II

The Five Books Against Marcion

The Five Books Against Marcion

Book I

Wherein is described the god of Marcion. He is shown to be utterly wanting in all the attributes of the true God

Chapter I

Preface. Reason for a New Work. Pontus Lends Its Rough Character to the Heretic Marcion, a Native. His Heresy Characterized in a Brief Invective

Whatever in times past we have wrought in opposition to Marcion, is from the present moment no longer to be accounted of. It is a new work which we are undertaking in lieu of the old one. My original tract, as too hurriedly composed, I had subsequently superseded by a fuller treatise. This latter I lost, before it was completely published, by the fraud of a person who was then a brother, but became afterwards an apostate. He, as it happened, had transcribed a portion of it, full of mistakes, and then published it. The necessity thus arose for an amended work; and the occasion of the new edition induced me to make a considerable addition to the treatise. This present text, therefore, of my work—which is the third as superseding the second, but henceforward to be considered the first instead of the third—renders a preface necessary to this issue of the tract itself that no reader may be perplexed, if he should by chance fall in with the various forms of it which are scattered about.

The Euxine Sea, as it is called, is self-contradictory in its nature, and deceptive in its name. As you would not account it hospitable from its situation, so is it severed from our more civilised waters by a certain stigma which attaches to its barbarous character. The fiercest nations inhabit it, if indeed it can be called habitation, when life is passed in waggons. They have no fixed abode; their life has no germ of civilization; they indulge their libidinous desires without restraint, and for the most part naked. Moreover, when they gratify secret lust, they hang up their quivers on their car-yokes, to warn off the curious and rash observer. Thus without a blush do they prostitute their weapons of war. The dead bodies of their parents they cut up with their sheep, and devour at their feasts. They who have not died so as to become food for others, are thought to have died an accursed death. Their women are not by their sex softened to modesty. They uncover the breast, from which they suspend their battle-axes, and prefer warfare to marriage. In their climate, too, there is the same rude nature. The day-time is never clear, the sun never cheerful; the sky is uniformly cloudy; the whole year is wintry; the only wind that blows is the angry North. Waters melt only by fires; their rivers flow not by reason of the ice; their mountains are covered with heaps of snow. All things are torpid, all stiff with cold. Nothing there has the glow of life, but that ferocity which has given to scenic plays their stories of the sacrifices of the Taurians, and the loves of the Colchians, and the torments of the Caucasus. Nothing, however, in Pontus is so barbarous and sad as the fact that Marcion was born there, fouler than any Scythian, more roving than the waggon-life of the Sarmatian, more inhuman than the Massagete, more audacious than an Amazon, darker than the cloud, (of Pontus) colder than its winter, more brittle than its ice, more deceitful than the Ister, more craggy than Caucasus. Nay more, the true Prometheus, Almighty God, is mangled by Marcion’s blasphemies. Marcion is more savage than even the beasts of that barbarous region. For what beaver was ever a greater emasculator than he who has abolished the nuptial bond? What Pontic mouse ever had such gnawing powers as he who has gnawed the Gospels to pieces? Verily, O Euxine, thou hast produced a monster more credible to philosophers than to Christians. For the cynic Diogenes used to go about, lantern in hand, at mid-day to find a man; whereas Marcion has quenched the light of his faith, and so lost the God whom he had found. His disciples will not deny that his first faith he held along with ourselves; a letter of his own proves this; so that for the future a heretic may from his case be designated as one who, forsaking that which was prior, afterwards chose out for himself that which was not in times past. For in as far as what was delivered in times past and from the beginning will be held as truth, in so far will that be accounted heresy which is brought in later. But another brief treatise will maintain this position against heretics, who ought to be refuted even without a consideration of their doctrines, on the ground that they are heretical by reason of the novelty of their opinions. Now, so far as any controversy is to be admitted, I will for the time (lest our compendious principle of novelty, being called in on all occasions to our aid, should be imputed to want of confidence) begin with setting forth our adversary’s rule of belief, that it may escape no one what our main contention is to be.

Chapter II

Marcion, Aided by Cerdon, Teaches a Duality of Gods; How He Constructed This Heresy of an Evil and a Good God

The heretic of Pontus introduces two Gods, like the twin Symplegades of his own shipwreck: One whom it was impossible to deny, i.e. our Creator; and one whom he will never be able to prove, i.e. his own god. The unhappy man gained the first idea of his conceit from the simple passage of our Lord’s saying, which has reference to human beings and not divine ones, wherein He disposes of those examples of a good tree and a corrupt one; how that “the good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit, neither the corrupt tree good fruit.” Which means, that an honest mind and good faith cannot produce evil deeds, any more than an evil disposition can produce good deeds. Now (like many other persons now-a-days, especially those who have an heretical proclivity), while morbidly brooding over the question of the origin of evil, his perception became blunted by the very irregularity of his researches; and when he found the Creator declaring, “I am He that createth evil,” inasmuch as he had already concluded from other arguments, which are satisfactory to every perverted mind, that God is the author of evil, so he now applied to the Creator the figure of the corrupt tree bringing forth evil fruit, that is, moral evil, and then presumed that there ought to be another god, after the analogy of the good tree producing its good fruit. Accordingly, finding in Christ a different disposition, as it were—one of a simple and pure benevolence—differing from the Creator, he readily argued that in his Christ had been revealed a new and strange divinity; and then with a little leaven he leavened the whole lump of the faith, flavouring it with the acidity of his own heresy.

He had, moreover, in one Cerdon an abettor of this blasphemy,—a circumstance which made them the more readily think that they saw most clearly their two gods, blind though they were; for, in truth, they had not seen the one God with soundness of faith. To men of diseased vision even one lamp looks like many. One of his gods, therefore, whom he was obliged to acknowledge, he destroyed by defaming his attributes in the matter of evil; the other, whom he laboured so hard to devise, he constructed, laying his foundation in the principle of good. In what articles he arranged these natures, we show by our own refutations of them.

Chapter III

The Unity of God. He is the Supreme Being, and There Cannot Be a Second Supreme

The principal, and indeed the whole, contention lies in the point of number: whether two Gods may be admitted, by poetic licence (if they must be), or pictorial fancy, or by the third process, as we must now add, of heretical pravity. But the Christian verity has distinctly declared this principle, “God is not, if He is not one;” because we more properly believe that that has no existence which is not as it ought to be. In order, however, that you may know that God is one, ask what God is, and you will find Him to be not otherwise than one. So far as a human being can form a definition of God, I adduce one which the conscience of all men will also acknowledge,—that God is the great Supreme existing in eternity, unbegotten, unmade without beginning, without end. For such a condition as this must needs be ascribed to that eternity which makes God to be the great Supreme, because for such a purpose as this is this very attribute in God; and so on as to the other qualities: so that God is the great Supreme in form and in reason, and in might and in power. Now, since all are agreed on this point (because nobody will deny that God is in some sense the great Supreme, except the man who shall be able to pronounce the opposite opinion, that God is but some inferior being, in order that he may deny God by robbing Him of an attribute of God), what must be the condition of the great Supreme Himself? Surely it must be that nothing is equal to Him, i.e. that there is no other great supreme; because, if there were, He would have an equal; and if He had an equal, He would be no longer the great Supreme, now that the condition and (so to say) our law, which permits nothing to be equal to the great Supreme, is subverted. That Being, then, which is the great Supreme, must needs be unique, by having no equal, and so not ceasing to be the great Supreme. Therefore He will not otherwise exist than by the condition whereby He has His being; that is, by His absolute uniqueness. Since, then, God is the great Supreme, our Christian verity has rightly declared, “God is not, if He is not one.” Not as if we doubted His being God, by saying, He is not, if He is not one; but because we define Him, in whose being we thoroughly believe, to be that without which He is not God; that is to say, the great Supreme. But then the great Supreme must needs be unique. This Unique Being, therefore, will be God—not otherwise God than as the great Supreme; and not otherwise the great Supreme than as having no equal; and not otherwise having no equal than as being Unique. Whatever other god, then, you may introduce, you will at least be unable to maintain his divinity under any other guise, than by ascribing to him too the property of Godhead—both eternity and supremacy over all. How, therefore, can two great Supremes co-exist, when this is the attribute of the Supreme Being, to have no equal,—an attribute which belongs to One alone, and can by no means exist in two?

Chapter IV

Defence of the Divine Unity Against Objection. No Analogy Between Human Powers and God’s Sovereignty. The Objection Otherwise Untenable, for Why Stop at Two Gods?

But some one may contend that two great Supremes may exist, distinct and separate in their own departments; and may even adduce, as an example, the kingdoms of the world, which, though they are so many in number, are yet supreme in their several regions. Such a man will suppose that human circumstances are always comparable with divine ones. Now, if this mode of reasoning be at all tolerable, what is to prevent our introducing, I will not say a third god or a fourth, but as many as there are kings of the earth? Now it is God that is in question, whose main property it is to admit of no comparison with Himself. Nature itself, therefore, if not an Isaiah, or rather God speaking by Isaiah, will deprecatingly ask, “To whom will ye liken me?” Human circumstances may perhaps be compared with divine ones, but they may not be with God. God is one thing, and what belongs to God is another thing. Once more: you who apply the example of a king, as a great supreme, take care that you can use it properly. For although a king is supreme on his throne next to God, he is still inferior to God; and when he is compared with God, he will be dislodged from that great supremacy which is transferred to God. Now, this being the case, how will you employ in a comparison with God an object as your example, which fails in all the purposes which belong to a comparison? Why, when supreme power among kings cannot evidently be multifarious, but only unique and singular, is an exception made in the case of Him (of all others) who is King of kings, and (from the exceeding greatness of His power, and the subjection of all other ranks to Him) the very summit, as it were, of dominion? But even in the case of rulers of that other form of government, where they one by one preside in a union of authority, if with their petty prerogatives of royalty, so to say, they be brought on all points into such a comparison with one another as shall make it clear which of them is superior in the essential features and powers of royalty, it must needs follow that the supreme majesty will redound to one alone,—all the others being gradually, by the issue of the comparison, removed and excluded from the supreme authority. Thus, although, when spread out in several hands, supreme authority seems to be multifarious, yet in its own powers, nature, and condition, it is unique. It follows, then, that if two gods are compared, as two kings and two supreme authorities, the concentration of authority must necessarily, according to the meaning of the comparison, be conceded to one of the two; because it is clear from his own superiority that he is the supreme, his rival being now vanquished, and proved to be not the greater, however great. Now, from this failure of his rival, the other is unique in power, possessing a certain solitude, as it were, in his singular pre-eminence. The inevitable conclusion at which we arrive, then, on this point is this: either we must deny that God is the great Supreme, which no wise man will allow himself to do; or say that God has no one else with whom to share His power.

Chapter V

The Dual Principle Falls to the Ground; Plurality of Gods, of Whatever Number, More Consistent. Absurdity and Injury to Piety Resulting from Marcion’s Duality

But on what principle did Marcion confine his supreme powers to two? I would first ask, If there be two, why not more? Because if number be compatible with the substance of Deity, the richer you make it in number the better. Valentinus was more consistent and more liberal; for he, having once imagined two deities, Bythos and Sige, poured forth a swarm of divine essences, a brood of no less than thirty AEons, like the sow of AEneas. Now, whatever principle refuses to admit several supreme beings, the same must reject even two, for there is plurality in the very lowest number after one. After unity, number commences. So, again, the same principle which could admit two could admit more. After two, multitude begins, now that one is exceeded. In short, we feel that reason herself expressly forbids the belief in more gods than one, because the self-same rule lays down one God and not two, which declares that God must be a Being to which, as the great Supreme, nothing is equal; and that Being to which nothing is equal must, moreover, be unique. But further, what can be the use or advantage in supposing two supreme beings, two co-ordinate powers? What numerical difference could there be when two equals differ not from one? For that thing which is the same in two is one. Even if there were several equals, all would be just as much one, because, as equals, they would not differ one from another. So, if of two beings neither differs from the other, since both of them are on the supposition supreme, both being gods, neither of them is more excellent than the other; and so, having no pre-eminence, their numerical distinction has no reason in it. Number, moreover, in the Deity ought to be consistent with the highest reason, or else His worship would be brought into doubt. For consider now, if, when I saw two Gods before me (who, being both Supreme Beings, were equal to each other), I were to worship them both, what should I be doing? I should be much afraid that the abundance of my homage would be deemed superstition rather than piety. Because, as both of them are so equal and are both included in either of the two, I might serve them both acceptably in only one; and by this very means I should attest their equality and unity, provided that I worshipped them mutually the one in the other, because in the one both are present to me. If I were to worship one of the two, I should be equally conscious of seeming to pour contempt on the uselessness of a numerical distinction, which was superfluous, because it indicated no difference; in other words, I should think it the safer course to worship neither of these two Gods than one of them with some scruple of conscience, or both of them to none effect.

