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Meaning of the scriptural passages advanced by the Quakers, supported by the opinions and practice of the early Christians Early Christian writers held it unlawful for Christians to fight, as appears from Justin Tatian Clemens and others Christians would not enter into the armies for more than two centuries, as appears from Ireneus Tertullian Celsus Origen and others and generally left the military service, if they happened to be converted in it.
True it is, we were brought up with these men in darkness, and in the lack of the knowledge of God, as Moses was taught up in the learning and in the bosom of the Egyptians. "We have been of your company," saith Tertullian, "I confess it, and no marvel at all; for," saith he, "men be made and not born Christians."
The ignorance of the Fathers, and, Origen excepted, of the Ante-Nicene Fathers in particular, in all that respects Hebrew learning and the New Testament references to the Old Testament, is shown in this so early fantastic misinterpretation grounded on the fact of our Lord's reminding, and as it were giving out aloud to John and Mary the twenty-second Psalm, the prediction of his present sufferings and after glory. But the entire passage in Tertullian, though no proof of his Arianism, is full of proofs of his want of insight into the true sense of the Scripture texts. Indeed without detracting from the inestimable services of the Fathers from Tertullian to Augustine respecting the fundamental article of the Christian Faith, yet commencing from the fifth century, I dare claim for the Reformed Church of England the honorable name of [Greek: archaspist
I might go from Tertullian even as far as Theoderet, if it were necessary, to shew, that the prophecy in question was considered as in the act of completion in those times. The fourth and last proof will be found in the assertions of Celsus, and in the reply of Origen to that writer. Celsus, who lived at the end of the second century, attacked the Christian religion.
The comment of Epiphanius on this is similar to that of Tertullian. To bid the leper 'do as Moses commanded, was practically to sanction the law of Moses. By calling Himself 'Son of Man, Epiphanius says, our Lord asserts His proper manhood and repels Docetism, and, by claiming 'power upon earth, He declares that earth not to belong to an alien creation.
The former bears a close affinity in style to Apuleius, or, rather, to the movement of which Apuleius was the most remarkable product; the latter succeeds to Quintilian and his contemporaries as the second impulse of Ciceronianism. The two opposing methods appear at their sharpest contrast in the earliest authors of each, Tertullian and Minucius Felix.
What this book was is obscure; probably it was a translation from Greek by an Irish scholar. The latter, I believe, we still have in the Arundel collection in the British Museum. The MS. of Tertullian which Gelenius got from England is gone, and our knowledge of the treatise On Baptism which it contained depends wholly on his printed text.
What Justin Martyr and Tertullian in the early Church and Luther in the Reformation-time declared, must for ever stand among the settled verities of Heaven: that it is not right to murder, burn, and afflict people because they feel in conscience bound to a belief and course of life which they have found and embraced as the certain will and requirement of their Maker.
Tertullian, likewise, tells us that the pagans received extraordinary graces by means of the Christians, some of which he quotes, and he adds: "How many persons of distinction, without mentioning other people, have been thus delivered from the devil, and cured of their evils!" St.
It is with the principles and end of this argument in view that Tertullian appeals to the witness of the soul, "not as when fashioned in schools, trained in libraries, fed in Attic academies and porticoes," but "rude, uncultured and untaught, such as they have thee who have thee only; that very thing of the road, the street, the workshop wholly;" and from his examination of this ordinary soul he concludes that "the knowledge of our God is possessed by all."
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