Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] It is timidity, however, when someone else binds you by an oath or some other testimony sworn by his own gods, and you keep quiet so as not to be caught out. For by keeping quiet you likewise confirm the majesty of those gods, on whose account you will appear to have been bound. [2] What does it matter whether you confirm the gods of the nations as gods by speaking or by silently assenting to hear them so named? Whether you swear by idols, or acquiesce when someone else puts you under oath by them? Why should we not recognize the cunning of Satan here, who — unable to accomplish through our own mouth what he wants — works to accomplish it through the mouths of his own people, smuggling idolatry in through our ears? Whoever he is, he binds you either in a friendly encounter or a hostile one. [3] If hostile, you are already summoned to combat and you know you must fight; if friendly, how much more safely will you transfer your pledge to the Lord, so as to dissolve the obligation by which the evil one was seeking to tie you to the honor of idols — that is, to idolatry. [4] Any tolerance of this sort is idolatry. You honor those to whom, once they are put upon you, you have rendered compliance. I know of a man — may the Lord forgive him — who, when someone said to him in public, in the course of a quarrel, "May Jupiter be angry with you," replied, "No, angry with you." What would a pagan who believed Jupiter to be a god have done differently? Even though he did not throw the curse back by the same god's name, nor by any equivalent of Jupiter, he had already confirmed Jupiter as a god by showing, in flinging the curse back, that he had taken it as an insult. [5] For why would you take offense by the name of one you know to be nothing? If you lose your temper, you are already confirming that he is something, and your idolatry will be a confession of your own alarm — all the more so when you curse back by the very same name and thereby pay Jupiter the same honor as the man who provoked you. But the believer in such a case ought to laugh, not lose his temper — or rather, following the precept, not curse back even in God's name, but plainly bless in God's name, so that you both destroy the idols and proclaim God and fulfill the discipline.
XXII.