In the meanwhile, the reader must not allow himself to suppose that the gentleman, by saying what he has, has really brought Sabbatarians under obligation to hint for new light, since what he here asserts is but a fact with which they have been familiar for years, and which they have iterated and re-iterated until they have almost despaired of bringing their opponents to an acknowledgment of the real state of things. Occasionally, others outside of their ranks have, as does the gentleman, borne testimony to the accuracy of their statements. If the reader would have an illustration of this, taken from the writings of an anti-Sabbatarian author, he will find it in the works of Domville, in which, substantially, the same conclusions are reached, Mr. Domville not only tracing the mistake to Dr. Dwight, but also allowing that the language cited was probably taken from the interpolated epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians. Up to this point, we have carefully examined, one by one, the historic quotations from ancient writers, which have been presented for our consideration; henceforth, we shall pursue a different course. As we have now reached, in the person of Tertullian, the close of the second, and the opening of the third, century of the Christian era, we find ourselves in a period when it is so generally acknowledged that the work of apostasy was so manifest that the utterances of the men of those times—even though they were pointed and explicit in regard to the sanctity of the first day of the week, as looked upon by themselves—could furnish no reliable standard of Christian faith in our day. The gentleman himself is compelled to admit that his own witness, Tertullian, became, in the second year of the third century, an ardent advocate of the errors, follies, and heresies, of Montanus. Not only so, but the writings of that father are proverbial, among scholars, for the fanciful conceits and the false notions which are so conspicuous upon their pages. Tertullian was a fiery zealot and a bitter partisan, manifestly credulous beyond bounds, and more earnest for his sect than anxious for the reliability of the sources of his information. Zell, in his popular Encyclopedia, speaks of him as follows:— “After he was past middle age, he embraced the doctrines of Montanus, to which his ardent, sensuous imagination, and ascetic tendencies would incline him. He is said to have been determined to that course by the ill-treatment he received from the Roman clergy. Whether he remained a Montanist till his death, cannot be decided.... They [his works] are characterized by vast learning, profound and comprehensive thought, fiery imagination, and passionate partisanship, leading into exaggeration and sophistry. His style is frequently obscure.”