ON THE TESTIMONY OF THE SOUL
CHAPTER I
IT were a work demanding considerable ingenuity and a still more retentive memory, were one to extract the testimonies to Christian Truth out of all the most approved writings of philosophers and poets and teachers of secular learning and wisdom, so that its rivals and opponents might be convicted out of their own literature both of error as regards themselves and of injustice towards us. Some, indeed, whose diligence in research and excellence of memory in ancient literature have been unfailing, have composed booklets with this end in view which are in our hands; 1 and in these works they set forth and attest in each particular the reason and origin of our traditions and the proofs of our tenets, from which it can be seen that we have upheld nothing either novel or strange which does not find support and countenance in popular writings in everybody's hands, in so far as we have either rejected error or admitted truth. But human obstinacy arising out of credulity has impaired men's faith even in their own teachers, who on other points are deemed most approved and most authori- tative, wherever they come across vindications of
1 Minucius Felix. See Intro., p. 13.
16
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the Christian position. Then are the poets foolish when they assign to the gods human passions and stories; then are the philosophers stupid when they knock at the doors of Truth. One will only be regarded as wise and learned so long as one utters sentiments nearly Christian; while if one has really aimed at prudence and wisdom by rejecting (heathen) ceremonies or by convicting the world (of sin), one is at once branded as a Christian.
We will now therefore have nothing to do with a literature and a teaching of such fertile perversity that it is believed in for what is false in it rather than for what is true. No matter that some have taught one GOD and one only. Rather let them have written nothing at all which a Christian acknowledges, lest he may upbraid them with it. For all do not know what has been written, and those who do know do not agree with it with any confidence. Far less do men agree with our writings, to which no one comes unless he is a
Christian already.
I call a new witness, better known than all liter- ature, more discussed than all doctrine, more public than all publications, greater than any man, yet which is indeed the whole of man.
Stand forth, O Soul, in the midst; whether thou art divine and eternal (as many philosophers assert), and therefore less likely to lie, or whether thou art the opposite of divine because mortal (as Epicurus is alone in thinking), and therefore oughtest the less to lie;1 whether thou art received from heaven, or conceived on earth; whether thou art produced from
1 i. e. being an outside, independent source of witness to GOD.
B
numbers or atoms; whether thou hast thy beginning with the body, or art subsequently introduced into the body; whencesoever and howsoever thou makest man to be a rational being, the most capable of sense and knowledge—stand forth and utter thy testimony.
But I do not summon thee in the form in which thou givest vent to thy wisdom when thou hast been shaped in the schools, trained in libraries, fed in Attic academies and Porches.1 I address thee in thy simple, unskilled, unpolished, untaught form, such as they possess thee who have nothing else but thee, thy very self alone, as thou existest in the lane, in the highway, in the loom. I need thy inexperience, since no one credits thy experience, however small. I demand of thee that which thou bringest into man, which thou hast learnt to feel either from thyself or from thine author, whoever he may be. Thou art not, as I know, Christian, for a soul is wont to be made, not born Christian.2 Yet now Christians extort from thee an alien, a testimony against thine own friends, so that these may actually blush before thee because they hate and mock us for those very things of which now thy conscience accuses thee.
1 i. e. brought up on Platonist or Stoic teaching.
2 So previously in his Apology Tertullian wrote: "Chris- tians are made, not born"; cp. Augustine, de pecc. mer. III, 9: "Not birth, but rebirth, makes Christians."
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CHAPTER II
WE give offence when we preach the ONE GOD under One Name only, from Whom are all things,1 and under Whom is the universe. Speak forth thy testimony, if thou knowest this to be the truth. For we hear thee everywhere openly and with full liberty (which is denied to us), ejaculating, "May GOD grant it," and "If GOD wills." And by these words thou declarest that some ONE exists, and confessest that all power belongs to Him to Whose will thou lookest. At the same time thou sayest that the rest are not gods, inasmuch as thou callest them by their own names—Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Minerva. For thou affirmest Him alone to be GOD Whom thou callest simply GOD; and hence when thou dost sometimes also call the others gods, thou seemest to do so by a derived and, as it were, a borrowed use of the word.
Nor is the Nature of the GOD Whom we preach hid from thee. "GOD is good," "GOD doeth good," are thine own expressions—obviously implying, "But man is evil"; involving in this contrary proposition by indirect inference the reproach that man is evil because he has departed from the good GOD.
Again, whereas with us every benediction in the Name of the GOD of goodness and loving-kindness is the most sacred bond of our faith and practice, "GOD bless thee" runs off thy tongue as readily as it should come from any Christian's need. And even when thou turnest the invocation of GOD into
1 I Cor. viii. 6.
a curse, by that very phrase thou dost confess equally with us that His power is supreme over us all.
