TERT ULLLA N 'S TABLE-TALK.
IT would have been good for posterity had there been a few Boswells among the early Fathers. No one wrote down Tertullian's table-talk, yet how interesting it must have been. Sparks which we feel sure must have been emitted in a clash of wits, intimate sayings suggestive of the close sympathy of a persecuted society, glitter and glow upon the dull surface of his polemical discourse. Phrases and passages the moderation and wisdom of which seem to have escaped the passion with which pen and paper too often inspired Tertullian fascinate us. Were they bits of the talk of the great Christian special pleader which lingered in his memory and are preserved still in his books P Now and then he ceases to elaborate his theme, and turns suddenly to confide in his reader, revealing not his creed but himself, and asking not for concurrence but sympathy. At times the reader is touched to the heart, and stands silent in awe before the great realities of the third century. He is in the presence of an enthusiasm the power of which can only be expressed in St. Paul's paradox, the power of "things which are not to bring to nought
things that are "; in presence also of the horrible possi- bility of death by torture, the thought of which is never wholly banished from the mind of the enthusiast. But you cannot listen to Tertullian and remain in one mood. The sense of awe is not lasting. Constantly the reader is deluded into a belief that he is an interlocutor, and is stimulated to reply, generally by some humorous exaggeration, some effer- vescent mixture of truth and nonsense, the champagne, as it were, of the conversational board which loosens every man's tongue. No critic has quite adequately portrayed the character of Tertullian. No Rembrandt of the pen has yet arisen to grapple with its " gloom and gleam."
But if we imagine ourselves discussing " talk " with Tertullian we shall get nothing to support our theory of his proficiency. He has a great deal to say about " huckstering wiseacres and talkers," and of " noxious vapours exhaled from philosophy." Occasionally too he has a fling at the philosophers themselves, steeped though he is in their lore,— " those patriarchs of heretics," he calls them, who belong properly to Athens, "that loquacious city." On the other hand, he makes a good many adverse reflections upon polemics ot all sorts, though so much of his life was spent in them. " Wide are men's inquiries into uncertainties," he writes; "wider still are their disputes about con- jectures. However great the difficulty of adducing proofs, the labour of producing conviction is not one whit less." Was he sometimes weary of the labour P What a wise man he would have been had "he more often heeded his own warnings. How irritating are his praises of simplicity in the midst of his controversial obscurities. As he looks back on the philosophies of the past he concludes that " there is nothing so old as the truth " ; but " if the truth was dis- tinguished by its simplicity, the more on that account the fastidiousness of man, too proud to believe, set to altering it; so that even what they found certain they made uncertain by their admixtures." Even on the subject of religion he gets tired of ratiocination, and condemns those who revel in it. "Finding a simple revelation of God, they proceeded to dispute about Him, not as He had been revealed to them, but turned aside to debate about His properties, His nature, His abode." There are plenty of such in the Church, he would have his brethren remember. They must have smiled at the words : "Some of their brood, with their opinions, have even adulterated our new-given Christian revelation, and corrupted it into a system of philosophic doctrines, and from the one path have struck off many and inexplicable by-roads." How many great men tempt small men to say with justice : "Physician, heal thyself."
Tertullian is the authority to whom Church historians go for the attitude of the Christian Church towards the Gentile world in the third century. He is always in favour of strict- ness, indeed of sternness, of discipline, but evidently he was accustomed to dispute with Christians of another opinion. He has no patience with a Christianity which can make terms with a heathen manner of life. " The world is God's, but the worldly is the devil's," he said. He denies the right of Christians to take part in any of the public entertainments. The arena, for obvious reasons, he condemns. Its very existence is contrary to the Christian revelation. "When the athletes are hard at struggle, will he [the Christian] be ready to proclaim that there must be no striking again P And with his eye fixed on the bites of bears, and the sponge- nets of the net-fighters, can he be moved by compassion P May God avert from His people any such passionate eagerness after a cruel enjoyment !" But he goes much further than this. He condemns root and branch the whole dramatic art. He claims that the conscience of heathendom is with him in this matter, else why are actors socially despised, why are they excluded from the Curia and from senatorial and equestrian rank P Men "magnify the art and brand the artist. What an. outrageous thing it is to blacken a man on account of the very things which make him meri- torious in their eyes ! " Tertullian takes a view as strong and stern as any Scotch Presbyterian of the last generation. He condemns "any putting on of voice, or sex, or age," and all " pretended loves, and wraths, and groans, and tears." Could a man with a wide knowledge of dramatic literature have really meant all this, or was he carried away by controversial logic P When he discusses the far more important subject of non-Christian literature he is reasonable. There is, he says, a vast difference between "learning " and " teaching." He is sure that the men who guide the Church should be well versed in it; he doubts whether it should be taught in Christian schools. He fears to give the young a respect for "a creed outworn." Idolatry, or what he calls idolatry, rouses him to a kind of furious satire which at this distance of time we cannot under- stand. He attacks mythology, not with reason, but with a sort of Falstaffian humour which is often very coarse, and must have struck even those to whom the system was endeared by sentiment alone as the rankest blasphemy. Had he seen harm come of the teaching of the poets of the old world P one wonders. Had some one he loved been led by literature into apostasy ? We know little of his domestic life ; but he disparaged matrimony, though he wrote affectionately to his wife, and alluded shortly to "the bitter bitter pleasure of children."
