Tertullian, Antidote for the Scorpion's Sting 4
If it is established from the beginning that this practice is forbidden by so many and such great precepts, never committed with impunity, and attested by so many and such great examples, and that no crime counts as more arrogant before God than this kind of transgression, we ought to grasp of our own accord the intention behind divine warnings and punishments. Those intentions were already backed by martyrdoms then — not only not to be doubted, but to be endured. Prohibiting idolatry made room for those martyrdoms; otherwise they would not have happened. And God certainly established his own authority, wishing to bring about the very things for which he had made room.
Now we are pricked by the will of God, and the scorpion doubles the blow, denying this will and accusing it — so as either to insinuate another God whose will this is not, or nonetheless to destroy our God whose will is of this kind, or altogether to deny the will of God if it cannot deny God himself. But we, who fight elsewhere about God and about the rest of the body of each heretical doctrine, now draw up fixed battle lines into a single kind of contest. We defend the will of no other God than the God of Israel — the will that made room for martyrdoms, both through precepts that always prohibited idolatry and through judgments that punished it.
For if an observed precept suffers violence, that will be, in a certain way, the observance of the precept: I suffer the very thing by which I can keep the precept — namely, whatever violence threatens me while I avoid idolatry. And the one who imposes the precept exacts obedience. Therefore he could not have been unwilling for those things to happen by which obedience is proved.
It is prescribed to me not to name any other God; not to fashion God, either by speaking or by hand, in any way; not to adore or venerate any other, in any way, except the One who so commands. I am also commanded to fear him, lest I be deserted by him, and to love him with all my substance, so that I may die for him. Fighting for this sacrament, I am provoked by enemies; I am their equal if I yield. Defending it, I fight in the line, I am wounded, I am struck down, I am killed. Who wished this outcome for his soldier, except the one who sealed him with such a sacrament?
Latin
Hanc igitur si a primordio constat et prohibitam de tot tantisque praeceptis, et nunquam impune commissam, de tot tantisque documentis, nec ullum tam superbum crimen apud Deum deputari, quam hujusmodi transgressionem, ultro intelligere debemus divinarum et denuntiationum et executionum intentionem, jam tunc martyriis patrocinatam, non modo non dubitandis, verum etiam sustinendis, quibus scilicet locum fecerat prohibendo idololatriam: aliter enim martyria non evenirent; et utique auctoritatem suam praestruxerat, volens ea evenire quibus locum fecerat. Nunc enim de Dei voluntate compungimur, et ingeminat scorpius plagam, hanc negans, hanc accusans voluntatem, ut aut alium Deum insinuet, cujus haec non sit voluntas; aut nostrum nihilominus destruat, cujus talis sit voluntas; aut omnino neget voluntatem Dei, si ipsum negare non poterit. Nos autem de Deo alibi dimicantes, et de reliquo corpore haereticae cujusque doctrinae, nunc in unam speciem congressionis certas praeducimus lineas, non alterius Dei, quam Israelis, eam defendentes voluntatem, quae martyriis locum fecerit, tam ex praeceptis prohibitae semper, quam ex judiciis punitae idololatriae. Si enim praeceptum observatum vim patitur, hoc erit quodammodo observandi praeceptum, ut id patiar per quod potero observare praeceptum: vim scilicet quaecumque mihi imminet caventi ab idololatria. Et utique qui imponit praeceptum, extorquet obsequium. Non potuit ergo noluisse ea evenire, per quae constabit obsequium. Praescribitur mihi ne quem alium Deum dicam; ne, vel dicendo, non minus lingua quam manu Deum fingam; ne quem alium adorem, aut quoque modo venerer, praeter unicum illum qui ita mandat; quem et jubeor timere, ne ab eo deserar; et de omni substantia diligere, ut pro eo moriar. Huic sacramento militans ab hostibus provocor, par sum illis si manus dedero; hoc defendendo depugno in acie, vulneror, concidor, occidor. Quis hunc militi suo exitum voluit, nisi qui tali eum sacramento consignavit?