It remains briefly to notice the confessedly spurious works which the editions of Tertullian generally have appended to them. With these Kaye does not deal. The fragment, adv. omnes Hæreses, Oehler attributes to Victorinus Petavionensis, i.e., Victorinus bishop of Pettaw, on the Drave, in Austrian Styria. It was once thought he ought to be called Pictaviensis, i.e. of Poictiers; but John Launoy [69] has shown this to be an error. Victorinus is said by Jerome to have "understood Greek better than Latin; hence his works are excellent for the sense, but mean as to the style." [70] Cave believes him to have been a Greek by birth. Cassiodorus [71] states him to have been once a professor of rhetoric. Jerome's statement agrees with the style of the tract in question; and Jerome distinctly says Victorinus did write adversus omnes Hæreses. Allix leaves the question of its authorship quite uncertain. If Victorinus be the author, the book falls clearly within the Ante-Nicene period; for Victorinus fell a martyr in the Diocletian persecution, probably about a.d. 303.
The next fragment--"Of the Execrable Gods of the Heathens"--is of quite uncertain authorship. Oehler would attribute it "to some declaimer not quite ignorant of Tertullian's writings," but certainly not to Tertullian himself.
Lastly we come to the metrical fragments. Concerning these, it is perhaps impossible to assign them to their rightful owners. Oehler has not troubled himself much about them; but he seems to regard the Jonah as worthy of more regard than the rest, for he seems to have intended giving more labour to its editing at some future time. Whether he has ever done so, or given us his German version of Tertullian's own works, which, "si Deus adjuverit," he distinctly promises in his preface, I do not know. Perhaps the best thing to be done under the circumstances is to give the judgment of the learned Peter Allix. It may be premised that by the celebrated George Fabricius [72] --who published his great work, Poetarum Veterum Ecclesiasticorum Opera Christiana, etc., in 1564--the Five Books in Reply to Marcion, and the Judgment of the Lord, are ascribed to Tertullian, the Genesis and Sodom to Cyprian. Pamelius likewise seems to have ascribed the Five Books, the Jonah, and the Sodom [73] to Tertullian; and according to Lardner, Bishop Bull likewise attributed the Five Books to him. [74] They have been generally ascribed to the Victorinus above mentioned. Tillemont, among others, thinks they may well enough be his. [75] Rigaltius is content to demonstrate that they are not Tertullian's, but leaves the real authorship without attempting to decide it. Of the others the same eminent critic says, "They seem to have been written at Carthage, at an age not far removed from Tertullian's." [76] Allix, after observing that Pamelius is inconsistent with himself in attributing the Genesis and Sodom at one time to Tertullian, at another to Cyprian, rejects both views equally, and assigns the Genesis with some confidence to Salvian, a presbyter of Marseilles, whose "floruit" Cave gives cir. 440, a contemporary of Gennadius, and a copious author. To this it is, Allix thinks, that Gennadius alludes in his Catalogue of Illustrious Men, c. 77.
The Judgment of the Lord Allix ascribes to one Verecundus, an African bishop, whose date he finds it difficult to decide exactly. He refers to two of the name: one Bishop of Tunis, whom Victor of Tunis in his chronicle mentions as having died in exile at Chalcedon a.d. 552; the other Bishop of Noba, who visited Carthage with many others a.d. 482, at the summons of King Huneric, to answer there for their faith;--and would ascribe the poem to the former, thinking that he finds an allusion to it in the article upon that Verecundus in the de Viris Illustribus of Isidore of Seville. Oehler agrees with him. The Five Books Allix seems to hint may be attributed to some imitator of the Victorinus of Pettaw named above. Oehler attributes them rather to one Victorinus, or Victor, of Marseilles, a rhetorician, who died a.d. 450. He appears in G. Fabricius as Claudius Marius Victorinus, writer of a Commentary on Genesis, and an epistle ad Salomonem Abbata, both in verse, and of some considerable length.
[1] Elucidation I.
