult!  A better philosophy has now deigned to honour thee, ever since thou hast begun to be a Christian’s vesture!

Elucidations.

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I.

(The garment…too quadrangular, p. 5.)

Speaking of the Greek priests of Korfou, the erudite Bishop of Lincoln, lately deceased, has remarked, “There is something very picturesque in the appearance of these persons, with their black caps resembling the modius seen on the heads of the ancient statues of Serapis and Osiris, their long beards and pale complexions, and their black flowing cloak,—a relic, no doubt, of the old ecclesiastical garment of which Tertullian wrote.”  These remarks

Wordsworth’s Greece, p. 263.  London, 1839.

He thus identifies the pallium with the gown of Justin Martyr;

See vol. i. p. 160, this series.

Tertullian rarely acknowledges his obligations to other Doctors; but Justin’s example and St. Paul’s cloak must have been in his thoughts when he rejected the toga, and claimed the pallium, as a Christian’s attire.  Our Edinburgh translator has assumed that it was the “ascetics’ mantle,” and perhaps it was.

But it was assuming a questionable point (See Kaye, p. 49) to give it this name in the title, and I have retained it untranslated.

“The pallium,” says a learned author,

See his valuable and exhaustive treatise, the Vestiarium Christianum, especially pp. 73, 125, 233, 490.  Also, for the Gallicanum, p. 204 and Appendix E., with pp. 210, 424.  For the Græcum, pp. xii. (note), xv. 73, 127, 233.

II.

(Superstition, p. 10, near note 9.)

The pall afterwards imposed upon Anglican and other primates by the Court of Rome was at first a mere complimentary present from the patriarchal see of the West.  It became a badge of dependence and of bondage (obsta principiis).  Only the ornamental bordering was sent, “made of lamb’s-wool and superstition,” says old Fuller, for whose amusing remarks see his Church Hist., vol. i. p. 179, ed. 1845.  Rome gives primitive names to middle-age corruptions:  needless to say the “pall” of her court is nothing like the pallium of our author.

Elucidation.

————————————

(The Prophecy of Enoch, p. 15.)

Dr. Davidson is the author of a useful article on “Apocalyptic Literature,” from which we extract all that is requisite to inform the reader of the freshest opinion as seen from his well-known point of view.  He notes Archbishop Lawrence’s translation into English, and that it has been rendered back again into German by Dillman (1853), as before, less accurately, by Hoffmann.  Ewald, Lücke, Koestlin, and Hilgenfeld are referred to, and an article of his own in Kitto’s Cyclopædia.  We owe its re-appearance, after long neglect, to Archbishop Lawrence (1838), and its preservation to the Abyssinians.  It was rescued by Bruce, the explorer, in an Æthiopic version; and the first detailed announcement of its discovery was made by De Sacy, 1800.  Davidson ascribes its authorship to pre-Messianic times, but thinks it has been interpolated by a Jewish Christian.  Tertullian’s negative testimony points the other way:  he evidently relies upon its “Christology” as genuine; and, if interpolated in his day, he could hardly have been deceived.

Its five parts are:  I. The rape of women by fallen angels, and the giants that were begotten of them.  The visions of Enoch begun.  II. The visions continued, with views of the Messiah’s kingdom.  III. The physical and astronomical mysteries treated of.  IV. Man’s mystery revealed in dreams from the beginning to the end of the Messianic kingdom.  V. The warnings of Enoch to his own family and to mankind, with appendices, which complete the book.  The article in Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible is accessible, and need only be referred to as well worth perusal; and, as it abounds in references to the entire literature of criticism respecting it, it is truly valuable.  It seems to have been written by Westcott.

See also Pusey’s reply to Dr. Farrar.

The fact that St. Jude refers to Enoch’s prophesyings no more proves that this book is other than apocryphal than St. Paul’s reference to Jannes and Jambres makes Scripture of the Targum.  The apostle Jude does, indeed, authenticate that particular saying by inspiration of God, and doubtless it was traditional among the Jews.  St. Jerome’s references to this quotation may be found textually in Lardner.

Credibility, etc., iv. pp. 460–462.

III.

On the Veiling of Virgins.

[Written, possibly, as early as a.d. 204.]

[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]

————————————

Chapter I.—Truth Rather to Be Appealed to Than Custom, and Truth Progressive in Its Developments.

Having already undergone the trouble peculiar to my opinion, I will show in Latin also that it behoves our virgins to be veiled from the time that they have passed the turning-point of their age:  that this observance is exacted by truth, on which no one can impose prescription—no space of times, no influence of persons, no privilege of regions.  For these, for the most part, are the sources whence, from some ignorance or simplicity, custom finds its beginning; and then it is successionally confirmed into an usage, and thus is maintained in opposition to truth.  But our Lord Christ has surnamed Himself Truth,

John xiv. 6.

Chapter II.—Before Proceeding Farther, Let the Question of Custom Itself Be Sifted.

But I will not, meantime, attribute this usage to Truth.  Be it, for a while, custom:  that to custom I may likewise oppose custom.

Throughout Greece, and certain of its barbaric provinces, the majority of Churches keep their virgins covered.  There are places, too, beneath this (African) sky, where this practice obtains; lest any ascribe the custom to Greek or barbarian Gentilehood.  But I have proposed (as models) those Churches which were founded by apostles or apostolic men; and antecedently, I think, to certain (founders, who shall be nameless).  Those Churches therefore, as well (as others), have the self-same authority of custom (to appeal to); in opposing phalanx they range “times” and “teachers,” more than these later (Churches do).  What shall we observe?  What shall we choose?  We cannot contemptuously reject a custom which we cannot condemn, inasmuch as it is not “strange,” since it is not among “strangers” that we find it, but among those, to wit, with whom we share the law of peace and the name of brotherhood.  They and we have one faith, one God, the same Christ, the same hope, the same baptismal sacraments; let me say it once for all, we are one Church.

Comp. Eph. iv. 1–6.

Still, here (as generally happens in all cases of various practice, of doubt, and of uncertainty), examination ought to have been made to see which of two so diverse customs were the more compatible with the discipline of God.  And, of course, that ought to have been chosen which keeps virgins veiled, as being known to God alone; who (besides that glory must be sought from God, not from men

Comp. John v. 44 and xii. 43.

Chapter III.—Gradual Development of Custom, and Its Results.  Passionate Appeal to Truth.

But not even between customs have those most chaste

Sanctissimi.

Chapter IV.—Of the Argument Drawn from 1 Cor. XI. 5–16.

But in so far as it is the custom to argue even from the Scriptures in opposition to truth, there is immediately urged against us the fact that “no mention of virgins is made by the apostle where he is prescribing about the veil, but that ‘women’ only are named; whereas, if he had willed virgins as well to be covered, he would have pronounced concerning ‘virgins’ also together with the ‘women’ named; just as,” says (our opponent), “in that passage where he is treating of marriage,

1 Cor. vii.

But we withal retort the self-same line of argument.  For he who knew elsewhere how to make mention of each sex—of virgin I mean, and woman, that is, not-virgin—for distinction’s sake; in these (passages), in which he does not name a virgin, points out (by not making the distinction) community of condition.  Otherwise he could here also have marked the difference between virgin and woman, just as elsewhere he says, “Divided is the woman and the virgin.”

1 Cor. vii. 34.

Nor yet, because in that case “divided is both woman and virgin,” will this division exert its patronizing influence in the present case as well, as some will have it.  For how many sayings, uttered on another occasion, have no weight—in cases, to wit, where they are not uttered—unless the subject-matter be the same as on the other occasion, so that the one utterance may suffice!  But the former case of virgin and woman is widely “divided” from the present question.  “Divided,” he says, “is the woman and the virgin.”  Why?  Inasmuch as “the unmarried,” that is, the virgin, “is anxious about those (things) which are the Lord’s, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit; but the married,” that is, the not-virgin, “is anxious how she may please her husband.”  This will be the interpretation of that “division,” having no place in this passage (now under consideration); in which pronouncement is made neither about marriage, nor about the mind and the thought of woman and of virgin, but about the veiling of the head.  Of which (veiling) the Holy Spirit, willing that there should be no distinction, willed that by the one name of woman should likewise be understood the virgin; whom, by not specially naming, He has not separated from the woman, and, by not separating, has conjoined to her from whom He has not separated her.

Is it now, then, a “novelty” to use the primary word, and nevertheless to have the other (subordinate divisions) understood in that word, in cases where there is no necessity for individually distinguishing the (various parts of the) universal whole?  Naturally, a compendious style of speech is both pleasing and necessary; inasmuch as diffuse speech is both tiresome and vain.  So, too, we are content with general words, which comprehend in themselves the understanding of the specialties.  Proceed we, then, to the word itself.  The word (expressing the) natural (distinction) is female.  Of the natural word, the general word is woman.  Of the general, again, the special is virgin, or wife, or widow, or whatever other names, even of the successive stages of life, are added hereto.  Subject, therefore, the special is to the general (because the general is prior); and the succedent to the antecedent, and the partial to the universal:  (each) is implied in the word itself to which it is subject; and is signified in it, because contained in it.  Thus neither hand, nor foot, nor any one of the members, requires to be signified when the body is named.  And if you say the universe, therein will be both the heaven and the things that are in it,—sun and moon, and constellations and stars,—and the earth and the seas, and everything that goes to make up the list of elements.  You will have named all, when you have named that which is made up of all.  So, too, by naming woman, he has named whatever is woman’s.

Chapter V.—Of the Word Woman, Especially in Connection with Its Application to Eve.

But since they use the name of woman in such a way as to think it inapplicable save to her alone who has known a man, the pertinence of the propriety of this word to the sex itself, not to a grade of the sex, must be proved by us; that virgins as well (as others) may be commonly comprised in it.

When this kind of second human being was made by God for man’s assistance, that female was forthwith named woman; still happy, still worthy of paradise, still virgin.  “She shall be called,” said (Adam), “Woman.”  And accordingly you have the name,—I say, not already common to a virgin, but—proper (to her; a name) which from the beginning was allotted to a virgin.  But some ingeniously will have it that it was said of the future, “She shall be called woman,” as if she were destined to be so when she had resigned her virginity; since he added withal:  “For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and be conglutinated to his own woman; and the two shall be one flesh.”  Let them therefore among whom that subtlety obtains show us first, if she were surnamed woman with a future reference, what name she meantime received.  For without a name expressive of her present quality she cannot have been.  But what kind of (hypothesis) is it that one who, with an eye to the future, was called by a definite name, at the present time should have nothing for a surname?  On all animals Adam imposed names; and on none on the ground of future condition, but on the ground of the present purpose which each particular nature served;

Gen. ii. 19, 20.

This name was at that time the only one she had, and (that) when nothing was (as yet) said prophetically.  For when the Scripture records that “the two were naked, Adam and his woman,” neither does this savour of the future, as if it said “his woman” as a presage of “wife;” but because his woman

Mulier, throughout.

If the case is so, it is apparent that she was not surnamed woman on account of a future (circumstance), to whom (that) future (circumstance) did not apply.

To this is added, that (Adam) himself published the reason of the name.  For, after saying, “She shall be called woman,” he said, “inasmuch as she hath been taken out of man”—the man himself withal being still a virgin.  But we will speak, too, about the name of man

Viri:  so throughout.

Thus in this case too it is shown, that it was not from a future (circumstance) that she was at that time named woman, who was shortly after to receive the name which would be proper to her future condition.

Sufficient answer has been made to this part (of the question).

Chapter VI.—The Parallel Case of Mary Considered.

Let us now see whether the apostle withal observes the norm of this name in accordance with Genesis, attributing it to the sex; calling the virgin Mary a woman, just as Genesis (does) Eve.  For, writing to the Galatians, “God,” he says, “sent His own Son, made of a woman,”

Gal. iv. 4.

But to these two (arguments), again, there is one who appears to himself to have made an ingenious answer; (to the effect that) inasmuch as Mary was “betrothed,” therefore it is that both by angel and apostle she is pronounced a woman; for a “betrothed” is in some sense a “bride.”  Still, between “in some sense” and “truth” there is difference enough, at all events in the present place:  for elsewhere, we grant, we must thus hold.  Now, however, it is not as being already wedded that they have pronounced Mary a woman, but as being none the less a female even if she had not been espoused; as having been called by this (name) from the beginning:  for that must necessarily have a prejudicating force from which the normal type has descended.  Else, as far as relates to the present passage, if Mary is here put on a level with a “betrothed,” so that she is called a woman not on the ground of being a female, but on the ground of being assigned to a husband, it immediately follows that Christ was not born of a virgin, because (born) of one “betrothed,” who by this fact will have ceased to be a virgin.  Whereas, if He was born of a virgin—albeit withal “betrothed,” yet intact—acknowledge that even a virgin, even an intact one, is called a woman.  Here, at all events, there can be no semblance of speaking prophetically, as if the apostle should have named a future woman, that is, bride, in saying “made of a woman.”  For he could not be naming a posterior woman, from whom Christ had not to be born—that is, one who had known a man; but she who was then present, who was a virgin, was withal called a woman in consequence of the propriety of this name,—vindicated, in accordance with the primordial norm, (as belonging) to a virgin, and thus to the universal class of women.

Chapter VII.—Of the Reasons Assigned by the Apostle for Bidding Women to Be Veiled.

Turn we next to the examination of the reasons themselves which lead the apostle to teach that the female ought to be veiled, (to see) whether the self-same (reasons) apply to virgins likewise; so that hence also the community of the name between virgins and not-virgins may be established, while the self-same causes which necessitate the veil are found to exist in each case.

If “the man is head of the woman,”

1 Cor. xi. 3 sqq.

Chapter VIII.—The Argument E Contrario.

The contraries, at all events, of all these (considerations) effect that a man is not to cover his head:  to wit, because he has not by nature been gifted with excess of hair; because to be shaven or shorn is not shameful to him; because it was not on his account that the angels transgressed; because his Head is Christ.

1 Cor. xi. 3.

Chapter IX.—Veiling Consistent with the Other Rules of Discipline Observed by Virgins and Women in General.

Let us now see whether, as we have shown the arguments drawn from nature and the matter itself to be applicable to the virgin as well (as to other females), so likewise the precepts of ecclesiastical discipline concerning women have an eye to the virgin.

It is not permitted to a woman to speak in the church;

1 Cor. xiv. 34, 35; 1 Tim. ii. 11, 12.

Chapter X.—If the Female Virgins are to Be Thus Conspicuous, Why Not the Male as Well?

Nor, similarly, (is it permitted) on the ground of any distinctions whatever.  Otherwise, it were sufficiently discourteous, that while females, subjected as they are throughout to men, bear in their front an honourable mark of their virginity, whereby they may be looked up to and gazed at on all sides and magnified by the brethren, so many men-virgins, so many voluntary eunuchs, should carry their glory in secret, carrying no token to make them, too, illustrious.  For they, too, will be bound to claim some distinctions for themselves—either the feathers of the Garamantes, or else the fillets of the barbarians, or else the cicadas of the Athenians, or else the curls of the Germans, or else the tattoo-marks of the Britons; or else let the opposite course be taken, and let them lurk in the churches with head veiled.  Sure we are that the Holy Spirit could rather have made some such concession to males, if He had made it to females; forasmuch as, besides the authority of sex, it would have been more becoming that males should have been honoured on the ground of continency itself likewise.  The more their sex is eager and warm toward females, so much the more toil does the continence of (this) greater ardour involve; and therefore the worthier is it of all ostentation, if ostentation of virginity is dignity.  For is not continence withal superior to virginity, whether it be the continence of the widowed, or of those who, by consent, have already renounced the common disgrace (which matrimony involves)?

See 1 Cor. vii. 5.  Comp. ad Ux., l. i. c. viii.; de Ex. Cast., c. i.

Chapter XI.—The Rule of Veiling Not Applicable to Children.

But what we intermitted above for the sake of the subsequent discussion—not to dissipate its coherence—we will now discharge by an answer.  For when we joined issue about the apostle’s absolute definition, that “ every woman” must be understood (as meaning woman) of even every age, it might be replied by the opposite side, that in that case it behoved the virgin to be veiled from her nativity, and from the first entry of her age (upon the roll of time).

But it is not so; but from the time when she begins to be self-conscious, and to awake to the sense of her own nature, and to emerge from the virgin’s (sense), and to experience that novel (sensation) which belongs to the succeeding age.  For withal the founders of the race, Adam and Eve, so long as they were without intelligence, went “naked;” but after they tasted of “the tree of recognition,” they were first sensible of nothing more than of their cause for shame.  Thus they each marked their intelligence of their own sex by a covering.

Gen. ii. 25; iii. 7 (in LXX. iii. 1, iii. 7).

Chapter XII.—Womanhood Self-Evident, and Not to Be Concealed by Just Leaving the Head Bare.

Recognise the woman, ay, recognise the wedded woman, by the testimonies both of body and of spirit, which she experiences both in conscience and in flesh.  These are the earlier tablets of natural espousals and nuptials.  Impose a veil externally upon her who has (already) a covering internally.  Let her whose lower parts are not bare have her upper likewise covered.  Would you know what is the authority which age carries?  Set before yourself each (of these two); one prematurely

Oehler’s “immutare” appears certainly to be a misprint for “immature.”

Chapter XIII.—If Unveiling Be Proper, Why Not Practise It Always, Out of the Church as Well as in It?

If on account of men

As distinguished from the “on account of the angels” of c. xi.

Chapter XIV.—Perils to the Virgins Themselves Attendant Upon Not-Veiling.

They report a saying uttered at one time by some one when first this question was mooted, “And how shall we invite the other (virgins) to similar conduct?”  Forsooth, it is their numbers that will make us happy, and not the grace of God and the merits of each individual!  Is it virgins who (adorn or commend) the Church in the sight of God, or the Church which adorns or commends virgins?  (Our objector) has therefore confessed that “glory” lies at the root of the matter.  Well, where glory is, there is solicitation; where solicitation, there compulsion; where compulsion, there necessity; where necessity, there infirmity.  Deservedly, therefore, while they do not cover their head, in order that they may be solicited for the sake of glory, they are forced to cover their bellies by the ruin resulting from infirmity.  For it is emulation, not religion, which impels them.  Sometimes it is that god—their belly

Comp. Phil. iii. 19.

These crimes does a forced and unwilling virginity incur.  The very concupiscence of non-concealment is not modest:  it experiences somewhat which is no mark of a virgin,—the study of pleasing, of course, ay, and (of pleasing) men.  Let her strive as much as you please with an honest mind; she must necessarily be imperilled by the public exhibition

Comp. the note above on “publicato bono suo.”

Chapter XV.—Of Fascination.

Nay, but true and absolute and pure virginity fears nothing more than itself.  Even female eyes it shrinks from encountering.  Other eyes itself has.  It betakes itself for refuge to the veil of the head as to a helmet, as to a shield, to protect its glory against the blows of temptations, against the dam of scandals, against suspicions and whispers and emulation; (against) envy also itself.  For there is a something even among the heathens to be apprehended, which they call Fascination, the too unhappy result of excessive praise and glory.  This we sometimes interpretatively ascribe to the devil, for of him comes hatred of good; sometimes we attribute it to God, for of Him comes judgment upon haughtiness, exalting, as He does, the humble, and depressing the elated.

Comp. Ps. cxlvii. (in LXX. and Vulg. cxlvi.) 6; Luke i. 52.

Chapter XVI.—Tertullian, Having Shown His Defence to Be Consistent with Scripture, Nature, and Discipline, Appeals to the Virgins Themselves.

Herein consists the defence of our opinion, in accordance with Scripture, in accordance with Nature, in accordance with Discipline.  Scripture founds the law; Nature joins to attest it; Discipline exacts it.  Which of these (three) does a custom founded on (mere) opinion appear in behalf of? or what is the colour of the opposite view?  God’s is Scripture; God’s is Nature; God’s is Discipline.  Whatever is contrary to these is not God’s.  If Scripture is uncertain, Nature is manifest; and concerning Nature’s testimony Scripture cannot be uncertain.

See 1 Cor. xi. 14, above quoted.

Chapter XVII.—An Appeal to the Married Women.

But we admonish you, too, women of the second (degree of) modesty, who have fallen into wedlock, not to outgrow so far the discipline of the veil, not even in a moment of an hour, as, because you cannot refuse it, to take some other means to nullify it, by going neither covered nor bare.  For some, with their turbans and woollen bands, do not veil their head, but bind it up; protected, indeed, in front, but, where the head properly lies, bare.  Others are to a certain extent covered over the region of the brain with linen coifs of small dimensions—I suppose for fear of pressing the head—and not reaching quite to the ears.  If they are so weak in their hearing as not to be able to hear through a covering, I pity them.  Let them know that the whole head constitutes “the woman.”

1 Cor. xi. 6, etc.

It is incumbent, then, at all times and in every place, to walk mindful of the law, prepared and equipped in readiness to meet every mention of God; who, if He be in the heart, will be recognised as well in the head of females.  To such as read these (exhortations) with good will, to such as prefer Utility to Custom, may peace and grace from our Lord Jesus Christ redound:  as likewise to Septimius Tertullianus, whose this tractate is.

