Tertullian: Prescription of the Heretics, proved to be very cynical and harsh or the heretics. The introduction explains on how the author is arguing that heretics should not be able to have a fair trial because of their beliefs. According to Tertullian, heretics do not believe in the literal words of the scripture so they are not to interpret the bible, and have to forfeit having a trial. “But since heretics have forsaken the church, they are not Christians; and since they are not Christians they have no right to appeal to the Christian scriptures” (Ehrman, 211pg). This is metaphorical on how the Roman law system could prevent a case from trial because of technicalities.
Tertullian explains on how heretics are choosing the worldly view, the humanly way, and philosophy instead of the Godly scriptures. Heretics do not believe in the rule of faith. Which he goes on to explain is how there is one true God over all. Which is the traditional story of one God and the story of Jesus. Which is the only right and true way to see the scripture. Arguing with a heretic would be useless because they do not understand what they are saying; their words would just be blasphemy and give a true believer a headache. Tertullian’s final argument over the heretics was “A great number of them even have no churches. Motherless and homeless, they wander about bereft of faith and banished from the truth” (Erhman, 217pg). It is very clear there is not any tolerance of the other Christians, only hostility.
I believe that Tertullian might not have been accurate with his accusations because he seemed over emotional. After all, they are both types of Christian even though he would never admit that. He just kept on repeating how wrong heretics were in their thinking, beliefs. There were many groups of Christians that were looking for leaders. “Those Christian called themselves ‘orthodox’ (‘right-believing’) or ‘catholic’ (‘universal’) and sometimes just “the church’ or ‘the Christians’, but I shall call them ‘proto-orthodox’. Tertullian focused on bashing the heretics, but both parties were abusive to each other.