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[BY THE REV S. THELWALL.]
IF, with the object of convicting the rivals and persecutors of
Christian truth, from their own authorities, of the crime of at once
being untrue to themselves and doing injustice to us, one is bent on
gathering testimonies in its favour from the writings of the
philosophers, or the poets, or other masters of this world's learning
and wisdom, he has need of a most inquisitive spirit, and a still
greater memory to carry out the research. Indeed, some of our people,
who still continued their inquisitive labours in ancient literature,
and still occupied memory with it, have published works we have in our
hands of this very sort; works in which they relate and attest the
nature and origin of their traditions, and the grounds on which
opinions rest, and from which it may be seen at once that we have
embraced nothing new or monstrous—nothing for which we cannot claim
the support of ordinary and well-known writings, whether in ejecting
error from our creed, or admitting truth into it. But the unbelieving
hardness of the human heart leads them to slight even their own
teachers, otherwise approved and in high renown, whenever they touch
upon arguments which are used in defence of Christianity. Then the
poets are fools, when they describe the gods with human passions and
stories; then the philosophers are without reason, when they knock at
the gates of truth. He will thus far be reckoned a wise and sagacious
man who has gone the length of uttering sentiments that are almost
Christian; while if, in a mere affectation of judgment and wisdom, he
sets himself to reject their ceremonies, or to convicting the world of
its sin, he is sure to be branded as a Christian. We will have nothing,
then, to do with the literature and the teaching, perverted in its best
results, which is believed in its errors rather than its truth. We
shall lay no stress on it, if some of their authors have declared that
there is one God, and one God only. Nay, let it be granted that there
is nothing in heathen writers which a Christian approves, that it may
be put out of his power to utter a single word of reproach. For all are
not familiar with their teachings; and those who are, have no assurance
in regard to their truth. Far less do men assent to our writings, to
which no one comes for guidance unless he is already a Christian. I
call in a new testimony, yea, one which is better known than all
literature, more discussed than all doctrine, more public than all
publications, greater than the whole man—I mean all which is man's.
Stand forth, O soul, whether thou art a divine and eternal substance,
as most philosophers believe if it be so, thou wilt be the less likely
to lie,—or whether thou art the very opposite of divine, because
indeed a mortal thing, as Epicurus alone thinks—in that case there
will be the less temptation for thee to speak falsely in this case:
whether thou art received from heaven, or sprung from earth; whether
thou art formed of numbers, or of atoms; whether thine existence begins
with that of the body, or thou art put into it at a later stage; from
whatever source, and in whatever way, thou makest man a rational being,
in the highest degree capable of thought and knowledge,—stand forth
and give thy witness. But I call thee not as when, fashioned in
schools, trained in libraries, fed in Attic academies and porticoes,
thou belchest wisdom. I address thee simple, rude, uncultured and
untaught, such as they have thee who have thee only; that very thing of
the road, the street, the work-shop, wholly. I want thine inexperience,
since in thy small experience no one feels any confidence. I demand of
thee the things thou bringest with thee into man, which thou knowest
either from thyself, or from thine author, whoever he may be. Thou art
not, as I well know, Christian; for a man becomes a Christian, he is
not born one. Yet Christians earnestly press thee for a testimony; they
press thee, though an alien, to bear witness against thy friends, that
they may be put to shame before thee, for hating and mocking us on
account of things which convict thee as an accessory.
We give offence by proclaiming that there is one God, to whom the
name of God alone belongs, from whom all things come, and who is Lord
of the whole universe.(1) Bear thy testimony, if thou knowest this to
be the truth; for openly and with a perfect liberty, such as we do not
possess, we hear thee both in private and in public exclaim, "Which may
God grant," and, "If God so will." By expressions such as these thou
declarest that there is one who is distinctively God, and thou
con-fessest that all power belongs to him to whose will, as Sovereign,
thou dost look. At the same time, too, thou deniest any others to be
truly gods, in calling them by their own names of Saturn, Jupiter,
Mars, Minerva; for thou affirmest Him to be God alone to whom thou
givest no other name than God; and though thou sometimes callest these
others gods, thou plainly usest the designation as one which does not
really belong to them, but is, so to speak, a borrowed one. Nor is the
nature of the God we declare unknown to thee: "God is good, God does
good," thou art wont to say; plainly suggesting further, "But man is
evil." In asserting an antithetic proposition, thou, in a sort of
indirect and figurative way, reproachest man with his wickedness in
departing from a God so good. So, again, as among us, as belonging to
the God of benignity and goodness, "Blessing" is a most sacred act in
our religion and our life, thou too sayest as readily as a Christian
needs, "God bless thee;" and when thou turnest the blessing of God into
a curse, in like manner thy very words confess with us that His power
over us is absolute and entire. There are some who, though they do not
deny the existence of God, hold withal that He is neither Searcher, nor
Ruler, nor Judge; treating with especial disdain those of us who go
over to Christ out of fear of a coming judgment, as they think,
honouring God in freeing Him from the cares of keeping watch, and the
trouble of taking note,—not even regarding Him as capable of anger.
