The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire Part 43

Under the Empire there were two ways to eminence, the bar and the camp, and Tertullian had chosen the former. His rhetoric, his wit, his force of mind, and his strong grasp of legal principles in general and the issue of the moment in particular, might have carried him far. He might have risen as high as a civilian could. It was a tempting prospect,--the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them--and he renounced it; and never once in all the books that have come down to us, does he give any hint of looking back, never so much as suggests that he had given up anything. Official life was full of religious usage, full too of minor duties of ritual which a Christian might not discharge. Tertullian was not the first to see this. A century earlier Flavius Clemens, the cousin of Domitian, seems to have been a Christian--Dio Ca.s.sius speaks of his atheism and Jewish practices, and Suetonius remarks upon his "contemptible inertia," though he was consul.[81] In other words, the Emperor's cousin found that public life meant compromise at every step. This is Tertullian's decision of the case--it has the note of his profession about it. "Let us grant that it is possible for a man successfully to manage that, whatever office it be, he bears merely the t.i.tle of that office; that he does not sacrifice, nor lend his authority to sacrifices, nor make contracts as to victims, nor delegate the charge of temples, nor look after their tributes; that he does not give shows (_spectacula_) at his own or the public cost, nor preside over them when being given; that he makes no proclamation or edict dealing with a festival; that he takes no oath; that--and these are the duties of a magistrate--he does not sit in judgment on any man's life or honour (for you might bear with his judging in matters of money); that he p.r.o.nounces no sentence of condemnation nor any [as legislator] that should tend to condemnation; that he binds no man, imprisons no man, tortures[82] no man"--if all this can be managed, a Christian may be a magistrate.[83] Tertullian made his renunciation and held no magistracy. It may be said that, as he held none, it was easy to renounce it; but hopes are often harder to renounce than realities. So Tertullian left the law and the Stoics, to study {323} the Scriptures, Justin and Irenaeus[84]--the Bible and the _regula fidei_ his new code, and the others his commentators. The Christian is "a stranger in this world, a citizen of the city above, of Jerusalem"; his ranks, his magistracies, his senate are the Church of Christ; his purple the blood of his Lord, his _laticlave_ in His cross.[85]

But Tertullian could speak, on occasion, of what he had done. "We have no fear or terror of what we may suffer from those who do not know," he wrote to Scapula, "for we have joined this school (_sectam_) fully accepting the terms of our agreement; so that we come into these conflicts with no further right to our own souls."[86] The contest was, as he says elsewhere, "against the inst.i.tutions of our ancestors, the authority of usage, the laws of rulers, the arguments of the wise; against antiquity, custom, necessity; against precedents, prodigies and miracles,"[87] and he did not need Celsus to remind him what form the resistance of the enemy might take. He knew, for he had seen, and that was why he stood where he did. But it is worth our while to understand how vividly he realized the possibilities before him.

There were the private risks of informers and blackmailers, Jews[88]

and soldiers, to which the Christians were exposed.[89] They were always liable to be trapped in their meetings--"every day we are besieged; every day we are betrayed; most of all in our actual gatherings and congregations are we surprised."[90] How are we to meet at all, asks the anxious Christian, unless we buy off the soldiers? By night, says Tertullian, "or let three be your church."[91] Then came the appearance before the magistrate, where everything turned on the character or the mood of the official. Tertullian quotes to Scapula several instances of kindness on the bench, rough and ready, or high-principled.[92] Anything might {324} happen--"then," wrote Perpetua, "he had all our names recited together and condemned us to the beasts."[93]

What followed in the arena may be read in various Acts of Martyrdom--in the story of Perpetua herself, as told in tense and quiet language by Tertullian. He, it is generally agreed, edited her visions, preserving what she wrote as she left it, and adding in a postscript what happened when she had laid down her pen for ever. The scene with the beasts is not easy to abridge, and though not long in itself it is too long to quote here; but no one who has read it will forget the episode of Saturus drenched in his own blood from the leopard's bite, amid the yells of the spectators, _Salvum lotum! salvum lotum!_ nor that of Perpetua and Felicitas, mothers both, one a month or so, the other three days, stripped naked to be tossed by a wild cow. And here comes a curious touch; the mob, with a superficial delicacy, suggested clothing; rough cloths were put over the women, and the cow was let loose; they were tossed, and then all were put to the sword.

