Chapter XII.--Further Answers to the Plea, How Am I to Live?
In vain do we flatter ourselves as to the necessities of human maintenance, if--after faith sealed [238] --we say, "I have no means to live?" [239] For here I will now answer more fully that abrupt proposition. It is advanced too late. For after the similitude of that most prudent builder, [240] who first computes the costs of the work, together with his own means, lest, when he has begun, he afterwards blush to find himself spent, deliberation should have been made before. But even now you have the Lord's sayings, as examples taking away from you all excuse. For what is it you say? "I shall be in need." But the Lord calls the needy "happy." [241] "I shall have no food." But "think not," says He, "about food;" [242] and as an example of clothing we have the lilies. [243] "My work was my subsistence." Nay, but "all things are to be sold, and divided to the needy." [244] "But provision must be made for children and posterity." "None, putting his hand on the plough, and looking back, is fit" for work. [245] "But I was under contract." "None can serve two lords." [246] If you wish to be the Lord's disciple, it is necessary you "take your cross, and follow the Lord:" [247] your cross; that is, your own straits and tortures, or your body only, which is after the manner of a cross. Parents, wives, children, will have to be left behind, for God's sake. [248] Do you hesitate about arts, and trades, and about professions likewise, for the sake of children and parents? Even there was it demonstrated to us, that both "dear pledges," [249] and handicrafts, and trades, are to be quite left behind for the Lord's sake; while James and John, called by the Lord, do leave quite behind both father and ship; [250] while Matthew is roused up from the toll-booth; [251] while even burying a father was too tardy a business for faith. [252] None of them whom the Lord chose to Him said, "I have no means to live." Faith fears not famine. It knows, likewise, that hunger is no less to be contemned by it for God's sake, than every kind of death. It has learnt not to respect life; how much more food? [You ask] "How many have fulfilled these conditions?" But what with men is difficult, with God is easy. [253] Let us, however, comfort ourselves about the gentleness and clemency of God in such wise, as not to indulge our "necessities" up to the point of affinities with idolatry, but to avoid even from afar every breath of it, as of a pestilence. [And this] not merely in the cases forementioned, but in the universal series of human superstition; whether appropriated to its gods, or to the defunct, or to kings, as pertaining to the selfsame unclean spirits, sometimes through sacrifices and priesthoods, sometimes through spectacles and the like, sometimes through holy-days.
[238] i.e., in baptism.
[239] See above, chaps. v. and viii. [One is reminded here of the famous pleasantry of Dr. Johnson; see Boswell.]
[240] See Luke xiv. 28-30.
[241] Luke vi. 20.
[242] Matt. vi. 25, 31, etc.; Luke xii. 22-24.
[243] Matt. vi. 28; Luke xii. 28.
[244] Matt. xix. 21; Luke xviii. 22.
[245] Luke ix. 62, where the words are, "is fit for the kingdom of God."
[246] Matt. vi. 24; Luke xvi. 13.
[247] Matt. xvi. 24; Mark viii. 34; Luke ix. 23; xiv. 27.
[248] Luke xiv. 26; Mark x. 29, 30; Matt. xix. 27-30. Compare these texts with Tertullian's words, and see the testimony he thus gives to the deity of Christ.
[249] i.e., any dear relations.
[250] Matt. iv. 21, 22; Mark i. 19, 20; Luke v. 10, 11.
[251] Matt. ix. 9; Mark ii. 14; Luke v. 29.
[252] Luke ix. 59, 60.
[253] Matt. xix. 26; Luke i. 37; xviii. 27.
Chapter XIII.--Of the Observance of Days Connected with Idolatry.
But why speak of sacrifices and priesthoods? Of spectacles, moreover, and pleasures of that kind, we have already filled a volume of their own. [254] In this place must be handled the subject of holidays and other extraordinary solemnities, which we accord sometimes to our wantonness, sometimes to our timidity, in opposition to the common faith and Discipline. The first point, indeed, on which I shall join issue is this: whether a servant of God ought to share with the very nations themselves in matters of his kind either in dress, or in food, or in any other kind of their gladness. "To rejoice with the rejoicing, and grieve with the grieving," [255] is said about brethren by the apostle when exhorting to unanimity. But, for these purposes, "There is nought of communion between light and darkness," [256] between life and death or else we rescind what is written, "The world shall rejoice, but ye shall grieve." [257] If we rejoice with the world, there is reason to fear that with the world we shall grieve too. But when the world rejoices, let us grieve; and when the world afterward grieves, we shall rejoice. Thus, too, Eleazar [258] in Hades, [259] (attaining refreshment in Abraham's bosom) and the rich man, (on the other hand, set in the torment of fire) compensate, by an answerable retribution, their alternate vicissitudes of evil and good. There are certain gift-days, which with some adjust the claim of honour, with others the debt of wages. "Now, then," you say, "I shall receive back what is mine, or pay back what is another's." If men have consecrated for themselves this custom from superstition, why do you, estranged as you are from all their vanity, participate in solemnities consecrated to idols; as if for you also there were some prescript about a day, short of the observance of a particular day, to prevent your paying or receiving what you owe a man, or what is owed you by a man? Give me the form after which you wish to be dealt with. For why should you skulk withal, when you contaminate your own conscience by your neighbour's ignorance? If you are not unknown to be a Christian, you are tempted, and you act as if you were not a Christian against your neighbour's conscience; if, however, you shall be disguised withal, [260] you are the slave of the temptation. At all events, whether in the latter or the former way, you are guilty of being "ashamed of God." [261] But "whosoever shall be ashamed of Me in the presence of men, of him will I too be ashamed," says He, "in the presence of my Father who is in the heavens." [262]
[254] The treatise De Spectaculis [soon to follow, in this volume.]
[255] Rom. xii. 15.
[256] See 2 Cor. vi. 14. In the De Spect. xxvi. Tertullian has the same quotation (Oehler). And there, too, he adds, as here, "between life and death."
[257] John xvi. 20. It is observable that Tertullian here translates kosmon by "seculum."
[258] i.e., Lazarus, Luke xvi. 19-31.
[259] "Apud inferos," used clearly here by Tertullian of a place of happiness. Augustine says he never finds it so used in Scripture. See Ussher's "Answer to a Jesuit" on the Article, "He descended into hell." [See Elucid. X. p. 59, supra.]
[260] i.e., if you are unknown to be a Christian: "dissimulaberis." This is Oehler's reading; but Latinius and Fr. Junis would read "Dissimulaveris," ="if you dissemble the fact" of being a Christian, which perhaps is better.
[261] So Mr. Dodgson renders very well.
[262] Matt. x. 33; Mark viii. 38; Luke ix. 26; 2 Tim. ii. 12.