Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] To call upon the testimony of nature herself against those who presume such things ought to be believed — look, we set before you the wage paid for these crimes: they promise eternal life in return. Believe it, for the moment! For this is what I ask: even granting you believe it, do you value it enough to reach it by way of such a conscience? [2] Come then, plunge the knife into an infant who is no one's enemy, guilty of nothing, everyone's child; or, if that is another's office, you at least stand by while a human being dies before he has lived; wait for the fleeing new-made soul to escape, catch the raw blood, sate your bread on it, feast on it gladly! [3] Meanwhile, as you recline at table, count off the places — where is the mother, where the sister; note them carefully, so that when the canine darkness falls, you do not go wrong! For you will have committed a sin, unless you also commit incest. [4] Initiated and sealed in such things, you live on forever. I want you to answer me, if eternity is worth that much; and if it is not worth that much, then it is not worth believing either. Even if you believed it, I say you would not be willing; even if you were willing, I say you would not be able. So how is it that some manage this deed while you can't? Or how is it you're unable, when others manage it well enough? [5] Are we of some other nature, I wonder — Dog-heads or Shade-feet? Do others have different rows of teeth, different sinews built for incestuous lust? Whoever believes this of a human being can also do it himself; he is human, and so is the Christian. Whoever cannot do it ought not to believe it. For the Christian is human too, and is exactly what you are.
[6] "But it is imposed and foisted upon the ignorant." Nothing of the kind, it is said, was ever asserted about Christians that they knew of — surely something they should have watched for and hunted down with every vigilance. [7] Yet surely, I think, it is customary for those willing to be initiated to approach first that father of the rites and hear described what must be prepared. Then he says: "You will need an infant, still tender, who does not yet know death, who will laugh under your knife; also bread, with which to soak up the sauce of blood; besides that, candlesticks and lamps and some dogs, and scraps of meat to make them lunge and knock over the lights; above all, you must come together with your mother and your sister." [8] What if they are unwilling, or there simply are none? What, in short, of Christians who have no family? There will be no legitimate Christian, I suppose, unless he has a sister or a son. [9] And what of this — that all these preparations are supposedly made while people are still ignorant of them? Surely afterward they learn of it, and put up with it, and forgive it. "They are afraid of punishment if they cry out." People who deserve to be defended — who indeed would rather perish outright than live under such a burden of conscience? Come now, grant that they are afraid — why then do they persevere? For it follows that you ought not to want to go on being what, had you known beforehand, you would never have become.