[Sidenote: On martyrdom]

"At this present moment," writes Tertullian, "it is the very middle of the heat, the very dog-days of persecution--as you would expect, from the dog-headed himself, of course. Some Christians have been tested by the fire, some by the sword, some by the beasts; some, lashed and torn with hooks, have just tasted martyrdom, and lie hungering for it in prison."[94] Cross, hook, and beasts[95]--the circus, the prison, the rack[96]--the _vivicomburium_,[97] burning alive--and meanwhile the renegade Jew is there with his placard of the "G.o.d of the Christians,"

an ugly caricature with the ears and one hoof of an a.s.s, clad in a toga, book in hand[98]--the Gnostic and the nervous Christian are asking whether the text "flee ye to the next" may not be G.o.d's present counsel--and meantime "faith glows and the church is burning like the bush."[99] Yet, says Tertullian to the heathen, "we say, and we say it openly,--while you are torturing us, torn and bleeding, we cry aloud 'We wors.h.i.+p G.o.d through Christ.'"[100] To {325} the Christian he says: "The command is given to me to name no other G.o.d, whether by act of hand, or word of tongue ... save the One alone, whom I am bidden to fear, lest he forsake me; whom I am bidden to love with all my being, so as to die for him. I am his soldier, sworn to his service, and the enemy challenge me. I am as they are, if I surrender to them. In defence of my allegiance I fight it out to the end in the battle-line, I am wounded, I fall, I am killed. Who wished this end for his soldier--who but he who sealed him with such an oath of enlistment?

There you have the will of my G.o.d."[101] "And therefore the Paraclete is needed, to guide into all truth, to animate for all endurance.

Those, who receive him, know not to flee persecution, nor to buy themselves off; they have him who will be with us, to speak for us when we are questioned, to help us when we suffer."[102a] "He who fears to suffer cannot be his who suffered."[102b] The tracts _On Flight in Persecution_ and _The Antidote for the Scorpion_ are among his most impressive pieces. They must have been read by his friends with a strange stirring of the blood. Even to-day they bring back the situation--living as only genius can make it live.

But what of the man of genius who wrote them? At what cost were they written? "Picture the martyr," he writes, "with his head under the sword already poised, picture him on the gibbet his body just outspread, picture him tied to the stake when the lion has just been granted, on the wheel with the f.a.ggots piled about him"[103]--and no doubt Tertullian saw these things often enough, with that close realization of each detail of shame and pain which is only possible to so vivid and sensitive an imagination. He saw _himself_ tied to the stake--heard the governor in response to the cry _Christiana leonem_[104] concede the lion--and then had to wait, how long? How long would it take to bring and to let loose the lion? How long would it seem? Through all this he went, in his mind, not once, nor twice.

And meanwhile, what was the audience doing, while he stood there tied, {326} waiting interminably for the lion? He knew what they would be doing, for he had seen it, and in the pa.s.sage at the end of _de Spectaculis_, which Gibbon quotes, every item of the description of the spectator is taken in irony from the actual circus. No man, trained, as the public speaker or pleader must be, to respond intimately and at once to the feelings and thoughts, expressed or unexpressed, of the audience, could escape realizing in heightened tension every possibility of anguish in such a crowd of hostile faces, full of frantic hatred,[105] cruelty and noise. To this Tertullian looked forward, as we have seen, and went onward--as another did who "steadfastly set his face for Jerusalem." The test of emotion is what it has survived, and Tertullian's faith in Christ and his peace of mind survived this martyrdom through the imagination. Whatever criticism has to be pa.s.sed upon his work and spirit, to some of his critics he might reply "_Ye_ have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin."

So much did martyrdom mean to the individual, yet it was not merely a personal affair. It was G.o.d's chosen way to propagate his church--so it had been foretold, and so it was fulfilled. "Nothing whatever is achieved," says Tertullian to the heathen, "by each more exquisite cruelty you invent;[106] on the contrary, it wins men for our school.

