Tertullian Quotes

31 Sourced Quotes

All things will be in danger of being taken in a sense different from their own proper sense, and, whilst taken in that different sense, of losing their proper one, if they are called by a name which differs from their natural designation. Fidelity in names secures the safe appreciation of properties.

Tertullian
It's a committing murder before hand, to destroy that which is to be born.

Tertullian
Let the emperor make war on heaven; let him lead heaven captive in his triumph; let him put guards on heaven; let him impose taxes on heaven! He cannot.... He gets his sceptre where he first got his humanity; his power where he got the breath of life.

Tertullian
And when will there be an end of marrying? I suppose, when there is an end of living.

Tertullian
Prevention of birth is premature murder, and it makes no difference whether it is a life already born that one snatches away or a life that is coming to birth.

Tertullian
Can we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with pleasure die?

Tertullian
He is a man, who is to be a man; the fruit is always present in the seed.

Tertullian
Reason, in fact, is a thing of God, inasmuch as there is nothing which God the Maker of all has not provided, disposed, ordained by reason — nothing which He has not willed should be handled and understood by reason.

Tertullian
See, they say, how they love one another, for themselves are animated by mutual hatred; how they are ready even to die for one another, for they themselves will sooner put to death.

Tertullian
For it is really better for us not to know a thing, because [God] has not revealed it to us, than to know it according to man's wisdom, because he has been bold enough to assume it.

Tertullian
Truth persuades by teaching, but does not teach by persuading.

Tertullian
It is certainly no part of religion to compel religion.

Tertullian
Now we allow that life begins with conception, because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does.

Tertullian
Of little worth is the recommendation which has for its prop the defamation of another.

Tertullian
O witness of the soul naturally Christian.

Tertullian
Man is one name belonging to every nation upon earth. In them all is one soul though many tongues. Every country has its own language, yet the subjects of which the untutored soul speaks are the same everywhere.

Tertullian
Examine then, and see if He be not the dispenser of kingdoms, who is Lord at once of the world which is ruled, and of man himself who rules; if He have not ordained the changes of dynasties, with their appointed seasons, who was before all time, and made the world a body of times; if the rise and the fall of states are not the work of Him, under whose sovereignty the human race once existed without states at all.

Tertullian
Why lean upon a blind guide, if you have eyes of your own? Why be clothed by one who is naked, if you have put on Christ? Why use the shield of another, when the apostle gives you armour of your own? It would be better for him to learn from you to acknowledge the resurrection of the flesh, than for you from him to deny it; because if Christians must needs deny it, it would be sufficient if they did so from their own knowledge, without any instruction from the ignorant multitude.

Tertullian
One man's religion neither harms nor helps another man.

Tertullian
In our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in the seed.

Tertullian
Men remain in ignorance as long as they hate, and they hate unjustly as long as they remain in ignorance.

Tertullian
Thus the connection of the Father in the Son, and of the Son in the Paraclete, produces three coherent Persons, who are yet distinct One from Another. These three are one [thing], not one [Person], as it is said, 'I and my Father are One,' in respect of unity of substance not singularity of number.

Tertullian
The flesh feeds on the Body and Blood of Christ that the soul may be fattened on God

Tertullian
We multiply whenever we are mown down by you; the blood of Christians is seed.

Tertullian
We are but of yesterday, and yet we have filled all the places that belong to you — cities, islands, forts, towns, exchanges; the military camps themselves, tribes, town councils, the palace, the senate, the market-place; we have left you nothing but your temples.

Tertullian
Every soul, then, by reason of its birth, has its nature in Adam until it is born again in Christ; moreover, it is unclean all the while that it remains without this regeneration; and because unclean, it is actively sinful, and suffuses even the flesh (by reason of their conjunction) with its own shame.

Tertullian
We say, and we say openly, and while ye torture us, mangled and gory we cry out, "We worship God through Christ!" Believe Him a man: it is through Him and in Him that God willeth Himself to be known and worshipped.

Tertullian
We worship unity in trinity, and trinity in unity; neither confounding the person nor dividing the substance. There is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost; but the Godhead of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal.

Tertullian
If the Tiber rises, if the Nile does not rise, if the heavens give no rain, if there is an earthquake, famine, or pestilence, straightway the cry is 'The Christians to the lion!' So many to one?

Tertullian
When God's Spirit descends, then Patience accompanies Him indivisibly.

Tertullian