they pretend to preach like us; and complain that though their doctrine be the same as ours, we abstain from their communion, and call them heretics. When they have seduced any from the faith by their disputes, and made them willing to comply with them, they begin to open their mysteries." He doubtless agrees with all the primitive christians in the doctrine of the Trinity, and makes use of the 45th psalm particularly to prove the deity of Jesus Christ. He is no less clear and sound in his views of the incarnation;* and, in general, notwithstanding some philosophical adulterations, he certainly maintained all the essentials of the gospel. The use of the mystic union between the godhead and manhood of Christ in the work of redemption, and in general the fall and the recovery, are scarce held out more instructively by any writer of antiquity. The learned reader, who has a taste for what is peculiarly christian, will not be displeased to see a few quotations.† "He united man to God; for if man had not overcome the adversary of man, the enemy could not have been legally conquered. And again, if God had not granted salvation, we should not have been put into firm possession of it; and if man had not been united to God, he could not have been a partaker of immortality. It behoved then the Mediator between God and man, by his affinity with both, to bring both into agreement with each other. "The all-powerful Word of God, and perfect in righteousness, justly set himself against the apostacy, redeeming his own property from him (Satan) not by violence, as he bore rule over us from the beginning, insatiably making rapine of what was not his own. But the Lord, redeeming us with his own blood, and giving his life for our life, and his flesh for our flesh, effected our salvation." : He beautifully expresses our recovery by a recapitulation in Christ.* "Our Lord would not have gathered up these things in himself, had he not been made. flesh and blood according to the original creation of man, saving in himself in the end what had perished in the beginning of Adam. He therefore had flesh and blood, not of another kind, but gathering into himself the very original creation of the Father, he sought that which was lost."+ Undoubtedly the intelligent, scriptural reader will recollect the divine reasoning of the author to the Hebrews very similar to all this. And those who see how well the views of Irenæus are supported by him, will know how to judge of the opinions of those who call this scholastic theology, will see how accurately the primitive fathers understood and maintained the doc-. trines now deemed fanatical, and will observe the propriety of being zealous for christian peculiarities. One short quotation shall conclude this account of the book of heresies. "The Word of God, Jesus Christ, on account of his immense love, became what we are, that he might make us what he is."-Book 5, Preface. Of the few fragments of this author there is nothing that seems to deserve any particular attention, except that of an Epistle to Florinus, whom he had known in early life, and of whom he had hoped better things than those into which he was afterwards seduced. "These doctrines, says he, those who were presbyters before us, those who had walked with the apostles, did not deliver to you. For I saw you, when I was a boy, in the lower Asia, with Polycarp, carrying a very splendid appearance in the Emperor's service, and desirous of being approved of by him. For I choose rather to mention things that happened at that time than facts of a later date. For the instructions of our childhood, * avanɛPaλaiwais. Eph. i. 10.-See Dr. Owen's Preface to his « Χριςολογία.” †B. 5. ch. 14. growing with our growth, adhere to us most closely, so that I can mention the very spot in which Polycarp sat and expounded, and his coming in and going out, and the very manner of his life, and the figure of his body, and the serions which he preached to the multitude, and how he described to us his converse with John, and with the rest of those who had seen the Lord, how he related to us their expressions and what things he had heard from them of the Lord, and of his miracles and of his doctrine. As Polycarp had received from the eye-witnesses of the Word of Life, he told us all things agreeable to the scriptures. These things then, through the mercy of God visiting me, I heard with seriousness, writing them not on paper, but on my heart, and ever since, through the grace of God, I have a genuine remembrance of them, and I can witness before God, that if that blessed apostolical presbyter had heard any such thing, he would have cried out and stopped his ears, and in his usual manner have said, "O good God, to what times hast thou reserved me, that I should endure these things!" And he would immediately have fled from the place in which he had heard such doctrines." How superficially numbers in this, which calls itself an enlightened age, are content to think, appears from the satisfaction with which two confused lines of a poet, great indeed as a poet, but very ill informed in religion, are constantly quoted: For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight; Those to whom these lines appear full of oracular wisdom, may call Irenæus a graceless zealot if they please. But those, in every age, to whom evangelical truth appears of real importance, will regret that so little of this zeal, “in earnestly contending for the faith which was once delivered to the saints," appears in our times, because they think it absolutely necessary to preserve even practical christianity in the world. CHAPTER II. Tertullian. WE have not yet had any occasion to take notice of the state of christianity in the Roman province of Africa. This whole region, once the scene of Carthagenian greatness, abounded with christians in the second century, though of the manner of the introduction of the gospel and of the proceedings of its first planters we have no account. In the latter part of the second and in the former part of the third century there flourished at Carthage the famous Tertullian, the first latin writer of the church whose works are come down to us. Yet were it not for some light which he throws on the state of christianity in his own times, he would not deserve to be distinctly noticed. I have seldom seen so large a collection of treatises, all professedly on christian subjects, containing so little matter of useful instruction. The very first tract in the volume, that de Pallio, shews the littleness of his views. The dress of the Roman Toga offended him; he exhorted christians to wear the Pallium, a more vulgar and rusty kind of garment, as more worthy of their religion. All his writings betray the same sour, monastic, harsh, and severe turn of mind. "*Touch not, taste not, handle not," might seem to have been the maxims of his religious conduct. The apostle there warns christians against will-worship and voluntary humility, and shews that while the flesh outwardly appears to be humbled, it is inwardly puffed up by these things, and induced to forsake the head, Christ Jesus. The subtile spirit of self-righteousness may, in all likelihood, in Tertullian's time, have very much overspread the African church, or his writings would scarce have rendered him so celebrated amongst them. * Coloss. 11. All his religious ideas seem tinged deeply with the same train of thinking; his treatise of repentance is meagre and dismal throughout, and while it enlarges on outward things, and recommends the rolling of our bodies before the priests, is very slight on the essential spirit of repentance itself. A christian soldier had refused to wear a crown of laurel which his commander had given him with the rest of the regiment, was punished for it, and blamed by the christians of those times, because his conduct had a tendency to irritate needlessly the reigning pow ers. I am apt to think that he might have worn it as innocently as St. Paul committed himself to a ship whose sign was Castor and Pollux. It was a merely military ornament, and could no more be said to have any connexion with idolatry, than almost every custom of civil life must have had at that time. The apostle, I think, would have accused the soldier of disobedience to his lawful superiors, and might have referred christians to his own determination in the case of eating things sacrificed to idols, eat of such things as they set before you, asking no questions for conscience sake. But Tertullian decides on the other side of the question, and applauds the disobedience of the soldier. His reasons are dishonourable to his understanding. He owns that there is no scripture to be found against compliance in this case. Tradition he thinks a sufficient reason for contumacy, and then mentions some traditional customs maintained in the African churches, among which the very frequent signing of themselves with the sign of the cross is one. Superstition had made, it seems, deep inroads into Africa. It was rather an unpolished region, and much inferior to Italy in point of civilization. Satan's temptations are suited to tempers and situations. But surely it was not by superstitious practices that the glad tidings of salvation had been first introduced into Africa. There must have been a deep decline. One of the strongest proofs that the comparative value of the christian religion in countries is not to be estimated by |