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| From Patriarchal, Tertullian Comes to Legal, Precedents.
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Chapter VII.—From
Patriarchal, Tertullian Comes to Legal, Precedents.
After the ancient examples of the patriarchs, let
us equally pass on to the ancient documents of the legal Scriptures,
that we may treat in order of all our canon. And since there are
some who sometimes assert that they have nothing to do with the law
(which Christ has not dissolved, but fulfilled),617
sometimes catch at such parts of the law as they choose; plainly do we
too assert that the law has deceased in this sense, that its
burdens—according to the sentence of the apostles—which not
even the fathers were able to sustain,618
have
wholly ceased: such (parts), however, as relate to righteousness
not only permanently remain reserved, but even amplified; in order, to be sure,
that our righteousness may be able to redound above the righteousness
of the scribes and of the Pharisees.619
If
“righteousness” must, of course chastity must too.
If, then, forasmuch as there is in the law a precept that a man is to
take in marriage the wife of his brother if he have died without
children,620
for the purpose of
raising up seed to his brother; and this may happen repeatedly to the
same person, according to that crafty question of the
Sadducees;621
| 621 See Matt. xxii. 23–33; Mark xii.
18–27; Luke xx. 26–38. Comp. ad Ux., l. i. | men for that reason
think that frequency of marriage is permitted in other cases as
well: it will be their duty to understand first the reason of the
precept itself; and thus they will come to know that that reason, now
ceasing, is among those parts of the law which have been
cancelled. Necessary it was that there should be a succession to
the marriage of a brother if he died childless: first, because
that ancient benediction, “Grow and multiply,”622
had still to run its course; secondly,
because the sins of the fathers used to be exacted even from the
sons;623
| 623 See Ex. xx. 5; and therefore there must be sons
begotten from whom to exact them. | thirdly, because eunuchs and barren persons
used to be regarded as ignominious. And thus, for fear that such
as had died childless, not from natural inability, but from being
prematurely overtaken by death, should be judged equally accursed (with
the other class); for this reason a vicarious and (so to say)
posthumous offspring used to be supplied them. But (now), when
the “extremity of the times” has cancelled (the command)
“Grow and multiply,” since the apostles (another command),
“It remaineth, that both they who have wives so be as if they
have not,” because “the time is compressed;”624
| 624 Comp. de Ex.
Cast., c. vi. | and “the sour grape” chewed by
“the fathers” has ceased “to set the sons’
teeth on edge,”625
for, “each one
shall die in his own sin;” and “eunuchs” not only
have lost ignominy, but have even deserved grace, being invited into
“the kingdoms of the heavens:”626
the law of succeeding to the wife of a brother being buried, its
contrary has obtained—that of not succeeding to the wife
of a brother. And thus, as we have said before, what has ceased
to be valid, on the cessation of its reason, cannot furnish a ground of
argument to another. Therefore a wife, when her husband is dead,
will not marry; for if she marry, she will of course be marrying (his)
brother: for “all we are brethren.”627
Again, the woman, if intending to
marry, has to marry “in the Lord;”628
that
is, not to an heathen, but to a brother, inasmuch as even the ancient
law forbids629
| 629
“Adimit;” but the two mss.
extant of this treatise read “admittit” =admits. | marriage with members
of another tribe. Since, moreover, even in Leviticus there is a
caution, “Whoever shall have taken (his) brother’s wife,
(it) is uncleanness—turpitude; without children shall (he)
die;”630
beyond doubt, while
the man is prohibited from marrying a second time, the woman is
prohibited too, having no one to marry except a brother. In what
way, then, an agreement shall be established between the apostle and
the Law (which he is not impugning in its entirety), shall be shown
when we shall have come to his own epistle. Meantime, so far as
pertains to the law, the lines of argument drawn from it are more
suitable for us (than for our opponents). In short, the same
(law) prohibits priests from marrying a second time. The daughter
also of a priest it bids, if widowed or repudiated, if she have had no
seed, to return into her father’s home and be nourished from his
bread.631
| 631 Lev. xxii. 13, where there is no command
to her to return, in the Eng. ver.: in the LXX. there
is. | The reason why (it is said), “If
she have had no seed,” is not that if she have she may marry
again—for how much more will she abstain from marrying if she
have sons?—but that, if she have, she may be
“nourished” by her son rather than by her father; in order
that the son, too, may carry out the precept of God, “Honour
father and mother.”632
Us, moreover,
Jesus, the Father’s Highest and Great Priest,633
| 633 Summus sacerdos et
magnus patris. But Oehler notices a conjecture of Jos. Scaliger,
“agnus patris,” when we must unite “the High Priest
and Lamb of the Father.” |
clothing us from His own store634
| 634 De suo. Comp.
de Bapt., c. xvii., ad fin.; de Cult. Fem., l. i. c. v.,
l. ii. c. ix.; de Ex. Cast., c. iii. med.; and for the
ref. see Rev. iii.
18. | —inasmuch as
they “who are baptized in Christ635
have
put on Christ”—has made “priests to God His
Father,”636
according to
John. For the reason why He recalls that young man who was
hastening to his father’s obsequies,637
is
that He may show that we are called priests by Him; (priests) whom the
Law used to forbid to be present at the sepulture of parents:638
“Over every dead soul,” it
says, “the priest shall not enter, and over his own father and
over his own mother he shall not be contaminated.”
“Does it follow that we too are bound to observe this
prohibition?” No, of course. For our one Father, God,
lives, and our mother, the Church; and neither are we dead who
live to God, nor do we bury our dead, inasmuch as they too are living
in Christ. At all events, priests we are called by Christ;
debtors to monogamy, in accordance with the pristine Law of God, which
prophesied at that time of us in its own priests.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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