Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Passover furnishes a more solemn day for baptism, since then too the Lord's passion, into which we are baptized, was accomplished. Nor will it be a strained reading of the figure that when the Lord was about to keep his last Passover, he sent his disciples ahead to make preparation, saying, "You will meet a man carrying water": by this he indicated the spot marked out for the Passover celebration through that watery token. [2] After that, Pentecost is a most joyful stretch of time for arranging baptisms, since during it the Lord's resurrection was repeatedly attested among the disciples, the grace of the Holy Spirit was inaugurated, and the hope of the Lord's coming was quietly foreshadowed — because then, after his reception back up among the heavenly realms, angels told the apostles he would return exactly as he had gone up on high, which occurred, naturally, at Pentecost. But Jeremiah too, when he says, "And I will gather them from the ends of the earth on the feast day of the Passover," means both that day and Pentecost, which is properly a feast day. [3] For the rest, every single day belongs to the Lord; any hour, any season suits baptism well enough. If solemnity produces a difference, grace produces none.