Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] This whole confession of theirs — by which they deny being gods, and answer that there is no other god besides the One to whom we are bound — is quite sufficient to dispel the charge of injuring, above all, the Roman religion. For if they are certainly not gods, then certainly there is no religion; and if there is no religion, then, since there are certainly no gods, we are certainly not guilty of injuring any religion. [2] On the contrary, the reproach rebounds upon you: worshipping a lie, you not only neglect the genuine worship owed the one real God but press further into assailing it, and so commit the actual offense of genuine impiety.
[3] Now, granting for argument's sake that they are gods, do you not concede, on the strength of common estimation, that there is some one being more sublime and more powerful, a kind of prince of the world of perfect and consummate majesty? For that is how most people arrange their divinity: that supreme command and dominion belong to one, while its various offices are distributed among many — as Plato describes great Jupiter in heaven with his escort, an army of gods and demons alike; and so, he holds, procurators and prefects and governors should likewise be respected together with him. [4] And yet what crime does a man commit who transfers his efforts and his hopes more directly to Caesar, and confesses the title "god" — just like the title "emperor" — in no one but the prince, when it is judged a capital offense even to say or hear that anyone but Caesar holds it? [5] Let one man worship one god, another Jupiter; let one stretch suppliant hands to heaven, another to the altar of Good Faith; let one — if you can believe it — count the clouds while praying, another the coffered ceiling; let one man vow his own soul to his god, another the soul of a goat. [6] For see to it that this too does not add up to a charge of irreligion: taking away freedom of religion and forbidding free choice of divinity, so that I am not permitted to worship whom I wish, but am forced to worship whom I do not wish. No one — not even a mere man — wants to be worshipped by someone unwilling.
[7] And yet even the Egyptians are granted the right to so absurd a superstition, consecrating birds and beasts, and condemning to death anyone who kills one of these gods of theirs. [8] Every province, too, and every city has its own god: Syria has Atargatis, Arabia has Dusares, Noricum has Belenus, Africa has the Heavenly Goddess, Mauretania has its own petty kings as gods. I have named, I believe, the Roman provinces — and yet those are not thereby Roman gods, since they are no more worshipped at Rome than are the gods that even throughout Italy itself are recognized only by local, municipal consecration: Deluentinus belongs to Casinum, Visidianus to Narnia, the people of Asculum keep their Ancharia, Volsinii holds Nortia, Ocriculum claims Valentia, and Sutrium has its Hostia; and the Faliscans, honoring a certain father Curris, granted Juno that same surname. [9] But we alone are refused the right to a religion of our own choosing. We are accused of harming the Romans, yet are denied the name Romans, all because we withhold worship from the Roman god. [10] Good enough, then, that there exists a God shared by all — willing or not, every one of us falls under him. Yet among you it is permitted to worship whatever you please except this one real God — as if he were not, all the more for that, everyone's God, seeing that every one of us belongs to him.