Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
It is she alone who both follows faith and goes before it. So Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. But it was patience that proved his faith, when he was ordered to sacrifice his son — not, I would say, as a testing of his faith, but as its type-bearing witness. God, after all, already knew the man he had reckoned righteous: so grave a command, one which the Lord himself did not wish carried through, Abraham heard patiently, and would have fulfilled it had God so willed. Rightly, then, was he blessed, because faithful; rightly faithful, because patient! And so faith, lit up by patience, when it was being sown among the nations through the seed of Abraham — which is Christ — and was superadding grace to the law, set patience over the task of enlarging and fulfilling the law, as her helper, since patience alone had been lacking, till then, to the teaching of righteousness. For in the old days the rule demanded an eye in return for an eye, a tooth exacted for a tooth, and evil was repaid with interest-bearing evil: patience was not yet on earth, because, of course, neither was faith. Meanwhile impatience feasted on the license the law gave it — an easy thing, with the Lord and Master of patience not yet arrived. But once he came and joined patience to the grace of faith, it is no longer permitted even to provoke by a word, or even to say 'You fool,' without risking judgment; anger is forbidden, restraint of spirit required, the hand's petulance suppressed, the venom drawn from the tongue. The law has found more than it lost, since Christ says: Love your enemies, and bless those who curse you, and pray for your persecutors, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. See what a Father patience wins for us!