God Himself an Example of Patience.

Chapter II.—God Himself an Example of Patience.

To us ⁹⁰²⁰ no human affectation of canine ⁹⁰²¹ equanimity, modelled ⁹⁰²² by insensibility, furnishes the warrant for exercising patience; but the divine arrangement of a living and celestial discipline, holding up before us God p. 708 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: ⁹⁰²³ 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 ⁹⁰²⁴ that He is wroth with the world. ⁹⁰²⁵

Footnotes

707:9020

i.e. us Christians.

707:9021

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.”

707:9022

i.e. the affectation is modelled by insensibility.

708:9023

See Ps. lxxiv. 23 in A.V. It is Ps. lxxiii. in the LXX.

708:9024

Because they see no visible proof of it.

708:9025

Sæculo.