Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] But there is a certain trick of this kind, in deed and in word, sharpened on both edges and dangerous both ways, though it may flatter you as though it were innocent on either side, since the deed goes unseen because the word is not pinned down. People borrowing money from pagans under pledge give sworn security and, in the very act, deny their faith; naturally they take care to know the season of persecution, the location of the tribunal, and the identity of the governor. [2] Christ prescribes that one must not swear at all. "I wrote it," someone says, "but I said nothing" — as though the tongue, not the letter, were what kills. Here I summon nature and conscience as witnesses: nature, because the hand can write nothing — even while the tongue stays motionless and silent as it dictates — unless the soul has dictated it; though indeed the soul dictates to the tongue itself as well, whether the thought is its own or handed to it by another. [3] Now, lest it be said "someone else dictated it," here I call on conscience: did the soul not take up what the other dictated, and pass it on to the hand, whether the tongue went along with it or stayed still? And it is rightly said that the Lord pronounced guilt to lie already in the intent and the disposition of the heart. "If," he says, "desire or malice has risen up into a man's heart, you are held guilty as for the deed." [4] So you have taken precautions over something that has plainly risen into your heart — something you cannot claim either not to have known or not to have willed. [5] For in taking precaution, you knew; and in knowing, you certainly willed it; and the guilt lies as much in the deed as in the thought. You cannot use a lesser charge to rule out the greater, by claiming that what you plainly bring about by taking precaution against it is somehow not real. "Still, I did not deny, because I did not swear." Why, even if you had done nothing of the kind, you would still be said to have sworn falsely, if you had done it by consent. A voice unspoken carries no weight against ink on a page, nor a mute sound against written letters. [6] But look at Zacharias: punished with a temporary loss of voice, he converses with his mind, bypassing his idle tongue; he dictates from the heart with his own hands and pronounces his son's name without a mouth. He speaks in writing; his hand is heard on the wax more clearly than any sound, its letters more vocal than any mouth. Ask whether the man who is found to have said something did not, in fact, say it. [7] Let us pray the Lord that no necessity of such a contract ever hem us in; and if it should happen, that he grant our brothers the means to act, or grant us the resolve to break off every such necessity entirely — lest those denying letters, standing in for our own mouths, be produced against us on the day of judgment, sealed not now with the seals of our advocates, but of the angels.
XXIV.