Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] But how great is the force of perversity for undermining faith, or refusing it altogether, that it should attack faith by means of the very things it is built on! Nothing hardens men's minds so much as the simplicity of God's works, as they appear in the doing, set against the magnificence promised in their effect. And here too: because with such simplicity — without pomp, without any novel apparatus, and in the end without expense — a man is let down into the water and dipped amid a few words, and comes up again no cleaner, or scarcely any cleaner, in body, for that very reason the attainment of eternity through it is judged incredible. [2] I lie if the solemnities and secret rites of idols do not, by contrast, build up their own credit and authority precisely by platform, apparatus, and expense. Shame on wretched unbelief, which strips God of the very qualities that belong to him — plainness and might! Well then? Is it not a marvelous thing, that death should be washed away by a bath? Is it, because it is marvelous, therefore not to be believed? On the contrary, that is all the more reason to believe it: for what should divine works be like, except beyond all wonder? We too marvel at them ourselves — but because we believe. Unbelief, on the other hand, marvels because it does not believe: it marvels at simple things as though they were empty, and at magnificent things as though they were impossible. [3] And let it be, plainly, just as you suppose: the divine word has already anticipated you thoroughly on both scores: "the Lord picked out what is foolish in this world so as to put its wisdom to shame"; and again, "what men find hard, God finds easy." For if God is at once wise and mighty — a point not even his detractors will dispute — he has, not without reason, drawn the substance of his working from the very reverse of wisdom and might, namely from folly and from what seems impossible: for might always finds its occasion precisely in whatever provokes it.