Note 79 — CHAP. IX. Of the Beards of Priests.

It may not be amiss perhaps to correct a chronological error that is in the epochs of this council of Carthage and the life of Tertullian. All the commentators and chroniclers place this council in the year 398, and the death of this learned man about the year 220 of our æra. According to them, he should have lived about a century and half before this council. After that, one is greatly surprised to find, in the works of this same Tertullian, his observations on this council of Carthage, and still more so, to find him speak of it as an epoch much earlier than that in which he was writing; for, when he condemns the supression of the word radat, he says it ought to be restored conformably to the fidelity of the old copies, juxta fidem veterum exemplarium, &c. The anachronism is more than two centuries.