Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
So then, if it is established from whom persecution comes, we can now bring your question forward and, on the strength of this very preliminary discussion, determine that flight in persecution is not to be resorted to. For if persecution comes from God, there will be no way one ought to flee what comes from God, as a twofold argument establishes: because what comes from God ought neither to be avoided nor can it be escaped. It ought not to be avoided, because it is good; for everything that seems good to God must necessarily be good. And was it not for this very reason recorded in Genesis, "And God looked upon it, and it was good" — not because he could not have known its goodness without looking upon it, but so that this phrase might signal that a thing counts as good precisely in that it has appeared so to God? There are, to be sure, many things that come from God and yet come about to someone's harm — no, rather, it is good for that very reason, because it comes from God as something divine, something rational; for what is divine that is not rational, not good? What is good that is not divine? But if it seems otherwise to anyone's private feeling, it is not feeling that dictates to the nature of things, but the nature of things that dictates to feeling; for the nature of each thing is a fixed reality and gives feeling the law of perceiving that nature as it is. But if by its nature a thing is good because it comes from God — for nothing from God is not good, because it is divine, because it is rational — while to feeling it seems evil, the nature of the thing will stand secure, and the fault will lie with the feeling. By nature, chastity and truth and justice are the best of things, and yet they displease the feelings of many; is the nature of the thing therefore made subject to feeling? So too persecution, by its nature, is good, because it is a divine and rational arrangement, even though it displeases the feelings of those to whose harm it comes. But whoever sees that even that evil is reckoned rational before God, when someone is overturned from salvation in persecution, just as that good happens by reason too, when someone makes progress toward salvation through persecution — unless someone perishes before the Lord, or is saved, without any reason at all — such a person will not be able to call persecution an evil, since even on the evil side of it, it is good, so long as it is administered by reason. So if persecution is in some way good, since its nature is established, we rightly conclude that what is good ought not to be avoided, since it would be a fault to refuse what is good — all the more so, what has seemed good to God — and indeed that it cannot even be avoided, since it comes from God, whose will cannot be avoided. And so those who think one should flee either charge God with evil, if they flee persecution as an evil thing — for no one avoids what is good — or else they consider themselves stronger than God, thinking they can escape, if God should will some such thing to happen.
V.