Anf-03 vi.vii.v Pg 12
Colonus. Gen. ii. 15.
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 9059 Homo.
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 9063 i.e. murder.
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 9065 i.e. want of power or patience to contemn gain.
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.”
