PREFACE.

The greater part of his life was spent at Carthage, for although he mentions incidentally having been at Rome, the chief allusions in his writings are Carthaginian; the small sect which bore his name lingered on in Carthage until St. Augustine's time.

Of his mental qualities, the Ancient Church seems to have been much impressed with his acuteness, energy, learning, and eloquence; what we have left are apparently but a small portion of the great number of works he composed. These indicate no ordinary fertility of mind, in that he so little repeats himself or recurs to favorite thoughts, as is so frequently the case even with the great St. Augustine. His character of mind is thus vividly described by Vincentius:

"As Origen is among the Greeks, so is Tertullian among the Latins to be accounted far the first of all our writers. For who was more learned than he? Who was more practiced in divinity or humanity? By a certain wonderful capacity of mind, he attained to and understood all philosophy, all the sects of philosophers, all their founders and supporters, all their systems, and all sorts of histories and studies. And for his wit, was he not so excellent, so grave, and so forcible, that he almost undertook the overthrow of nothing which, either by quickness of wit or weight of reason, he did not crush? Further, who is able to express the praises his style of speech deserves? It is fraught (I know not how) with such force of reason that such as it cannot persuade, it compels to assent. His words are almost so many sentences; his thoughts, so many victories. Let Marcion and Apelles, Praxeas and Hermogenes, Jews, Gentiles, Gnostics, and various others know this."