[2] The notes of Dr. Holmes were bracketted, and I have been forced to remove this feature, as brackets are tokens in this edition of the contributions of American editors. The perpetual recurrence of brackets in his translations has led me to improve the page by parenthetical marks instead, which answer as well and rarely can be mistaken for the author's parentheses, while these disfigure the printer's work much less. I have sometimes substituted italics for brackets, where an inconsiderable word, like and or for, was bracketted by the translator. In every case that I have noted, an intelligent reader will readily perceive such instances; but a critic who may wish to praise, or condemn, should carefully compare the Edinburgh pages with our own. I found them so painful to the eye and so needlessly annoying to the reader, that I have taken the responsibility of making what seems to me a very great typographical improvement.
[3] (I.) Concerning Tertullian; (II.) Concerning his Work against Marcion, its date, etc.; (III.) Concerning Marcion; (IV.) Concerning Tertullian's Bible; (V.) Influence of his Montanism on his writings.
[4] We quote Bishop Kaye's translation of Jerome's article; see his Account of the Writings of Tertullian, pp. 5-8.
[5] Adv. Parmenianum, i.
[6] Chap. ii.
[7] Eccl. Hist., ii. 2.
[8] Valesius, however, supposes the historian's words ton malista epi Romes lampron to mean, that Tertullian had obtained distinction among Latin writers.
[9] See De Præscript. Hæretic. xxx.
[10] De Poenitentia, i. Hoc genus hominum, quod et ipsi retro fuimus, cæci, sine Domini lumine, naturâ tenus norunt; De Fuga in Persecutione, vi. Nobis autem et via nationum patet, in quâ et inventi sumus; Adv. Marcionem, iii. 21. Et nationes, quod sumus nos; Apolog. xviii. Hæc et nos risimus aliquando; de vestris fuimus; also De Spectac. xix.
[11] [Kaye, p. 9. A fair view of this point.]
[12] These notes of Bishop Kaye may be found, in their fuller form, in his work on Tertullian, pp. 8-12.
[13] Book i., chap. xv.
[14] Jerome probably took this date as the central period, when Tertullian "flourished," because of its being the only clearly authenticated one, and because also (it may be) of the importance and fame of the Treatise against Marcion.
[15] So Clinton, Fasti Romani, i. 204; or 208, Pamelius, Vita Tertull.
[16] In his treatise, De vera ætate ac doctrina script. Tertulliani, sections 28, 45.
[17] De Præscript. Hæret. xxx.
[18] Comp. Adv. Marcionem, iv. 4.
[19] I., Adv. Hæret. xlii. 1.
[20] Dr. Burton's Lectures on Eccl. Hist. of First Three Centuries, ii. 105-109.
[21] Or versions.
[22] Tertullianus.
[23] Vincentius Lirinensis, in his celebrated Commonitorium, expresses the opinion of Catholic churchmen concerning Tertullian thus: "Tertullian, among the Latins, without controversy, is the chief of all our writers. For who was more learned than he? Who in divinity or humanity more practised? For, by a certain wonderful capacity of mind, he attained to and understood all philosophy, all the sects of philosophers, all their founders and supporters, all their systems, all sorts of histories and studies. And for his wit, was he not so excellent, so grave, so forcible, that he scarce ever undertook the overthrow of any position, but either by quickness of wit he undermined, or by weight of reason he crushed it? Further, who is able to express the praises which his style of speech deserves, which is fraught (I know none like it) with that cogency of reason, that such as it cannot persuade, it compels to assent; whose so many words almost are so many sentences; whose so many senses, so many victories? This know Marcion and Apelles, Praxeas and Hermogenes, Jews, Gentiles, Gnostics, and divers others, whose blasphemous opinions he hath overthrown with his many and great volumes, as it had been thunderbolts. And yet this man after all, this Tertullian, not retaining the Catholic doctrine--that is, the old faith--hath discredited with his later error his worthy writings," etc.--Chap. xxiv. (Oxford trans. chap. xviii.)
[24] Neander's introduction to his Antignostikus should be read in connection with this topic. He powerfully delineates the disposition of Tertullian and the character of Montanism, and attributes his secession to that sect not to outward causes, but to "his internal congeniality of mind." But, inasmuch as a man's subjective development is very much guided by circumstances, it is not necessary, in agreeing with Neander, to disbelieve some such account as Jerome has given us of Tertullian (Neander's Antignostikus, etc. Bohn's trans., vol. ii. pp. 200-207).
[25] Introductory Notice to the Anti-Marcion, pp. xiii., xiv.