Elucidations.

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I.

(Vicar of the Lord, p. 27.)

The recurrence of this emphatic expression in our author is worthy of special note.  He knew of no other “Vicar of Christ” than the promised Paraclete, who should bring all Christ’s words to remembrance, and be “another Comforter.”  Let me quote from Dr. Scott

The Christian Life, vol. iii. p. 64.

II.

(She shall be called woman, p. 31.)

The Vulgate reads, preserving something of the original epigrammatic force, “Vocabitur Vir-ago, quoniam de Vir-o sumpta est.”  The late revised English gives us, in the margin, Isshah and Ish, which marks the play upon words in the Hebrew,—“She shall be called Isshah because she was taken out of Ish.”  This Epithalamium is the earliest poem, and Adam was the first poet.

As to the argument of our author, it is quite enough to say, that, whatever we may think of his refinements upon St. Paul, he sticks to the inspired text, and enforces God’s Law in the Gospel.  Let us reflect, moreover, upon the awful immodesty of heathen manners (see Martial, passim), and the necessity of enforcing a radical reform.  All that adorns the sex among Christians has sprung out of these severe and caustic criticisms of the Gentile world and its customs.  And let us reflect that there is a growing licence in our age, which makes it important to revert to first principles, and to renew the apostolic injunctions, if not as Tertullian did, still as best we may, in our own times and ways.

III.

(These crimes, p. 36.)

The iniquity here pointed at has become of frightful magnitude in the United States of America.  We shall hear of it again when we come to Hippolytus.

Tertullian speaks of the heathen as “decimated by abortions.”  See ad Uxor., p. 41, infra.

Hippolytus speaks of the crime which had shocked Tertullian as assuming terrible proportions at Rome in the time of Callistus

Bunsen, vol. i. p. 134.

Elucidation.

————————————

(Marriage lawful, p. 39.)

St. Peter was a married apostle, and the traditions of his wife which connect her married life with Rome itself render it most surprising that those who claim to be St. Peter’s successors should denounce the marriage of the clergy as if it were crime.  The touching story, borrowed from Clement of Alexandria, is related by Eusebius.  “And will they,” says Clement, “reject even the apostles?  Peter and Philip, indeed, had children; Philip also gave his daughters in marriage to husbands; and Paul does not demur, in a certain Epistle, to mention his own wife, whom he did not take about with him, in order to expedite his ministry the better.”  Of St. Peter and his wife, Eusebius subjoins, “Such was the marriage of these blessed ones, and such was their perfect affection.”

Eccl. Hist., Book III. cap. xxx.

The Easterns to this day perpetuate the marriage of the clergy, and enjoin it; but unmarried men only are chosen to be bishops.  Even Rome relaxes her discipline for the Uniats, and hundreds of her priesthood, therefore, live in honourable marriage.  Thousands live in secret marriage, but their wives are dishonoured as “concubines.”  It was not till the eleventh century that the celibate was enforced.  In England it was never successfully imposed; and, though the “priest’s leman” was not called his wife (to the disgrace of the whole system), she was yet honoured (see Chaucer), and often carried herself too proudly.

The enormous evils of an enforced celibacy need not here be remarked upon.  The history of Sacerdotal Celibacy, by Henry C. Lea

Boston:  Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., second edition, enlarged, 1884.

V.

On Exhortation to Chastity.

[Written, possibly, circa a.d. 204.]

[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]

————————————

Chapter I.—Introduction.  Virginity Classified Under Three Several Species.

I doubt not, brother, that after the premission in peace of your wife, you, being wholly bent upon the composing of your mind (to a right frame), are seriously thinking about the end of your lone life, and of course are standing in need of counsel.  Although, in cases of this kind, each individual ought to hold colloquy with his own faith, and consult its strength; still, inasmuch as, in this (particular) species (of trial), the necessity of the flesh (which generally is faith’s antagonist at the bar of the same inner consciousness, to which I have alluded) sets cogitation astir, faith has need of counsel from without, as an advocate, as it were, to oppose the necessities of the flesh:  which necessity, indeed, may very easily be circumscribed, if the will rather than the indulgence of God be considered.  No one deserves (favour) by availing himself of the indulgence, but by rendering a prompt obedience to the will, (of his master).

Comp. c. iii. and the references there.

Chapter II.—The Blame of Our Misdeeds Not to Be Cast Upon God.  The One Power Which Rests with Man is the Power of Volition.

What moderation, in short, is there in that utterance, “The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away; as seemed (good) to the Lord, so hath it been done!”

Job i. 21 (in LXX. and Vulg.).

Chapter III.—Of Indulgence and Pure Volition.  The Question Illustrated.

From 1 Cor. vii.

For what things are manifest we all know; and in what sense these very things are manifest must be thoroughly examined.  For, albeit some things seem to savour of “the will of God,” seeing that they are allowed by Him, it does not forthwith follow that everything which is permitted proceeds out of the mere and absolute will of him who permits.  Indulgence is the source of all permission.  And albeit indulgence is not independent of volition, still, inasmuch as it has its cause in him to whom the indulgence is granted, it comes (as it were) from unwilling volition, having experienced a producing cause of itself which constrains volition.  See what is the nature of a volition of which some second party is the cause.  There is, again, a second species of pure volition to be considered.  God wills us to do some acts pleasing to

Or, “decreed by.”

If, therefore, second marriage finds the source of its allowance in that “will of God” which is called indulgence, we shall deny that that which has indulgence for its cause is volition pure; if in that to which some other—that, namely, which regards continence as more desirable—is preferred as superior, we shall have learned (by what has been argued above), that the not-superior is rescinded by the superior.  Suffer me to have touched upon these considerations, in order that I may now follow the course of the apostle’s words.  But, in the first place, I shall not be thought irreligious if I remark on what he himself professes; (namely), that he has introduced all indulgence in regard to marriage from his own (judgment)—that is, from human sense, not from divine prescript.  For, withal, when he has laid down the definitive rule with reference to “the widowed and the unwedded,” that they are to “marry if they cannot contain,” because “better it is to marry than to burn,”

1 Cor. vii. 8, 9.

Chapter IV.—Further Remarks Upon the Apostle’s Language.

However, touching second marriage, we know plainly that the apostle has pronounced:  “Thou hast been loosed from a wife; seek not a wife.  But if thou shalt marry, thou wilt not sin.”

1 Cor. vii. 27, 28.

Chapter V.—Unity of Marriage Taught by Its First Institution, and by the Apostle’s Application of that Primal Type to Christ and the Church.

For the laying down

Dirigendam.

Chapter VI.—The Objection from the Polygamy of the Patriarchs Answered.

“But withal the blessed patriarchs,” you say, “made mingled alliances not only with more wives (than one), but with concubines likewise.”  Shall that, then, make it lawful for us also to marry without limit?  I grant that it will, if there still remain types—sacraments of something future—for your nuptials to figure; or if even now there is room for that command, “Grow and multiply;”

Gen. i. 28.

Chapter VII.—Even the Old Discipline Was Not Without Precedents to Enforce Monogamy.  But in This as in Other Respects, the New Has Brought in a Higher Perfection.

Why, moreover, should we not rather recognise, from among (the store of) primitive precedents, those which communicate with the later (order of things) in respect of discipline, and transmit to novelty the typical form of antiquity?  For look, in the old law I find the pruning-knife applied to the licence of repeated marriage.  There is a caution in Leviticus:  “My priests shall not pluralize marriages.”

I cannot find any such passage.  Oehler refers to Lev. xxi. 14, but neither the Septuagint nor the Vulgate has any such prohibition there.

Chapter VIII.—If It Be Granted that Second Marriage is Lawful, Yet All Things Lawful are Not Expedient.

Let it now be granted that repetition of marriage is lawful, if everything which is lawful is good.  The same apostle exclaims:  “All things are lawful, but all are not profitable.”

1 Cor. x. 23.

Chapter IX.—Second Marriage a Species of Adultery, Marriage Itself Impugned, as Akin to Adultery.

If we look deeply into his meanings, and interpret them, second marriage will have to be termed no other than a species of fornication.  For, since he says that married persons make this their solicitude, “how to please one another”

Sibi, “themselves,” i.e., mutually.  See 1 Cor. vii. 32–35.

Chapter X.—Application of the Subject.  Advantages of Widowhood.

Renounce we things carnal, that we may at length bear fruits spiritual.  Seize the opportunity—albeit not earnestly desired, yet favourable—of not having any one to whom to pay a debt, and by whom to be (yourself) repaid!  You have ceased to be a debtor.  Happy man!  You have released

Dimisisti, al. amisisti ="you have lost.”

Chapter XI.—The More the Wives, the Greater the Distraction of the Spirit.

For (in that case) the shame is double; inasmuch as, in second marriage, two wives beset the same husband—one in spirit, one in flesh.  For the first wife you cannot hate, for whom you retain an even more religious affection, as being already received into the Lord’s presence; for whose spirit you make request; for whom you render annual oblations.  Will you stand, then, before the Lord with as many wives as you commemorate in prayer; and will you offer for two; and will you commend those two (to God) by the ministry of a priest ordained (to his sacred office) on the score of monogamy, or else consecrated (thereto) on the score even of virginity, surrounded by widows married but to one husband?  And will your sacrifice ascend with unabashed front, and—among all the other (graces) of a good mind—will you request for yourself and for your wife chastity?

Chapter XII.—Excuses Commonly Urged in Defence of Second Marriage.  Their Futility, Especially in the Case of Christians, Pointed Out.

I am aware of the excuses by which we colour our insatiable carnal appetite.

Comp. herewith, ad Ux., l. i. c. iv.

Chapter XIII.—Examples from Among the Heathen, as Well as from the Church, to Enforce the Foregoing Exhortation.

To this my exhortation, best beloved brother, there are added even heathenish examples; which have often been set by ourselves as well (as by others) in evidence, when anything good and pleasing to God is, even among “strangers,” recognised and honoured with a testimony.  In short, monogamy among the heathen is so held in highest honour, that even virgins, when legitimately marrying, have a woman never married but once appointed them as brideswoman; and if you say that “this is for the sake of the omen,” of course it is for the sake of a good omen; again, that in some solemnities and official functions, single-husbandhood takes the precedence:  at all events, the wife of a Flamen must be but once married, which is the law of the Flamen (himself) too.  For the fact that the chief pontiff himself must not iterate marriage is, of course, a glory to monogamy.  When, however, Satan affects God’s sacraments, it is a challenge to us; nay, rather, a cause for blushing, if we are slow to exhibit to God a continence which some render to the devil, by perpetuity sometimes of virginity, sometimes of widowhood.  We have heard of Vesta’s virgins, and Juno’s at the town

Ægium (Jos. Scaliger, in Oehler).

Elucidation.

————————————

(Albeit they be laics, p. 54.)

In the tract on Baptism

Chap. vi. vol. iii. p. 672, this series.

VI.

On Monogamy.

[Written against orthodoxy, say circa a.d. 208.  But see Elucidation I.].

[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]

————————————

Chapter I.—Different Views in Regard to Marriage Held by Heretics, Psychic, and Spiritualists.

Heretics do away with marriages; Psychics accumulate them.  The former marry not even once; the latter not only once.  What dost thou, Law of the Creator?  Between alien eunuchs and thine own grooms, thou complainest as much of the over-obedience of thine own household as of the contempt of strangers.  They who abuse thee, do thee equal hurt with them who use thee not.  In fact, neither is such continence laudable because it is heretical, nor such licence defensible because it is psychical.  The former is blasphemous, the latter wanton; the former destroys the God of marriages, the latter puts Him to the blush.  Among us, however, whom the recognition of spiritual gifts entitles to be deservedly called Spiritual, continence is as religious as licence is modest; since both the one and the other are in harmony with the Creator.  Continence honours the law of marriage, licence tempers it; the former is not forced, the latter is regulated; the former recognises the power of free choice, the latter recognises a limit.  We admit one marriage, just as we do one God.  The law of marriage reaps an accession of honour where it is associated with shamefastness.  But to the Psychics, since they receive not the Spirit, the things which are the Spirit’s are not pleasing.  Thus, so long as the things which are the Spirit’s please them not, the things which are of the flesh will please, as being the contraries of the Spirit.  “The flesh,” saith (the apostle), “lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.”

Gal. v. 17.

Chapter II.—The Spiritualists Vindicated from the Charge of Novelty.

And so they upbraid the discipline of monogamy with being a heresy; nor is there any other cause whence they find themselves compelled to deny the Paraclete more than the fact that they esteem Him to be the institutor of a novel discipline, and a discipline which they find most harsh:  so that this is already the first ground on which we must join issue in a general handling (of the subject), whether there is room for maintaining that the Paraclete has taught any such thing as can either be charged with novelty, in opposition to catholic tradition,

Comp. 1 Cor. xi. 2; 2 Thess. ii. 15; iii. 6.  Comp. the Gr. text and the Vulg. in locis.

Now concerning each point the Lord Himself has pronounced.  For in saying, “I still have many things to say unto you, but ye are not yet able to bear them:  when the Holy Spirit shall be come, He will lead you into all truth,”

John xvi. 12, 13.  Tertullian’s rendering is not verbatim.

Chapter III.—The Question of Novelty Further Considered in Connection with the Words of the Lord and His Apostles.

But (as for the question) whether monogamy be “burdensome,” let the still shameless “infirmity of the flesh” look to that:  let us meantime come to an agreement as to whether it be “novel.”  This (even) broader assertion we make:  that even if the Paraclete had in this our day definitely prescribed a virginity or continence total and absolute, so as not to permit the heat of the flesh to foam itself down even in single marriage, even thus He would seem to be introducing nothing of “novelty;” seeing that the Lord Himself opens “the kingdoms of the heavens” to “eunuchs,”

See Matt. xix. 12.  Comp. de. Pa., c. xiii.; de. Cult. Fem., l. ii. c. ix.

What, now, if he accommodatingly grants all indulgence to marry on the ground of his own (that is, of human) sense, out of the necessity which we have mentioned, inasmuch as “better it is to marry than to burn?”  In fact, when he turns to the second case, by saying, “But to the married I officially announce—not I, but the Lord”—he shows that those things which he had said above had not been (the dictates) of the Lord’s authority, but of human judgment.  When, however, he turns their minds back to continence, (“But I will you all so to be,”) “I think, moreover,” he says, “I too have the Spirit of God;” in order that, if he had granted any indulgence out of necessity, that, by the Holy Spirit’s authority, he might recall.  But John, too, when advising us that “we ought so to walk as the Lord withal did,”

1 John ii. 6.

Therefore, if all these (considerations) obliterate the licence of marrying, whether we look into the condition on which the licence is granted, or the preference of continence which is imposed, why, after the apostles, could not the same Spirit, supervening for the purpose of conducting disciplehood

Disciplinam.

Chapter IV.—Waiving Allusion to the Paraclete, Tertullian Comes to the Consideration of the Ancient Scriptures, and Their Testimony on the Subject in Hand.

Waiving, now, the mention of the Paraclete, as of some authority of our own, evolve we the common instruments of the primitive Scriptures.  This very thing is demonstrable by us:  that the rule of monogamy is neither novel nor strange, nay rather, is both ancient, and proper to Christians; so that you may be sensible that the Paraclete is rather its restitutor than institutor.  As for what pertains to antiquity, what more ancient formal type can be brought forward, than the very original fount of the human race?  One female did God fashion for the male, culling one rib of his, and (of course) (one) out of a plurality.  But, moreover, in the introductory speech which preceded the work itself, He said, “It is not good for the man that he be alone; let us make an help-meet for him.”  For He would have said “helpers” if He had destined him to have more wives (than one).  He added, too, a law concerning the future; if, that is, (the words) “And two shall be (made) into one flesh”—not three, nor more; else they would be no more “two” if (there were) more—were prophetically uttered.  The law stood (firm).  In short, the unity of marriage lasted to the very end in the case of the authors of our race; not because there were no other women, but because the reason why there were none was that the first-fruits of the race might not be contaminated by a double marriage.  Otherwise, had God (so) willed, there could withal have been (others); at all events, he might have taken from the abundance of his own daughters—having no less an Eve (taken) out of his own bones and flesh—if piety had allowed it to be done.  But where the first crime (is found) homicide, inaugurated in fratricide—no crime was so worthy of the second place as a double marriage.  For it makes no difference whether a man have had two wives singly, or whether individuals (taken) at the same time have made two.  The number of (the individuals) conjoined and separate is the same.  Still, God’s institution, after once for all suffering violence through Lamech, remained firm to the very end of that race.  Second Lamech there arose none, in the way of being husband to two wives.  What Scripture does not note, it denies.  Other iniquities provoke the deluge:  (iniquities) once for all avenged, whatever was their nature; not, however, “seventy-seven times,”

Septuagies septies.  See Gen. iv. 19–24.

But again:  the reformation of the second human race is traced from monogamy as its mother.  Once more, “two (joined) into one flesh” undertake (the duty of) “growing and multiplying,”—Noah, (namely), and his wife, and their sons, in single marriage.

Comp. Gen. vii. 7 with 1 Pet. iii. 20 ad fin.

Chapter V.—Connection of These Primeval Testimonies with Christ.

Thus far for the testimony of things primordial, and the sanction of our origin, and the prejudgment of the divine institution, which of course is a law, not (merely) a memorial inasmuch as, if it was “so done from the beginning,” we find ourselves directed to the beginning by Christ:  just as, in the question of divorce, by saying that that had been permitted by Moses on account of their hard-heartedness but from the beginning it had not been so, He doubtless recalls to “the beginning” the (law of) the individuity of marriage.  And accordingly, those whom God “from the beginning” conjoined, “two into one flesh,” man shall not at the present day separate.

See Matt. xix. 6.

Chapter VI.—The Case of Abraham, and Its Bearing on the Present Question.

But let us proceed with our inquiry into some eminent chief fathers of our origin:  for there are some to whom our monogamist parents Adam and Noah are not pleasing, nor perhaps Christ either.  To Abraham, in fine, they appeal; prohibited though they are to acknowledge any other father than God.

See Matt. xxiii. 9.

Thenceforward let matters see to themselves.  Figures are one thing; laws another.  Images are one thing; statutes another.  Images pass away when fulfilled:  statutes remain permanently to be fulfilled.  Images prophesy:  statutes govern.  What that digamy of Abraham portends, the same apostle fully teaches,

See Gal. iv. 21–31.

These accordingly, I suppose, are they in whom my origin is counted.  All others I ignore.  And if I glance around at their examples—(examples) of some David heaping up marriages for himself even through sanguinary means, of some Solomon rich in wives as well as in other riches—you are bidden to “follow the better things;”

See Ps. xxxvii. 27 (in LXX. xxxvi. 27); 1 Pet. iii. 11; 3 John 11.

Chapter VII.—From Patriarchal, Tertullian Comes to Legal, Precedents.

After the ancient examples of the patriarchs, let us equally pass on to the ancient documents of the legal Scriptures, that we may treat in order of all our canon.  And since there are some who sometimes assert that they have nothing to do with the law (which Christ has not dissolved, but fulfilled),

See Matt. v. 17.

Chapter VIII.—From the Law Tertullian Comes to the Gospel.  He Begins with Examples Before Proceeding to Dogmas.

Turning now to the law, which is properly ours—that is, to the Gospel—by what kind of examples are we met, until we come to definite dogmas?  Behold, there immediately present themselves to us, on the threshold as it were, the two priestesses of Christian sanctity, Monogamy and Continence:  one modest, in Zechariah the priest; one absolute, in John the forerunner:  one appeasing God; one preaching Christ:  one proclaiming a perfect priest; one exhibiting “more than a prophet,”

See Matt. xi. 9; Luke vii. 26.

Chapter IX.—From Examples Tertullian Passes to Direct Dogmatic Teachings.  He Begins with the Lord’s Teaching.

But grant that these argumentations may be thought to be forced and founded on conjectures, if no dogmatic teachings have stood parallel with them which the Lord uttered in treating of divorce, which, permitted formerly, He now prohibits, first because “from the beginning it was not so,” like plurality of marriage; secondly, because “What God hath conjoined, man shall not separate,”

See Matt. xix. 3–8, where, however, Tertullian’s order is reversed.  Comp. with this chapter, c. v. above.

So far as regards the non-destruction of the will of God, and the restruction of the law of “the beginning.”  But another reason, too, conspires; nay, not another, but (one) which imposed the law of “the beginning,” and moved the will of God to prohibit divorce:  the fact that (he) who shall have dismissed his wife, except on the ground of adultery, makes her commit adultery; and (he) who shall have married a (woman) dismissed by her husband, of course commits adultery.

See Matt. v. 32.

Chapter X.—St. Paul’s Teaching on the Subject.

