and at the same time shew that it is contained in those Scriptures which have always been recognised as authentic by the Apostolic Churches, I have surely done much, not only towards proving its truth, but also towards confirming the genuineness of the Scriptures themselves.

Mosheim 277 277 places the rise of the Ascetics in the second century; and says that they were produced by the double doctrine of certain Christian moralists, who laid down two different rules of life, the ordinary and the extraordinary :—the one adapted to the general mass of Christians, the other to those only of a more sublime and exalted character. To the former class of doctrines they gave the name of Precepts; which were obligatory upon all orders of men:-to the latter that of Counsels; which were voluntarily obeyed by such Christians as aimed at higher degrees of virtue. Mosheim traces the origin of this double doctrine to the Platonic and Pythagorean schools of philosophy; which taught that the continual aim of him, who aspired to the envied title of the sage or truly wise, must be to abstract his mind from the senses, and to raise it above the contagious influence

277 Ubi supra, Sect. 11, 12, 13, 14.

of the body, which he was in consequence to extenuate by severe discipline and a spare diet. With the same view he was to withdraw himself from the world, and to affect a life of solitude and contemplation. In 278 our account of the tenets of Montanus we observed, that Clemens Alexandrinus was the earliest ChrisItian writer in whose works this distinction between the ordinary and the extraordinary rules of life is expressly laid down. Tertullian drew a distinction of a different kind, between spiritual and animal Christians-between those who received, and those who rejected, the prophecies of Montanus. Yet in the 279 second Tract ad Uxorem we find him also distinguishing between precepts and counsels; or to use his own language, between jussa and suasa, and grounding the distinction upon St. Paul's expressions in 1 Cor. vii. Although, however, it is certain that the discipline of Montanus

278 Chap. I. p. 34.

279 Quanto autem nubere in Domino perpetrabile est uti nostræ potestatis, tanto culpabilius est non observare quod possis. Eo accedit, quod Apostolus, de Viduis et Innuptis, ut ita permaneant suadet, quum dicit, Cupio autem omnes meo exemplo perseverare; de nubendo vero in Domino quum dicit, tantum in Domino, jam non suadet, sed exertè jubet. Igitur in ista maximè specie, nisi obsequimur, periclitamur. Quia suasum impunè quis negligat, quam jussum: quod illud de consilio veniat et voluntati proponatur, hoc autem de potestate descendat et necessitati obligetur: illic libertas, hic contumacia delinquere videatur, c. 1.

was of an ascetic character, and that great stress was laid in it upon fasts and other mortifications, we discover nothing in the writings of Tertullian from which we should infer that either the monastic or the eremitical mode of life was practised in his day. There is in the Apology a passage which would rather lead to the opposite conclusion.

280

The 281 rise of pious frauds is also placed by Mosheim in the second century, and in like manner ascribed to the pernicious influence of the Platonic philosophy. 282 Tertullian has recorded a fraud of this kind, practised by a presbyter, who endeavoured to palm upon the Christian world a spurious work under the name of St. Paul. As he pronounces no severe condemnation upon the offender, it may be thought that he did not look upon the offence as of a very heinous character. Yet his writings appear to us to furnish no ground for affirming, that he is himself justly liable to the charge of practising

280 Sed alio quoque injuriarum titulo postulamur, et infructuosi in negotiis dicimur. Quo pacto? homines vobiscum degentes, ejusdem victûs, habitûs, instructûs, ejusdem ad vitam necessitatis? neque enim Brachmanæ, aut Indorum Gymnosophista sumus, silvicolæ, et exules vitæ, c. 42.

281 Ubi supra, Sect. 15.

282 See note 127. of this Chapter.

similar deceptions. We can perceive in him extreme reluctance to admit any fact which militates against the cause which he is defending; and equal readiness to adopt without due examination whatever tends to promote his immediate purpose. But the same dispositions are discernible in the controversialists of all ages; and to make them the pretence for refusing credit to the Fathers in particular, is to display a great deficiency either in information or in candour.

In 283 his chapter on the Doctrine of the Church, Mosheim gives a short account of what he calls its penitential discipline. Having already discussed this subject in our account of the government of the Church, under which head it appeared more properly to fall, we shall now only remark, that we have found in Tertullian's writings no confirmation of Mosheim's assertion, that the Christian discipline began, even at that early period, to be modelled upon the forms observed in the heathen mysteries.

In 284 his strictures upon the qualifications of the Fathers of the second century as moral

283 Ubi supra, Sect. 17.

284 Sect. 10. note

writers, Mosheim alludes to the controversy between M. Barbeyrac and the Père Cellier on that subject. On no one of the Fathers has M. Barbeyrac animadverted with greater severity than on our author; and an examination of his charges will enable us to form a tolerably accurate estimate of the degree of deference which ought to be paid to the decisions of the Fathers in general, upon questions of morals.

But before we enter upon this examination, we must in justice to the early Fathers remark, that nothing can be more unfair or more unreasonable than to require in them that perspicuity of arrangement, or that precision of language, which we find in the moral writers of modern times. They never studied morality as a system, nor did they profess to teach it systematically. 285 We ought also, before we censure them too harshly for their errors, duly

285 The just and candid mode of estimating the works of the Fathers, when not directly controversial, is to consider them, not as argumentative treatises, but as popular discourses; in which the author is less solicitous to reason accurately, than to say what is striking and calculated to produce an effect upon his readers. Were we to subject many popular treatises on religion published at the present day, to the same severe scrutiny to which M. Barbeyrac has subjected the works of Tertullian, the illustrations, I fear, would sometimes be found as impertinent, the premises as unsound, and the conclusions as illogical.