Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] As far as concerns the discipline of that most pleasing peace toward God, who — born to impatience — will ever forgive his brother even once, let alone seven times, or seventy times seven? [2] Who, on his way to the judge with his adversary, will settle matters amicably unless he has first cut away anger, grief, hardness, bitterness — the poisons, that is, of impatience? [3] How will you forgive and be forgiven, if through the absence of patience you cling to the wrong done you? No one whose spirit is convulsed against his brother will complete his offering at the altar, unless he has first turned back to patience by being reconciled to his brother. [4] If the sun goes down on our anger, we are in danger: it is not permitted us to spend even one day without patience.
Yet since it governs every form of the discipline of salvation, what wonder that it also serves repentance, whose habit is to come to the aid of the fallen? [5] This patience awaits, this longs for, this pleads for the repentance of those who are one day to enter into salvation. When, after a divorce — but only for that cause which permits either husband or wife to be sustained in perseverance of widowhood — it does not drive the one to a second match, but corrects the other, how much good it confers on both! [6] So too, in those examples of the Lord's parables, patience stands by holy repentance: the patience of the shepherd seeks out the straying sheep and finds it (for impatience would easily have written off a single sheep, but patience takes up the labor of the search), and, carrying it, bears the abandoned sinning sheep home upon its shoulders. [7] That prodigal son too — the father's patience both receives him back and clothes him and feeds him, and excuses him before the impatience of his angry brother. Saved, then, is the one who was lost, because he entered upon repentance; and repentance is not lost, because it has found patience.
[8] For love — the supreme sacrament of faith, the treasure of the Christian name, which the apostle commends with all the strength of the Holy Spirit — by whose discipline but patience's is it trained? [9] Love, he says, is magnanimous: that it takes from patience; it is kind: patience does no evil; it does not envy: that indeed is patience's own property; it savors nothing insolent: it drew its modesty from patience; it is not puffed up, does not act shamelessly: for that has nothing to do with patience; it does not seek its own: it puts up with its own losses, so long as it may profit another; it is not provoked: for what else would be left for impatience? Therefore, he says, love bears all things, endures all things — precisely because it is itself patient. [10] Rightly, then, will it never fail. For the rest will be emptied out and brought to an end: tongues, knowledge, prophecy will be drained dry, but faith, hope, and love remain — faith, which the patience of Christ has instilled; hope, which the patience of man awaits; love, which, with God as its teacher, patience accompanies.