From this point I see that we are challenged by an appeal to the apostle; for the more easy apprehension of whose meaning we must all the more earnestly inculcate (the assertion), that a woman is more bound when her husband is dead not to admit (to marriage) another husband.  For let us reflect that divorce either is caused by discord, or else causes discord; whereas death is an event resulting from the law of God, not from an offence of man; and that it is a debt which all owe, even the unmarried.  Therefore, if a divorced woman, who has been separated (from her husband) in soul as well as body, through discord, anger, hatred, and the causes of these—injury, or contumely, or whatsoever cause of complaint—is bound to a personal enemy, not to say a husband, how much more will one who, neither by her own nor her husband’s fault, but by an event resulting from the Lord’s law, has been—not separated from, but left behind by—her consort, be his, even when dead, to whom, even when dead, she owes (the debt of) concord?  From him from whom she has heard no (word of) divorce she does not turn away; with him she is, to whom she has written no (document of) divorce; him whom she was unwilling to have lost, she retains.  She has within her the licence of the mind, which represents to a man, in imaginary enjoyment, all things which he has not.  In short, I ask the woman herself, “Tell me, sister, have you sent your husband before you (to his rest) in peace?”  What will she answer?  (Will she say), “In discord?”  In that case she is the more bound to him with whom she has a cause (to plead) at the bar of God.  She who is bound (to another) has not departed (from him).  But (will she say), “In peace?”  In that case, she must necessarily persevere in that (peace) with him whom she will no longer have the power to divorce; not that she would, even if she had been able to divorce him, have been marriageable.  Indeed, she prays for his soul, and requests refreshment for him meanwhile, and fellowship (with him) in the first resurrection; and she offers (her sacrifice) on the anniversaries of his falling asleep.  For, unless she does these deeds, she has in the true sense divorced him, so far as in her lies; and indeed the more iniquitously—inasmuch as (she did it) as far as was in her power—because she had no power (to do it); and with the more indignity, inasmuch as it is with more indignity if (her reason for doing it is) because he did not deserve it.  Or else shall we, pray, cease to be after death, according to (the teaching of) some Epicurus, and not according to (that of) Christ?  But if we believe the resurrection of the dead, of course we shall be bound to them with whom we are destined to rise, to render an account the one of the other.  “But if ‘in that age they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but will be equal to angels,’

See Matt. xxii. 30; Mark xii. 25; Luke xx. 35, 36.

Since this is so, how will a woman have room for another husband, who is, even to futurity, in the possession of her own?  (Moreover, we speak to each sex, even if our discourse address itself but to the one; inasmuch as one discipline is incumbent [on both].)  She will have one in spirit, one in flesh.  This will be adultery, the conscious affection of one woman for two men.  If the one has been disjoined from her flesh, but remains in her heart—in that place where even cogitation without carnal contact achieves beforehand both adultery by concupiscence, and matrimony by volition—he is to this hour her husband, possessing the very thing which is the mean whereby he became so—her mind, namely, in which withal, if another shall find a habitation, this will be a crime.  Besides, excluded he is not, if he has withdrawn from viler carnal commerce.  A more honourable husband is he, in proportion as he is become more pure.

Chapter XI.—Further Remarks Upon St. Paul’s Teaching.

Grant, now, that you marry “in the Lord,” in accordance with the law and the apostle—if, notwithstanding, you care even about this—with what face do you request (the solemnizing of) a matrimony which is unlawful to those of whom you request it; of a monogamist bishop, of presbyters and deacons bound by the same solemn engagement, of widows whose Order you have in your own person refused?  And they, plainly, will give husbands and wives as they would morsels of bread; for this is their rendering of “To every one who asketh thee thou shalt give!”

See Matt. v. 42; Luke vi. 30.  Comp. de Bapt., c. xviii.

Chapter XII.—The Explanation of the Passage Offered by the Psychics Considered.

Listen, withal, to the very subtle argumentation on the contrary side.  “So true is it,” say (our opponents), “that the apostle has permitted the iteration of marriage, that it is only such as are in the Clerical Order that he has stringently bound to the yoke of monogamy.  For that which he prescribes to certain (individuals) he does not prescribe to all.”  Does it then follow, too, that to bishops alone he does not prescribe what he does enjoin upon all; if what he does prescribe to bishops he does not enjoin upon all? or is it therefore to all because to bishops? and therefore to bishops because to all?  For whence is it that the bishops and clergy come?  Is it not from all?  If all are not bound to monogamy, whence are monogamists (to be taken) into the clerical rank?  Will some separate order of monogamists have to be instituted, from which to make selection for the clerical body?  (No); but when we are extolling and inflating ourselves in opposition to the clergy, then “we are all one:”  then “we are all priests, because He hath made us priests to (His) God and Father.”  When we are challenged to a thorough equalization with the sacerdotal discipline, we lay down the (priestly) fillets, and (still) are on a par!  The question in hand (when the apostle was writing), was with reference to Ecclesiastical Orders—what son of men ought to be ordained.  It was therefore fitting that all the form of the common discipline should be set forth on its fore-front, as an edict to be in a certain sense universally and carefully attended to, that the laity might the better know that they must themselves observe that order which was indispensable to their overseers; and that even the office of honour itself might not flatter itself in anything tending to licence, as if on the ground of privilege of position.  The Holy Spirit foresaw that some would say, “All things are lawful to bishops;” just as that bishop of Utina of yours feared not even the Scantinian law.  Why, how many digamists, too, preside in your churches; insulting the apostle, of course:  at all events, not blushing when these passages are read under their presidency!

Come, now, you who think that an exceptional law of monogamy is made with reference to bishops, abandon withal your remaining disciplinary titles, which, together with monogamy, are ascribed to bishops.

See 1 Tim. iii. 1–7; Tit. i. 6–9.

Chapter XIII.—Further Objections from St. Paul Answered.

“But again, writing to Timotheus, he ‘wills the very young (women) to marry, bear children, act the housewife.’”

1 Tim. v. 14.

“We read him withal writing to the Romans:  ‘But the woman who is under an husband, is bound to her husband (while) living; but if he shall have died, she has been emancipated from the law of the husband.’  Doubtless, then, the husband living, she will be thought to commit adultery if she shall have been joined to a second husband.  If, however, the husband shall have died, she has been freed from (his) law, (so) that she is not an adulteress if made (wife) to another husband.”

Rom. vii. 2, 3, not exactly rendered.

Chapter XIV.—Even If the Permission Had Been Given by St. Paul in the Sense Which the Psychics Allege, It Was Merely Like the Mosaic Permission of Divorce—A Condescension to Human Hard-Heartedness.

Now, if the apostle had even absolutely permitted marriage when one’s partner has been lost subsequently to (conversion to) the faith, he would have done (it), just as (he did) the other (actions) which he did adversely to the (strict) letter of his own rule, to suit the circumstances of the times:  circumcising Timotheus

Acts xvi. 3; see Gal. iii. iv.

And here, accordingly, we will render the supplement of this (his) meaning.  For if Christ abrogated what Moses enjoined, because “from the beginning (it) was not so;” and (if)—this being so—Christ will not therefore be reputed to have come from some other Power; why may not the Paraclete, too, have abrogated an indulgence which Paul granted—because second marriage withal “was not from the beginning”—without deserving on this account to be regarded with suspicion, as if he were an alien spirit, provided only that the superinduction be worthy of God and of Christ?  If it was worthy of God and of Christ to check “hard-heartedness” when the time (for its indulgence) was fully expired, why should it not be more worthy both of God and of Christ to shake off “infirmity of the flesh” when “the time” is already more “wound up?”  If it is just that marriage be not severed, it is, of course, honourable too that it be not iterated.  In short, in the estimation of the world, each is accounted a mark of good discipline:  one under the name of concord; one, of modesty.  “Hardness of heart” reigned till Christ’s time; let “infirmity of the flesh” (be content to) have reigned till the time of the Paraclete.  The New Law abrogated divorce—it had (somewhat) to abrogate; the New Prophecy (abrogates) second marriage, (which is) no less a divorce of the former (marriage).  But the “hardness of heart” yielded to Christ more readily than the “infirmity of the flesh.”  The latter claims Paul in its own support more than the former Moses; if, indeed, it is claiming him in its support when it catches at his indulgence, (but) refuses his prescript—eluding his more deliberate opinions and his constant “wills,” not suffering us to render to the apostle the (obedience) which he “prefers.”

And how long will this most shameless “infirmity” persevere in waging a war of extermination against the “better things?”  The time for its indulgence was (the interval) until the Paraclete began His operations, to whose coming were deferred by the Lord (the things) which in His day “could not be endured;” which it is now no longer competent for any one to be unable to endure, seeing that He through whom the power of enduring is granted is not wanting.  How long shall we allege “the flesh,” because the Lord said, “the flesh is weak?”

Matt. xxvi. 41.

Chapter XV.—Unfairness of Charging the Disciples of the New Prophecy with Harshness.  The Charge Rather to Be Retorted Upon the Psychics.

What harshness, therefore, is here on our part, if we renounce (communion with) such as do not the will of God?  What heresy, if we judge second marriage, as being unlawful, akin to adultery?  For what is adultery but unlawful marriage?  The apostle sets a brand upon those who were wont entirely to forbid marriage, who were wont at the same time to lay an interdict on meats which God has created.

See 1 Tim. iv. 1–3.

Chapter XVI.—Weakness of the Pleas Urged in Defence of Second Marriage.

But I smile when (the plea of) “infirmity of the flesh” is advanced in opposition (to us:  infirmity) which is (rather) to be called the height of strength.  Iteration of marriage is an affair of strength:  to rise again from the ease of continence to the works of the flesh, is (a thing requiring) substantial reins.  Such “infirmity” is equal, to a third, and a fourth, and even (perhaps) a seventh marriage; as (being a thing) which increases its strength as often as its weakness; which will no longer have (the support of) an apostle’s authority, but of some Hermogenes—wont to marry more women than he paints.  For in him matter is abundant:  whence he presumes that even the soul is material; and therefore much more (than other men) he has not the Spirit from God, being no longer even a Psychic, because even his psychic element is not derived from God’s afflatus!  What if a man allege “indigence,” so as to profess that his flesh is openly prostituted, and given in marriage for the sake of maintenance; forgetting that there is to be no careful thought about food and clothing?

See Matt. vi. 25–34.

Chapter XVII.—Heathen Examples Cry Shame Upon This “Infirmity of the Flesh.”

Spado.

They will have plainly a specious privilege to plead before Christ—the everlasting “infirmity of the flesh!”  But upon this (infirmity) will sit in judgment no longer an Isaac, our monogamist father; or a John, a noted voluntary celibate

Comp. ad Ux., l. i. cc. vi. vii.; and de Ex. Cast., c. xiii.

Elucidations.

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I.

(About 160 years having elapsed, pp. 59, 61.)

If the First Epistle to the Corinthians was written a.d. 57, and if our author speaks with designed precision, and not in round numbers, the date of this treatise should be a.d. 217—a date which I should prefer to accept.  Bishop Kaye,

P. 40, Kaye’s Tertullian.

On the general subject Kaye bids us read cap. 3, with cap. 14, to grasp the argument of our enthusiast.

P. 24, Kaye’s Tertullian.

Our author seems struggling here, according to my view, with his own rule of prescription.  He would free the doctrine from the charge of novelty by pointing it out in the Scripture of a hundred and sixty years before.  But how instinctively the Church ruled against this sophistry, condemning in advance that whole system of “development” which a modern Tertullian defends on grounds quite as specious, under a Montanistic subjection that makes a Priscilla of the Roman pontiff.  Let me commend the reader to the remarks upon Tertullian of the “judicious Hooker,” in book ii. capp. v. 5, 6; also book iv. cap. vii. 4, 5, and elsewhere.

II.

(Abrogated indulgence (comp. capp. 2 and 3), p. 70.)

Poor Tertullian is at war with himself in all the works which he indites against Catholic orthodoxy.  In the tract De Exhort. Castitatis he gives one construction to 1 Cor. ix. 5, which in this he explains away;

Comp. Ex. Cast., cap. viii. p. 55, supra, with the Monogam., cap. viii. p. 65, supra.

In England the principles of the Monogamia were revived by the eccentric Whiston (circa a.d. 1750), and attracted considerable attention among the orthodox,—a fact pleasantly satirized by Goldsmith in his Vicar of Wakefield.

On the general subject comp. Chrysost., tom. iii. p. 226:  “Laus Maximi, et quales ducendæ sint uxores.”

VII.

On Modesty.

[Written not earlier than a.d. 208; probably very much later.  See Bp. Kaye’s very important remarks on this treatise, p. 224.]

[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]

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Modesty, the flower of manners, the honour of our bodies, the grace of the sexes, the integrity of the blood, the guarantee of our race, the basis of sanctity, the pre-indication of every good disposition; rare though it is, and not easily perfected, and scarce ever retained in perpetuity, will yet up to a certain point linger in the world, if nature shall have laid the preliminary groundwork of it, discipline persuaded to it, censorial rigour curbed its excesses—on the hypothesis, that is, that every mental good quality is the result either of birth, or else of training, or else of external compulsion.

But as the conquering power of things evil is on the increase—which is the characteristic of the last times

Comp. 2 Tim. iii. 1–5; Matt. xxiv. 12.

In opposition to this (modesty), could I not have acted the dissembler?  I hear that there has even been an edict set forth, and a peremptory one too.  The Pontifex Maximus

[This is irony; a heathen epithet applied to Victor (or his successor), ironically, because he seemed ambitious of superiority over other bishops.]

Chapter II.—God Just as Well as Merciful; Accordingly, Mercy Must Not Be Indiscriminate.

“But,” say they, “God is ‘good,’ and ‘most good,’

See Matt. xix. 17; Mark x. 18; Luke xviii. 19.

Chapter III.—An Objection Anticipated Before the Discussion Above Promised is Commenced.

But before doing this, I will make short work with an answer which meets us from the opposite side, in reference to that species of repentance which we are just defining as being without pardon.  “Why, if,” say they, “there is a repentance which lacks pardon, it immediately follows that such repentance must withal be wholly unpractised by you.  For nothing is to be done in vain.  Now repentance will be practised in vain, if it is without pardon.  But all repentance is to be practised.  Therefore let (us allow that) all obtains pardon, that it may not be practised in vain; because it will not be to be practised, if it be practised in vain.  Now, in vain it is practised, if it shall lack pardon.”  Justly, then, do they allege (this argument) against us; since they have usurpingly kept in their own power the fruit of this as of other repentance—that is, pardon; for, so far as they are concerned, at whose hands (repentance) obtains man’s peace, (it is in vain).  As regards us, however, who remember that the Lord alone concedes (the pardon of) sins, (and of course of mortal ones,) it will not be practised in vain.  For (the repentance) being referred back to the Lord, and thenceforward lying prostrate before Him, will by this very fact the rather avail to win pardon, that it gains it by entreaty from God alone, that it believes not that man’s peace is adequate to its guilt, that as far as regards the Church it prefers the blush of shame to the privilege of communion.  For before her doors it stands, and by the example of its own stigma admonishes all others, and calls at the same time to its own aid the brethren’s tears, and returns with an even richer merchandise—their compassion, namely—than their communion.  And if it reaps not the harvest of peace here, yet it sows the seed of it with the Lord; nor does it lose, but prepares, its fruit.  It will not fail of emolument if it do not fail in duty.  Thus, neither is such repentance vain, nor such discipline harsh.  Both honour God.  The former, by laying no flattering unction to itself, will more readily win success; the latter, by assuming nothing to itself, will more fully aid.

Chapter IV.—Adultery and Fornication Synonymous.

Having defined the distinction (between the kinds) of repentance, we are by this time, then, able to return to the assessment of the sins—whether they be such as can obtain pardon at the hand of men.  In the first place, (as for the fact) that we call adultery likewise fornication, usage requires (us so to do).  “Faith,” withal, has a familiar acquaintance with sundry appellations.  So, in every one of our little works, we carefully guard usage.  Besides, if I shall say “adulterium,” and if “stuprum,” the indictment of contamination of the flesh will be one and the same.  For it makes no difference whether a man assault another’s bride or widow, provided it be not his own “female;” just as there is no difference made by places—whether it be in chambers or in towers that modesty is massacred.  Every homicide, even outside a wood, is banditry.  So, too, whoever enjoys any other than nuptial intercourse, in whatever place, and in the person of whatever woman, makes himself guilty of adultery and fornication.  Accordingly, among us, secret connections as well—connections, that is, not first professed in presence of the Church—run risk of being judged akin to adultery and fornication; nor must we let them, if thereafter woven together by the covering of marriage, elude the charge.  But all the other frenzies of passions—impious both toward the bodies and toward the sexes—beyond the laws of nature, we banish not only from the threshold, but from all shelter of the Church, because they are not sins, but monstrosities.

Chapter V.—Of the Prohibition of Adultery in the Decalogue.

Of how deep guilt, then, adultery—which is likewise a matter of fornication, in accordance with its criminal function—is to be accounted, the Law of God first comes to hand to show us; if it is true, (as it is), that after interdicting the superstitious service of alien gods, and the making of idols themselves, after commending (to religious observance) the veneration of the Sabbath, after commanding a religious regard toward parents second (only to that) toward God, (that Law) laid, as the next substratum in strengthening and fortifying such counts, no other precept than “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”  For after spiritual chastity and sanctity followed corporeal integrity.  And this (the Law) accordingly fortified, by immediately prohibiting its foe, adultery.  Understand, consequently, what kind of sin (that must be), the repression of which (the Law) ordained next to (that of) idolatry.  Nothing that is a second is remote from the first; nothing is so close to the first as the second.  That which results from the first is (in a sense) another first.  And so adultery is bordering on idolatry.  For idolatry withal, often cast as a reproach upon the People under the name of adultery and fornication, will be alike conjoined therewith in fate as in following—will be alike co-heir therewith in condemnation as in co-ordination.  Yet further:  premising “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” (the Law) adjoins, “Thou shalt not kill.”  It honoured adultery, of course, to which it gives the precedence over murder, in the very fore-front of the most holy law, among the primary counts of the celestial edict, marking it with the inscription of the very principal sins.  From its place you may discern the measure, from its rank the station, from its neighbourhood the merit, of each thing.  Even evil has a dignity, consisting in being stationed at the summit, or else in the centre, of the superlatively bad.  I behold a certain pomp and circumstance of adultery:  on the one side, Idolatry goes before and leads the way; on the other, Murder follows in company.  Worthily, without doubt, has she taken her seat between the two most conspicuous eminences of misdeeds, and has completely filled the vacant space, as it were, in their midst, with an equal majesty of crime.  Enclosed by such flanks, encircled and supported by such ribs, who shall dislocate her from the corporate mass of coherencies, from the bond of neighbour crimes, from the embrace of kindred wickednesses, so as to set apart her alone for the enjoyment of repentance?  Will not on one side Idolatry, on the other Murder, detain her, and (if they have any voice) reclaim:  “This is our wedge, this our compacting power?  By (the standard of) Idolatry we are measured; by her disjunctive intervention we are conjoined; to her, outjutting from our midst, we are united; the Divine Scripture has made us concorporate; the very letters are our glue; herself can no longer exist without us.  ‘Many and many a time do I, Idolatry, subminister occasion to Adultery; witness my groves and my mounts, and the living waters, and the very temples in cities, what mighty agents we are for overthrowing modesty.’  ‘I also, Murder, sometimes exert myself on behalf of Adultery.  To omit tragedies, witness nowadays the poisoners, witness the magicians, how many seductions I avenge, how many rivalries I revenge; how many guards, how many informers, how many accomplices, I make away with.  Witness the midwives likewise, how many adulterous conceptions are slaughtered.’  Even among Christians there is no adultery without us.  Wherever the business of the unclean spirit is, there are idolatries; wherever a man, by being polluted, is slain, there too is murder.  Therefore the remedial aids of repentance will not be suitable to them, or else they will likewise be to us.  We either detain Adultery, or else follow her.”  These words the sins themselves do speak.  If the sins are deficient in speech, hard by (the door of the church) stands an idolater, hard by stands a murderer; in their midst stands, too, an adulterer.  Alike, as the duty of repentance bids, they sit in sackcloth and bristle in ashes; with the self-same weeping they groan; with the selfsame prayers they make their circuits; with the self-same knees they supplicate; the self-same mother they invoke.  What doest thou, gentlest and humanest Discipline?  Either to all these will it be thy duty so to be, for “blessed are the peacemakers;”

Matt. v. 9.

Chapter VI.—Examples of Such Offences Under the Old Dispensation No Pattern for the Disciples of the New.  But Even the Old Has Examples of Vengeance Upon Such Offences.

Plainly, if you show by what patronages of heavenly precedents and precepts it is that you open to adultery alone—and therein to fornication also—the gate of repentance, at this very line our hostile encounter will forthwith cross swords.  Yet I must necessarily prescribe you a law, not to stretch out your hand after the old things,

Comp. Isa. xliii. 18.

Chapter VII.—Of the Parables of the Lost Ewe and the Lost Drachma.