We are made more as often as you mow us down; the blood of Christians is seed."[107]

Sixteen centuries or so later, Th.o.r.eau in his _Plea for Captain John Brown_, a work not unlike Tertullian's own in its force, its surprises, its desperate energy and high conviction, wrote similarly of the opponents of another great movement. "Such do not know that like the seed is the fruit, and that in the moral world, when good seed is planted, good fruit is inevitable, and does not depend on our watering and cultivating; that when you plant, or bury, a hero in his field, a crop of heroes is sure to spring up. This is a seed of such {327} force and vitality, that it does not ask our leave to germinate."

[Sidenote: On baptism]

There were yet other possibilities in martyrdom. It was believed by Christians that in baptism the sins of the earlier life were washed away; but what of sins after baptism? They involved a terrible risk--"the world is destined to fire like the man who after baptism renews his sins"[108]--and it was often felt safer to defer baptism to the last moment in consequence. Constantine was baptized on his death-bed. "The postponement of baptism is more serviceable especially in the case of children;" says Tertullian, "let them become Christians when they shall be able to know Christ. Why should the innocent age hasten to the remission of sins?"[109] As to sins committed after baptism, different views were held. In general, as the church grew larger and more comprehensive, it took a lighter view of sin, but Tertullian and his Montanist friends did not, and for this they have been well abused, in their own day and since. They held that adultery and apostasy were not venial matters, to be forgiven by a bishop issuing an "edict," like a _Pontifex Maximus_, in the legal style, "I forgive the sins of adultery and fornication to such as have done penance, _paenitentia functis_."[110] The Montanist alternative was not so easy; G.o.d, they held, permitted a second baptism, which should be final--a baptism of blood. "G.o.d had foreseen the weaknesses of humanity, the strategems of the enemy, the deceitfulness of affairs, the snares of the world--that faith even after baptism would be imperilled, that many would be lost again after being saved--who should soil the wedding dress, and provide no oil for their lamps, who should yet have to be sought over mountain and forest, and carried home on the shoulders. He therefore appointed a second consolation, a last resource, the fight of martyrdom and the baptism of blood, thereafter secure."[111] This view may not appeal to us to-day; it did not appeal to Gnostic, time-server and coward. The philosophy of sin involved is hardly deep enough, but {328} this doctrine of the second baptism cannot be said to lack virility.

But Tertullian himself did not receive the first baptism with any idea of looking for a second. Like men who are baptized of their own motion and understanding, he was greatly impressed by baptism. "There is nothing," he says, "which more hardens the minds of men than the simplicity of G.o.d's works, which appears in the doing, and the magnificence, which is promised in the effect. Here too, because, with such simplicity, without pomp, without any novel apparatus, and without cost, a man is sent down into the water and baptized, while but a few words are spoken, and rises again little or nothing cleaner, on that account his attainment of eternity is thought incredible."[112] It must be felt that the ill.u.s.tration declines from the principle. It may also be remarked that this is a more magical view of baptism than would have appealed to Seneca or to his contemporaries in the Christian movement, and that, as it is developed, it becomes even stranger.

Tertullian's description of baptism is of interest in the history of the rite. The candidate prepares himself with prayer, watching and the confession of sin.[113] "The waters receive the mystery (_sacramentum_) of sanctification, when G.o.d has been called upon. The Spirit comes at once from heaven and is upon the waters, sanctifying them from himself, and so sanctified they receive (_combibunt_) the power of sanctifying."[114] This is due to what to-day we should call physical causes. The underlying matter, he says, must of necessity absorb the quality of the overlying, especially when the latter is spiritual, and therefore by the subtlety of its substance more penetrative.[115] We may compare "the enthusiastic spirit," which, Plutarch tells us, came up as a gas from the chasm at Delphi,[116] and further the general teaching of Tertullian (Stoic in origin) of the corporeity of the soul and of similar spiritual beings. He ill.u.s.trates the influence of the Spirit in thus affecting the waters of baptism by the a.n.a.logy of the unclean spirits that haunt streams and fountains, natural and artificial, and similarly affect men, though for evil--"lest any should think it a hard thing that G.o.d's holy angel should be present to temper {329} waters for man's salvation."[117]

