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 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]

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Footnotes:

[9020] i.e. us Christians.

[9021] i.e. cynical = kunikos = doglike. But Tertullian appears to use "caninæ" purposely, and I have therefore retained it rather than substitute (as Mr. Dodgson does) "cynical."

[9022] i.e. the affectation is modelled by insensibility.

[9023] See Psalm 74:23 in A.V. It is Psalm 73.in the LXX.

[9024] Because they see no visible proof of it.

[9025] Sæculo.