For if God, they say, gets angry, then He is susceptible of corruption
and passion; but that of which passion and corruption can be affirmed
may also perish, which God cannot do. But these very persons elsewhere,
confessing that the soul is divine, and bestowed on us by God, stumble
against a testimony of the soul itself, which affords an answer to
these views. For if either divine or God-given, it doubtless knows its
giver; and if it knows Him, it undoubtedly fears Him too, and
especially as having been by Him endowed so amply. Has it no fear of
Him whose favour it is so desirous to possess, and whose anger it is so
anxious to avoid? Whence, then, the soul's natural fear of God, if God
cannot be angry? How is there any dread of Him whom nothing offends?
What is feared but anger? Whence comes anger, but from observing what
is done? What leads to watchful oversight, but judgment in prospect?
Whence is judgment, but from power? To whom does supreme authority and
power belong, but to God alone? So thou art always ready, O soul, from
thine own knowledge, nobody casting scorn upon thee, and no one
preventing, to exclaim, "God sees all," and "I commend thee to God,"
and "May God repay," and "God shall judge between us." How happens
this, since thou art not Christian? How is it that, even with the
garland of Ceres on the brow, wrapped in the purple cloak of Saturn,
wearing the white robe of the goddess Isis, thou invokest God as judge?
Standing under the statue of AEsculapius, adorning the brazen image of
Juno, arraying the helmet of Minerva with dusky figures, thou never
thinkest of appealing to any of these deities. In thine own forum thou
appealest to a God who is elsewhere; thou permittest honour to be
rendered in thy temples to a foreign god. Oh, striking testimony to
truth, which in the very midst of demons obtains a witness for us
Christians!
But when we say that there are demons—as though, in the simple
fact that we alone expel them from the men's bodies,(2) we did not also
prove their existence—some disciple of Chrysippus begins to curl the
lip. Yet thy curses sufficiently attest that there are such beings, and
that they are objects of thy strong dislike.(3) As what comes to thee
as a fit expression of thy strong hatred of him, thou callest the man a
daemon who annoys thee with his filthiness, or malice, or insolence, or
any other vice which we ascribe to evil spirits. In expressing
vexation, contempt, or abhorrence, thou hast Satan constantly upon thy
lips;(1) the very same we hold to be the angel of evil, the source of
error, the corrupter of the whole world, by whom in the beginning man
was entrapped into breaking the commandment of God. And (the man) being
given over to death on account of his sin, the entire human race,
tainted in their descent from him, were made a channel for transmitting
his condemnation. Thou seest, then, thy destroyer; and though he is
fully known only to Christians, or to whatever sect(2) confesses the
Lord, yet, even thou hast some acquaintance with him while yet thou
abhorrest him!
Even now, as the matter refers to thy opinion on a point the more
closely belonging to thee, in so far as it bears on thy personal
well-being, we maintain that after life has passed away thou still
remainest in existence, and lookest forward to a day of judgment, and
according to thy deserts art assigned to misery or bliss, in either way
of it for ever; that, to be capable of this, thy former substance must
needs return to thee, the matter and the memory of the very same human
being: for neither good nor evil couldst thou feel if thou wert not
endowed again with that sensitive bodily organization, and there would
be no grounds for judgment without the presentation of the very person
to whom the sufferings of judgment were due. That Christian view,
though much nobler than the Pythagorean, as it does not tranfser thee
into beasts; though more complete than the Platonic, since it endows
thee again with a body; though more worthy of honour than the
Epicurean, as it preserves thee from annihilation,—yet, because of the
name connected with it, it is held to be nothing but vanity and folly,
and, as it is called, a mere presumption. But we are not ashamed of
ourselves if our presumption is found to have thy support. Well, in the
first place, when thou speakest of one who is dead, thou sayest of him,
"Poor man"—poor, surely, not because he has been taken from the good
of life, but because he has been given over to punishment and
condemnation. But at another time thou speakest of the dead as free
from trouble; thou professest to think life a burden, and death a
blessing. Thou art wont, too, to speak of the dead as in repose,(3)
when, returning to their graves beyond the city gates(4) with food and
dainties, thou art wont to present offerings to thyself rather than to
them; or when, coming from the graves again, thou art staggering under
the effects of wine. But I want thy sober opinion. Thou callest the
dead poor when thou speakest thine own thoughts, when thou art at a
distance from them. For at their feast, where in a sense they are
present and recline along with thee, it would never do to cast reproach
upon their lot. Thou canst not but adulate those for whose sake thou
art feasting it so sumptuously. Dost thou then speak of him as poor who
feels not? How happens it that thou cursest, as one capable of
suffering from thy curse, the man whose memory comes back on thee with
the sting in it of some old injury? It is thine imprecation that "the
earth may lie heavy on him," and that there may be trouble "to his
ashes in the realm of the dead." In like manner, in thy kindly feeling
to him to whom thou art indebted for favours, thou entreatest "repose
to his bones and ashes," and thy desire is that among the dead he may
"have pleasant rest." If thou hast no power of suffering after death,
if no feeling remains,—if, in a word, severance from the body is the
annihilation of thee, what makes thee lie against thyself, as if thou
couldst suffer in another state? Nay, why dost thou fear death at all?
