Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] So much, then, I have contributed on the general pattern of the human condition, as a vote cast in the flesh's favor. Let us now look at the pattern peculiar to the Christian name itself — how great a privilege before God belongs to this frivolous, sordid substance. [2] Even if it were enough that no soul at all can obtain salvation except while it is in the flesh that it believed, so thoroughly is the flesh the hinge of salvation: it is by the flesh, when the soul is bound to God, that the soul itself comes to be capable of being chosen by God. [3] But more: the flesh is washed so that the soul may be made spotless; the flesh is anointed so that the soul may be consecrated; the flesh bears the sign so that the soul as well may be strengthened by it; hands are laid upon the flesh in the overshadowing rite so that the soul in turn may have the Spirit's light poured into it; the flesh takes as its nourishment the body and blood of Christ so that the soul likewise may grow fat on God. Things that works have joined cannot, then, be separated in their reward. [4] For sacrifices pleasing to God — I mean the soul's struggles, its fastings, its late and dry meals, and the grime that is the appendage of this service — the flesh makes good out of its own discomfort. Virginity too, and widowhood, and the modest concealment of marriage kept discreetly private, and the sole knowledge of it, court God's favor from the flesh's own goods. [5] Come now — what do you think of the flesh when it fights it out in the open for loyalty to the Name, thrust into public hatred, wasted in prisons by the foulest exile from the light, worn down by the world's want, filth, grime, insult — not even free in sleep, chained as it is to its very pallet, torn even on its own straw bedding — when in broad daylight it is mangled by every engine of torture devised, when finally it is paid out to the executioners, straining to render Christ the like for like by dying for him, and often by that very same cross, not to speak of crueler devices of punishment still? [6] Should that flesh — most blessed, most glorious, able to pay Christ the Lord so great a debt that this alone it owes him: that it has ceased to owe him — be, the more bound, all the more set free?