{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/003/0030070.htm","path":"chr/ecf/003/0030070.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/003/0030070.htm","text":"Chapter XII.\u2014Further Answers to the Plea, How Am I to Live?\nIn vain do we flatter ourselves as to the necessities of human maintenance, if\u2014after faith sealed 238 \u2014we say, \u201cI have no means to live?\u201d 239 For here I will now answer more fully that abrupt proposition. It is advanced too late. For after the similitude of that most prudent builder, 240 who first computes the costs of the work, together with his own means, lest, when he has begun, he afterwards blush to find himself spent, deliberation should have been made before. But even now you have the Lord\u2019s sayings, as examples taking away from you all excuse. For what is it you say? \u201cI shall be in need.\u201d But the Lord calls the needy \u201chappy.\u201d 241 \u201cI shall have no food.\u201d But \u201cthink not,\u201d says He, \u201cabout food;\u201d 242 and as an example of clothing we have the lilies. 243 \u201cMy work was my subsistence.\u201d Nay, but \u201call things are to be sold, and divided to the needy.\u201d 244 \u201cBut provision must be made for children and posterity.\u201d \u201cNone, putting his hand on the plough, and looking back, is fit\u201d for work. 245 \u201cBut I was under contract.\u201d \u201cNone can serve two lords.\u201d 246 If you wish to be the Lord\u2019s disciple, it is necessary you \u201ctake your cross, and follow the Lord:\u201d 247 your cross; that is, your own straits and tortures, or your body only, which is after the manner of a cross. Parents, wives, children, will have to be left behind, for God\u2019s sake. 248 Do you hesitate about arts, and trades, and about professions likewise, for the sake of children and parents? Even there was it demonstrated to us, that both \u201cdear pledges,\u201d 249 and handicrafts, and trades, are to be quite left behind for the Lord\u2019s sake; while James and John, called by the Lord, do leave quite behind both father and ship; 250 while Matthew is roused up from the toll-booth; 251 while even burying a father was too tardy a business for faith. 252 None of them whom the Lord chose to Him said, \u201cI have no means to live.\u201d Faith fears not famine. It knows, likewise, that hunger is no less to be contemned by it for God\u2019s sake, than every kind of death. It has learnt not to respect life; how much more food? [You ask] \u201cHow many have fulfilled these conditions?\u201d But what with men is difficult, with God is easy. 253 Let us, however, comfort ourselves about the gentleness and clemency of God in such wise, as not to indulge our \u201cnecessities\u201d up to the point of affinities with idolatry, but to avoid even from afar every breath of it, as of a pestilence. [And this] not merely in the cases forementioned, but in the universal series of human superstition; whether appropriated to its gods, or to the defunct, or to kings, as pertaining to the selfsame unclean spirits, sometimes through sacrifices and priesthoods, sometimes through spectacles and the like, sometimes through holy-days.\nSee above, chaps. v. and viii. [One is reminded here of the famous pleasantry of Dr. Johnson; see Boswell.]\n68:240\nSee Luke xiv. 28-30.\n68:241 68:242 68:243 68:244 68:245\nLuke ix. 62, where the words are, \u201cis fit for the kingdom of God.\u201d\n68:246 68:247\nMatt. 16:24, Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23, Luke 14:27.\n68:248\nLuke 14:26, Mark 10:29, 30, Matt. 19:27. Compare these texts with Tertullian\u2019s words, and see the testimony he thus gives to the deity of Christ.\n68:249 68:250\nMatt. 4:21, 22, Mark 1:19, 20, Luke 5:10, 11.\n68:251\nMatt. 9:9, Mark 2:14, Luke 5:29.\n68:252 68:253\nMatt. 19:26, Luke 1:37, Luke 18:27.","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol III: Tertullian: Part I: Further...","type":"page"}