Chapter Xxxix
—ff Qe i a a Tertulhian's Apology for the Christians.
which we know is owing to superstition and idolatry, and never are present at any of your diversions.
- We have nothing to do with the madness of the Cirque, with the obsceneness of the stage, and the cruelty of the amphitheatre, and the vanity of the Xystus.!
The Epicurean sect is tolerated in the exercise of their pleasures, and why are we such intolerable offenders for non-conforming with you in point of pleasure?
Nay, if mortification is the Christian pleasure, where is the harm to you? if it be a harm, it is to ourselves only.
But thus it is, your pleasures are our aversion, and ours affect not you.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
CONCERNING THE DISCIPLINE OF CHRISTIANS, AND THEIR
EMPLOYMENT AND WAYS OF LIVING.
Havine vindicated our sect from the calumnies of rebellion, etc., I come now to lay before you the Christian way and fashion of living.
We Christians then are a corporation or society of men? most strictly united by the same religion, by the same rites of worship,
1 Cum Xisti vanitate.
The Xystus was a gallery or portico of great length and breadth, and planted about with trees, where in the winter time the athlete performed.
Vid. Alex, ab Alex. tom. ii. cap. 9, p. 659.
It was certainly a place too where philosophers and men of learning met, for here it was Justin Martyr met and disputed with Trypho the Jew.
2 Corpus sumus de conscientid Religionis, et Discipline Unitate.
'' Weare one body by our agreement in religion and our unity of discipline."
I know nothing less understood, or less regarded, than unity of discipline, as if that was no part of Church unity ; forms of worship and government are now to be passed over with moderation, though the ancient and best of Christians reckoned unity of discipline, as well as faith, necessary to make them members of the same body.
Dr, Barrow, a truly moderate and good man, in his excellent discourse concerning the unity of the Church, says, '' That all.Christians are one by a specifical unity of discipline, resembling one another in ecclesiastical administrations, which are regulated by the indispensable sanctions and institutions of their sovereign.
That they are all bound to use the same sacraments, according to the forms appointed by our Lord, not admitting any substantial alteration.
They must uphold that sort of order, government, and ministry, on all its substantial parts, which God did appoint in His Church."
And a little after he says, "' That no power ought to abrogate, destroy, infringe, or violate the main form,
Tertulhan's Apology for the Christians. and animated with one and the same hope.
When we come to the public service of God, we come in as formidable a body as if we were to storm heaven by force of prayer, and such a force is a most grateful violence to God.
When this holy army of supplicants is met and disposed in godly array, we all send up our prayers for the life of the emperors,! for their ministers, for magistrates, for the good of the State, for the peace of the empire, and for retarding the final doom, :
E _ We meet together likewise for the reading of Holy Scriptures,' and we take such lessons out of them as we judge suit best with the condition of the times, to confirm our faith either by of discipline constituted by divine appointment.
Hence the Meletians rejected by the Church for introducing ordinations.
Hence was A®rius.accounted a heretic for meaning to innovate in so grand a point of discipline as the subordination of bishops and presbyters.
Upon which grounds"
(says he at the conclusion of his discourse) ''I do not scruple to affirm the recusants in England to be no less schismatics than any other separatists ; they are indeed somewhat worse, for most others do only forbear communion, these do'rudely condemn the Church to which they owe obedience, they strive to destroy it, they are most desperate rebels against it."
Another person too of known learning, the Right Reverend author of the Conferences abovesaid, thus argues for unity of discipline, Conf. iii, p. 275— "'If therefore the worship of God among us continue undefiled, even in the confession of all; if the sacraments be administered as before; if the persons who officiate be ministers of the gospel, then certainly such as separate from our public meetings do forsake the assemblies of the saints, and so break the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace."
And page 280 he goes on—''But _ if separation be a sin, it must have a guilt of a high nature, and such as all who would be thought zealous watchmen ought to warn their people of.
And what shall be said of those (even Churchmen) who, at a time when the laws are sharply
~ looked to, do join in our worship ; but if there be an unbending in these, they not only withdraw and become thereby a scandal to others, but draw about them divided meetings ; are not those time-servers?
For if concurrence in our worship be lawful, and to be done at any time, it must be a'duty which should be done at all times; and therefore such masters of conscience ought to express an equality in their ways, and that they make the rules of their concurrence in worship to be the laws of God, and not the fear of civil punishment."
Whoever would see more concerning the nature of 'Church unity, and the sin of occasional conformity, let him read the whole Conference.
1 Oramus etiam pro Imperatoribus, pro Ministris eorum, etc.
This, not without good reason, is thought to be the ''common prayer" mentioned. by St.
