[Paul] bids us shine as sons of light, not hide away out of sight as sons of darkness. He commands us to stand stedfast, certainly not to act an opposite part by fleeing; and to be girt, not to play the fugitive or oppose the Gospel. He points out weapons, too, which persons who intend to run away would not require. And among these he notes the shield too, that […]
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Tertullian On Spiritual Authority
Discipline governs a man, power sets a seal upon him; apart from the fact that power is the Spirit, but the Spirit is God. .. Who was able to forgive sins? This is His alone prerogative: for “who remitteth sins but God alone?” and, of course, (who but He can remit) mortal sins, such as have been committed against Himself, and against His temple? For, as far as you are […]
Read moreTertullian: On the Apparel of Women
From the smallest caskets is produced an ample patrimony. On a single thread is suspended a million of sesterces. One delicate neck carries about it forests and islands. The slender lobes of the ears exhaust a fortune; and the left hand, with its every finger, sports with a several money-bag. Such is the strength of ambition—(equal) to bearing on one small body, and that a woman’s, the product of so […]
Read moreTertullian: Ad Martyras
On Imprisonment You have no occasion to look on strange gods, you do not run against their images; you have no part in heathen holidays, even by mere bodily mingling in them; you are not annoyed by the foul fumes of idolatrous solemnities; you are not pained by the noise of the public shows, nor by the atrocity or madness or immodesty of their celebrants; your eyes do not fall […]
Read moreTertullian: On Prayer
In the Lord’s Prayer is comprised an epitome of the whole Gospel. Prayer is alone that which vanquishes God. But Christ has willed that it be operative for no evil: He had conferred on it all its virtue in the cause of good. And so it knows nothing save how to recall the souls of the departed from the very path of death, to transform the weak, to restore the […]
Read moreTertullian: On Baptism
The Sanctity of Water First, indeed, when the people, set unconditionally free, escaped the violence of the Egyptian king by crossing over through water , it was water that extinguished the king himself, with his entire forces. What figure more manifestly fulfilled in the sacrament of baptism? The nations are set free from the world by means of water , to wit: and the devil, their old tyrant, they leave […]
Read moreTertullian On the Trinity
The Word is a Substantive Being For you will say, what is a word, but a voice and sound of the mouth, and air when struck against, intelligible to the ear, but for the rest a sort of void, empty, and incorporeal thing. I, on the contrary, contend that nothing empty and void could have come forth from God, seeing that it is not put forth from that which is […]
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