Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] So much for the flesh's praises against its enemies — who are nonetheless its dearest friends. For no one lives so much after the flesh as the man who denies that the flesh will rise: by denying it, they despise both its punishment and its discipline. [2] Of these the Paraclete has spoken plainly through the prophetess Prisca: 'They are flesh, and they hate the flesh.' [3] But if so great an authority protects this flesh, sufficient to patronize its claim to the merit of salvation, need we even review God's own power and authority and license — whether he is great enough to rebuild and restore this tabernacle of flesh once it has collapsed, been devoured, and snatched away by whatever means? [4] Has he not, moreover, given us examples of this very prerogative of his, publicly proclaimed in the order of nature, in case anyone should still thirst to know God — one who is to be believed in on no other terms than that he is believed capable of all things? [5] To be sure, among the philosophers you will find some who maintain that this world is unborn and indestructible. But it is much better that almost all the heresies, admitting that the world was born and made, thereby credit our God with its founding. [6] Trust, then, that he brought forth this whole world out of nothing, and know God by trusting that God alone is capable of so much. For some, being weaker in their faith, prefer to hold — after the philosophers — that he dedicated the universe out of some underlying matter. [7] Yet even if that were the true account, since he would still be said to have produced substances and forms utterly different from what that matter itself had been, by reshaping it, I would no less maintain that he produced them out of nothing — if what he produced had, in that form, simply never existed before. [8] For what does it matter whether a thing is brought forth out of nothing or out of something, so long as what did not exist comes to exist — since 'not having been' is itself a kind of nothing? So too, on the other side, 'having been' is not nothing. [9] Now, though it makes a difference either way, both accounts favor me equally. For if God fashioned everything from nothingness, then flesh reduced to nothingness is likewise within his power to call back from nothingness; or if instead he shaped the rest of creation from some pre-existing matter, then flesh drained away, in whatever fashion, can equally be summoned by him out of that same matter. [10] And surely the one who made a thing is fit to remake it — since it is a greater thing to have made than to have remade, to have given a beginning than to have given it back. So you may believe the restoring of the flesh easier than its original founding.