Tertullian, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
My own writings do not give a narrative of the day or the hour, and I will not manufacture one. What they do show is the ground on which a man like me stood once he had crossed over, and the road by which others come. First, a man is made a Christian, he is not born one.1 I say that to the soul, and I say it of myself. I came to this faith from the schools and the courts, from the very libraries I now refuse as judges, and it was not the learning that carried me.
The wisdom of the philosophers, when it knocks at the gates of truth, is slighted by their own admirers the moment it sounds like us, and the man who goes the whole length of saying almost Christian things is called sage until he rejects the ceremonies of the world, and then he is branded a Christian.2 That branding I know from the inside. Second, I have no faith in the way of argument by itself, and the reason is plain: by whom has truth ever been discovered without God?3
Look at Socrates, who talked of the soul's immortality with the hemlock drunk and his wife weeping, and tell me whether his composure was the conviction of ascertained truth or the assumption of a man answering injustice.3 If the best of the schools could not hold the truth in a prison cell, I did not find it in a lecture hall either. Third, and here I speak as one who has watched them: the demons themselves turn men.
They confess under our command, they leave the bodies they have entered before your eyes, and you, who believe them when they lie, are asked to believe them when they speak the truth against themselves. It has been no unusual thing for such testimonies from your own gods to convert men, because in giving them credit we are led to believe in Christ.4
That is one door. The other door is the one I opened in The Soul's Testimony. I call no author, no school, no scripture of ours, since no one comes to our writings unless he is already a Christian. I call the soul, simple, rude, untaught, the thing of the road and the workshop, and I demand of it what it brings with it into man.5 That witness is older than every library, and it is where I would have you begin.
Thou art not, as I well know, Christian; for a man becomes a Christian, he is not born one.The Soul's Testimony
He will thus far be reckoned a wise and sagacious man who has gone the length of uttering sentiments that are almost Christian; while if, in a mere affectation of judgment and wisdom, he sets himself to reject their ceremonies, or to convicting the world of its sin, he is sure to be branded as a Christian.The Soul's Testimony
For by whom has truth ever been discovered without God?A Treatise on the Soul
It has not been an unusual thing, accordingly, for those testimonies of your deities to convert men to Christianity; for in giving full belief to them, we are led to believe in Christ.The Apology
I address thee simple, rude, uncultured and untaught, such as they have thee who have thee only; that very thing of the road, the street, the work-shop, wholly.The Soul's Testimony