Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume III/Ethical/On Patience/II
Chapter II.—God Himself an Example of Patience.
To us[1] no human affectation of canine[2] equanimity, modelled[3] by insensibility, furnishes the warrant for exercising patience; but the divine arrangement of a living and celestial discipline, holding up before us God Himself in the very first place as an example of patience; who scatters equally over just and unjust the bloom of this light; who suffers the good offices of the seasons, the services of the elements, the tributes of entire nature, to accrue at once to worthy and unworthy; bearing with the most ungrateful nations, adoring as they do the toys of the arts and the works of their own hands, persecuting His Name together with His family; bearing with luxury, avarice, iniquity, malignity, waxing insolent daily:[4] so that by His own patience He disparages Himself; for the cause why many believe not in the Lord is that they are so long without knowing[5] that He is wroth with the world.[6]
Footnotes[edit]
- ↑ i.e. us Christians.
- ↑ i.e. cynical = κυνικός = doglike. But Tertullian appears to use “caninæ” purposely, and I have therefore retained it rather than substitute (as Mr. Dodgson does) “cynical.”
- ↑ i.e. the affectation is modelled by insensibility.
- ↑ See Ps. lxxiv. 23 in A.V. It is Ps. lxxiii. in the LXX.
- ↑ Because they see no visible proof of it.
- ↑ Sæculo.