There are some who, although they do not deny GOD, yet do not regard Him as One Who searches and beholds and judges (in which opinion, of course, they markedly differ from us who cling to that doctrine in fear of the proclaimed Judgement), thus attempting to honour GOD by freeing Him from the care of watching and the trouble of censuring, not even permitting Him to be angry. "For if GOD be angry," say they, "He is cor- ruptible and passionate; and moreover what is corruptible and passionate is perishable, but GOD is not perishable." These same persons, however, by their own confession elsewhere that the soul is divine and GOD-given, run up against a testimony of the soul itself which can be retorted against their opinion just given; for if the soul be either divine or bestowed by GOD, doubtless it knows its Giver, and if it knows Him it surely fears Him as its especial Endower. Doth it not fear Him Whom it would rather have propitious towards it than wrathful ? Whence comes, then, that natural fear of the soul for GOD if GOD knows not how to be angry ? How can He be feared Who cannot be offended ? What is to be feared save anger ? Whence arises anger save from censure ? Whence censure save from judgement ? And whence judge- ment save from power ? And who has the supreme power save GOD alone ? Hence comes, O soul, thy readiness to say from thine own inmost know- ledge, at all times and places, no one scoffing or objecting, "GOD seeth all things"; "I leave it to GOD"; "GOD will repay"; "GOD shall judge
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between us." Whence hast thou this knowledge, not being Christian ?
Moreover, often in the very temples themselves, wreathed with Ceres' fillet, or scarleted with Saturn's cloak, or white in Isis' linen, thou suppli- catest GOD as Judge! Thou standest under Aesculapius, thou deckest out Juno in bronze, thou bindest on Minerva a morion with dusky orna- ments, and yet thou dost not adjure any one of these deities that are present with thee ! In thine own forum thou appealest to a Judge in another place : in thine own temples thou sufferest another GOD ! O Testimony of Truth, which among the very daemons1 makes these a witness for the Christians !
CHAPTER III
BUT when we affirm that there are daemons—as a matter of fact we prove their existence, for we alone expel them—some supporter of Chrysippus 2 mocks us. Yet thine own execrations confirm the fact of their existence and of their being abomi- nated. Thou callest a man a daemon either for his filthiness or malice or insolence, or for some stigma or other which we assign to daemons, in a sudden hastiness of hatred. Thou namest Satan,3 for
1 Tertullian, and the African school of Apologists gener- ally, held that the pagan gods were identical with the daemons who were agents of the Evil One. See Apol. 23.
2 Chrysippus. One of the most distinguished of the Stoic philosophers (300-220 B.C.), a disciple of Zeno and Cleanthes.
3 Tertullian's meaning seems to be that Satan is unwit- tingly referred to in the maledictory exclamation of the
instance (whom we call the angel of evil, the con- triver of error, the corrupter of the whole world), in every expression of vexation and scorn and detestation—the being by whom man in the begin- ning was beguiled to transgress GOD'S command, and on that account was given over to death, and brought it about that the whole race, thus infected from his seed, became a sharer in and transmitter of his condemnation. Thou art aware, therefore, of thine own destroyer, and albeit that Christians alone (including whatever sect is on GOD's side) 1 know him, yet even thou too recognizest him since thou hatest him.
CHAPTER IV
To come now to a matter more closely related to thine own perception—how intimately indeed does it touch thy very being !—we affirm that thou existest after the extinction of the bodily life, and awaitest a day of judgement, and art destined, according to thy deservings, either to torture or to refreshment, in either case eternally; for the perception of which thy original essence must necessarily return to thee, together with the substance of the identical human being, and thy memory; because neither canst thou feel any- thing of good or bad without the faculty of sensitive
vulgar, "Malum !" See Terence, Eun. IV, 7, 10; Plautus, Epidic. V, 2, 44. Tertullian uses Malus for Satan, de cult, fem. 5; de idol. 16, 21; so also Paulin, Carm. adv. pag. V, 158. See my note on Apol. 22.
1 The Jews.
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flesh,1 nor is there any possibility of judgement without the presentation of the actual person who has deserved to suffer judgement. This Christian opinion, though nobler far than Pythagoras', inasmuch as it doth not transmigrate thee into animals; though fuller than Plato's, inasmuch as it restores to thee thy dowry of body; though more dignified than Epicurus', inasmuch as it saves thee from perishing, is yet set down to sheer vanity and stupidity and (as it is called) "pre- sumption,"2 merely because it is Christian. But we blush not if our "presumption" is found also with thee. For in the first place, when thou recallest in memory any one who is dead, thou callest him "wretched man"—not surely as one cut off from a happy life, but as one assigned to punishment and judgement. Another time, how- ever, thou callest the dead free from care—thus implying the disadvantage of life and the boon of death. Next thou callest the dead free from care what times thou retirest outside the gate to the tombs with thy viands and delicacies, or when (appeasing thyself rather than them) thou returnest from the tombs overcome with wine.
