Isiah that the Gentiles should be his inheritance and the ends of the earth his possession? was he not described as the light of the Gentiles? and are not these predictions accomplished in the diffusion of the Gospel of Jesus through every part of the known world?”

21

"We, 20 therefore, do not err when we affirm that the Messiah is already come. The error is yours, who still look for his coming. The Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem of Judah, according to the prophet. But at the present moment no one of the stock of Israel remains at Bethlehem: either, therefore, the prophecy is already fulfilled, or its fulfilment is impossible." " Tertullian concludes with pointing out the source of the error of the Jews, who did not perceive that two advents of Christ were announced in Scripture-the first in humiliation, the second in glory. Fixing their thoughts exclusively on the latter, they refused to acknowledge a meek and suffering Saviour.

Such were the arguments by which Tertullian endeavoured to shew, in opposition to the objections of the Jews, that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah. It appears

20

c. 13.

21 Micah v. 1.

22 c. 14.

from them that the controversy then stood precisely on the same footing on which it stands in the present day: and that the Jews of his time resorted to the same subterfuges and cavils as the modern Jews, in order to evade the force of the prophecies which, as the Christians maintained, had been fulfilled in Jesus. If we turn to Bp. Pearson, we shall find that the course, which he pursues in establishing the truth of the second 23 Article of the Creed, differs not very materially from that of our author. We notice this resemblance for the purpose of removing, at least in part, the unfavourable impression which Mosheim's strictures are calculated to create against this portion of Tertullian's labours. In judging also of the Treatise adversus Judæos, we should bear in mind that it has come down to us in a corrupt state, some "passages bearing evident marks of interpolation. We will conclude our remarks upon it with observing that Tertullian, when he charges the Jews with confounding the two advents of Christ, makes no allusion to the notion of two Messiahs-one suffering, the other triumphant ; whence we are warranted in concluding either

23 See p. 76. where he shews that Joshua was a type of Christ. See also Article III. "born of the Virgin Mary," and Article IV. " was crucified."

24 See c. 5. and c. 14. sub fine.

that he was ignorant of this device, or that it had not been resorted to in his day.

25

To return to Mosheim. In his enumeration of the heresies which divided the Church in the second century, he first mentions that which originated in a superstitious attachment to the Mosaic law. This heresy is scarcely noticed by Tertullian. There can indeed be little doubt that, after the promulgation of Adrian's edict, those Christians who had united the observance of the Mosaic ritual with the profession of the Gospel, fearful least they should be confounded with the Jews, gradually abandoned the Jewish ceremonies-so that, in the time of Tertullian, the number of 26 Judaizing Christians had become extremely small. We are now speaking of those whom Mosheim calls 27 Nazarenes—who, though they retained the Mosaic rites, believed all the fundamental articles of the Christian faith. The Ebionites on

25 Century II. Part ii. Chap. 5.

26 See Wilson's Illustration of the method of explaining the New Testament, &c. c. 11. where he enumerates the different causes which contributed to the gradual extinction of the Judaizing Christians, or as he terms them, Christian Jews.

27 The Jews, in Tertullian's time, appear to have called Christians in general by the name of Nazarenes. Adv. Marcionem, L. iv. c. 8. sub initio. Apud Hebræos Christianos, L. iii. c. 12.

the contrary, 28 who also maintained the necessity of observing the ceremonial law, rejected many essential doctrines of Christianity. They are more than once mentioned by Tertullian, who always speaks of them as having received their appellation from their founder Ebion. He did not write any express treatise against them; but we learn from incidental notices in his works that they 29 denied the miraculous conception, and affirmed that 30 Jesus was not the Son of God, but a mere man born according to the ordinary course of nature.

The next Heresies, of which Mosheim speaks, are those which he imagines to have arisen from the attempt to explain the doctrines of Christianity, in a manner conformable to the dictates of the oriental philosophy, concerning the origin of evil. In every age, both before and since the promulgation of the Gospel, this question has been found to baffle the powers of the human understanding, and to involve in an endless maze of error all who have engaged in the unavailing research. Of this Tertul

28 De Præscriptione Hæreticorum, c. 33.

29 Quam utique virginem constat fuisse, licet Ebion resistat. De Virginibus velandis, c. 6.

30 De Præscriptione Hæreticorum, c. 33. De Carne Christi, cc. 14, 18, 24.

lian was fully aware; and he traces the rise of many of the heretical opinions which he 31 combats, to the to the curiosity of vain and presumptuous men, venturing to explore the hidden things of God. But though he so far connects philosophy with heresy, as to style the 32 philosophers the ancestors of the Heretics; yet neither he, nor any other of the early Fathers, appears to have thought that the Heretics derived their notions from 55 the oriental philosophy. On the contrary, Tertullian repeatedly charges them with borrowing from Pythagoras and Plato and other Greek Philosophers. In like manner 35 Irenæus affirms that Valentinus was indebted for his succession of Eons to the Theogonies of the Greek Poets. It will be said, perhaps, that

34

Unde malum, et quare? et unde homo, et quomodo? et quod proxime Valentinus proposuit, unde Deus? De Præscriptione Hæreticorum, c. 7.

32 Hæreticorum Patriarchæ Philosophi. Adv. Hermogenem, c. 8. De Animâ, cc. 3, 23. Ipsi illi sapientiæ professores, de quorum ingeniis omnis hæresis animatur. Adv. Marcionem, L. i. c. 13. See also L. v. c. 19.

33 Mosheim refers to Clemens Alexandrinus, L. vii. c. 17. p. 898. and to Cyprian, Ep. 75. But those passages only confirm his statement, that Basilides, Cerdo, and the other Heretics began to publish their opinions about the time of Adrian: respecting the Oriental origin of the opinions they are silent.

34 Ubi tunc Marcion, Ponticus Nauclerus, Stoicæ studiosus? ubi Valentinus, Platonicæ Sectator? De Præscriptione Hæreticorum, c. 30. 35 L. ii. c. 19.