PRIVILEGES PURCHASED.

249

In some districts, the privilege of pursuing their worship, unmolested, was purchased by the churches, but this was greatly opposed, by the more devoted and prominent Christians, on the ground, that it was derogatory to the character of Christianity, and served only to excite the cupidity of avaricious minions of the government, and was soon abolished.

CHAPTER XIX:

TERTULLIAN OF CARTHAGE.

His Birth Place and Parentage-His Education and Acquirements-A Presbyter at Rome-His Style and Language-His Opposition to Gnosticism-Tertullian a Montanist-Montanus-His Views-Montanistic Doctrines-Views of the Church-How to Attribute Tertullian's Montanism-His ApologyHis Real Position-The Occasion of his Apology-The Persecution of these Times-The Five Carthagenian Martyrs-Perpetua and Felicita-The Spirit and Boldness of the Apology-Its Subject and Beauty.

THE peculiar theology of the North African church, has its origin in Tertullian, although its influence and full development is attributed to the powerful talents of Augustine, through whom it swayed the whole western church. Tertullian is, therefore, an important character among the fathers, as the representative of the North African theology, which grew up in the latter part of the second, and the beginning of the third century.

He was born at Carthage, the metropolis of Africa, A. D. 150; his father was the son of a proconsular centurion, who was in constant attendance upon the proconsul of Africa, and he reared his son in the habits and faith of idolatry. Tertullian was, however,

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TERTULLIAN A PRESBYTER.

educated in the best possible manner, and his studies included all the literature of the times. Jerome calls him the first Latin writer; but he understood the Greek, and composed three treatises in that language, but they have not reached our day, only in broken fragments, and unconnected parts. The quotations with which his writings abound, show that he was extensively acquainted with poetry, natural philosophy, and medical science; and, as he was bred to the law,* he uses, with great familiarity, the terms and phrases peculiar to his profession.

Before his conversion, he was a thorough heathen, and indulged in all the vices of his day. We have no account of the particulars of his conversion, but in A. D. 196, we find him a presbyter at Rome, where his activity as a theologian soon brought him into extensive notice. The number and character of his works show that he was a most zealous defender of the opinions which he entertained.

His lively imagination and zeal against the Gnostic doctrine of Æons, which he ascribed to the Platonic doctrine of immaterial forms, seduced him; so that he unfortunately banished all pure intelligence from his system, and maintained that all intelligent beings, including even God himself, was material. "Who can deny," says he, "that God, though a spirit, is a body? for spirit is body of a particular kind." He holds the opinion that there was a time when Christ did not exist, and advances some absurd opinions with respect to marriage, war, and the power of magistrates.

Euseb. H. E. ii, 2.

MONTANUS-HIS DOCTRINES.

253

It was this anti-Gnostic religious realism, which led Tertullian to adopt the opinions of Montanus. This man was a convert to Christianity in a village of Mysia, called Ardaban, on the confines of Phrygia. He was of a people in whose religion we recognize the wild enthusiasm which distinguished this sect. Inclined to fanaticism and superstition, believing in enchantments and magic, it is quite natural to transfer this Phrygian spirit, which showed itself in the ecstacies of the priests of Cybele, to the ecstacies and somnambulism of the Montanists. But what had been brought forward by Montanus is in broken fragments, in the language of feeling, and not of reason; was conceived by Tertullian, more clearly, and placed into a more rational system.

Montanus used to fall into unconscious transports, during which, he conceived that he became the passive instrument of a higher power, to deliver predictions, which were interpreted, from enigmatical and mystical expressions. He believed in a strict ascetic life, and exhorted Christians boldly to confess their faith, that they might seek martyrdom. During his transports he predicted new persecutions, and the near approach of that punishment which God had threatened against the persecutors of his people. He believed in the second coming of Christ to establish upon earth the Millenarian kingdom, while he extolled the blessedness of that kingdom in the most extravagant and singular coloring.

Montanism taught the gradual development of the