Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Christ Jesus our Lord — let anyone say for the moment whatever he likes, whoever he is, son of whatever God, man and God of whatever substance, teacher of whatever faith, promiser of whatever reward — whatever he was, whatever he had been, whatever will of the Father he administered, whatever he determined that man must do, for as long as he walked the earth he himself proclaimed it, whether openly to the people or apart to his disciples — of whom he had picked out twelve in particular to keep at his side, marked out as teachers destined for the nations. And so, one of them having dropped away, he ordered the remaining eleven, as he departed to the Father after the resurrection, to go and teach the nations, plunging them in baptism under the names of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit alike. At once, then, the apostles — a name that translates as "those sent" — having taken on by lot a twelfth, Matthias, in Judas's place, on the authority of the prophecy found in David's psalm, and having received the promised power of the Holy Spirit for works of power and for speech, first bore witness to faith in Jesus Christ throughout Judea and founded churches there, then set out into the world and spread that same teaching of that same faith among the nations. And in just the same way they founded churches in city after city, and it is from these that all the other churches thereafter have borrowed the cutting of the faith and the seeds of the teaching, and go on borrowing them daily, in order to become churches at all. And by this very fact they too are reckoned apostolic, as offspring of the apostolic churches. Every family must, of necessity, be reckoned back to its origin. And so, many and great as these churches are, they are that one original church from the apostles, from which they all descend. In this fashion each one counts as original, each one counts as apostolic, and the whole lot of them form a single body. Proof of that unity lies in the exchange of peace, the name of brotherhood, and the mutual hospitality that seals it — rights governed by no other principle than the single tradition of one and the same sacred bond.