Chapter 11

Notes

1. 1

   [He plays on this word Sacramentum. Is the military sacrament to be added to the Lord’s?]

2. 2

   1 Cor. viii. 10.

3. 3

   [Vexillum. Such words as these prepared for the Labarum.]

4. 4

   “Outside of the military service.” By substituting ex militia for the corresponding words extra militiam, as has been proposed by Rigaltius, the sentence acquires a meaning such that desertion from the army is suggested as one of the methods by which a soldier who has become a Christian may continue faithful to Jesus. But the words extra militiam are a genuine part of the text. There is no good ground, therefore, for the statement of Gibbon:  “Tertullian (de Corona Militis, c. xi.) suggests to them the expedient of deserting; a counsel which, if it had been generally known, was not very proper to conciliate the favour of the emperors toward the Christian sect.”—Tr.

5. 5

   “The faithful,” etc.; i.e., the kind of occupation which any one has cannot be pleaded by him as a reason for not doing all that Christ has enjoined upon His people.—Tr.

6. 6

   [He was not yet quite a Montanist.]