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| Quotes From Tertullian Tertullian is no doubt one of the most influential
Apostolic Fathers in the area of introducing the writings of the Mishnah
and Talmud into what has been called the foundation of Roman Catholic
Doctrine. (We therefore declare Him to be a false teacher of epic proportions.)
– Those downstream from him (Jerome and Augustine) used many of his
Talmudic teachings, embroidering and enlarging on them to make names
for themselves. St. Tertullian And do you not know that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age:
the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil’s gateway:
you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first
deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom
the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily
God’s image, man. On account of your desertion (Of the Life and vocation God freely gave in the beginning)—that
is, death—even the Son of God had to die. (The words of Tertullian turn the entire Gospels
and epistles upon its head – The acetic views voiced here are completely
from the Talmud – this book is the codification in the church of the
Christian Burka the predecessor of the Nun Habit and the Muslim Burka) On the Apparel of Women. Book I Chapter
1 St. Tertullian: But
how are we (Christian
women by our dress) a (source of) danger to our neighbour?
How do we import (Thoughts of) concupiscence (Sexual relations)
into our neighbour? Which (Thoughts of ) concupiscence, if God, in “elevating (Our standard of obedience of)
the law (Of
Moses),” (Which) did not associate a penalty without the
actual commission of fornication, I know not (This knowing not is on the basis of any personal knowledge or revelation
from the Lord because Tertullian clearly did not know the Lord. This
knowing was also clearly not from scripture, the words of Christ and
the Apostles or by the words of the apostolic fathers before him which
Tertullian completely disregards.) whether He allows impunity
(Forgiveness
or immunity from sin) to him who has (unknowingly)
been the cause of perdition (Apostasy) to some other. For that other, as
soon as he has felt concupiscence (Desire for sexual relations) after your beauty,
and has mentally already committed (the deed) which his concupiscence
(Sexual desires)
pointed to perishes; (Paul speaks of burning with desire and seeing it not as a cause for
perdition, or causing one to perish, Paul’s answer to the unmarried
is to marry and to the married to have more sex.) and you have been
made the sword which destroys him: On the Apparel of Women. Book I Chapter
1 St. Tertullian: And,
of course, that
(A universal law in the church) ought to have been chosen
which keeps virgins (Hooded and) veiled, (So that their looks might only) be made known to God alone; (Until after marriage)
who ought to blush even at their own privilege (In some churches not to be veiled). You put a virgin to the blush more by praising
than by blaming her; because the front of sin is more hard, (Than)
learning shamelessness from and in the sin itself. For that custom
which belies virgins while it exhibits them, would never have been approved
by any except by some men who must have been similar in (unchaste)
character (like)
unto these (unchaste)
virgins themselves. Such (corrupt men’s)
eyes will wish that a virgin be seen, (We are talking about her head and face)
as has the virgin who shall wish to be seen. The same kinds of
(lusting)
eyes reciprocally crave after each other. Seeing and being seen
belong to the self-same lust. To blush if he see a virgin (Unhooded head and unveiled face) is as much a mark of a chaste man, as of a chaste
virgin if seen by a man.
On
the Veiling of Virgins. Book
I Chapter 2 St. Tertullian: (On the angels marrying the daughters
of men)Who it has above said were “born,” thus
also signifying their virginity: first, “born;” but here, wedded
to angels. Anything
else I know not except that
they were “born” and subsequently “wedded.” So perilous (Was their unhooded and unveiled)
face, then, (that)
ought to (have)
be shaded, which has cast stumbling-stones even so far as heaven: (All of this is not in the bible)
that, when (These women shall.) stand
in the presence of God, at whose bar (They shall) stand accused of the driving of the angels
from their (natural) confines. (Their standing there) may (Cause) the other angels to blush as well; and
(They)
may repress (Cut
off) those (Of this) former evil liberty of their heads.(A liberty)
now (By
Christian women) to be exhibited not even before human eyes.
But even if they were (Those unbelieving) females already (sexually) contaminated
by those angels that had desired them, so much the more “on account
of the angels” would it have been the duty of those to be veiled, as
their being (Unveiled and unhooded) would
have been the most likely cause for virgins to have been the
cause of those angels sinning. On the
Veiling of Virgins.. Book I Chapter 7 St. Tertullian: But
the authority which licenses her sitting in that seat uncovered
is the same which allows her to sit there as a virgin: a seat to which besides the
“sixty years not merely a single-husbanded women that
became widowed (who)
are at length (of days) elected, but “mothers” also, yes, and “educators
of children;” in order, forsooth, that their
experimental (experiential) training in all the affections (This strongly implies that Tertullian
still understood the role of female elders in the church and their duties
including training up their daughters as [Philoanderers] as Naomi had
done with Ruth) may, on the one hand, have rendered them capable
of readily aiding all others with counsel and comfort, and that, on
the other, they may none the less have travelled down the whole course
of probation whereby a virgin female can be tested (before marriage so the husband when selected his veiled and hooded
wife can be assured she is a worthy bride). So she
will be truly trained and grounded in her position, On the Veiling of Virgins.. Book
I Chapter 9 St. Tertullian: We
learn from the apostle, who permits
(Talmudic
word) marrying
indeed, but prefers abstinence; the former on account of the insidiousness
of temptations, the latter on account of the straits of the times.