There is nothing after death to be feared, if there is nothing to be
felt. For though it may be said that death is dreadful not for anything
it threatens afterwards, but because it deprives us of the good of
life; yet, on the other hand, as it puts an end to life's discomforts,
which are far more numerous, death's terrors are mitigated by a gain
that more than outweighs the loss. And there is no occasion to be
troubled about a loss of good things, which is amply made up for by so
great a blessing as relief from every trouble. There is nothing
dreadful in that which delivers from all that is to be dreaded. If thou
shrinkest from giving up life because thy experience of it has been
sweet, at any rate there is no need to be in any alarm about death if
thou hast no knowledge that it is evil. Thy dread of it is the proof
that thou art aware of its evil. Thou wouldst never think it evil—thou
wouldst have no fear of it at all—if thou weft not sure that after it
there is something to make it evil, and so a thing of terror.(1) Let
us leave unnoted at this time that natural way of fearing death. It
is a poor thing for any one to fear what is inevitable. I take up the
other side, and argue on the ground of a joyful hope beyond our term of
earthly life; for desire of posthumous fame is with almost every class
an inborn thing.(2) I have not time to speak of the Curtii, and the
Reguli, or the brave men of Greece, who afford us innumerable cases of
death despised for after renown. Who at this day is without the desire
that he may be often remembered when he is dead? Who does not give all
endeavour to preserve his name by works of literature, or by the simple
glory of his virtues, or by the splendour even of his tomb? How is it
the nature of the soul to have these posthumous ambitions and with such
amazing effort to prepare the things it can only use after decease? It
would care nothing about the future, if the future were quite unknown
to it. But perhaps thou thinkest thyself surer, after thy exit from the
body, of continuing still to feel, than of any future resurrection,
which is a doctrine laid at our door as one of our presumptuous
suppositions. But it is also the doctrine of the soul; for if any one
inquires about a person lately dead as though he were alive, it occurs
at once to say, "He has gone." He is expected to return, then.
These testimonies of the soul are simple as true, commonplace as
simple, universal as commonplace, natural as universal, divine as
natural. I don't think they can appear frivolous or feeble to any one,
if he reflect on the majesty of nature, from which the soul derives its
authority.(3) If you acknowledge the authority of the mistress, you
will own it also in the disciple. Well, nature is the mistress here,
and her disciple is the soul. But everything the one has taught or the
other learned, has come from God—the Teacher of the teacher. And what
the soul may know from the teachings of its chief instructor, thou
canst judge from that which is within thee. Think of that which enables
thee to think; reflect on that which in forebodings is the prophet, the
augur in omens, the foreseer of coming events. Is it a wonderful thing,
if, being the gift of God to man, it knows how to divine? Is it
anything very strange, if it knows the God by whom it was bestowed?
Even fallen as it is, the victim of the great adversary's machinations,
it does not forget its Creator, His goodness and law, and the final end
both of itself and of its foe. Is it singular then, if, divine in its
origin, its revelations agree with the knowledge God has given to His
own people? But he who does not regard those outbursts of the soul as
the teaching of a congenital nature and the secret deposit of an inborn
knowledge, will say that the habit and, so to say, the vice of speaking
in this way has been acquired and confirmed from the opinions of
published books widely spread among men. Unquestionably the soul
existed before letters, and speech before books, and ideas before the
writing of them, and man himself before the poet and philosopher.(4) Is
it then to be believed, that before literature and its publication no
utterances of the sort we have pointed out came from the lips of men?
Did nobody speak of God and His goodness, nobody of death, nobody of
the dead? Speech went a-begging, I suppose; nay,(the subjects being
still awanting, without which it cannot even exist at this day, when it
is so much more copious, and rich, and wise), it could not exist at all
if the things which are now so easily suggested, that cling to us so
constantly, that are so very near to us, that are somehow born on our
very lips, had no existence in ancient times, before letters had any
existence in the world—before there was a Mercury, I think, at all.