Chapter VI

Marcion Untrue to His Theory. He Pretends that His Gods are Equal, But He Really Makes Them Diverse. Then, Allowing Their Divinity, Denies This Diversity

Thus far our discussion seems to imply that Marcion makes his two gods equal. For while we have been maintaining that God ought to be believed as the one only great Supreme Being, excluding from Him every possibility of equality, we have treated of these topics on the assumption of two equal Gods; but nevertheless, by teaching that no equals can exist according to the law of the Supreme Being, we have sufficiently affirmed the impossibility that two equals should exist. For the rest, however, we know full well that Marcion makes his gods unequal: one judicial, harsh, mighty in war; the other mild, placid, and simply good and excellent. Let us with similar care consider also this aspect of the question, whether diversity (in the Godhead) can at any rate contain two, since equality therein failed to do so. Here again the same rule about the great Supreme will protect us, inasmuch as it settles the entire condition of the Godhead. Now, challenging, and in a certain sense arresting the meaning of our adversary, who does not deny that the Creator is God, I most fairly object against him that he has no room for any diversity in his gods, because, having once confessed that they are on a par, he cannot now pronounce them different; not indeed that human beings may not be very different under the same designation, but because the Divine Being can be neither said nor believed to be God, except as the great Supreme. Since, therefore, he is obliged to acknowledge that the God whom he does not deny is the great Supreme, it is inadmissible that he should predicate of the Supreme Being such a diminution as should subject Him to another Supreme Being. For He ceases (to be Supreme), if He becomes subject to any. Besides, it is not the characteristic of God to cease from any attribute of His divinity—say, from His supremacy. For at this rate the supremacy would be endangered even in Marcion’s more powerful god, if it were capable of depreciation in the Creator. When, therefore, two gods are pronounced to be two great Supremes, it must needs follow that neither of them is greater or less than the other, neither of them loftier or lowlier than the other. If you deny him to be God whom you call inferior, you deny the supremacy of this inferior being. But when you confessed both gods to be divine, you confessed them both to be supreme. Nothing will you be able to take away from either of them; nothing will you be able to add. By allowing their divinity, you have denied their diversity.

Chapter VII

Other Beings Besides God are in Scripture Called God. This Objection Frivolous, for It is Not a Question of Names. The Divine Essence is the Thing at Issue. Heresy, in Its General Terms, Thus Far Treated

But this argument you will try to shake with an objection from the name of God, by alleging that that name is a vague one, and applied to other beings also; as it is written, “God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; He judgeth among the gods.” And again, “I have said, Ye are gods.” As therefore the attribute of supremacy would be inappropriate to these, although they are called gods, so is it to the Creator. This is a foolish objection; and my answer to it is, that its author fails to consider that quite as strong an objection might be urged against the (superior) god of Marcion: he too is called god, but is not on that account proved to be divine, as neither are angels nor men, the Creator’s handiwork. If an identity of names affords a presumption in support of equality of condition, how often do worthless menials strut insolently in the names of kings—your Alexanders, Caesars, and Pompeys! This fact, however, does not detract from the real attributes of the royal persons. Nay more, the very idols of the Gentiles are called gods. Yet not one of them is divine because he is called a god. It is not, therefore, for the name of god, for its sound or its written form, that I am claiming the supremacy in the Creator, but for the essence to which the name belongs; and when I find that essence alone is unbegotten and unmade—alone eternal, and the maker of all things—it is not to its name, but its state, not to its designation, but its condition, that I ascribe and appropriate the attribute of the supremacy. And so, because the essence to which I ascribe it has come to be called god, you suppose that I ascribe it to the name, because I must needs use a name to express the essence, of which indeed that Being consists who is called God, and who is accounted the great Supreme because of His essence, not from His name. In short, Marcion himself, when he imputes this character to his god, imputes it to the nature, not to the word. That supremacy, then, which we ascribe to God in consideration of His essence, and not because of His name, ought, as we maintain, to be equal in both the beings who consist of that substance for which the name of God is given; because, in as far as they are called gods (i.e. supreme beings, on the strength, of course, of their unbegotten and eternal, and therefore great and supreme essence), in so far the attribute of being the great Supreme cannot be regarded as less or worse in one than in another great Supreme. If the happiness, and sublimity, and perfection of the Supreme Being shall hold good of Marcion’s god, it will equally so of ours; and if not of ours, it will equally not hold of Marcion’s. Therefore two supreme beings will be neither equal nor unequal: not equal, because the principle which we have just expounded, that the Supreme Being admits of no comparison with Himself, forbids it; not unequal, because another principle meets us respecting the Supreme Being, that He is capable of no diminution. So, Marcion, you are caught in the midst of your own Pontic tide. The waves of truth overwhelm you on every side. You can neither set up equal gods nor unequal ones. For there are not two; so far as the question of number is properly concerned. Although the whole matter of the two gods is at issue, we have yet confined our discussion to certain bounds, within which we shall now have to contend about separate peculiarities.

Chapter VIII

Specific Points. The Novelty of Marcion’s God Fatal to His Pretensions. God is from Everlasting, He Cannot Be in Any Wise New

In the first place, how arrogantly do the Marcionites build up their stupid system, bringing forward a new god, as if we were ashamed of the old one! So schoolboys are proud of their new shoes, but their old master beats their strutting vanity out of them. Now when I hear of a new god, who, in the old world and in the old time and under the old god was unknown and unheard of; whom, (accounted as no one through such long centuries back, and ancient in men’s very ignorance of him), a certain “Jesus Christ,” and none else revealed; whom Christ revealed, they say—Christ himself new, according to them, even, in ancient names—I feel grateful for this conceit of theirs. For by its help I shall at once be able to prove the heresy of their tenet of a new deity. It will turn out to be such a novelty as has made gods even for the heathen by some new and yet again and ever new title for each several deification. What new god is there, except a false one? Not even Saturn will be proved to be a god by all his ancient fame, because it was a novel pretence which some time or other produced even him, when it first gave him godship. On the contrary, living and perfect Deity has its origin neither in novelty nor in antiquity, but in its own true nature. Eternity has no time. It is itself all time. It acts; it cannot then suffer. It cannot be born, therefore it lacks age. God, if old, forfeits the eternity that is to come; if new, the eternity which is past. The newness bears witness to a beginning; the oldness threatens an end. God, moreover, is as independent of beginning and end as He is of time, which is only the arbiter and measurer of a beginning and an end.

Chapter IX

Marcion’s Gnostic Pretensions Vain, for the True God is Neither Unknown Nor Uncertain. The Creator, Whom He Owns to Be God, Alone Supplies an Induction, by Which to Judge of the True God

Now I know full well by what perceptive faculty they boast of their new god; even their knowledge. It is, however, this very discovery of a novel thing—so striking to common minds—as well as the natural gratification which is inherent in novelty, that I wanted to refute, and thence further to challenge a proof of this unknown god. For him whom by their knowledge they present to us as new, they prove to have been unknown previous to that knowledge. Let us keep within the strict limits and measure of our argument. Convince me there could have been an unknown god. I find, no doubt, that altars have been lavished on unknown gods; that, however, is the idolatry of Athens. And on uncertain gods; but that, too, is only Roman superstition. Furthermore, uncertain gods are not well known, because no certainty about them exists; and because of this uncertainty they are therefore unknown. Now, which of these two titles shall we carve for Marcion’s god? Both, I suppose, as for a being who is still uncertain, and was formerly unknown. For inasmuch as the Creator, being a known God, caused him to be unknown; so, as being a certain God, he made him to be uncertain. But I will not go so far out of my way, as to say: If God was unknown and concealed, He was overshadowed in such a region of darkness, as must have been itself new and unknown, and be even now likewise uncertain—some immense region indeed, one undoubtedly greater than the God whom it concealed. But I will briefly state my subject, and afterwards most fully pursue it, promising that God neither could have been, nor ought to have been, unknown. Could not have been, because of His greatness; ought not to have been, because of His goodness, especially as He is (supposed, by Marcion) more excellent in both these attributes than our Creator. Since, however, I observe that in some points the proof of every new and heretofore unknown god ought, for its test, to be compared to the form of the Creator, it will be my duty first of all to show that this very course is adopted by me in a settled plan, such as I might with greater confidence use in support of my argument. Before every other consideration, (let me ask) how it happens that you, who acknowledge the Creator to be God, and from your knowledge confess Him to be prior in existence, do not know that the other god should be examined by you in exactly the same course of investigation which has taught you how to find out a god in the first case? Every prior thing has furnished the rule for the latter. In the present question two gods are propounded, the unknown and the known. Concerning the known there is no question. It is plain that He exists, else He would not be known. The dispute is concerning the unknown god. Possibly he has no existence; because, if he had, he would have been known. Now that which, so long as it is unknown, is an object to be questioned, is an uncertainty so long as it remains thus questionable; and all the while it is in this state of uncertainty, it possibly has no existence at all. You have a god who is so far certain, as he is known; and uncertain, as unknown. This being the case, does it appear to you to be justly defensible, that uncertainties should be submitted for proof to the rule, and form, and standard of certainties? Now, if to the subject before us, which is in itself full of uncertainty thus far, there be applied also arguments derived from uncertainties, we shall be involved in such a series of questions arising out of our treatment of these same uncertain arguments, as shall by reason of their uncertainty be dangerous to the faith, and we shall drift into those insoluble questions which the apostle has no affection for. If, again, in things wherein there is found a diversity of condition, they shall prejudge, as no doubt they will, uncertain, doubtful, and intricate points, by the certain, undoubted, and clear sides of their rule, it will probably happen that (those points) will not be submitted to the standard of certainties for determination, as being freed by the diversity of their essential condition from the application of such a standard in all other respects. As, therefore, it is two gods which are the subject of our proposition, their essential condition must be the same in both. For, as concerns their divinity, they are both unbegotten, unmade, eternal. This will be their essential condition. All other points Marcion himself seems to have made light of, for he has placed them in a different category. They are subsequent in the order of treatment; indeed, they will not have to be brought into the discussion, since on the essential condition there is no dispute. Now there is this absence of our dispute, because they are both of them gods. Those things, therefore, whose community of condition is evident, will, when brought to a test on the ground of that common condition, have to be submitted, although they are uncertain, to the standard of those certainties with which they are classed in the community of their essential condition, so as on this account to share also in their manner of proof. I shall therefore contend with the greatest confidence that he is not God who is to-day uncertain, because he has been hitherto unknown; for of whomsoever it is evident that he is God, from this very fact it is (equally) evident, that he never has been unknown, and therefore never uncertain.

Chapter X

The Creator Was Known as the True God from the First by His Creation. Acknowledged by the Soul and Conscience of Man Before He Was Revealed by Moses

For indeed, as the Creator of all things, He was from the beginning discovered equally with them, they having been themselves manifested that He might become known as God. For although Moses, some long while afterwards, seems to have been the first to introduce the knowledge of the God of the universe in the temple of his writings, yet the birthday of that knowledge must not on that account be reckoned from the Pentateuch. For the volume of Moses does not at all initiate the knowledge of the Creator, but from the first gives out that it is to be traced from Paradise and Adam, not from Egypt and Moses. The greater part, therefore, of the human race, although they knew not even the name of Moses, much less his writings, yet knew the God of Moses; and even when idolatry overshadowed the world with its extreme prevalence, men still spoke of Him separately by His own name as God, and the God of gods, and said, “If God grant,” and, “As God pleases,” and, “I commend you to God.” Reflect, then, whether they knew Him, of whom they testify that He can do all things. To none of the writings of Moses do they owe this. The soul was before prophecy. From the beginning the knowledge of God is the dowry of the soul, one and the same amongst the Egyptians, and the Syrians, and the tribes of Pontus. For their souls call the God of the Jews their God. Do not, O barbarian heretic, put Abraham before the world. Even if the Creator had been the God of one family, He was yet not later than your god; even in Pontus was He known before him. Take then your standard from Him who came first: from the Certain (must be judged) the uncertain; from the Known the unknown. Never shall God be hidden, never shall God be wanting. Always shall He be understood, always be heard, nay even seen, in whatsoever way He shall wish. God has for His witnesses this whole being of ours, and this universe wherein we dwell. He is thus, because not unknown, proved to be both God and the only One, although another still tries hard to make out his claim.

