Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] As to what you say — "the worst and most disgraceful people, for greed, luxury, dishonesty" — we will not deny that some are so; even this serves as testimony to our name, provided it is not all of us, not most of us. [2] It is inevitable that in a body, however sound or pure you like, either some blemish sprouts up, or some little wart rises, or some freckle mars the skin. [3] The sky itself, however clear its serenity, is never so thoroughly purged that it is not marked by the wisp of some little cloud; a small blemish on the forehead, in one part, serving as the very sample by which the whole is seen to be clean. The greater portion of good uses a small portion of evil as testimony to itself. [4] Yet when you point to some of ours as bad, by that very fact you are proving them not Christians. Go look for the sect to which such wickedness belongs. [5] You yourselves, in conversation, whenever you argue against us, say: "Why is that man a cheat, if Christians are supposed to be abstinent? Why is he pitiless, if Christians are supposed to be merciful?" In doing so you yourselves testify that such men are not true Christians, even while you throw back at us the question of why those who are called Christians should be such.
[6] There is a great difference between a crime and a name, between opinion and truth. For names are so instituted that they have their own boundaries between being called something and actually being it. [7] How many, after all, are called philosophers and yet do not fulfill the law of philosophy? [8] All bear a name derived from their profession: if they bear the name without living up to the excellence the profession requires, they who under the surface of the word bring truth into disrepute are not what they are called merely because they are called it — rather, precisely because they are not what they are called, they are called it in vain, and they deceive those who attach the reality to the name, when it is the reality that ought to determine the standing of the name. [9] And yet such people neither assemble nor share fellowship with us, having become, through their own offenses, once again yours — since we do not even mix with those whom your violence and savagery have forced merely into denial. [10] For it would certainly be easier to keep among ourselves unwilling deserters of our discipline than willing ones. In any case, you have no reason to call "Christians" those whom Christians themselves disown — men who do not even know how to disown themselves.
VI.