Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
For all offenses, then, whether committed in flesh or in spirit, in deed or in will, the one who has appointed a punishment through judgment has likewise pledged a pardon through repentance, saying to the people: 'Repent, and I will save you.' And again: 'As I live,' says the Lord, 'I prefer repentance to death.' Repentance, then, is life, set above death. Seize hold of it, you sinner — my equal, or rather my inferior, for I acknowledge my own preeminence in offenses — seize it, embrace it, the way a shipwrecked man clings to some plank he trusts. This will lift you, submerged in the waves of your sins, and haul you safely into the harbor of divine clemency. Snatch the chance of this unlooked-for good fortune, so that you, who once were nothing before the Lord but a drop from the bucket and dust from the threshing-floor and a mere vessel of the potter, may from that point become a tree — that tree which is planted by the waters, and stays green in leaf, and bears its fruit in its season, and will see neither fire nor axe. Repent of your errors now that the truth is found; repent of having loved what God does not love — seeing that we ourselves do not even permit our own slaves to persist in what offends us, for compliance rests on a likeness of minds. To lay out in full the good that repentance brings would be a vast subject requiring, for that reason, a great eloquence; we, however, given our own narrow limits, press home just this one point: that what God commands is good, indeed the very best. I count it a kind of audacity even to argue about the goodness of a divine command; for it is not because it is good that we ought to obey it, but because God has commanded it — in the rendering of obedience, the majesty of the divine power takes precedence, the authority of the one commanding comes before the advantage of the one serving. 'Is it good to repent, or not?' Why do you keep turning it over? God has commanded it! And yet he does not merely command — he even exhorts; he invites with a reward, namely salvation; he even swears, saying 'As I live,' wanting to be believed. O how blessed we are, for whose sake God swears an oath; O how utterly wretched, if we will not even believe the Lord when he swears! And since God recommends this so earnestly that he even attests it, in human fashion, under oath, we surely ought both to undertake and to guard it with the utmost seriousness, so that, remaining steadfast in the assurance of divine grace, we may likewise persevere in its fruit and its reward.