Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
From this, then, those most wicked people press their questions further: 'So then,' they say, 'baptism is not necessary for those to whom faith is enough — for Abraham too pleased God by the sacrament of faith alone, without any water.' But in all things the later stages settle the matter, and what comes after outweighs what came before. Granted that, in the past, salvation lay in bare faith, before the Lord's passion and resurrection; but once faith was enlarged, and came to include belief in his birth, passion, and resurrection, there was added to the sacrament an amplification — the sealing of baptism, a garment, so to speak, thrown over the faith that had before gone naked, which now cannot save without its own law attached. For a law of baptizing has been imposed, and a set form prescribed: "Go," he says, "make disciples of the nations, baptizing them into the Father's name, and the Son's, and the Holy Spirit's." Alongside this law stands that definition, "Unless a man is born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he shall not enter the kingdom of heaven," which binds faith fast to the necessity of baptism. And so, from that point on, all who believed were baptized. Then Paul too — the moment he believed, that moment he was baptized: and this is exactly what the Lord had commanded him in the midst of that blinding blow: "Rise," he said, "and go into Damascus: there you will be shown what you must do" — namely, to be baptized, the one thing still lacking to him. For otherwise he had already thoroughly learned and believed that the Nazarene was the Lord, the Son of God.