Man's whole nature in Christ, seems to be sanctified by the Holy Spirit's suffusion of man's spirit; this rules and governs the psychic nature and through it the body.
II.
(The entire work, cap. xxi. p. 474.)
He who has followed Tertullian through the mazes in which Marcion, in spite of shifts and turnings innumerable, has been hunted down, and defeated, must recognize the great work performed by this author in behalf of Christian Orthodoxy. It seems to have been the plan of Christ's watchful care over His Church, that, in the earliest stages of its existence the enemy should be allowed to display his utmost malice and to bring out all his forces against Truth. Thus, before the meeting of Church-councils the language of faith had grown up, and clear views and precise statements of doctrine had been committed to the idioms of human thought. But, the labours of Tertullian are not confined to these diverse purposes. With all the faults of his acute and forensic mind, how powerfully he illuminates the Scriptures and glorifies them as containing the whole system of the Faith. How rich are his quotations, and how penetrating his conceptions of their uses. Besides all this, what an introduction he gives us to the modes of thought which were becoming familiar in the West, and which were convening the Latin tongue to new uses, and making it capable of expressing Augustine's mind and so of creating new domains of Learning among the nations of Europe.
If I have treated tenderly the reputation of this great Master, in my notes upon his Marcion, it is with a twofold purpose. (1.) It seems to me due to truth that his name should be less associated with his deplorable lapse than with his long and faithful services to the Church, and (2.) that the student should thus follow his career with a pleasure and with a confidence the lack of which perpetually annoys us when we give the first place to the Montanist and not to the Catholic. Let this be our spirit in accompanying him into his fresh campaigns against "the grievous wolves" foreseen by St. Paul with tears. Acts xx. 29, 30.
But as our Author invokes a careful examination of his "entire work," let the student recur to Irenæus (Vol. I. p. 352, etc.) and observe how formidable, from the beginning, was the irreligion of Marcion. His doctrines did truly "eat like a canker," assailing the Scriptures by mutilations and corruptions of the text itself. No marvel that Tertullian shows him no quarter, though we must often regret the forensic violence of his retort. As to the Dualism which, through Marcion, thus threatened the first article of the Creed, consult the valuable remarks of the Encyc. Britannica, ("Mithras"). Mithras became known to the Romans circa b.c. 70, and his worship flourished under Trajan and his successors. An able writer remarks that it was natural "Dualism should develop itself out of primitive Zoroastrianism. The human mind has ever been struck with a certain antagonism of which it has sought to discover the cause. Evil seems most easily accounted for by the supposition of an evil Person; and the continuance of an equal struggle, without advantage to either side, seems to imply the equality of that evil Person with the author of all good. Thus Dualism had its birth. Many came to believe in the existence of two co-eternal and co-equal Persons, one good and the other evil, between whom there has been from all eternity a perpetual conflict, and between whom the same conflict must continue to rage through all coming time."
tertullian against_hermogenes anf03 tertullian-against_hermogenes Against Hermogenes /ccel/schaff/anf03.v.v.html
Against Hermogenes
III.
Against Hermogenes.
Containing an Argument Against His Opinion that Matter is Eternal.
[Translated by Dr. Holmes.]
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Chapter I.--The Opinions of Hermogenes, by the Prescriptive Rule of Antiquity Shown to Be Heretical. Not Derived from Christianity, But from Heathen Philosophy. Some of the Tenets Mentioned.
We are accustomed, for the purpose of shortening argument, [6129] to lay down the rule against heretics of the lateness of their date. [6130] For in as far as by our rule, priority is given to the truth, which also foretold that there would be heresies, in so far must all later opinions be prejudged as heresies, being such as were, by the more ancient rule of truth, predicted as (one day) to happen. Now, the doctrine of Hermogenes has this [6131] taint of novelty. He is, in short, [6132] a man living in the world at the present time; by his very nature a heretic, and turbulent withal, who mistakes loquacity for eloquence, and supposes impudence to be firmness, and judges it to be the duty of a good conscience to speak ill of individuals. [6133] Moreover, he despises God's law in his painting, [6134] maintaining repeated marriages, [6135] alleges the law of God in defence of lust, [6136] and yet despises it in respect of his art. [6137] He falsifies by a twofold process--with his cautery and his pen. [6138] He is a thorough adulterer, both doctrinally and carnally, since he is rank indeed with the contagion of your marriage-hacks, [6139] and has also failed in cleaving to the rule of faith as much as the apostle's own Hermogenes. [6140] However, never mind the man, when it is his doctrine which I question. He does not appear to acknowledge any other Christ as Lord, [6141] though he holds Him in a different way; but by this difference in his faith he really makes Him another being,--nay, he takes from Him everything which is God, since he will not have it that He made all things of nothing. For, turning away from Christians to the philosophers, from the Church to the Academy and the Porch, he learned there from the Stoics how to place Matter (on the same level) with the Lord, just as if it too had existed ever both unborn and unmade, having no beginning at all nor end, out of which, according to him, [6142] the Lord afterwards created all things.
[6129] Compendii gratia. [The reference here to the De Præscript. forbids us to date this tract earlier than 207 a.d. Of this Hermogenes, we only know that he was probably a Carthaginian, a painter, and of a versatile and clever mind.]
[6130] This is the criterion prescribed in the Præscript. Hæret.xxxi. xxxiv., and often applied by Tertullian. See our Anti-Marcion, pp. 272, 345, 470, and passim.
[6131] The tam novella is a relative phrase, referring to the fore-mentioned rule.
[6132] Denique.
[6133] Maldicere singuiis.
[6134] Probably by painting idols (Rigalt.; and so Neander).
[6135] It is uncertain whether Tertullian means to charge Hermogenes with defending polygamy, or only second marriages, in the phrase nubit assidue. Probably the latter, which was offensive to the rigorous Tertullian; and so Neander puts it.
[6136] Quoting Gen. i. 28, "Be fruitful and multiply" (Rigalt.).
[6137] Disregarding the law when it forbids the representation of idols. (Rigalt.).
[6138] Et cauterio et stilo. The former instrument was used by the encaustic painters for burning in the wax colours into the ground of their pictures (Westropp's Handbook of Archæology, p. 219). Tertullian charges Hermogenes with using his encaustic art to the injury of the scriptures, by practically violating their precepts in his artistic works; and with using his pen (stilus) in corrupting the doctrine thereof by his heresy.
[6139] By the nubentium contagium, Tertullian, in his Montanist rigour, censures those who married more than once.
[6140] 2 Tim. i. 15.
[6141] Thus differing from Marcion.
[6142] The force of the subjunctive, ex qua fecerit.