Chapter 4
PATIENCE
that was wounded in [the person of] Malchus.7 And so, He actually cursed for all time the works of the sword and by healing him whom He had not Himself struck,8 He made satisfaction by forbearance, which is the mother of mercy.
(9) I say nothing about His crucifixion; it was for this that He had come. Still, did there have to be such insults attending the death He must undergo? No; but as He went forward to His death, He willed to have His fill of joy in suffering: He is spat upon, beaten, mocked, disgracefully clothed, and even more disgracefully crowned. (10) Marvel at the constancy of His meekness: He who had proposed to escape notice in the guise of man has in no degree imitated man's impatience.
For this reason particularly, you Pharisees, you should have recognized the Lord! Patience such as this no mere man had ever practised!
(11) Such were the manifestations [of His patience], the very magnitude of which is the reason why pagan nations reject the faith; for us they are its rational foundation. For those to whom there has been granted the gift of faith they suffice to make it very clear, not only by the words our Lord used in His precepts, but also by the sufferings which He endured, that patience is the very nature of God, the effect and manifestation of a certain connatural property [of His being].
Chapter 4 (1) Now, if we see that all servants of righteous character and good disposition live according to the mind of their lord
7 Matt. 26.52.
8 Luke 22.51.
TERTULLIAN
—obedience, as you know, is a facility in rendering service, but the principle of obedience is compliant submission—how much more does it behoove us to be found modeled upon our
Lord! Servants indeed we are of the living God whose sway over His [creatures] consists not in manacles or the granting of the slave's cap,1 but in alloting everlasting punishment or salvation. (2) To escape His severity or to invite His liberality one needs diligence in obeying which is proportionate to the threats uttered by His severity or the promises made by His liberality. (3) Yet, we ourselves exact obedience not only from men who are bound to us by the bonds of slavery or who, because of some other legal bond, are under obligation to us, but also from our flocks and even from the wild animals. We understand that they have been provided and granted by the Lord for our purposes. (4) I ask you: in the practice of obedience, shall those creatures which God has made subject to us surpass us? In a word, creatures which obey [their masters] acknowledge [their condition as creatures]: do we hesitate to heed Him to whom alone we are subject, namely, the Lord? Why, how unjust it would be, and in addition how ungrateful, for you not to make a return of what you have obtained from others through the kindness of a third party, to him through whom you obtained it!
(5) But, no more about the manifestation of the obedience which we owe to the Lord our God. For, in the act of recognition of God one understands sufficiently what is in cumbent upon him. However, lest we seem to have inserted something irrelevant to this discussion of obedience, [let me
1 The pilleus was a felt cap shaped like the half of an egg, and made toc ^5 ^losej was given to a slave at his enfranchisement as a sign ot his freedom. &