Tertullian — on Rom 1:1 (On Modesty)

“Come, now, if he had not "wholly saddened" so many persons in the first Epistle; if he had "rebuked" none, had "terrified" none; if he had "smitten" the incestuous man alone; if, for his cause, he had sent none into panic, had struck (no) "inflated" one with consternation,-would it not be better for you to suspect, and more believing for you to argue, that rather some one far different had been in the same predicament at that time among the Corinthians; so that, rebuked, and terrified, and already wounded with mourning, he therefore-the moderate nature of his fault permitting it-subsequently received pardon, than that you should interpret that (pardon as granted) to an incestuous fornicator? For this you had been bound to read, even if not in an Epistle, yet impressed upon the very character of the apostle, by (his) modesty more clearly than by the instrumentality of a pen: not to steep, to wit, Paul, the "apostle of Christ," the "teacher of the nations in faith and verity," the "vessel of election," the founder of Churches, the censor of discipline, (in the guilt of) levity so great as that he should either have condemned rashly one whom he was presently to absolve, or else rashly absolved one whom he had not rashly condemned, albeit on the ground of that fornication which is the result of simple immodesty, not to say on the ground of incestuous nuptials and impious voluptuousness and parricidal lust,-(lust) which he had refused to compare even with (the lusts of) the nations, for fear it should be set down to the account of custom; (lust) on which he would sit in judgment though absent, for fear the culprit should "gain the time; " (lust) which he had condemned after calling to his aid even "the Lord's power," for fear the sentence should seem human.”