Chapter XI

The Evidence for God External to Him; But the External Creation Which Yields This Evidence is Really Not Extraneous, for All Things are God’s. Marcion’s God, Having Nothing to Show for Himself, No God at All. Marcion’s Scheme Absurdly Defective, Not Furnishing Evidence for His New God’s Existence, Which Should at Least Be Able to Compete with the Full Evidence of the Creator

And justly so, they say. For who is there that is less well known by his own (inherent) qualities than by strange ones? No one. Well, I keep to this statement. How could anything be strange to God, to whom, if He were personally existent, nothing would be strange? For this is the attribute of God, that all things are His, and all things belong to Him; or else this question would not so readily be heard from us: What has He to do with things strange to Him?—a point which will be more fully noticed in its proper place. It is now sufficient to observe, that no one is proved to exist to whom nothing is proved to belong. For as the Creator is shown to be God, God without any doubt, from the fact that all things are His, and nothing is strange to Him; so the rival god is seen to be no god, from the circumstance that nothing is his, and all things are therefore strange to him. Since, then, the universe belongs to the Creator, I see no room for any other god. All things are full of their Author, and occupied by Him. If in created beings there be any portion of space anywhere void of Deity, the void will be of a false deity clearly. By falsehood the truth is made clear. Why cannot the vast crowd of false gods somewhere find room for Marcion’s god? This, therefore, I insist upon, from the character of the Creator, that God must have been known from the works of some world peculiarly His own, both in its human constituents, and the rest of its organic life; when even the error of the world has presumed to call gods those men whom it sometimes acknowledges, on the ground that in every such case something is seen which provides for the uses and advantages of life. Accordingly, this also was believed from the character of God to be a divine function; namely, to teach or point out what is convenient and needful in human concerns. So completely has the authority which has given influence to a false divinity been borrowed from that source, whence it had previously flowed forth to the true one. One stray vegetable at least Marcion’s god ought to have produced as his own; so might he be preached up as a new Triptolemus. Or else state some reason which shall be worthy of a God, why he, supposing him to exist, created nothing; because he must, on supposition of his existence, have been a creator, on that very principle on which it is clear to us that our God is no otherwise existent, than as having been the Creator of this universe of ours. For, once for all, the rule will hold good, that they cannot both acknowledge the Creator to be God, and also prove him divine whom they wish to be equally believed in as God, except they adjust him to the standard of Him whom they and all men hold to be God; which is this, that whereas no one doubts the Creator to be God on the express ground of His having made the universe, so, on the selfsame ground, no one ought to believe that he also is God who has made nothing—except, indeed, some good reason be forthcoming. And this must needs be limited to one of two: he was either unwilling to create, or else unable. There is no third reason. Now, that he was unable, is a reason unworthy of God. Whether to have been unwilling to be a worthy one, I want to inquire. Tell me, Marcion, did your god wish himself to be recognised at any time or not? With what other purpose did he come down from heaven, and preach, and having suffered rise again from the dead, if it were not that he might be acknowledged? And, doubtless, since he was acknowledged, he willed it. For no circumstance could have happened to him, if he had been unwilling. What indeed tended so greatly to the knowledge of himself, as his appearing in the humiliation of the flesh,—a degradation all the lower indeed if the flesh were only illusory? For it was all the more shameful if he, who brought on himself the Creator’s curse by hanging on a tree, only pretended the assumption of a bodily substance. A far nobler foundation might he have laid for the knowledge of himself in some evidences of a creation of his own, especially when he had to become known in opposition to Him in whose territory he had remained unknown by any works from the beginning. For how happens it that the Creator, although unaware, as the Marcionites aver, of any god being above Himself, and who used to declare even with an oath that He existed alone, should have guarded by such mighty works the knowledge of Himself, about which, on the assumption of His being alone without a rival, He might have spared Himself all care; while the Superior God, knowing all the while how well furnished in power His inferior rival was, should have made no provision at all towards getting Himself acknowledged? Whereas He ought to have produced works more illustrious and exalted still, in order that He might, after the Creator’s standard, both be acknowledged as God from His works, and even by nobler deeds show Himself to be more potent and more gracious than the Creator.

Chapter XII

Impossibility of Acknowledging God Without This External Evidence Of His Existence. Marcion’s Rejection of Such Evidence for His God Savours of Impudence and Malignity

But even if we were able to allow that he exists, we should yet be bound to argue that he is without a cause. For he who had nothing (to show for himself as proof of his existence), would be without a cause, since (such) proof is the whole cause that there exists some person to whom the proof belongs. Now, in as far as nothing ought to be without a cause, that is, without a proof (because if it be without a cause, it is all one as if it be not, not having the very proof which is the cause of a thing), in so far shall I more worthily believe that God does not exist, than that He exists without a cause. For he is without a cause who has not a cause by reason of not having a proof. God, however, ought not to be without a cause, that is to say, without a proof. Thus, as often as I show that He exists without a cause, although (I allow that) He exists, I do really determine this, that He does not exist; because, if He had existed, He could not have existed altogether without a cause. So, too, even in regard to faith itself, I say that he seeks to obtain it without cause from man, who is otherwise accustomed to believe in God from the idea he gets of Him from the testimony of His works: (without cause, I repeat,) because he has provided no such proof as that whereby man has acquired the knowledge of God. For although most persons believe in Him, they do not believe at once by unaided reason, without having some token of Deity in works worthy of God. And so upon this ground of inactivity and lack of works he is guilty both of impudence and malignity: of impudence, in aspiring after a belief which is not due to him, and for which he has provided no foundation; of malignity, in having brought many persons under the charge of unbelief by furnishing to them no groundwork for their faith.

Chapter XIII

The Marcionites Depreciate the Creation, Which, However, is a Worthy Witness of God. This Worthiness Illustrated by References to the Heathen Philosophers, Who Were Apt to Invest the Several Parts of Creation with Divine Attributes

While we are expelling from this rank (of Deity) a god who has no evidence to show for himself which is so proper and God-worthy as the testimony of the Creator, Marcion’s most shameless followers with haughty impertinence fall upon the Creator’s works to destroy them. To be sure, say they, the world is a grand work, worthy of a God. Then is the Creator not at all a God? By all means He is God. Therefore the world is not unworthy of God, for God has made nothing unworthy of Himself; although it was for man, and not for Himself, that He made the world, (and) although every work is less than its maker. And yet, if to have been the author of our creation, such as it is, be unworthy of God, how much more unworthy of Him is it to have created absolutely nothing at all!—not even a production which, although unworthy, might yet have encouraged the hope of some better attempt. To say somewhat, then, concerning the alleged unworthiness of this world’s fabric, to which among the Greeks also is assigned a name of ornament and grace, not of sordidness, those very professors of wisdom, from whose genius every heresy derives its spirit, called the said unworthy elements divine; as Thales did water, Heraclitus fire, Anaximenes air, Anaximander all the heavenly bodies, Strato the sky and earth, Zeno the air and ether, and Plato the stars, which he calls a fiery kind of gods; whilst concerning the world, when they considered indeed its magnitude, and strength, and power, and honour, and glory,—the abundance, too, the regularity, and law of those individual elements which contribute to the production, the nourishment, the ripening, and the reproduction of all things,—the majority of the philosophers hesitated to assign a beginning and an end to the said world, lest its constituent elements, great as they undoubtedly are, should fail to be regarded as divine, which are objects of worship with the Persian magi, the Egyptian hierophants, and the Indian gymnosophists. The very superstition of the crowd, inspired by the common idolatry, when ashamed of the names and fables of their ancient dead borne by their idols, has recourse to the interpretation of natural objects, and so with much ingenuity cloaks its own disgrace, figuratively reducing Jupiter to a heated substance, and Juno to an aerial one (according to the literal sense of the Greek words); Vesta, in like manner, to fire, and the Muses to waters, and the Great Mother to the earth, mowed as to its crops, ploughed up with lusty arms, and watered with baths. Thus Osiris also, whenever he is buried, and looked for to come to life again, and with joy recovered, is an emblem of the regularity wherewith the fruits of the ground return, and the elements recover life, and the year comes round; as also the lions of Mithras are philosophical sacraments of arid and scorched nature. It is, indeed, enough for me that natural elements, foremost in site and state, should have been more readily regarded as divine than as unworthy of God. I will, however, come down to humbler objects. A single floweret from the hedgerow, I say not from the meadows; a single little shellfish from any sea, I say not from the Red Sea; a single stray wing of a moorfowl, I say nothing of the peacock,—will, I presume, prove to you that the Creator was but a sorry artificer!

Chapter XIV

All Portions of Creation Attest the Excellence of the Creator, Whom Marcion Vilifies. His Inconsistency Herein Exposed. Marcion’s Own God Did Not Hesitate to Use the Creator’s Works in Instituting His Own Religion

Now, when you make merry with those minuter animals, which their glorious Maker has purposely endued with a profusion of instincts and resources,—thereby teaching us that greatness has its proofs in lowliness, just as (according to the apostle) there is power even in infirmity—imitate, if you can, the cells of the bee, the hills of the ant, the webs of the spider, and the threads of the silkworm; endure, too, if you know how, those very creatures which infest your couch and house, the poisonous ejections of the blister-beetle, the spikes of the fly, and the gnat’s sheath and sting. What of the greater animals, when the small ones so affect you with pleasure or pain, that you cannot even in their case despise their Creator? Finally, take a circuit round your own self; survey man within and without. Even this handiwork of our God will be pleasing to you, inasmuch as your own lord, that better god, loved it so well, and for your sake was at the pains of descending from the third heaven to these poverty-stricken elements, and for the same reason was actually crucified in this sorry apartment of the Creator. Indeed, up to the present time, he has not disdained the water which the Creator made wherewith he washes his people; nor the oil with which he anoints them; nor that union of honey and milk wherewithal he gives them the nourishment of children; nor the bread by which he represents his own proper body, thus requiring in his very sacraments the “beggarly elements” of the Creator. You, however, are a disciple above his master, and a servant above his lord; you have a higher reach of discernment than his; you destroy what he requires. I wish to examine whether you are at least honest in this, so as to have no longing for those things which you destroy. You are an enemy to the sky, and yet you are glad to catch its freshness in your houses. You disparage the earth, although the elemental parent of your own flesh, as if it were your undoubted enemy, and yet you extract from it all its fatness for your food. The sea, too, you reprobate, but are continually using its produce, which you account the more sacred diet. If I should offer you a rose, you will not disdain its Maker. You hypocrite, however much of abstinence you use to show yourself a Marcionite, that is, a repudiator of your Maker (for if the world displeased you, such abstinence ought to have been affected by you as a martyrdom), you will have to associate yourself with the Creator’s material production, into what element soever you shall be dissolved. How hard is this obstinacy of yours! You vilify the things in which you both live and die.

Chapter XV

The Lateness of the Revelation of Marcion’s God. The Question of the Place Occupied by the Rival Deities. Instead of Two Gods, Marcion Really (Although, as It Would Seem, Unconsciously) Had Nine Gods in His System

After all, or, if you like, before all, since you have said that he has a creation of his own, and his own world, and his own sky; we shall see, indeed, about that third heaven, when we come to discuss even your own apostle. Meanwhile, whatever is the (created) substance, it ought at any rate to have made its appearance in company with its own god. But now, how happens it that the Lord has been revealed since the twelfth year of Tiberius Caesar, while no creation of His at all has been discovered up to the fifteenth of the Emperor Severus; although, as being more excellent than the paltry works of the Creator, it should certainly have ceased to conceal itself, when its lord and author no longer lies hid? I ask, therefore, if it was unable to manifest itself in this world, how did its Lord appear in this world? If this world received its Lord, why was it not able to receive the created substance, unless perchance it was greater than its Lord? But now there arises a question about place, having reference both to the world above and to the God thereof. For, behold, if he has his own world beneath him, above the Creator, he has certainly fixed it in a position, the space of which was empty between his own feet and the Creator’s head. Therefore God both Himself occupied local space, and caused the world to occupy local space; and this local space, too, will be greater than God and the world together. For in no case is that which contains not greater than that which is contained. And indeed we must look well to it that no small patches be left here and there vacant, in which some third god also may be able with a world of his own to foist himself in. Now, begin to reckon up your gods. There will be local space for a god, not only as being greater than God, but as being also unbegotten and unmade, and therefore eternal, and equal to God, in which God has ever been. Then, inasmuch as He too has fabricated a world out of some underlying material which is unbegotten, and unmade, and contemporaneous with God, just as Marcion holds of the Creator, you reduce this likewise to the dignity of that local space which has enclosed two gods, both God and matter. For matter also is a god according to the rule of Deity, being (to be sure) unbegotten, and unmade, and eternal. If, however, it was out of nothing that he made his world, this also (our heretic) will be obliged to predicate of the Creator, to whom he subordinates matter in the substance of the world. But it will be only right that he too should have made his world out of matter, because the same process occurred to him as God which lay before the Creator as equally God. And thus you may, if you please, reckon up so far, three gods as Marcion’s,—the Maker, local space, and matter. Furthermore, he in like manner makes the Creator a god in local space, which is itself to be appraised on a precisely identical scale of dignity; and to Him as its lord he subordinates matter, which is notwithstanding unbegotten, and unmade, and by reason hereof eternal. With this matter he further associates evil, an unbegotten principle with an unbegotten object, an unmade with an unmade, and an eternal with an eternal; so here he makes a fourth God. Accordingly you have three substances of Deity in the higher instances, and in the lower ones four. When to these are added their Christs—the one which appeared in the time of Tiberius, the other which is promised by the Creator—Marcion suffers a manifest wrong from those persons who assume that he holds two gods, whereas he implies no less than nine, though he knows it not.

