"I must also say something about the period of the soul's birth, that I may omit nothing incidental in the whole process. A mature and regular birth takes place, as a general rule, at the commencement of the tenth month. 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_. But inasmuch as birth is also completed with the seventh month, I more readily recognize in this number than in the eighth the honor of a numerical agreement with the Sabbatical period; so that the month in which God's image is sometimes produced in a human birth, shall in its number tally with the day on which God's creation was completed and hallowed."--_De Anima_, chap. xxxvii. This kind of reasoning is of course destitute of any force. But in adducing such an argument Tertullian avows his faith in the ten commandments as the rule of the Christian's life, gives the preference to the seventh day as the Sabbath, and deduces the origin of the Sabbath from God's act of hallowing the seventh day at creation. Though Tertullian elsewhere, as we shall see, speaks lightly of the law of God, and represents it as abolished, his next testimony most sacredly honors that law, and while acknowledging the Sabbath as one of its precepts, he recognizes the authority of the whole code. Thus he says:-- "Of how deep guilt, then, adultery--which is likewise a matter of fornication, in accordance with its criminal function--is to be accounted, the law of God first comes to hand to show us; if it is true [as it is], that after interdicting the superstitious service of alien gods, and the making of idols themselves, after commending [to religious observance] the veneration of the Sabbath, after commanding a religious regard toward parents, second [only to that] toward God, [that law] laid, as the next substratum in strengthening and fortifying such counts, no other precept than 'Thou shalt not commit adultery.'"--_On Modesty_, chap. v. And of this precept Tertullian presently tells us that it stands "in the very forefront of _the most holy law_, among the primary counts of _the celestial edict_." In his treatise "On Fasting," chapter xiv., he terms "the Sabbath--a day never to be kept as a fast except at the passover season, according to a reason elsewhere given." And in chapter xv., he excepts from the two weeks in which meat was not eaten "the Sabbaths" and "the Lord's days."