You shall have leave to begin with the parables, where you have the lost ewe re-sought by the Lord, and carried back on His shoulders.

Luke xv. 3–7.

Similarly, the parable of the drachma,

Luke xv. 8–10.

I will now withdraw for a short time from this position; in order that I may, even by withdrawing, the more recommend it, when I shall have succeeded even thus also in confuting the presumption of the opposite side.  I admit that the sinner portrayed in each parable is one who is already a Christian; yet not that on this account must he be affirmed to be such an one as can be restored, through repentance, from the crime of adultery and fornication.  For although he be said to “have perished,” there will be the kind of perdition to treat of; inasmuch as the “ewe” “perished” not by dying, but by straying; and the “drachma” not by being destroyed, but by being hidden.  In this sense, a thing which is safe may be said to “have perished.”  Therefore the believer, too, “perishes,” by lapsing out of (the right path) into a public exhibition of charioteering frenzy, or gladiatorial gore, or scenic foulness, or athletic vanity; or else if he has lent the aid of any special “arts of curiosity” to sports, to the convivialities of heathen solemnity, to official exigence, to the ministry of another’s idolatry; if he has impaled himself upon some word of ambiguous denial, or else of blasphemy.  For some such cause he has been driven outside the flock; or even himself, perhaps, by anger, by pride, by jealousy, (or)—as, in fact, often happens—by disdaining to submit to chastisement, has broken away (from it).  He ought to be re-sought and recalled.  That which can be recovered does not “perish,” unless it persist in remaining outside.  You will well interpret the parable by recalling the sinner while he is still living.  But, for the adulterer and fornicator, who is there who has not pronounced him to be dead immediately upon commission of the crime?  With what face will you restore to the flock one who is dead, on the authority of that parable which recalls a sheep not dead?

Finally, if you are mindful of the prophets, when they are chiding the shepherds, there is a word—I think it is Ezekiel’s:  “Shepherds, behold, ye devour the milk, and clothe you with the fleeces:  what is strong ye have slain; what is weak ye have not tended; what is shattered ye have not bound; what has been driven out ye have not brought back; what has perished ye have not re-sought.”

See Ezek. xxxiv. 1–4.

By comparison, even in this way, of this our interpretation with theirs, the arguments of both the ewe and the drachma will all the more refer to the heathen, that they cannot possibly apply to the Christian guilty of the sin for the sake of which they are wrested into a forced application to the Christian on the opposite side.

Chapter VIII.—Of the Prodigal Son.

But, however, the majority of interpreters of the parables are deceived by the self-same result as is of very frequent occurrence in the case of embroidering garments with purple.  When you think that you have judiciously harmonized the proportions of the hues, and believe yourself to have succeeded in skilfully giving vividness to their mutual combination; presently, when each body (of colour) and (the various) lights are fully developed, the convicted diversity will expose all the error.  In the self-same darkness, accordingly, with regard to the parable of the two sons also, they are led by some figures (occurring in it), which harmonize in hue with the present (state of things), to wander out of the path of the true light of that comparison which the subject-matter of the parable presents.  For they set down, as represented in the two sons, two peoples—the elder the Jewish, the younger the Christian:  for they cannot in the sequel arrange for the Christian sinner, in the person of the younger son, to obtain pardon, unless in the person of the elder they first portray the Jewish.  Now, if I shall succeed in showing that the Jewish fails to suit the comparison of the elder son, the consequence of course will be, that the Christian will not be admissible (as represented) by the joint figure of the younger son.  For although the Jew withal be called “a son,” and an “elder one,” inasmuch as he had priority in adoption;

See Ex. iv. 22; Rom. ix. 4.

Chapter IX.—Certain General Principles of Parabolic Interpretation.  These Applied to the Parables Now Under Consideration, Especially to that of the Prodigal Son.

We, however, who do not make the parables the sources whence we devise our subject-matters, but the subject-matters the sources whence we interpret the parables, do not labour hard, either, to twist all things (into shape) in the exposition, while we take care to avoid all contradictions.  Why “an hundred sheep?” and why, to be sure, “ten drachmas?”  And what is that “besom?”  Necessary it was that He who was desiring to express the extreme pleasure which the salvation of one sinner gives to God, should name some special quantity of a numerical whole from which to describe that “one” had perished.  Necessary it was that the style of one engaged in searching for a “drachma” in a “house,” should be aptly fitted with the helpful accompaniment of a “besom” as well as of a “lamp.”  For curious niceties of this kind not only render some things suspected, but, by the subtlety of forced explanations, generally lead away from the truth.  There are, moreover, some points which are just simply introduced with a view to the structure and disposition and texture of the parable, in order that they may be worked up throughout to the end for which the typical example is being provided.  Now, of course the (parable of) the two sons will point to the same end as (those of) the drachma and the ewe:  for it has the self-same cause (to call it forth) as those to which it coheres, and the selfsame “muttering,” of course, of the Pharisees at the intercourse between the Lord and heathens.  Or else, if any doubts that in the land of Judea, subjugated as it had been long since by the hand of Pompey and of Lucullus, the publicans were heathens, let him read Deuteronomy:  “There shall be no tribute-weigher of the sons of Israel.”

Oehler refers to Deut. xxiii. 19; but the ref. is not satisfactory.

Chapter X.—Repentance More Competent to Heathens Than to Christians.

When, therefore, the yoke which forbade the discussion of these parables with a view to the heathens has been shaken off, and the necessity once for all discerned or admitted of not interpreting otherwise than is (suitable to) the subject-matter of the proposition; they contend in the next place, that the official proclamation of repentance is not even applicable to heathens, since their sins are not amenable to it, imputable as they are to ignorance, which nature alone renders culpable before God.  Hence the remedies are unintelligible to such to whom the perils themselves are unintelligible:  whereas the principle of repentance finds there its corresponding place where sin is committed with conscience and will, where both the fault and the favour are intelligible; that he who mourns, he who prostrates himself, is he who knows both what he has lost and what he will recover if he makes to God the offering of his repentance—to God who, of course, offers that repentance rather to sons than to strangers.

Was that, then, the reason why Jonah thought not repentance necessary to the heathen Ninevites, when he tergiversated in the duty of preaching? or did he rather, foreseeing the mercy of God poured forth even upon strangers, fear that that mercy would, as it were, destroy (the credit of) his proclamation? and accordingly, for the sake of a profane city, not yet possessed of a knowledge of God, still sinning in ignorance, did the prophet well-nigh perish?

Comp. Jonah i. iv.

Nay, but I will even contend that repentance is more competent to natural sinners than to voluntary.  For he will merit its fruit who has not yet used more than he who has already withal abused it; and remedies will be more effective on their first application than when outworn.  No doubt the Lord is “kind” to “the unthankful,”

Comp. Luke vi. 35.

Come, you rope-walker upon modesty, and chastity, and every kind of sexual sanctity, who, by the instrumentality of a discipline of this nature remote from the path of truth, mount with uncertain footstep upon a most slender thread, balancing flesh with spirit, moderating your animal principle by faith, tempering your eye by fear; why are you thus wholly engaged in a single step?  Go on, if you succeed in finding power and will, while you are so secure, and as it were upon solid ground.  For if any wavering of the flesh, any distraction of the mind, any wandering of the eye, shall chance to shake you down from your equipoise, “God is good.”  To His own (children), not to heathens, He opens His bosom:  a second repentance will await you; you will again, from being an adulterer, be a Christian!  These (pleas) you (will urge) to me, most benignant interpreter of God.  But I would yield my ground to you, if the scripture of “the Shepherd,”

i.e., the “Shepherd” of Hermas.  See de Or., c. xvi.

Chapter XI.—From Parables Tertullian Comes to Consider Definite Acts of the Lord.

From the side of its pertinence to the Gospel, the question of the parables indeed has by this time been disposed of.  If, however, the Lord, by His deeds withal, issued any such proclamation in favour of sinners; as when He permitted contact even with his own body to the “woman, a sinner,”—washing, as she did, His feet with tears, and wiping them with her hair, and inaugurating His sepulture with ointment; as when to the Samaritaness—not an adulteress by her now sixth marriage, but a prostitute—He showed (what He did show readily to any one) who He was;

John iv. 1–25.

Chapter XII.—Of the Verdict of the Apostles, Assembled in Council, Upon the Subject of Adultery.

Accordingly, these who have received “another Paraclete” in and through the apostles,—(a Paraclete) whom, not recognising Him even in His special prophets, they no longer possess in the apostles either;—come, now, let them, even from the apostolic instrument, teach us the possibility that the stains of a flesh which after baptism has been repolluted, can by repentance be washed away.  Do we not, in the apostles also, recognise the form of the Old Law with regard to the demonstration of adultery, how great (a crime) it is; lest perchance it be esteemed more trivial in the new stage of disciplines than in the old?  When first the Gospel thundered and shook the old system to its base, when dispute was being held on the question of retaining or not the Law; this is the first rule which the apostles, on the authority of the Holy Spirit, send out to those who were already beginning to be gathered to their side out of the nations:  “It has seemed (good),” say they, “to the Holy Spirit and to us to cast upon you no ampler weight than (that) of those (things) from which it is necessary that abstinence be observed; from sacrifices, and from fornications, and from blood:

See Acts xv. 28, 29.

Chapter XIII.—Of St. Paul, and the Person Whom He Urges the Corinthians to Forgive.

We know plainly at this point, too, the suspicions which they raise.  For, in fact, they suspect the Apostle Paul of having, in the second (Epistle) to the Corinthians, granted pardon to the self-same fornicator whom in the first he has publicly sentenced to be “surrendered to Satan, for the destruction of the flesh,”

See 1 Cor. v. 5.

Chapter XIV.—The Same Subject Continued.

And—these intervening points having accordingly been got rid of—I return to the second of Corinthians; in order to prove that this saying also of the apostle, “Sufficient to such a man be this rebuke which (is administered) by many,” is not suitable to the person of the fornicator.  For if he had sentenced him “to be surrendered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,” of course he had condemned rather than rebuked him.  Some other, then, it was to whom he willed the “rebuke” to be sufficient; if, that is, the fornicator had incurred not “rebuke” from his sentence, but “condemnation.”  For I offer you withal, for your investigation, this very question:  Whether there were in the first Epistle others, too, who “wholly saddened” the apostle by “acting disorderly,”

Comp. 2 Thess. iii. 6, 11.

But I will rather take my stand at that point where the apostle is more fervent, where the fornicator himself has troubled others also.  “As if I be not about to come unto you, some are inflated.  But I will come with more speed, if the Lord shall have permitted, and will learn not the speech of those who are inflated, but the power.  For the kingdom of God is not in speech, but in power.  And what will ye? shall I come unto you in a rod, or in a spirit of lenity?”  For what was to succeed?  “There is heard among you generally fornication, and such fornication as (is) not (heard) even among the Gentiles, that one should have his own father’s wife.  And are ye inflated, and have ye not rather mourned, that he who hath committed such a deed may be taken away from the midst of you?”  For whom were they to “mourn?”  Of course, for one dead.  To whom were they to mourn?  Of course, to the Lord, in order that in some way or other he may be “taken away from the midst of them;” not, of course in order that he may be put outside the Church.  For a thing would not have been requested of God which came within the official province of the president (of the Church); but (what would be requested of Him was), that through death—not only this death common to all, but one specially appropriate to that very flesh which was already a corpse, a tomb leprous with irremediable uncleanness—he might more fully (than by simple excommunication) incur the penalty of being “taken away” from the Church.  And accordingly, in so far as it was meantime possible for him to be “taken away,” he “adjudged such an one to be surrendered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.”  For it followed that flesh which was being cast forth to the devil should be accursed, in order that it might be discarded from the sacrament of blessing, never to return into the camp of the Church.

And thus we see in this place the apostle’s severity divided, against one who was “inflated,” and one who was “incestuous:”  (we see the apostle) armed against the one with “a rod,” against the other with a sentence,—a “rod,” which he was threatening; a sentence, which he was executing:  the former (we see) still brandishing, the latter instantaneously hurtling; (the one) wherewith he was rebuking, and (the other) wherewith he was condemning.  And certain it is, that forthwith thereafter the rebuked one indeed trembled beneath the menace of the uplifted rod, but the condemned perished under the instant infliction of the penalty.  Immediately the former retreated fearing the blow, the latter paying the penalty.  When a letter of the self-same apostle is sent a second time to the Corinthians, pardon is granted plainly; but it is uncertain to whom, because neither person nor cause is advertised.  I will compare the cases with the senses.  If the “incestuous” man is set before us, on the same platform will be the “inflated” man too.  Surely the analogy of the case is sufficiently maintained, when the “inflated” is rebuked, but the “incestuous” is condemned.  To the “inflated” pardon is granted, but after rebuke; to the “incestuous” no pardon seems to have been granted, as under condemnation.  If it was to him for whom it was feared that he might be “devoured by mourning” that pardon was being granted, the “rebuked” one was still in danger of being devoured, losing heart on account of the commination, and mourning on account of the rebuke.  The “condemned” one, however, was permanently accounted as already devoured, alike by his fault and by his sentence; (accounted, that is, as one) who had not to “mourn,” but to suffer that which, before suffering it, he might have mourned.  If the reason why pardon was being granted was “lest we should be defrauded by Satan,” the loss against which precaution was being taken had to do with that which had not yet perished.  No precaution is taken in the use of a thing finally despatched, but in the case of a thing still safe.  But the condemned one—condemned, too, to the possession of Satan—had already perished from the Church at the moment when he had committed such a deed, not to say withal at the moment of being forsworn by the Church itself.  How should (the Church) fear to suffer a fraudulent loss of him whom she had already lost on his ereption, and whom, after condemnation, she could not have held?  Lastly, to what will it be becoming for a judge to grant indulgence? to that which by a formal pronouncement he has decisively settled, or to that which by an interlocutory sentence he has left in suspense?  And, of course, (I am speaking of) that judge who is not wont “to rebuild those things which he has destroyed, lest he be held a transgressor.”

Comp. Gal. ii. 18.

Come, now, if he had not “wholly saddened” so many persons in the first Epistle; if he had “rebuked” none, had “terrified”

Comp. 2 Cor. x. 9.

Chapter XV.—The Same Subject Continued.

If you hammer out the sequel of that Epistle to illustrate the meaning of the apostle, neither will that sequel be found to square with the obliteration of incest; lest even here the apostle be put to the blush by the incongruity of his later meanings.  For what kind (of hypothesis) is it, that the very moment after making a largess of restoration to the privileges of ecclesiastical peace to an incestuous fornicator, he should forthwith have proceeded to accumulate exhortations about turning away from impurities, about pruning away of blemishes, about exhortations to deeds of sanctity, as if he had decreed nothing of a contrary nature just before?  Compare, in short, (and see) whether it be his province to say, “Wherefore, having this ministration, in accordance with (the fact) that we have obtained mercy, we faint not; but renounce the secret things of disgrace,”

2 Cor. iv. 1, 2.

Chapter XVI.—General Consistency of the Apostle.

Necessary it is, therefore, that the (character of the) apostle should be continuously pointed out to them; whom I will maintain to be such in the second of Corinthians withal, as I know (him to be) in all his letters.  (He it is) who even in the first (Epistle) was the first of all (the apostles) to dedicate the temple of God:  “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that in you the Lord dwells?”

1 Cor. iii. 16, inexactly.

Chapter XVII.—Consistency of the Apostle in His Other Epistles.

Challenge me to front the apostolic line of battle; look at his Epistles:  they all keep guard in defence of modesty, of chastity, of sanctity; they all aim their missiles against the interests of luxury, and lasciviousness, and lust.  What, in short, does he write to the Thessalonians withal?  “For our consolation

1 Thess. ii. 3, omitting the last clause.

Chapter XVIII.—Answer to a Psychical Objection.

“But these (passages),” says (our opponent), “will pertain to the interdiction of all immodesty, and the enforcing of all modesty, yet without prejudice to the place of pardon; which (pardon) is not forthwith quite denied when sins are condemned, since the time of the pardon is concurrent with the condemnation which it excludes.”

This piece of shrewdness on the part of the Psychics was (naturally) sequent; and accordingly we have reserved for this place the cautions which, even in the times of antiquity, were openly taken with a view to the refusing of ecclesiastical communion to cases of this kind.

For even in the Proverbs, which we call Parœmiæ, Solomon specially (treats) of the adulterer (as being) nowhere admissible to expiation.  “But the adulterer,” he says, “through indigence of senses acquireth perdition to his own soul; sustaineth dolors and disgraces.  His ignominy, moreover, shall not be wiped away for the age.  For indignation, full of jealousy, will not spare the man in the day of judgment.”

Prov. vi. 32–34.

What if, even here, you should conceive to reply that communion is indeed denied to sinners, very especially such as had been “polluted by the flesh,”

Comp. Jude 23 ad fin.

Chapter XIX.—Objections from the Revelation and the First Epistle of St. John Refuted.

But how far (are we to treat) of Paul; since even John appears to give some secret countenance to the opposite side? as if in the Apocalypse he has manifestly assigned to fornication the auxiliary aid of repentance, where, to the angel of the Thyatirenes, the Spirit sends a message that He “hath against him that he kept (in communion) the woman Jezebel, who calleth herself a prophet, and teacheth,

Or, “saith and teacheth that she is a prophet.”

In short, this Apocalypse, in its later passages, has assigned “the infamous and fornicators,” as well as “the cowardly, and unbelieving, and murderers, and sorcerers, and idolaters,” who have been guilty of any such crime while professing the faith, to “the lake of fire,”

Rev. xxi. 8.

Chapter XX.—From Apostolic Teaching Tertullian Turns to that of Companions of the Apostles, and of the Law.

The discipline, therefore, of the apostles properly (so called), indeed, instructs and determinately directs, as a principal point, the overseer of all sanctity as regards the temple of God to the universal eradication of every sacrilegious outrage upon modesty, without any mention of restoration.  I wish, however, redundantly to superadd the testimony likewise of one particular comrade of the apostles,—(a testimony) aptly suited for confirming, by most proximate right, the discipline of his masters.  For there is extant withal an Epistle to the Hebrews under the name of Barnabas—a man sufficiently accredited by God, as being one whom Paul has stationed next to himself in the uninterrupted observance of abstinence:  “Or else, I alone and Barnabas, have not we the power of working?”

1 Cor. ix. 6; but our copies read, τοῦ μὴ ἐργάζεσθαι.

For excellently was he wont to interpret the law, and keep its figures even in (the dispensation of) the Truth itself.  It was with a reference, in short, to this species of discipline that the caution was taken in the case of the leper:  “But if the speckled appearance shall have become efflorescent over the skin, and shall have covered the whole skin from the head even unto the feet through all the visible surface, then the priest, when he shall have seen, shall utterly cleanse him:  since he hath wholly turned into white he is clean.  But on the day that there shall have been seen in such an one quick colour, he is defiled.”

See Lev. xiii. 12–14 (in LXX.).

Chapter XXI.—Of the Difference Between Discipline and Power, and of the Power of the Keys.

If the apostles understood these (figurative meanings of the Law) better, of course they were more careful (with regard to them than even apostolic men).  But I will descend even to this point of contest now, making a separation between the doctrine of apostles and their power.  Discipline governs a man, power sets a seal upon him; apart from the fact that power is the Spirit, but the Spirit is God.  What, moreover, used (the Spirit) to teach?  That there must be no communicating with the works of darkness.

Eph. v. 11.  See ch. xviii. above.

Chapter XXII.—Of Martyrs, and Their Intercession on Behalf of Scandalous Offenders.

But you go so far as to lavish this “power” upon martyrs withal!  No sooner has any one, acting on a preconceived arrangement, put on the bonds—(bonds), moreover, which, in the nominal custody now in vogue,

Comp. de Je., c. xii.

I have, even now, a test whereby to prove (the presence of) Christ (in you).  If Christ is in the martyr for this reason, that the martyr may absolve adulterers and fornicators, let Him tell publicly the secrets of the heart, that He may thus concede (pardon to) sins; and He is Christ.  For thus it was that the Lord Jesus Christ showed His power:  “Why think ye evil in your hearts?  For which is easier, to say to the paralytic, Thy sins are remitted thee; or, Rise and walk?  Therefore, that ye may know the Son of man to have the power upon earth of remitting sins, I say to thee, paralytic, Rise, and walk.”

See Mark ii. 9–11.

Elucidations.

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I.

(The Shepherd of Hermas, p. 85.)

Here, and in chap. xx. below, Tertullian’s rabid utterances against the Shepherd may be balanced by what he had said, less unreasonably, in his better mood.

On Prayer, vol. iii. cap. xvi. p. 686, supra, where he speaks respectfully.

II.

(Clasping the knees of all, p. 86.)