Thus when the candidate has solemnly "renounced the devil, his pomp and his angels,"[118] he is thrice plunged,[119] his spirit is washed corporeally by the waters "medicated" and his flesh spiritually is purified.[120] "It is not that in the waters we receive the Holy Spirit, but purified in water under the angel, we are prepared for the Holy Spirit.... The angel, that is arbiter of baptism, prepares the way for the Spirit that shall come."[121] On leaving the water the Christian is anointed (_signaculum_). The hand of blessing is laid upon him, and in response to prayer the Holy Spirit descends with joy from the Father to rest upon the purified and blest.[122]

[Sidenote: Renouncing the world]

Tertullian never forgot the baptismal pledge in which he renounced the devil, his pomp and his angels; and, for his part, he never showed any tendency to make compromise with them--when he recognized them, for sometimes he seems not to have penetrated their disguises. Again and again his pledge comes back to him. What has the Christian to do with circus or theatre, who has renounced the devil, his pomp and his angels, when both places are specially consecrated to these, when there, above all, wickedness, l.u.s.t and cruelty reign without reserve?[123] How can the maker of idols, the temple-painter, etc., be said to have renounced the devil and his angels, if they make their living by them?[124] We have seen the difficulty of the schoolmaster here. The general question of trade troubles Tertullian--its cupidity, the lie that ministers to cupidity, to say nothing of perjury.[125] Of astrologers, he would have thought, nothing needed to be said--but that he had "within these few days" heard some one claim the right to continue in the profession. He reminds him of the source of his magical information--the fallen angels.[126] One must not even name them--to say _Meditis fidius_ is idolatry, for it is a prayer; but to say "I live in the street of Isis" is not sin--it is sense.[127] Many inventions were attributed by pagans to their G.o.ds. If every implement of life is set down to some G.o.d, "yet I still must recognize Christ lying on a couch--or when he brings a basin {330} to his disciples'

feet, or pours water from the jug, and is girded with linen--Osiris'

own peculiar garb."[128] In fact, common utility, and the service of ordinary needs and comforts, may lead us to look upon things (to whomsoever attributed) as really due to the inspiration of G.o.d himself "who foresees, instructs and gives pleasure to man, who is after all His own."[129] Thus common sense and his doctrine of Nature come to his aid. "So amid rocks and bays, amid the shoals and breakers of idolatry, faith steers her course, her sails filled by the Spirit of G.o.d."[130]

[Sidenote: The _Apology_]

Tertullian had been a lawyer and a pleader, as we are reminded in many a page, where the man of letters is overridden by the man of codes and arguments; and a lawyer he remained. The Gospel, for instance, bade that, if any man take the tunic, he should be allowed to take the cloak also. Yes, says Tertullian, if he asks--"if he threatens, I will ask for the tunic back."[131] A man, with such habits of mind, will not take violent measures to repel injustice, but he may be counted upon to defend himself in his own way. Tertullian, accordingly, when persecution broke out in the autumn of 197 in Carthage, addressed to the governor of the province an Apology for the Christians. It is one of his greatest works. It was translated into Greek, and Eusebius quotes the translation in several places. It is a most brilliant book.

All his wit and warmth, his pungency and directness, his knowledge and his solid sense come into play. As a piece of rhetoric, as a lawyer's speech, it is inimitable. But it is more than that, for it is as full of his finest qualities as of his other gifts of dexterity and humour.

It shows the full grown and developed man, every faculty at its highest and all consecrated, and the book glows with the pa.s.sion of a dedicated spirit.

He begins with the ironical suggestion that, if the governors of provinces are not permitted in their judicial capacity to examine in public the case of the Christians, if this type of action alone their authority is afraid--or blushes--to investigate in the interests of justice, he yet hopes that Truth by the {331} silent path of letters may reach their ears. Truth makes no excuse--she knows she is a stranger here, while her race, home, hope, grace and dignity are in heaven. All her eagerness is not to be condemned unheard.

Condemnation without trial is invidious, it suggests injustice and wakes suspicion. It is in the interests of Christianity, too, that it should be examined--that is how the numbers of the Christians have grown to such a height. They are not ashamed--unless it be of having become Christians so late. The natural characteristics of evil are fear, shame, tergiversation, regret; yet the Christian criminal is glad to be accused, prays to be condemned and is happy to suffer. You cannot call it madness, when you are shown to be ignorant of what it is.

