PREFACE.

Yet he may have persuaded himself that, the faith remaining entire, though visibly divided, they remained invisibly one Church—even as the several portions of the Church whose communion is interrupted, Eastern, Western, our own, now do—only that in the case of Tertullian, it was not merely a misunderstanding between Churches, each having the Apostolic constitution and succession, but the formation of a sect de novo anew, opposed to the Church. This at least seems the most natural meaning of a passage written by him as a Montanist, when, speaking of the agreement of the Eastern and Western Churches, he includes himself in the Westerna. He may also in part have been carried away by his sympathies with an individual, Proculus, whose continency and eloquence he admiredb. But the difference of his tone in and out of the Church, the remarkable expressions of deep self-abasement on many occasions while within it, and the arrogant and self-confident language after his secessionc—the calm and subdued tone prevalent in the former, the irritated and impatient temper visible in the latter period—seem to imply some moral fault, which his secession carried out into action and, as do decisive acts, fixed.

a. “In Greece and some barbarous nations belonging to her, many Churches keep their virgins concealed. This same practice exists also in some parts in these climates, that persons may not ascribe that custom to Greek or Barbarian heathenism. But I have set before them Churches [the Grecian] which the Apostles themselves or Apostolic men have founded, and I suppose before certain [the Roman]. They then also have the same authority of custom; they oppose periods [of observance] and [practice of] predecessors more than those later. Which shall we observe? Which choose? We cannot reject that custom, which we cannot condemn, not being alien, as not of aliens, inasmuch as we share [communicamus] with them the rights of peace and the name of brotherhood. We and they have one faith, One God, the Same Christ, the same hope, the same sacraments of Baptism. To say all at once, we are one Church. So then whatever is of ours, is ours. But you divide the body.” On the Veiling of Virgins, ch. 2.
b. “As Justin, Philosopher and Martyr, Miltiades, Philosopher of the Church, Irenæus, most careful examiner of all doctrine, our Proculus, of virgin old-age and the glory of Christian eloquence, all of whom I should wish to follow in every work of the faith, as in this.” Against the Valentinians, ch. 5. This, however, does not imply any special preference for Proculus, although it is probable that he was the same as Proclus or Proculus the Montanist.
c. St. Augustine seems to refer to this changed tone where he says, (On the Good of Widowhood, ch. 4. § 6): “The Cataphrygian and Novatian heresies, which Tertullian also filled out with swelling cheeks, not with wisdom's breath, cutting off, as unlawful, with insulting speech, second marriages, which the Apostle, with calm judgment, concedes to be wholly lawful.”