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| Satan's Wiles Against the Truth. How They Take the Form of the Praxean Heresy. Account of the Publication of This Heresy.
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VII.
Against Praxeas;7766
| 7766 The error of
Praxeas appears to have originated in anxiety to maintain the unity of
God; which, he thought, could only be done by saying that the Father,
Son and Holy Ghost were one and the same. He contended, therefore,
according to Tertullian, that the Father himself descended into the
virgin, was born of her, suffered, and was in a word Jesus Christ. From
the most startling of the deductions from Praxeas’ general
theory, his opponents gave him and his followers the name of
Patripassians; from another point in his teaching they were
called Monarchians. [Probable date not earlier than a.d. 208]. |
In Which He Defends, in all Essential
Points, the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity. 7767
[Translated by Dr. Holmes.]
————————————
Chapter I.—Satan’s Wiles
Against the Truth. How They Take the Form of the Praxean Heresy.
Account of the Publication of This Heresy.
In various ways has the
devil rivalled and resisted the truth. Sometimes his aim has been
to destroy the truth by defending it. He maintains that there is one
only Lord, the Almighty Creator of the world, in order that out of this
doctrine of the unity he may fabricate a heresy. He says that
the Father Himself came down into the Virgin, was Himself born of her,
Himself suffered, indeed was Himself Jesus Christ. Here the old
serpent has fallen out with himself, since, when he tempted Christ
after John’s baptism, he approached Him as “the Son of
God;” surely intimating that God had a Son, even on the testimony
of the very Scriptures, out of which he was at the moment forging his
temptation: “If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones
be made bread.”7768
Again:
“If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from
hence;7769
for it is written,
He shall give His angels charge concerning thee”—referring
no doubt, to the Father—“and in their hands they shall bear
thee up, that thou hurt not thy foot against a stone.”7770
Or perhaps, after all, he was only
reproaching the Gospels with a lie, saying in fact: “Away with
Matthew; away with Luke! Why heed their words? In spite of them,
I declare that it was God Himself that I approached; it was the
Almighty Himself that I tempted face to face; and it was for no other
purpose than to tempt Him that I approached Him. If, on the contrary,
it had been only the Son of God, most likely I should never have
condescended to deal with Him.” However, he is himself a liar
from the beginning,7771
and whatever man he
instigates in his own way; as, for instance, Praxeas. For he was
the first to import into Rome from Asia this kind of heretical pravity,
a man in other respects of restless disposition, and above all inflated
with the pride of confessorship simply and solely because he had to
bear for a short time the annoyance of a prison; on which occasion,
even “if he had given his body to be burned, it would have
profited him nothing,” not having the love of God,7772
whose very gifts he has resisted and
destroyed. For after the Bishop of Rome7773
| 7773 Probably Victor.
[Elucidation II.] |
had acknowledged the prophetic gifts of Montanus, Prisca, and
Maximilla, and, in consequence of the acknowledgment, had bestowed his
peace7774
on the churches of Asia and Phrygia,
he, by importunately urging false accusations against the
prophets themselves and their churches, and insisting on the authority
of the bishop’s predecessors in the see, compelled him to recall
the pacific letter which he had issued, as well as to desist from his
purpose of acknowledging the said gifts. By this Praxeas did a
twofold service for the devil at Rome: he drove away prophecy,
and he brought in heresy; he put to flight the Paraclete, and he
crucified the Father. Praxeas’ tares had been moreover
sown, and had produced their fruit here also,7775
| 7775 “The connection
renders it very probable that the hic quoque of this
sentence forms an antithesis to Rome, mentioned before, and that
Tertullian expresses himself as if he had written from the very spot
where these things had transpired. Hence we are led to conclude that it
was Carthage.”—Neander, Antignostikus, ii. 519, note 2, Bohn. |
while many were asleep
in their simplicity of doctrine; but these tares actually seemed to
have been plucked up, having been discovered and exposed by him whose
agency God was pleased to employ. Indeed, Praxeas had
deliberately resumed his old (true) faith, teaching it after his
renunciation of error; and there is his own handwriting in evidence
remaining among the carnally-minded,7776
| 7776 On the designation
Psychici, see our Anti-Marcion, p. 263, note 5,
Edin. | in whose
society the transaction then took place; afterwards nothing was heard
of him. We indeed, on our part, subsequently withdrew from the
carnally-minded on our acknowledgment and maintenance of the
Paraclete.7777
| 7777 [This statement may
only denote a withdrawal from the communion of the Bishop of Rome, like
that of Cyprian afterwards. That prelate had stultified himself and
broken faith with Tertullian; but, it does not, necessarily, as Bp.
Bull too easily concludes, define his ultimate separation from his own
bishop and the North-African church.] | But the tares of
Praxeas had then everywhere shaken out their seed, which having
lain hid for some while, with its vitality concealed under a mask, has
now broken out with fresh life. But again shall it be rooted up, if the
Lord will, even now; but if not now, in the day when all bundles of
tares shall be gathered together, and along with every other
stumbling-block shall be burnt up with unquenchable fire.7778
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