Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
If this is so, if men who were called Romans are caught out as enemies, why are we—who are supposed to be enemies—denied the name of Romans? We cannot both fail to be Romans and be enemies at once, when it turns out that those actually deemed Romans are the enemies.
So thoroughly does the loyalty and religion and good faith owed to emperors not consist in observances of that sort—duties which even outright hostility can use as a disguise—but rather in that conduct which our divine faith commands us to display, and truly commands, toward everyone without distinction, as it must. For these are not works of a good conscience that we owe to emperors alone. We dispense no good deed on a basis of favored persons, because in doing it we are really providing for ourselves, since we are not angling for praise or reward from a human being, but from God, who exacts and rewards an impartial kindness. We are the same toward emperors as we are toward our neighbors. We are equally barred from wishing harm, doing harm, uttering harm, or even harboring a harmful thought against anyone at all. Whatever is not permitted against the emperor is not permitted against anyone; and what is forbidden against no one is perhaps forbidden all the more against him, since through God he stands so great.