Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Come now, do you not grant that divinity ought not merely to avoid running in servile fashion, but above all to stand whole, and must be neither diminished, nor cut off, nor corrupted? Otherwise all its blessedness is gone, if it ever suffers anything at all. [2] But look — the stars themselves suffer eclipse, and testify by that very eclipse to their own failing; and the moon confesses how much she has lost, when she takes it up again. [3] Indeed, you are accustomed to observe her greater losses in the mirror of water — so much so that I need not credit any further point which the magicians know. The sun himself, too, has often been assailed by eclipse. [4] Invent whatever explanations you like for these heavenly mishaps — a god will not wish either to become lesser or to cease to be. Let the champions of human learning look to it, then, who by the artifice of guesswork counterfeit both wisdom and truth. [5] Is nature perhaps such elsewhere, that whoever speaks more elegantly is thought to have spoken more truly? Rather, is it not whoever speaks more truly who speaks better? [6] But to whoever weighs the matter, it will certainly seem more probable that these elements are ruled by someone than that they wear themselves away on their own; therefore they are not gods, since they are under someone. [7] But if error is made here, it is better to err simply than to err, as the natural philosophers do, with elaborate diligence. Yet if you look to the mythic sort, mortality errs better in the physical sort, in awarding divinity to what it supposes felt above man in position and force and magnitude and duration: for whatever is above man, you take to be next to god.
VII.