Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Now if gods — and therefore beings possessed of reason too — behaved this way, they would weigh the merits of repentance first, and never turn it into a tool for enlarging a perverse correction; they would in short keep repentance within its proper measure, precisely because they would keep within the measure of offending, out of fear of the Lord. But where there is no fear, there is correspondingly no correction; and where there is no correction, repentance is necessarily empty, since it is deprived of the very fruit for which God sowed it, the rescue of mankind. For, once such vast and repeated offenses of human rashness had piled up, beginning from Adam, the founder of the race — after man was condemned along with the dowry of this age, after he was cast out of paradise and made subject to death — when he had once again ripened toward his own mercy, from that point on established repentance in himself, rescinding the sentence of his former wrath and undertaking to forgive his own handiwork, his own image. And so he gathered a people to himself and cherished them with many gifts of his goodness, and though he found them ungrateful again and again, he never ceased urging them to repentance, sending out for that preaching the mouths of all the prophets: presently, having promised the favor that in the final age he would pour out through his Spirit over the whole world, he commanded that a baptism of repentance should go ahead of it, so that those whom he would call by grace to the promise destined for Abraham's seed might first be prepared by the pledge of repentance. John does not stay silent about repentance, saying, 'Repent'; for already salvation was drawing near to the nations — the Lord, that is, bringing it as God had promised. To him God assigned repentance as a handmaid, set over the cleansing of minds, so that whatever old error had defiled, whatever ignorance had contaminated in man's heart, repentance might sweep it out, scour it away, and cast it forth, and so prepare the clean house of the heart for the Holy Spirit about to come, that he might gladly bring himself into it along with the goods of heaven. One title among these goods is man's salvation, preceded by the wiping-out of former crimes; this is the business of repentance, this its work, tending to the affairs of divine mercy — which profits man and serves God. As for its rule, once we have come to know the Lord we learn that it holds a fixed form: that no violent hand is ever to be laid on deeds or thoughts that are good. For God does not ratify the rejection of good deeds, seeing they are his own; and since he is their author and their defender, he must also be their approver — and if their approver, then also their rewarder. Let the ingratitude of men see to it, then, if it forces repentance even upon good deeds done; and let self-interested grace see to it too, if the courting of reward is itself an incentive to doing good — both motives are earthly and mortal. For what is the profit if you did good to a grateful man, or the loss if to an ungrateful one? A worthy act makes God its debtor, exactly as a wicked one does, since every judge stands as rewarder of the case set before him. But since God as judge presides over the exacting and guarding of justice, dearest of all things to him, and makes it the sum total of his whole discipline, can it be doubted that, as in all our acts, so also in the matter of repentance, justice is owed by God? And this can indeed be fulfilled only if repentance is applied solely to sins. Now, nothing deserves to be called a sin except a bad deed done, and no one offends by doing good. But if he does not offend, why does repentance — the private penalty of offenders — invade his case? Why does it lay the office of malice upon his goodness? This is what happens when a thing is applied where it has no business, and is neglected where it does belong.