Quotes from Tertullian

You can judge the quality of their faith from the way they behave. Discipline is an index to doctrine.

You say we worship the sun; so do you.

Certum est, quia impossible est.

Hope is patience with the lamp lit

Examine then, and see if He be not the dispenser of kingdoms, who is Lord at once of the world which is ruled, and of man himself who rules; if He have not ordained the changes of dynasties, with their appointed seasons, who was before all time, and made the world a body of times; if the rise and the fall of states are not the work of Him, under whose sovereignty the human race once existed without states at all.

Wide are men's inquiries into uncertainties; wider still are their disputes about conjectures.

Credere quia absurdum est

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?

Truth and the hatred of truth come into our world together. As soon as truth appears, it is regarded as an enemy.

I believe because it is absurd.

Men remain in ignorance as long as they hate, and they hate unjustly as long as they remain in ignorance.

We live in the world with you. We do not forsake forum or bath or workshop, or inn, or market, or any other place of commerce. We sail with you, fight with you, farm with you.

There is no public entertainment which does not inflict spiritual damage.

In one sense there will be something difficult even for God — namely, that which He has not done — not because He could not, but because He would not, do it. For with God, to be willing is to be able, and to be unwilling is to be unable; all that He has willed, however, He has both been able to accomplish, and has displayed His ability.

For God would in nothing fail to endow a being who was to be next to Himself with a liberty of this kind.

The old law vindicated itself by the vengeance of the sword, and plucked out eye for eye, and requited injury with punishment; but the new law pointed to clemency, and changed the former savagery of swords and lances into tranquility, and refashioned the former infliction of war upon rivals and foes of the law into the peaceful acts of ploughing and cultivating the earth. And so . . . the observance of the new law and of spiritual circumcision has shone forth in acts of peaceful obedience.

But how will a Christian engage in war—indeed, how will a Christian even engage in military service during peacetime—without the sword, which the Lord has taken away? For although soldiers had approached John to receive instructions and a centurion believed, this does not change the fact that afterward, the Lord, by disarming Peter, disarmed every soldier. Under no circumstances should a true Christian draw the sword.

a taint on our purity is considered among us something more terrible than any punishment and any death.

Let women paint their eyes with tints of chastity.

The more you mow us down, the more numerous we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.

Where our work is, there let our joy be.

The usual complaint is, 'I have no other way of earning a living.' The harsh reply can be, 'Do you have to live?'

Where our joy is, there should our work be.

Arguments about Scripture achieve nothing but a stomachache and a headache.