We are a body knit together as such by a common religious profession, by unity of discipline, and by the bond of a common hope. We meet together as an assembly and congregation, that, offering up prayer to God as with united force, we may wrestle with Him in our supplications. This violence God delights in. We pray, too, for the emperors, for their ministers and for all in authority, […]
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Tertullian: Christ as Lord of the Sabbath
For although the Creator had forbidden that the manna should be gathered for two days, He yet permitted it on the one occasion only of the day before the Sabbath, in order that the yesterday’s provision of food might free from fasting the feast of the following Sabbath-day. … [Christ] did not directly defend His disciples, but excuses them; He interposes human want, as if deprecating censure; He maintains the […]
Read moreTertullian: Against Marcion
You may, I assure you, more easily find a man born without a heart or without brains, like Marcion himself, than without a body, like Marcion’s Christ. — Against Marcion IV.X It would have been but right that a new god should first be expounded, and his discipline be introduced afterwards; because it would be the god that would impart authority to the discipline, and not the discipline to the […]
Read moreTertullian: Divine Passions
What would be said, if, when you thought the doctor necessary, you were to find fault with his instruments, because they cut, or cauterize, or amputate, or tighten; whereas there could be no doctor of any value without his professional tools?… Your conduct is equally unreasonable, when you allow indeed that God is a judge, but at the same time destroy those operations and dispositions by which He discharges His […]
Read moreTertullian: Divine Goodness and Justice
In short, from the very first the Creator was both good and also just. And both His attributes advanced together. His goodness created, His justice arranged, the world; and in this process it even then decreed that the world should be formed of good materials, because it took counsel with goodness. The work of justice is apparent, in the separation which was pronounced between light and darkness, between day and […]
Read moreTertullian: The Prescription Against Heretics
The Rule of Faith Now, with regard to this rule of faith—that we may from this point acknowledge what it is which we defend—it is, you must know, that which prescribes the belief that there is one only God, and that He is none other than the Creator of the world, who produced all things out of nothing through His own Word, first of all sent forth; that this Word […]
Read moreTertullian: A Treatise On the Soul
A comprehensive treatise on the soul. Its substance, attributes, origin, and final destiny. Tertullian argues that the soul is corporeal, in opposition to the Gnostics, and Plato, with whom (he believes) the Gnostic heresies originated. He critiques pagan philosophers and writers on various opinions about the soul, and strives to ground beliefs on the Scripture. Stoics’ Arguments for Corporeal Soul Zeno, defining the soul to be a spirit generated with […]
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