Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Candidates approaching baptism ought to give themselves to prayer, and do so often, along with fastings, kneelings, and vigils, and with confessing every past sin of theirs, so as to reproduce even the baptism of John: "They were baptized," it says, "confessing their sins" — we may congratulate ourselves if we do not have to confess our iniquities or shames in public — for at the same time we settle accounts for our former life through the wrestling match of flesh against spirit, and we throw up defenses against the temptations that are to follow. "Watch and pray," he says, "that you not fall into temptation." [2] And this, I believe, is why they were tempted — because they had fallen asleep — so that they abandoned the Lord once he was seized, and even the one who had stood by him and used the sword denied him three times over. For the saying had already gone before, that no one will attain the heavenly kingdom without having been tempted. [3] The Lord himself, immediately after his washing, was beset by temptations for forty days, which he spent in fasting. "So we too," someone will say, "ought rather to fast right after our washing." And indeed who forbids it — except the compulsion of joy, the thanksgiving for salvation? [4] But the Lord, as far as I can judge, turned back a reproach upon Israel by way of a figure. For that people, having crossed the sea and been led into the wilderness, though fed there for forty years on heaven-sent supplies, kept thinking of their belly and their appetite rather than of God. The Lord, on the other hand, set apart in the desert after his own water and having completed forty days of fasting, showed that a man lives not on bread alone but through God's own utterance, and thus that the temptations aimed at a full and unrestrained belly are struck down by abstinence. [5] Therefore, you blessed ones for whom God's grace waits: when you come up from that most holy washing of the new birth and first spread your hands at your mother's side among your brothers, ask the Father, ask the Lord, that special gifts of grace, distributions of spiritual endowments, be granted you. "Ask, and you shall receive," he says. For you have sought and found; you have knocked, and the door has swung open before you. Only, I ask this — when you make your requests, keep Tertullian, a sinner, in your remembrance too.
HERE ENDS TERTULLIAN'S BOOK ON BAPTISM