Justin just before the communion, and much the same with that in our Communion Service for the Church Militant ; the form whereof in the Apostolical
Constitutions is described at large, Comst. Apost. lib. ii. cap. 57, p. 881, and so lib.
Vili, cap. 10, p. 1011, which is still a further proof that the passage size monitore ought not to be understood of extempore prayer.
* Cogimur ad Divinarum literarum Commemorationem, etc.
This is just the same almost with what you had in the conclusion of Justin's Apology, and therefore the same note may serve for both.
— a ertullian's Apology for the Christians.
forewarning us what we are to expect, or by bringing to our minds the predictions already fulfilled.
And certainly our spiritual life is wonderfully nourished with reading the Holy Scriptures, our hopes thereby are erected, and our trust fixed and settled upon God.
However, besides the bare reading, we continually preach and press the duties of the gospel with all the power and argument we are able; for it is in these assemblies that we exhort, reprove, and pass the divine censure or sentence of excommunication ;! for the judgments in this place are delivered with all solemnity, and after the maturest deliberation imaginable, as being delivered by men who know they are pronouncing God's sentence, and act with the same caution as if God stood visibly among them; and the censures here pronounced are looked upon as an anticipation of the judgment to come, and the sinner precondemned by God, who has sinned to such a degree.as to be shut out by his ministers from the fellowship of the faithful, the communion of prayers and sacraments, and the rest of that sacred commerce.
1 Jbidem etiam exhortationes, castigationes, et censura Divina,—Summumague futuri Judicit Prejudicium est, si quis ita deliquerit ut a Communicatione
Orationts et conventis et omnis Sancti commercti relegetur, The Church subsisted now purely as a spiritual society independent of the State, and while it did so, and its censures were managed magno cum pondere, as our author speaks, with great gravity and judgment, they were looked upon as divine, and an anticipation of the judgment to come.
And had this inherent power of the Church acted still independently of the civil power, and the people been made sensible of the ~ necessity of the communion of the Church in order to salvation, I cannot see why excommunication should not have as good an effect, and be as much dreaded now, as in the primitive times, upon the same principles.
However, thus much is observable from this passage, that men were first admonished and then reproved more severely, before the sentence of excommunication was passed.
Secondly, that this sentence excluded them from all religious intercourse.
And thirdly, that it was looked upon as the forerunner of future condemnation in the world to come.
To the same purpose St. Cyprian speaks—ad Pomponium, Spiritali Gladio superbi, et contumaces necantur, dum de Ecclesté ejiciuntur : neque enim vivere forts possent, cum Domus Dei una sit; et nemini salus esse, nisi in Ecclesid possit.
'' The proud and contumacious are slain with the spiritual sword, by being cast out of the Church; for they cannot live without (or be admitted into any other Church), since the house of God is but one, and there can be no salvation to any, but only in the Church,"
And thus again, de Orat.
Domin. p. 192—Eucharistiam quotidie ad cibum Salutis acctpimus, intercedente aliquo graviore delicto, dum abstenti et non communicantes a Calesti Pane prohibemur ; a Christi corpore separamur, 'We receive the Eucharist every day,
'as the food that nourishes to salvation; and while for any more grievous offence we do not communicate, but are debarred from the heavenly bread, we are separated from the body of Christ."
~ So far was this martyr from thinking that excommunication was little more than the loss of a grace-cup, or the Church ministers refusing him that bread and wine which was not bought with his, but other men's money, - :
( j . at
Tertullian's Apology for the Christians. — The presidents or bishops! among us are men of the most venerable age and piety, raised to this honour not by the powers _ of money, but the brightness of their lives; for nothing sacred is to be had for money..
That kind of treasury we have is not filled with any dishonourable sum, as the price of a purchased religion ; every one puts a little to the public stock, commonly once a month," or when he pleases, and only upon condition that he is both willing and able ; for there is no compulsion upon any. All here is a freewill offering, and all these collections are deposited in a common bank for charitable uses, not for the support of merry meetings, for . _ drinking and gormandizing, but for feeding the poor and burying the dead, and providing for girls and boys who have neither parents nor provisions left to support them, for relieving old people worn out in the service of 'the saints, or those who have suffered by shipwreck, or are condemned to the mines, or islands, or prisons, only for the faith of Christ; these may be said to live upon their profession, for while they suffer for professing the name of Christ, they are fed with the collections of His Church.
But strange! that such lovely expressions of Christian charity cannot pass with some men without a censure; for look ye, say they, how these Christians seem to love each other, when in their hearts they hate each other to death!
