Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Let their own guests gorge themselves on such sweets: the place, the time, and the one who invites them are all their own. Our banquet, our wedding feast, has not yet come. We cannot recline at table with them, because they will not recline with us: the matter has been arranged by turns. Now it is their turn to rejoice, ours to be pressed hard. "The world," he says, "will rejoice, but you will grieve." Let us grieve, then, while the pagans rejoice, so that when they begin to grieve, we may rejoice—lest, rejoicing alongside them now, we grieve alongside them later too. You are soft, Christian, if you crave pleasure even in this present age—no, you are far too foolish, if you imagine this is what pleasure really is. Some philosophers have given that name to quietness and tranquility; in that they rejoice, in that they find their retreat, in that they even take their pride. And do you sigh to me over the starting-posts, the platform, the sand, and the arena floor? Tell me, if you would: can we not live without pleasure, we who are meant to die with pleasure? For what else is our great longing, if not what the apostles longed for too—to depart this world and be received by the Lord? There is our pleasure, exactly where our longing is.