Rome, and among other things had succeeded in reversing the favorable policy of the Roman bishops with respect to the Montanists. By this achievement he naturally earned from Tertullian a twofold scorn. Tertullian bitingly remarks that thus Praxeas had doubly done the devil’s business in Rome,—“he had expelled prophecy and brought in heresy, had exiled the Paraclete and crucified the Father.”[1] His heresy passed over into Africa,—while the people, says Tertullian, slept in doctrinal simplicity. But God raised up a defender of the truth: and the heresy was exposed and seemingly destroyed; Praxeas himself submitted to correction, and returned to the old faith. Apparently this was the end of it all: exinde silentium, says Tertullian, with terse significance. But it is the curse of noxious growths that they are apt to leave seeds behind them. So it happened in this case also. The tares had been rooted up and burned. But lo, after so long a time, the new crop appeared, and the last state was unspeakably worse than the first. The tares had everywhere, says Tertullian, shaken out their seed, and now, after having lain hid so long, their vitality had become only too manifest. It is not then an individual that Tertullian is facing; it is a widespread condition. This tract is not an attempt to silence a heretic menacing the peace of the Church; it is an effort to correct a rampant evil already widely spread in the community, by which the very existence of the truth is endangered.
The tones in which Tertullian speaks of the rise of the heresy in the person of Praxeas and of its prevalence at the time of his writing are noticeably different. Then it was an exotic vagary seeking footing in the West and finding none: now it is a native growth, springing up everywhere. The tares had cast their seed, he says, “everywhere” (ubique). Nor can he look with comfort on the task of rooting them up. Though he is not the man to lose courage, and reminds himself of the past success, he yet finds his deepest consolation in the assurance that all tares shall be burnt up at the last day. When a man looks forward to the Judgment Day for the vindication of his cause, he is not far from despairing of success here and now. It looks very much as if Tertullian felt himself in a hopeless minority in his defense of what he calls the pristine faith
- ↑ Adv. Prax., i, Ita duo negotia diaboli Praxeas Romæ procuravit, prophetiam expulit et hæresim intulit, paracletum fugavit et patrem crucifixit.
a hundred years in advance of the Church at large reflating Arianism and establishing for Rome a '‘triune creed” (see especially pp. 101 and 128). On the other hand, he represents Tertullian as, under the influence of Hippolytus, so misunderstanding Callistus that, under the nick-name of Praxeas, he treats his epoch-making orthodox definitions as if they were Monarchian.
