Chapter XI.—From Parables Tertullian Comes to Consider Definite Acts of the Lord.

From the side of its pertinence to the Gospel, the question of the parables indeed has by this time been disposed of.  If, however, the Lord, by His deeds withal, issued any such proclamation in favour of sinners; as when He permitted contact even with his own body to the “woman, a sinner,”—washing, as she did, His feet with tears, and wiping them with her hair, and inaugurating His sepulture with ointment; as when to the Samaritaness—not an adulteress by her now sixth marriage, but a prostitute—He showed (what He did show readily to any one) who He was;118    John iv. 1–25.—no benefit is hence conferred upon our adversaries, even if it had been to such as were already Christians that He (in these several cases) granted pardon.  For we now affirm:  This is lawful to the Lord alone:  may the power of His indulgence be operative at the present day!119    Comp. c. iii. above.  At those times, however, in which He lived on earth we lay this down definitively, that it is no prejudgment against us if pardon used to be conferred on sinners—even Jewish ones.  For Christian discipline dates from the renewing of the Testament,120    Comp. Matt. xxvi. 28, Mark xiv. 24, Luke xxii. 21, with Heb. ix. 11–20. and (as we have premised) from the redemption of flesh—that is, the Lord’s passion.  None was perfect before the discovery of the order of faith; none a Christian before the resumption of Christ to heaven; none holy before the manifestation of the Holy Spirit from heaven, the Determiner of discipline itself.

CAPUT XI.

Exinde, quod ad Evangelium pertinet, parabolarum quidem discussa jam quaestio est. Si vero et factis aliquid tale pro peccatoribus edidit Dominus, ut 1001B cum peccatrici foeminae etiam corporis sui contactum permittit lavanti lacrymis pedes ejus et crinibus detergenti, et unguento sepulturam ipsius inauguranti (Luc. VII, 37, et seqq.); ut cum Samaritanae sexto jam matrimonio, non moechae, sed prostitutae (Jo. IV, 7 et seqq.), etiam, quod nemini facile, quis esset ostendit, nihil ex hoc adversariis confertur, etsi jam Christianis veniam delictorum praestitisset. Nunc enim dicimus, soli Domino hoc licet, hodie potestas indulgentiae ejus operetur. Ad illa tamen tempora quibus in terris egit, hoc definimus nihil adversum nos praejudicare, si peccatoribus etiam Judaeis venia conferebatur. Christiana enim disciplina a novatione Testamenti et, ut praemisimus, a redemptione carnis, id est Domini passione censetur. Nemo perfectus ante 1001C repertum ordinem fide, nemo Christianus ante Christum coelo resumptum, nemo sanctus ante Spiritum Sanctum de coelo repraesentatum ipsius disciplinae determinatorem.