Christians are condemned for the name's sake, though such condemnation, irrespective of the proving of guilt or innocence, is outrage. Others are tortured to confess their guilt, Christians to deny it. Trajan's famous letter to Pliny, he tears to shreds; Christians are not to be hunted down--that is, they are innocent; but they are to be punished--that is, they are guilty. If the one, why not hunt them down? If the other, why punish? Of course Trajan's plan was a compromise, and Tertullian is not a man of compromises. If a founder's name is guilt for a school, look around! Schools of philosophers and schools of cooks bear their founders' names with impunity. But about the Founder of the Christian school curiosity ceases to be inquisitive.

But the "authority of laws" is invoked against truth--_non licet esse vos!_ is the cry. What if laws do forbid Christians to be? "If your law has made a mistake, well, I suppose, it was a human brain that conceived it; for it did not come down from heaven." Laws are always being changed, and have been. "Are you not yourselves every day, as experiment illumines the darkness of antiquity, engaged in felling and cutting the whole of that ancient and ugly forest of laws with the new axes of imperial rescripts and edicts?"[132] Roman laws once forbade extravagance, theatres, divorce--they forbade the religions of Bacchus, Serapis and Isis. Where are those laws now? "You are always praising antiquity, and you improvise your life from day to day."[133]

In pa.s.sing, one remark may be made in view of what is {332} said sometimes of Tertullian and his conception of religion. "To Tertullian the revelation through the Christ is no more than a law."[134] There is truth in this criticism, of course; but unless it is clearly understood that Tertullian drew the distinction, which this pa.s.sage of the _Apology_ and others suggest, between Natural law, as conceived by the Stoics, and civil law as regarded by a Propraetor, he is likely to be misjudged. He constantly slips into the lawyer's way of handling law, for like all lawyers he is apt to think in terms of paper and parchment; but he draws a great distinction, not so familiar to judges and lawyers--as English daily papers abundantly reveal--between the laws of G.o.d or Nature and the laws of human convention or human legislatures. The weak spot was his belief in the text of the Scriptures as the ultimate and irrefragable word and will of G.o.d, though even here, in his happier hours, when he is not under stress of argument, he will interpret the divine and infallible code, not by the letter, but by the general principles to be observed at once in Nature and the book. _Legis injustae honor nullus est_[135] is not the ordinary language of a lawyer.

The odious charges brought by the vulgar against the Christians then, as now in China, and used for their own purposes by men who really knew better, he shows to be incredible. No one has the least evidence of any kind for them, and yet Christian meetings are constantly surprised.

What a triumph would await the spy or the traitor who could prove them!

But they are not believed, or men would harry the Christians from the face of the earth (c. 8). As to the idea that Christians eat children to gain eternal life--who would think it worth the price? No! if such things _are_ done, by whom are they done? He reminds his fellow-countrymen that in the reign of Tiberius priests of Saturn were crucified in Africa on the sacred trees around their temple--for the sacrifice of children. And then who are those who practise abortion?

"how many of those who crowd around and gape for Christian blood?" And the gladiatorial shows? is it the Christians who frequent them?

Atheism and treason were more serious charges. "You do {333} not wors.h.i.+p the G.o.ds." What G.o.ds? He cannot mention them all--"new, old, barbarian, Greek, Roman, foreign, captive, adoptive, special, common, male, female, rustic, urban, nautical and military"--but Saturn at any rate was a man, as the historians know. But they were made G.o.ds after they died. Now, that implies "a G.o.d more sublime, true owner (_mancipem_), so to speak, of divinity," who made them into G.o.ds, for they could not of course have done it themselves; and meanwhile you abolish the only one who could have. But why should he?--"unless the great G.o.d needed their ministry and aid in his divine tasks"--dead men's aid! (c. 11). No, the whole universe is the work of Reason; nothing was left for Saturn to do, or his family. It rained from the beginning, stars shone, thunders roared, and "Jove himself shuddered at the living bolts which you put in his hand." Ask the spiders what they think of your G.o.ds and their webs tell you (c. 12). To-day a G.o.d, to-morrow a pan, as domestic necessity melts and casts the metal. And the G.o.ds are carried round and alms begged for them--_religio mendicans_--"hold out your hand, Jupiter, if you want me to give you anything!"[136] Does Homer's poetry do honour to the G.o.ds (c. 14)--do the actors on the stage (c. 15)?

