CHAPTER XXI
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CHAPTER XXI.
CONCERNING THE BIRTH AND CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS CHRIST.
Bur because I have already declared the Christian religion to have its foundation in the most ancient of monuments, the sacred writings of the Jews; and yet many among you well know us to be a novel sect risen up in the reign of Tiberius, and we ourselves confess the charge; and because you should not take umbrage that we shelter ourselves only under the venerable pretext of this
_ Old religion, which is tolerated among you, and because we differ from them, not only in point of age, but also in the observation of meats, festivals, circumcision, etc., nor communicate with them so much as in name, all which seems to look very odd if we aré servants of the same God as the Jews;—therefore
I think it necessary to explain myself a little particularly upon this head, and especially because it is in every one's mouth that Christ was a man, and a man, too, condemned to death by the very Jews, which may naturally lead any one at first hearing into a mistake, that we are worshippers of a man, and not of the God of the Jews.
However, this their wickedly ungrateful treatment of Christ makes us not ashamed of our Master; so far from it, that it is the joy and triumph of our souls to be called by our Lord's name and condemned for it ; and yet for all this we think no otherwise of God than the Jews did.
To make out this, I am obliged to say something of Christ as God.
_ The Jews once were a people in such favour with God, upon the account of their forefathers' faith and piety, which was the root of all their greatness, both with respect to the increase of their families, and the advance of a kingdom, and their happiness was so unparalleled, that God Himself did them the honour even with His
- own mouth to prescribe them laws, whereby they might secure His omnipotence on their side, and never turn it against them.
But how the degenerate children upon the stock of Abraham's faith, and in confidence of their forefathers' virtue, how egregiously they pro_voked God by deviating from His own positive institutions into profaneness and idolatry; although the Jews themselves will not confess this, yet the present calamities of that people are a sad and standing testimony against them.
For they are now a dispersed,!
1 Dispersi, palabundi, et soli ac celt suz Extorres, etc.
Justin Martyr in his first Apology, sec. 62, takes notice that it was a capital crime for a Jew so much
Tertullian's Apology for the Christians. vagabond people, banished country and climate, strolling about the world without any show of government, either divine or human, and so completely miserable that they have not the poor privilege to visit the Holy Land like strangers, or set a foot upon their native soil ; and while the sacred writings did forethreaten these calamities, they did likewise continually inculcate that the time would come about the last days when out of every nation and country God would choose Himself a people that should serve Him more faithfully, upon whom He would shed a greater measure of grace in proportion to the merits of the founder of this new worship.
The proprietor therefore of this grace, and the master of this institution, this Son of Righteousness and tutor of mankind, was declared the Son of God; but not so that this begotten of God might blush at the name of Son, or the mode of His generation; for it was not from any incestuous mixture of brother and sister, not from any violation of a god with his own daughter, or another man's wife, in the disguise of a serpent, or a bull, or a shower of gold.
These are the modes of generation with your Jove, and the offspring of deities you worship; but the Son of God we adore had a mother indeed, but a mother without uncleanness, without even that which the name of mother seems to imply, for she was a pure virgin.
But I shall first set forth the nature of His substance in order to make you apprehend the manner of His nativity.
I have already said that God reared this fabric of the world out of nothing, by His word, wisdom, or power; and it is evident that 'your sages of old were of the same opinion, that the Adyos, that is, the Word, or the Wisdom, was the Maker of the universe, for as to set a foot upon the Holy Land.
And Eusebius from Aristo Pellzus urges. likewise that by the law and constitutions of Adrian the. Jews were prohibited
| to cast even their eyes towards Jerusalem. us. lib. iv., Hist. Eccles. cap. 6.
Tertullian observes the same here ; and so likewise in-his book against the Jews,
— cap. 13, upon which you will see some remarks by Dr, Grabe in his S#zcdleg. Pat. sec. 2, p.,131, and certainly the distinguishing misery of this vagabond people even to this day is a strange living monument of the divine wrath; a mark set upon them by God for the murder of His Christ, and their obdurate infidelity.
