In another of Tertullian's works we read:—
"As for him who affirms that we are the priesthood of a cross, we shall claim him as a co-religionist . . . Every piece of timber which is fixed in the ground in an erect position is part of a cross, and indeed the greater part of its mass. But an entire cross is attributed to us . . . . The truth however is that your religion is all cross . . . You are ashamed, I suppose, to worship unadorned and simple crosses."24
In the Instructions of Commodianus we read "The first law was in the tree, and so, too, was the second."25
Cyprian contends that "By the sign of the cross, also, Amalek was conquered by Moses."26
Elsewhere Cyprian tells us that "In this sign of the cross is salvation for all people who are marked on their foreheads"; quoting as proof of this, from the Apocalypse, "They had his name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads," and "Blessed are they that do his commandments that they may have power over the Tree of Life."27 Methodius tells us that "He overcame, as has been said, the powers that enslaved us by the figure of the cross; and shadowed forth man, who had been oppressed by corruption as by a tyrant power, to be free with unfettered hands. For the cross, if you wish to define it, is the confirmation of victory."28
Passing on to Origen, we find in one of his works the noteworthy passage:—
"It is possible to avoid it if we do what the Apostle saith 'Mortify your members which are upon earth,' and if we always carry about in our bodies the death of Christ. For it is certain that where the death of Christ is carried about, sin cannot reign. For the power of the stauros of Christ is so great that if it be set before a man's eyes and kept faithfully in his mind so that he look with steadfast eyes of the mind upon that same death of Christ, no concupiscence, no sensuality, no natural passion, and no envious desire, is able to overcome him."29
Whether however this reference to the "stauros of Christ" is or is not a reference to the figure of the cross, is doubtful.
Such is the evidence regarding the cross, whether considered as immaterial sign or material symbol, obtainable from the writings of the Christians who lived between the days of the Apostles and those of Constantine; other of course than the Octavius of Minucius Felix, which was dealt with in the last chapter, and the writings of Irenæus, which will be dealt with in the next.
Among the noteworthy features of the evidence in question prominently stands out the smallness of its volume.
This is but a negative point, however; and what should be carefully borne in mind is that the evidence as a whole leads to the conclusion that the Christians of the second and third centuries made use of the sign and venerated the figure of the cross without, as Dean Farrar admits, it "only or even mainly," reminding them of the death of Jesus; and therefore otherwise than as a representation of the instrument of execution upon which Jesus died.30
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