Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
All the other burdens on the spirit have escorted you only as far as the threshold of the prison, exactly as your own parents did. From that point you have been set apart from the world itself — how much more, then, from this age and its business! And do not let it unsettle you that you have been set apart from the world. For if we stop to think it through, the world itself is the real prison, and you have emerged from confinement rather than stepped into it; once we grasp that, all becomes clear.
The world holds a deeper darkness, one that blinds the very hearts of men. The world fastens heavier chains, ones that bind the souls of men themselves. The world breathes out fouler filth — the lusts of men.
The world, finally, holds more prisoners: the entire human race, no less. And it is not the proconsul's court it awaits, but God's.
So think of yourselves, blessed ones, as merely transferred from one holding-cell to another, if you must think of it that way at all. It has darkness, but you are the light. It has chains, but you are free — in God. It breathes out gloom, but you are a fragrance of sweetness. A judge is expected there, but you are the ones who will pass judgment on the judges themselves.
Let the man grieve there who sighs after the fruits of this present age. The Christian has already renounced the world outside the prison; in the prison he simply renounces the prison too. It makes no difference where you are within the world, once you stand outside the world.
And if some of life's comforts are now behind you — well, "it is good business to lose a little in order to gain a great deal more." I say nothing yet of the reward to which God invites his martyrs. Let us simply, for now, weigh life in the world against life in prison, and see whether the spirit does not gain more in prison than the flesh loses.
Indeed, the flesh does not even lose what is rightfully its due, thanks to the church's care and the love-feast of the brothers; and beyond that, the spirit gains everything that is ever useful to faith. You do not see strange gods; you do not run into their images; you do not, by mixing in the crowd, take part in the high holy days of the nations; you are not battered by their filthy incense-smoke, not by the roar of the arena, not struck down by the savagery or frenzy or shamelessness of those who celebrate it; your eyes do not stumble into the haunts of public lust. You are free from scandals, from temptations, from ugly memories — and now, at last, even from persecution.
Prison gives the Christian what the desert gave the prophets. The Lord himself spent his time more often in retreat, so that he might pray more freely, so that he might step back from the world. It was, in fact, in solitude that he showed his glory to his disciples. Let us drop the word "prison" — let us call it retreat.
Even though the body is shut in, even though the flesh is held fast, everything lies open to the spirit. Wander in spirit, roam in spirit — setting before yourself not dim running-tracks or long colonnades, but that road which leads to God. As often as you walk it in spirit, that often you will not be in prison.
The leg feels nothing in the stocks when the mind is in heaven. The mind carries the whole man about with it, and takes him wherever it wishes. And where your heart is, there your treasure will be also. Let our heart, then, be there where we wish to keep our treasure.