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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

i.e. us Christians.

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.”

i.e. the affectation is modelled by insensibility.

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

Because they see no visible proof of it.

Sæculo.