Tertullian, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
You put the question as a lawsuit about a departure, and the premise is the first thing I contest. I never wrote a renunciation, and I never denied an article of the faith. The rule of faith stands as I stated it. What I took up was a discipline, and I took it up in the Church. The charge that I left is the psychics' charge, and it rests on their dislike of what the Paraclete commands.
They cannot abide the New Prophecy because they think it the institutor of a novel discipline, and a harsh one, and so they deny the Paraclete himself.1 I answer that nothing taught there is novel against catholic tradition, and nothing burdensome against the Lord's light burden. The plea in that tract is that a stricter rule is a growth of what was always commanded, not a second gospel.
Where we parted, then, was on who holds the power of remission. The bishop says the Church forgives sins, and I grant the Church that power. But the Paraclete speaks in the new prophets and says the Church has the power to forgive, yet he will not exercise it, lest men commit further sins.2 I then asked the bishop what right he has to take to himself what neither prophet nor apostle bestowed on him.
A man who holds only the duties of discipline, and presides ministerially, has no virtue by which to indulge.2 Adultery and fornication stand among the three things the apostles, speaking for the Holy Spirit, laid on the nations as necessary to abstain from. They loosed us from the rest of the Law's burdens so as to bind us the more firmly to these.3
On fasting the quarrel runs the same way. The psychics set boundary-posts to God, as with grace so with discipline, as if his gifts had ceased and with them his claim to command.4 I say that even if the Paraclete had been mute since John, we should have risen as prophets to ourselves, to train the Christian for prison and hunger, so that he enters custody as one who has already come out of it.4
You may judge that a schismatic's rigour. I judge the opposite: they were pampering martyrs with cookshops, and one of theirs died hiccoughing in the act of apostasy.5 If you want a departure, it is theirs. They shut out the Spirit and kept the cookshop.
nor is there any other cause whence they find themselves compelled to deny the Paraclete more than the fact that they esteem Him to be the institutor of a novel discipline, and a discipline which they find most harshOn Monogamy
The Church has the power to forgive sins; but I will not do it, lest they commit others withal.On Modesty
They loosed us from the more numerous, that we might be bound up to abstinence from the more noxious.On Modesty
But you again set up boundary-posts to God, as with regard to grace, so with regard to discipline; as with regard to gifts, so, too, with regard to solemnitiesOn Fasting
Plainly, your habit is to furnish cookshops in the prisons to untrustworthy martyrs, for fear they should miss their accustomed usagesOn Fasting