INTRODUCTION.
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THE life of Tertullian, so far as we
know it, may be briefly told. He was born at Carthage about the year A.D. 160,
and was brought up amid the pagan surroundings of that provincial metropolis. His
father, whose name is not known, was a centurion in attendance upon the
proconsul of Africa, and he took care that his son, who was probably intended
for public life, should receive an excellent education in the celebrated
schools of his native city. Before his conversion it is believed that
Tertullian practised in the provincial law-courts; and the constant recurrence
of legal phraseology in his writings bears out the truth of Eusebius' statement
that he was intimately acquainted with Roman law (H. E. ii. 2). That he was
also well versed in the art of rhetoric, the reader of the APOLOGY will at once
admit: the arguments are accumulated with the skill, and sometimes with the
one-sidedness, of an advocate holding a brief in his own case, and pleading with
an impassioned earnestness born of deep personal conviction.
Tertullian's conversion may be dated
in 196 1, and he
was ordained priest in the Carthaginian Church. He was married, but childless.
His character reflects [viii] the typical African
temperament,—fervid, impatient, impetuous, and with a considerable vein of
latent puritanism. It was this unrestrained impulsiveness of nature that soon
beguiled him to break away from the wise moderation of rhe Church and to
embrace the heresy of Montanus,—a Phrygian fanatic, who claimed to be the
recipient of a new Revelation of the Paraclete, and whose system of discipline
was rigorously severe. The lapse of so gifted a champion of the faith was, as
Vincent of Lerins tells us (Common. 18), a severe temptation to the
Church, and his later error naturally 'cast some discredit on the authority of
his approved writings' (Hil. in Matt. 5).
Tertullian lived to an extreme old
age, according to the report mentioned by Jerome (de vir. illustr. 53),
and his death may be placed about the year 240. A small sect, called after him
'Tertullianists,' lingered in Carthage to the time of Augustine (Haer. 86).
The APOLOGY was written in the year
197, very soon after his conversion, and the reader may, happily, forget the
subsequent lapse of its author into heresy. The work is one of the best and
most interesting examples of Western apologetic writings, both on account of
the cogency and brilliance of its defensive pleading for Christianity, and from
the graphic picture which it portrays of paganism as it existed in the great
metropolis of Africa particularly, and in the Roman Empire generally, at the
close of the second century. It may be said at once that there is much in this
picture which is painful; few English readers will have been prepared for the
hideous disclosures [ix] which Tertullian's exposure of
heathenism necessarily entails; yet it may prove a useful lesson, if it in any
way brings home to us what and how deep was the moral darkness of the world
which it was the divine office of the Christian Church to enlighten and purify.
The immediate purpose of the APOLOGY
was to protest against the wholesale condemnation of a body of men on the mere
presumption of a criminality which had never been proved. The inveterate
hostility manifested towards the Christians forbade them the rights even of
ordinary criminals. They were prosecuted under the laws, and persecuted by a
panic-stricken populace, whose unreasoning animosity, and ignorance of the true
nature of the Christian religion, led to the formulation of execrable charges
which the Christian Apologists had to meet and repel 2. Some of these, e.g. those in ch.
7—9, were due to the close bonds which united the Christians together in a true
fraternity, and to the care with which they shielded the higher mysteries of
their religious worship from any risk of profanation by the heathen outsiders
3. Others
again, e.g. those in ch. 40-44, arose from mere popular irrational dislike,
which seized anything as a handle against a section of society whose purity and
integrity of life were a standing rebuke to the dissolute morals of the age.
The two main charges brought against
the Christians,—Sacrilege and Disloyalty to the Emperor,— [x] stood on a different base. They
were reasonable enough from the heathen point of sight, and the Apologist could
only refute them by attacking the whole groundwork and fabric of the Roman
religion of the time. This attack upon paganism is carried on simultaneously
with the defence of Christianity. Tertullian's favourite weapon is sarcastic
retort, and his pagan readers must have winced, not once nor twice only, under
the lash of his stinging epigrams and biting irony.
The APOLOGY naturally contains but
few references to the internal life of the Church. Sufficient is related to
disarm the suspicions of the heathen, but no more. A full statement of
Christian doctrine or mode of worship is not to be looked for. This reserve,
which is maintained by all the Apologists when addressing those outside the
Church, is significant of their jealous reverence for the sanctity of their
faith. Hence those passages are the more valuable and interesting which treat
of the Being of God, of the Divinity of Christ, the God-Man, and His earthly
life (ch. 17—21), and of the nature of the bond of Christian unity (ch. 39). It
will be observed that the only passage adduced from the New Testament4 in the whole of the APOLOGY (i Tim.
ii. 2; see ch. 31) is quoted merely in self-defence on a point of Christian
practice. [xi]
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