Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] But we must not yet speak of martyrdom as a good — first as a debt owed — nor take up its usefulness before its necessity. Divine authority comes first: whether God has willed and commanded some such thing, so that those who deny it is good may at least be brought round to admitting it is expedient, once they have been forced to it. It is fitting that heretics be compelled to duty, not coaxed into it. Stubbornness is to be conquered, not persuaded. [2] And in any case it will be judged more than sufficiently good once it is shown to have been established and commanded by God. For the moment the Gospels can stand aside while I extract their taproot, the Law, and draw out from it the will of God — the very fountain from which I know God himself: "I am," he says, "the Lord your God, the one who led you forth out of Egypt's land. You shall have no other gods before my face. You shall not fashion for yourself any likeness of what is in the sky above, or upon the earth below, or in the waters beneath the earth. Do not bow before them, and give them no service; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous one." So too in the same book of Exodus: "You have yourselves seen that I spoke with you out of the heavens. Make for yourselves no gods of silver, and gods of gold you must not make." [3] So likewise in Deuteronomy: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord your God is one Lord, and you must love him — the Lord your God — with your whole heart, your whole strength, and the entirety of your soul." And further: "Do not put out of mind the Lord your God, who led you out from Egypt's land, out from that house of slavery. Fear the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve; hold fast to him, and swear only by his name." [4] "You shall not go after strange gods, gods of the nations round about you, for the Lord your God is a jealous god in your midst, lest he grow angry and indignant and wipe you off the face of the earth." [5] And setting before them blessings and curses: "Blessings," he says, "if you hearken to the commandments of the Lord your God, all that I command you today, and do not stray from the way I have laid down for you, so as to go off and serve other gods, whom you do not know." [6] And on rooting these out in every quarter: "You shall utterly destroy," he says, "all the places where the nations you shall possess as an inheritance served their gods — on the high mountains and the hills and under the leafy trees; you shall dig up their altars, overturn and shatter their standing stones, cut down their sacred groves, and burn the carved images of their very gods with fire, and blot out their name from that place." [7] He presses further: once they had entered the promised land and destroyed its nations — "Take heed to yourself, that you do not follow after them once they have been destroyed before your face, that you do not seek out their gods, saying, 'As these nations serve their gods, so will I do likewise.'" [8] And further: "Should a prophet rise up in your midst, or one given to dreams, and offer you a sign or a portent, and it should happen just as he foretold, and he then says, 'Come, let us follow and worship other gods you have not known' — pay no heed to what that prophet or that dreamer proclaims, for the Lord your God is putting you to the test, to see whether you hold him dear — the Lord your God — with your whole heart and your entire soul. Walk instead behind the Lord your God; hold him in reverence, keep what he commands, heed his voice, serve him, and stay bound to him. As for that prophet or dreamer, death shall be his end, since he spoke so as to draw you away from the Lord your God." [9] And under yet another heading: "If your brother, by father or by mother, or your son or your daughter, or the wife who lies in your bosom, or the friend who is as your own soul, entices you in secret, saying, 'Come, let us go and worship other gods,' ones neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods belonging to the nations around you, be they close by or distant — give him no consent, and pay him no heed. [10] Your eye shall not spare him, nor shall you pity him or shield him; you shall surely denounce him. Your hands shall be the first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people, and you shall stone him, and he shall die, because he sought to turn you away from the Lord your God." [11] He adds further, concerning cities: if it should be found that any of them, persuaded by wicked men, had gone over to other gods, then all its inhabitants were to be put to the sword, and the whole of it given over to destruction, and all its plunder heaped up in the open square and set ablaze, together with every vessel and every soul in it, before the eyes of the Lord God himself — "and it shall never again be inhabited," he says, "nor rebuilt, nor shall anything of that accursed thing cling to your hands, so that the Lord may turn from the fury of his wrath." [12] He also opened the list of curses with the execration of idols: "Cursed is the man who makes a carved or a molten abomination, the work of a craftsman's hands, and sets it up in a hidden place." And in Leviticus: "Do not turn toward idols," he says, "nor cast yourselves molten gods — I, the Lord your God, forbid it." And elsewhere: "The children of Israel belong to me, my own servants; these are the ones I led forth out of Egypt's land — I am their Lord and God. You shall make for yourselves no handcrafted thing, set up no graven likeness, and place no engraved stone within your territory — I am the Lord your God." [13] These, then, were the first words spoken through Moses, pertaining certainly to all whom the Lord God of Israel likewise led out of Egypt — that most superstitious of ages — and out of the house of human bondage. [14] And after that, every prophetic mouth thenceforward rings with the voice of that same God, heaping up the same law by renewing those same precepts, and proclaiming nothing else so emphatically as this first thing: to beware of every making and worshiping of idols. As through David: "The idols of the nations are but silver and gold, fashioned by human hands; they have eyes, yet cannot see; ears, yet cannot hear; noses, yet cannot smell; a mouth, yet cannot speak; hands, yet cannot feel; feet, yet cannot walk. Their makers shall come to resemble them, as will everyone who puts trust in them."