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| As God is the Author of Patience So the Devil is of Impatience.
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Chapter V.—As God
is the Author of Patience So the Devil is of Impatience.
Nevertheless, the proceeding9049
| 9049
“Procedere:” so Oehler, who, however, notices an ingenious
conjecture of Jos. Scaliger—“procudere,” the
hammering out, or forging. | of a discussion on the necessaries of faith
is not idle, because it is not unfruitful. In edification no loquacity
is base, if it be base at any time.9050
| 9050 Tertullian may
perhaps wish to imply, in prayer. See Matt. vi. 7. | And so, if the
discourse be concerning some particular good, the subject
requires us to review also the contrary of that good. For you
will throw more light on what is to be pursued, if you first give a
digest of what is to be avoided.
Let us therefore consider, concerning
Impatience, whether just as patience in God, so its adversary
quality have been born and detected in our adversary, that from this
consideration may appear how primarily adverse it is to faith. For that
which has been conceived by God’s rival, of course is not
friendly to God’s things. The discord of things is the
same as the discord of their authors. Further, since God is
best, the devil on the contrary worst, of beings, by their own
very diversity they testify that neither works for9051
| 9051 Facere. But Fulv.
Ursinus (as Oehler tells us) has suggested a neat
emendation—“favere,” favours. | the other; so that anything of good can no
more seem to be effected for us by the Evil One, than anything of evil
by the Good. Therefore I detect the nativity of impatience in the devil
himself, at that very time when he impatiently bore that the Lord God
subjected the universal works which He had made to His own image, that
is, to man.9052
For if he had
endured (that), he would not have grieved; nor would he have envied man
if he had not grieved. Accordingly he deceived him, because he had
envied him; but he had envied because he had grieved: he had grieved
because, of course, he had not patiently borne. What that angel of
perdition9053
first
was—malicious or impatient—I scorn to inquire: since
manifest it is that either impatience took its rise together
with malice, or else malice from impatience; that
subsequently they conspired between themselves; and that they grew up
indivisible in one paternal bosom. But, however, having been
instructed, by his own experiment, what an aid unto sinning was that
which he had been the first to feel, and by means of which he
had entered on his course of
delinquency, he called the same to his assistance for the thrusting of
man into crime. The woman,9054
| 9054 Mulier. See de
Orat. c. xxii. | immediately on
being met by him—I may say so without rashness—was, through
his very speech with her, breathed on by a spirit infected with
impatience: so certain is it that she would never have sinned at all,
if she had honoured the divine edict by maintaining her patience to the
end. What (of the fact) that she endured not to have been met alone;
but in the presence of Adam, not yet her husband, not yet bound to lend
her his ears,9055
she is impatient of
keeping silence, and makes him the transmitter of that which she had
imbibed from the Evil One? Therefore another human being, too,
perishes through the impatience of the one; presently, too, perishes of
himself, through his own impatience committed in each respect, both in
regard of God’s premonition and in regard of the devil’s
cheatery; not enduring to observe the former nor to refute the latter.
Hence, whence (the origin) of delinquency, arose the first origin of
judgment; hence, whence man was induced to offend, God began to be
wroth. Whence (came) the first indignation in God, thence (came) His
first patience; who, content at that time with malediction only,
refrained in the devil’s case from the instant
infliction9056
of punishment. Else
what crime, before this guilt of impatience, is imputed to man?
Innocent he was, and in intimate friendship with God, and the
husbandman9057
of paradise. But
when once he succumbed to impatience, he quite ceased to be of sweet
savour9058
| 9058 Sapere. See de
Idol. c. i. sub fin. | to God; he quite
ceased to be able to endure things celestial. Thenceforward, a
creature9059
given to earth, and
ejected from the sight of God, he begins to be easily turned by
impatience unto every use offensive to God. For straightway that
impatience conceived of the devil’s seed, produced, in the
fecundity of malice, anger as her son; and when brought forth, trained
him in her own arts. For that very thing which had immersed Adam and
Eve in death, taught their son, too, to begin with murder. It would be
idle for me to ascribe this to impatience, if Cain, that first homicide
and first fratricide, had borne with equanimity and not impatiently the
refusal by the Lord of his own oblations—if he is not wroth with
his own brother—if, finally, he took away no one’s life.
Since, then, he could neither have killed unless he had been wroth, nor
have been wroth unless he had been impatient, he demonstrates that what
he did through wrath must be referred to that by which wrath was
suggested during this cradle-time of impatience, then (in a certain
sense) in her infancy. But how great presently were her
augmentations! And no wonder, If she has been the first delinquent, it
is a consequence that, because she has been the first, therefore
she is the only parent stem,9060
| 9060 Matrix. Mr.
Dodgson renders womb, which is admissible; but the other
passages quoted by Oehler, where Tertullian uses this word, seem to
suit better with the rendering given in the text. | too, to
every delinquency, pouring down from her own fount various veins
of crimes.9061
| 9061 Compare a similar
expression in de Idol. ii. ad init. | Of murder we
have spoken; but, being from the very beginning the outcome of
anger,9062
| 9062 Which Tertullian
has just shown to be the result of impatience. | whatever causes
besides it shortly found for itself it lays collectively on the account
of impatience, as to its own origin. For whether from private
enmities, or for the sake of prey, any one perpetrates that
wickedness,9063
the earlier step is
his becoming impatient of9064
| 9064 i.e. unable to
restrain. | either the
hatred or the avarice. Whatever compels a man, it is not
possible that without impatience of itself it can be perfected
in deed. Who ever committed adultery without
impatience of lust? Moreover, if in females the sale of their
modesty is forced by the price, of course it is by impatience of
contemning gain9065
that this
sale is regulated.9066
| 9066
“Ordinatur;” but “orditur” has been very
plausibly conjectured. | These (I mention)
as the principal delinquencies in the sight of the Lord,9067
| 9067 Mr. Dodgson refers to
ad Uxor. i. 5, q. v. sub fin. | for, to speak compendiously, every
sin is ascribable to impatience. “Evil” is
“impatience of good.” None immodest is not
impatient of modesty; dishonest of honesty; impious of
piety;9068
| 9068 Or,
“unduteous of duteousness.” | unquiet of
quietness. In order that each individual may become evil
he will be unable to persevere9069
in
being good. How, therefore, can such a hydra of delinquencies
fail to offend the Lord, the Disapprover of evils? Is it not manifest
that it was through impatience that Israel himself also always failed
in his duty toward God, from that time when,9070
| 9070 I have departed
slightly here from Oehler’s punctuation. |
forgetful of the heavenly arm whereby he had been drawn out of his
Egyptian affliction, he demands from Aaron “gods9071
as his guides;” when he pours down for
an idol the contributions of his gold: for the so necessary delays of
Moses, while he met with God, he had borne with impatience. After the
edible rain of the
manna, after the watery following9072
| 9072 i.e. the water which
followed them, after being given forth by the smitten rock. See
1 Cor. x. 4. | of the rock,
they despair of the Lord in not enduring a three-days’
thirst;9073
| 9073 See Num. xx. 1–6. But Tertullian has apparently confused
this with Ex. xv.
22, which seems to be
the only place where “a three-days’ thirst” is
mentioned. | for this also is
laid to their charge by the Lord as impatience. And—not to rove
through individual cases—there was no instance in which it was
not by failing in duty through impatience that they perished. How,
moreover, did they lay hands on the prophets, except through impatience
of hearing them? on the Lord moreover Himself, through impatience
likewise of seeing Him? But had they entered the path of
patience, they would have been set free.9074
| 9074 Free, i.e. from the
bondage of impatience and of sin. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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