But I demand thy sober opinion. Thou callest the dead "poor wretches" when thou speakest
1 This is worked out more fully and with equally crude materialism in the treatise de resurrectione carnis.
2 This was quite a technical term of reproach against the Christians, like dementia, obstinatio; see ad Nat. I, 19; Apol. 19, "our confidence which you call presumption"; ib. 49, "tenets that in our case alone are called presump- tions, but in the case of philosophers and poets are looked upon as sublime and most ingenious flights of science," So again below, 4; compare de anima, 1.
from thine own mind when thou art away from them. For thou canst not denounce their lot in their feast when they are, as it were, present and reclining with thee : thou art bound to flatter those on whose account thou art faring more joyously. Dost thou then call him a poor wretch who feeleth nothing ? What when thou cursest, as one who does feel, him whose memory thou recallest with some mordant dislike ? Thou prayest that the earth may lie heavy on him, and that his ashes may be tormented among the shades below. Likewise out of good feeling for one to whom thou owest favours, thou implorest refreshment on his bones and ashes, and that he may rest happily among the shades. If thou hast no capability of suffer- ing after death, if there is no persistency of feeling, if in fine thou art absolutely naught when thou hast left the body, why dost thou lie against thyself and imply the possibility of some suffering here- after ? Nay, why dost thou fear death at all ? There is nothing after death for thee to fear, since there is nothing to be felt. For even were it to be said that "death is to be feared, not because it threatens something beyond, but because it deprives one of the advantage of life, yet since the far more numerous ills of life are cut off at the same time, the fear of death is removed by a gain of greater weight; for the loss of good is no longer to be feared inasmuch as it is balanced by another good, the freedom from ills. That ought not to be feared which frees one from everything fearful. If thou fearest to depart out of life because thou knowest life to be best, thou certainly oughtest not to fear death which thou dost not know to be evil. But on the other hand, inasmuch as thou fearest it, thou
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showest that thou knowest it to be evil. But thou wouldst not know it to be evil, and therefore wouldst not fear it, if thou didst not know that there is something after death which makes it an evil and a thing of dread to thee. We will say nothing now of the instinctive fear of death. No one should fear what cannot be avoided. I will meet thee from the opposite side of a more joyful hope after death. For in almost all men there is an innate desire of fame after death. There is no need to recount again the Curtii, and the Reguli, and the Greek heroes of whose contempt of death for the sake of posthumous fame there are innumerable testimonies.1 Who now, in our own day, does not strive that his memory may be con- stantly borne in mind after his death, and that his name may be preserved either by works of liter- ature, or by simple glory of his virtues, or by the splendour of his very tomb ? Whence is it that to-day the soul aspires to something which it wishes for after death, and makes such elaborate preparations for what it can use only after its departure? Surely it would care nothing about the future if it knew nothing about the future.
But perhaps thou art more certain of thy sentience after death than of thy future resurrection—the doctrine of which we are branded as being the "presumptuous"2 teachers. Yet this also is pro- claimed by the soul. For if any one inquires about some one already dead as though he were alive, at once the answer comes, "He has just gone, and ought to return." 3
1 See instances in Apol. 50.
2 See note above.
3 This was a conventional formula, as though the question
CHAPTER V
THESE testimonies of the soul are as simple as they are true, as constant as they are simple, as common as they are habitual, as natural as they are common, as divine as they are natural. I do not think they could appear to any one to be trifling or indifferent, if one meditates on the majesty of Nature whence the authority of the soul is derived. Howsoever much thou allowest to the mistress, the same must thou assign to the disciple. Nature is the mistress; the soul, the disciple. Whatever either the mistress has taught or the soul has learnt came from GOD, the Master in truth of the mistress herself. What the soul can infer about its first Teacher it is thy power to estimate from what is in thyself. Think of that soul which enables thee to think. Reflect on that which is in presages thy seer, in omens thy augur, in issues thy foreseer. Is it strange if, given by GOD, it knows how to divine for man ? Is it very strange if it knows Him by Whom it has been given ? Even when outwitted by its adversary, it remembers its own Author and His goodness and His decree both of its own end and of that of its adversary himself. Is it so strange if, given by GOD, it utters the truths that GOD has given to His own people to know?
