Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
But since it would readily seem unjust to force free men against their will to sacrifice — for even otherwise, a willing mind is what is called for in performing a religious rite — surely it would be reckoned absurd if a man were compelled by another to pay honor to gods whom, on his own account, he ought freely to appease, lest it be taken out of his hands, by right of his own freedom, to say: 'I do not want Jupiter's favor; who are you? Let Janus be angry with me from whatever face he likes; what is that to you?' You yourselves have been shaped by these same spirits to compel us to sacrifice for the emperor's safety, and the necessity of compelling has been laid upon you just as the obligation of risking ourselves has been laid upon us.
We have come, then, to the second charge — of insulting the more august majesty — since indeed you keep watch over Caesar with greater dread and shrewder timidity than over Jupiter himself up on Olympus. And rightly so, if you knew it! For which living man is not more powerful than a dead one? But you don't do even this out of reasoned judgment so much as out of regard for present power; and so on this very point you will be caught out as irreligious toward your own gods, since you pay more fear to human rule. In fact, among you, men swear falsely by all the gods together more readily than by the single genius of Caesar alone.