Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] There is indeed some wisdom to be had from common human perceptions in matters of God — but as testimony to the truth, not as a prop for falsehood; provided it agrees with the divine arrangement, not stands against it. For certain things are known naturally: the immortality of the soul, to most; our God, to all. [2] I will use, then, even the judgment of some Plato, pronouncing, "Every soul is immortal"; I will use also the common conscience of the people bearing witness to the God of gods; I will use, too, the rest of the common perceptions that proclaim God as judge — "God sees" and "I commend it to God." [3] But when they say, "The dead is dead," and "Live while you live," and "After death everything ends, even death itself," then I shall remember that the crowd's very heart has been reckoned by God as ashes, and the very wisdom of this age pronounced foolishness — and then, if a heretic takes refuge in the vices of the crowd or the cleverness of the age, I will say: "Step aside, pagan — I am speaking to the heretic now: though the two of you are one, all of you who fashion your own god, still, since you do this in the name of Christ, since you fancy yourself a Christian, you are other than the pagan. Give back to him his own opinions, for he was not trained on yours: [4] why lean on a blind guide, when you can see? Why wrap yourself in someone stripped bare, when you have already clothed yourself in Christ? Why make use of another's shield, when you are armed by an apostle? Let him rather learn from you to confess the resurrection of the flesh, than you learn from him to deny it — because if it were right for even Christians to deny it, it would be enough for them to be instructed from their own knowledge, not from the crowd's ignorance." [5] So thoroughly will no one be a Christian who denies what Christians confess, and denies it by the very arguments that non-Christians use. [6] Strip from the heretics, then, whatever wisdom they share with the pagans, so that they must stand or fall on the scriptures alone — and they will not be able to stand. For common perceptions commend themselves by their very simplicity, by a fellow-feeling of opinions, by a familiarity of views, and are reckoned more trustworthy precisely because they define things bare, open, and known to all: but divine reasoning lies in the marrow, not on the surface, and is very often at odds with what is plain to see.