Chapter XVI

Marcion Assumes the Existence of Two Gods from the Antithesis Between Things Visible and Things Invisible. This Antithetical Principle in Fact Characteristic of the Works of the Creator, the One God—Maker of All Things Visible and Invisible

Since, then, that other world does not appear, nor its god either, the only resource left to them is to divide things into the two classes of visible and invisible, with two gods for their authors, and so to claim the invisible for their own, (the supreme) God. But who, except an heretical spirit, could ever bring his mind to believe that the invisible part of creation belongs to him who had previously displayed no visible thing, rather than to Him who, by His operation on the visible world, produced a belief in the invisible also, since it is far more reasonable to give one’s assent after some samples (of a work) than after none? We shall see to what author even (your favourite) apostle attributes the invisible creation, when we come to examine him. At present (we withhold his testimony), for we are for the most part engaged in preparing the way, by means of common sense and fair arguments, for a belief in the future support of the Scriptures also. We affirm, then, that this diversity of things visible and invisible must on this ground be attributed to the Creator, even because the whole of His work consists of diversities—of things corporeal and incorporeal; of animate and inanimate; of vocal and mute of moveable and stationary; of productive and sterile; of arid and moist; of hot and cold. Man, too, is himself similarly tempered with diversity, both in his body and in his sensation. Some of his members are strong, others weak; some comely, others uncomely; some twofold, others unique; some like, others unlike. In like manner there is diversity also in his sensation: now joy, then anxiety; now love, then hatred; now anger, then calmness. Since this is the case, inasmuch as the whole of this creation of ours has been fashioned with a reciprocal rivalry amongst its several parts, the invisible ones are due to the visible, and not to be ascribed to any other author than Him to whom their counterparts are imputed, marking as they do diversity in the Creator Himself, who orders what He forbade, and forbids what He ordered; who also strikes and heals. Why do they take Him to be uniform in one class of things alone, as the Creator of visible things, and only them; whereas He ought to be believed to have created both the visible and the invisible, in just the same way as life and death, or as evil things and peace? And verily, if the invisible creatures are greater than the visible, which are in their own sphere great, so also is it fitting that the greater should be His to whom the great belong; because neither the great, nor indeed the greater, can be suitable property for one who seems to possess not even the smallest things.

Chapter XVII

Not Enough, as the Marcionites Pretend, that the Supreme God Should Rescue Man; He Must Also Have Created Him. The Existence of God Proved by His Creation, a Prior Consideration to His Character

Pressed by these arguments, they exclaim: One work is sufficient for our god; he has delivered man by his supreme and most excellent goodness, which is preferable to (the creation of) all the locusts. What superior god is this, of whom it has not been possible to find any work so great as the man of the lesser god! Now without doubt the first thing you have to do is to prove that he exists, after the same manner that the existence of God must ordinarily be proved—by his works; and only after that by his good deeds. For the first question is, Whether he exists? and then, What is his character? The former is to be tested by his works, the other by the beneficence of them. It does not simply follow that he exists, because he is said to have wrought deliverance for man; but only after it shall have been settled that he exists, will there be room for saying that he has affected this liberation. And even this point also must have its own evidence, because it may be quite possible both that he has existence, and yet has not wrought the alleged deliverance. Now in that section of our work which concerned the question of the unknown god, two points were made clear enough—both that he had created nothing: and that he ought to have been a creator, in order to be known by his works; because, if he had existed, he ought to have been known, and that too from the beginning of things; for it was not fit that God should have lain hid. It will be necessary that I should revert to the very trunk of that question of the unknown god, that I may strike off into some of its other branches also. For it will be first of all proper to inquire, Why he, who afterwards brought himself into notice, did so—so late, and not at the very first? From creatures, with which as God he was indeed so closely connected (and the closer this connection was, the greater was his goodness), he ought never to have been hidden. For it cannot be pretended that there was not either any means of arriving at the knowledge of God, or a good reason for it, when from the beginning man was in the world, for whom the deliverance is now come; as was also that malevolence of the Creator, in opposition to which the good God has wrought the deliverance. He was therefore either ignorant of the good reason for and means of his own necessary manifestation, or doubted them; or else was either unable or unwilling to encounter them. All these alternatives are unworthy of God, especially the supreme and best. This topic, however, we shall afterwards more fully treat, with a condemnation of the tardy manifestation; we at present simply point it out.

Chapter XVIII

Notwithstanding Their Conceits, the God of the Marcionites Fails in the Vouchers Both of Created Evidence and of Adequate Revelation

Well, then, he has now advanced into notice, just when he willed, when he could, when the destined hour arrived. For perhaps he was hindered hitherto by his leading star, or some weird malignants, or Saturn in quadrature, or Mars at the trine. The Marcionites are very strongly addicted to astrology; nor do they blush to get their livelihood by help of the very stars which were made by the Creator (whom they depreciate). We must here also treat of the quality of the (new) revelation; whether Marcion’s supreme god has become known in a way worthy of him, so as to secure the proof of his existence: and in the way of truth, so that he may be believed to be the very being who had been already proved to have been revealed in a manner worthy of his character. For things which are worthy of God will prove the existence of God. We maintain that God must first be known from nature, and afterwards authenticated by instruction: from nature by His works; by instruction, through His revealed announcements. Now, in a case where nature is excluded, no natural means (of knowledge) are furnished. He ought, therefore, to have carefully supplied a revelation of himself, even by announcements, especially as he had to be revealed in opposition to One who, after so many and so great works, both of creation and revealed announcement, had with difficulty succeeded in satisfying men’s faith. In what manner, therefore, has the revelation been made? If by man’s conjectural guesses, do not say that God can possibly become known in any other way than by Himself, and appeal not only to the standard of the Creator, but to the conditions both of God’s greatness and man’s littleness; so that man seem not by any possibility to be greater than God, by having somehow drawn Him out into public recognition, when He was Himself unwilling to become known by His own energies, although man’s littleness has been able, according to experiments all over the world, more easily to fashion for itself gods, than to follow the true God whom men now understand by nature. As for the rest, if man shall be thus able to devise a god,—as Romulus did Consus, and Tatius Cloacina, and Hostilius Fear, and Metellus Alburnus, and a certain authority some time since Antinous,—the same accomplishment may be allowed to others. As for us, we have found our pilot in Marcion, although not a king nor an emperor.

Chapter XIX

Jesus Christ, the Revealer of the Creator, Could Not Be the Same as Marcion’s God, Who Was Only Made Known by the Heretic Some CXV. Years After Christ, and That, Too, on a Principle Utterly Unsuited to the Teaching of Jesus Christ, I.e., the Opposition Between the Law and the Gospels

Well, but our god, say the Marcionites, although he did not manifest himself from the beginning and by means of the creation, has yet revealed himself in Christ Jesus. A book will be devoted to Christ, treating of His entire state; for it is desirable that these subject-matters should be distinguished one from another, in order that they may receive a fuller and more methodical treatment. Meanwhile it will be sufficient if, at this stage of the question, I show—and that but briefly—that Christ Jesus is the revealer of none other god but the Creator. In the fifteenth year of Tiberius, Christ Jesus vouchsafed to come down from heaven, as the spirit of saving health. I cared not to inquire, indeed, in what particular year of the elder Antoninus. He who had so gracious a purpose did rather, like a pestilential sirocco, exhale this health or salvation, which Marcion teaches from his Pontus. Of this teacher there is no doubt that he is a heretic of the Antonine period, impious under the pious. Now, from Tiberius to Antoninus Pius, there are about 115 years and 6–1/2 months. Just such an interval do they place between Christ and Marcion. Inasmuch, then, as Marcion, as we have shown, first introduced this god to notice in the time of Antoninus, the matter becomes at once clear, if you are a shrewd observer. The dates already decide the case, that he who came to light for the first time in the reign of Antoninus, did not appear in that of Tiberius; in other words, that the God of the Antonine period was not the God of the Tiberian; and consequently, that he whom Marcion has plainly preached for the first time, was not revealed by Christ (who announced His revelation as early as the reign of Tiberius). Now, to prove clearly what remains of the argument, I shall draw materials from my very adversaries. Marcion’s special and principal work is the separation of the law and the gospel; and his disciples will not deny that in this point they have their very best pretext for initiating and confirming themselves in his heresy. These are Marcion’s Antitheses, or contradictory propositions, which aim at committing the gospel to a variance with the law, in order that from the diversity of the two documents which contain them, they may contend for a diversity of gods also. Since, therefore, it is this very opposition between the law and the gospel which has suggested that the God of the gospel is different from the God of the law, it is clear that, before the said separation, that god could not have been known who became known from the argument of the separation itself. He therefore could not have been revealed by Christ, who came before the separation, but must have been devised by Marcion, the author of the breach of peace between the gospel and the law. Now this peace, which had remained unhurt and unshaken from Christ’s appearance to the time of Marcion’s audacious doctrine, was no doubt maintained by that way of thinking, which firmly held that the God of both law and gospel was none other than the Creator, against whom after so long a time a separation has been introduced by the heretic of Pontus.

Chapter XX

Marcion, Justifying His Antithesis Between the Law and the Gospel by the Contention of St. Paul with St. Peter, Shown to Have Mistaken St. Paul’s Position and Argument. Marcion’s Doctrine Confuted Out of St. Paul’s Teaching, Which Agrees Wholly with the Creator’s Decrees

This most patent conclusion requires to be defended by us against the clamours of the opposite side. For they allege that Marcion did not so much innovate on the rule (of faith) by his separation of the law and the gospel, as restore it after it had been previously adulterated. O Christ, most enduring Lord, who didst bear so many years with this interference with Thy revelation, until Marcion forsooth came to Thy rescue! Now they adduce the case of Peter himself, and the others, who were pillars of the apostolate, as having been blamed by Paul for not walking uprightly, according to the truth of the gospel—that very Paul indeed, who, being yet in the mere rudiments of grace, and trembling, in short, lest he should have run or were still running in vain, then for the first time held intercourse with those who were apostles before himself. Therefore because, in the eagerness of his zeal against Judaism as a neophyte, he thought that there was something to be blamed in their conduct—even the promiscuousness of their conversation—but afterwards was himself to become in his practice all things to all men, that he might gain all,—to the Jews, as a Jew, and to them that were under the law, as under the law,—you would have his censure, which was merely directed against conduct destined to become acceptable even to their accuser, suspected of prevarication against God on a point of public doctrine. Touching their public doctrine, however, they had, as we have already said, joined hands in perfect concord, and had agreed also in the division of their labour in their fellowship of the gospel, as they had indeed in all other respects: “Whether it were I or they, so we preach.” When, again, he mentioned “certain false brethren as having crept in unawares,” who wished to remove the Galatians into another gospel, he himself shows that that adulteration of the gospel was not meant to transfer them to the faith of another god and christ, but rather to perpetuate the teaching of the law; because he blames them for maintaining circumcision, and observing times, and days, and months, and years, according to those Jewish ceremonies which they ought to have known were now abrogated, according to the new dispensation purposed by the Creator Himself, who of old foretold this very thing by His prophets. Thus He says by Isaiah: Old things have passed away. “Behold, I will do a new thing.” And in another passage: “I will make a new covenant, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.” In like manner by Jeremiah: Make to yourselves a new covenant, “circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your heart.” It is this circumcision, therefore, and this renewal, which the apostle insisted on, when he forbade those ancient ceremonies concerning which their very founder announced that they were one day to cease; thus by Hosea: “I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast-days, her new moons, and her Sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.” So likewise by Isaiah: “The new moons, and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; your holy days, and fasts, and feast-days, my soul hateth.” Now, if even the Creator had so long before discarded all these things, and the apostle was now proclaiming them to be worthy of renunciation, the very agreement of the apostle’s meaning with the decrees of the Creator proves that none other God was preached by the apostle than He whose purposes he now wished to have recognised, branding as false both apostles and brethren, for the express reason that they were pushing back the gospel of Christ the Creator from the new condition which the Creator had foretold, to the old one which He had discarded.

Chapter XXI

St. Paul Preached No New God, When He Announced the Repeal of Some of God’s Ancient Ordinances. Never Any Hesitation About Belief in the Creator, as the God Whom Christ Revealed, Until Marcion’s Heresy

Now if it was with the view of preaching a new god that he was eager to abrogate the law of the old God, how is it that he prescribes no rule about the new god, but solely about the old law, if it be not because faith in the Creator was still to continue, and His law alone was to come to an end?—just as the Psalmist had declared: “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth stand up, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and against His Anointed.” And, indeed, if another god were preached by Paul, there could be no doubt about the law, whether it were to be kept or not, because of course it would not belong to the new lord, the enemy of the law. The very newness and difference of the god would take away not only all question about the old and alien law, but even all mention of it. But the whole question, as it then stood, was this, that although the God of the law was the same as was preached in Christ, yet there was a disparagement of His law. Permanent still, therefore, stood faith in the Creator and in His Christ; manner of life and discipline alone fluctuated. Some disputed about eating idol sacrifices, others about the veiled dress of women, others again about marriage and divorce, and some even about the hope of the resurrection; but about God no one disputed. Now, if this question also had entered into dispute, surely it would be found in the apostle, and that too as a great and vital point. No doubt, after the time of the apostles, the truth respecting the belief of God suffered corruption, but it is equally certain that during the life of the apostles their teaching on this great article did not suffer at all; so that no other teaching will have the right of being received as apostolic than that which is at the present day proclaimed in the churches of apostolic foundation. You will, however, find no church of apostolic origin but such as reposes its Christian faith in the Creator. But if the churches shall prove to have been corrupt from the beginning, where shall the pure ones be found? Will it be amongst the adversaries of the Creator? Show us, then, one of your churches, tracing its descent from an apostle, and you will have gained the day. Forasmuch then as it is on all accounts evident that there was from Christ down to Marcion’s time no other God in the rule of sacred truth than the Creator, the proof of our argument is sufficiently established, in which we have shown that the god of our heretic first became known by his separation of the gospel and the law. Our previous position is accordingly made good, that no god is to be believed whom any man has devised out of his own conceits; except indeed the man be a prophet, and then his own conceits would not be concerned in the matter. If Marcion, however, shall be able to lay claim to this inspired character, it will be necessary for it to be shown. There must be no doubt or paltering. For all heresy is thrust out by this wedge of the truth, that Christ is proved to be the revealer of no God else but the Creator.