Here is a portrait of the early penitential discipline sufficiently terrible, and it conforms to the apostolic pictures of the same.  “Tell it unto the Church,” says our Lord (Matt. xviii. 17).  In 1 Cor. v. 4 the apostle (“present in spirit”) gives judgment, but the whole Church is “gathered together.”  In James v. 16 the “confession to one another” seems to refer to this public discipline, as also the prayer for healing enjoined on one another.  St. Chrysostom, however, reflecting the discipline of his day, in which great changes were made, says, on Matt. xviii. 17, unless it be a gloss, “Dic Ecclesiæ id est Præsidibus =προεδρευούσιν.”  (Tom. vii. p. 536, ed. Migne.)

III.

(Remedial discipline, p. 87.)

Powerfully as Tertullian states his view of this apostolic “delivering unto Satan” as for final perdition, it is not to be gainsaid that (1 Cor. v. 5) the object was salvation and hope, “that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”  Thus, the power of Satan to inflict bodily suffering (Job ii. 6), when divinely permitted, is recognised under the Gospel (Luke xiii. 16; 2 Cor. xii. 7).  The remedial mercy of trials and sufferings may be inferred when providentially occurring.

IV.

(Personally upon Peter, p. 99.)

See what has been said before.  But note our author (now writing against the Church, and as a Montanist) has no idea that the personal prerogative of St. Peter had descended to any bishop.  More when we come to Cyprian, and see vol. iii. p. 630, this series.

VIII.

On Fasting.

[Written, say, circa a.d. 208.]

In Opposition to the Psychics.

[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]

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Chapter I.—Connection of Gluttony and Lust.  Grounds of Psychical Objections Against the Montanists.

I should wonder at the Psychics, if they were enthralled to voluptuousness alone, which leads them to repeated marriages, if they were not likewise bursting with gluttony, which leads them to hate fasts.  Lust without voracity would certainly be considered a monstrous phenomenon; since these two are so united and concrete, that, had there been any possibility of disjoining them, the pudenda would not have been affixed to the belly itself rather than elsewhere.  Look at the body:  the region (of these members) is one and the same.  In short, the order of the vices is proportionate to the arrangement of the members.  First, the belly; and then immediately the materials of all other species of lasciviousness are laid subordinately to daintiness:  through love of eating, love of impurity finds passage.  I recognise, therefore, animal

i.e., Psychic.

It is really irksome to engage with such:  one is really ashamed to wrangle about subjects the very defence of which is offensive to modesty.  For how am I to protect chastity and sobriety without taxing their adversaries?  What those adversaries are I will once for all mention:  they are the exterior and interior botuli of the Psychics.  It is these which raise controversy with the Paraclete; it is on this account that the New Prophecies are rejected:  not that Montanus and Priscilla and Maximilla preach another God, nor that they disjoin Jesus Christ (from God), nor that they overturn any particular rule of faith or hope, but that they plainly teach more frequent fasting than marrying.  Concerning the limit of marrying, we have already published a defence of monogamy.

[Which is a note of time, not unimportant.]

Chapter II.—Arguments of the Psychics, Drawn from the Law, the Gospel, the Acts, the Epistles, and Heathenish Practices.

For, so far as pertains to fasts, they oppose to us the definite days appointed by God:  as when, in Leviticus, the Lord enjoins upon Moses the tenth day of the seventh month (as) a day of atonement, saying, “Holy shall be to you the day, and ye shall vex your souls; and every soul which shall not have been vexed in that day shall be exterminated from his people.”

Lev. xvi. 29; xxiii. 26–29.

By the instrumentalities of these and similar passages, they subtlely tend at last to such a point, that every one who is somewhat prone to appetite finds it possible to regard as superfluous, and not so very necessary, the duties of abstinence from, or diminution or delay of, food, since “God,” forsooth, “prefers the works of justice and of innocence.”  And we know the quality of the hortatory addresses of carnal conveniences, how easy it is to say, “I must believe with my whole heart;

Rom. x. 10.

Chapter III.—The Principle of Fasting Traced Back to Its Earliest Source.

Accordingly we are bound to affirm, before proceeding further, this (principle), which is in danger of being secretly subverted; (namely), of what value in the sight of God this “emptiness” you speak of is:  and, first of all, whence has proceeded the rationale itself of earning the favour of God in this way.  For the necessity of the observance will then be acknowledged, when the authority of a rationale, to be dated back from the very beginning, shall have shone out to view.

Adam had received from God the law of not tasting “of the tree of recognition of good and evil,” with the doom of death to ensue upon tasting.

See Gen. ii. 16, 17.

Chapter IV.—The Objection is Raised, Why, Then, Was the Limit of Lawful Food Extended After the Flood?  The Answer to It.

This rationale was constantly kept in the eye of the providence of God—modulating all things, as He does, to suit the exigencies of the times—lest any from the opposite side, with the view of demolishing our proposition, should say:  “Why, in that case, did not God forthwith institute some definite restriction upon food? nay, rather, why did He withal enlarge His permission?  For, at the beginning indeed, it had only been the food of herbs and trees which He had assigned to man:  ‘Behold, I have given you all grass fit for sowing, seeding seed, which is upon the earth; and every tree which hath in itself the fruit of seed fit for sowing shall be to you for food.’

Gen. i. 29.

Chapter V.—Proceeding to the History of Israel, Tertullian Shows that Appetite Was as Conspicuous Among Their Sins as in Adam’s Case.  Therefore the Restraints of the Levitical Law Were Imposed.

At length, when a familiar people began to be chosen by God to Himself, and the restoration of man was able to be essayed, then all the laws and disciplines were imposed, even such as curtailed food; certain things being prohibited as unclean, in order that man, by observing a perpetual abstinence in certain particulars, might at last the more easily tolerate absolute fasts.  For the first People had withal reproduced the first man’s crime, being found more prone to their belly than to God, when, plucked out from the harshness of Egyptian servitude “by the mighty hand and sublime arm”

Comp. Ps. cxxxvi. 12 (in LXX. cxxxv. 12).

Chapter VI.—The Physical Tendencies of Fasting and Feeding Considered.  The Cases of Moses and Elijah.

Now, if there has been temerity in our retracing to primordial experiences the reasons for God’s having laid, and our duty (for the sake of God) to lay, restrictions upon food, let us consult common conscience.  Nature herself will plainly tell with what qualities she is ever wont to find us endowed when she sets us, before taking food and drink, with our saliva still in a virgin state, to the transaction of matters, by the sense especially whereby things divine are handled; whether (it be not) with a mind much more vigorous, with a heart much more alive, than when that whole habitation of our interior man, stuffed with meats, inundated with wines, fermenting for the purpose of excremental secretion, is already being turned into a premeditatory of privies, (a premeditatory) where, plainly, nothing is so proximately supersequent as the savouring of lasciviousness.  “The people did eat and drink, and they arose to play.”

Comp. 1 Cor. x. 7 with Ex. xxxii. 6.

On the other hand, he whose “heart” was habitually found “lifted up”

See Ps. lxxxvi. 4 (in LXX. lxxxv. 4); Lam. iii. 41 (in LXX. iii. 40).

Chapter VII.—Further Examples from the Old Testament in Favour of Fasting.

And thus we have already proceeded to examples, in order that, by its profitable efficacy, we may unfold the powers of this duty which reconciles God, even when angered, to man.

Israel, before their gathering together by Samuel on occasion of the drawing of water at Mizpeh, had sinned; but so immediately do they wash away the sin by a fast, that the peril of battle is dispersed by them simultaneously (with the water on the ground).  At the very moment when Samuel was offering the holocaust (in no way do we learn that the clemency of God was more procured than by the abstinence of the people), and the aliens were advancing to battle, then and there “the Lord thundered with a mighty voice upon the aliens, and they were thrown into confusion, and fell in a mass in the sight of Israel; and the men of Israel went forth out of Mizpeh, and pursued the aliens, and smote them unto Bethor,”—the unfed (chasing) the fed, the unarmed the armed.  Such will be the strength of them who “fast to God.”

See Zech. vii. 5.

Similarly, when the king of the Assyrians, Sennacherib, after already taking several cities, was volleying blasphemies and menaces against Israel through Rabshakeh, nothing else (but fasting) diverted him from his purpose, and sent him into the Ethiopias.  After that, what else swept away by the hand of the angel an hundred eighty and four thousand from his army than Hezekiah the king’s humiliation? if it is true, (as it is), that on hearing the announcement of the harshness of the foe, he rent his garment, put on sackcloth, and bade the elders of the priests, similarly habited, approach God through Isaiah—fasting being, of course, the escorting attendant of their prayers.

See 2 Kings xviii.; xix.; 2 Chron. xxxii.; Isa. xxxvi.; xxxvii.

Through this attendant of mourning, and (this) hunger, even that sinful state, Nineveh, is freed from the predicted ruin.  For repentance for sins had sufficiently commended the fast, keeping it up in a space of three days, starving out even the cattle with which God was not angry.

See Jonah iii.  Comp. de Pa., c. x.

Nor is it merely change of nature, or aversion of perils, or obliteration of sins, but likewise the recognition of mysteries, which fasts will merit from God.  Look at Daniel’s example.  About the dream of the King of Babylon all the sophists are troubled:  they affirm that, without external aid, it cannot be discovered by human skill.  Daniel alone, trusting to God, and knowing what would tend to the deserving of God’s favour, requires a space of three days, fasts with his fraternity, and—his prayers thus commended—is instructed throughout as to the order and signification of the dream; quarter is granted to the tyrant’s sophists; God is glorified; Daniel is honoured; destined as he was to receive, even subsequently also, no less a favour of God in the first year, of King Darius, when, after careful and repeated meditation upon the times predicted by Jeremiah, he set his face to God in fasts, and sackcloth, and ashes.  For the angel, withal, sent to him, immediately professed this to be the cause of the Divine approbation:  “I am come,” he said, “to demonstrate to thee, since thou art pitiable”

Dan. ix. 23; x. 11.

Chapter VIII.—Examples of a Similar Kind from the New.

We produce, too, our remaining (evidences).  For we now hasten to modern proofs.  On the threshold of the Gospel,

See Luke ii. 36–38.  See de Monog., c. viii.

By and by the Lord Himself consecrated His own baptism (and, in His own, that of all) by fasts;

Matt. iv. 12; Luke iv. 1, 2; comp. de Bapt., c. xx.

Thereafter He prescribed to fasts a law—that they are to be performed “without sadness:”

Matt. vi. 16–18.

Chapter IX.—From Fasts Absolute Tertullian Comes to Partial Ones and Xerophagies.

This principal species in the category of dietary restriction may already afford a prejudgment concerning the inferior operations of abstinence also, as being themselves too, in proportion to their measure, useful or necessary.  For the exception of certain kinds from use of food is a partial fast.  Let us therefore look into the question of the novelty or vanity of xerophagies, to see whether in them too we do not find an operation alike of most ancient as of most efficacious religion.  I return to Daniel and his brethren, preferring as they did a diet of vegetables and the beverage of water to the royal dishes and decanters, and being found as they were therefore “more handsome” (lest any be apprehensive on the score of his paltry body, to boot!), besides being spiritually cultured into the bargain.

Dan. i.

I return likewise to Elijah.  When the ravens had been wont to satisfy him with “bread and flesh,”

See 1 Kings xvii. (in LXX. 3 Kings xvii.) 1–6.

Chapter X.—Of Stations, and of the Hours of Prayer.

In like manner they censure on the count of novelty our Stations as being enjoined; some, moreover, (censure them) too as being prolonged habitually too late, saying that this duty also ought to be observed of free choice, and not continued beyond the ninth hour,—(deriving their rule), of course, from their own practice.  Well:  as to that which pertains to the question of injunction, I will once for all give a reply to suit all causes.  Now, (turning) to the point which is proper to this particular cause—concerning the limit of time, I mean—I must first demand from themselves whence they derive this prescriptive law for concluding Stations at the ninth hour.  If it is from the fact that we read that Peter and he who was with him entered the temple “at the ninth (hour), the hour of prayer,” who will prove to me that they had that day been performing a Station, so as to interpret the ninth hour as the hour for the conclusion and discharge of the Station?  Nay, but you would more easily find that Peter at the sixth hour had, for the sake of taking food, gone up first on the roof to pray;

See Acts x. 9.

Chapter XI.—Of the Respect Due to “Human Authority;” And of the Charges of “Heresy” And “Pseudo-Prophecy.”

But all these (instances) I believe to be unknown to those who are in a state of agitation at our proceedings; or else known by the reading alone, not by careful study as well; in accordance with the greater bulk of “the unskilled”

Comp. 2 Pet. iii. 16.

Chapter XII—Of the Need for Some Protest Against the Psychics and Their Self-Indulgence.

For, by this time, in this respect as well as others, “you are reigning in wealth and satiety”

1 Cor. iv. 8.

Plainly, your habit is to furnish cookshops in the prisons to untrustworthy martyrs, for fear they should miss their accustomed usages, grow weary of life, (and) be stumbled at the novel discipline of abstinence; (a discipline) which not even the well-known Pristinus—your martyr, no Christian martyr—had ever come in contact with:  he whom—stuffed as he had long been, thanks to the facilities afforded by the “free custody” (now in vogue, and) under an obligation, I suppose, to all the baths (as if they were better than baptism!), and to all the retreats of voluptuousness (as if they were more secret than those of the Church!), and to all the allurements of this life (as if they were of more worth than those of life eternal!), not to be willing to die—on the very last day of trial, at high noon, you premedicated with drugged wine as an antidote, and so completely enervated, that on being tickled—for his intoxication made it feel like tickling—with a few claws, he was unable any more to make answer to the presiding officer interrogating him “whom he confessed to be Lord;” and, being now put on the rack for this silence, when he could utter nothing but hiccoughs and belchings, died in the very act of apostasy!  This is why they who preach sobriety are “false prophets;” this why they who practise it are “heretics!”  Why then hesitate to believe that the Paraclete, whom you deny in a Montanus, exists in an Apicius?

Chapter XIII.—Of the Inconsistencies of the Psychics.

You lay down a prescription that this faith has its solemnities “appointed” by the Scriptures or the tradition of the ancestors; and that no further addition in the way of observance must be added, on account of the unlawfulness of innovation.  Stand on that ground, if you can.  For, behold, I impeach you of fasting besides on the Paschal-day, beyond the limits of those days in which “the Bridegroom was taken away;” and interposing the half-fasts of Stations; and you, (I find), sometimes living on bread and water, when it has seemed meet to each (so to do).  In short, you answer that “these things are to be done of choice, not of command.”  You have changed your ground, therefore, by exceeding tradition, in undertaking observances which have not been “appointed.”  But what kind of deed is it, to permit to your own choice what you grant not to the command of God?  Shall human volition have more licence than Divine power?  I am mindful that I am free from the world,

1 Cor. ix. 19; sæculo.

But it is enough for me that it is a customary practice for the bishops withal to issue mandates for fasts to the universal commonalty of the Church; I do not mean for the special purpose of collecting contributions of alms, as your beggarly fashion has it, but sometimes too from some particular cause of ecclesiastical solicitude.  And accordingly, if you practise ταπεινοφρόνησις at the bidding of a man’s edict, and all unitedly, how is it that in our case you set a brand upon the very unity also of our fastings, and xerophagies, and Stations?—unless, perhaps, it is against the decrees of the senate and the mandates of the emperors which are opposed to “meetings” that we are sinning!  The Holy Spirit, when He was preaching in whatsoever lands He chose, and through whomsoever He chose, was wont, from foresight of the imminence either of temptations to befall the Church, or of plagues to befall the world, in His character of Paraclete (that is, Advocate for the purpose of winning over the judge by prayers), to issue mandates for observances of this nature; for instance, at the present time, with the view of practising the discipline of sobriety and abstinence:  we, who receive Him, must necessarily observe also the appointments which He then made.  Look at the Jewish calendar, and you will find it nothing novel that all succeeding posterity guards with hereditary scrupulousness the precepts given to the fathers.  Besides, throughout the provinces of Greece there are held in definite localities those councils gathered out of the universal Churches, by whose means not only all the deeper questions are handled for the common benefit, but the actual representation of the whole Christian name is celebrated with great veneration.  (And how worthy a thing is this, that, under the auspices of faith, men should congregate from all quarters to Christ!  “See, how good and how enjoyable for brethren to dwell in unity!”

Ps. cxxxiii. (in LXX. and Vulg. cxxxii.).

Chapter XIV.—Reply to the Charge of “Galaticism.”

Being, therefore, observers of “seasons” for these things, and of “days, and months, and years,”

Comp. Gal. iv. 10.

Chapter XV.—Of the Apostle’s Language Concerning Food.

The apostle reprobates likewise such as “bid to abstain from meats; but he does so from the foresight of the Holy Spirit, precondemning already the heretics who would enjoin perpetual abstinence to the extent of destroying and despising the works of the Creator; such as I may find in the person of a Marcion, a Tatian, or a Jupiter, the Pythagorean heretic of to-day; not in the person of the Paraclete.  For how limited is the extent of our “interdiction of meats!”  Two weeks of xerophagies in the year (and not the whole of these,—the Sabbaths, to wit, and the Lord’s days, being excepted) we offer to God; abstaining from things which we do not reject, but defer.  But further:  when writing to the Romans, the apostle now gives you a home-thrust, detractors as you are of this observance:  “Do not for the sake of food,” he says, “undo

Rom. xiv. 20.

How unworthy, also, is the way in which you interpret to the favour of your own lust the fact that the Lord “ate and drank” promiscuously!  But I think that He must have likewise “fasted” inasmuch as He has pronounced, not “the full,” but “the hungry and thirsty, blessed:”

Comp. Luke vi. 21 and 25, and Matt. v. 6.

Chapter XVI.—Instances from Scripture of Divine Judgments Upon the Self-Indulgent; And Appeals to the Practices of Heathens.

For even if He does prefer “the works of righteousness,” still not without a sacrifice, which is a soul afflicted with fasts.

See Ps. li. (l. in LXX. and Vulg.) 18, 19; see c. iii. above.

These will be warnings both to people and to bishops, even spiritual ones, in case they may ever have been guilty of incontinence of appetite.  Nay, even in Hades the admonition has not ceased to speak; where we find in the person of the rich feaster, convivialities tortured; in that of the pauper, fasts refreshed; having—(as convivialities and fasts alike had)—as preceptors “Moses and the prophets.”

Luke xvi. 19–31.

Chapter XVII.—Conclusion.

“Old” you are, if we will say the truth, you who are so indulgent to appetite, and justly do you vaunt your “priority:”  always do I recognise the savour of Esau, the hunter of wild beasts:  so unlimitedly studious are you of catching fieldfares, so do you come from “the field” of your most lax discipline, so faint are you in spirit.

Comp. Gen. xxiii. 2, 3, 4, 31, and xxv. 27–34.

To the indictment of your appetite pertains (the charge) that “double honour” is with you assigned to your presiding (elders) by double shares (of meat and drink); whereas the apostle has given them “double honour” as being both brethren and officers.

1 Tim. v. 17.

Elucidations.

————————————

I.

(Greater licence, p. 104.)

In this treatise, which is designed to justify the extremes of Montanistic fasts, Tertullian’s genius often surprises us by his ingenuity.  This is one of the instances where the forensic orator comes out, trying to outflank and turn the position of an antagonist who has gained an advantage.  The fallacy is obvious.  Kaye cites, in comparison, a passage

II. cap. 10, p. 23, supra.

Fasting was ordained of Christ Himself as a means to an end.  It is here reduced from its instrumental character, and made an excuse for dividing the household of faith, and for cruel accusations against brethren.

In our age of an entire relaxation of discipline, the enthusiast may nevertheless awaken us, perhaps, to honest self-examination as to our manner of life, in view of the example of Christ and His apostles, and their holy precepts.

II.

(Provinces of Greece, p. 111.)

We have here an interesting hint as to the ἀρχαῖα ἔθη to which the Council of Nice

See our minor titlepage.

IX.

De Fuga in Persecutione.

[Written, say, circa a.d. 208.]

[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]

————————————

1.  My brother Fabius, you very lately asked, because some news or other were communicated, whether or not we ought to flee in persecution.  For my part, having on the spot made some observations in the negative suited to the place and time, I also, owing to the rudeness of some persons, took away with me the subject but half treated, meaning to set it forth now more fully by my pen; for your inquiry had interested me in it, and the state of the times had already on its own account pressed it upon me.  As persecutions in increasing number threaten us, so the more are we called on to give earnest thought to the question of how faith ought to receive them, and the duty of carefully considering it concerns you no less, who no doubt, by not accepting the Comforter, the guide to all truth, have, as was natural, opposed us hitherto in regard to other questions also.  We have therefore applied a methodical treatment, too, to your inquiry, as we see that we must first come to a decision as to how the matter stands in regard to persecution itself, whether it comes on us from God or from the devil, that with the less difficulty we may get on firm ground as to our duty to meet it; for of everything one’s knowledge is clearer when it is known from whom it has its origin.  It is enough indeed to lay it down, (in bar of all besides,) that nothing happens without the will of God.  But lest we be diverted from the point before us, we shall not by this deliverance at once give occasion to the other discussions if one make answer—Therefore evil and sin are both from God; the devil henceforth, and even we ourselves, are entirely free.  The question in hand is persecution.  With respect to this, let me in the meantime say, that nothing happens without God’s will; on the ground that persecution is especially worthy of God, and, so to speak, requisite, for the approving, to wit, or if you will, the rejection of His professing servants.  For what is the issue of persecution, what other result comes of it, but the approving and rejecting of faith, in regard to which the Lord will certainly sift His people?  Persecution, by means of which one is declared either approved or rejected, is just the judgment of the Lord.  But the judging properly belongs to God alone.  This is that fan which even now cleanses the Lord’s threshing-floor—the Church, I mean—winnowing the mixed heap of believers, and separating the grain

Matt. iii. 12.

