PREFACE.

Again, in another way, it is important to observe how nearly Tertullian, on other points of doctrine, was betrayed into heresy while defending the truth. When contending against the heretic Praxeas, he expressed himself in such a way as to fall under suspicion of heresy, even regarding the doctrine of the Trinity, although his position was actually sound. In proving against Plato that the soul has a beginning, he narrowly escaped falling into materialism and the doctrine of the transmigration of the sould. When arguing against those who denied Baptism, he wrote in such a way that he seemed to deny original sine.

For the correct use of Tertullian, therefore, more care and judgment are required than for other Church Fathers. His testimony to facts, doctrines, and the rites of the Church is, of course, always of the highest value. In these respects, he is valuable even when writing against the Church, a situation that often elicits his specific statements. Furthermore, no one would question the great instructiveness of the man whom St. Cyprian titled his "Master." Still, he requires a mature judgment; it is perhaps for this reason that his influence upon the Church has been mediated through those whose minds were formed by his writings, rather than by direct contact with his works. Among these, we may count not only St. Cyprian but also Pacian and St. Jerome; in both, the sayings of Tertullian reappear in a form that shows how great an influence his writings must have had upon them. However, the more this mediate influence increased and his writings molded other minds within the Church, the more the apparent necessity for them ceased, and the office once assigned to them was suspended. The scarcity of manuscripts of his works, with the single exception of the Apology (and even those are not numerous), illustrates what St. Hilaryf says regarding his Treatise on Prayer: that it was indeed "excellently to the purpose, but that the subsequent error of the man had taken from the authority even of what he had written well." And this is not without reason, for the maxims of Tertullian are often so

d. "Some object to Tertullian, saying he argued that the soul came by transmission—i.e., that soul was generated of soul just as body is generated of bodies." Prædestinatus.
e. See the notes on De Baptismo, ch. 18, p. 277.
f. In Matthew, ch. 5.