Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Hence, then, I take up the next step: whether he ought to have come so suddenly. First, because he was himself the son of his god. For the natural order would have been for the father to acknowledge the son before the son acknowledged the father, and for the father to bear witness about the son before the son bore witness about the father. Next, because he was sent — quite apart from the title of son. The sponsorship of the one who sends ought to have preceded, as testimony on behalf of the one sent, since no one coming on another's authority defends that authority for himself by his own say-so; rather, he expects his defense to come from that authority itself, preceded by the endorsement of the one who furnishes it. [2] But neither will he be acknowledged as son whom a father has never named as such, nor will he be believed to be sent whom a commissioner never designated — a father who would have named him, a commissioner who would have designated him, had there been one. Everything that strays from the rule will be held suspect, and the order fundamental to things does not allow the father to be recognized after the son, the one who commissions after the thing commissioned, or God after Christ. [3] Nothing is prior to its own origin in our recognition of it, because nothing is prior to it in the actual arrangement of things. Suddenly a son, suddenly one sent, suddenly a Christ! Yet I should think nothing is sudden with God, because nothing is undisposed by God. But if it was disposed beforehand, why not also foretold, so that it might be proved both disposed, from the preaching, and divine, from the disposing? [4] And in any case so great a work — one, namely, being prepared for the salvation of mankind — would not have been sudden even to the degree that it was meant to profit through faith. For precisely insofar as belief was required before it could do any good, its groundwork likewise needed to render such belief possible — built up on the foundations of prior arrangement and prior preaching, so that, by this order, faith once properly formed might rightly be both required of man by God and rendered to God by man, man being obliged to believe, out of recognition, because he was able to — having, that is, learned to believe it from the preaching.
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