How forward are they to ~ 1 President probati quique Seniores, honorem istum non pretio sed testimonio adepti.
The presiding elders here are undoubtedly the same with the xporerares in Justin Martyr's foregoing Apology, that is, the bishops; for our author, speaking of the power of excommunicating where it is lodged, tells us it was in the president, wt extra Ecclesiam detur, inerat in Presidentis officio, lib. de Pud. cap. 14.
And thus his scholar St. Cyprian, de Unitate Ecclesia, Tenere firmiter, et vindicare debemus, maxime Episcopi qui in Ecclesia presidemus,
They were Probati Sentores, men of age, and publicly approved for their life and conversation,
For thus again, St. Cyprian in Zpist. ad Felicem—Quod ad ipsum videmus divind Auctoritate descendere, uti Sacerdos plebe presente sub omnium oculis deligatur, et dignus atque idoneus publico judicio et testimonio comprobetur.
Agreeable to the practice of the apostles, who left it to the congregation as the — most competent judges to choose fitting men, and then they ordained them to the office of deacon by prayer and laying on of hands.
? Modicam unusquisqgue Stipem menstrua die, etc.
We have St. Paul, 1 Cor. xvi. I, 2, giving order to the Churches of Galatia and Corinth for weekly offerings for the saints, '' That upon the first day of the week" (when they never failed to receive the sacrament) '' they should every one of them lay by him in store according as God had prospered him." But I have already given an account of these charities, and therefore only remark here, that according to St. Paul's order, the collections were weekly to the time of Justin Martyr, but in the age pow ee) that of Tertullian, we find these offerings sunk to monthly, AMenstrua zé,"etes
; i. all —_— Tertultran's Apology for the Christians.
stake down their lives for one another, when inwardly they could cut one another's throats!
But the true reason of this defamation, upon the account of styling ourselves brethren, I take to be this, because the name of brother is found with these men to be only a gilded expression of a counterfeit friendship.
But you need not wonder at this loving title among Christians, when we own even you*your- ' selves for brethren by the right of one common nature ; although indeed you have cancelled this relation, and by being inhuman
~ brethren have forfeited the title of men; but by what diviner ties are we Christians brethren!
We who all acknowledge but one and the same God as our universal Father, who have all drunk of one and the same Holy Spirit, and who are all delivered as it were from one common womb of ignorance, and called out of darkness into His marvellous light.
But maybe we cannot pass for right brothers with you, because you want a tragedy about the bloody feuds of the Christian fraternity ; or because our brotherly love continues even
~ to the division of our estates, which is a test few brotherhoods will - . bear, and which commonly divides the dearest unions among you.
But we Christians look upon ourselves as one body, informed as it were by one soul; and being thus incorporated by love, we can never dispute what we are to bestow upon our own members.
Accordingly among us all things are in common, excepting wives ; in this alone we reject communion, and this is the only thing you enjoy in common ; for you not only make no conscience in violating the wife of your friend, but with amazing patience and gratitude lend him your own.
This doctrine, I suppose, came from the school of the Grecian Socrates, or the Roman Cato, those wisest of sages, who accommodated their friends with their own wives, wives which they espoused for the sake of children of their own begetting, as I imagine, and not of other folks.
Whether the wives are thus prostituted with their own consent, in truth I cannot tell, but I see no great reason why they should be
1 Omnia indiscreta sunt apud nos, etc.
Dr. Potter observes from hence that among many other reasons why a certain proportion for the maintenance of the clergy was not fixed by the apostles, this was one, that there could be no occasion
'to determine the portion then, when men laid all they had at their feet 5 and the samie reason held good to our Tertullian's time, for he says here that Christians had all things in common but their wives.
Vid. Dr, Potter's Discourse of Church Government, p. 434.
I only observe further, what great veneration is due to the writers of those ages, when men valued nothing but religion, and followed Christ in the highest expression of charity, in selling all they had for the support of Christians.
Yertullian's Apology for the Christians, much concerned about that chastity which their husbands think not worth keeping.
Oh, never-to-be-forgotten example of Athenian wisdom!
Socrates the great Grecian philosopher, and Cato the great Roman censor, are both pimps.
But is it any great wonder that such charitable brethren as enjoy all things in common should have such frequent love-feasts?
For this it is you blacken us, and reflect upon our little frugal suppers, not only as infamously wicked, but as scandalously excessive.
Diogenes, for aught I know, might have us Christians in his eye when he said that the Megarensians feast as if they were never to eat more, and build as if they were to live for ever; but every one sees a straw in another's eye sooner than a beam in his own; or else you must be sensible of your own beastliness in this case; for the very air in the streets is soured with the belches of the people coming from their feasts in their several wards.
