Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] What we worship is one God — who by the word by which he commanded, the reason by which he ordered, the power by which he was able, brought forth out of nothing this whole mass, with all its equipment of elements, bodies, and spirits, as an adornment to his majesty; whence the Greeks, too, gave the world the name kosmos, "ornament." [2] He is invisible, though he is seen; incomprehensible, though he is represented through grace; beyond estimation, though estimated by human senses — and that is exactly why he is real and so great. What can commonly be seen, grasped, or estimated is something less than the eyes that take it in, the hands that soil it, the senses that find it; but what is truly immense is known to itself alone. [3] This is what makes God estimable — the very fact that he cannot be grasped by estimation; thus the force of his greatness at once sets him before men as known and leaves him unknown. And this is the sum of the offense of those who refuse to acknowledge the one they cannot help but know.
[4] Do you want us to prove it from his works, so many and so great, by which we are contained, by which we are sustained, by which we are delighted — even by which we are terrified? Do you want it proven from the soul's own witness instead? [5] For the soul, though pressed down by the prison of the body, though hemmed in by depraved upbringing, though drained of its strength by lusts and desires, though enslaved to false gods, still, whenever it comes to itself — as from a drunken stupor, as from sleep, as from some sickness — and regains its own health, it speaks the name "God," and this alone, because this one alone is truly God, properly so called. "God is good and great," and "what God has given" — these are on everyone's lips. [6] It calls him, too, to witness as judge: "God sees," "I commend it to God," "God will repay me." O testimony of a soul that is by nature Christian! And note: in pronouncing these words, its gaze turns away from the Capitol and up toward heaven. For it knows the seat of the living God; from him, and from there, it came down.