Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
But since this proof is so ready to hand that, once produced, nothing further would need reconsidering — indeed as if it had not even been produced by us at all — let us for the moment give the other side room, in case they think they have something that might weaken this prescription. It is their custom to claim that the apostles did not know everything — driven by that same lunacy that then flips the claim around: that the apostles did in fact know everything, but did not hand everything on to everyone — in either case throwing the reproach back onto Christ, for having sent apostles who were either poorly instructed or none too straightforward. Who, then, in his right mind could believe that these men were ignorant of anything, these men the Lord gave as teachers, keeping them inseparably at his side in company, in discipleship, in daily fellowship, men to whom he explained privately whatever was obscure, telling them it had been granted to them to know the secrets that the people were not permitted to understand? Was anything hidden from Peter, the man called the rock on which the church would be built, the man to whom were handed the keys that unlock the kingdom of the heavens, along with the power to bind and to loose on earth and in heaven? Was anything hidden, too, from John, most beloved of the Lord, who leaned on his breast, the one man alone to whom the Lord pointed out Judas the traitor beforehand, the one he commended in his own place as son to Mary? What did he mean these men to be ignorant of, when he even showed them his own glory, together with Moses and Elijah and, on top of that, the Father's voice from heaven — not as though rejecting the rest, but because "every word shall stand on the testimony of three witnesses"? So then, were even these men ignorant — men to whom, after the resurrection too, on the road, he deigned to expound all the Scriptures? He had indeed said once: "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now" — yet adding: "When that spirit of truth comes, he will lead you into all truth" — thereby showing that these men, whom he had promised would attain to all truth through the spirit of truth, were ignorant of nothing. And he did indeed fulfil that promise, as the Acts of the Apostles prove, with the descent of the Holy Spirit. Whoever refuses to accept that writing cannot belong to the Holy Spirit either, since they are not yet able to acknowledge the Holy Spirit as sent upon the disciples; nor can they even defend the church as theirs, since they have no way of proving when and in what cradle this body was first established. For it matters so much to them not to have proofs for what they defend, precisely so that the pedigrees of what they lie about will not have to be admitted along with them.