The Salii cannot sup without the advance of a loan, and upon the feast of tithes to Hercules the entertainment is so very costly that you are forced to — have a bookkeeper on purpose for expenses.
At Athens likewise when the Apaturia, or feasts in honour of Bacchus for a serviceable piece of treachery he did, are to be celebrated, there is a proclamation for all the choice cooks to come in and assist at the banquet ; and when the kitchen of Serapis smokes, what baskets of provisions come tumbling in from every quarter!
But my business at present is to justify the Christian supper; and the nature of this supper you may understand by its name; for it is the Greek word for love.
We Christians think we can never be too expensive, because we think all is gain that is laid out in doing good; when therefore we are at the charge of an entertainment, it is to refresh the bowels of the needy, but not as you gorge those parasites among you who glory in selling their liberty for stuffing their guts, and can find in their hearts to cram their bellies in spite of all the affronts you can lay upon them ; but we feed the hungry, because we know God takes a peculiar delight in seeing us doit.
If therefore we feast only with such brave and excellent designs, I leave you from hence to guess at the rest of our discipline in matters of pure religion; nothing earthly, nothing unclean, has ever admittance here ; our souls ascend in prayer to-God before we sit down to meat ; we eat only what suffices nature, and drink no more than what is strictly becoming chaste and regular persons.
We sup as servants that know we must wake in the night to the service of our Master, and discourse as those who remember that they are in the hearing of God.
When supper is ended, and we have washed our hands, and the _candles are
is « Tertullian's A pology for the Ghachane
lighted up, every one is invited forth to sing praises to God, either such as he collects from the Holy Scriptures, or such as are of his own composing ;1 and by this you may judge of the measures of drinking at a Christian feast.
And as we began, so we conclude all in prayer, and depart not like a parcel of heated bullies, for scouring the ~ Streets and killing and ravishing the next we meet, but with the Same tenor of temperance and modesty we came, as men who have not so properly been a-drinking as imbibing religion.
This assembly of Christians therefore is deservedly ranked among unlawful ones, if it holds any resemblance with them; and I will not say a word against condemning it, if any man will make good any one article against it which is charged upon other factions.
Did we ever come together to the ruin of any one person?
We are the same in our assemblies as at home, and as harmless in a body as apart ; in neither capacity injuring or afflicting any person whatever.
__-When therefore so many honest and good, pious and chaste people -1 Post aguam manualem et lumina, ut guisg. ; de Scripturis sanctis, vel de proprio Lugenio potest, provocatur in medium Deo canere.
Pliny, lib. x. ep. 97, reports it as a main part of the Christian worship, that they met together before _ day to join in singing hymns to Christ as God.
These hymns were taken either out of the Holy Scriptures (and the compiler of the Afostolical Constitutions mentions the 33rd Psalm, lib. viii. cap. 13, p. 1023), or else such as were ae proprio Ingenio, of their own head, of their own composing; for it was usual at this time for any persons to compose divine songs in honour of Christ, and sing them in the public assemblies, till the Council of Laodicea ordered that no songs composed by private persons should be recited in the church, Can. 59.
The dispute between us and the dissenters is about the sense of this phrase, de proprio Ingenio, which they will have to signify extempore rapturés, in vindication of their own effusions ; against which the Reverend Mr. Bennet argues thus :
That allowing this hymn to be extempore, yet it made nothing to the purpose, unless it could be proved that the congregation joined in it.
Secondly, he denies the fact that the psalm was extempore, because no such thing as an extempore psalm was ever heard of; those of David, though inspired, were
-notwithstanding precomposed.
Nor does singing de proprio Ingenio psalms of their own composing, imply that they were extempore psalms, for psalms de proprio Ingenio are in this place opposed to psalms de Scripturis Sanctis, taken
out of Scripture, and not to precomposed ones.
Thus, that judicious person in his very laborious and very valuable History of Set Forms of Prayer, p. 243,
_ which I had not the satisfaction to see till it was too late to add any improvements from him to my own remarks upon that passage, Ste monitore quia de
Lectore, and therefore I recommend the reader to his eighth chapter, p. 95, - where he will find this phrase largely and substantially treated.
But after all, supposing these hymns to have been extempore, yet it is granted on all hands that the season of miracles and inspiration was not over in Tertullian's time, and therefore it is great contempt of authority and presumption in them to pray the same way, till they can prove they have the same gifts, especially since they find all such effusions censured and forbid by the Council of Laodicea already cited.