Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] He chose also another seventy apostles besides the twelve. For why twelve, corresponding to the twelve springs at Elim, if not also seventy corresponding to the seventy palm trees there? It was chiefly the diversity of the occasions that produced these antitheses, not any diversity of powers. But whoever failed to notice the diversity of occasions readily supposed it a diversity of powers. When the Creator led the children of Israel out of Egypt, he sent them off loaded with the spoils of gold and silver vessels and garments, on top of the burdens of their kneading-troughs; but Christ forbade his disciples to carry even a staff on the road. [2] The reason is this: they were being sent forward into the wilderness, these into the cities. Weigh the difference of the occasions, and you will understand it is one and the same power that arranged the expedition of its own people according to scarcity and abundance — cutting away what would abound as they passed through cities, just as it had provided what was needed as they went through the wilderness. He forbade them, too, to carry sandals. For it was he himself under whom, in the wilderness, the people had for so many years worn out no sandals at all. Greet no one along the road, he says. [3] O Christ, destroyer of the prophets — from whom he took this very instruction! When Elisha dispatched his servant Gehazi along that road to bring back the Shunammite woman's son from death's grip, this, I believe, is how he charged him: Gird your loins, take my staff in your hand, and go; whomever you meet on the road, do not bless him — that is, do not greet him — and whoever blesses you, do not answer him — that is, do not return his greeting. For what is a blessing exchanged on the road, if not a mutual greeting at meeting? [4] So too the Lord bids them, on entering a house, to speak peace to it. It is the very same pattern. For Elisha likewise ordered this, when he had gone in to the Shunammite woman, that Gehazi should say to her, Peace to your husband, peace to your son. These, rather, are the true antitheses that ought to concern us — the ones that liken Christ to the Creator, not the ones that separate them. The laborer is worthy of his hire — who could pronounce that more fittingly than a god who is judge? For this very thing is itself an act of judgment: to make a laborer worthy of his hire. No repayment stands apart from a judgment. Now here too the Creator's law is confirmed, since he judges even oxen at work worthy of their hire: You shall not muzzle the ox that treads out the corn, he says. [5] Who could be so generous toward men, if not one who is so even toward beasts? But if Christ too pronounces laborers worthy of their hire, he has thereby excused that command of the Creator's about carrying off the gold and silver vessels of the Egyptians. For those who had built the estates and cities of the Egyptians were certainly laborers worthy of their hire; they were instructed not to commit fraud but to exact compensation, which they could not otherwise have obtained from their masters. Nor is the kingdom of God shown to be new or unheard-of by being announced as having drawn near. For what was once far off can be said to have drawn near. [6] But if it had never existed before it drew near, it could not even be said to have drawn near — since what had never been distant could not draw near to anything. Everything new and unknown is sudden. Everything sudden, once announced, only then first takes on a form, only then first receives a beginning in time. Yet it cannot have been delayed all the while it was not being announced, nor can it be said to have drawn near only from the moment it began to be announced. [7] He adds, further, that to those who would not receive them they should say, Know nevertheless that the kingdom of God has drawn near. If this is not commanded also by way of threat, it is a wholly empty command. For what would it matter to them that the kingdom was drawing near, unless it draws near together with judgment — that is, for the salvation of those who received its announcement? And since a threat cannot exist without its execution, you have in the one who threatens a god who executes, and in both a judge. So too he bids that the dust itself be knocked off as a witness against them — dust clinging to their feet, to say nothing of any closer contact. [8] For if such cruelty and refusal of welcome were to draw no retribution at all from him, why does he send this witness on ahead, one that surely signals coming threats? Furthermore, since the Creator too, in Deuteronomy, forbids the Ammonites and Moabites to be received into the assembly, because they had inhumanly and inhospitably cheated the people coming out of Egypt of supplies, it will therefore be established that the ban on fellowship flowed into Christ's teaching from that same source, where it takes the form: He who despises you despises me. This too the Creator said to Moses: They have not despised you, but me. For Moses was as much an apostle as the prophets were apostles. [9] The authority of both offices must be reckoned equal, since they belong to one and the same Lord of both apostles and prophets. Who now will give the power to tread upon serpents and scorpions? The Lord of all animals — or a god who is not even lord of a single lizard? But it is well that the Creator promised this very power even to little children, through Isaiah — to put a hand into the viper's den and into the nest of the viper's young, and take no harm at all. [10] And we know well enough — without prejudice to the plain sense of Scripture, for the beasts themselves have indeed been unable to harm where there was faith — that scorpions and serpents are figures portending the spiritual forces of malice, whose very prince is reckoned, under the names of serpent and dragon and every most fearsome beast, as belonging to the Creator, who granted this power to his own Christ beforehand, just as the ninetieth psalm says of him: You shall tread upon the asp and the basilisk, and trample the lion and the dragon. So too Isaiah declares: on that appointed day the Lord God will wield a sword both holy and mighty in strength — meaning his own Christ — against that twisting, dragon-like serpent, and will put him to death on that same day. [11] But since the same prophet says, It shall be called a clean way and a holy way, and nothing unclean shall pass along it, nor shall there be any unclean way there; but those who are scattered shall walk in it and shall not go astray, and there shall no longer be a lion there, nor shall anything of the most evil beasts come up onto it, nor be found there — since the way signifies the faith through which we come to God, he was already promising, for that same way, that is, for faith, this very clearing away and subjection of the beasts. [12] You will find, in fact, that the times of the promise correspond, if you read what comes before it: Take courage, hands grown weak, and knees gone feeble: then shall the eyes of those without sight be unshut, and ears once deaf shall come to hear: then shall the lame man bound like a stag, and the tongue of him who cannot speak shall talk plainly. So then, having first granted these gifts of healing, he went on to place scorpions and serpents likewise under the feet of his saints — he who had himself been the first to obtain this authority from the Father, so as afterward to hand it on to others too, showing it forth in the sequence proper to his preaching.
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