[26] In the end of Chapter Second.
[27] Eccl. Hist. illust. from Tertullian's Writings, p. 36 sqq. (ed. 3, Lond. 1845).
[28] See Kaye, as above.
[29] Antignostikus, p. 424 (Bohn's tr., ed. 1851).
[30] See Judg. ix. 2 sqq.
[31] See 2 Kings (4 Kings in LXX. and Vulg.) xiv. 9.
[32] Here, again, our limits forbid a discussion; but the allusion to the Rhone having "scarcely yet lost the stain of blood" which we find in the ad. Natt. i. 17, compared with Apol. 35, seems to favour the idea of those who date the ad. Natt. earlier than the Apology, and consider the latter as a kind of new edition of the former: while it would fix the date of the ad. Natt. as not certainly earlier than 197, in which year (as we have seen) Albinus died. The fatal battle took place on the banks of the Rhone.
[33] In c. 7.
[34] Viz. in the de Monog.
[35] It looks strange to see Tertullian's works referred to as consisting of "about thirty short treatises" in Murdock's note on Moshiem. See the ed. of the Eccl. Hist. by Dr. J. Seaton Reid, p. 65, n. 2, Lond. and Bel. 1852.
[36] This last qualification is very specially observable in Dr. Kaye.
[37] In his article on Tertullian in Smith's Dict. of Biog. and Myth.
[38] Referred to apparently in de Pudic. ad init.-Tr.
[39] The de Præscr. is ref. to in adv. Marc. i.; adv Prax. 2; de Carne Christi, 2; adv. Hermog. 1.
[40] Ref. to in de Res. Carn. 2, 14; Scorp. 5; de Anima, 21. The only mark, as the learned Bishop's remarks imply, for fixing the date of publication as Montanistic, is the fact that Tertullian alludes, in the opening sentences, to B. i. Hence B. ii. could not, in its present form, have appeared till after B. i. Now B. i. contains evident marks of Montanism: see the last chapter, for instance. But the writer speaks (in the same passage) of B. ii. as being the treatise, the ill fate of which in its unfinished condition he there relates--at least such seems the legitimate sense of his words--now remodelled. Hence, when originally written, it may not have been Montanistic.--Tr.
[41] Ref. to in de Res. Carn. 2, 17, 45; comp. cc. 18, 21.
[42] Ref. to in de Carn. Chr. 7.
[43] Ref. to in de Res. Carn. 2.
[44] See the beginning and end of the de Carne Christi.--Tr. Ref. to in adv. Marc. v. 10.
[45] In c. 4 Tertullian speaks as if he had already refuted all the heretics.
[46] Ref. to in de Jej. c. 1.
[47] Ref. to in de Idolol. 13; in de Cult. Fem. i. 8. In the de Cor. 6 is a reference to the Greek tract de Spectaculis by our author.
[48] Archdeacon Evans, in his Biography of the Early Church (in the Theological Library), suggests that the success which the Apology met with, or at least the fame it brought its author, may have been the occasion of Tertullian's visit to Rome. He rejects entirely the supposition that Tertullian was a presbyter of the Roman church; nor does he think Eusebius' words, kai ton malista epi Romes lampron (Eccl. Hist. ii. 2. 47 ad fin., 48 ad init.), sufficiently plain to be relied on. One thing does seem pretty plain, that the rendering of them which Rufinus gives, and Valesius follows, "inter nostros" (sc. Latinos) "Scriptores admodum clarus," cannot be correct. That we find a famous Roman lawyer Tertullianus, or Tertyllianus, among the writers fragments of whom are preserved in the Pandects, Neander reminds us; but (as he says) it by no means follows, even if it could be proved that the date of the said lawyer corresponded with the supposed date of our Tertullian, that they were identical. Still it is worth bearing in mind, especially as a similarity of language exists, or has been thought to exist, between the jurist and the Christian author. And the juridical language and tone of our author do seem to point to his having--though Mr. Evans regards that as doubtful--been a trained lawyer.--Tr.
[49] Kaye, as above. Pref. to 2d ed. pp. xxi. xxii. incorporated in the 3d ed., which I always quote.
[50] i.e., four years after Kaye's third.
[51] See Pref. 2d ed. p. xix. n. 9.