other · 212 · Carthage
Scapula was proconsul of Africa and was putting Christians to death, and Tertullian wrote to him directly and in public. The argument is partly a warning drawn from precedent — he lists governors who had persecuted and what became of them — and partly a piece of arithmetic delivered without heat: if you mean to do this properly, consider what Carthage itself will have to suffer, decimated, when it finds its own kindred and companions among the condemned. He also makes the case that a man cannot be compelled to a religion he does not hold, which is one of the earliest statements of the thing in any language. The letter dates itself: it refers to a solar eclipse seen at Utica and to Scapula's own proconsulship, which puts it in 212, and nothing datable of his survives from after it.
To tell a proconsul who was executing Christians exactly what he was taking on.
The last datable thing he wrote, and the least theological.