Elucidations.

I'

Appendix, p. 127.

About these versifications, which are "poems" only as mules are horses, it is enough to say of them, with Dupin, "They are no more Tertullian's than they are Virgil's or Homer's. The poem called Genesis seems to be that which Gennadius attributes to Salvian, Bishop of Marseilles. That concerning the Judgment of God was, perhaps, composed by Verecundus, an African bishop. In the books Against Marcion there are some opinions different from those of Tertullian. There is likewise a poem To a Senator in Pamelius' edition, one of Sodom, and in the Bibliotheca Patrum one of Jonas and Nineve; the first of which is ancient, and the other two seem to be by the same author."

It is worth while to observe that this rhymester makes two bishops out of one.357 Cletus and Anacletus he supposes different persons, which brings Clement into the fourth place in the see of Rome. Our author elsewhere makes St. Clement the immediate successor of the apostles.358

II

Or is there ought, etc., l. 136, p. 137.

In taking leave of Tertullian, it may be well to say a word of his famous saying, Cerlum est quia impossibile est. It occurs in the tract De Carne Chrisli,359 and is one of those startling epigrammatic dicta of our author which is no more to be pressed in argument than any other bon-mot of a wit or a poet. It is evidently designed as a rhetorical climax, to enforce the same idea which we find in the hymn of Aquinas: -

"Et si sensus deficit, Ad

firmandum cor sincerum

Sola fides sufficit."