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86 TERTULLIANUS to the morid in that great city: it originated with a certain
graco Ho is manifested. He is beyond our ulmost thought, though our human facultios conceive of Him. He is there- fore equalty real and great. But that Whicli, in the ordina Sense, can be seen and handled and conceived, is inserior to
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propheis, Dom tho ossice Which belongs to them os predictingilis future. Their Words, as weli as the miracles which theyperformed, that men might have faith in their divino auth rity, κε havo stili in the literary treasures they have lest, and whicli are open to ali. Ptolemy, sumamed Philadelphus, themost learned of his race, a man os vast acquaintance with aliliterature, emulating, Ι imagine, tho book enthusiasm os Pisi tratus, among other remains of the past Whicli cither thoirantiqui or something of peculiar interest made famous, at thesuggestion os Demetrius Phalereus, who was reno ned above ali grammarians of his time, and to whom he had committed the management of these things, applied to the Jows for their Writings-I mean the writings peculiar to them and in thoirtongue, Whicli they alone possessed. For hom stemselves,as a peopte dear to God for their sathera' sine, their propheis had ever sprunn and in them they had ever spolien. NoW in ancient times the peopte me cali JeWs baro the nameos Hebrems, and so both their writings and their speechwero HebreW. But that tho understanding of their booksmight not be Wanting, this also tho JeWs supplied to Ptolemy;
for they gave him seventy-tWο interpreters-men Whom thephilosopher Menedemus, the well-known asserter of a Provia
dence, regarded With respect as sharing in his viens. The fame account is given by Aristaeus. So tho hing lest theso moris unioched to ait, in the Greeli language. To this dariat tho templo of Serapis, the libraries of Ptolemy ars to beseon, With the identical HebreW originals in them. . The JeWs, Mo, read them publicly. Under a tribui liberin theyare in the habit of going to hear them every Sabbath. Wh ever gives ear will find God in them; Whoever inhes palns tounderetand, mill bo compelled to belleve.
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damand belles on this very ground. Well, ait tho substances, ali ino materiali, the origins, classes, contenta os Dur most ancient Writings, men most nations and cities illustrious in tho recoria of the past and noted for their antiqui in books ofannias,-the Very forms of your letters, those revealers and custodiers of evenis, nay Ι thinh I speis still wistin thsi mact), your Very gods themselves, Four Very temples and oracles, and sacred rites, aro tres ancient than the work of a single prophet, in Whom you have the thesaurus of the entim Je iis religion, and therefore ino of oura. Is you happen tollavo hoard os a certain Moses, I speah firet of him: he is assar bach as the Argivo Inachus; by nearly four hundred years nly seven tess-lis precedes Danaus, your most ancientname, Whilo he antedates by a millennium tho death of Priam. I might assim, too, that he is sive hundred years earlier than Homer, and have supporters of that vie . The other propheta also, though of later date, are even the most recent of them astar bach as the first of your philosophers, and legislatore, and historians. It is not so much the dissiculty of the subjeci,as ita vasiness, that stanti in the way oi a statement of thogrounds on Whicli these statemenis rest; the matter is not soarduous as it mould bo tedious. It would require ths anxious study Oi many books, and the fingere busy rechoning. The histories of the most ancient nations, such as the Egyptians, tho Chaldeans, the Phoenicians, would need to be ransacked; tho men os these various nations who have information togive, mould have to be called in as witnesses. Manetho tho Egyptian, and Berosus the Chaldean, and Iromus the Phoenician hing oi Tyre; their successors too, Ptolemy tho Mendesian, and Demetrius Phalereus, and Κing Juba, and Apion, and Thallus, and their critic the Je Josephus, thenative vindicator of the ancient history of his peοple, Whoeither authenticates or refutes the othera. Also tho Greeli censors' lista must be compared, and the dates of eventa asce ininia, that tho chronological connections may be opened up, and thus the rechonings of the various annals be made to ove forin light. must go abroad into the histories and liter tum os ali nations. Αnd, in faci, We have atready brought
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90 TERTULLIANUS the proos in pari besore you, in giving thom hinis as in hom
lences, and locat massacres, and widespread desolating mo
slachening interest in ali good ways; the Very Masons and elementa Ming out of their ordinary courae, monstera and portenta taking the place of nature's forms-it Was ali sore- seen and predicted before it came to pass. Whilo me suffertho calamities, wo read of them in the Scriptures; us We
thin is the demonstration of iis being hom above. Henoethere is among us an assured faith in regard to coming evenis as
Same Vesces, they are written in the samo books-the fame Spirit
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themserues aliould res e to admit it, their present nationalruin Would afford sufficient proos. Scattered abroad, a raceos manderer' exiles Irom their own land and clime, theymam over the wholo world Without either a human or aheavenly hing, not possessing even tho stranger's right to set so much as a simple Molatep in their nativo counti . The
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Whoso coming to renovate and illuminate man's nature Was
born as to mahe Him ashamed of the name os Son or of Hispaternat origin. It was not His tot to have as His sather, by incest With a sister, or by violation os a daughtor or another's Wile, a god in the shape of serpent, or Ox, or bird, or lover,ior his vile onds transmuting himsoli into the gold os Danaus. They are your divinities upon Whom theso base deeds of Jupiter Were done. But the Son os God has no mollior in any sense whicli involves impuri ; sho Whom men supposeto bo His mollier in the ordinary Way, had never entered into the marriage bond. But, first, I shali discuss His essentialnature, and so the nature of His birth will be understood. We have Hready asserted that God mado the worid, and allwhicli it contains, by His Word, and Reason, and ΡοWer. It is abundantly plain that your philosophers, toο, regard the Logos-that is, the Word and Reason-as tho Creator of the universe. For Zeno lays it doWn that he is the creator, having made ali things according to a determinate plan ; thathis naine is Fate, and God, and tho soul of Jupiter, and the necessity of ali things. Cleanthos ascribes ali this to spirit, Which he maintains pervades the universe. And we, in liko manner, hold that the Word, and Reason, and PoWer, by which wo havo said God mado all, have spirit as their proper and essentiat substratum, in Whicli tho Word has in-being to give fortii ulterances, and reason abides to disposeand arrange, and poWer is over ali to execute. have
been tauot that He proceods forin from God, and in that procession He is generated; so that He is the Son os God,
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in the my, because it is a ray of the sun-thero is no divusion os substance, but merely an extension. Thus Christ is
The materiai matrix remians entire and unim patred, thoughyou derive from it any number of sboora possessed of iis qualities; so, ino, that Which has come fortit out of God is at oneo God and tho Son os God, and the two are one. In
have concluded that the second-Which, as matter of more manifest prediction, they set their liopes on-is the only one. It was tho merited punishment of their sin not to understand
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and deceive oven the incredulous. But, io, on the third doythere Was a sudden shock of earlhquako, and the stone Which