Apologetic Writings.

        In A.D. 197-98 there was another outbreak against the African Christians. Their habit of holding aloof from public shows, which were both pagan and brutal in character, kept them away from the public celebration of the victory of the emperor, Septimius Severus, over his rivals, and precipitated a fresh persecution. Tertullian came to the defense of his harassed brethren with the fiery vehemence and fervor that always characterized him. In a work addressed To the Heathen (Ad Nationes, two books) he vigorously protested against the laws condemning Christians simply as such and without first examining their behavior and manner of life. He protests also against the calumnies heaped upon them and the charges of incest, child murder, and disloyalty to the empire that were made against them. He refers to the ancient pagan practice of exposing undesired children and throws back the charges upon those who made them.

        A second book of this same year, A.D. 197, was his great Apology (Apologeticus). It was addressed to the Roman governors of provinces and presents a similar argument, although in a more restrained and legal tone. He repels again the stock charges of child-slaying, incest, and cannibalism and admits that Christians do not worship the old gods but holds that they are not disloyal to the empire; although they cannot call the emperor God, they respect and rover him and are good Romans. Here Tertullian points out that persecution simply advances Christianity: “We multiply every time we are mowed down by you; the blood of Christians is seed”-the most famous of all his famous observations. These writings were preceded in the same year, 197, by a short address To the Martyrs already in prison, encouraging them and cheering them on. But the Address to the Heathen and the Apology form Tertullian's main contribution to Christian defense literature, and they are powerful reinforcements of it.

        Upon the death of Severus, fourteen years later, A.D. 211, and the accession of Caracalla, persecution began again. Once more, in 212-13, Tertullian wrote a short but vigorous apology addressed To Scapula, the proconsul of Africa, warning him, in view of well-known Roman precedents favorable to Christians, not to proceed against them.

        Trenchant and timely as were his writings in the apologetic field, his practical, doctrinal, and polemic works were no less so. No ancient list of his writings has come down to us, but in the oldest manuscript we have of Tertullian, the Codex Agobardinus, given by Agobard, bishop of Lyons, who died in A.D. 840, to a church there, there is a list of twenty-one of his works, which that manuscript originally contained. From other sources, however, this list can be increased to forty-three, and possibly even to forty-five.