Now, by looking into the reason thus given for each proposition, it
is easily discerned that the ground on which the power of marrying is conceded
as necessity; and
whatsoever necessity grants,
by it’s very nature (becomes) depreciated. In fact,
in that it is written, “To marry is better than to burn,”
what, pray, is the nature of this “good” which is (only) commended by
comparison with “evil?” So that the reason why “marrying” is more good
is (merely) that “burning” is less? (The burning is less spoken of here, is an acknowledgment by Tertullian
that the conjugal duties of husband and wife had been greatly altered
since the death of the Apostles.) To
his wife
Book I Chapter 3 St. Tertullian: (On being not unequally yoked) For who but could understand that the apostle
foresaw many dangers and wounds to (The) faith in marriages?
(This phrase regarding “wounds to faith caused by marriage”
(Augustine picks up on of and makes it great wood hay and stubble out
of this in his Epistle on marriage – completely ignoring like “any good
Rabbi” that the subject matter here is not “marriage” but being married
unequally yoked.)
(So
as to understand why) he prohibited this kind (of marriage.)
(And
in so doing) Taking precaution, in the first place, against
the defilement of holy flesh in Gentile flesh? (Holy flesh and gentile flesh
is not a term used by Paul or any of the Apostles.) At this point some one says, “What, then, is
the difference between him who is chosen by the Lord to Himself in Gentile marriage, (The first gentile believers)
and him who was of (The) old (Covenant) a believer, that (Were forbidden to do such) should
not they (Those
believers unequally yoked) be equally cautious in (The joining or communion of) their flesh (that they might also become
corrupted by sexual relations with their unbelieving spouse?) whereas
the one (Those
in the covenant of Moses) are kept from marriage with an unbeliever, the other (Those of the new covenant)
bidden to continue in it (such relations). Why, if (As Tertullian preached) we are defiled
by (marriage
to) a Gentile,
is not the one (with
the unbelieving spouse that will to remain married)
disjoined (Divorced),
just as the other (married to the unbelieving spouse who has departed)
is not bound?” I will answer, if the Spirit give (me ability);
alleging, before all (other arguments), The Lord holds
it more pleasing that matrimony should not be contracted, than that
it should at all be dissolved: in short, divorce He prohibits,
except for the cause of fornication; but continence (with even an unbelieving spouse)
He commends. Let the one, (with the unbelieving spouse)
therefore, have the necessity of continuing; and the other,(that wishes to marry a unbeliever) further, even the power of not marrying.
Secondly, if, according to the Scripture, they who shall be “apprehended”
by the faith in (the state of) Gentile marriage are
not defiled by reason, of their communing together, others (of their household shall)
also are sanctified: without doubt, the (believing and unbelieving) have been sanctified in (their continued) marriage, if (though) they (A believer marries a unbeliever and they) commingle themselves with “strange flesh,”
(The
believer)
cannot sanctify that (unbeliever’s) flesh in union with (That)
which they were not “apprehended.” (If they were married at the time of salvation)
The grace of God, moreover, sanctifies that which it finds. (And not that which man puts
together) Thus, what has not been able to be sanctified
is (remains)
unclean; what is unclean has no part with the holy, unless to defile
and slay it by its own nature.. To his wife Book
2 Chapter 2 St. Tertullian: Let
us now recount the other sources of danger as I have preached or wounds
to faith, (That
were) foreseen by the apostle (Concerning believers being married
to unbelievers) ; most grievous not to the flesh merely,
but likewise to the spirit too. For who would doubt that faith
undergoes a daily process of obliteration by unbelieving intercourse?
“Evil confabulations corrupt good morals;”
[1]
[1] how much more fellowship of life, and indivisible
intimacy! Any and every believing woman must of necessity obey
God. And how can she serve two lords
[2]
[1]—the Lord, and her husband—a Gentile to boot?
For in obeying a Gentile she will carry out Gentile practices,—personal
attractiveness, dressing of the head, worldly
[3]
[1] elegancies, baser blandishments, the very
secrets even of matrimony tainted: not, as among the saints, where
the duties of the sex are discharged with honour (shown) to the very
necessity (which makes them incumbent), with modesty and temperance,
as beneath the eyes of God. To his wife Book
2 Chapter 2 Tertullian on the Rapture: :For why did the Lord foretell a “woe to them that are with child, and them that give suck,” except because He testifies that in that day of disencumbrance the encumbrances of children (Here the church of Tertullian’s day has made out of whole cloth the desolation of marriage, the desolation of family and the desolation of children as part of a "secret" or "invisible" coming of Christ) will be an inconvenience? It is to marriage, of course, that those encumbrances appertain; but that (“woe”) will not pertain to widows. At the first trump of the angel (Christian wives) will spring forth disencumbered (from their babies, from their children that give suck, and presumably from their “duties” as a wife[this sounds alot like feminism] and they) will freely bear (The message of the Gospel across the earth.) to the end (The time of the last trump, regardless of) whatsoever pressure and persecution, (Shall be set before them) with no burdensome fruit of marriage heaving in the womb, none in the bosom. (They will not deny the faith.) To his wife Book I Chapter 5 What we have here, is a made up fantasy concerning a rapture or catching away taking place at the first trumpet where of babies and children that are being breast fed are whisked off so that these woman can fearlessly preach the gospel. -- This is no doubt the source of the false prophesies and false visions of the rapture given in the Irvingite Revival in the mid-1800's. (The rapture as taught is the spiritualization of these children flying away instead being believers. And the mothers are spiritualized into being the churches of tribulated believers -- who are to die for their faith as a punishment of not having believed sooner.) |