Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
But we are also charged with another count of injuries: we are called useless in business. Yet how so, when we live among you, sharing the same food, dress, and furnishings, the same necessities of life? For we are not Brahmins or the gymnosophists of the Indians, forest-dwellers and exiles from life. We hold in mind our debt of gratitude toward God, our Lord and Maker; none of the produce of his handiwork do we spurn — only we practice moderation, so as not to make use of it excessively or amiss. And so we dwell in this age not without the forum, not without the market, not without your baths, shops, workshops, stables, fairs, and all your other commerce. We sail together with you, and serve in the army, and farm the land, and likewise engage in trade; we put our skills and our labor at your service. How we can seem unprofitable to the business we live with and by, I do not know.
But if I do not attend your ceremonies, still, on that very day, I am a man. I do not bathe at dawn on the Saturnalia, so as not to lose both night and day; but I do bathe at a decent and healthy hour, one that keeps my warmth and my blood — after a wash I can turn stiff and pale as a corpse. I do not recline at the public feast of the Liberalia, which is the custom for beast-fighters eating their last meal; but wherever I do dine, I dine on your own provisions. I do not buy a garland for my head — what is it to you how I use flowers I have bought all the same? I think it more pleasing for them to be loose, free, and wandering every way; but even bound into a wreath, we know a wreath by the nose — let those who smell through their hair see to that! I do not gather at the shows; yet whatever is sold there at those gatherings I may, if I want it, take more freely from my own stock. Incense, plainly, we do not buy; if the Arabians complain, let the Sabaeans know that more of their goods, and dearer, are spent burying Christians than fumigating gods.
"Surely," you say, "the temple revenues are dwindling daily; how few now toss in a coin?" Well, we cannot bring aid both to men and to your begging gods, and we do not think it right to give to any but those who ask. In short, let Jupiter hold out his hand and take it — meanwhile our mercy spends more street by street than your religion does temple by temple.
But the rest of the revenues will have Christians to thank, as we pay our debts in good faith, refraining from defrauding another man's property — so that, if the reckoning were taken, how much is lost to the revenues through the fraud and lying of your own professions could easily be calculated, and the complaint about one branch offset by the gain to all the rest.