Elucidations.

————————————

I.

(Persecutions threaten, p. 116.)

We have reserved this heroic tract to close our series of the ascetic essays of our author because it places even his sophistical enthusiasm in a light which shows much to admire.  Strange that this defiant hero should have died (as we may infer) in his bed, and in extreme old age.  Great man, how much, alike for weal and woe, the ages have been taught by thee!

This is the place for a tabular view of the ten persecutions of the Ante-Nicene Church.  They are commonly enumerated as follows:

See what Gibbon can say to minimize the matter (in cap. xvi. 4, vol. ii. p. 45, New York).

1.  Under Nero——a.d. 64.

2.  Under Trajan——a.d. 95.

3.  Under Trajan——a.d. 107.

4.  Under Hadrian (a.d. 118 and)——a.d. 134.

5.  Under Aurelius (a.d. 177) and Severus——a.d. 202.

6.  Under Maximin——a.d. 235.

7.  Under Decius——a.d. 250.

8.  Under Valerian——a.d. 254.

9.  Under Aurelian——a.d. 270.

10.  Under Diocletian (a.d. 284 and)——a.d. 303.

Periods of Comparative Rest.

1.  Under Antoninus Pius——a.d. 151.

2.  Under Commodus——a.d. 185.

3.  Under Alexander Severus——a.d. 223.

4.  Under Philip——a.d. 248.

5.  Under Diocletian——a.d. 284 till a.d. 303.

In thus chastising and sifting his Church in the years of her gradual growth “from the smallest of all seeds,” we see illustrations of the Lord’s Epistles to the seven churches of the Apocalypse.  Who can doubt that Tertullian’s writings prepared the North-African Church for the Decian furnace, and all believers for the “seven times hotter” fires of Diocletian?

II.

(To the fearful, p. 120.)

In the Patientia

Cap. xiii.

III.

(Enormous gains from numbers, p. 124.)

Christians were now counted by millions.  The following tabular view of the Christian population of the world from the beginning has been attributed to Sharon Turner.  I do not find it in any of his works with which I am familiar.  The nineteenth century is certainly credited too low, according to the modern computists; but I insert it merely for the centuries we are now considering.

Growth of the Church in Numbers.

1.  First century——500,000

2.  Second century——2,000,000

3.  Third century——5,000,000

4.  Fourth century——10,000,000

5.  Fifth century——15,000,000

6.  Sixth century——20,000,000

7.  Seventh century——24,000,000

8.  Eighth century——30,000,000

9.  Ninth century——40,000,000

10.  Tenth century——50,000,000

11.  Eleventh century——70,000,000

12.  Twelfth century——80,000,000

13.  Thirteenth century——75,000,000

14.  Fourteenth century——80,000,000

15.  Fifteenth century——100,000,000

16.  Sixteenth century——125,000,000

17.  Seventeenth century——155,000,000

18.  Eighteenth century——200,000,000

19.  Nineteenth century——400,000,000

X.

Appendix.

[Elucidation.]

[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]

————————————

1.  A Strain of Jonah the Prophet.

After the living, aye—enduring death

Of Sodom and Gomorrah; after fires

Penal, attested by time-frosted plains

Of ashes; after fruitless apple-growths,

5  Born but to feed the eye; after the death

Of sea and brine, both in like fate involved;

While whatsoe’er is human still retains

In change corporeal its penal badge:

These two lines, if this be their true sense, seem to refer to Lot’s wife.  But the grammar and meaning of this introduction are alike obscure.

A city—Nineveh—by stepping o’er

10  The path of justice and of equity,

On her own head had well-nigh shaken down

More fires of rain supernal.  For what dread

“Metus;” used, as in other places, of godly fear.

Dwells in a mind subverted?  Commonly

Tokens of penal visitations prove

15  All vain where error holds possession.  Still,

Kindly and patient of our waywardness,

And slow to punish, the Almighty Lord

Will launch no shaft of wrath, unless He first

Admonish and knock oft at hardened hearts,

20  Rousing with mind august presaging seers.

For to the merits of the Ninevites

The Lord had bidden Jonah to foretell

Destruction; but he, conscious that He spare;

The subject, and remits to suppliants

25  The dues of penalty, and is to good

Ever inclinable, was loth to face

That errand; lest he sing his seerly strain

In vain, and peaceful issue of his threats

Ensue.  His counsel presently is flight:

30  (If, howsoe’er, there is at all the power

God to avoid, and shun the Lord’s right hand

’Neath whom the whole orb trembles and is held

In check:  but is there reason in the act

Which in

Lit. “from,” i.e., which, urged by a heart which is that of a saint, even though on this occasion it failed, the prophet dared.

35  On the beach-lip, over against the shores

Of the Cilicians, is a city poised,

Libratur.

Far-famed for trusty port—Joppa her name.

Thence therefore Jonah speeding in a barque

Seeks Tarsus,

“Tarshish,” Eng. ver.; perhaps Tartessus in Spain.  For this question, and the “trustiness” of Joppa (now Jaffa) as a port, see Pusey on Jonah i. 3.

40  Of the same God;

Ejusdem per signa Dei.

If, fleeing from the Lord upon the lands,

He found Him in the waves.  For suddenly

A little cloud had stained the lower air

With fleecy wrack sulphureous, itself

i.e., the cloud.

45  By the wind’s seed excited: by degrees,

Bearing a brood globose, it with the sun

Cohered, and with a train caliginous

Shut in the cheated day.  The main becomes

The mirror of the sky; the waves are dyed so

50  With black encirclement; the upper air

Down rushes into darkness, and the sea

Uprises; nought of middle space is left;

While the clouds touch the waves, and the waves all

Are mingled by the bluster of the winds

55  In whirling eddy.  ’Gainst the renegade,

’Gainst Jonah, diverse frenzy joined to rave,

While one sole barque did all the struggle breed

’Twixt sky and surge.  From this side and from that

Pounded she reels; ’neath each wave-breaking blow

60  The forest of her tackling trembles all;

As, underneath, her spinal length of keel,

Staggered by shock on shock, all palpitates;

And, from on high, her labouring mass of yard

Creaks shuddering; and the tree-like mast itself

65  Bends to the gale, misdoubting to be riven.

Meantime the rising

Genitus (Oehler); geminus (Migne) ="twin clamour,” which is not inapt.

Tries every chance for barque’s and dear life’s sake:

To pass from hand to hand

Mandare (Oehler).  If this be the true reading, the rendering in the text seems to represent the meaning; for “mandare” with an accusative, in the sense of “to bid the tardy coils tighten the girth’s noose,” seems almost too gross a solecism for even so lax a Latinist as our present writer.  Migne, however, reads mundare—to “clear” the tardy coils, i.e., probably from the wash and weed with which the gale was cloying them.

To tighten the girth’s noose:  straitly to bind

70  The tiller’s struggles; or, with breast opposed,

T’ impel reluctant curves.  Part, turn by turn,

With foremost haste outbale the reeking well

Of inward sea.  The wares and cargo all

They then cast headlong, and with losses seek

75  Their perils to subdue.  At every crash

Of the wild deep rise piteous cries; and out

They stretch their hands to majesties of gods,

Which gods are none; whom might of sea and sky

Fears not, nor yet the less from off their poops

80  With angry eddy sweeping sinks them down.

Unconscious of all this, the guilty one

’Neath the poop’s hollow arch was making sleep

Re-echo stertorous with nostril wide

Inflated:  whom, so soon as he who guides

85  The functions of the wave-dividing prow

Saw him sleep-bound in placid peace, and proud

In his repose, he, standing o’er him, shook,

And said, “Why sing’st, with vocal nostril, dreams,

In such a crisis?  In so wild a whirl,

90  Why keep’st thou only harbour?  Lo! the wave

Whelms us, and our one hope is in the gods.

Thou also, whosoever is thy god,

Make vows, and, pouring prayers on bended knee,

Win o’er thy country’s Sovran!”

Then they vote

95  To learn by lot who is the culprit, who

The cause of storm; nor does the lot belie

Jonah:  whom then they ask, and ask again,

“Who? whence? who in the world? from what abode,

What people, hail’st thou?”  He avows himself

100  A servant, and an over-timid one,

Of God, who raised aloft the sky, who based

The earth, who corporally fused the whole:

A renegade from Him he owns himself,

And tells the reason.  Rigid turned they all

105  With dread.  “What grudge, then, ow’st thou us?  What now

Will follow?  By what deed shall we appease

The main?”  For more and far more swelling grew

The savage surges.  Then the seer begins

Words prompted by the Spirit of the Lord:

Tunc Domini vates ingesta Spiritus infit.  Of course it is a gross offence against quantity to make a genitive in “us” short, as the rendering in the text does.  But a writer who makes the first syllable in “clamor” and the last syllable of gerunds in do short, would scarcely be likely to hesitate about taking similar liberties with a genitive of the so-called fourth declension.  It is possible, it is true, to take “vates” and “Spiritus” as in apposition, and render, “Then the seer-Spirit of the Lord begins to utter words inspired,” or “Then the seer-Spirit begins to utter the promptings of the Lord.”  But these renderings seem to accord less well with the ensuing words.

110  “Lo!  I your tempest am; I am the sum

Of the world’s

Mundi.

“That the sea rises, and the upper air

Down rushes; land in me is far, death near,

And hope in God is none!  Come, headlong hurl

115  Your cause of bane:  lighten your ship, and cast

This single mighty burden to the main,

A willing prey!”  But they—all vainly!—strive

Homeward to turn their course; for helm refused

To suffer turning, and the yard’s stiff poise

120  Willed not to change.  At last unto the Lord

They cry:  “For one soul’s sake give us not o’er

Unto death’s maw, nor let us be besprent

With righteous blood, if thus Thine own right hand

Leadeth.”  And from the eddy’s depth a whale

125  Outrising on the spot, scaly with shells,

i.e., apparently with shells which had gathered about him as he lay in the deep.

Unravelling his body’s train, ’gan urge

More near the waves, shocking the gleaming brine,

Seizing—at God’s command—the prey; which, rolled

From the poop’s summit prone, with slimy jaws

130  He sucked; and into his long belly sped

The living feast; and swallowed, with the man,

The rage of sky and main.  The billowy waste

Grows level, and the ether’s gloom dissolves;

The waves on this side, and the blasts on that,

135  Are to their friendly mood restored; and, where

The placid keel marks out a path secure,

White traces in the emerald furrow bloom.

The sailor then does to the reverend Lord

Of death make grateful offering of his fear;

This seems to be the sense of Oehler’s “Nauta at tum Domino leti venerando timorem Sacrificat grates”—“grates” being in apposition with “timorem.”  But Migne reads:  “Nautæ tum Domino læti venerando timorem Sacrificant grates:”—

“The sailors then do to the reverend Lord

Gladly make grateful sacrifice of fear:”

and I do not see that Oehler’s reading is much better.

140  Then enters friendly ports.

Jonah the seer

The while is voyaging, in other craft

Embarked, and cleaving ’neath the lowest waves

A wave:  his sails the intestines of the fish,

Inspired with breath ferine; himself, shut in;

145  By waters, yet untouched; in the sea’s heart

And yet beyond its reach; ’mid wrecks of fleets

Half-eaten, and men’s carcasses dissolved

In putrid disintegrity:  in life

Learning the process of his death; but still—

150  To be a sign hereafter of the Lord

Comp. Matt. xii. 38–41; Luke xi. 29, 30.

A witness was he (in his very self),

These words are not in the original, but are inserted (I confess) to fill up the line, and avoid ending with an incomplete verse.  If, however, any one is curious enough to compare the translation, with all its defects, with the Latin, he may be somewhat surprised to find how very little alteration or adaptation is necessary in turning verse into verse.

Not of destruction, but of death’s repulse.

————————————

2.  A Strain of Sodom.

(Author Uncertain.)

Already had Almighty God wiped off

By vengeful flood (with waters all conjoined

Which heaven discharged on earth and the sea’s plain

Maris æquor.

Outspued) the times of the primeval age:

5  Had pledged Himself, while nether air should bring

The winters in their course, ne’er to decree,

By liquid ruin, retribution’s due;

And had assigned, to curb the rains, the bow

Of many hues, sealing the clouds with band

10  Of purple and of green, Iris its name,

The rain-clouds’ proper baldric.

See Gen. ix. 21, 22; x. 8–17.

But alike

With mankind’s second race impiety

Revives, and a new age of ill once more

Shoots forth; allotted now no more to showers

15  For ruin, but to fires:  thus did the land

Of Sodom earn to be by glowing dews

Upburnt, and typically thus portend

The future end.

Comp. 2 Pet. iii. 5–14.

(Modesty’s foe) stood in the room of law;

20  Which prescient guest would shun, and sooner choose

At Scythian or Busirian altar’s foot

’Mid sacred rites to die, and, slaughtered, pour

His blood to Bebryx, or to satiate

Libyan palæstras, or assume new forms;

25  By virtue of Circæan cups, than lose

His outraged sex in Sodom.  At heaven’s gate

There knocked for vengeance marriages commit

With equal incest common ’mong a race

By nature rebels ’gainst themselves;

The expression, “sinners against their own souls,” in Num. xvi. 38—where, however, the LXX. have a very different version—may be compared with this; as likewise Prov. viii. 36.

30  Done to man’s name and person equally.

But God, forewatching all things, at fix’d time

Doth judge the unjust; with patience tarrying

The hour when crime’s ripe age—not any force

Of wrath impetuous—shall have circumscribed

35  The space for waiting.

Whether the above be the sense of this most obscure triplet I will not presume to determine.  It is at least (I hope) intelligible sense.  But that the reader may judge for himself whether he can offer any better, I subjoin the lines, which form a sentence alone, and therefore can be judged of without their context:—

“Tempore sed certo Deus omnia prospectulatus,

Judicat injustos, patiens ubi criminis ætas

Cessandi spatium vis nulla coëgerit iræ.”

Now at length the day

Of vengeance was at hand.  Sent from the host

Angelical, two, youths in form, who both

Were ministering spirits,

Comp. Heb. i. 14.  It may be as well here to inform the reader once for all that prosody as well as syntax is repeatedly set at defiance in these metrical fragments; and hence, of course, arise some of the chief difficulties in dealing with them.

The Lord’s divine commissions, come beneath

40  The walls of Sodom.  There was dwelling Lot

A transplantation from a pious stock;

Wise, and a practicer of righteousness,

He was the only one to think on God:

As oft a fruitful tree is wont to lurk,

45  Guest-like, in forests wild.  He, sitting then

Before the gate (for the celestials scarce

Had reached the ramparts), though he knew not them

Divine,

“Divinos;” i.e., apparently “superhuman,” as everything heavenly is.

Invites, and with ancestral honour greets;

50  And offers them, preparing to abide

Abroad, a hospice.  By repeated prayers

He wins them; and then ranges studiously

The sacred pledges

Of hospitality—bread and salt, etc.

His friends with courteous offices.  The night

55  Had brought repose:  alternate

Altera =alterna.  But the statement differs from Gen. xix. 4.

The night, and Sodom with her shameful law

Makes uproar at the doors.  Lot, suppliant wise,

Withstands:  “Young men, let not your new fed lust

Enkindle you to violate this youth!

“Istam juventam,” i.e., the two “juvenes” (ver. 31) within.

60  Whither is passion’s seed inviting you?

To what vain end your lust?  For such an end

No creatures wed:  not such as haunt the fens;

Not stall-fed cattle; not the gaping brood

Subaqueous; nor they which, modulant

65  On pinions, hang suspended near the clouds;

Nor they which with forth-stretched body creep

Over earth’s face.  To conjugal delight

Each kind its kind doth owe:  but female still

To all is wife; nor is there one that has

70  A mother save a female one.  Yet now,

If youthful vigour holds it right

“Fas” =ὅσιον, morally right; distinct from “jus” or “licitum.”

The flower of modesty, I have within

Two daughters of a nuptial age, in whom

Virginity is swelling in its bloom,

75  Already ripe for harvest—a desire

Worthy of men—which let your pleasure reap!

Myself their sire, I yield them; and will pay

For my guests’ sake, the forfeit of my grief!”

Answered the mob insane:  “And who art thou?

80  And what? and whence? to lord it over us,

And to expound us laws?  Shall foreigner

Rule Sodom, and hurl threats?  Now, then, thyself

For daughters and for guests shalt sate our greed!

One shall suffice for all!”  So said, so done:

85  The frantic mob delays not.  As, whene’er

A turbid torrent rolls with wintry tide,

And rushes at one speed through countless streams

Of rivers, if, just where it forks, some tree

Meets the swift waves (not long to stand, save while

90  By her root’s force she shall avail to oppose

Her tufty obstacles), when gradually

Her hold upon the undermined soil

Is failing, with her bared stem she hangs,

And, with uncertain heavings to and fro,

95  Defers her certain fall; not otherwise

Lot in the mid-whirl of the dizzy mob

Kept nodding, now almost o’ercome.  But power

Divine brings succour:  the angelic youths,

Snatching him from the threshold, to his roof

100  Restore him; but upon the spot they mulct

Of sight the mob insane in open day,—

Fit augury of coming penalties!

Then they unlock the just decrees of God:

That penalty condign from heaven will fall

105  On Sodom; that himself had merited

Safety upon the count of righteousness.

“Gird thee, then, up to hasten hence thy flight,

And with thee to lead out what family

Thou hast:  already we are bringing on

110  Destruction o’er the city.”  Lot with speed

Speaks to his sons-in-law; but their hard heart

Scorned to believe the warning, and at fear

Laughed.  At what time the light attempts to climb

The darkness, and heaven’s face wears double hue

115  From night and day, the youthful visitants

Were instant to outlead from Sodoma

The race Chaldæan,

i.e., Lot’s race or family, which had come from “Ur of the Chaldees.”  See Gen. xi. 26, 27, 28.

Consign to safety:  “Ho! come, Lot! arise,

And take thy yokefellow and daughters twain,

120  And hence, beyond the boundaries be gone,

Preventing

I use “preventing” in its now unusual sense of “anticipating the arrival of.”

With friendly hands they lead them trembling forth,

And then their final mandates give:  “Save, Lot,

Thy life, lest thou perchance should will to turn

125  Thy retroverted gaze behind, or stay

The step once taken:  to the mountain speed!”

Lot feared to creep the heights with tardy step,

Lest the celestial wrath-fires should o’ertake

And whelm him:  therefore he essays to crave

130  Some other ports; a city small, to wit,

Which opposite he had espied.  “Hereto,”

He said, “I speed my flight:  scarce with its walls

’Tis visible; nor is it far, nor great.”

They, favouring his prayer, safety assured

135  To him and to the city; whence the spot

Is known in speech barbaric by the name

Segor.

Σηγώρ in the LXX., “Zoar” in Eng. ver.

Is rising,

“Simul exoritur sol.”  But both the LXX. and the Eng. ver. say the sun was risen when Lot entered the city.

To Sodom conflagration; for his rays

140  He had armed all with fire:  beneath him spreads

An emulous gloom, which seeks to intercept

The light; and clouds combine to interweave

Their smoky globes with the confused sky:

Down pours a novel shower:  the ether seethes

145  With sulphur mixt with blazing flames:

So Oehler and Migne.  But perhaps we may alter the pointing slightly, and read:—

“Down pours a novel shower, sulphur mixt

With blazing flames:  the ether seethes:  the air

Crackles with liquid exust.”

Crackles with liquid heats exust.  From hence

The fable has an echo of the truth

Amid its false, that the sun’s progeny

Would drive his father’s team; but nought availed

150  The giddy boy to curb the haughty steeds

Of fire:  so blazed our orb:  then lightning reft

The lawless charioteer, and bitter plaint

Transformed his sisters.  Let Eridanus

See to it, if one poplar on his banks

155  Whitens, or any bird dons plumage there

Whose note old age makes mellow!

The story of Phaëthon and his fate is told in Ov., Met., ii. 1–399, which may be compared with the present piece.  His two sisters were transformed into white poplars, according to some; alders, according to others.  See Virg., Æn., x. 190 sqq., Ec., vi. 62 sqq.  His half-brother (Cycnus or Cygnus) was turned into a swan:  and the scene of these transformations is laid by Ovid on the banks of the Eridanus (the Po).  But the fable is variously told; and it has been suggested that the groundwork of it is to be found rather in the still-standing of the sun recorded in Joshua.