Chapter XXII

God’s Attribute of Goodness Considered as Natural; The God of Marcion Found Wanting Herein. It Came Not to Man’s Rescue When First Wanted

But how shall (this) Antichrist be fully overthrown unless we relax our defence by mere prescription, and give ourselves scope for rebutting all his other attacks? Let us therefore next take the very person of God Himself, or rather His shadow or phantom, as we have it in Christ, and let Him be examined by that condition which makes Him superior to the Creator. And undoubtedly there will come to hand unmistakeable rules for examining God’s goodness. My first point, however, is to discover and apprehend the attribute, and then to draw it out into rules. Now, when I survey the subject in its aspects of time, I nowhere descry it from the beginning of material existences, or at the commencement of those causes, with which it ought to have been found, proceeding thence to do whatever had to be done. For there was death already, and sin the sting of death, and that malignity too of the Creator, against which the goodness of the other god should have been ready to bring relief; falling in with this as the primary rule of the divine goodness (if it were to prove itself a natural agency), at once coming as a succour when the cause for it began. For in God all things should be natural and inbred, just like His own condition indeed, in order that they may be eternal, and so not be accounted casual and extraneous, and thereby temporary and wanting in eternity. In God, therefore, goodness is required to be both perpetual and unbroken, such as, being stored up and kept ready in the treasures of His natural properties, might precede its own causes and material developments; and if thus preceding, might underlie every first material cause, instead of looking at it from a distance, and standing aloof from it. In short, here too I must inquire, Why his goodness did not operate from the beginning? no less pointedly than when we inquired concerning himself, Why he was not revealed from the very first? Why, then, did it not? since he had to be revealed by his goodness if he had any existence. That God should at all fail in power must not be thought, much less that He should not discharge all His natural functions; for if these were restrained from running their course, they would cease to be natural. Moreover, the nature of God Himself knows nothing of inactivity. Hence (His goodness) is reckoned as having a beginning, if it acts. It will thus be evident that He had no unwillingness to exercise His goodness at any time on account of His nature. Indeed, it is impossible that He should be unwilling because of His nature, since that so directs itself that it would no longer exist if it ceased to act. In Marcion’s god, however, goodness ceased from operation at some time or other. A goodness, therefore, which could thus at any time have ceased its action was not natural, because with natural properties such cessation is incompatible. And if it shall not prove to be natural, it must no longer be believed to be eternal nor competent to Deity; because it cannot be eternal so long as, failing to be natural, it neither provides from the past nor guarantees for the future any means of perpetuating itself. Now as a fact it existed not from the beginning, and, doubtless, will not endure to the end. For it is possible for it to fail in existence some future time or other, as it has failed in some past period. Forasmuch, then, as the goodness of Marcion’s god failed in the beginning (for he did not from the first deliver man), this failure must have been the effect of will rather than of infirmity. Now a wilful suppression of goodness will be found to have a malignant end in view. For what malignity is so great as to be unwilling to do good when one can, or to thwart what is useful, or to permit injury? The whole description, therefore, of Marcion’s Creator will have to be transferred to his new god, who helped on the ruthless proceedings of the former by the retardation of his own goodness. For whosoever has it in his power to prevent the happening of a thing, is accounted responsible for it if it should occur. Man is condemned to death for tasting the fruit of one poor tree, and thence proceed sins with their penalties; and now all are perishing who yet never saw a single sod of Paradise. And all this your better god either is ignorant of, or else brooks. Is it that he might on this account be deemed the better, and the Creator be regarded as all that the worse? Even if this were his purpose he would be malicious enough, for both wishing to aggravate his rival’s obloquy by permitting His (evil) works to be done, and by keeping the world harrassed by the wrong. What would you think of a physician who should encourage a disease by withholding the remedy, and prolong the danger by delaying his prescription, in order that his cure might be more costly and more renowned? Such must be the sentence to be pronounced against Marcion’s god: tolerant of evil, encouraging wrong, wheedling about his grace, prevaricating in his goodness, which he did not exhibit simply on its own account, but which he must mean to exhibit purely, if he is good by nature and not by acquisition, if he is supremely good in attribute and not by discipline, if he is God from eternity and not from Tiberius, nay (to speak more truly), from Cerdon only and Marcion. As the case now stands, however, such a god as we are considering would have been more fit for Tiberius, that the goodness of the Divine Being might be inaugurated in the world under his imperial sway!

Chapter XXIII

God’s Attribute of Goodness Considered as Rational. Marcion’s God Defective Here Also; His Goodness Irrational and Misapplied

Here is another rule for him. All the properties of God ought to be as rational as they are natural. I require reason in His goodness, because nothing else can properly be accounted good than that which is rationally good; much less can goodness itself be detected in any irrationality. More easily will an evil thing which has something rational belonging to it be accounted good, than that a good thing bereft of all reasonable quality should escape being regarded as evil. Now I deny that the goodness of Marcion’s god is rational, on this account first, because it proceeded to the salvation of a human creature which was alien to him. I am aware of the plea which they will adduce, that that is rather a primary and perfect goodness which is shed voluntarily and freely upon strangers without any obligation of friendship, on the principle that we are bidden to love even our enemies, such as are also on that very account strangers to us. Now, inasmuch as from the first he had no regard for man, a stranger to him from the first, he settled beforehand, by this neglect of his, that he had nothing to do with an alien creature. Besides, the rule of loving a stranger or enemy is preceded by the precept of your loving your neighbour as yourself; and this precept, although coming from the Creator’s law, even you ought to receive, because, so far from being abrogated by Christ, it has rather been confirmed by Him. For you are bidden to love your enemy and the stranger, in order that you may love your neighbour the better. The requirement of the undue is an augmentation of the due benevolence. But the due precedes the undue, as the principal quality, and more worthy of the other, for its attendant and companion. Since, therefore, the first step in the reasonableness of the divine goodness is that it displays itself on its proper object in righteousness, and only at its second stage on an alien object by a redundant righteousness over and above that of scribes and Pharisees, how comes it to pass that the second is attributed to him who fails in the first, not having man for his proper object, and who makes his goodness on this very account defective? Moreover, how could a defective benevolence, which had no proper object whereon to expend itself, overflow on an alien one? Clear up the first step, and then vindicate the next. Nothing can be claimed as rational without order, much less can reason itself dispense with order in any one. Suppose now the divine goodness begin at the second stage of its rational operation, that is to say, on the stranger, this second stage will not be consistent in rationality if it be impaired in any way else. For only then will even the second stage of goodness, that which is displayed towards the stranger, be accounted rational, when it operates without wrong to him who has the first claim. It is righteousness which before everything else makes all goodness rational. It will thus be rational in its principal stage, when manifested on its proper object, if it be righteous. And thus, in like manner, it will be able to appear rational, when displayed towards the stranger, if it be not unrighteous. But what sort of goodness is that which is manifested in wrong, and that in behalf of an alien creature? For peradventure a benevolence, even when operating injuriously, might be deemed to some extent rational, if exerted for one of our own house and home. By what rule, however, can an unjust benevolence, displayed on behalf of a stranger, to whom not even an honest one is legitimately due, be defended as a rational one? For what is more unrighteous, more unjust, more dishonest, than so to benefit an alien slave as to take him away from his master, claim him as the property of another, and suborn him against his master’s life; and all this, to make the matter more iniquitous still whilst he is yet living in his master’s house and on his master’s garner, and still trembling beneath his stripes? Such a deliverer, I had almost said kidnapper, would even meet with condemnation in the world. Now, no other than this is the character of Marcion’s god, swooping upon an alien world, snatching away man from his God, the son from his father, the pupil from his tutor, the servant from his master—to make him impious to his God, undutiful to his father, ungrateful to his tutor, worthless to his master. If, now, the rational benevolence makes man such, what sort of being prithee would the irrational make of him? None I should think more shameless than him who is baptized to his god in water which belongs to another, who stretches out his hands to his god towards a heaven which is another’s, who kneels to his god on ground which is another’s, offers his thanksgivings to his god over bread which belongs to another, and distributes by way of alms and charity, for the sake of his god, gifts which belong to another God. Who, then, is that so good a god of theirs, that man through him becomes evil; so propitious, too, as to incense against man that other God who is, indeed, his own proper Lord?

Chapter XXIV

The Goodness of Marcion’s God Only Imperfectly Manifested; It Saves But Few, and the Souls Merely of These. Marcion’s Contempt of the Body Absurd

But as God is eternal and rational, so, I think, He is perfect in all things. “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Prove, then, that the goodness of your god also is a perfect one. That it is indeed imperfect has been already sufficiently shown, since it is found to be neither natural nor rational. The same conclusion, however, shall now be made clear by another method; it is not simply imperfect, but actually feeble, weak, and exhausted, failing to embrace the full number of its material objects, and not manifesting itself in them all. For all are not put into a state of salvation by it; but the Creator’s subjects, both Jew and Christian, are all excepted. Now, when the greater part thus perish, how can that goodness be defended as a perfect one which is inoperative in most cases, is somewhat only in few, naught in many, succumbs to perdition, and is a partner with destruction? And if so many shall miss salvation, it will not be with goodness, but with malignity, that the greater perfection will lie. For as it is the operation of goodness which brings salvation, so is it malevolence which thwarts it. Since, however, this goodness) saves but few, and so rather leans to the alternative of not saving, it will show itself to greater perfection by not interposing help than by helping. Now, you will not be able to attribute goodness (to your god) in reference to the Creator, (if accompanied with) failure towards all. For whomsoever you call in to judge the question, it is as a dispenser of goodness, if so be such a title can be made out, and not as a squanderer thereof, as you claim your god to be, that you must submit the divine character for determination. So long, then, as you prefer your god to the Creator on the simple ground of his goodness, and since he professes to have this attribute as solely and wholly his own, he ought not to have been wanting in it to any one. However, I do not now wish to prove that Marcion’s god is imperfect in goodness because of the perdition of the greater number. I am content to illustrate this imperfection by the fact that even those whom he saves are found to possess but an imperfect salvation—that is, they are saved only so far as the soul is concerned, but lost in their body, which, according to him, does not rise again. Now, whence comes this halving of salvation, if not from a failure of goodness? What could have been a better proof of a perfect goodness, than the recovery of the whole man to salvation? Totally damned by the Creator, he should have been totally restored by the most merciful god. I rather think that by Marcion’s rule the body is baptized, is deprived of marriage, is cruelly tortured in confession. But although sins are attributed to the body, yet they are preceded by the guilty concupiscence of the soul; nay, the first motion of sin must be ascribed to the soul, to which the flesh acts in the capacity of a servant. By and by, when freed from the soul, the flesh sins no more. So that in this matter goodness is unjust, and likewise imperfect, in that it leaves to destruction the more harmless substance, which sins rather by compliance than in will. Now, although Christ put not on the verity of the flesh, as your heresy is pleased to assume, He still vouchsafed to take upon Him the semblance thereof. Surely, therefore, some regard was due to it from Him, because of this His feigned assumption of it. Besides, what else is man than flesh, since no doubt it was the corporeal rather than the spiritual element from which the Author of man’s nature gave him his designation? “And the Lord God made man of the dust of the ground,” not of spiritual essence; this afterwards came from the divine afflatus: “and man became a living soul.” What, then, is man? Made, no doubt of it, of the dust; and God placed him in paradise, because He moulded him, not breathed him, into being—a fabric of flesh, not of spirit. Now, this being the case, with what face will you contend for the perfect character of that goodness which did not fail in some one particular only of man’s deliverance, but in its general capacity? If that is a plenary grace and a substantial mercy which brings salvation to the soul alone, this were the better life which we now enjoy whole and entire; whereas to rise again but in part will be a chastisement, not a liberation. The proof of the perfect goodness is, that man, after his rescue, should be delivered from the domicile and power of the malignant deity unto the protection of the most good and merciful God. Poor dupe of Marcion, fever is hard upon you; and your painful flesh produces a crop of all sorts of briers and thorns. Nor is it only to the Creator’s thunderbolts that you lie exposed, or to wars, and pestilences, and His other heavier strokes, but even to His creeping insects. In what respect do you suppose yourself liberated from His kingdom when His flies are still creeping upon your face? If your deliverance lies in the future, why not also in the present, that it may be perfectly wrought? Far different is our condition in the sight of Him who is the Author, the Judge, the injured Head of our race! You display Him as a merely good God; but you are unable to prove that He is perfectly good, because you are not by Him perfectly delivered.