But then it ought also to be observed, that as God in judgment hath scattered them through all nations, and not suffered them to have a foot of free land in all
— the world, yet He hath preserved their name and nation in all places, as distinct
— from all other people, as if they had continued in the Holy Land; in which His
providence and goodness are conspicuous, that according to the prophecies at His appointed time the veil may be taken away from their faces, that they may look upon Him whom they have pierced, and be' converted to that Jesus whom they have crucified and ever since blasphemed.
me ertullian's Apology for the Christians.
Zeno ! determines the Logos to be the creator and adjuster of everything in nature.
The same Logos he affirms to be called by the name of Fate, God, Mind of Jove, and Necessity of all Things. Cleanthes 2 will have the author of the world to be a spirit which pervades every part of it.
And we Christians also do affirm a spirit to be the proper substance of the Logos, by whom all things were made, in which He subsisted before He was spoken out,' and was the wisdom that assisted at the creation, and the power that presided
'over the whole work.
The Logos or Word issuing forth from that spiritual substance at the creation of the world, and generated by that issuing or progression, is for this reason called the Son of God, and ' the God, from His unity of substance with God the F ather, for God is a Spirit.
An imperfect image of this you have in the derivation of a ray from the body of the sun; for this ray is a part without any diminution of the whole, but the sun is always in the ray, because the ray is always from the sun; nor is the substance separated, but only extended.
'Thus is it in some measure in the eternal generation of the Logos ; He is a spirit of a spirit, a God of God,' as one
1 Hunc enim Zeno determinat Factitatorem.
Lactantius, lib. iv. sec. 9, p. 186, justly says that the term Asyes is much more expressive of the Maker of the world, than the Latin Verbum or Sermo, as signifying both the Word and Wisdom of God.
And had we still continued the Logos instead of the Word in _ our English translation, it had, methinks, been a term more majestic and more expressive of the personality of Christ than the Word.
This Logos was preached up by Zeno as the disposer of nature and ihe framer of the world, and was called sometimes Fate, God, Mind of Jove, etc., says Lactantius in the place above cited, just as our author speaks here. Concerning this Zeno, the preceptor of Antigonus and founder of the Stoics, see Diog. Laer. lib. vil.
Ga 2 Hac Cleanthes in Spiritum congerit.
Concerning the doctrine of Cleanthes, Zeno's disciple, vzd@. Lactant. lib. i. sec. 5, p. 12.
3 Cui et Sermo insit Pronuncianti, etc.
There is a threefold generation of the Son of God frequently mentioned by the primitive writers..
The first is the _ true and proper generation of the Son, which was from the Father before all worlds.
The second is the progression of the Logos from His Father at the creation, which they call xpeéAevors, tpev¥is, etc.
The third was at His incarnation in the womb of the Blessed Virgin overshadowed by the power of the Most High,
The second kind of generation is that which Tertullian hints at in the words cited.
For the fuller satisfaction in this point I advise the reader to consult Bishop Bull's incomparable Defence of the Nicene Faith, cap. v., concerning the co-eternity of the Son.
And so likewise, cap. 7, sec. 5, where he will find several things in this place cleared, and our author vindicated beyond exception as to the doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Son.
4 De Deo Deus, ut Lumen de Lumine.
This similitude of a ray from the sun, ora light from a light, is not to be looked upon as a full and adequate illustration of the mode how the Son of God was generated by the Father, nor will anything in nature give us a perfect representation of it.
It is what Justin Martyr and others have chosen to represent it by; nor do I know a better to make this. incomprehensible mystery apprehended, which is all they drive at ; and it serves
Tertullian's Apology for the Christians. light is generated by another; the original parent light remaining entire and undiminished, notwithstanding the communication of itself to many other lights.
'Thus it is that the Logos which came forth from God is both God and the Son of God, and those two are one.
Hence it is that a spirit of a spirit, or a God of God, makes another in mode of subsistence, but not in number; in order of nature, but not in numericalness or identity of essence ; and so the Son is subordinate to the Father as He comes from Him as the principle, but is never separated.