Christians are not atheists. They wors.h.i.+p one G.o.d, Creator, true, great, whose very greatness makes him known of men and unknown.[137]

Who he is, and that he is one, the human soul knows full well--_O testimonium animae naturaliter Christianae_! But G.o.d has other evidence--_instrumentum litteraturae_. He sent into the world men "inundated with the divine spirit" to proclaim the one G.o.d, who framed all things, who made man, who one day will raise man from the dead for eternal judgment. These writings of the prophets are not secret books.

Anyone can read them in the Greek version, which was made by the seventy elders for Ptolemy Philadelphus. To this book he appeals,--to the majesty of Scripture, to the fulfilment of prophecy.

Zeno called the Logos the maker of all things--and named him Fate, G.o.d, mind of Jove, Necessity. Cleanthes described him as permeating all things. This the Christians also hold to {334} be G.o.d's Word, Reason and Power--and his Son, one with him in being, Spirit as He is Spirit.

This was born of a Virgin, became man, was crucified and rose again.

Even the Caesars would have believed on Christ, if Caesars were not needful to the world, or if there could be Christian Caesars.[138] As for the pagan G.o.ds, they are daemons, daily exorcised into the confession of Christ.

But the charge of Atheism may be retorted. Are not the pagans guilty of Atheism, at once in not wors.h.i.+pping the true G.o.d and in persecuting those who do? As a rule they conceive, with Plato, of a great Jove in heaven surrounded by a hierarchy of G.o.ds and daemons.[139] But, as in the Roman Empire, with its Emperor and its procurators and prefects, it is a capital offence to turn from the supreme ruler to the subordinate, so "may it not involve a charge of irreligion to take away freedom of religion, to forbid free choice of divinity, that I may not wors.h.i.+p whom I will?" Every one else may; but "we are not counted Romans, who do not wors.h.i.+p the G.o.d of the Romans. It is well that G.o.d is G.o.d of all, whose we are, whether we will or no. But with you it is lawful to wors.h.i.+p anything whatever--except the true G.o.d."

But the G.o.ds raised Rome to be what she is. Which G.o.ds? Sterculus?

Larentina? Did Jove forget Crete for Rome's sake--Crete, where he was born, where he lies buried?[140] No, look to it lest G.o.d prove to be the dispenser of kingdoms, to whom belong both the world that is ruled and the man who rules. Some are surprised that Christians prefer "obstinacy to deliverance"--but Christians know from whom _that_ suggestion comes, and they know the malevolence of the daemon ranks, who are now beginning to despair since "they recognize they are not a match for us" (c. 27).

For the Emperor Christians invoke G.o.d, the eternal, the true, the living. They look up, with hands outspread, heads bared, and from their hearts, without a form of words, they pray for long life for the Emperor, an Empire free from alarms, a safe home, brave armies, a faithful senate, an honest people and a quiet world (c. 30). They do this, for the Empire stands {335} between them and the world's end.

(It was a common thought that the world and Rome would end together.) Christians however honour Caesar as G.o.d's vice-gerent; he is theirs more than any one's, for he is set up by the Christians' G.o.d. They make no plots and have no recourse to magic to inquire into his "health" (c.

35).[141] In fact "we are the same to the Emperors as to our next-door neighbours. We are equally forbidden to wish evil, to do evil, to speak evil, to think evil of anyone." So much for being enemies of the state (c. 36).

Christians do not retaliate on the mob for its violence, though, if they did, their numbers would be serious. "We are but of yesterday, and we have filled everything, cities, islands, camps, palace, forum,"

etc.; "all we have left you is the temples." But "far be it that a divine school should vindicate itself with human fire, or grieve to suffer that wherein it is proved" (c. 37). Christians make no disturbances and aspire to no offices. They are content to follow their religion and look after the poor, the s.h.i.+pwrecked, and men in mines and prisons. "See how they love each other!" say the heathen.[142] They are not, as alleged, the cause of public disasters; though if the Nile do not overflow, or if the Tiber do, it is at once _Christianos ad leonem_! But they are "unprofitable in business!"