Chapter XXV

God is Not a Being of Simple Goodness; Other Attributes Belong to Him. Marcion Shows Inconsistency in the Portraiture of His Simply Good and Emotionless God

As touching this question of goodness, we have in these outlines of our argument shown it to be in no way compatible with Deity,—as being neither natural, nor rational, nor perfect, but wrong, and unjust, and unworthy of the very name of goodness,—because, as far as the congruity of the divine character is concerned, it cannot indeed be fitting that that Being should be regarded as God who is alleged to have such a goodness, and that not in a modified way, but simply and solely. For it is, furthermore, at this point quite open to discussion, whether God ought to be regarded as a Being of simple goodness, to the exclusion of all those other attributes, sensations, and affections, which the Marcionites indeed transfer from their god to the Creator, and which we acknowledge to be worthy characteristics of the Creator too, but only because we consider Him to be God. Well, then, on this ground we shall deny him to be God in whom all things are not to be found which befit the Divine Being. If (Marcion) chose to take any one of the school of Epicurus, and entitle him God in the name of Christ, on the ground that what is happy and incorruptible can bring no trouble either on itself or anything else (for Marcion, while poring over this opinion of the divine indifference, has removed from him all the severity and energy of the judicial character), it was his duty to have developed his conceptions into some imperturbable and listless god (and then what could he have had in common with Christ, who occasioned trouble both to the Jews by what He taught, and to Himself by what He felt?), or else to have admitted that he was possessed of the same emotions as others (and in such case what would he have had to do with Epicurus, who was no friend to either him or Christians?). For that a being who in ages past was in a quiescent state, not caring to communicate any knowledge of himself by any work all the while, should come after so long a time to entertain a concern for man’s salvation, of course by his own will,—did he not by this very fact become susceptible of the impulse of a new volition, so as palpably to be open to all other emotions? But what volition is unaccompanied with the spur of desire? Who wishes for what he desires not? Moreover, care will be another companion of the will. For who will wish for any object and desire to have it, without also caring to obtain it? When, therefore, (Marcion’s god) felt both a will and a desire for man’s salvation, he certainly occasioned some concern and trouble both to himself and others. This Marcion’s theory suggests, though Epicurus demurs. For he raised up an adversary against himself in that very thing against which his will and desire, and care were directed,—whether it were sin or death,—and more especially in their Tyrant and Lord, the Creator of man. Again, nothing will ever run its course without hostile rivalry, which shall not (itself) be without a hostile aspect. In fact, when willing, desiring, and caring to deliver man, (Marcion’s god) already in the very act encounters a rival, both in Him from whom He effects the deliverance (for of course he means the liberation to be an opposition to Him), and also in those things from which the deliverance is wrought (the intended liberation being to the advantage of some other things). For it must needs be, that upon rivalry its own ancillary passions will be in attendance, against whatever objects its emulation is directed: anger, discord, hatred, disdain, indignation, spleen, loathing, displeasure. Now, since all these emotions are present to rivalry; since, moreover, the rivalry which arises in liberating man excites them; and since, again, this deliverance of man is an operation of goodness, it follows that this goodness avails nothing without its endowments, that is to say, without those sensations and affections whereby it carries out its purpose against the Creator; so that it cannot even in this be ruled to be irrational, as if it were wanting in proper sensations and affections. These points we shall have to insist on much more fully, when we come to plead the cause of the Creator, where they will also incur our condemnation.

Chapter XXVI

In the Attribute of Justice, Marcion’s God is Hopelessly Weak and Ungodlike. He Dislikes Evil, But Does Not Punish Its Perpetration

But it is here sufficient that the extreme perversity of their god is proved from the mere exposition of his lonely goodness, in which they refuse to ascribe to him such emotions of mind as they censure in the Creator. Now, if he is susceptible of no feeling of rivalry, or anger, or damage, or injury, as one who refrains from exercising judicial power, I cannot tell how any system of discipline—and that, too, a plenary one—can be consistent in him. For how is it possible that he should issue commands, if he does not mean to execute them; or forbid sins, if he intends not to punish them, but rather to decline the functions of the judge, as being a stranger to all notions of severity and judicial chastisement? For why does he forbid the commission of that which he punishes not when perpetrated? It would have been far more right, if he had not forbidden what he meant not to punish, than that he should punish what he had not forbidden. Nay, it was his duty even to have permitted what he was about to prohibit in so unreasonable a way, as to annex no penalty to the offence. For even now that is tacitly permitted which is forbidden without any infliction of vengeance. Besides, he only forbids the commission of that which he does not like to have done. Most listless, therefore, is he, since he takes no offence at the doing of what he dislikes to be done, although displeasure ought to be the companion of his violated will. Now, if he is offended, he ought to be angry; if angry, he ought to inflict punishment. For such infliction is the just fruit of anger, and anger is the debt of displeasure, and displeasure (as I have said) is the companion of a violated will. However, he inflicts no punishment; therefore he takes no offence.

He takes no offence, therefore his will is not wronged, although that is done which he was unwilling to have done; and the transgression is now committed with the acquiescence of his will, because whatever offends not the will is not committed against the will. Now, if this is to be the principle of the divine virtue or goodness, to be unwilling indeed that a thing be done and to prohibit it, and yet not be moved by its commission, we then allege that he has been moved already when he declared his unwillingness; and that it is vain for him not to be moved by the accomplishment of a thing after being moved at the possibility thereof, when he willed it not to be done. For he prohibited it by his not willing it. Did he not therefore do a judicial act, when he declared his unwillingness, and consequent prohibition of it? For he judged that it ought not to be done, and he deliberately declared that it should be forbidden. Consequently by this time even he performs the part of a judge. If it is unbecoming for God to discharge a judicial function, or at least only so far becoming that He may merely declare His unwillingness, and pronounce His prohibition, then He may not even punish for an offence when it is committed. Now, nothing is so unworthy of the Divine Being as not to execute retribution on what He has disliked and forbidden. First, He owes the infliction of chastisement to whatever sentence or law He promulges, for the vindication of His authority and the maintenance of submission to it; secondly, because hostile opposition is inevitable to what He has disliked to be done, and by that dislike forbidden. Moreover, it would be a more unworthy course for God to spare the evil-doer than to punish him, especially in the most good and holy God, who is not otherwise fully good than as the enemy of evil, and that to such a degree as to display His love of good by the hatred of evil, and to fulfil His defence of the former by the extirpation of the latter.

Chapter XXVII

Dangerous Effects to Religion and Morality of the Doctrine of So Weak a God

Again, he plainly judges evil by not willing it, and condemns it by prohibiting it; while, on the other hand, he acquits it by not avenging it, and lets it go free by not punishing it. What a prevaricator of truth is such a god! What a dissembler with his own decision! Afraid to condemn what he really condemns, afraid to hate what he does not love, permitting that to be done which he does not allow, choosing to indicate what he dislikes rather than deeply examine it! This will turn out an imaginary goodness, a phantom of discipline, perfunctory in duty, careless in sin. Listen, ye sinners; and ye who have not yet come to this, hear, that you may attain to such a pass! A better god has been discovered, who never takes offence, is never angry, never inflicts punishment, who has prepared no fire in hell, no gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness! He is purely and simply good. He indeed forbids all delinquency, but only in word. He is in you, if you are willing to pay him homage, for the sake of appearances, that you may seem to honour God; for your fear he does not want. And so satisfied are the Marcionites with such pretences, that they have no fear of their god at all. They say it is only a bad man who will be feared, a good man will be loved. Foolish man, do you say that he whom you call Lord ought not to be feared, whilst the very title you give him indicates a power which must itself be feared? But how are you going to love, without some fear that you do not love? Surely (such a god) is neither your Father, towards whom your love for duty’s sake should be consistent with fear because of His power; nor your proper Lord, whom you should love for His humanity and fear as your teacher. Kidnappers indeed are loved after this fashion, but they are not feared. For power will not be feared, except it be just and regular, although it may possibly be loved even when corrupt: for it is by allurement that it stands, not by authority; by flattery, not by proper influence. And what can be more direct flattery than not to punish sins? Come, then, if you do not fear God as being good, why do you not boil over into every kind of lust, and so realize that which is, I believe, the main enjoyment of life to all who fear not God? Why do you not frequent the customary pleasures of the maddening circus, the bloodthirsty arena, and the lascivious theatre? Why in persecutions also do you not, when the censer is presented, at once redeem your life by the denial of your faith? God forbid, you say with redoubled emphasis. So you do fear sin, and by your fear prove that He is an object of fear Who forbids the sin. This is quite a different matter from that obsequious homage you pay to the god whom you do not fear, which is identical in perversity indeed to is own conduct, in prohibiting a thing without annexing the sanction of punishment. Still more vainly do they act, who when asked, What is to become of every sinner in that great day? reply, that he is to be cast away out of sight. Is not even this a question of judicial determination? He is adjudged to deserve rejection, and that by a sentence of condemnation; unless the sinner is cast away forsooth for his salvation, that even a leniency like this may fall in consistently with the character of your most good and excellent god! And what will it be to be cast away, but to lose that which a man was in the way of obtaining, were it not for his rejection—that is, his salvation? Therefore his being cast away will involve the forfeiture of salvation; and this sentence cannot possibly be passed upon him, except by an angry and offended authority, who is also the punisher of sin—that is, by a judge.

Chapter XXVIII

This Perverse Doctrine Deprives Baptism of All Its Grace. If Marcion Be Right, the Sacrament Would Confer No Remission of Sins, No Regeneration, No Gift of the Spirit

And what will happen to him after he is cast away? He will, they say, be thrown into the Creator’s fire. Then has no remedial provision been made (by their god) for the purpose of banishing those that sin against him, without resorting to the cruel measure of delivering them over to the Creator? And what will the Creator then do? I suppose He will prepare for them a hell doubly charged with brimstone, as for blasphemers against Himself; except indeed their god in his zeal, as perhaps might happen, should show clemency to his rival’s revolted subjects. Oh, what a god is this! everywhere perverse; nowhere rational; in all cases vain; and therefore a nonentity!—in whose state, and condition, and nature, and every appointment, I see no coherence and consistency; no, not even in the very sacrament of his faith! For what end does baptism serve, according to him? If the remission of sins, how will he make it evident that he remits sins, when he affords no evidence that he retains them? Because he would retain them, if he performed the functions of a judge. If deliverance from death, how could he deliver from death, who has not delivered to death? For he must have delivered the sinner to death, if he had from the beginning condemned sin. If the regeneration of man, how can he regenerate, who has never generated? For the repetition of an act is impossible to him, by whom nothing any time has been ever done. If the bestowal of the Holy Ghost, how will he bestow the Spirit, who did not at first impart the life? For the life is in a sense the supplement of the Spirit. He therefore seals man, who had never been unsealed in respect of him; washes man, who had never been defiled so far as he was concerned; and into this sacrament of salvation wholly plunges that flesh which is beyond the pale of salvation! No farmer will irrigate ground that will yield him no fruit in return, except he be as stupid as Marcion’s god. Why then impose sanctity upon our most infirm and most unworthy flesh, either as a burden or as a glory? What shall I say, too, of the uselessness of a discipline which sanctifies what is already sanctified? Why burden the infirm, or glorify the unworthy? Why not remunerate with salvation what it burdens or else glorifies? Why keep back from a work its due reward, by not recompensing the flesh with salvation? Why even permit the honour of sanctity in it to die?

