Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
But why should I say more about the religion and devotion of Christians toward the emperor? Him we cannot help but revere, as the one whom our Lord has chosen—so that I might rightly say: "Caesar belongs to us more than to you, since it is our God who set him in place." And so, because it serves my own interest as much as his, I labor for his welfare all the more—not only because I ask it of the One who is actually able to grant it, and ask it as one who might deserve to obtain it, but also because, by keeping Caesar's majesty subordinate to God, I commend him the more fully to God, to whom alone I subject him; and I subject him, mind you, without making him God's equal. For I will not call the emperor God—either because I do not know how to lie, or because I dare not mock him, or because he himself would not wish to be called God. If he is a man, it is in his own interest to yield to God; let it be enough for him to be called emperor—that too is a great name, one conferred by God. Whoever calls him God denies that he is emperor; unless he is a man, he cannot be emperor. Even in the moment of his triumph, riding that most exalted chariot, he is reminded that he is a man; a voice is whispered behind him: "Look behind you! Remember you are a man!" And in fact he takes all the more delight in the splendor of that glory precisely because the reminder of his human condition is thought necessary for him. He would be the lesser if he were called God then, since it would not be true; he is the greater who is called back from thinking himself one.