Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
As for how they handle the word — what am I to say, when their whole business is not converting pagans but subverting our own people? [2] This is the glory they angle for: not raising up the fallen, but toppling the standing. For their very work does not come from any building of their own but from tearing down the truth; they undermine our structure in order to build theirs: [3] take away from them the law of Moses, the prophets, and God the Creator, and they have no accusation left to make and nothing left to say. [Thus it happens that they find it easier to demolish standing buildings than to construct anything out of the rubble they've made.] [5] And it is only in this business that they act humble and ingratiating and deferential — otherwise they show their own leaders no respect at all. [6] And this is why schisms are practically unheard of among heretics: because although they exist, they go unnoticed — for their whole "unity" is itself a schism. [7] I lie if they do not even vary among themselves from their own rules, each one shaping what he received according to his own private judgment, just as the man who handed it down composed it according to his. [8] The result acknowledges its own nature and follows the manner of its origin. What was permitted to Valentinus was equally permitted to the Valentinians, what to Marcion was permitted equally to the Marcionites — to remake the faith according to one's own private judgment. [9] In the end, when their heresies are thoroughly examined, all of them are caught disagreeing on many points even with their own founders. [10] Most of them have no churches at all — motherless, homeless, orphaned of faith, exiles, wandering about as if under some kind of curse.