“We have learned a holy law; but we have as Law-giver him who is really God, who teaches us to act righteously, and to be pious, and to do good.”[666] “Of this great and wonderful law which tends to all righteousness, the TEN HEADS are such as we have already rehearsed.”[667] Tertullian calls the ten commandments “the rules of our regenerate life,” that is to say, the rules which govern the life of a converted man:— “They who theorize respecting numbers, honor the number ten as the parent of all the others, and as imparting perfection to the human nativity. For my own part, I prefer viewing this measure of time in reference to God, as if implying that the ten months rather initiated man into _the ten commandments_; so that the numerical estimate of the time needed to consummate our natural birth should correspond to the numerical classification of _the rules of our regenerate life_.”[668] In showing the deep guilt involved in the violation of the seventh commandment, Tertullian speaks of the sacredness of the commandments which precede it, naming several of them in particular, and among them the fourth, and then says of the precept against adultery that It stands “in the very forefront of _the most holy law_, among the _primary counts_ of the _celestial edict_.”[669] Clement of Rome, or rather the author whose works have been ascribed to this father, speaks thus of the decalogue as a test:— “On account of those, therefore, who, by neglect of their own salvation, please the evil one, and those who, by study of their own profit, seek to please the good One, ten things have been prescribed as a test to this present age, according to the number of the ten plagues which were brought upon Egypt.”[670] Novatian, who wrote about A. D. 250, is accounted the founder of the sect called _Cathari_ or Puritans. He wrote a treatise on the Sabbath, which is not extant. There is no reference to Sunday in any of his writings. He makes the following striking remarks concerning the moral law:— “The law was given to the children of Israel for this purpose, that they might profit by it, and RETURN _to those virtuous manners_ which, although _they had received them from their fathers_, they had corrupted in Egypt by reason of their intercourse with a barbarous people. Finally, also, those _ten commandments_ on the tables teach nothing _new_, but _remind them of what had been obliterated_—that righteousness in them, which had been put to sleep, might revive again as it were by the afflatus of the law, after the manner of a fire [nearly extinguished].”[671]