Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Furthermore, even if we could grant that he exists, we would be forced to conclude that he exists without cause. For a thing exists without cause when it has no "matter" — since every matter is the cause for which someone possesses that matter as his own. Now, to the extent that nothing ought to exist without cause, that is, without matter — because if a thing exists without cause it is exactly as if it did not exist, lacking, as it does, matter to be the cause of its own reality — to that same degree I would find it far more fitting to hold that no god is there at all, rather than to hold that one is there lacking any cause. A thing lacks cause precisely when, having no matter, it has nothing to account for it. But God should not be found causeless — that is, without matter. So then, every time I demonstrate him standing "causeless," as though he really did exist, I am in fact showing that he amounts to nothing — since had he truly existed, causelessness would have been impossible for him. In just the same way I say that this very faith itself is grasped at by man without cause, contrary to the usual way of believing in a god shaped by the authority of his works — since he provided nothing of the kind by which man might learn of a god. For even though most people believe in him, they do not believe by reasoned grounds, since they possess no pledge of his godhead — works worthy of a god. And so, on this score, he stands close kin to cessation and default of works, and to shamelessness and malice alike: shamelessness, in that he grasps at a faith owed him by nothing, having provided no foundation for it to rest on; malice, in that he has made a great many guilty of unbelief by procuring no faith at all.
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