This ray of God then descended, as it was foretold, upon a certain Virgin, and in her womb was incarnated, and being there fully formed the God-man, was born into the world; the divine and human nature making up this person, as soul and body does one man.
'The flesh being wrought and perfected by a divine Spirit, was nursed and grew up to the stature of a man, and then addressed the Jews, and preached and worked miracles among them ; and this is the Christ, the God of Christians.
If you please now you may receive this great truth in the nature of a fable like one of yours, till I have given you my proofs; though it is a truth that could not be unknown to those among you who maliciously dressed up their own inventions on ~ purpose to destroy it..
The Jews likewise full well knew from their prophets that Christ was to come, and they are now in expectation of Him; and the great clashing between us and them is chiefly upon this very account, that they do not believe Him
~ already come.
For there being two advents of Christ described in the prophets, the first which is discharged and over, namely His state of humiliation and suffering in human flesh.
The second, which is at hand; too, in the conclusion of the world, in which He will exert His majesty, and come in a full explication of divine glory.
By not understanding the first, they fixed only upon the second advent, which is described in the most pompous and glaring metaphors, and which struck the carnal fancy with the most agreeable impressions.
And it was the just judgment of God upon them for their sins that withheld their understandings from.seeing this first coming, which had they understood, they had believed, and by believing had obtained salvation.
And this judicial blindness they sufficiently to declare their sense and notion of it, namely, that Christ from all eternity did co-exist with the Father, as light does with the sun, that He was God of God, without any diminution of the divine substance, as one light is kindled from another, etc.
It is evident likewise from this expression of God of God, as Light of Light, what the notion of the Fathers was about the divinity of Christ before the establishment of the Nicene Fathers, who make use of this expression in their creed.
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¢ Ps = ee age Lertullian's Apology for the Christians.
read of in their prophets,! that their understandings should be darkened, and their eyes and ears of no advantage for their
~ conversion.
_Him therefore they could not see to be a God in the humble disguise of a man ; yet seeing the-miracles He did, they cried Him down for a conjurer, for dealing with the devil, when He was
_ turning the devils out of all their possessions at a word speaking ; _ and with the same word bid sight return to the blind, and it returned, and cleansed the lepers, and new braced the paralytic joints, and spoke the dead to life, and made the elements obey,
stilling the storms, and walking upon the seas, and demonstrating Himself to be the Logos of God, that is, the ancient first-begotten
Word, invested with power and wisdom, and supported by the Spirit, _~ at whose doctrine the very doctors of the law stood aghast, and the _ chief among the Jews were so exasperated against Him, especially at seeing such numbers of people thronging after Him, that at length, by mere violence and importunity of remonstrating, they extorted sentence against Him to be crucified from Pontius Pilate, then governor of Syria under Tiberius.
And all this Christ Him_self-foretold they would do, which I will grant you to be an argument
\ not so considerable for the authority of His mission, had not all the 'prophets long before concurred in every. particular.
At length being fastened to the cross, and having cried out and commended His spirit into the hands of His Father, He gave up the ghost of His own accord, and so prevented the executioner's breaking His bones, by dying in His own time, and fulfilled a prophecy by so doing.
Moreover, in the same moment He dismissed life, the light departed from the sun,? and the world was benighted at noonday, and those men who acknowledged this eclipse, but were unacquainted with the prophecies that foretold it upon Christ's death, and finding it impossible to be solved by the laws of nature, at last roundly denied the fact ; and yet this wonder of the world you have
related, and the relation preserved in your archives to this day.
1 «* Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes ; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed."
_ Isa. vi. Io.
E 2 Deliquium utique putaverunt.
An eclipse of the sun at a full moon (as this was) is by the known laws of nature demonstratively impossible, and this it was made it so much taken notice of by the ancient astronomers ; by Dionysius the Areopagite, Apollophanes the Sophist, by Phlegon in his Olympiads, etc.
