PREFACE.

balance of the whole. Men's very excellences, lest they forget their humility and "be as gods," are often purchased at the expense of other endowments. It is with God alone to possess all things perfectly. Thus we see how strength of memory and learning are mostly bought by the forfeiture of originality or even judgment; inventiveness by a want of precision; imaginativeness by an absence of accuracy in reasoning; clearness by a want of depth. What lies deep struggles to the surface, yet cannot reach it; contemplativeness and practical wisdom are severed; and so on. In this way, the very intensity with which Tertullian's mind grasped single truths may have rather hindered him from seeing their bearings upon other truths. While gazing intently upon one object, a person cannot for the time see others that surround it, or at most is only indistinctly conscious of their presence. On each occasion, Tertullian seems to be wholly taken up with and immersed in the one truth he is contemplating, seeing other things only as they bear upon it, rather than its bearings upon others. It seems for the time the center around which his thoughts are revolving. This habit was perhaps augmented by his previous profession. To this habit of mind perhaps belong his frequent argumenta ad hominem (arguments directed at the person); they stop the mouth of an adversary, and with this he seems for the time content; whether he has maintained his position or merely silenced an adversary seems to him indifferent q. It is perhaps out of reverence that he thus contents himself with retorting the charge of worshipping the Cross (Apol. ch. 16) or the Sun, because they prayed towards the East (ibid.).. One seems to see the habits of a mind accustomed to bend all its energies to make out its case—not, of course, now as in Heathenism and on secular subjects, irrespectively of truth or falsehood—yet, even the more, because he was fully persuaded of the truth of what he advocated, seizing whatever would fortify his position without fully considering whether he might not thereby be dismantling some other post, and pressing into his service what really did not belong thither. On different occasions, he seems to look on the same truth from opposite sides, and each time