Tertullian, Antidote for the Scorpion's Sting 11

We defend the same pattern in everything else that belongs to martyrdom. "Whoever does more," he says, "and makes his own soul count for more than me, is not worthy of me" (Matthew 10:39). That is, whoever prefers to live by denying me rather than to die by confessing me. "Whoever finds his life will lose it; whoever loses it for my sake will find it" (Matthew 16:25; Luke 17:33). So the one who denies Christ to gain his life actually finds it — but only to lose it in Gehenna. The one who thinks he gains it by denying Christ loses it there. But the one who is killed after confessing loses his life now, yet will find it in eternal life.

Even the judges themselves, when they urge denial, say, 'Save your soul, and do not lose your soul.' How else would Christ speak than in the way a Christian is treated? When he forbids rehearsing a defense before the tribunal, he instructs his servants and promises the Holy Spirit will speak for them. When he wants a brother visited in prison, he commands care for the confessor. When he affirms that God will avenge his elect, he consoles their sufferings. Even in the parable of the seed after the thorns wither, he depicts the heat of persecutions (Matthew 13:6).

If these words are not taken exactly as they are spoken, they certainly sound different from what they mean; one thing will be in the words, another in the senses — like allegories, like parables, like riddles. Whatever scorpion has conceived a wind of argument for them, whatever sharpness they thrust themselves with, there is now a single line: they will be driven to the things themselves, to see whether they are carried out according to the Scriptures.

For if something else is signified in the Scriptures, but the same thing is not found in the events, then what is written will not happen. What is written must happen. And it will happen what is written — if nothing else happens instead. Look: we are hated by all people for the name's sake, just as it is written (Matthew 10:22). We are betrayed even by those closest to us, just as it is written (Matthew 24:9). We are hauled before authorities, interrogated, tortured, we confess, and we are slaughtered — just as it is written. So the Lord decreed.

If he decreed these things differently, why do they not happen differently than he decreed — that is, exactly as he decreed? But they do not happen differently than he decreed. Therefore, as they happen, so he decreed; so they happen. It was not permitted for them to happen otherwise than he decreed; nor would he have decreed otherwise than he wanted them to happen. Thus the Scriptures will not signify anything other than what we recognize in the events.

Or if the things predicted are not yet done, how are these things done which were not predicted? For the things that are happening are not predicted if other things are predicted and not these things that are happening. But now, because the same things are in the events as in the words, people believe things spoken otherwise. What would happen if the events themselves turned out differently? But this is the perversity of faith: not to believe proven things, to presume unproven things.

To that perversity I also oppose this: if these things that are happening exactly as written are not the very things predicted, then those things that ought not to happen exactly as written — lest they also be endangered by the example of these — must be excluded. For one thing is in the words, another in the events. And it remains that predicted things are not recognized when they happen, if they are predicted otherwise than they come to pass. And how will those things be believed which are not predicted, because they are not predicted in the way they happen? So heretics believe the things predicted not as they have been proven by believing, but the things that are not predicted at all.