Showing results by author "Tertullian" in All Categories

Speaking of the Greek priests of Korfou, the erudite bishop of Lincoln, lately deceased, has remarked, “There is something very picturesque in the appearance of these persons, with their black caps resembling the modius seen on the heads of the ancient statues of Serapis and Osiris, their long beards and pale complexions, and their black flowing cloak, - a relic, no doubt, of the old ecclesiastical garment of which Tertullian wrote.”

And so he gathered together a people for himself, and fostered them with many liberal distributions of his bounty, and, after so often finding them most ungrateful, ever exhorted them to repentance and sent out the voices of the universal company of the prophets to prophesy. By and by, promising freely the grace which in the last times he was intending to pour as a flood of light on the universal world through his Spirit, he bade the baptism of repentance lead the way.

Happy is our sacrament of water, in that, by washing away the sins of our early blindness, we are set free and admitted into eternal life! A treatise on this matter will not be superfluous; instructing not only such as are just becoming formed (in the faith), but them who, content with having simply believed, without full examination of the grounds of the traditions, carry (in mind), through ignorance, an untried though probable faith.