Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Watch, then, that it is not rather he who dispenses kingdoms — whose is the world that is ruled, and the man himself who rules — who has ordered the turns of dominion at their appointed times in the age; he who existed before all time and made the age itself the embodiment of the times; he who raises up cities or brings them low, he under whom the human race once existed without any cities at all! Why are you mistaken? Rome, still a wilderness, existed before some of the gods now hers; she reigned before she ever built that vast sprawl of the Capitol. The Babylonians reigned before there were pontiffs, the Medes before the quindecemvirs, the Egyptians before the Salii, the Assyrians before the Luperci, the Amazons before the Vestal Virgins. Finally, if Roman religious rites confer kingdoms, then Judea — the scorner of all those common deities of yours — could never once have reigned, Judea whose God you honored, Romans, for a time with sacrifices, whose temple you honored with gifts, whose nation you honored with treaties; and you would never have come to rule over her, had she not at last offended in the matter of Christ.