It is when Tertullian discusses the ethics of martyrdom that we seem to see the whole man. He addresses his fellow- Christians only, and his words bring an assembly of just and very angry men before the mind's eye. He was a great believer in righteous indignation, and declared that Christ proscribed nothing but " irrational irascibility." A young soldier was blamed by the brethren for betraying his Christianity by refusing to wear a crown offered to him by the Emperor in reward for valour. Tertullian regarded him as a hero, exalted him, indeed, as a man of whom not only the world but the Church was not worthy. Those of the contrary part seem to have used somewhat poor arguments to defend what was a really strong position. The man had endangered a thousand lives for a scruple. Tertullian had no patience, he said, with a lot of cowards who hid their creed, who were willing to obtain immunity by giving money to " some paltry thief of a ruler," who met for worship in an agony of fear lest they were watched, their faith being too weak to "remove a soldier," let alone "a mountain," and whose ambition was, he supposed, to die "in soft fevers," since they would risk their skin in nothing else. Some misguided person seems to have suggested that there could be no harm in crowns, seeing that our Lord had worn one. Tertullian scornfully replies : " Be crowned, as He was ; you have full permission." Even in this raging mood, however, Tertullian shows a curious tenderness. It is the man who avoids the test that he despises, not the man who tries and fails. Sooner or later every man must breathe his last, and be written down as having lost or won or shirked. As to the man who goes into the struggle voluntarily, he is no coward. " He must die, in whatever way of it," he argues, "either as con.' quered or conqueror," and "although he has succumbed in denying, he has yet faced and battled with the torture. I had rather be one to be pitied than to be blushed for." His words suggest some very nice moral questions. It is the way of the world to respect most the man who, knowing his weakness, avoids the test. Tertnllian goes well below the surface down to the roots of responsibility, where, as so often happens, the last is seen to be first and the first last.
On the subject of repentance we find this stern idealist most kind. He cannot help smiling about those who through their repeated repentances become "a burden to the divine mercy," but he would have none discouraged. " Let it by all means be irksome to sin again, but let not to repent again be irksome." There is to be no "upward clambering over the prostrate." The man who is " down " is not be shunned. "Why flee from the partners of your own mischances P " Tertullian is no Pharisee. He is full of a kind of pride. Yet it is clearly from his heart that he calls himself "a sinner of all brands," and asks for the prayers of better men. About charity Tertullian also speaks in character. " The declarations of the Lord have reasons and laws of their own," he maintains. " They are not of unlimited or universal application. And so He commands us to give to every one who asks, yet He. Himself does not give to those who ask a sign. Otherwise, if you think that we should give indiscriminately to all who ask, that seems to me to mean that you would give, I say not wine to him who has a fever, but even poison or a sword to him who longs for death." Still, Tertullian is ready to go a long way. " I will give on the plea of charity, not under any intimidation. 'Who askO, He says. But he who uses intimidation does not ask. One who threatens if he does not receive, does not crave, but
compel. It is not alms he looks for, who comes not to be pitied, but to be feared. I will give, therefore, because I pity, not because I fear, when the recipient honours God and returns me his blessing, not when rather he both believes that he has conferred a favour on me, and, beholding his plunder, says, ' Guilt money.'" As to the giving of the cloak when the coat has been taken, that is to Tertullian a bard command ; yet even this he will rise to. " The cloak, too, I will grant if I am not threatened If he threatens, I will demand even my coat back again " Tertullian probably died a heretic. He was certainly a Montanist for many years. Had he been less impulsive, less candid, and lees opinionated, he would no doubt have made a better Churchman. Perhaps, however, he would have been a less lovable man and less good company.
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