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| Elucidations.
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Elucidations.
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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.1701
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.1702
| 1702 See De
Præscrip., cap. xxxii. vol. iii. p. 258. |
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, Certum est quia impossibile
est. It occurs in the tract De Carne
Christi,1703
| 1703 Cap. v. vol. iii. p.
525. | 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,
Adfirmandum cor sincerum
Sola fides sufficit.”
As Jeremy Taylor1704
| 1704 Christ in the Holy
Sacrament, § xi. 6. |
argues, the condition is, that holy Scripture affirms it. If that
be the case, then “all things are possible with God:”
I believe; but I do not argue, for it is impossible with men.
This is the plain sense of the great Carthaginian doctor’s pithy
rhetoric. But Dr. Bunsen sets it on all-fours, and treats it as
if it were soberly designed to defy reason,—that reason to which
Tertullian constantly makes his appeal against Marcion, and in many of
his sayings1705
| 1705 De Anima, cap.
xvii. | hardly less
witty. Speaking of Hippolytus, that writer remarks,1706
“He might have said on some
points, Credibile licet ineptum: he would never
have exclaimed with Tertullian, ‘Credibile quia
ineptum.’” Why attempt to prove the
absurdity of such a reflection? As well attempt to defend St.
John’s hyperbole1707
against a mind
incapable of comprehending a figure of speech.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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