Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Still, to press the discussion further on matters necessary to the faith is not idle, since it is not fruitless either: talkativeness is never shameful in building up — if ever it is shameful at all. So if the discourse concerns some good, the matter demands that we also review its opposite: since you will illuminate far better what ought to be sought after by also laying out, alongside it, what ought to be shunned. Let us consider, then, impatience — whether, just as patience is found in God, its adversary was born and discovered in our adversary — so that from this it may appear how fundamentally it stands opposed to the faith. For what has been conceived by the rival of God is certainly no friend to the things of God. There is the same discord between things as between their authors: and since God is supremely good and the devil, on the contrary, supremely bad, their very difference from each other testifies that neither can produce what belongs to the other, so that to us it seems no more possible for anything good to come from evil than for anything evil to come from good. I find, then, that impatience was born in the devil himself, precisely at the instant when he could not stomach the fact that the Lord God had put everything he had fashioned under the rule of the being made in his own likeness — that is, under man. For he would not have grieved had he endured it, nor would he have envied man had he not grieved: so thoroughly did he deceive because he had envied, and envied because he had grieved, and grieved because he had certainly not borne it with patience. Which came first in that angel of ruin — malice or impatience — I do not care to inquire, since it is plain enough that either impatience took its start from malice, or malice from impatience, and that thereafter the two conspired together and grew up inseparable in one father's bosom. But indeed, by the very means through which he himself first sensed it, through which he first entered into sin, instructed by his own experience as to what would help toward sinning, he summoned man into the same offense by inflicting the same thing on him. The woman, approached at once — I would not say it rashly — was, through that very conversation of his, breathed upon by a spirit infected with impatience: so entirely would she never have sinned at all had she preserved patience toward the divine prohibition! And what of this: she did not merely fail to hold out when approached alone, but also with Adam — who was as yet no husband of hers, under no obligation yet to lend her his ear — she was so impatient that she could not even keep silent, and made him a channel for what she herself had drunk in from the evil one. So another man perishes through another's impatience — no, he too perishes through his own impatience, committed on both counts, both regarding God's warning and regarding the devil's deception, unable to hold fast to the one or refute the other. Hence the first inkling of judgment, from the source of the offense; hence God's first stirring to anger, from the point at which man was led to give offense; hence, too, the first patience in God, from the point of that first indignation, since he was content then with a curse alone, restraining himself from the onslaught of vengeance even against the devil. Or what crime, prior to this one of impatience, is charged against man? He was innocent, and a close friend of God, and a tenant of paradise: but the moment he once fell into impatience, he ceased to savor heavenly things, ceased to be able to endure them. From then on man, given over to earth and cast out from the sight of God, easily fell prey to impatience in everything that could offend God. For at once, conceived from the devil's seed, by the fruitfulness of malice, impatience bore the son of wrath; once born, it schooled him in its own arts: for the very thing that had plunged Adam and Eve into death, it taught the son to begin with murder. I would ascribe this to impatience in vain, if Cain, that first murderer and first fratricide, had borne the rejection of his offerings by the Lord calmly and without impatience — if he had not been angry at his brother, if in the end he had killed no one. Since, then, he could not have killed except in anger, and could not have been angry except through impatience, this shows that what he carried out through anger must be traced back to the source that suggested that anger. These, then, were in some sense the cradle-days of impatience, still in its infancy. But how great its growth soon after! No wonder: if it sinned first, it follows that, because it was first, it alone is the womb of every offense, pouring out from its own fountain the various veins of crime. Of murder, indeed, we have spoken. But anger, brought forth from the very beginning, refers back to its own origin whatever causes it later devises for itself toward impatience: for whether a man commits that crime out of enmity or for the sake of plunder, it is necessary first that he become impatient, whether of hatred or of greed. Whatever compels a man to act cannot be carried through without impatience with itself: who has ever committed adultery without impatience of lust? And even if it is bought with money from women, that sale of chastity is certainly arranged through an impatience with despising gain. These are, so to speak, the principal offenses against the Lord. Now indeed, to put it in short compass, every sin must be charged to impatience. Impatience is the evil of the good. No unchaste person is other than impatient of chastity, no dishonest person impatient of honesty, no impious person impatient of piety, no restless person impatient of rest — so that every man becomes bad precisely because he could not persevere in being good! Why, then, should such a viper's brood of offenses not give offense to the Lord, who condemns every evil? Is it not plain that Israel too always sinned against God through impatience? Thus, when, forgetful of the heavenly arm by which he had been drawn out from the afflictions of Egypt, he demands gods to lead him from Aaron, when he pours his gold into a molten idol — so impatiently had he taken those delays, so necessary as they were, of Moses meeting with the Lord! After the rain of edible manna, after the watery flow that followed from the rock, they despair of the Lord, unable to endure three days' thirst; for this too is impatience reproached in them by the Lord. And, not to range over every instance, they never perished except by sinning through impatience. How, indeed, did they lay hands on the prophets, if not through impatience of listening? And on the Lord himself, through impatience even of seeing him! Whereas, had they taken up patience, they would have been set free.