Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] And what becomes of him once cast away? "He will be caught," they say, "by the Creator's fire." Does this god then have not one single element, even reserved for this purpose, by which he might banish his own sinners without such savagery, so as not to hand them over to the Creator? What then does the Creator do? Presumably he has an even more sulphurous Gehenna standing ready for them, on the grounds that they blasphemed against him — unless, perhaps, this jealous god spares the very deserters to his rival! O this god, perverse through and through, irrational on every side, empty in everything — and therefore, in truth, nobody at all! [2] For I can find no standing, no status, no condition, no nature, no order at all that holds together in him — not even the very sacrament of faith in him. For to what purpose is baptism even required in his system? If it is remission of sins, how will he who will not be seen to retain sins appear to remit them? For he would retain them if he judged them. If it is release from death, how will he release from death the one whom he never bound over to death? For he would have bound him over, had he condemned him from the beginning. If it is man's regeneration, how does he regenerate the one he did not first generate? [3] For a repetition does not belong to one by whom the thing was never done even once. If it is the obtaining of the Holy Spirit, how will he bestow the Spirit on one to whom he never first gave a soul? Since the soul is, in a sense, sufficient to make way for the Spirit. So he seals a man never unsealed in his own system, washes a man never defiled in his own system, and in doing so submerges in flesh — flesh excluded from salvation — the whole sacrament of salvation. [4] Not even a farmer will water ground that will bear him no fruit — unless he is as foolish as Marcion's god. Why, then, does he lay upon flesh so weak, or so unworthy, either the burden or the glory of holiness? And what shall I say of the absurdity of a discipline that sanctifies a substance it holds to be holy already? Why does he either burden the weak or adorn the unworthy? Why does he not reward with salvation the flesh he burdens or adorns? Why does he cheat the flesh of the wages of its labor, refusing it salvation in return? And why does he allow it to die still wearing the honor of holiness?
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