Vid. paraphrase of Zephyrus, and the notes of Pamelius, and especially the annotations of Grotius upon Matt. xxvii. 45, where this passage of Tertullian is taken notice of.
Tertullian's Apology for the Christians. x x Christ then being taken down from the cross, and laid in a sepulchre,
». the Jews beset it round with a strong guard of soldiers, forearming them with the strictest caution that His disciples should not come and steal away the body unawares, because He had foretold that He would rise again from the dead on the third day. But lo! on the third day, a sudden earthquake arose, and the huge stone was rolled from the mouth of the sepulchre, and the guard struck with fear and confusion; not one disciple appearing at the action, and nothing found in the sepulchre, but the spoils of death, the linen clothes He was buried in.
Nevertheless, the chief priests, whose interest it was to set such a wicked lie on foot, in order to reclaim
-~ the people from a faith which must end in the utter ruin of their incomes and authority among them, gave out that His disciples came privily and stole Him away.
For after the resurrection Christ thought not fit to make a public entry among the people,' because
He would not violently redeem such obstinate wretches from error, and that a faith which proposes infinite rewards should labour undgr some difficulties, that believing might be a virtue, and not a necessity.
But with some of His disciples He did eat and drink forty days in Galilee, a province of Judea, instructing them in all they should teach,? and then having ordained them to the office of preaching those instructions all over the world, He was parted from them by a cloud, and so received up before them into heaven, much more truly than what your Proculus's report of Romulus, and some others of your deified kings.
Pilate, who in his conscience 1 Nec ille se in vulgus eduxit, etc.
These and the following words give the true reason why Christ after His resurrection would_not show Himself publicly to all His crucifiers.
Because He would not. bestow upon such obstinate offenders, who had abused all His former miracles, such an evidence as must in a manner have forced them to believe, whether they would or no; and therefore it is said in the Acts of the Apostles, x. 40, ''Him God raised up the third day, and showed Him openly ; not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with Him after He arose from — the dead."
2 Docens eos que docerent, dehinc Ordinatis eis ad Offictum Predicandi, etc.
It is very evident in this place that our author makes a notorious distinction between Christ teaching His apostles in what they should instruct the world, and His ordaining them to the office and authority of preaching those instructions ; and as Christ was sent by His Father, so by the same authority did He commission His apostles to ordain others, and promises to be with them to the end of the world.
And therefore to say that the people have a natural right to ordain their own ministers, is in effect to say they have a natural right to do a thing when Christ has determined to the contrary.
And because the apostles gave the people a liberty to choose whom they would have for deacons, therefore they had ate to ordain them to that office by prayer and imposition of their own ands.
er Tertullian's Apology for the Christians.
J was a Christian, sent Tiberius Czesar an account of all these proceedings relating to Christ ; and the Czsars had been Christians too, could the ages have borne it, if either such Czesars had not been necessary and unavoidable in such times, or could Christians have come to be Cesars.
The apostles, in obedience to their Master's command, went about preaching through the world, persecuted by the Jews to the last degree, but suffering victoriously, in full assurance of the truth ; but at length-the infidels taking the advantage of the barbarous Nero's reign, they were forced to sow. the _ Christian religion in their own Christian blood.
But I shall take an occasion, by and by, to produce such witnesses as you yourselves must think authentic for the truth of the Christian religion; for I shall produce the gods you worship vouching for the God of Christians.
This must needs be surprising, you will say, that I should bring in those to convert you to the faith, for whose sake it is that you are infidels.
In the meantime you are to look upon this as the series and economy of the Christian religion.
I have laid before you an account of the original of our sect, of our name, and of the author of it; let no man therefore now throw such dirt and infamy upon Christians, nor harbour an opinion that.this account is not according to truth ; for it is not reasonable to believe that any one should think it allowable to lie for his religion ;1 for every man by saying he adores one, while in his mind he adores another, denies the very deity he adores, and translates divine honour from his own god to that other, and by such a translation unworships the god he worships.
