Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Well then, since God's own goodness, in providing that man should come to know God, added this too to its own proclamation — that it first devised a dwelling-place for man, some very great mass of matter to begin with, and afterward a still greater one, so that man might rehearse and advance in the great as in the lesser, and so be promoted from the good of God (that is, from the great) to the best of God as well (that is, to the greater dwelling). To this good work he applies as minister his own Word, which is best of all: "My heart," he says, "has belched forth a most excellent word." [2] Let Marcion recognize here the first fruit — the best fruit, surely, of the best tree. The rankest of rustics has grafted a bad shoot onto a good stock. But the cutting of blasphemy will not prevail; it will wither along with its grafter, and so the nature of the good tree will bear witness to itself. Look at the sum of it — what sort of fruit the Word has borne. "And God said, Let it be, and it was, and God saw that it was good" — not as though he did not know it was good until he saw it, but because, seeing that it was good, he was thereby honoring, sealing, and appraising the goodness of the works by the verdict of his gaze. [3] So too he blessed what he had done well, that the whole God might be commended to you — good both in speaking and in doing. The Word did not yet know how to curse, because it did not yet know how to do harm. We shall see the reasons which later exacted this too from God. Meanwhile the world was made up entirely of good things, giving ample foretaste of how much good was being readied for the one for whom this whole was being prepared. Who, in the end, was worthy to inhabit the works of God but his own image and likeness? [4] That too his goodness — and indeed a more active goodness — accomplished, not by an imperial word but by a familiar hand, though even here a coaxing word came first: "Let us make man in our image and likeness." Goodness spoke, goodness fashioned man out of clay into so great a substance of flesh, built up out of one material into so many qualities. Goodness breathed in a soul, not a dead one but a living one. Goodness set him in charge of all things to enjoy and to rule, even to name. Goodness went further and added delights for man, so that, though he possessed the whole world, he might dwell in more pleasant places, transferred into paradise — already then, a passage from the world into the church. That same goodness provided him a helper too, lest anything should be lacking in goodness. [5] "It is not good," he says, "for man to be alone." He knew that this sex would one day benefit Mary, and after her, the church. But even the law you fault, which you twist into controversies, goodness dispensed, taking thought for man, so that he might cleave to God, lest he seem not so much free as cast off, leveled with his own servants, the other animals, who are released by God and free from any such charge — but so that man alone might glory in having alone been worthy to receive a law from God, and so that, being a rational animal capable of understanding and knowledge, he might be constrained even by that same reasoning freedom, answerable to the one who had made all things subject to him. [6] To the observing of this law, goodness likewise appended its counsel: "But on the day you eat of it, you shall surely die." For in his great kindness he revealed beforehand what the transgression would bring, so that unawareness of the peril might not encourage carelessness in obeying. Further, if the reasoning for imposing the law came first, the reasoning for keeping it followed as well, so that a penalty might be attached to transgression — a penalty, however, which he who foretold it beforehand did not wish to come to pass. Acknowledge, then, the goodness of our God, at least this far for now, from his good works, his good blessings, his indulgences, his provisions, and his laws and warnings, good and kindly alike.
5.