Reading Tertullian's THE APOLOGY, I can barely distinguish the current Christian Church from the Roman heathens and persecutors that this "Father of African Latin Christianity" of 2nd century Carthage, Africa , condemned so fervently, eloquently!
For example, he writes in Chapter XXXVI:
"We never do good with respect of persons; for in our own interests we conduct ourselves as those who take no payment either of praise or premium from man, but from God, who both requires and remunerates an impartial benevolence. We are the same to emperors as to our ordinary neighbors . For we are equally forbidden to wish ill, to speak ill, to think ill of all men. The thing we must not do to an emperor , we must not do to anyone else: what we would not do to anybody , a fortiori, perhaps we should not do to him whom God has been pleased so highly to exalt."
P. 60 (2013)
http://www.tertullian.org/articles/reeve_apology.htm
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
TERTULLION, "FATHER OF AFRICAN LATIN CHRISTIANITY"
Reading Tertullian's THE APOLOGY, I can barely distinguish the current Christian Church from the Roman heathens and persecutors that this "Father of African Latin Christianity" of 2nd century Carthage, Africa , condemned so fervently, eloquently!
For example, he writes in Chapter XXXVI:
"We never do good with respect of persons; for in our own interests we conduct ourselves as those who take no payment either of praise or premium from man, but from God, who both requires and remunerates an impartial benevolence. We are the same to emperors as to our ordinary neighbors . For we are equally forbidden to wish ill, to speak ill, to think ill of all men. The thing we must not do to an emperor , we must not do to anyone else: what we would not do to anybody , a fortiori, perhaps we should not do to him whom God has been pleased so highly to exalt."
P. 60 (2013)
http://www.tertullian.org/articles/reeve_apology.htm