Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] All these gifts conferred on the soul from birth, the same one who envied us in the beginning now likewise overshadows and corrupts, so that they are neither foreseen of their own accord nor administered as they ought to be. [THAT SCARCELY ANY SOUL IS WITHOUT A DEMON.] For to which of men will an evil spirit not cling, lying in wait for souls from the very doorway of birth itself, invited in by that whole superstitious apparatus of childbirth? [2] Thus all are born with idolatry as their midwife, while the very wombs, still wreathed with ribbons made up at the idols' shrines, proclaim their offspring, even in the making, as candidates of the demons — while at the birth Lucina and Diana are wailed for, while through the whole first week a table is set out for Juno, while on the last day the Fates of Writing are invoked, while even the infant's first setting-down upon the ground is a rite sacred to the goddess Statina. [3] Who does not, from that point, either vow his son's whole head to the guilt of some cult, or set aside a lock of hair, or shave it all off with a razor, or bind it by a sacrificial vow, or seal it with a sacred rite — for the sake of the nation, or the family, or the public or private devotion? So too the demonic spirit found Socrates while he was still a boy; so too all men are assigned their 'genii,' which is only another name for demons. To such a degree is scarcely any birth clean — certainly not among the pagans. [4] Hence the apostle says that children are born holy from a parent of either sex once sanctified — as much from the privilege of the seed as from the discipline of upbringing. Otherwise, he says, they would be born unclean — meaning, evidently, that the children of believers are to be understood as marked out for holiness, and through this for salvation as well, so that by the pledge of this hope he might defend those marriages which he had judged should be kept. Besides, he remembered the Lord's own pronouncement: whoever is not brought forth from water and spirit cannot pass into God's kingdom — that is, cannot be counted holy.