Chapter XXIX

Marcion Forbids Marriage. Tertullian Eloquently Defends It as Holy, and Carefully Discriminates Between Marcion’s Doctrine and His Own Montanism

The flesh is not, according to Marcion, immersed in the water of the sacrament, unless it be in virginity, widowhood, or celibacy, or has purchased by divorce a title to baptism, as if even generative impotents did not all receive their flesh from nuptial union. Now, such a scheme as this must no doubt involve the proscription of marriage. Let us see, then, whether it be a just one: not as if we aimed at destroying the happiness of sanctity, as do certain Nicolaitans in their maintenance of lust and luxury, but as those who have come to the knowledge of sanctity, and pursue it and prefer it, without detriment, however, to marriage; not as if we superseded a bad thing by a good, but only a good thing by a better. For we do not reject marriage, but simply refrain from it. Nor do we prescribe sanctity as the rule, but only recommend it, observing it as a good, yea, even the better state, if each man uses it carefully according to his ability; but at the same time earnestly vindicating marriage, whenever hostile attacks are made against it is a polluted thing, to the disparagement of the Creator. For He bestowed His blessing on matrimony also, as on an honourable estate, for the increase of the human race; as He did indeed on the whole of His creation, for wholesome and good uses. Meats and drinks are not on this account to be condemned, because, when served up with too exquisite a daintiness, they conduce to gluttony; nor is raiment to be blamed, because, when too costlily adorned, it becomes inflated with vanity and pride. So, on the same principle, the estate of matrimony is not to be refused, because, when enjoyed without moderation, it is fanned into a voluptuous flame. There is a great difference between a cause and a fault, between a state and its excess. Consequently it is not an institution of this nature that is to be blamed, but the extravagant use of it; according to the judgment of its founder Himself, who not only said, “Be fruitful, and multiply,” but also, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife;” and who threatened with death the unchaste, sacrilegious, and monstrous abomination both of adultery and unnatural sin with man and beast. Now, if any limitation is set to marrying—such as the spiritual rule, which prescribes but one marriage under the Christian obedience, maintained by the authority of the Paraclete,—it will be His prerogative to fix the limit Who had once been diffuse in His permission; His to gather, Who once scattered; His to cut down the tree, Who planted it; His to reap the harvest, Who sowed the seed; His to declare, “It remaineth that they who have wives be as though they had none,” Who once said, “Be fruitful, and multiply;” His the end to Whom belonged the beginning. Nevertheless, the tree is not cut down as if it deserved blame; nor is the corn reaped, as if it were to be condemned,—but simply because their time is come. So likewise the state of matrimony does not require the hook and scythe of sanctity, as if it were evil; but as being ripe for its discharge, and in readiness for that sanctity which will in the long run bring it a plenteous crop by its reaping. For this leads me to remark of Marcion’s god, that in reproaching marriage as an evil and unchaste thing, he is really prejudicing the cause of that very sanctity which he seems to serve. For he destroys the material on which it subsists; if there is to be no marriage, there is no sanctity. All proof of abstinence is lost when excess is impossible; for sundry things have thus their evidence in their contraries. Just as “strength is made perfect in weakness,” so likewise is continence made manifest by the permission to marry. Who indeed will be called continent, if that be taken away which gives him the opportunity of pursuing a life of continence? What room for temperance in appetite does famine give? What repudiation of ambitious projects does poverty afford? What bridling of lust can the eunuch merit? To put a complete stop, however, to the sowing of the human race, may, for aught I know, be quite consistent for Marcion’s most good and excellent god. For how could he desire the salvation of man, whom he forbids to be born, when he takes away that institution from which his birth arises? How will he find any one on whom to set the mark of his goodness, when he suffers him not to come into existence? How is it possible to love him whose origin he hates? Perhaps he is afraid of a redundant population, lest he should be weary in liberating so many; lest he should have to make many heretics; lest Marcionite parents should produce too many noble disciples of Marcion. The cruelty of Pharaoh, which slew its victims at their birth, will not prove to be more inhuman in comparison. For while he destroyed lives, our heretic’s god refuses to give them: the one removes from life, the other admits none to it. There is no difference in either as to their homicide—man is slain by both of them; by the former just after birth, by the latter as yet unborn. Thanks should we owe thee, thou god of our heretic, hadst thou only checked the dispensation of the Creator in uniting male and female; for from such a union indeed has thy Marcion been born! Enough, however, of Marcion’s god, who is shown to have absolutely no existence at all, both by our definitions of the one only Godhead, and the condition of his attributes. The whole course, however, of this little work aims directly at this conclusion. If, therefore, we seem to anybody to have achieved but little result as yet, let him reserve his expectations, until we examine the very Scripture which Marcion quotes.

Book II

Wherein Tertullian shows that the creator, or demiurge, whom Marcion calumniated, is the true and good God

Chapter I

The Methods of Marcion’s Argument Incorrect and Absurd. The Proper Course of the Argument

The occasion of reproducing this little work, the fortunes of which we noticed in the preface of our first book, has furnished us with the opportunity of distinguishing, in our treatment of the subject of two Gods in opposition to Marcion, each of them with a description and section of his own, according to the division of the subject-matter, defining one of the gods to have no existence at all, and maintaining of the Other that He is rightly God; thus far keeping pace with the heretic of Pontus, who has been pleased to admit one unto, and exclude the other. For he could not build up his mendacious scheme without pulling down the system of truth. He found it necessary to demolish some other thing, in order to build up the theory which he wished. This process, however, is like constructing a house without preparing suitable materials. The discussion ought to have been directed to this point alone, that he is no god who supersedes the Creator. Then, when the false god had been excluded by certain rules which prescriptively settle what is the character of the One only perfect Divinity, there could have remained no longer any question as to the true God. The proof of His existence would have been clear, and that, too, amid the failure of all evidence in support of any other god; and still clearer would have seemed the point as to the honour in which He ought without controversy to be held: that He ought to be worshipped rather than judged; served reverentially rather than handled critically, or even dreaded for His severity. For what was more fully needed by man than a careful estimate of the true God, on whom, so to speak, he had alighted, because there was no other god?

Chapter II

The True Doctrine of God the Creator. The Heretics Pretended to a Knowledge of the Divine Being, Opposed to and Subversive of Revelation. God’s Nature and Ways Past Human Discovery. Adam’s Heresy

We have now, then, cleared our way to the contemplation of the Almighty God, the Lord and Maker of the universe. His greatness, as I think, is shown in this, that from the beginning He made Himself known: He never hid Himself, but always shone out brightly, even before the time of Romulus, to say nothing of that of Tiberius; with the exception indeed that the heretics, and they alone, know Him not, although they take such pains about Him. They on this account suppose that another god must be assumed to exist, because they are more able to censure than deny Him whose existence is so evident, deriving all their thoughts about God from the deductions of sense; just as if some blind man, or a man of imperfect vision, chose to assume some other sun of milder and healthier ray, because he sees not that which is the object of sight. There is, O man, but one sun which rules this world and even when you think otherwise of him, he is best and useful; and although to you he may seem too fierce and baneful, or else, it may be, too sordid and corrupt, he yet is true to the laws of his own existence. Unable as you are to see through those laws, you would be equally impotent to bear the rays of any other sun, were there one, however great and good. Now, you whose sight is defective in respect of the inferior god, what is your view of the sublimer One? Really you are too lenient to your weakness; and set not yourself to the proof of things, holding God to be certainly, undoubtedly, and therefore sufficiently known, the very moment you have discovered Him to exist, though you know Him not except on the side where He has willed His proofs to lie. But you do not even deny God intelligently, you treat of Him ignorantly; nay, you accuse Him with a semblance of intelligence, whom if you did but know Him, you would never accuse, nay, never treat of. You give Him His name indeed, but you deny the essential truth of that name, that is, the greatness which is called God; not acknowledging it to be such as, were it possible for it to have been known to man in every respect, would not be greatness. Isaiah even so early, with the clearness of an apostle, foreseeing the thoughts of heretical hearts, asked, “Who hath known the mind of the Lord? For who hath been His counsellor? With whom took He counsel? . . . or who taught Him knowledge, and showed to Him the way of understanding?” With whom the apostle agreeing exclaims, “Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!” “His judgments unsearchable,” as being those of God the Judge; and “His ways past finding out,” as comprising an understanding and knowledge which no man has ever shown to Him, except it may be those critics of the Divine Being, who say, God ought not to have been this, and He ought rather to have been that; as if any one knew what is in God, except the Spirit of God. Moreover, having the spirit of the world, and “in the wisdom of God by wisdom knowing not God,” they seem to themselves to be wiser than God; because, as the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God, so also the wisdom of God is folly in the world’s esteem. We, however, know that “the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” Accordingly, God is then especially great, when He is small to man; then especially good, when not good in man’s judgment; then especially unique, when He seems to man to be two or more. Now, if from the very first “the natural man, not receiving the things of the Spirit of God,” has deemed God’s law to be foolishness, and has therefore neglected to observe it; and as a further consequence, by his not having faith, “even that which he seemeth to have hath been taken from him”—such as the grace of paradise and the friendship of God, by means of which he might have known all things of God, if he had continued in his obedience—what wonder is it, if he, reduced to his material nature, and banished to the toil of tilling the ground, has in his very labour, downcast and earth-gravitating as it was, handed on that earth-derived spirit of the world to his entire race, wholly natural and heretical as it is, and not receiving the things which belong to God? Or who will hesitate to declare the great sin of Adam to have been heresy, when he committed it by the choice of his own will rather than of God’s? Except that Adam never said to his fig-tree, Why hast thou made me thus? He confessed that he was led astray; and he did not conceal the seducer. He was a very rude heretic. He was disobedient; but yet he did not blaspheme his Creator, nor blame that Author of his being, Whom from the beginning of his life he had found to be so good and excellent, and Whom he had perhaps made his own judge from the very first.

Chapter III

God Known by His Works. His Goodness Shown in His Creative Energy; But Everlasting in Its Nature; Inherent in God, Previous to All Exhibition of It. The First Stage of This Goodness Prior to Man

It will therefore be right for us, as we enter on the examination of the known God, when the question arises, in what condition He is known to us, to begin with His works, which are prior to man; so that His goodness, being discovered immediately along with Himself, and then constituted and prescriptively settled, may suggest to us some sense whereby we may understand how the subsequent order of things came about. The disciples of Marcion, moreover, may possibly be able, while recognising the goodness of our God, to learn how worthy it is likewise of the Divine Being, on those very grounds whereby we have proved it to be unworthy in the case of their god. Now this very point, which is a material one in their scheme, Marcion did not find in any other god, but eliminated it for himself out of his own god. The first goodness, then, was that of the Creator, whereby God was unwilling to remain hidden for ever; in other words, (unwilling) that there should not be a something by which God should become known. For what, indeed, is so good as the knowledge and fruition of God? Now, although it did not transpires that this was good, because as yet there existed nothing to which it could transpire, yet God foreknew what good would eventually transpire, and therefore He set Himself about developing His own perfect goodness, for the accomplishment of the good which was to transpire; not, indeed, a sudden goodness issuing in some accidental boon or in some excited impulse, such as must be dated simply from the moment when it began to operate. For if it did itself produce its own beginning when it began to operate, it had not, in fact, a beginning itself when it acted. When, however, an initial act had been once done by it, the scheme of temporal seasons began, for distinguishing and noting which, the stars and luminaries of heaven were arranged in their order. “Let them be,” says God, “for seasons, and for days, and years.” Previous, then, to this temporal course, (the goodness) which created time had not time; nor before that beginning which the same goodness originated, had it a beginning. Being therefore without all order of a beginning, and all mode of time, it will be reckoned to possess an age, measureless in extent and endless in duration; nor will it be possible to regard it as a sudden or adventitious or impulsive emotion, because it has nothing to occasion such an estimate of itself; in other words, no sort of temporal sequence. It must therefore be accounted an eternal attribute, inbred in God, and everlasting, and on this account worthy of the Divine Being, putting to shame for ever the benevolence of Marcion’s god, subsequent as he is to (I will not say) all beginnings and times, but to the very malignity of the Creator, if indeed malignity could possibly have been found in goodness.

Chapter IV

The Next Stage Occurs in the Creation of Man by the Eternal Word. Spiritual as Well as Physical Gifts to Man. The Blessings of Man’s Free-Will

The goodness of God having, therefore, provided man for the pursuit of the knowledge of Himself, added this to its original notification, that it first prepared a habitation for him, the vast fabric (of the world) to begin with, and then afterwards the vaster one (of a higher world, ) that he might on a great as well as on a smaller stage practise and advance in his probation, and so be promoted from the good which God had given him, that is, from his high position, to God’s best; that is, to some higher abode. In this good work God employs a most excellent minister, even His own Word. “My heart,” He says, “hath emitted my most excellent Word.” Let Marcion take hence his first lesson on the noble fruit of this truly most excellent tree. But, like a most clumsy clown, he has grafted a good branch on a bad stock. The sapling, however, of his blasphemy shall be never strong: it shall wither with its planter, and thus shall be manifested the nature of the good tree. Look at the total result: how fruitful was the Word! God issued His fiat, and it was done: God also saw that it was good; not as if He were ignorant of the good until He saw it; but because it was good, He therefore saw it, and honoured it, and set His seal upon it; and consummated the goodness of His works by His vouchsafing to them that contemplation. Thus God blessed what He made good, in order that He might commend Himself to you as whole and perfect, good both in word and act. As yet the Word knew no malediction, because He was a stranger to malefaction. We shall see what reasons required this also of God. Meanwhile the world consisted of all things good, plainly foreshowing how much good was preparing for him for whom all this was provided. Who indeed was so worthy of dwelling amongst the works of God, as he who was His own image and likeness? That image was wrought out by a goodness even more operative than its wont, with no imperious word, but with friendly hand preceded by an almost affable utterance: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Goodness spake the word; Goodness formed man of the dust of the ground into so great a substance of the flesh, built up out of one material with so many qualities; Goodness breathed into him a soul, not dead but living. Goodness gave him dominion over all things, which he was to enjoy and rule over, and even give names to. In addition to this, Goodness annexed pleasures to man so that, while master of the whole world, he might tarry among higher delights, being translated into paradise, out of the world into the Church. The self-same Goodness provided also a help meet for him, that there might be nothing in his lot that was not good. For, said He, that the man be alone is not good. He knew full well what a blessing to him would be the sex of Mary, and also of the Church. The law, however, which you find fault with, and wrest into a subject of contention, was imposed on man by Goodness, aiming at his happiness, that he might cleave to God, and so not show himself an abject creature rather than a free one, nor reduce himself to the level of the other animals, his subjects, which were free from God, and exempt from all tedious subjection; but might, as the sole human being, boast that he alone was worthy of receiving laws from God; and as a rational being, capable of intelligence and knowledge, be restrained within the bounds of rational liberty, subject to Him who had subjected all things unto him. To secure the observance of this law, Goodness likewise took counsel by help of this sanction: “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” For it was a most benignant act of His thus to point out the issues of transgression, lest ignorance of the danger should encourage a neglect of obedience. Now, since it was given as a reason previous to the imposition of the law, it also amounted to a motive for subsequently observing it, that a penalty was annexed to its transgression; a penalty, indeed, which He who proposed it was still unwilling that it should be incurred. Learn then the goodness of our God amidst these things and up to this point; learn it from His excellent works, from His kindly blessings, from His indulgent bounties, from His gracious providences, from His laws and warnings, so good and merciful.

