Tertullian Quotes

Itaque et ego vanitatem vanitate depellam.

Of little worth is the recommendation which has for its prop the defamation of another.

Infirma commendatio est quae de alterius destructione fulcitur.

Digna enim deo probabunt deum. Nos definimus deum primo natura cognoscendum, deinde doctrina recognoscendum, natura ex operibus, doctrina ex praedicationibus.

Then, inasmuch as He too has fabricated a world out of some underlying material which is unbegotten, and unmade, and contemporaneous with God, just as Marcion holds of the Creator, you reduce this likewise to the dignity of that local space which has enclosed two gods, both God and matter.

Finally, take a circuit round your own self; survey man within and without. Even this handiwork of our God will be pleasing to you, inasmuch as your own lord, that better god, loved it so well, and for your sake was at the pains of descending from the third heaven to these poverty-stricken elements, and for the same reason was actually crucified in this sorry apartment of the Creator.

What indeed tended so greatly to the knowledge of himself, as his appearing in the humiliation of the flesh,—a degradation all the lower indeed if the flesh were only illusory? For it was all the more shameful if he, who brought on himself the Creator’s curse by hanging on a tree, only pretended the assumption of a bodily substance.

In the first place, how arrogantly do the Marcionites build up their stupid system, bringing forward a new god, as if we were ashamed of the old one! So schoolboys are proud of their new shoes, but their old master beats their strutting vanity out of them.

But this argument you will try to shake with an objection from the name of God, by alleging that that name is a vague one, and applied to other beings also; as it is written, “God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; He judgeth among the gods.” And again, “I have said, Ye are gods.”

But the Christian verity has distinctly declared this principle, “God is not, if He is not one;” because we more properly believe that that has no existence which is not as it ought to be.

The dead bodies of their parents they cut up with their sheep, and devour at their feasts. They who have not died so as to become food for others, are thought to have died an accursed death. Their women are not by their sex softened to modesty. They uncover the breast, from which they suspend their battle-axes, and prefer warfare to marriage.

Nec religionis est cogere religionem

Nec alii obest aut prodest alterius religio.

He who flees will fight again.

Qui fugiebat, rursus sibi proeliabitur.