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Anti-Marcion
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Introduction, by the American Editor.
[2318] Bishop Kaye says of Tertullian (page 62): “He is indeed the harshest and most obscure of writers, and the least capable of being accurately represented in a translation;” and he quotes the learned Ruhnken’s sentence of our author: “Latinitatis certè pessimum auctorem esse aio et confirmo.” This is surely much too sweeping. To the careful student Tertullian’s style commends itself, by and by, as suited exactly to his subject—as the terse and vigorous expression of terse and vigorous thought. Bishop Butler has been often censured for an awkward style; whereas it is a fairer criticism to say, that the arguments of the Analogy and the Sermons of Human Nature have been delivered in the language best suited to their character. This adaptation of style to matter is probably in all great authors a real characteristic of genius. A more just and favourable view is taken of Tertullian’s Latin by Niebuhr, Hist. Rom. (Schmitz), vol. v. p. 271, and his Lectures on Ancient Hist. (Schmitz), vol. ii. p. 54.
[2319] He has also, as the reader will observe, endeavoured to distinguish, by the help of type, between the true God and Marcion’s god, printing the initials of the former, and of the pronouns referring to Him, in capitals, and those of the latter in small letters. To do this was not always an easy matter, for in many passages the argument amalgamates the two. Moreover, in the earlier portion of the work the translator fears that he may have occasionally neglected to make the distinction.
[2320] [Written A.D. 207. See Chapter xv. infra. In cap. xxix. is the token of Montanism which denotes his impending lapse.]
[2321] Retro.
[2322] Jam hinc viderit.
[2323] Ex vetere.
[2324] Fratris.
[2325] Stilus.
[2326] De.
[2327] [Euxine=hospitable. One recalls Shakespeare:
—“Like to the Pontick Sea
Whose icy current and compulsive force
Ne’er feels retiring ebb.”—Othel.]
[2328] Cruda.
[2329] De jugo. See Strabo (Bohn’s trans.), vol. ii. p. 247.
[2330] Duritia.
[2331] Libens.
[2332] Exaggerantur.
[2333] Calet.
[2334] [Iphigenia of Euripides.]
[2335] [See the Medea of Euripides.]
[2336] [Prometheus of Æschylus.]
[2337] Hamaxobio. This Sarmatian clan received its name ῾Αμαξόβιοι from its gypsy kind of life.
[2338] [I fancy there is point in this singular, the sky of Pontus being always overcast. Cowper says:
“There is but one cloud in the sky,
But that doth the welkin invest,” etc.
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