Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] But — you were given a mouth, man, to gorge and to drink with. Why not rather to speak with, so that you might be set apart from the other animals? Why not rather to proclaim God with, and so stand as a priest even to other men? Adam, after all, pronounced the names of the animals before he plucked from the tree; he even prophesied before he ate. [2] But — you were given teeth to gnaw the butcher's stall with. Why not rather to crown the whole gape and grin of your mouth, why not rather to keep the pulses of the tongue in tune, to mark the joints of the voice with their proper strokes? Consider, too, the toothless: both listen to them and look at them, and you will see that the honor belongs to the mouth, and the teeth are its instrument. [3] Openings, too, have been bored below in man and woman, no doubt so that lusts might flow through them — why not rather so that the runoff of drink might be drained there? Woman, too, still has within her a place where seeds are gathered — or is it rather a place where the burdens of blood, which the sluggisher sex cannot manage to disperse, may withdraw? [4] These things must be said, inasmuch as our opponents, in whatever way and to whatever degree and however they please, mockingly and deliberately drag the functions of the members forward to smear the resurrection with ridicule, without stopping to consider that the very causes of the necessity in question will then themselves have ceased — hunger for food, thirst for drink, the begetting drive of intercourse, and the toil of labor for a living. For once death is abolished, neither will the props of sustenance be needed to support life, nor will the heavy business of propagating the race weigh on the members. [5] Besides, even today it is possible for the bowels and the privy parts to lie idle: Moses and Elijah, in a forty-day fast, were fed by God alone — for even then it was already being taught, 'Man shall not live by bread but by the word of God.' Behold the outlines of the coming power! [6] We too, so far as we are able, excuse the mouth from food, and withdraw sex itself from intercourse. How many voluntary eunuchs, how many virgins wedded to Christ, how many of both natures made barren, their genitals built for no fruit! [7] For if even here already there is idleness — both of the functions and the profits of the members — through a temporary suspension answering to a temporary arrangement, and man is none the less saved for it, then, man being saved, all the more then — as befits an eternal arrangement — we shall not miss what we have already made a habit of not missing here.