Here they mourn

O’er miracles of metamorphosis

Of other sort.  For, partner of Lot’s flight,

His wife (ah me, for woman! even then

i.e., as she had been before in the case of Eve.  See Gen. iii. 1 sqq.

160  Intolerant of law!) alone turned back

At the unearthly murmurs of the sky)

Her daring eyes, but bootlessly:  not doomed

To utter what she saw! and then and there

Changed into brittle salt, herself her tomb

165  She stood, herself an image of herself,

Keeping an incorporeal form:  and still

In her unsheltered station ’neath the heaven

Dures she, by rains unmelted, by decay

And winds unwasted; nay, if some strange hand

170  Deface her form, forthwith from her own store

Her wounds she doth repair.  Still is she said

To live, and, ’mid her corporal change, discharge

With wonted blood her sex’s monthly dues.

Gone are the men of Sodom; gone the glare

175  Of their unhallowed ramparts; all the house

Inhospitable, with its lords, is gone:

The champaign is one pyre; here embers rough

And black, here ash-heaps with hoar mould, mark out

The conflagration’s course:  evanished

180  Is all that old fertility

I have hazarded the bold conjecture—which I see others (Pamelius at all events) had hazarded before me—that “feritas” is used by our author as ="fertilitas.”  The word, of course, is very incorrectly formed etymologically; but etymology is not our author’s forte apparently.  It will also be seen that there is seemingly a gap at this point, or else some enormous mistake, in the mss.  An attempt has been made (see Migne) to correct it, but not a very satisfactory one.  For the common reading, which gives two lines,

“Occidit illa prior feritas, quam prospiciens Loth

Nullus arat frustra piceas fuligine glebas,”

which are evidently entirely unconnected with one another, it is proposed to read,

“Occidit illa prior feritas, quam prospiciens Loth,

Deseruisse pii fertur commercia fratris.

Nullas arat,” etc.

This use of “fratris” in a wide sense may be justified from Gen. xiii. 8 (to which passage, with its immediate context, there seems to be a reference, whether we adopt the proposed correction or no), and similar passages in Holy Writ.  But the transition is still abrupt to the “nullus arat,” etc.; and I prefer to leave the passage as it is, without attempting to supply the hiatus.

Seeing outspread before him,…

.     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

No ploughman spends his fruitless toil on glebes

Pitchy with soot:  or if some acres there,

But half consumed, still strive to emulate

185  Autumn’s glad wealth, pears, peaches, and all fruits

Promise themselves full easely

This use of “easely” as a dissyllable is justifiable from Spenser.

In fairest bloom, until the plucker’s hand

Is on them:  then forthwith the seeming fruit

Crumbles to dust ’neath the bewraying touch,

190  And turns to embers vain.

Thus, therefore (sky

And earth entombed alike), not e’en the sea

Lives there:  the quiet of that quiet sea

Is death!

This seems to be the sense, but the Latin is somewhat strange:  “mors est maris illa quieti,” i.e., illa (quies) maris quieti mors est.  The opening lines of “Jonah” (above) should be compared with this passage and its context.

Through its anhealant volumes; which beneath

195  Its native Auster sighs not anywhere;

Which cannot from its depths one scaly race,

Or with smooth skin or cork-like fence encased,

Produce, or curled shell in single valve

Or double fold enclosed.  Bitumen there

200  (The sooty reek of sea exust) alone,

With its own crop, a spurious harvest yields;

Which ’neath the stagnant surface vivid heat

From seething mass of sulphur and of brine

Maturing tempers, making earth cohere

205  Into a pitch marine.

Inque picem dat terræ hærere marinam.

The heated water’s fatty ooze is borne

Up to the surface; and with foamy flakes

Over the level top a tawny skin

Is woven.  They whose function is to catch

210  That ware put to, tilting their smooth skin down

With balance of their sides, to teach the film,

Once o’er the gunnel, to float in:  for, lo!

Raising itself spontaneous, it will swim

Up to the edge of the unmoving craft;

215  And will, when pressed,

“Pressum” (Oehler); “pretium” (Migne):  “it will yield a prize, namely, that,” etc.

Immunity from the defiling touch

Of weft which female monthly efflux clothes.

Behold another portent notable,

Fruit of that sea’s disaster:  all things cast

220  Therein do swim:  gone is its native power

For sinking bodies:  if, in fine, you launch

A torch’s lightsome

Luciferam.

For fire) therein, the apex of the flame

Will act as sail; put out the flame, and ’neath

225  The waters will the light’s wrecks ruin go!

Such Sodom’s and Gomorrah’s penalties,

For ages sealed as signs before the eyes

Of unjust nations, whose obdurate hearts

God’s fear have quite forsaken,

Oehler’s pointing is disregarded.

230  To reverence heaven-sanctioned rights,

“De cælo jura tueri;” possibly “to look for laws from heaven.”

Their gaze unto one only Lord of all.

————————————

3.  Genesis.

(Author Uncertain.)

In the beginning did the Lord create

The heaven and earth:

Terram.

And hidden by the wave, and God immense

Immensus.  See note on the word in the fragment “Concerning the Cursing of the Heathen’s Gods.”

O’er the vast watery plains was hovering,

5  While chaos and black darkness shrouded all:

Which darkness, when God bade be from the pole

Cardine.

Disjoined, He speaks, “Let there be light;” and all

In the clear world

Mundo.

The first day’s work had finished, He formed

10  Heaven’s axis white with nascent clouds:  the deep

Immense receives its wandering

“Errantia;” so called, probably, either because they appear to move as ships pass them, or because they may be said to “wander” by reason of the constant change which they undergo from the action of the sea, and because of the shifting nature of their sands.

The rivers manifold with mighty trains.

The third dun light unveiled earth’s

Terrarum.

(Its name assigned

“God called the dry land Earth:”  Gen. i. 10.

15  Together on the windy champaigns rise

The flowery seeds, and simultaneously

Fruit-bearing boughs put forth procurvant arms.

The fourth day, with

i.e., “together with;” it begets both sun and moon.

The moon, and moulds the stars with tremulous light

20  Radiant:  these elements it

i.e., “the fourth day.”

To th’ underlying world,

Mundo.

Which, through their rise and setting, were to change.

Then, on the fifth, the liquid

Or, “lucid”—liquentia.

Their fish, and birds poise in the lower air

25  Their pinions many-hued.  The sixth, again,

Supples the ice-cold snakes into their coils,

And over the whole fields diffuses herds

Of quadrupeds; and mandate gave that all

Should grow with multiplying seed, and roam

30  And feed in earth’s immensity.

All these

When power divine by mere command arranged,

Observing that things mundane still would lack

A ruler, thus It

i.e., “Power Divine.”

Assimilated to our own aspect,

So Milton and Shakespeare.

35  Make We a man to reign in the whole orb.”

And him, although He with a single word

As (see above, l. 31) He had all other things.

Could have compounded, yet Himself did deign

To shape him with His sacred own right hand,

Inspiring his dull breast from breast divine.

40  Whom when He saw formed in a likeness such

As is His own, He measures how he broods

Alone on gnawing cares.  Straight way his eyes

With sleep irriguous He doth perfuse;

That from his left rib woman softlier

45  May formed be, and that by mixture twin

His substance may add firmness to her limbs.

To her the name of “Life”—which is called “Eve”

See Gen. iii. 20, with the LXX., and the marg. in the Eng. ver.

Is given:  wherefore sons, as custom is,

Their parents leave, and, with a settled home,

50  Cleave to their wives.

The seventh came, when God

At His works’ end did rest, decreeing it

Sacred unto the coming ages’ joys.

Straightway—the crowds of living things deployed

Before him—Adam’s cunning skill (the gift

55  Of the good Lord) gives severally to all

The name which still is permanent.  Himself,

And, joined with him, his Eve, God deigns address

“Grow, for the times to come, with manifold

Increase, that with your seed the pole and earth

Terræ.

60  Be filled; and, as Mine heirs, the varied fruits

Pluck ye, which groves and champaigns render you,

From their rich turf.”  Thus after He discoursed,

In gladsome court

The “gladsome court”—“læta aula”—seems to mean Eden, in which the garden is said to have been planted.  See Gen. ii. 8.

And looks towards the rays of th’ early sun.

i.e., eastward.  See the last reference.

65  These joys among, a tree with deadly fruits,

Breeding, conjoined, the taste of life and death,

Arises.  In the midst of the demesne

Ædibus in mediis.

Flows with pure tide a stream, which irrigates

Fair offsprings from its liquid waves, and cuts

70  Quadrified paths from out its bubbling fount

Here wealthy Phison, with auriferous waves,

Swells, and with hoarse tide wears

Terit.  So Job (xiv. 19), “The waters wear the stones.”

This prasinus,

“Onyx,” Eng. ver.  See the following piece, l. 277.

By name; and raves, transparent in its shoals,

75  The margin of the land of Havilath.

Next Gihon, gliding by the Æthiops,

Enriches them.  The Tigris is the third,

Adjoined to fair Euphrates, furrowing

Disjunctively with rapid flood the land

80  Of Asshur.  Adam, with his faithful wife,

Placed here as guard and workman, is informed

By such the Thunderer’s

Comp. Ps. xxix. 3, especially in “Great Bible” (xxviii. 3 in LXX.)

To pluck together the permitted fruits

Which, with its leafy bough, the unshorn grove

85  Hath furnished; anxious only lest perchance

Ye cull the hurtful apple,

Malum.

With a twin juice for functions several.”

And, no less blind meantime than Night herself,

Deep night ’gan hold them, nor had e’en a robe

90  Covered their new-formed limbs.

Amid these haunts,

And on mild berries reared, a foamy snake,

Surpassing living things in sense astute,

Was creeping silently with chilly coils.

He, brooding over envious lies instinct

95  With gnawing sense, tempts the soft heart beneath

The woman’s breast:  “Tell me, why shouldst thou dread

The apple’s

Mali.

All known fruits hallowed?

“Numquid poma Deus non omnia nota sacravit?”

To cull the honeyed fruits, the golden world

Mundus.

100  Will on its starry pole return.”

The writer, supposing it to be night (see 88, 89), seems to mean that the serpent hinted that the fruit would instantly dispel night and restore day.  Compare the ensuing lines.

Refuses, and the boughs forbidden fears

To touch.  But yet her breast ’gins be o’er come

With sense infirm.  Straightway, as she at length

With snowy tooth the dainty morsels bit,

105  Stained with no cloud the sky serene up-lit!

Then taste, instilling lure in honeyed jaws,

To her yet uninitiated lord

Constrained her to present the gift; which he

No sooner took, then—night effaced!:—their eyes

110  Shone out serene in the resplendent world.

Mundo.

When, then, they each their body bare espied,

And when their shameful parts they see, with leaves

Of fig they shadow them.

By chance, beneath

The sun’s now setting light, they recognise

115  The sound of the Lord’s voice, and, trembling, haste

To bypaths.  Then the Lord of heaven accosts

The mournful Adam:  “Say, where now thou art.”

Who suppliant thus answers:  “Thine address,

O Lord, O Mighty One, I tremble at,

120  Beneath my fearful heart; and, being bare,

I faint with chilly dread.”  Then said the Lord:

“Who hath the hurtful fruits, then, given you?”

“This woman, while she tells me how her eyes

With brilliant day promptly perfused were,

125  And on her dawned the liquid sky serene,

And heaven’s sun and stars, o’ergave them me!”

Forthwith God’s anger frights perturbed Eve,

While the Most High inquires the authorship

Of the forbidden act.  Hereon she opes

130  Her tale:  “The speaking serpent’s suasive words

I harboured, while the guile and bland request

Misled me:  for, with venoms viperous

His words inweaving, stories told he me

Of those delights which should all fruits excel.”

135  Straightway the Omnipotent the dragon’s deeds

Condemns, and bids him be to all a sight

Unsightly, monstrous; bids him presently

With grovelling beast to crawl; and then to bite

And chew the soil; while war should to all time

140  ’Twixt human senses and his tottering self

Be waged, that he might creep, crestfallen, prone,

Behind the legs of men,

Virorum.

Close on their heels they may down-trample him.

The woman, sadly caught by guileful words,

145  Is bidden yield her fruit with struggle hard,

And bear her husband’s yoke with patient zeal.

“Servitiumque sui studio perferre mariti;” or, perhaps, “and drudge in patience at her husband’s beck.”

“But thou, to whom the sentence

“Sententia:”  her sentence, or opinion, as to the fruit and its effects.

(Who, vanquished, to the dragon pitiless

Yielded) seemed true, shalt through long times deplore

150  Thy labour sad; for thou shalt see, instead

Of wheaten harvest’s seed, the thistle rise,

And the thorn plenteously with pointed spines:

So that, with weary heart and mournful breast,

Full many sighs shall furnish anxious food;

Or,

“That with heart-weariness and mournful breast

Full many sighs may furnish anxious food.”

155  Till, in the setting hour of coming death,

To level earth, whence thou thy body draw’st,

Thou be restored.”  This done, the Lord bestows

Upon the trembling pair a tedious life;

And from the sacred gardens far removes

160  Them downcast, and locates them opposite,

And from the threshold bars them by mid fire,

Wherein from out the swift heat is evolved

A cherubim,

The writer makes “cherubim”—or “cherubin”—singular.  I have therefore retained his mistake.  What the “hot point”—“calidus apex”—is, is not clear.  It may be an allusion to the “flaming sword” (see Gen. iii. 24); or it may mean the top of the flame.

And rolls enfolding flames.  And lest their limbs

165  With sluggish cold should be benumbed, the Lord

Hides flayed from cattle’s flesh together sews,

With vestures warm their bare limbs covering.

When, therefore, Adam—now believing—felt

(By wedlock taught) his manhood, he confers

170  On his loved wife the mother’s name; and, made

Successively by scions twain a sire,

Gives names to stocks

Or, “origins”—“orsis”—because Cain and Abel were original types, as it were, of two separate classes of men.

Hath for his name, to whom is Abel joined.

The latter’s care tended the harmless sheep;

175  The other turned the earth with curved plough.

These, when in course of time

“Perpetuo;” “in process of time,” Eng. ver.; μεθ᾽ ἡμέρας, LXX. in Gen. iv. 3.

To Him who thunders, offered—as their sense

Prompted them—fruits unlike.  The elder one

Offered the first-fruits

Quæ prosata fuerant.  But, as Wordsworth remarks on Gen. iv., we do not read that Cain’s offerings were first-fruits even.

180  The other pays his vows with gentle lamb,

Bearing in hand the entrails pure, and fat

Snow-white; and to the Lord, who pious vows

Beholds, is instantly acceptable.

Wherefore with anger cold did Cain glow;

Quod propter gelida Cain incanduit ira.  If this, which is Oehler’s and Migne’s reading, be correct, the words gelida and incanduit seem to be intentionally contrasted, unless incandescere be used here in a supposed sense of “growing white,” “turning pale.”  Urere is used in Latin of heat and cold indifferently.  Calida would, of course, be a ready emendation; but gelida has the advantage of being far more startling.

185  With whom God deigns to talk, and thus begins:

“Tell Me, if thou live rightly, and discern

Things hurtful, couldst thou not then pass thine age

Pure from contracted guilt?  Cease to essay

With gnawing sense thy brother’s ruin, who,

190  Subject to thee as lord, his neck shall yield.”

Not e’en thus softened, he unto the fields

Conducts his brother; whom when overta’en

In lonely mead he saw, with his twin palms

Bruising his pious throat, he crushed life out.

195  Which deed the Lord espying from high heaven,

Straitly demands “where Abel is on earth? ”

He says “he will not as his brother’s guard

Be set.”  Then God outspeaks to him again:

“Doth not the sound of his blood’s voice, sent up

200  To Me, ascend unto heaven’s lofty pole?

Learn, therefore, for so great a crime what doom

Shall wait thee.  Earth, which with thy kinsman’s blood

Hath reeked but now, shall to thy hateful hand

Refuse to render back the cursed seeds

205  Entrusted her; nor shall, if set with herbs,

Produce her fruit:  that, torpid, thou shalt dash

Thy limbs against each other with much fear.”……

————————————

4.  A Strain of the Judgment of the Lord.

(Author Uncertain.)

The reader is requested to bear in mind, in reading this piece, tedious in its elaborate struggles after effect, that the constant repetitions of words and expressions with which his patience will be tried, are due to the original.  It was irksome to reproduce them; but fidelity is a translator’s first law.

Who will for me in fitting strain adapt

Field-haunting muses? and with flowers will grace

The spring-tide’s rosy gales?  And who will give

The summer harvest’s heavy stalks mature?

5  And to the autumn’s vines their swollen grapes?

Or who in winter’s honour will commend

The olives, ever-peaceful? and will ope

Waters renewed, even at their fountainheads?

And cut from waving grass the leafy flowers?

10  Forthwith the breezes of celestial light

I will attune.  Now be it granted me

To meet the lightsome

Luciferas.

The secret rivers on the fluvial top

Of Helicon,

Helicon is not named in the original, but it seems to be meant.

15  ’Neath other star.

i.e., in another clime or continent.  The writer is (or feigns to be) an African.  Helicon, of course, is in Europe.

I will attune in song the eternal flames;

Whence the sea fluctuates with wave immense:

What power

Virtus.

And whence the golden light first shot its rays

20  On the new world; or who from gladsome clay

Could man have moulded; whence in empty world

Sæculo.

Our race could have upgrown; and what the greed

Of living which each people so inspires;

What things for ill created are; or what

25  Death’s propagation; whence have rosy wreaths

Sweet smell and ruddy hue; what makes the vine

Ferment in gladsome grapes away; and makes

Full granaries by fruit of slender stalks

distended be; or makes the tree grow ripe

30  ’Mid ice, with olives black; who gives to seeds

Their increments of vigour various;

And with her young’s soft shadowings protects

The mother.  Good it is all things to know

Which wondrous are in nature, that it may

35  Be granted us to recognise through all

The true Lord, who light, seas, sky, earth prepared,

And decked with varied star the new-made world;

Mundum.

And first bade beasts and birds to issue forth;

And gave the ocean’s waters to be stocked

40  With fish; and gathered in a mass the sands,

With living creatures fertilized.  Such strains

With stately

Compositis.

Healthful will from their fountainheads disclose:

And may this strain of mine the gladsome shower

45  Catch, which from placid clouds doth come, and flows

Deeply and all unsought into men’s souls,

And guide it into our new-fumed lands

In copious rills.

I have endeavoured to give some intelligible sense to these lines; but the absence of syntax in the original, as it now stands, makes it necessary to guess at the meaning as best one may.

Now come:  if any one

Still ignorant of God, and knowing naught

50  Of life to come,

Venturi ævi.

The care-effacing living nymph, and through

The swift waves’ virtue his lost life repair,

And ’scape the penalties of flame eterne,

“But in them nature’s copy’s not eterne.”—Shakespeare, Macbeth, act iii. scene 2.

And rather win the guerdons of the life

55  To come, let such remember God is One,

Alone the object of our prayers; who ’neath

His threshold hath the whole world poised; Himself

Eternally abiding, and to be

Alway for aye; holding the ages

Sæcula.

60  Alone, before all ages;

Sæcula.

Limitless God; who holds alone His seat

Supernal; supereminent alone

Above high heavens; omnipotent alone;

Whom all things do obey; who for Himself

65  Formed, when it pleased Him, man for aye; and gave

Him to be pastor of beasts tame, and lord

Of wild; who by a word

Sermone tenus:  i.e., the exertion (so to speak) needed to do such mighty works only extended to the uttering of a speech; no more was requisite.  See for a similar allusion to the contrast between the making of other things and the making of man, the “Genesis,” 30–39.

And with a word could solid earth suspend;

And quicklier than word

Dicto.

70  Disjoined;

i.e., from the solid mass of earth.  See Gen. i. 9, 10.

Did love to mould; and furthermore did will

His own fair likeness

Faciem.

And by His Spirit on his countenance

The breath

“Auram,” or “breeze.”

Unmindful he

75  Of God, such guilt rashly t’ incur!  Beyond

The warning’s range he was not ought to touch.

“Immemor ille Dei temere committere tale!

Non ultra monitum quidquam contingeret.”

Whether I have hit the sense here I know not.  In this and in other passages I have punctuated for myself.

One fruit illicit, whence he was to know

Forthwith how to discriminate alike

Evil and equity, God him forbade

80  To touch.  What functions of the world

Munera mundi.

Permit to man, and sealed the sweet sweet pledge

Of His own love! and jurisdiction gave

O’er birds, and granted him both deep and soil

To tame, and mandates useful did impart

85  Of dear salvation!  ’Neath his sway He gave

The lands, the souls of flying things, the race

Feathered, and every race, or tame or wild,

Of beasts, and the sea’s race, and monsterforms

Shapeless of swimming things.  But since so soon

90  The primal man by primal crime transgressed

The law, and left the mandates of the Lord

(Led by a wife who counselled all the ills),

By death he ’gan to perish.  Woman ’twas

Who sin’s first ill committed, and (the law

95  Transgressed) deceived her husband.  Eve, induced

By guile, the thresholds oped to death, and proved

To her own self, with her whole race as well,

A procreatrix of funereal woes.

