Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] For he had not brought man forth merely to live, but to live rightly — that is, with regard to God and his law. So then, God himself had granted man life, by making him a living soul; but living rightly he had entrusted to him by charging him to obey the law. Thus he proves that he did not institute man for death, since he now wishes him restored to life, preferring the sinner's repentance to his death. [2] So then, just as God brought upon man a state of life, man drew upon himself a state of death — and this not through weakness, any more than through ignorance, lest anything be laid to the Author's charge. For even the angel who seduced him was free and his own master, and the one seduced was the image and likeness of God, stronger than an angel, and breathed on by a breath of God nobler than the material spirit of which angels are made. "He who makes," it says, "spirits his angels, and a flame of fire his ministers." For God would not have subjected the whole created order to a man weaker and less potent than angels, when he subjected nothing of the kind to them. [3] So too he would not have imposed the burden of the law, if the law were too heavy for a helpless creature to bear; nor would he have bound by the sentence of death one whom he knew could plead the excuse of weakness. Finally, it was not by freedom or by power of choice that he made him weak, but rather by their failure. And thus this same man, this same substance of soul, this same condition of Adam, this same freedom and power of choice makes him today a victor over that same devil, when he conducts himself in obedience to God's laws.
9.