I.
(About 160 years having elapsed, pp. 59, 61.)
If the First Epistle to the Corinthians was written a.d. 57, and if our author speaks with designed precision, and not in round numbers, the date of this treatise should be a.d. 217--a date which I should prefer to accept. Bishop Kaye, 1 however, instances capp. 7 and 9 in the Ad Nationes as proving his disposition to give his numbers in loose rhetoric, and not with arithmetical accuracy. Pamelius, on the other hand, gives a.d. 213.
On the general subject Kaye bids us read cap. 3, with cap. 14, to grasp the argument of our enthusiast. 2 In few words, our author holds that St. Paul condescends to human infirmity in permitting any marriage whatever, pointing to a better way. 3 The apostle himself says, "The time is short;" but a hundred and sixty years have passed since then, and why may not the Spirit of truth and righteousness now, after so long a time, be given to animate the adult Church to that which is pronounced the better way in Scripture itself?
Our author seems struggling here, according to my view, with his own rule of prescription. He would free the doctrine from the charge of novelty by pointing it out in the Scripture of a hundred and sixty years before. But how instinctively the Church ruled against this sophistry, condemning in advance that whole system of "development" which a modern Tertullian defends on grounds quite as specious, under a Montanistic subjection that makes a Priscilla of the Roman pontiff. Let me commend the reader to the remarks upon Tertullian of the "judicious Hooker," in book ii. capp. v. 5, 6; also book iv. cap. vii. 4, 5, and elsewhere.