Yes, to pimps, poisoners and mathematicians; still they are not Brahmans or solitaries of the woods, exiles from life, and they refuse no gift of G.o.d. "We sail with you, take the field with you, share your country life, and know all the intercourse of arts and business" (cc.

42, 43). They are innocent, for they fear G.o.d and not the proconsul.

If they were a philosophic school, they would have toleration--"who compels a philosopher to sacrifice, to renounce, or to set out lamps at midday to no purpose?" Yet the philosophers openly destroy your G.o.ds and your superst.i.tions in their books, and win your applause for it--and they "bark at your princes." He then points out how much there is in common to Christians and philosophers, and yet (in a burst of temper) how unlike they are. No, "where is the likeness between the philosopher and the Christian? the disciple of Greece and of heaven?

the trafficker in fame and in life? the friend and the foe of error?"

(c. 46). {336} The Christian artisan knows G.o.d better than Plato did.

And yet what is knowledge and genius in philosopher and poet, is "presumption" in a Christian! "Say the things are false that protect you--mere presumption! yet necessary. Silly! yet useful. For those who believe them are compelled to become better men, for fear of eternal punishment and hope of eternal refreshment. So it is inexpedient to call that false or count that silly, which it is expedient should be presumed true. On no plea can you condemn what does good" (c. 49).

Yet, whatever their treatment, Christians would rather be condemned than fall from G.o.d. Their death is their victory; their "obstinacy"

educates the world; and while men condemn them, G.o.d acquits them. That is his last word--_a deo absolvimur_ (c. 50).

Such, in rough outline, is the great Apology--not quite the work of the fuller or baker at whom Celsus sneered. Yet it has not the accent of the conventional Greek or Latin gentleman, nor that of the philosophic Greek Christian. The style is unlike anything of the age. Everything in it is individual; there is hardly a quotation in the piece.

Everything again is centripetal; Tertullian is too much in earnest to lose himself in the endless periods of the rhetorician, or in the charming fancies dear to the eclectic and especially to contemporary Platonists. Indeed his tone toward literature and philosophy is startlingly contemptuous, not least so when contrasted with that of Clement.

For this there are several reasons. First of all, like Carlyle, Tertullian has "to write with his nerves in a kind of blaze," and, like Carlyle, he says things strongly and sweepingly. It is partly temperament, partly the ingrown habit of the pleader. Something must be allowed to the man of moods, whose way it is to utter strongly what he feels for the moment. Such men do a service for which they have little thanks. Many moods go in them to the making of the mind, moods not peculiar to themselves. In most men feelings rarely find full and living expression, and something is gained when they are so expressed, even at the cost of apparent exaggeration. The sweeping half-truth at once suggests its complement to the man who utters it, and may stir very wholesome processes of thought in the milder person who hears it.

{337}

[Sidenote: The philosophers]

In the next place the philosophers may have deserved the criticism.

Fine talk and idle talk, in philosophic terms, had disgusted Epictetus;[143] and for few has Lucian more mockery than for the philosophers of his day--Tertullian's day--with their plat.i.tudes and their beards, their flunkeyism and love of gain. Clement of Alexandria, who loved philosophy, had occasional hard words for the vanity of its professors.[144] For a man of Tertullian's earnestness they were too little serious. _Gloriae animal_[145] is one of his phrases--a creature of vainglory was not likely to appeal to a man who lived in full view of the lion and the circus. He had made a root and branch cleavage with idolatry, because no men could die like the Christians unless they had the truth. The philosophers--to say nothing of their part now and then in stirring the people against the Christians--had made terms with polytheism, beast-wors.h.i.+p, magic, all that was worst and falsest in paganism, "lovers of wisdom" and seekers after truth as they professed themselves to be. Ancient Philosophy suggests to the modern student the name of Herac.l.i.tus or Plato; but Tertullian lived in the same streets with Apuleius, philosopher and Platonist, humorist and _gloriae animal_. But even Plato vexed Tertullian.[146] The "c.o.c.k to be offered to aesculapius" was too available a quotation in a world where the miracles of the great Healer were everywhere famous. The triflers and the dogmatists of the day used Plato's myths to confute the Christian doctrine of the resurrection. And of course Plato and Tertullian are in temperament so far apart, that an antipathy provoked by such causes was hardly to be overcome.