“While” says she, “we were still with the persecutors, and my father, for the sake of his affection for me, was persisting in seeking to turn me away, and to cast me down from the faith,—‘Father,’ said I, ‘do you see, let us say, this vessel lying here to be a little pitcher, or something else?’ And he said, ‘I see it to be so.’ And I replied to him, ‘Can it be called by any other name than what it is?’ And he said, ‘No.’ ‘Neither can I call myself anything else than what I am, a Christian.’ Then my father, provoked at this saying, threw himself upon me, as if he would tear my eyes out.

Roberts, Alexander, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, eds. 1885. “The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas.” In Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian, translated by R. E. Wallis, 3:699–700. The Ante-Nicene Fathers. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company.