Patience in bearing loss of property

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Tertullian is explaining how the Lord's chief command to love enemies sums up the whole discipline of patience, and now turns to the causes of impatience, beginning with loss of property.

This chief precept, which does not even allow us to wrong someone who deserves it, girds up the whole discipline of patience. Now as we run through the causes of impatience, the other precepts will answer each in its own place. If the mind is stirred up by loss of property, the Lord's Scriptures remind us in almost every place to despise the world. Nor is there any greater encouragement to despise money than the fact that the Lord himself is found in no riches. He always justifies the poor and condemns the rich beforehand. So the casting away of riches has supplied beforehand a distaste for wealth, showing that when riches are cast aside, the wounds they bring should also be counted as nothing. What we have no need to desire, because the Lord did not desire it, we should not bear with bitterness when it is cut off or even taken away. The Spirit of the Lord declared through the apostle that covetousness is the root of all evils (1 Timothy 6:10). Let us not interpret it as consisting only in desiring what belongs to another. For even what seems to be ours belongs to another. Nothing is ours, since all things are God's, and we ourselves are his. Therefore if we feel impatient when we suffer loss, grieving over the loss of what is not ours, we will be caught as akin to covetousness. We seek what belongs to another when we bear with bitterness the loss of what belongs to another. Whoever is stirred up by impatience at loss, putting earthly things before heavenly things, sins against his neighbor and so against God. For he shakes the spirit he received from the Lord for the sake of a worldly thing. Let us therefore willingly lose earthly things so that we may keep heavenly things. Let the whole world perish, if only I gain patience. Now whoever decides he cannot steadfastly bear the loss of some small thing through theft or force or even negligence, I do not know whether he could easily or from the heart lay his hand on his own property for the sake of almsgiving. For who, not bearing at all to be cut by another, draws the knife himself in his own body? Patience in losses is training for giving and sharing. He does not regret giving who does not fear losing. Otherwise, how will the one who has two tunics give one of them to the naked (Luke 3:11), unless he is the same person who can offer his cloak also to the one taking his tunic (Matthew 5:40)? How will we make friends for ourselves from mammon (Luke 16:9), if we love it so much that we cannot bear to lose it? We will perish with what is lost. Here we find where we have to lose. It belongs to pagans to apply impatience to every loss, since they perhaps put money before the soul. For they do this when they carry out profitable dangers of trade on the sea through desire for gain, when for money's sake they do not hesitate to undertake in the forum what must be feared even at the cost of condemnation, when finally they hire themselves out to the games and the camps, when they rob on open roads, forgetful of the beasts. But we, according to the difference between us and them, should lay down not the soul for money but money for the soul, whether willingly in giving or patiently in losing.

Latin

Hoc principali praecepto, quo ne digne quidem malefacere concessum, uniuersa patientiae disciplina succincta est. iam uero percurrentibus nobis causas impatientiae cetera quoque praecepta suis locis respondebunt. si detrimento rei familiaris animus concitatur, omni paene in loco contemnendo saeculo scripturis dominicis commonetur; nec maior ad pecuniae contemptum exhortatio subiacet, quam quod ipse dominus in nullis diuitiis inuenitur. semper pauperes iustificat, diuites praedamnat. ita detriment(or)um patientiae fastidium opulentiae praeministrauit, demonstrans per abiectionem diuitiarum laesuras quoque earum computandas non esse. quod ergo nobis appetere minime opus est, quia nec dominus appetiuit, detruncatum uel etiam ademptum non aegre sustinere debemus. cupiditatem omnium malorum radicem spiritus domini per apostolum pronuntiauit. eam non in concupiscentia alieni tantum constitutam interpretemur: nam et quod nostrum uidetur alienum est; nihil enim nostrum, quoniam dei omnia, cuius ipsi quoque nos. itaque si damno adfecti impatienter senserimus, . de non nostro amissum dolentes adfines cupiditatis deprehendemur.. alienum quaerimus, cum alienum amissum aegre sustinemus. qui damni impatientia concitatur terrena caelestibus anteponendo, de proximo in deum peccat. spiritum enim, quem a domino sumpsit, saecularis rei gratia concutit. libenter igitur terrena amittamus, (ut) caelestia tueamur. totum licet saeculum pereat, dum patientiam lucrifaciam. iam qui minutum sibi aliquid aut furto aut ui aut etiam ignauia non constanter sustinere constituit, nescio an facile uel ex animo ipse rei suae manum inferre possit in causa elemosynae. quis enim ab alio secari omnino non sustinens ipse ferrum in corpore suo ducit? patientia in detrimentis exercitatio est largiendi et communicandi. non piget donare eum, qui non timet perdere. alioquin quomodo duas habens tunicas alteram earum nudo dabit, nisi idem sit, qui auferenti tunicam etiam pallium offerre possit? quomodo amicos de mammona . fabricabimus nobis, si eum in tantum amauerimus, ut amissum non sufferamus? peribimus cum perdito qui hic inuenimus ubi habemus amittere. gentilium est omnibus detrimentis impatientiam adhibere, qui rem pecuniariam fortasse animae anteponant., nam id faciunt, cum lucri cupiditatibus quaestuosa pericula mercimoniorum in mari exercent, cum pecuniae causa etiam in foro nihil f damnationi timendum adgredi dubitant, cum denique ludo et castris sese locant, cum peruia inmemores bestiarum latrocinantur. nos uero secundum diuersitatem, qua cum illis sumus, non animam pro pecunia, sed pecuniam pro anima deponere conuenit, seu sponte in largiendo seu patienter in amittendo.

About this text

Tertullian, who admits he is short of patience himself, praises it as the virtue every Christian duty needs, after the pattern of God and Christ.

Tertullian (c. 155–c. 220) was a Christian writer from Carthage in North Africa, and one of the earliest Christian authors to write in Latin. He wrote this treatise for fellow Christians, though he names no particular person or church. He opens by confessing that he himself is weak in patience, and says he writes because no command of God or work pleasing to him can be performed without it.

The work presents patience as the central discipline of Christian life. Tertullian argues that patience is God's own nature, shown in his forbearance toward the wicked and supremely in Christ's passion. Its opposite, impatience, began with the devil and is the root of every sin, from the fall of Adam and Eve to the crimes of Cain and Israel. A reader will meet God and Christ as the supreme examples of patience, the devil as the origin of impatience, and figures such as Adam, Eve, Cain, Abraham, Moses, Aaron, Job, Isaiah, Stephen, Elijah, and Malchus. The words of Christ, the apostle Paul, and God in scripture are quoted and argued from.

The treatise contrasts true Christian patience with the false patience taught by the devil to his own followers. Patience governs every Christian duty: bearing loss, enduring wrong, accepting death, renouncing revenge, forgiving others, and practicing bodily self-denial. The translation renders patientia as patience and impatientia as impatience throughout. Old Latin Bible names are given in their familiar English forms, so Esaias is Isaiah, Helias is Elijah, Moyses is Moses, Iob is Job, Stephanus is Stephen, and Eua is Eve. Malchus is the high priest's servant whose ear was cut off at Jesus' arrest and healed by him.

New English from the Latin base text; no published English used as wording.

Printed text used

Translated from CSEL 47 (1900) (Latin)
Also checked Quinti Septimii Florentis Tertulliani Quae Supersunt Omnia Tertullian Franz Oehler T. O. Weigel Leipzig 1853 (Latin · comparison witness (not aligned to the sections))

This work has passed this project's source check. This is an AI-assisted study translation. Source fidelity and completeness have not been independently certified. Open Latin on each section (or the Latin source witness link) for the source text. This is not a complete critical edition.