And whence was it, I pray, that letters themselves came to know, and to
disseminate for the use of speech, what no mind had ever conceived, or
tongue put forth, or ear taken in? But, clearly, since the Scriptures
of God, whether belonging to Christians or to Jews, into whose olive
tree we have been grafted—are much more ancient than any secular
literature, (or, let us only say, are of a somewhat earlier date, as we
have shown in its proper place when proving their trustworthiness); if
the soul have taken these utterances from writings at all, we must
believe it has taken them from ours, and not from yours, its
instruction coming more naturally from the earlier than the later
works. Which latter indeed waited for their own instruction from the
former, and though we grant that light has come from you, still it has
flowed from the first fountainhead originally; and we claim as
entirely ours, all you may have taken from us and handed down. Since
it is thus, it matters little whether the soul's knowledge was put into
it by God or by His book. Why, then, O man, wilt thou maintain a view
so groundless, as that those testimonies of the soul have gone forth
from the mere human speculations of your literature, and got hardening
of common use?
Believe, then, your own books, and as to our Scriptures so much
the more believe writings which are divine, but in the witness of the
soul itself give like confidence to Nature. Choose the one of these you
observe to be the most faithful friend of truth. If your own writings
are distrusted, neither God nor Nature lie. And if you would have faith
in God and Nature, have faith in the soul; thus you will believe
yourself. Certainly you value the soul as giving you your true
greatness,—that to which you belong; which is all things to you;
without which you can neither live nor die; on whose account you even
put God away from you. Since, then, you fear to become a Christian,
call the soul before you, and put her to the question. Why does she
worship another? why name the name of God? Why does she speak of
demons, when she means to denote spirits to be held accursed? Why does
she make her protestations towards the heavens, and pronounce her
ordinary execrations earthwards? Why does she render service in one
place, in another invoke the Avenger? Why does she pass judgments on
the dead? What Christian phrases are those she has got, though
Christians she neither desires to see nor hear? Why has she either
bestowed them On us, or received them from us? Why has she either
taught us them, or learned them as our scholar? Regard with suspicion
this accordance in words, while there is such difference in practice.
It is utter folly—denying a universal nature—to ascribe this
exclusively to our language and the Greek, which are regarded among us
as so near akin. The soul is not a boon from heaven to Latins and
Greeks alone. Man is the one name belonging to every nation upon earth:
there is one soul and many tongues, one spirit and various sounds;
every country has its own speech, but the subjects of speech are common
to all. God is everywhere, and the goodness of God is everywhere;
demons are everywhere, and the cursing of them is everywhere; the
invocation of divine judgment is everywhere, death is everywhere, and
the sense of death is everywhere, and all the world over is found the
witness of the soul. There is not a soul of man that does not, from the
light that is in itself, proclaim the very things we are not permitted
to speak above our breath. Most justly, then, every soul is a culprit
as well as a witness: in the measure that it testifies for truth, the
guilt of error lies on it; and on the day of judgment it will stand
before the courts of God, without a word to say. Thou proclaimedst God,
O soul, but thou didst not seek to know Him: evil spirits were detested
by thee, and yet they were the objects of thy adoration; the
punishments of hell were foreseen by thee, but no care was taken to
avoid them; thou hadst a savour of Christianity, and withal wert the
persecutor of Christians.
I (Recognition of the Supreme God, cap, ii., p. 176.)
THE passage referred to in the note, begins thus in Jowett's
rendering: "The Ruler of the Universe has ordered all things with a
view to the preservation and perfection of the whole etc." So, in the
same book: "Surely God must not be supposed to have a nature which he
himself hates." Again: "Let us not, then, deem God inferior to human
workmen, who in proportion to their skill finish and perfect their
works .... or that God, the wisest of beings, who is willing and able
to extend his care to all things, etc." Now, it is a sublime plan which
our author here takes up, (making only slight reference to the
innumerable citations which were behind his apostrophe to the soul if
any one should dispute it) to bid the soul stand forth and confess its
consciousness of God. II. (Daemons, cap. vi. p. 176.)
Those who would pursue the subject of Demonology, which
Tertullian opens in this admirable treatise, should follow it up in a
writer whom Tertullian greatly influenced, in many particulars, even
when he presents a remarkable contrast. The Ninth Book of the City of
God is devoted to inquiries which throw considerable light on some of
the startling sayings of our author as to the heathen systems, and
their testimony to the Soul's Consciousness of God and of the great
enemy of God and the inferior spirit of Evil.