Hence unanticipated wickedness,

100  Hence death, like seed, for aye, is scattered.  Then

More frequent grew atrocious deed; and toil

More savage set the corrupt orb astir:

(This lure the crafty serpent spread, inspired

By envy’s self:)  then peoples more invent

105  Practices of ill deeds; and by ill deeds

Gave birth to seeds of wickedness.

And so

The only Lord, whose is the power supreme.

Who o’er the heights the summits holds of heaven

Supreme, and in exalted regions dwells

110  In lofty light for ages, mindful too

Of present time, and of futurity

Prescient beforehand, keeps the progeny

Of ill-desert, and all the souls which move

By reason’s force much-erring man—nor less

115  Their tardy bodies governs He—against

The age decreed, so soon as, stretched in death,

Men lay aside their ponderous limbs, and light

As air, shall go, their earthly bonds undone,

And take in diverse parts their proper spheres

120  (But some He bids be forthwith by glad gales

Recalled to life, and be in secret kept

To wait the decreed law’s awards, until

Their bodies with resuscitated limbs

Revive.

These lines, again, are but a guess at the meaning of the original, which is as obscure as defiance of grammar can well make it.  The sense seems to be, in brief, that while the vast majority are, immediately on their death, shut up in Hades to await the “decreed age,” i.e., the day of judgment, some, like the children raised by Elijah and Elisha, the man who revived on touching Elisha’s bones, and the like, are raised to die again.  Lower down it will be seen that the writer believes that the saints who came out of their graves after our Lord’s resurrection (see Matt. xxvii. 51–54) did not die again.

125  Of their first life, and on their crime and faults

To think, and keep them for their penalties

Which will be far from death; and mindful grow

Of pious duties, by God’s judgments taught;

To wait expectant for their penalty

130  And their descendants’, fruit of their own crime;

Or else to live wholly the life of sheep,

Cf. Ps. xlix. 14 (xlviii. 15 in LXX.).

Without a name; and in God’s ear, now deaf,

Pour unavailing weeping.  Shall not God

Almighty, ’neath whose law are all things ruled,

135  Be able after death life to restore?

Or is there ought which the creation’s Lord

Unable seems to do?  If, darkness chased,

He could outstretch the light, and could compound

All the world’s mass by a word suddenly,

140  And raise by potent voice all things from nought,

Why out of somewhat

i.e., the dust into which our bodies turn.

The well-known shape which erst had been, which He

Had moulded formerly; and bid the form

Arise assimilated to Himself

145  Again? Since God’s are all things, earth the more

Gives Him all back; for she will, when He bids,

Unweave whate’er she woven had before.

If one, perhaps, laid on sepulchral pyre,

The flame consumed; or one in its blind waves

150  The ocean have dismembered; if of one

The entrails have, in hunger, satisfied

The fishes; or on any’s limbs wild beasts

Have fastened cruel death; or any’s blood,

His body reft by birds, unhid have lain:

155  Yet shall they not wrest from the mighty Lord

His latest dues.  Need is that men appear

Quickened from death ’fore God, and at His bar

Stand in their shapes resumed.  Thus arid seeds

Are drops into the vacant lands, and deep

160  In the fixt furrows die and rot:  and hence

Is not their surface

i.e., the surface or ridge of the furrows.

With stalks repaired? and do they

i.e., the furrows.

And yellow with the living grains? and, rich

With various usury,

“Some thirty-fold, some sixty-fold, some an hundred-fold.”  See the parable of the sower.

165  In mass?  The stars all set, and, born again,

Renew their sheen; and day dies with its light

Lost in dense night; and now night wanes herself

As light unveils creation presently;

And now another and another day

170  Rises from its own stars; and the sun sets,

Bright as it is with splendour—bearing light;

Light perishes when by the coming eve

The world

Mundo.

By her own soot

Fuligine.

175  Rises, again a bird, O wondrous sight!

After her burnings!  The bare tree in time

Shoots with her leaves; and once more are her boughs

Curved by the germen of the fruits.

While then

The world

Mundo.

180  And deeply moved are the high air’s powers,

Virtutibus.  Perhaps the allusion is to Eph. ii. 2, Matt. xxiv. 29, Luke xxi. 26.

Then comes a crash unwonted, then ensue

Heaven’s mightiest murmurs, on the approach of God,

The whole world’s

Mundi.

Forthwith conjoin their rushing march, and God

185  With majesty supernal fence around.

Angelic bands will from the heaven descend

To earth; all, God’s host, whose is faculty

Divine; in form and visage spirits all

Of virtue:  in them fiery vigour is;

190  Rutilant are their bodies; heaven’s might

Divine about them flashes; the whole orb

Hence murmurs; and earth, trembling to her depths

(Or whatsoe’er her bulk is

Vel quanta est.  If this be the right sense, the words are probably inserted, because the conflagration of “the earth and the works that are therein” predicted in 2 Pet. iii. 10, and referred to lower down in this piece, is supposed to have begun, and thus the “depths” of the earth are supposed to be already diminishing.

The roar, parturient of men, whom she,

195  Being bidden, will with grief upyield.

I have ventured to alter one letter of the Latin; and for “quos reddere jussa docebit,” read “quos reddere jussa dolebit.”  If the common reading be retained, the only possible meaning seems to be “whom she will teach to render (to God) His commands,” i.e., to render obedience to them; or else, “to render (to God) what they are bidden to render,” i.e., an account of themselves; and earth, as their mother, giving them birth out of her womb, is said to teach them to do this.  But the emendation, which is at all events simple, seems to give a better sense:  “being bidden to render the dead, whom she is keeping, up, earth will grieve at the throes it causes her, but will do it.”

In wonderment.  At last disturbed are

The clouds, and the stars move and quake from height

Of sudden power.

Subitæ virtutis ab alto.

Of potent sound, at once throughout all realms

200  The sepulchres are burst, and every ground

Outpours bones from wide chasms, and opening sand

Outbelches living peoples; to the hair

Comis, here “the heads.”

The members cleave; the bones inwoven are

With marrow; the entwined sinews rule

205  The breathing bodies; and the veins ’gin throb

With simultaneously infused blood:

And, from their caves dismissed, to open day

Souls are restored, and seek to find again

Each its own organs, as at their own place

210  They rise. O wondrous faith!  Hence every age

Shoots forth; forth shoots from ancient dust the host

Of dead.  Regaining light, there rise again

Mothers, and sires, and high-souled youths, and boys,

And maids unwedded; and deceased old men

215  Stand by with living souls; and with the cries

Of babes the groaning orb resounds.

This passage is imitated from Virgil, Æn., vi. 305 sqq.; Georg., iv. 475 sqq.

Various from their lowest seats will come:

Bands of the Easterns; those which earth’s extreme

Sees; those which dwell in the downsloping clime

220  Of the mid-world, and hold the frosty star’s

Riphæan citadels.  Every colonist

Of every land stands frighted here:  the boor;

The son of Atreus

i.e., “the king.”  The “Atridæ” of Homer are referred to,—Agamemnon “king of men,” and Menelaus.

Of royalty put off; the rich man mixt

225  Coequally in line with pauper peers.

Deep tremor everywhere:  then groans the orb

With prayers; and peoples stretching forth their hands

Grow stupid with the din!

The Lord Himself

Seated, is bright with light sublime; and fire

230  Potent in all the Virtues

Or, “Powers.”

And on His high-raised throne the Heavenly One

Coruscates from His seat; with martyrs hemmed

(A dazzling troop of men), and by His seers

Elect accompanied (whose bodies bright

235  Effulgent are with snowy stoles), He towers

Above them.  And now priests in lustrous robes

Attend, who wear upon their marked

Insigni.  The allusion seems to be to Ezek. ix. 4, 6, Rev. vii. 3 et seqq., xx. 3, 4, and to the inscribed mitre of the Jewish high priest, see Ex. xxviii. 36; xxxix. 30.

Wreaths golden-red; and all submissive kneel

And reverently adore.  The cry of all

240  Is one:  “O Holy, Holy Holy, God!”

To these

I have corrected “his” for “hic.”  If the latter be retained, it would seem to mean “hereon.”

The people in twin lines; and orders them

To set apart by number the depraved;

While such as have His biddings followed

245  With placid words He calls, and bids them, clad

With vigour—death quite conquered—ever dwell

Amid light’s inextinguishable airs,

Stroll through the ancients’ ever blooming realm,

Through promised wealth, through ever sunny swards,

250  And in bright body spend perpetual life.

A place there is, beloved of the Lord,

In Eastern coasts, where light is bright and clear,

And healthier blows the breeze; day is eterne,

Time changeless:  ’tis a region set apart

255  By God, most rich in plains, and passing blest,

In the meridian

Cardine, i.e., the hinge as it were upon which the sun turns in his course.

There gladsome the air, and is in light

Ever to be; soft is the wind, and breathes

Life-giving blasts; earth, fruitful with a soil

260  Luxuriant, bears all things; in the meads

Flowers shed their fragrance; and upon the plains

The purple—not in envy—mingles all

With golden-ruddy light.  One gladsome flower,

With its own lustre clad, another clothes;

265  And here with many a seed the dewy fields

Are dappled, and the snowy tilths are crisped

With rosy flowers.  No region happier

Is known in other spots; none which in look

Is fairer, or in honour more excels.

270  Never in flowery gardens are there born

Such lilies, nor do such upon our plains

Outbloom; nor does the rose so blush, what time,

New-born, ’tis opened by the breeze; nor is

The purple with such hue by Tyrian dye

275  Imbued.  With coloured pebbles beauteous gleams

The gem:  here shines the prasinus;

See the “Genesis,” 73.

The carbuncle; and giant-emerald

Is green with grassy light.  Here too are born

The cinnamons, with odoriferous twigs;

280  And with dense leaf gladsome amomum joins

Its fragrance.  Here, a native, lies the gold

Of radiant sheen; and lofty groves reach heaven

In blooming time, and germens fruitfullest

Burden the living boughs.  No glades like these

285  Hath Ind herself forth-stretcht; no tops so dense

Rears on her mount the pine; nor with a shade

So lofty-leaved is her cypress crisped;

Nor better in its season blooms her bough

In spring-tide.  Here black firs on lofty peak

290  Bloom; and the only woods that know no hail

Are green eternally:  no foliage falls;

At no time fails the flower.  There, too, there blooms

A flower as red as Tarsine purple is:

A rose, I ween, it is (red hue it has,

295  An odour keen); such aspect on its leaves

It wears, such odour breathes.  A tree it

Or, “there.”  The question is, whether a different tree is meant, or the rose just spoken of.

With a new flower, fairest in fruits; a crop

Life-giving, dense, its happy strength does yield.

Rich honies with green cane their fragrance join,

300  And milk flows potable in runners full;

And with whate’er that sacred earth is green,

It all breathes life; and there Crete’s healing gift

This seems to be marshmallows.

Is sweetly redolent.  There, with smooth tide,

Flows in the placid plains a fount:  four floods

305  Thence water parted lands.

Here again it is plain that the writer is drawing his description from what we read of the garden of Eden.

With flowers, I wot, keeps ever spring; no cold

Of wintry star varies the breeze; and earth,

After her birth-throes, with a kindlier blast

Repairs.  Night there is none; the stars maintain

310  Their darkness; angers, envies, and dire greed

Are absent; and out-shut is fear, and cares

Driven from the threshold.  Here the Evil One

Is homeless; he is into worthy courts

Out-gone, nor is’t e’er granted him to touch

315  The glades forbidden.  But here ancient faith

Rests in elect abode; and life here treads,

Joying in an eternal covenant;

And health

“Salus,” health (probably) in its widest sense, both bodily and mental; or perhaps “safety,” “salvation.”

In placid tilths, ever to live and be

320  Ever in light.

Here whosoe’er hath lived

Pious, and cultivant of equity

And goodness; who hath feared the thundering God

With mind sincere; with sacred duteousness

Tended his parents; and his other life

Reliquam vitam, i.e., apparently his life in all other relations; unless it mean his life after his parents’ death, which seems less likely.

325  Spent ever crimeless; or who hath consoled

With faithful help a friend in indigence;

Succoured the over-toiling needy one,

As orphans’ patron, and the poor man’s aid;

Rescued the innocent, and succoured them

330  When press with accusation; hath to guests

His ample table’s pledges given; hath done

All things divinely; pious offices

Enjoined; done hurt to none; ne’er coveted

Another’s:  such as these, exulting all

335  In divine praises, and themselves at once

Exhorting, raise their voices to the stars;

Thanksgivings to the Lord in joyous wise

They psalming celebrate; and they shall go

Their harmless way with comrade messengers.

340  When ended hath the Lord these happy gifts,

And likewise sent away to realms eterne

The just, then comes a pitiable crowd

Wailing its crimes; with parching tears it pours

All groans effusely, and attests

i.e., “appeals to.”  So Burke:  “I attest the former, I attest the coming generations.”  This “attesting of its acts” seems to refer to Matt. xxv. 44.  It appeals to them in hope of mitigating its doom.

345  With frequent ululations.  At the sight

Of flames, their merit’s due, and stagnant pools

Of fire, wrath’s weapons, they ’gin tremble all.

This seems to be the sense.  The Latin stands thus:  “Flammas pro meritis, stagnantia tela tremiscunt.”

Them an angelic host, upsnatching them,

Forbids to pray, forbids to pour their cries

350  (Too late!) with clamour loud:  pardon withheld,

Into the lowest bottom they are hurled!

O miserable men! how oft to you

Hath Majesty divine made itself known!

The sounds of heaven ye have heard; have seen

355  Its lightnings; have experienced its rains

Assiduous; its ires of winds and hail!

How often nights and days serene do make

Your seasons—God’s gifts—fruitful with fair yields!

Roses were vernal; the grain’s summer-tide

360  Failed not; the autumn variously poured

Its mellow fruits; the rugged winter brake

The olives, icy though they were:  ’twas God

Who granted all, nor did His goodness fail.

At God earth trembled; on His voice the deep

365  Hung, and the rivers trembling fled and left

Sands dry; and every creature everywhere

Confesses God!  Ye (miserable men!)

Have heaven’s Lord and earth’s denied; and oft

(Horrible!) have God’s heralds put to flight;

Or, “banished.”

370  And rather slain the just with slaughter fell;

And, after crime, fraud ever hath in you

Inhered.  Ye then shall reap the natural fruit

Of your iniquitous sowing.  That God is

Ye know; yet are ye wont to laugh at Him.

375  Into deep darkness ye shall go of fire

And brimstone; doomed to suffer glowing ires

In torments just.

I adopt the correction (suggested in Migne) of justis for justas.

To

This is an extraordinary use for the Latin dative; and even if the meaning be “for (i.e., to suffer) penalty eternal,” it is scarcely less so.

The ardour of an endless raging hell;

Gehennæ.

380  Be urged, a seething mass, through rotant pools

Of flame; and into threatening flame He bids

The elements convert; and all heaven’s fire

Descend in clouds.

Then greedy Tartarus

With rapid fire enclosed is; and flame

385  Is fluctuant within with tempest waves;

And the whole earth her whirling embers blends!

There is a flamy furrow; teeth acute

Are turned to plough it, and for all the years

Or, “in all the years:”  but see note 5 on this page.

The fiery torrent will be armed:  with force

390  Tartarean will the conflagrations gnash

Their teeth upon the world.

Mundo.

In seething tide with course precipitate;

Hence flee; thence back are borne in sharp career;

The savage flame’s ire meets them fugitive!

395  And now at length they own the penalty

Their own, the natural issue of their crime.

And now the reeling earth, by not a swain

Possest, is by the sea’s profundity

Prest, at her farthest limit, where the sun

400  (His ray out-measured) divides the orb,

And where, when traversed is the world,

Mundo.

Are hidden.  Ether thickens.  O’er the light

Spreads sable darkness; and the latest flames

Stagnate in secret rills.  A place there is

405  Whose nature is with sealed penalties

Fiery, and a dreadful marsh white-hot

With heats infernal, where, in furnaces

Horrific, penal deed roars loud, and seethes,

And, rushing into torments, is up-caught

410  By the flame’s vortex wide; by savage wave

And surge the turbid sand all mingled is

With miry bottom.  Hither will be sent,

Groaning, the captive crowd of evil ones,

And wickedness (the sinful body’s train)

415  To burn! Great is the beating there of breasts,

By bellowing of grief accompanied;

Wild is the hissing of the flames, and thence

The ululation of the sufferers!

And flames, and limbs sonorous,

“Artusque sonori,” i.e., probably the arms and hands with which (as has been suggested just before) the sufferers beat their unhappy breasts.

420  Afar:  more fierce will the fire burn; and up

To th’ upper air the groaning will be borne.

Then human progeny its bygone deeds

Of ill will weigh; and will begin to stretch

Heavenward its palms; and then will wish to know

425  The Lord, whom erst it would not know, what time

To know Him had proved useful to them.  There,

His life’s excesses, handiworks unjust,

And crimes of savage mind, each will confess,

And at the knowledge of the impious deeds

430  Of his own life will shudder.  And now first,

Whoe’er erewhile cherished ill thoughts of God;

Had worshipped stones unsteady, lyingly

Pretending to divinity; hath e’er

Made sacred to gore-stained images

435  Altars; hath voiceless pictured figures feared;

Hath slender shades of false divinity

Revered; whome’er ill error onward hath

Seduced; whoe’er was an adulterer,

Or with the sword had slain his sons; whoe’er

440  Had stalked in robbery; whoe’er by fraud

His clients had deferred; whoe’er with mind

Unfriendly had behaved himself, or stained

His palms with blood of men, or poison mixt

Wherein death lurked, or robed with wicked guise

445  His breast, or at his neighbour’s ill, or gain

Iniquitous, was wont to joy; whoe’er

Committed whatsoever wickedness

Of evil deeds:  him mighty heat shall rack,

And bitter fire; and these all shall endure,

450  In passing painful death, their punishment.

Thus shall the vast crowd lie of mourning men!

This oft as holy prophets sang of old,

And (by God’s inspiration warned) oft told

The future, none (’tis pity!) none (alas!)

455  Did lend his ears.  But God Almighty willed

His guerdons to be known, and His law’s threats

’Mid multitudes of such like signs promulged.

He ’stablished them

i.e., the “guerdons” and the “threats.”

These likewise uttering words divine; and some,

460  Roused from their sleep, He bids go from their tombs

Forth with Himself, when He, His own tomb burst,

Had risen.  Many ’wildered were, indeed,

To see the tombs agape, and in clear light

Corpses long dead appear; and, wondering

465  At their discourses pious, dulcet words!

Starward they stretch their palms at the mere sound,

“Ipsa voce,” unless it mean “voice and all,” i.e., and their voice as well as their palms.

And offer God and so—victorious Christ

Their gratulating homage.  Certain ’tis

That these no more re-sought their silent graves,

470  Nor were retained within earth’s bowels shut;

See note 1, p. 137.

But the remaining host reposes now

In lowliest beds, until—time’s circuit run—

That great day do arrive.

Now all of you

Own the true Lord, who alone makes this soul

475  Of ours to see His light

Here again a correction suggested in Migne’s ed., of “suam lucem” for “sua luce,” is adopted.

(To Tartarus sent) subject to penalties;

And to whom all the power of life and death

Is open.  Learn that God can do whate’er

He list; for ’tis enough for Him to will,

480  And by mere speaking He achieves the deed;

And Him nought plainly, by withstanding, checks.

He is my God alone, to whom I trust

With deepest senses.  But, since death concludes

Every career, let whoe’er is to-day

485  Bethink him over all things in his mind.

And thus, while life remains, while ’tis allowed

To see the light and change your life, before

The limit of allotted age o’ertake

You unawares, and that last day, which

“Qui” is read here, after Migne’s suggestion, for “quia;” and Oehler’s and Migne’s punctuation both are set aside.

490  By death’s law fixt, your senseless eyes do glaze,

Seek what remains worth seeking:  watchful be

For dear salvation; and run down with ease

And certainty the good course.  Wipe away

By pious sacred rites your past misdeeds

495  Which expiation need; and shun the storms,

The too uncertain tempests, of the world.

Mundi.

Then turn to right paths, and keep sanctities.

Hence from your gladsome minds depraved crime

Quite banish; and let long-inveterate fault

500  Be washed forth from your breast; and do away

Wicked ill-stains contracted; and appease

Dread God by prayers eternal; and let all

Most evil mortal things to living good

Give way:  and now at once a new life keep

505  Without a crime; and let your minds begin

To use themselves to good things and to true:

And render ready voices to God’s praise.

Thus shall your piety find better things

All growing to a flame; thus shall ye, too,

510  Receive the gifts of the celestial life;

Or, “assume the functions of the heavenly life.”

And, to long age, shall ever live with God,

Seeing the starry kingdom’s golden joys.

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