PREFACE.

exclusively, so that from a different point of view, its form seems not only different, but inconsistent and contradictory. He seems to take no pains to guard or qualify his statements either for his own mind or that of others; rather, he exhibits them unqualified, as being more effective. As an instance of this sort, it has been noted in the body of the work how he represents the end of the world, on different occasions, as the object exclusively of hope or fear, so that persons must needs pray for it or against it, longing for its coming or its delayr.

One form in which this habit of mind showed itself was his very mode of employing his wonted test of heresy—the “rule of faith.” The “rule of faith,” or the body of Apostolic teaching committed to the Church and concentrated in the Creeds, is as a whole inviolable, either by the Church or by individuals. What has been “delivered once for all” must, in its minutest details, remain to the end. What is truly Apostolic admits neither of increase nor diminution without blame. Other things may be true, provided they do not contradict it, but they cannot form part of it, nor may they be ranked with it, because they did not originally belong to it; and what did once belong to it must, of course, remain a part of it to the end. The doctrine of the Millennium may be true, but cannot be part of that body of truth because it was not so at the first; the Roman doctrine of Purgatory cannot be true because it is at variance with the Apostolic tradition of Paradise and a state of rest for those departed in the faith and fear of Christ; the value of almsdeeds or fasting, however disparaged of late, must continue a part of Catholic truth because it was such. But Tertullian’s view of the “rule of faith” seems to have been narrowed by his exclusive consideration of those whose errors he sought to refute. These were individuals who violated it in very gross cases, such as by denying the Creator of the world or the resurrection of the flesh. Against these, he urged the extent of their departure from the Apostolic rule vividly, as they used the Scriptures

r. Apology, ch. 31, p. 27, note u.