Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Let it first be established, then, whether those beings to whom sacrifice is offered can in fact grant safety to emperors or to any man at all — and only then charge us with treason, if angels or demons — beings of the substance of the worst possible spirit — actually perform some benefit; if the lost preserve, if the damned set free, if, in short — as your own conscience knows — the dead protect the living! Why, they would surely first protect their own statues and images and shrines, which, I suppose, are only kept safe by the standing guard of Caesar's soldiers! In fact, I think that very material comes from Caesar's mines, and whole temples exist only by Caesar's nod. Indeed, many gods have had Caesar angry at them; and it counts equally for our case if he has also been favorable to some, granting them some generosity or privilege. So how can beings who are in Caesar's power — who indeed belong to him entirely — hold Caesar's safety in their power, so as to seem able to grant what they themselves obtain more easily from Caesar?
Is this, then, how we commit treason against the majesty of the emperors — because we do not subject them to their own creations, because we do not toy with the duty owed to their safety by pretending it rests in hands cast from lead? No — it is you who are the irreligious ones, who go looking for that safety where it is not, who ask it of those who cannot give it, passing over the one in whose power it actually is; and on top of that you make war on those who know how to ask for it — who are even able to obtain it — precisely because they know how to ask!