Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] But I have more to offer already, in place of that postponement: the majesty of the Scriptures, in case we are proving them divine not by their antiquity, in case their age is doubted. Nor is there anything slower or more roundabout to learn this from; the evidence is right in front of you, ready to teach it: the world, the age, and how things turn out. [2] Whatever happens was foretold beforehand; whatever is seen was already heard. That the earth swallows cities, that the seas cheat islands out of their place, that wars foreign and civil tear everything to pieces, that kingdoms grind down kingdoms, that famine and plague and local disasters of every kind lay waste, and death, striking in droves, does the same; that the lowly are changed by being raised on high, and the high by being brought low—[3] that justice grows rare, that wrongdoing grows common, that care for every good discipline goes slack, that even the duties of the seasons and the offices of the elements run off course, that the very shape of nature is thrown into confusion by monsters and portents—all this was written down with foreknowledge. While we suffer it, it is being read; while we recognize it, it is being proven true. A fitting testimony to divinity, I should think, is the truth of its own divination. [4] Hence, then, our confidence about the future too rests secure—already proven, in effect, because it was foretold together with the very things that are proven true every day: the same voices sound, the same writings record it, the same spirit drives it, there is one single time for a prophecy that foretells what is still to come; [5] among men, if at all, a distinction gets drawn only as the thing is checked off—first future, then counted as present, and after that as past. What wrong do we do, I ask you, in believing the future too, we who have already learned to believe it by these two steps?