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Œuvres Tertullien (160-220) Appendix Elucidations - Appendix Tertullian

II.

(Or is there ought, etc., l. 136, p. 137.)

In taking leave of Tertullian, it may be well to say a word of his famous saying, Certum est quia impossibile est. It occurs in the tract De Carne Christi, 1 and is one of those startling epigrammatic dicta of our author which is no more to be pressed in argument than any other bon-mot of a wit or a poet. It is evidently designed as a rhetorical climax, to enforce the same idea which we find in the hymn of Aquinas:--

"Et si sensus deficit,

Adfirmandum cor sincerum

Sola fides sufficit."

As Jeremy Taylor 2 argues, the condition is, that holy Scripture affirms it. If that be the case, then "all things are possible with God:" I believe; but I do not argue, for it is impossible with men. This is the plain sense of the great Carthaginian doctor's pithy rhetoric. But Dr. Bunsen sets it on all-fours, and treats it as if it were soberly designed to defy reason,--that reason to which Tertullian constantly makes his appeal against Marcion, and in many of his sayings 3 hardly less witty. Speaking of Hippolytus, that writer remarks, 4 "He might have said on some points, Credibile licet ineptum: he would never have exclaimed with Tertullian, Credibile quia ineptum.'" Why attempt to prove the absurdity of such a reflection? As well attempt to defend St. John's hyperbole 5 against a mind incapable of comprehending a figure of speech.


  1. Cap. v. vol. iii. p. 525. ↩

  2. Christ in the Holy Sacrament, § xi. 6. ↩

  3. De Anima, cap. xvii. ↩

  4. Vol. i. p. 304. ↩

  5. Chap. xxi. verse 25. ↩

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Elucidations - Appendix Tertullian

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