But he who does not think such outbursts of the soul are the teaching of its essential nature and
asked in ignorance of the person's death was of good omen to the deceased.
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secret truths entrusted to its inborn consciousness,1 will rather say that the existing habit, and, as it were, vice, of speaking in this way has been con- firmed by the widely spread opinions amongst the common people of published books. Surely the soul existed before letters, and speech before books, and ideas before the record of them, and man himself before the philosopher and poet. Is it then to be believed that before literature and its publication men lived without speaking of such matters? Used no one to speak of GOD and His
goodness, of death and of the shades below ? Speech went a-begging, I suppose—nay, none was possible for lack at that time of those subjects without which it cannot exist even to-day when it is so much more full and rich and wise—if those things which to-day are so obvious, so pressing, so close at hand, bred as it were on the very lips, were formerly non-existent, before letters had sprung up in the world, before Mercury,2 I suppose, was born.
And whence, I pray, did letters come to know and spread abroad for the use of speech matters which no mind had ever conceived or tongue produced, or ear heard ?
But in truth, since the Divine Scriptures which are in our hands or in those of the Jews, into whose olive 3 tree we have been grafted, precede secular
1 So again, de virg. vel. 5, Tertullian speaks of the divine nature of the soul, through the tacit consciousness of nature, unwittingly bringing into use forms of speech conformable with Scripture.
2 Mercury, as identified by the Romans with Hermes, was believed to be the inventor of the alphabet; Cicero, de nat. deorum, III, 22.
3 Oleastro, properly the wild olive, but if the text is correct
literature by a very long period, or even by a moderate space of time (as we have shown in the proper place in order to demonstrate their trust- worthiness),1 if the soul hath taken these utterances from literature, obviously it must be believed to have taken them from ours, not from yours, because the earlier are more potent for instructing the soul than the later, which were actually themselves waiting to be instructed by the earlier. So that even if we grant that the soul was instructed from your writings, yet tradition belongs to its first origin, and whatever you happen to have taken and handed on from ours is altogether ours. Since this is so, it matters little whether the knowledge which the soul possesses has been implanted in it by GOD or derived from the writings of GOD.
CHAPTER VI
BELIEVE therefore thine own writings, and also believe our records so much the more as being divine; but as touching the witness of the soul itself, believe Nature in like manner. Select which of these thou notest to be the more faithful sister to the Truth. If thou doubtest about thine own writings, neither GOD nor Nature speak falsely. That thou mayest believe both Nature and GOD, believe the soul: thus it will come to pass that thou wilt believe thyself also. Assuredly it is the
here = olivo. Rigault and other editors suggest olea ex oleastro. The reference is to Rom. xi. 17 f.
1 Apol. 19.
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soul that thou valuest as making thee as great as thou art, whose thou art entirely; for the soul is everything to thee, without which thou canst neither live nor die, and for its sake thou neglectest GOD. For since thou art afraid to become a Christian, summon the soul and ask why, when worshipping another, she calleth upon the name of GOD ? 1 Why, when she brandeth spirits as accursed, doth she speak of daemons? Why doth she make her protestations heavenwards and her execrations earthwards ? Why doth she worship him in one place, and in another call upon Him as an Avenger ? Why doth she pass judgements on the dead ? Why hath she Christian phrases on her lips when Christians she desires neither to hear nor see ? Why hath she either given us those phrases or received them from us ? Why hath she been either our teacher or our scholar ? Hadst thou not better suspect that there is something in this agreement of speech amid so great a disagree- ment of practice ? Foolish thou art if thou attributest such to our own language only or to the Greek (both of which are regarded as near akin), and deniest the solidarity of Nature. The soul descended not from heaven exclusively on the Latins and Greeks. Man is one and the same in all nations; the soul is one though speech be various; the spirit is one though its voice differs; each race has its own language, but the themes of language are the same in all. GOD is every- where,2 and His goodness everywhere; the daemon is everywhere, and his curse everywhere; the
1 Above, Chap. II.
2 i. e in universal speech.
invocation of divine judgement is everywhere, and the consciousness of it everywhere; and the witness of the soul likewise is everywhere. Every soul in its own right shouts aloud what we are not per- mitted even to whisper. Deservedly therefore is every soul a culprit and a witness; for in so far as it witnesses to the Truth, just so far is it guilty of wrongdoing, and so it will stand before the courts of GOD in the day of judgement speechless, Thou usest to proclaim GOD, O Soul, and didst not seek Him; thou didst abominate daemons, and didst worship them; thou didst appeal to the judge- ment of GOD, and didst not believe in its exist- ence ; thou didst look for infernal punishments, and tookest no precautions to avoid them; thou wert Christianly minded, and yet didst persecute the Christian name.
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