Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
If, further, you want us to think him fickle even in his dealings with persons — rejecting men he once approved, or careless in approving men later to be rejected, as if either condemning his own past verdicts or ignorant of the future — in fact nothing suits a good judge so well as to reject and to choose according to merits actually present. Saul is chosen while he has not yet turned scornful toward Samuel the prophet. Solomon, by contrast, is cast off, but not before he has fallen under the spell of foreign wives and had become enslaved to the deities worshipped by Moab and Sidon. What was the Creator to do, to escape the reproach of the Marcionites? Condemn men in advance while they were still behaving well, on account of sins yet to come? But it was not the way of a good God to condemn men in advance who had not yet earned it. Well then, should he refuse now to punish sinners because of their past good deeds? But it was not the way of a just judge to let past good works cancel out present crimes. Or is there any man without fault, such that God should always choose him, being never able to reject him? Or again, any man without some good deed, such that God should always reject him, being never able to choose him? Show unbroken goodness, and you will never be rejected; show unbroken evil, and you will never be chosen. But if the same man, being now this and now that according to the times, is weighed by God — both good and judge — in each case accordingly, that is no fickleness or carelessness in reversing verdicts, but the gravest and most far-seeing scrutiny, weighing each man's merits as they stand at the time.
24.