Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
I confess before the Lord God that it is rash of me, if not downright shameless, that I have ventured to write something on patience — I who am wholly unfit to display it, a man of no goodness at all, when the rule is that anyone who undertakes to demonstrate and commend some quality ought first to be caught practicing it himself, steering the constancy of his exhortation by the authority of his own conduct, lest his words blush at his failing deeds. If only blushing brought some remedy — if the shame of not exhibiting what I am about to urge on others could itself become a kind of schooling! Except that the sheer magnitude of certain goods, like certain evils, is so overwhelming that only the grace of divine inspiration can enable one to grasp and perform them. For whatever is the greatest good belongs above all to God, and no one dispenses it but he who possesses it, giving it to whom he sees fit. So it will be something of a consolation to discuss what one is not granted to enjoy — the way the sick, though they lack health themselves, cannot keep silent about its blessings. So I, most wretched of men, forever feverish with the heats of impatience, unable to secure the health of patience, must sigh and cry out and plead, whenever I recall — turning it over in the contemplation of my own weakness — that the good condition of faith and the health of the Lord's discipline come easily to no one unless patience stands at his side. So preeminent is patience among the things of God that no one estranged from it can carry out a single command, or perform a single work pleasing to the Lord.
Its goodness even those who live in blindness honor with the title of highest virtue; the philosophers, indeed, who are reckoned creatures of some wisdom, subscribe to it so far that, though they quarrel among themselves with the varied lusts of their sects and the rivalries of their opinions, they nevertheless are of one mind about patience alone, entrusting to this one thing alone the peace of all their pursuits: on this they agree, on this they make their pact, toward this, in their affectation of virtue, they strive with one accord; every ostentation of their wisdom they set below patience. Great is the testimony to it when it advances even the vain disciplines of this world to praise and glory! Or is it not rather an injury, when a divine thing gets tumbled about in worldly arts? But that is for them to see to — those who will soon be ashamed of their wisdom, wrecked and disgraced along with the world!