Tertullian
Tertullian
Tertullian, full name Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, c. 155 – c. 240 AD, was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He is the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature. He also was a notable early Christian apologist and a polemicist against heresy, including contemporary Christian Gnosticism. Tertullian has been called "the father of Latin Christianity" and "the founder of Western theology."...
NationalityRoman
ProfessionAuthor
christian religious errors
If we refuse our homage to statues and frigid images, the very counterpart of their dead originals, with which hawks, and mice, and spiders are so well acquainted, does it not merit praise instead of penalty [Christians were punished for not worshiping Roman gods] that we have rejected what we have come to see is error? We cannot surely be made out to injure those whom we are certain are nonentities. What does not exist is in its nonexistence secure from suffering.
errors truth-is customs
Custom without truth is error grown old.
lying men causes
The Word, then, the Christ, is the cause both of our ancient beginning, for lie was in God, and of our well-being. And now this same Word has appeared as man. He alone is both God and man, and the source of all our good things
way earning usual
The usual complaint is, 'I have no other way of earning a living.' The harsh reply can be, 'Do you have to live?'
christian blood seeds
The blood of Christians is seed.
prayer conquer one-thing
Prayer is the one thing that can conquer God
long littles wander
Indeed it is better to postpone, lest either we complete too little by hurrying, or wander too long in completing it.
lust soul maidens
The soul whose bosom lust did never touch Is God's fair bride; and maiden's souls are such.
sarcastic dog apostles
Now then, you dogs, whom the apostle puts outside and who yelp at the God of truth, let us come to your various questions.
impossible certain certainty
It is certain because it is impossible. -Certum est quia impossibile
father son names
[T]he Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost [are] three ... not in condition, but in degree; not in substance, but in form; not in power, but in aspect; yet of one substance, and of one condition, and of one power, inasmuch as He is one God, from whom these degrees and forms and aspects are reckoned, under the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
religious idols sea
Enoch predicted that "the demons and the spirits of the angelic apostates would turn into idolatry all the elements, all the adornment of the universe, and all things contained in the heaven, the sea, and the earth, that they might be consecrated as God in opposition to God." All things, therefore, does human error worship, except the Founder of all himself. The images of those things are idols; the consecration of the images is idolatry.
religious mean sacrifice
Offerings to propitiate the dead then were regarded as belonging to the class of funeral sacrifices, and these are idolatry. Idolatry, in fact, is a sort of homage to the departed, the one as well as the other is a service to dead men. Moreover, demons dwell in the images of the dead. ... this sort of exhibition has passed from honors of the dead to honors of the living; I mean, to quaestorships [financial overseers]and magistractes, to priestly offices of different kinds. Yet, since idolatry still cleaves to the dignity's name, whatever is done in its name partakes of its impurity.
religious art divorce
[Hermogenes] despises God's law in his painting, maintains repeated marriages [almost certainly a reference to remarrying after divorce or perhaps even widowhood, which Tertullian, who became a Montanist, opposed], alleges the law of God in defense of lust [likely same reference], and yet despises it in respect of his art.