Prison as training ground for the contest
Tertullian continues addressing the imprisoned Christians, now reframing their hardship as military and athletic training for the coming contest of martyrdom.
But now, blessed ones, grant that even a prison is unpleasant for Christians. We were called to the military service of the living God at the very moment when we answered the words of the oath. No soldier comes to war with luxuries, nor does he advance to the battle line from his bedroom, but from tents that are light and tightly packed, where every hardship and discomfort and unpleasantness has its place. Even in peacetime soldiers learn to endure war through labor and troubles—marching under arms, running across the field, digging the trench, forming the tortoise formation, sweating it out. Everything is built on sweat, so that bodies and minds do not panic at the change from shade to sun, from sun to cold, from tunic to breastplate, from silence to shouting, from rest to uproar. Therefore, blessed ones, count whatever is harsh here as training for the strengths of mind and body. You are about to enter a good contest, in which the presider of the contest is the living God, the trainer is the Holy Spirit, the crown is eternity, the prize is angelic substance, citizenship is in the heavens, and glory is for ever and ever. And so your overseer Christ Jesus, who anointed you with the Spirit and brought you into this arena, wanted you to be set apart from a freer condition for harsher treatment before the day of the contest, so that your strength might be built up in you. For athletes too are separated off for stricter discipline, so that they can devote themselves to building up their strength. They are kept from luxury, from richer foods, from more pleasant drink; they are driven, tormented, exhausted. The more they have labored in their exercises, the more they hope for victory. And those men, says the apostle, do it to obtain a corruptible crown (1 Corinthians 9:25). We, who are going to obtain an eternal crown, interpret the prison as our training ground, so that we may be brought to the stadium of the tribunal well trained through every hardship, because strength is built by hardness, while softness destroys it.
Latin
Sit nunc, benedicti, carcer etiam Christianis molestus. Vocati sumus ad militiam dei vivi iam tunc, cum in sacramenti verba respondemus. Nemo miles ad bellum cum deliciis venit nec de cubiculo ad aciem procedit, sed de papilionibus expeditis et substrictis, ubi omnis duritia et inbonitas et insuavitas constitit. Etiam in pace labore et incommodis bellum pati iam ediscunt in armis deambulando, campum decurrendo, fossam moliendo, testudinem destinando, desudando. Sudore omnia constant, ne corpora atque animi expavescant de umbra ad solem et sole ad gelum, de tunica ad loricam, de silentio ad clamorem, de quiete ad tumultum. Proinde vos, benedicti, quodcunque hoc durum est, ad exercitationem virtutum animi et corporis deputate. Bonum agonem subituri estis, in quo agonothetes deus vivus est, xystarches spiritus sanctus, corona aeternitatis brabium angelicae substantiae, politia in caelis, gloria in saecula saeculorum. Itaque epistates vester Christus Iesus, qui vos spiritu unxit et ad hoc scamma produxit, voluit vos ante diem agonis ad duriorem tractationem a liberiore condicione seponere, ut vires corroborarentur in vobis. Nempe enim et athletae segregantur ad strietiorem disciplinam, ut robori aedificando vacent. Continentur a luxuria, a cibis laetioribus, a potu iocundiore, coguntur, cruciantur, fatigantur: quanto plus in exercitationibus laboraverint, tanto plus de victoria sperant. Et illi, inquit apostolus, ut coronam corruptibilem consequantur. Nos aeternam consecuturi carcerem nobis pro palaestra interpretamur, ut ad stadium tribunalis bene exercitati incommodis omnibus producamur, quia virtus duritia extruitur, mollitia vero destruitur.