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| From Apostolic Teaching Tertullian Turns to that of Companions of the Apostles, and of the Law.
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Chapter
XX.—From Apostolic Teaching Tertullian Turns to that of
Companions of the Apostles, and of the Law.
The discipline, therefore, of the apostles
properly (so called), indeed, instructs and determinately directs, as a
principal point, the overseer of all sanctity as regards the temple of
God to the universal eradication of every sacrilegious outrage upon
modesty, without any mention of restoration. I wish, however,
redundantly to superadd the testimony likewise of one particular
comrade of the apostles,—(a testimony) aptly suited for
confirming, by most proximate right, the discipline of his
masters. For there is extant withal an Epistle to the Hebrews
under the name of Barnabas—a man sufficiently accredited by God,
as being one whom Paul has stationed next to himself in the
uninterrupted observance of abstinence: “Or else, I alone
and Barnabas, have not we the power of working?”955
And, of course, the Epistle of Barnabas
is more generally received among the Churches than that apocryphal
“Shepherd” of adulterers. Warning, accordingly, the
disciples to omit all first principles, and strive rather after
perfection, and not lay again the foundations of repentance from the
works of the dead, he says: “For impossible it is that they
who have once been illuminated, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and
have participated in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the word of God
and found it sweet, when they shall—their age already
setting—have fallen away, should be again recalled unto
repentance, crucifying again for themselves the Son of God, and
dishonouring Him.”956
“For the
earth which hath drunk the rain often descending upon it, and hath
borne grass apt for them on whose account it is tilled withal,
attaineth God’s blessing; but if it bring forth thorns, it is
reprobate, and nighest to cursing, whose end is (doomed) unto utter
burning.”957
He who learnt
this from apostles, and taught it with apostles, never
knew of any “second repentance” promised by apostles to the
adulterer and fornicator.
For excellently was he wont to interpret the law, and
keep its figures even in (the dispensation of) the Truth itself.
It was with a reference, in short, to this species of discipline that
the caution was taken in the case of the leper: “But if the
speckled appearance shall have become efflorescent over the skin, and
shall have covered the whole skin from the head even unto the feet
through all the visible surface, then the priest, when he shall have
seen, shall utterly cleanse him: since he hath wholly turned into
white he is clean. But on the day that there shall have been seen in such an one quick
colour, he is defiled.”958
(The Law) would
have the man who is wholly turned from the pristine habit of the flesh
to the whiteness of faith—which (faith) is esteemed a defect and
blemish in (the eyes of) the world959
—and is
wholly made new, to be understood to be “clean;” as being
no longer “speckled,” no longer dappled with the pristine
and the new (intermixt). If, however, after the reversal (of the
sentence of uncleanness), ought of the old nature shall have revived
with its tendencies, that which was beginning to be thought utterly
dead to sin in his flesh must again be judged unclean, and must no more
be expiated by the priest. Thus adultery, sprouting again from
the pristine stock, and wholly blemishing the unity of the new colour
from which it had been excluded, is a defect that admits of no
cleansing. Again, in the case of a house: if any spots and
cavities in the party-walls had been reported to the priest, before he
entered to inspect that house he bids all (its contents) be taken away
from it; thus the belongings of the house would not be unclean.
Then the priest, if, upon entering, he had found greenish or reddish
cavities, and their appearance to the sight deeper down within the body
of the party-wall, was to go out to the gate, and separate the house
for a period within seven days. Then, upon returning on the
seventh day, if he should have perceived the taint to have become
diffused in the party-walls, he was to order those stones in which the
taint of the leprosy had been to be extracted and cast away outside the
city into an unclean place; and other stones, polished and sound, to be
taken and replaced in the stead of the first, and the house to be
plastered with other mortar.960
For, in coming
to the High Priest of the Father—Christ—all impediments
must first be taken away, in the space of a week, that the house which
remains, the flesh and the soul, may be clean; and when the Word of God
has entered it, and has found “stains of red and green,”
forthwith must the deadly and sanguinary passions “be
extracted” and “cast away” out of doors—for the
Apocalypse withal has set “death” upon a “green
horse,” but a “warrior” upon a
“red”961
—and in their
stead must be under-strewn stones polished and apt for conjunction, and
firm,—such as are made (by God) into (sons) of Abraham,962
—that thus the man may be fit for
God. But if, after the recovery and reformation, the priest again
perceived in the same house ought of the pristine disorders and
blemishes, he pronounced it unclean, and bade the timbers, and the
stones, and all the structure of it, to be pulled down, and cast away
into an unclean place.963
This will be
the man—flesh and soul—who, subsequently to reformation,
after baptism and the entrance of the priests, again resumes the scabs
and stains of the flesh, and “is case away outside the city into
an unclean place,”—“surrendered,” to wit,
“to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,”—and is
no more rebuilt in the Church after his ruin. So, too, with
regard to lying with a female slave, who had been betrothed to an
husband, but not yet redeemed, not yet set free:
“provision,” says (the Law), shall be made for her, and she
shall not die, because she was not yet manumitted for him for whom she
was being kept.964
For flesh not
yet manumitted to Christ, for whom it was being kept,965
used to be contaminated with impunity: so now, after manumission,
it no more receives pardon.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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