Tertullian, On Baptism 2

But consider the sheer force of perversity: it aims to undermine faith or reject it outright, turning the very evidence that establishes faith into weapons against it. Nothing hardens human minds like the simplicity of divine works seen in action, and the magnificence promised in their effect. Here, too, because a man is plunged into water with such stark simplicity — no pomp, no novel apparatus, ultimately no expense — dipped amid a few words, and rises no cleaner than before, the promise of eternity strikes people as incredible. I am lying if the solemnities and mysteries of idols do not, by contrast, build their own credibility and authority on spectacle, stagecraft, and expense. Away with it, this wretched unbelief that denies God his own properties: simplicity and power. So what? Is it not a wonder that death is washed away by washing? Yet all the more it must be believed precisely because it is wonderful enough to be disbelieved. What kind of works should divine works be, if not beyond all wonder? We ourselves wonder, but we wonder because we believe. Unbelief, on the other hand, wonders and refuses to believe. It treats simple things as empty, magnificent things as impossible. And let it stand as you suppose: the divine pronouncement has already raced ahead to cover both points. God chose the foolish things of the world to shame its wisdom (1 Cor. 1:27), and the weak things — what is easy for God. For if God is both wise and powerful, which even passersby do not deny, he rightly establishes the materials of his operation in the opponents of wisdom and power — that is, in foolishness and impossibility. Since all power draws its cause from the very things that provoke it.