# “We meet together” by Tertullian of Carthage (A.D. 160-212)

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2009/01/29/we-meet-together-by-tertullian-of-carthage-160-212/
- Published: 2009-01-29T14:14:58-06:00
- Author: tollelege

“We meet together as an assembly and congregation, that, offering up prayer to God
as with united force, we may wrestle with Him in our supplications. This violence
God delights in. We pray, too, for the emperors, for their ministers and for all
in authority, for the welfare of the world, for the prevalence of peace, for the
delay of the final consummation. We assemble to read our sacred writings, if any
peculiarity of the times makes either forewarning or reminiscence needful.

However it be in that respect, with the sacred words we nourish our faith, we animate
our hope, we make our confidence more steadfast; and no less by inculcations of 
God’s precepts we confirm good habits. In the same place also exhortations are made,
rebukes and sacred censures are administered. For with a great gravity is the work
of judging carried on among us, as befits those who feel assured that they are in
the sight of God; and you have the most notable example of judgment to come when
any one has sinned so grievously as to require his severance from us in prayer, 
in the congregation and in all sacred intercourse.

The tried men of our elders preside over us, obtaining that honour not by purchase,
but by established character. There is no buying and selling of any sort in the 
things of God. Though we have our treasure-chest, it is not made up of purchase-
money, as of a religion that has its price. On the monthly day, if he likes, each
puts in a small donation; but only if it be his pleasure, and only if he be able:
for there is no compulsion; all is voluntary.

These gifts are, as it were, piety’s deposit fund. For they are not taken thence
and spent on feasts, and drinking-bouts, and eating-houses, but to support and bury
poor people, to supply the wants of boys and girls destitute of means and parents,
and of old persons confined now to the house; such, too, as have suffered shipwreck;
and if there happen to be any in the mines, or banished to the islands, or shut 
up in the prisons, for nothing but their fidelity to the cause of God’s Church, 
they become the nurslings of their confession.”

–Tertullian of Carthage, [_Apology XXXIX_](http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03.iv.iii.xxxix.html)
in _Ante-Nicene Fathers: Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, Vol. 3_, Ed.
Allan Menzies (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 46.

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