Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
That, then, is divine patience viewed as it were from a distance, as befits things estimated from on high: but what of the patience that has, in a sense, been taken hold of by hand, openly among men on earth? God allows himself to be born: in his mother's womb he waits, and once born he endures growing up, and grown, he does not clamor to be recognized — no, worse, he treats himself with contempt: he submits to washing at the hands of his own servant, and beats back the tempter's assaults with nothing but speech; when from Lord he becomes a teacher instructing man how to escape death, schooled, that is, in the full pardon owed to an offense against patience — he does not contend, he raises no outcry, no one heard his voice in the public squares; a bruised reed he did not break, a smoldering wick he did not quench (for the prophet had not lied — no, it is God's own testimony that his Spirit rests upon his Son with all patience!). He turned away no one who wished to cling to him, he scorned no one's table or roof — indeed he himself served, washing his disciples' feet; he did not spurn sinners or tax collectors, nor was he even angry at that city which had refused to receive him, though his disciples wanted heavenly fire called down upon that insolent town; he showed care to those who felt no gratitude, he gave way before men plotting against him. That is little, if he did not even keep his betrayer at his side, without once openly denouncing him. But when he is handed over, when he is led like a sheep to the slaughter (for he opens his mouth no more than a lamb under the shearer's hand), he — for whom, had he wished it, legions of angels would have stood ready from heaven at a single word — did not so much as approve the avenging sword of a single disciple. The Lord's patience was wounded in Malchus: and so he cursed the sword's work for all time to come, and by restoring health made amends to the man he himself had not injured, making patience the mother of mercy. I say nothing of his being nailed up, for that was what he had come for — but did the undergoing of death really require insults too? Yet, about to depart, he wanted to be gorged full on the pleasure of patience: he is spat on, scourged, mocked, dressed in filthy garments, crowned with fouler ones still. What astonishing constancy of equanimity — he who had chosen to hide within the shape of a man imitated nothing of man's impatience! By this above all, Pharisees, you ought to have recognized the Lord: no mere man could have carried through patience of this kind! Such and so great are the proofs which — however their magnitude serves the nations as an excuse for refusing faith — for us stand as reason and structure, proving clearly enough, not by words of teaching alone but by the Lord's endurance of his sufferings, to those granted to believe, that patience is the very nature of God, the effect and preeminence of a quality inborn in him.