Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
ON THE EVIL AND THE GOOD OF THE SOUL. [1] The evil of the soul, then — apart from what is built up on top of it by the encounter with the evil spirit — precedes from the fault of its origin, natural, so to speak, in a certain sense. For, as we have said, the corruption of a nature is itself another nature, having its own god and father — namely, the very author of the corruption — yet in such a way that the good of the soul is still present within it: that primary, that divine and native and properly natural good. [2] For what comes from God is not so much extinguished as overshadowed. It can be overshadowed, because it is not God; it cannot be extinguished, because it is from God. And so, just as light, obstructed by some barrier, remains even though it does not appear — if the density of the obstruction is great enough — so too the good in the soul, oppressed by evil, either lies wholly empty of any visible salvation, given the quality of that evil, or, where it is granted, shines out once its freedom is found. [3] Thus there are those who are, in a sense, the very worst and those who are the very best, and yet all souls are nonetheless one single kind; thus in the worst there is some good, and in the best no little of the worst. For God alone stands apart from sin, and the sole sinless man is Christ, seeing that Christ is God too. So too the divinity of the soul bursts out in premonitions from that prior good, and the conscience of God breaks forth in testimony: 'God is good,' and 'God sees,' and 'I commend it to God.' For this reason no soul is without fault, because none is without the seed of good. [4] Accordingly, when the soul comes to faith, reformed through a second birth from water and a power from above, the veil of its former corruption drawn back, it beholds its whole light. It is also received now by the Holy Spirit, just as at its first birth it was received by a profane spirit. The flesh follows the soul as it weds itself to the Spirit, like a dowered bondmaid — no longer the soul's servant, but the Spirit's. O blessed marriage, if only it commits no adultery!