Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] But, you say, the age to come belongs to a different, an eternal, arrangement — and therefore the substance of this present age, not being eternal, cannot possess a share in that different one. Fair enough — if man exists for the sake of the arrangement, and not the arrangement for the sake of man! [2] Yet the apostle, writing 'be it the cosmos, or life, or death, or matters now at hand, or matters yet to come — all of it is yours,' makes the same people heirs of the future as of the present. Isaiah grants you nothing when he says, 'Every body is but grass,' and, in another place, 'and every body will look upon the deliverance wrought by God': he is distinguishing outcomes, not substances. [3] For who does not know that God's judgment stands in a double sentence — of salvation and of punishment? So every body counts as grass, namely the flesh destined for burning, while every body will behold the Lord's deliverance, namely the flesh set apart for rescue. I myself know that I have committed no adultery in some other flesh, and that it is in no other flesh that I now strive toward continence. [4] If a man happens to carry a pair of privy members about with him, then let him by all means cut away the grass of the unclean flesh and keep for himself only the flesh that shall see the Lord's salvation! [5] But since the same prophet also shows the nations at one moment reckoned as dust and spittle, and at another as destined to hope and believe in the Lord's name and arm — are we to be misled about the nations too, and say that some are destined to believe and others reckoned as dust, on account of a difference of substance? [6] No: Christ, within the ocean, and under this sky that arches over us, shone the true light on the nations — and even the Valentinians themselves learned their error right here: there will be no different shape to the believing nations than to the unbelieving, as regards flesh and soul. [7] Therefore, just as he distinguished these same nations not by kind but by lot, so too he separates the flesh — which in these very nations is one and the same substance — not by matter but by merit.