History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity. A. D. 100-325

derived from his book and from the brief notice of Jerome in his catalogue of illustrious men. But

few writers have impressed their individuality so strongly in their books as this African father. In

this respect, as well as in others, he resembles St. Paul, and Martin Luther. He was born about the

year 150, at Carthage, the ancient rival of Rome, where his father was serving as captain of a Roman

legion under the proconsul of Africa. He received a liberal Graeco-Roman education; his writings

manifest an extensive acquaintance with historical, philosophical, poetic, and antiquarian literature,

and with juridical terminology and all the arts of an advocate. He seems to have devoted himself

to politics and forensic eloquence, either in Carthage or in Rome. Eusebius calls him "a man

accurately acquainted with the Roman laws,"

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 and many regard him as identical with the

Tertyllus, or Tertullianus, who is the author of several fragments in the Pandects.

To his thirtieth or fortieth year he lived in heathen blindness and licentiousness.

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Towards the end of the second century be embraced Christianity, we know not exactly on what

occasion, but evidently from deepest conviction, and with all the fiery energy of his soul; defended

it henceforth with fearless decision against heathens, Jews, and heretics; and studied the strictest

morality of life. His own words may be applied to himself: "Fiunt, non nascuntur Christiani." He

was married, and gives us a glowing picture of Christian family life, to which we have before

referred; but in his zeal for every form of self-denial, he set celibacy still higher, and advised his

wife, in case he should die before her to remain a widow, or, at least never to marry an unbelieving

husband; and he afterwards put second marriage even on a level with adultery. He entered the

ministry of the Catholic church,

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 first probably in Carthage, perhaps in Rome, where at all

events he spent some time

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 but, like Clement of Alexandria and Origen, he never rose above

the rank of presbyter.

Some years after, between 199 and 203, he joined the puritanic, though orthodox, sect of

the Montanists. Jerome attributes this change to personal motives, charging it to the envy and insults

of the Roman clergy, from whom he himself experienced many an indignity.

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 But Tertullian

was inclined to extremes from the first, especially to moral austerity. He was no doubt attracted by

the radical contempt for the world, the strict asceticism, the severe discipline, the martyr enthusiasm,

and the chiliasm of the Montanists, and was repelled by the growing conformity to the world in the

Roman church, which just at that period, under Zephyrinus and Callistus, openly took under its

protection a very lax penitential discipline, and at the same time, though only temporarily, favored

the Patripassian error of Praxeas, an opponent of the Montanists. Of this man Tertullian therefore

says, in his sarcastic way: He has executed in Rome two works of the devil; has driven out prophecy

(the Montanistic) and brought in heresy (the Patripassian); has turned off the Holy Ghost and

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H. E. II. 2. He adds that Tertullian was "particularly distinguished among the eminent men of Rome," and quotes a passage

from his Apology, which is also translated into the Greek."

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De Resurr. Carn. c. 59, he confesses: "Ego me scio neque alia carne adulteria commisisse, neque nunc alia carne ad

continentiam eniti." Comp. also Apolog., c. 18 and 25; De Anima, c. 2; De Paenit., c. 4 and 12; Ad Scapul., c. 5.

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This fact, however, rests only on the authority of Jerome, and does not appear from Tertullian’s own writings. Roman

Catholic historians, with their dislike to married priests, have made him a layman on the insufficient ground of the passage:

"Nonne et Laici sacerdotes sumus? "De Exhort. Cast., c. 7.

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De Cultu Femin., c. 7. Comp. Euseb. II. 2.

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De Vir. illustr., c. 53: "Hic [Tert.] cum usque ad mediam aetatem presbyter ecclesia epermansisset, invidia et contumeliis

clericorum Romanae ecclesiae ad Montani dogma delapsus in multis libris novac prophetiae meminit."

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History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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crucified the Father.

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Tertullian now fought the catholics, or the psychicals, is he frequently

calls them, with the same inexorable sternness with which he had combated the heretics. The

departures of the Montanists, however, related more to points of morality and discipline than of

doctrine; and with all his hostility to Rome, Tertullian remained a zealous advocate of the catholic

faith, and wrote, even from his schismatic position, several of his most effective works against the

heretics, especially the Gnostics. Indeed, as a divine, he stood far above this fanatical sect, and

gave it by his writings an importance and an influence in the church itself which it certainly would

never otherwise have attained.

He labored in Carthage as a Montanist presbyter and an author, and died, as Jerome says,

in decrepit old age, according to some about the year 220, according to others not till 240; for the

exact time, as well as the manner of his death, are unknown. His followers in Africa propagated

themselves, under the name of "Tertullianists," down to the time of Augustin in the fifth century,

and took perhaps a middle place between the proper Montanists and the catholic church. That he

ever returned into the bosom of Catholicism is an entirely groundless opinion.

Strange that this most powerful defender of old catholic orthodoxy and the teacher of the

high-churchly Cyprian, should have been a schismatic and all antagonist of Rome. But he had in

his constitution the tropical fervor and acerbity of the Punic character, and that bold spirit of

independence in which his native city of Carthage once resisted, through more than a hundred

years’ war,

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 the rising power of the seven-hilled city on the Tiber. He truly represents the

African church, in which a similar antagonism continued to reveal itself, not only among the

Donatists, but even among the leading advocates of Catholicism. Cyprian died at variance with

Rome on the question of heretical baptism; and Augustin, with all his great services to the catholic

system of faith, became at the same time, through the anti-Peligian doctrines of sin and grace, the

father of evangelical Protestantism and of semi-Protestant Jansenism.

Hippolytus presents several interesting points of contact. He was a younger contemporary

of Tertullian though they never met is far as we know. Both were champions of catholic orthodoxy

against heresy, and yet both opposed to Rome. Hippolytus charged two popes with heresy as well

as laxity of discipline; and yet in view of his supposed repentance and martyrdom (as reported by

Prudentius nearly two hundred years afterwards), he canonized in the Roman church; while such

honor was never conferred upon the African, though he was a greater and more useful man.

II. Character. Tertullian was a rare genius, perfectly original and fresh, but angular, boisterous

and eccentric; full of glowing fantasy, pointed wit, keen discernment, polemic dexterity, and moral

earnestness, but wanting in clearness, moderation, and symmetrical development. He resembled a

foaming mountain torrent rather than a calm, transparent river in the valley. His vehement temper

was never fully subdued, although he struggled sincerely against it.

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 He was a man of strong

convictions, and never hesitated to express them without fear or favor.

Like almost all great men, he combined strange contrarieties of character. Here we are again

reminded of Luther; though the reformer had nothing of the ascetic gloom and rigor of the African

father, and exhibits instead with all his gigantic energy, a kindly serenity and childlike simplicity

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Adv. Prax. c. 1.

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B.C. 264-146,

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Comp. his own painful confession in De Patient. c. 1: "Miserrimus ego semper aeger caloribus impatientiae."

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Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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