Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] This is the reasoning of patience, this its discipline, these its works — heavenly and true, that is, the Christian kind, not that patience of the pagans of this earth, false and shameful. [2] For just as in this matter too the devil apes the Lord, as though they stood on equal terms (except that this very disparity between evil and good is itself matched in scale), so he has taught his own people a patience of their own — [3] I mean that patience which subjects husbands who sell themselves for a dowry, or trade in pandering, to the power of their wives; that patience which, hunting for childless estates, endures every labor of forced compliance with counterfeit affections; that patience which surrenders the workers of the belly to shameful patronage, enslaving their freedom to their gluttony. [4] Such are the pursuits of patience the nations know, and they occupy the name of so great a good with foul dealings: patient toward rivals and the rich and their hosts, they live impatient only toward God. But let them see to their own patience and that of their own overseer — the patience the fire beneath the earth is waiting for. [5] For the rest, let us cherish God's patience, and Christ's patience too; let us return to him what he himself expended for our sake; let us bring forward the patience proper to the spirit and the patience proper to the flesh, we who believe in the resurrection of the flesh and the spirit!