Ch. 28. This is the spiritual victim which has abolished the pristine sacrifices.… We are the true adorers and true priests, who, praying in the spirit, in the spirit sacrifice prayer, proper and acceptable to God, which, assuredly, He has required, which He has looked forward to for Himself. This victim, devoted from the whole heart, fed on faith, tended by truth, entire in innocence, pure in chastity, garlanded with love [agape], we ought to escort with the pomp of good works, amid psalms and hymns, unto God's altar, to obtain all things from God for us.
(b) Tertullian, De Jejun., 3. (MSL, 2:100.)
The following is a characteristic statement of the meritorious and propitiatory character of fasting. See below, [h], Cyprian.
Since He himself both commands fasting and calls a soul wholly shattered—properly, of course, by straits of diet—a sacrifice (Psalm 51:18), who will any longer doubt that of all macerations as to food the rationale has been this: that by a renewed interdiction of food and observance of the precept the primordial sin might now be expiated, so that man may make God satisfaction through the same causative material by which he offended, that is, by interdiction of food; and so, by way of emulation, hunger might rekindle, just as [pg 167] satiety had extinguished, salvation, contemning for the sake of one thing unlawful many things that are lawful?
(c) Tertullian, De Baptismo, 17. (MSL, 1:1326.)
It remains to put you in mind, also, of the due observance of giving and receiving baptism. The chief priest (summus sacerdos), who is the bishop, has the right of giving it; in the second place, the presbyters and deacons, yet not without the bishop's authority, on account of the honor of the Church. When this has been preserved, peace is preserved. Besides these, even laymen have the right; for what is equally received can be equally given. If there are no bishops, priests, or deacons, other disciples are called. The word of the Lord ought not to be hidden away by any. In like manner, also, baptism, which is equally God's property, can be administered by all; but how much more is the rule of reverence and modesty incumbent on laymen, since these things belong to their superiors, lest they assume to themselves the specific functions of the episcopate! Emulation of the episcopal office is the mother of schism.
(d) Tertullian, De Pœnitentia, 2. (MSL, 1:1340.)
How small is the gain if you do good to a grateful man, or the loss if to an ungrateful man! A good deed has God as its debtor, just as an evil deed has Him also; for the judge is a rewarder of every cause. Now, since God as judge presides over the exacting and maintaining of justice, which is most dear to Him, and since it is for the sake of justice that He appoints the whole sum of His discipline, ought one to doubt that, as in all our acts universally, so, also, in the case of repentance, justice must be rendered to God?
(e) Tertullian, Scorpiace, 6. (MSL, 2:157.)
If he had put forth faith to suffer martyrdoms, not for the contest's sake, but for its own benefit, ought it not to have had some store of hope, for which it might restrain its own desire [pg 168] and suspend its wish, that it might strive to mount up, seeing that they, also, who strive to discharge earthly functions are eager for promotion? Or how will there be many mansions in the Father's house, if not for a diversity of deserts? How, also, will one star differ from another star in glory, unless in virtue of a disparity of their rays?