Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Granted, then, blessed ones — let the prison still be hard on Christians too. We were called to the service of the living God already back when we answered the words of the oath. No soldier comes to war pampered, nor marches from his bedroom straight to the battle-line; he comes from the field-tents, stripped down and tightened for action, where every kind of hardship, discomfort, and roughness has already settled in.
Even in peacetime men train themselves to endure the sufferings of war through labor and hardship — marching under arms, running the drill-field, digging the trench, packing the tortoise-formation shield to shield. Everything is built on sweat, so that bodies and minds do not flinch — from shade into sun, from sun into frost, from tunic into breastplate, from silence into battle-cry, from stillness into uproar.
So then, blessed ones, whatever hardship this is, count it toward drilling the virtues of both mind and flesh. A fine contest awaits you, one in which the president of the games is the living God, the master of the training-ground is the Holy Spirit, the crown is eternity itself, the prize is a share in the nature of angels, citizenship is in the heavens, and the glory is forever and ever.
And so your trainer, Christ Jesus, who anointed you with the Spirit and led you out onto this training-floor, chose to draw you apart, before the day of the contest, from a softer way of life into harder discipline, so that your strength might be built up in you. For athletes too, of course, are set apart for a stricter regimen, so that they can devote themselves entirely to building their power. They are kept from indulgence, from richer food, from sweeter drink. They are driven, strained, worn down — and the harder they labor in training, the more confidently they hope for victory.
"And they do it," says the Apostle, "to win a perishable crown." We, who are to win one that lasts forever, should read the prison as our training-ground, so that, once well-conditioned by every hardship, we may be led out fit for the arena of the tribunal — because virtue is built up by hardship, but torn down by softness.