But we say we are Christians, and say it to the whole world, under the hands of the executioner,? and in the 1 Ouia nec fas est ull de sua Religione mentirit,
Pamelius brings forth this passage in great state, as if it made notably for the papists against certain heretics
_of his time, who justified lying for their religion.
I do not know what heretics he means, and if there be any that do so, they certainly do very ill, and against the apostle's rule of not doing evil that good may come of it ; but had he considered some certain casuists of their own, he might have spared this reflection, _
2 Dicimus et palam dicimus, et vobis torquentibus lacerati et cruenti vociferamur,
Deun colimus per Christum.
The primitive Christians were not ashamed or afraid to proclaim, to proclaim it to the whole world, and under the hands of the executioner, and weltering in their own blood, that they worshipped God through Christ.
Do we ever read of any generation of men so greedy of martyrdom before, who thought it long till they were upon the rack, and so cheerful and stedfast under the most intolerable torments?
What a restless posture of mind does Socrates betray, the wisest and best of heathens!
With what misgivings and fits of hope and fear does he deliver himself in that most famous discourse, supposed to be made by hima little before his death, about a future state ! Vid,
Plat. Pred.
Do we find that Phzedo, Cebes, Crito, and Simmias, or any of his greatest friends, who were present at his death, condemning his murder in the Areopagus, and asserting the worship of one god as the Christians did?
Did
Tertullian's Apology for the Christians. midst of all the tortures you exercise us with to unsay it.
Torn and mangled and covered over in our own blood, we cry out as loud as | we are able to cry that we are worshippers of God through Christ.
Believe this Christ, if you please, to be a man, but let me tell you He is the only man by whom and in whom God will be known and worshipped to advantage, But to stop the mouth of Jews, I have this to answer, that they received every tittle of their religion from God by the meditation and ministry of the man Moses ; and as to the Greeks, did not Orpheus upon Mount Pieria, and his disciple
Muszeus at Athens, and Melampus at Argos, and Trophonius in - Beeotia, were not all these men who initiated these several countries in their religion?
And to turn my eyes upon you, who are the masters of the world, was it not the man Numa Pompilius, who bound on these heavy burdens of ceremony and superstition upon the Romans?
Why then, I pray you, must not Christ be tolerated to give the world a commentary of that divinity 1 which is His own, properly His and His alone?
He who did not begin His government upon a wild uncultivated people, and astonish them into subjection and civility by a multitude of imaginary gods, after the example of your Numa, but addresses the most polished and << Sig ae * —.
= Sar P lato afterwards dodge-abeut; and disguise himself under feigned names, and say and unsay the most excellent truths for the security of his skin?
And did not all the academics afterwards keep much upon the reserve, for fear that dogmatizing should send them after their master Socrates? How then comes it to pass that Christians, and Christians only, should dare to suffer.at this rate above all the philosophers in the world, and that the same generation of men should hold 'on suffering for four hundred years together, till they had subdued the world by dying for their religion?
Had not Christians the same flesh and blood, the — same sense and feeling as other men? and did they not desire happiness as much as other men?
Ifso, then nothing but the clearest, the most powerful and convincing arguments could possibly engage such numbers of men in a particular worship, and support them under it in defiance of death in the most shocking circumstances.
And with what face could a Christian offer to persuade a heathen to embrace such a persecuted religion, without the clearest convictions imaginable2
This argument from the primitive sufferings, and from the manner of them, for the truth of Christianity I insist upon the longer, not only because it is strong in itself, and so often appealed to in these Apologies, but because to me it is more moving, and apter.to take hold of the heart, than all the speculative
-proofs in nature.
1 Licuertt et Christo commentari Divinitatem, rem propriam.
Were it is observable that Tertullian calls the divinity of Christ, Rem profriam, an expression which denotes our Saviour to be as truly and really God, as man can be said _ to be the proprietor of anything in the sense of thelaw.
Thus when our Saviour said, '' My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," the Jews sought to kill Him, because rurtpu iov ZAsye rev Ody, He said God was His own proper Father in a fe incommunicable to any cteature, making Himself equal to God, John
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