Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
There is also another supreme goad to impatience: the itch for revenge, a business tending either to glory or to malice. But glory in this matter is everywhere empty, and malice is never anything but hateful to the Lord — most of all here, where, provoked by another's malice, a man sets himself up as superior in carrying out revenge, and, in paying the wretch back, doubles what was done only once. Vengeance, viewed through the lens of error, looks like a comfort for grief; viewed through the lens of truth, it stands convicted, plainly, as malice. What difference, after all, is there between the provoker and the one provoked, except that the one is caught first in wrongdoing, the other second? Yet both alike are guilty before the Lord of the wronged man, who bars and condemns every wicked act without exception. In wrongdoing there is no reckoning of order, and no distance separates what likeness joins together. It stands laid down, without exception, that evil must never be answered with evil in return: a matching deed carries a matching guilt. How are we to hold to that rule unless we set ourselves decisively above the very notion of getting even? And what honor would we be paying the Lord God, if we claimed for ourselves the right to plead and settle our own cause? We rotten things, mere vessels of clay — when our own lowly household slaves presume to avenge themselves against their fellow slaves, we take it as a grave affront to us; while those who instead offer us their own forbearance, mindful of a servant's humility and jealous for their master's standing, we not only commend, but go on to grant a satisfaction far beyond what they would ever have dared ask for themselves. Shall this same principle, then, remain doubtful for us in the case of a Master so just in judgment and so mighty to enforce it? What, then, do we believe him to be, if not a judge — and, if a judge, not also an avenger? This is what he promises us, saying: Vengeance is mine, and I will repay — that is to say: 'Give me patience, and I will repay patience with patience.' For when he says, Judge not, that you be not judged, does he not, in effect, demand patience? Who, after all, will refrain from judging another, except the man who is patient enough not to defend himself? Who judges precisely in order to forgive? And even if he does forgive, he has still not guarded against the judge's own impatience, and has stolen the honor due the one true Judge, that is, God! And how many disasters has impatience of this kind been in the habit of bringing down, how often has a man regretted his own self-defense, how often has his own insistence turned out worse for his case than the case itself — since impatience never knows how to carry a thing through without a headlong rush, and nothing done in a headlong rush fails either to give offense, or to collapse, or to come to grief! Now if you defend yourself too mildly, you will fret; if too vigorously, you will be burdened with the consequences. What is revenge to me, whose measure I cannot govern through the impatience of grief? But if I settle down into patience, I shall not grieve; and if I do not grieve, I shall not long to avenge myself.