Prophet, from an Ethiopic MS. in the Bodleian library.

Such of our readers as are acquainted with the late Professor Porson's Letters to Archdeacon Travis will remember the Archdeacon's interpretation of an expression used by Tertullian, when speaking of the Apostolic Churches. 12166 Percurre Ecclesias Apostolicas, apud quas ipsæ adhuc Cathedræ Apostolorum suis locis præsident, apud quas ipsæ Authenticæ Literæ eorum recitantur, sonantes vocem et repræsentantes faciem uniuscujusque." By the words authenticæ literæ the Archdeacon understood Tertullian to mean the autographs of the Apostles. If, however, we turn to the 122 Tract de Monogamia, we find our author complaining that an error had crept into the Latin version; and stating that a passage was differently read in Græco authentico; that is, in the original Greek, as contradistinguished from a translation. In like manner he uses the expressions originalia instrumenta Christi; ori

123

121 De Præscriptione Hæreticorum, c. 36.

122 c. 11. The passage is 1 Cor. vii. 39. The MSS. now extant lend no countenance to Tertullian's assertion. Does not, however, his assertion prove that a Latin Version was actually extant in his time, in opposition to Semler's notion stated in Chap. II. note 38? See Lardner, Credibility, c. 27.

Sect. 19.

123 De Carne Christi, c. 2. Adv. Hermogenem, c. 19.

ginale instrumentum Moysi; meaning of course, not an autograph either of Christ or Moses, but the Gospels and the Pentateuch, as they were originally written. 124 Berriman, therefore, and others suppose that Tertullian by the words authentica literæ meant only the genuine unadulterated Epistles. 125 Lardner conceives that our author intended to appeal, not to the Epistles which St. Paul addressed to the particular Churches mentioned by Tertullian; but to all the Scriptures of the New Testament, of which the Apostolic Churches were peculiarly the depositaries. But Lardner's argument is, in my opinion, founded on a misapprehension of Tertullian's immediate object in the passage in question. He there appeals to the Apostolic Churches as bearing witness, not to the genuineness and integrity of the Scriptures, but to the true and uncorrupted doctrine of the Gospel. For this he tell us that we must look to those Churches which were founded by the Apostles, and were able to produce the authority of epistles addressed to

124 Tertullian says of Valentinus, ab Ecclesià authenticæ regulæ abrupit, he separated himself from the Church which possessed the genuine rule of life. Adv. Valentinianos, c. 4. In another place he says of our Saviour, ipse authenticus Pontifex Dei Patris. He was the true, the original priest, of whom the priests under the Mosaic law were only copies. Adv. Marcionem, L. iv. c. 35.

125 Credibility of the Gospel History, c. 27.

them by the Apostles. The words litera authenticæ may, therefore, mean, epistles possessing authority. It is, however, of little consequence to which of the above meanings we give the preference; since the whole passage is evidently nothing more than a declamatory mode of stating the weight which Tertullian attached to the authority of the Apostolic Churches. To infer from it that the very chairs in which the Apostles sat, or that the very Epistles which they wrote, then actually existed at Corinth, Ephesus, Rome, &c. would be only to betray a total ignorance of Tertullian's style.

Tertullian 126 expressly ascribes the Epistle

to the Hebrews to Barnabas: he does not say that it was universally received in the Church, but that it was more generally received than the Shepherd of Hermas. He 127 mentions also a work falsely ascribed to St.

126 De Pudicitiâ, c. 20. Extat enim et Barnabæ titulus ad Hebræos: adeo satis auctoritatis viro, ut quem Paulus juxta se constituerat in abstinentiæ tenore: aut ego solus et Barnabas non habemus hoc operandi potestatem? Et utique receptior apud Ecclesias Epistola Barnabæ illo apocrypho Pastore mochorum. Tertullian then proceeds to quote a passage from the sixth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Lardner thinks it doubtful whether Tertullian's works contain any other allusion to the Epistle.

127 De Baptismo, c. 17. sub fine. Jerome, Catalogus Scrip

torum

Paul, but composed by an Asiatic presbyter, who was impelled, as he himself confessed, to commit the pious fraud by admiration of the Apostle. The work appears to have been quoted in defence of a custom which had crept in of allowing females to baptise.

In speaking of the mode in which the canon of the New Testament was formed, 128 Lardner says, that it was not determined by the authority of councils. This may in one sense be true. Yet it appears from a passage in the Tract de Pudicitiâ, 129 referred to in a former Chapter, that in Tertullian's time one part of the business of councils was to decide what books were genuine, and what spurious; for he appeals to the decisions of councils in support of his rejection of the Shepherd of Hermas. We have seen that Tertullian appeals to the original Greek text of the first Epistle to the Corinthians. This

130

torum Ecclesiasticorum under St. Luke. He appears to have supposed that the work in question was entitled the Travels of Paul and Thecla.

128 History of the Apostles and Evangelists, c. 3.

129 Chap. iv. note 51. Sed cederem tibi, si Scriptura Pastoris, quæ sola machos amat, divino instrumento meruisset incidi: si non ab omni concilio Ecclesiarum etiam vestrarum inter apocrypha et falsa judicaretur, c. 10.

130 See note 119.

fact appears to militate strongly against the theory of the author of a recent work entitled Palæoromaica, who asserts that the said Epistle, as well as the greater part of the New Testament, was originally written in Latin.

When we contrast the acuteness which the anonymous author of that work occasionally, and the extensive reading which he always displays, with the extraordinary conclusions at which he arrives, we are strongly tempted to suspect that he is only playing with his readers; and trying how far intrepid assertion will go towards inducing men to lend a favourable ear to the most startling paradoxes. To take a single instance from the Epistle just mentioned. His solution of the celebrated difficulty respecting the power which,

131

according to St. Paul, a woman ought to have on her head, is that 132 in the original Latin the word was habitus, which the ignorant translator rendered etymologically ἐξουσία. In support of this fancy he quotes the following words from Tertullian's Treatise de Virginibus velandis, c. 3. "O sacrilegæ manus, quæ

131 1 Cor. xi. 10.

152 Supplement to Palæoromaica, p. 61. note 5. The author does not inform us how the word habitus came to be translated etymologically ovcía; does he mean that the translator confounded is and coveía?