Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
The remembrance of the precepts paves the road of our prayers to heaven, and chief among them is this: that we should not go up to God's altar before we have resolved any quarrel or offense we may have incurred with our brothers. For what sort of thing is it to approach God's peace without peace? To seek remission of debts while holding a grudge? How will an angry man appease the Father when he is angry at his brother, since all anger has been forbidden us from the beginning? Even Joseph, sending his brothers off to fetch their father, said, Do not quarrel on the way. Surely he was warning us — for 'the way' is elsewhere the name for our own discipline — not to set out on the way of prayer to the Father while walking in anger. Then the Lord, openly extending the law, ranks anger at a brother alongside murder; he does not even permit it to be discharged by a harsh word; and even if one must be angry, let it not outlast the setting of the sun, as the apostle warns. How reckless it is either to let a day go by without prayer while you delay making it right with your brother, or to ruin your prayer by nursing your anger.