Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] By this same pattern we maintain that everything else, too, belongs to the condition of martyrdom. 'He who has valued even his own life more than me,' he says, 'is not worthy of me' — that is, the man who would rather live by denying than die by confessing; and 'whoever keeps hold of his life shall forfeit it, while he who forfeits it on my account shall keep it safe.' [2] For the man who denies, buying his life at a profit, finds it in just the same sense as the man who loses it in hell, thinking he has turned a profit by denying. But the one who confesses and is killed loses it for the present — and is going to find it again in eternal life. [3] Indeed, the governors themselves, when they urge denial, say exactly this: 'Spare your life! Don't throw your life away!' How could Christ have spoken as he did, unless the Christian were going to be treated exactly as he describes? Yet when he forbids rehearsing a defense for the tribunal, he is coaching his own servants, promising that the Holy Spirit will answer for them; and when he wants a brother visited in prison, he is ordering care for the confessor; and when he affirms that God will execute vengeance for his elect, he is consoling their sufferings; even in the parable of the seed, scorched after the green blade, he is picturing the heat of persecutions. [4] If these things are not to be taken as they are stated, then without question they carry a meaning other than their surface, so that the wording says one thing while the sense intends another — as happens with allegories, parables, riddles. So then, whatever gust of argument these scorpions may conjure up, whatever point they may drive themselves onto, there is one single line to test it on: are they to be settled by appeal to the actual facts, in agreement with the Scriptures? [5] Because at that point the Scriptures will be shown to mean something else only if that same thing is not found to match the facts. What is written must, of necessity, come to pass; and what is written will only come to pass if it does not come to pass otherwise. But look — we are hated by all men because of the Name, exactly as it is written; and we are betrayed even by our own kin, exactly as it is written; and we are hauled before the powers, and questioned, and tortured, and we confess, and we are butchered, exactly as it is written. So the Lord declared it. [6] If he declared these things meaning something other than this, why do the very things he declared not turn out otherwise — that is, exactly as he declared them? But in fact they turn out exactly as he declared; therefore, as they turn out, so he declared, and as he declared, so they turn out. For it would not have been permitted to turn out otherwise than he declared, nor would he himself have declared it otherwise than he intended it to turn out. [7] So these Scriptures will signify nothing other than what we recognize in the facts — unless, of course, the events foretold have not yet happened, in which case, how can the events that ARE happening be the ones foretold? For these present events are not the foretold ones if the foretold events are something else, and not these. But as things stand, since the very things believed to be figuratively expressed in words are found, as they are, in the facts, what would be the case if they were found to have happened otherwise? [8] But this will be a perversity of faith — refusing to believe what is proven, and presuming upon what is not. And against that perversity I will set this further point too: if these things, which are happening exactly as they were written, are not to be taken as the very things foretold, then other things likewise ought not to happen as they are written, lest they too, on this same precedent, run the risk of being ruled out — since, on this logic, the wording would carry one import and the actual events another, leaving it uncertain whether things will even be recognized as fulfillments, once they happen, if they were foretold in some sense other than how they are to happen. And how will things be believed as fulfillments which will not count as fulfilled — since they were not foretold in the way they in fact come to pass? That is exactly how the heretics come to believe things that were never even foretold, by refusing to believe, as proven, the things that plainly are.