Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] As for me, since I derive the Son from nowhere else but the substance of the Father, doing nothing without the Father's will, having been given the whole of that power by the Father — how, then, could I be tearing down, through such a faith, a monarchy which I hold to have been passed by the Father to the Son, and kept safe in the Son? Let this apply equally, for me, to the third degree, since I hold that the Spirit comes from nowhere else but the Father, through the Son. [2] So look rather to whether it is not you yourself who destroys the monarchy, by overturning its arrangement and administration, established under as many names as God willed. And indeed it so remains in its own condition, even though a trinity is introduced, that it must even be given back to the Father by the Son, since the apostle writes concerning the end: "when he hands over the reign to God the Father himself." For "he is bound to rule until God places his foes beneath his feet" — as the psalm has it: "Take your seat at my right hand, until I make your enemies a stool for your feet." "And once everything has been made subject to him — apart, of course, from the one who subjected everything to him — then the Son himself will likewise submit to the one who subjected everything to him, so that God may become all things in all." [3] We see, then, that the Son does no harm to the monarchy, even though today it resides with the Son, since it remains in its own condition with the Son, and, with that condition intact, will be restored by the Son to the Father. So no one will destroy it on this ground, once he admits a Son to whom, it is agreed, the monarchy was handed down by the Father, and by whom it will one day be restored to the Father. [4] From this single passage of the apostle alone we could already have proven the Father and the Son to be two, not one and the same — quite apart from the names "Father" and "Son" — from the very fact that the one who hands over the kingdom and the one to whom it is handed over, and likewise the one who subjects and the one to whom things are subjected, must necessarily be two.