Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
If you hold back from confession, set hell before your mind's eye, the very blaze that confession will douse on your behalf, and first form a picture of how immense the punishment is, so that you will not hesitate about adopting the remedy. [2] What are we to make of that treasury of eternal fire, when certain of its little smoke-vents stir up such blasts of flame that the nearest cities either already exist no more, or from one day to the next expect the same fate? [3] The loftiest mountains split open, big with fire in their bellies, and—here is the sign that shows us how endless the judgment will be—though they split open, though they burn away, they are never used up! [4] Who will fail to count these ongoing torments of the mountains as rehearsals of the judgment now looming over us? Who will not grant that such sparks amount to, so to speak, projectiles flung and warning-shots let loose from some enormous and unfathomable furnace? [5] Since, then, you know that against hell there are, besides those first defenses of the Lord's baptism, still further reinforcements available in a second confession, why do you abandon your own salvation, why do you hold back from taking up what you know can heal you? [6] Even dumb and unreasoning creatures recognize in their own time the remedies divinely allotted to them: the stag, pierced through by an arrow, knows it must eat dittany, so as to expel the iron and its irrevocable lingering from the wound; the swallow, if it has blinded its chicks, knows how to make them see again with its own celandine. [7] Shall the sinner, knowingly, pass by that confession established for his own restoration by the Lord—the very thing that restored the king of Babylon to his kingdom? For a long time he had offered penitence to the Lord like a sacrifice, working out his confession through seven years of squalor, with a wildness like lions' claws and a neglect of hair giving him the fearsome look of an eagle. What a happy outcome from such rough treatment! The one men shuddered at, God took back. [8] By contrast, the Egyptian king, who once pursued the people of God in their affliction, long denied to his own lord, rushed into battle, and after so many object lessons in the plagues, perished when the waters closed back over him at the parting of the sea, which had been passable only to that one people: for he had thrown away repentance and its ministry, confession! [9] Why should I go on further about these two planks, as it were, of human salvation, tending more to the business of my pen than to the duty of my conscience? For being a sinner marked by every stain, and born for nothing but repentance, I cannot easily keep silent about that thing which even Adam himself, first of the human race and first to offend the Lord, did not keep silent about—when, restored by confession, he was set back in his own paradise!