PREFACE

I Offer to the Public a Version of the Address of TERTULLIAN to SCAPULA.  The merit of the original is well known.  It contains many circumstances respecting the state of the Church soon after the commencement of the third century, and therefore may be reckoned among the valuable Remains of Christian Antiquity.

The traces of a wild imagination are not so discernable in the Address to SCAPULA, as in the other works of TERTULLIAN.  The topics which he uses, seem, in general, well chosen, and judiciously enforced.[vi]

As the original is printed along with the version, the learned reader will have an opportunity of comparing them, and of detecting the errors which may have been committed in the attempt to render Tertullian into English.  The attempt, in itself, was difficult, and became more so by a fancy of mine, which, without pretending to justify it, I must communicate to my readers.

Whether William Duke of Normandy conquered England as a kingdom, or only acquired it as an inheritance, it is no part of my present business to inquire.  This much, however, is certain, that the Norman [vii] conquest or acquisition had violent effects on the English language, for, at that aera, French words and phrases rushed in, and well  nigh overwhelmed the Anglo-Saxon dialect.

It occurred to me that, between Anglo-Saxon and Latin, a few pages might be composed without the aid of French auxiliaries, and this produced the following version, a version which, perhaps, loses more by the singularity of its style, than it gains by the grave and solemn air produced from the blending of old English and Latin.

For the better understanding of the sense of Tertullian, many Notes and Illustrations became necessary.  After [viii] I had availed myself of the aid of former commentators, I found that much, especially as to the historical part, remained without explanation.  The attempt made to supply this deficiency, is submitted to the candour of the reader.

While engaged in the drawing up of those Notes, I had occasion to remark some strange inaccuracies in the work of a celebrated Historian; and I have used the liberty of pointing them out.  Even  in the first volume of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and independently of the two famous chapters, there is a wide field for literary and historical criticism.