[5] [Greek: I will appoint their bishops in righteousness and their deacons in faith]
[6] ad Smyrn. viii. i, 2.
[7] The earliest Latin versions of the Bible seem often to have used the word sacramentum to translate the Greek μυστήριον, thus in St. Matthew xiii. 11, in reply to the disciples' query "Why speakest thou unto them in parables?" is given the response "To you is given to know the sacraments of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it is not given" (Cod. Bobbiensis). Even the Vulgate retains this rendering in a number of passages (Eph. i. 9; iii. 3; v. 32; Revelation i. 20), and one cannot help wishing that our English version might have retained so beautiful a rendering as "the sacrament of His will," or the reference to the mystical union of Christ and His church as "the great sacrament." Similarly, it is interesting to hear the Vulgate speak of "the sacrament of the seven stars," in the Apocalypse, and to read in i Tim. iii. 16, "great is the sacrament of godliness."
[8] De Anima, ix.
[9] Adv. Marcion, v. 4.
[10] Adv. Marcion, v. i.
[11] "Hoc enim lignum tunc in sacramento erat" (Adv. Judaeos, xii.).
[12] "Nolite verba, cum sacramentum meum erit canendum,providenter quaerere ."
[13] "Quid enim sunt aliud quaeque corporalia sacramenta nisi quaedam quasi verba visibilia sacrosancta quidem, veruntamen mutabilia at temporalia ?" (Contra Faustum Manichaeum., Lib. xix. Cap. 16.).
[14] ("De Praescriptione Haereticorum" xl.) At his best, however, Tertullian, at least in one of his works, did seem to go farther than this, and to recognise in the instinctive strivings of natural religion the witness of the soul to the truths revealed in Christ ("De Testimonio Animae").