{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/003/0030226.htm","path":"chr/ecf/003/0030226.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/003/0030226.htm","text":"Chapter XXII.\u2014Recapitulation. Definition of the Soul.\nHermogenes has already heard from us what are the other natural faculties of the soul, as well as their vindication and proof; whence it may be seen that the soul is rather the offspring of God than of matter. The names of these faculties shall here be simply repeated, that they may not seem to be forgotten and passed out of sight. We have assigned, then, to the soul both that freedom of the will which we just now mentioned, and its dominion over the works of nature, and its occasional gift of divination, independently of that endowment of prophecy which accrues to it expressly from the grace of God. We shall therefore now quit this subject of the soul\u2019s disposition, in order to set out fully in order its various qualities. 1664 The soul, then, we define to be sprung from the breath of God, immortal, possessing body, having form, simple in its substance, intelligent in its own nature, developing its power in various ways, free in its determinations, subject to be changes of accident, in its faculties mutable, rational, supreme, endued with an instinct of presentiment, evolved out of one (archetypal soul). It remains for us now to consider how it is developed out of this one original source; in other words, whence, and when, and how it is produced.\nTertullian had shown that \u201cthe soul is the breath or afflatus of God,\u201d in ch. iv. and xi. above. He demonstrated its \u201cimmortality\u201d in ch. ii.\u2013iv., vi., ix., xiv.; and he will repeat his proof hereafter, in ch. xxiv., xxxviii., xlv., li., liii., liv. Moreover, he illustrates the soul\u2019s \u201ccorporeity\u201d in ch. v.\u2013viii.; its \u201cendowment with form or figure,\u201d in ch. ix.; its \u201csimplicity in substance\u201d in ch. x. and xi.; its \u201cinherent intelligence,\u201d in ch. xii.; its varied development, in ch. xiii.\u2013xv. The soul\u2019s \u201crationality,\u201d \u201csupremacy,\u201d and \u201cinstinctive divination,\u201d Tertullian treated of in his treatise De Censu Anim\u00e6 against Hermogenes (as he has said in the text); but he has treated somewhat of the soul\u2019s \u201crational nature\u201d in the sixteenth chapter above; in the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters he referred to the soul\u2019s \u201csupremacy or hegemony;\u201d whilst we have had a hint about its \u201cdivining faculty,\u201d even in infants, in ch. xix. The propagation of souls from the one archetypal soul is the subject of the chapter before us, as well as of the five succeeding ones (La Cerda).","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol III: Tertullian: Part I: Recapit...","type":"page"}