Chapter V

Marcion’s Cavils Considered. His Objection Refuted, I.e., Man’s Fall Showed Failure in God. The Perfection of Man’s Being Lay in His Liberty, Which God Purposely Bestowed on Him. The Fall Imputable to Man’s Own Choice

Now then, ye dogs, whom the apostle puts outside, and who yelp at the God of truth, let us come to your various questions. These are the bones of contention, which you are perpetually gnawing! If God is good, and prescient of the future, and able to avert evil, why did He permit man, the very image and likeness of Himself, and, by the origin of his soul, His own substance too, to be deceived by the devil, and fall from obedience of the law into death? For if He had been good, and so unwilling that such a catastrophe should happen, and prescient, so as not to be ignorant of what was to come to pass, and powerful enough to hinder its occurrence, that issue would never have come about, which should be impossible under these three conditions of the divine greatness. Since, however, it has occurred, the contrary proposition is most certainly true, that God must be deemed neither good, nor prescient, nor powerful. For as no such issue could have happened had God been such as He is reputed—good, and prescient, and mighty—so has this issue actually happened, because He is not such a God. In reply, we must first vindicate those attributes in the Creator which are called in question—namely, His goodness and foreknowledge, and power. But I shall not linger long over this point for Christ’s own definition comes to our aid at once. From works must proofs be obtained. The Creator’s works testify at once to His goodness, since they are good, as we have shown, and to His power, since they are mighty, and spring indeed out of nothing. And even if they were made out of some (previous) matter, as some will have it, they are even thus out of nothing, because they were not what they are. In short, both they are great because they are good; and God is likewise mighty, because all things are His own, whence He is almighty. But what shall I say of His prescience, which has for its witnesses as many prophets as it inspired? After all, what title to prescience do we look for in the Author of the universe, since it was by this very attribute that He foreknew all things when He appointed them their places, and appointed them their places when He foreknew them? There is sin itself. If He had not foreknown this, He would not have proclaimed a caution against it under the penalty of death. Now if there were in God such attributes as must have rendered it both impossible and improper for any evil to have happened to man, and yet evil did occur, let us consider man’s condition also—whether it were not, in fact, rather the cause why that came to pass which could not have happened through God. I find, then, that man was by God constituted free, master of his own will and power; indicating the presence of God’s image and likeness in him by nothing so well as by this constitution of his nature. For it was not by his face, and by the lineaments of his body, though they were so varied in his human nature, that he expressed his likeness to the form of God; but he showed his stamp in that essence which he derived from God Himself (that is, the spiritual, which answered to the form of God), and in the freedom and power of his will. This his state was confirmed even by the very law which God then imposed upon him. For a law would not be imposed upon one who had it not in his power to render that obedience which is due to law; nor again, would the penalty of death be threatened against sin, if a contempt of the law were impossible to man in the liberty of his will. So in the Creator’s subsequent laws also you will find, when He sets before man good and evil, life and death, that the entire course of discipline is arranged in precepts by God’s calling men from sin, and threatening and exhorting them; and this on no other ground than that man is free, with a will either for obedience or resistance.

Chapter VI

This Liberty Vindicated in Respect of Its Original Creation; Suitable Also for Exhibiting the Goodness and the Purpose of God. Reward and Punishment Impossible If Man Were Good or Evil Through Necessity and Not Choice

But although we shall be understood, from our argument, to be only so affirming man’s unshackled power over his will, that what happens to him should be laid to his own charge, and not to God’s, yet that you may not object, even now, that he ought not to have been so constituted, since his liberty and power of will might turn out to be injurious, I will first of all maintain that he was rightly so constituted, that I may with the greater confidence commend both his actual constitution, and the additional fact of its being worthy of the Divine Being; the cause which led to man’s being created with such a constitution being shown to be the better one. Moreover, man thus constituted will be protected by both the goodness of God and by His purpose, both of which are always found in concert in our God. For His purpose is no purpose without goodness; nor is His goodness goodness without a purpose, except forsooth in the case of Marcion’s god, who is purposelessly good, as we have shown. Well, then, it was proper that God should be known; it was no doubt a good and reasonable thing. Proper also was it that there should be something worthy of knowing God. What could be found so worthy as the image and likeness of God? This also was undoubtedly good and reasonable. Therefore it was proper that (he who is) the image and likeness of God should be formed with a free will and a mastery of himself; so that this very thing—namely, freedom of will and self-command—might be reckoned as the image and likeness of God in him. For this purpose such an essence was adapted to man as suited this character, even the afflatus of the Deity, Himself free and uncontrolled. But if you will take some other view of the case, how came it to pass that man, when in possession of the whole world, did not above all things reign in self-possession—a master over others, a slave to himself? The goodness of God, then, you can learn from His gracious gift to man, and His purpose from His disposal of all things. At present, let God’s goodness alone occupy our attention, that which gave so large a gift to man, even the liberty of his will. God’s purpose claims some other opportunity of treatment, offering as it does instruction of like import. Now, God alone is good by nature. For He, who has that which is without beginning, has it not by creation, but by nature. Man, however, who exists entirely by creation, having a beginning, along with that beginning obtained the form in which he exists; and thus he is not by nature disposed to good, but by creation, not having it as his own attribute to be good, because, (as we have said,) it is not by nature, but by creation, that he is disposed to good, according to the appointment of his good Creator, even the Author of all good. In order, therefore, that man might have a goodness of his own, bestowed on him by God, and there might be henceforth in man a property, and in a certain sense a natural attribute of goodness, there was assigned to him in the constitution of his nature, as a formal witness of the goodness which God bestowed upon him, freedom and power of the will, such as should cause good to be performed spontaneously by man, as a property of his own, on the ground that no less than this would be required in the matter of a goodness which was to be voluntarily exercised by him, that is to say, by the liberty of his will, without either favour or servility to the constitution of his nature, so that man should be good just up to this point, if he should display his goodness in accordance with his natural constitution indeed, but still as the result of his will, as a property of his nature; and, by a similar exercise of volition, should show himself to be too strong in defence against evil also (for even this God, of course, foresaw), being free, and master of himself; because, if he were wanting in this prerogative of self-mastery, so as to perform even good by necessity and not will, he would, in the helplessness of his servitude, become subject to the usurpation of evil, a slave as much to evil as to good. Entire freedom of will, therefore, was conferred upon him in both tendencies; so that, as master of himself, he might constantly encounter good by spontaneous observance of it, and evil by its spontaneous avoidance; because, were man even otherwise circumstanced, it was yet his bounden duty, in the judgment of God, to do justice according to the motions of his will regarded, of course, as free. But the reward neither of good nor of evil could be paid to the man who should be found to have been either good or evil through necessity and not choice. In this really lay the law which did not exclude, but rather prove, human liberty by a spontaneous rendering of obedience, or a spontaneous commission of iniquity; so patent was the liberty of man’s will for either issue. Since, therefore, both the goodness and purpose of God are discovered in the gift to man of freedom in his will, it is not right, after ignoring the original definition of goodness and purpose which it was necessary to determine previous to any discussion of the subject, on subsequent facts to presume to say that God ought not in such a way to have formed man, because the issue was other than what was assumed to be proper for God. We ought rather, after duly considering that it behoved God so to create man, to leave this consideration unimpaired, and to survey the other aspects of the case. It is, no doubt, an easy process for persons who take offence at the fall of man, before they have looked into the facts of his creation, to impute the blame of what happened to the Creator, without any examination of His purpose. To conclude: the goodness of God, then fully considered from the beginning of His works, will be enough to convince us that nothing evil could possibly have come forth from God; and the liberty of man will, after a second thought, show us that it alone is chargeable with the fault which itself committed.

Chapter VII

If God Had Anyhow Checked Man’s Liberty, Marcion Would Have Been Ready with Another and Opposite Cavil. Man’s Fall Foreseen by God. Provision Made for It Remedially and Consistently with His Truth and Goodness

By such a conclusion all is reserved unimpaired to God; both His natural goodness, and the purposes of His governance and foreknowledge, and the abundance of His power. You ought, however, to deduct from God’s attributes both His supreme earnestness of purpose and most excellent truth in His whole creation, if you would cease to inquire whether anything could have happened against the will of God. For, while holding this earnestness and truth of the good God, which are indeed capable of proof from the rational creation, you will not wonder at the fact that God did not interfere to prevent the occurrence of what He wished not to happen, in order that He might keep from harm what He wished. For, since He had once for all allowed (and, as we have shown, worthily allowed) to man freedom of will and mastery of himself, surely He from His very authority in creation permitted these gifts to be enjoyed: to be enjoyed, too, so far as lay in Himself, according to His own character as God, that is, for good (for who would permit anything hostile to himself?); and, so far as lay in man, according to the impulses of his liberty (for who does not, when giving anything to any one to enjoy, accompany the gift with a permission to enjoy it with all his heart and will?). The necessary consequence, therefore, was, that God must separate from the liberty which He had once for all bestowed upon man (in other words, keep within Himself), both His foreknowledge and power, through which He might have prevented man’s falling into danger when attempting wrongly to enjoy his liberty. Now, if He had interposed, He would have rescinded the liberty of man’s will, which He had permitted with set purpose, and in goodness. But, suppose God had interposed; suppose Him to have abrogated man’s liberty, by warning him from the tree, and keeping off the subtle serpent from his interview with the woman; would not Marcion then exclaim, What a frivolous, unstable, and faithless Lord, cancelling the gifts He had bestowed! Why did He allow any liberty of will, if He afterwards withdrew it? Why withdraw it after allowing it? Let Him choose where to brand Himself with error, either in His original constitution of man, or in His subsequent abrogation thereof! If He had checked (man’s freedom), would He not then seem to have been rather deceived, through want of foresight into the future? But in giving it full scope, who would not say that He did so in ignorance of the issue of things? God, however, did foreknow that man would make a bad use of his created constitution; and yet what can be so worthy of God as His earnestness of purpose, and the truth of His created works, be they what they may? Man must see, if he failed to make the most of the good gift he had received, how that he was himself guilty in respect of the law which he did not choose to keep, and not that the Lawgiver was committing a fraud against His own law, by not permitting its injunctions to be fulfilled. Whenever you are inclined to indulge in such censure (and it is the most becoming for you) against the Creator, recall gently to your mind in His behalf His earnestness, and endurance, and truth, in having given completeness to His creatures both as rational and good.

Chapter VIII

Man, Endued with Liberty, Superior to the Angels, Overcomes Even the Angel Which Lured Him to His Fall, When Repentant and Resuming Obedience to God

For it was not merely that he might live the natural life that God had produced man, but that he should live virtuously, that is, in relation to God and to His law. Accordingly, God gave him to live when he was formed into a living soul; but He charged him to live virtuously when he was required to obey a law. So also God shows that man was not constituted for death, by now wishing that he should be restored to life, preferring the sinner’s repentance to his death. As, therefore, God designed for man a condition of life, so man brought on himself a state of death; and this, too, neither through infirmity nor through ignorance, so that no blame can be imputed to the Creator. No doubt it was an angel who was the seducer; but then the victim of that seduction was free, and master of himself; and as being the image and likeness of God, was stronger than any angel; and as being, too, the afflatus of the Divine Being, was nobler than that material spirit of which angels were made. Who maketh, says he, His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire. He would not have made all things subject to man, if he had been too weak for the dominion, and inferior to the angels, to whom He assigned no such subjects; nor would He have put the burden of law upon him, if he had been incapable of sustaining so great a weight; nor, again, would He have threatened with the penalty of death a creature whom He knew to be guiltless on the score of his helplessness: in short, if He had made him infirm, it would not have been by liberty and independence of will, but rather by the withholding from him these endowments. And thus it comes to pass, that even now also, the same human being, the same substance of his soul, the same condition as Adam’s, is made conqueror over the same devil by the self-same liberty and power of his will, when it moves in obedience to the laws of God.

Chapter IX

Another Cavil Answered, I.e., the Fall Imputable to God, Because Man’s Soul is a Portion of the Spiritual Essence of the Creator. The Divine Afflatus Not in Fault in the Sin of Man, But the Human Will Which Was Additional to It

But, you say, in what way soever the substance of the Creator is found to be susceptible of fault, when the afflatus of God, that is to say, the soul, offends in man, it cannot but be that that fault of the portion is refferible to the original whole. Now, to meet this objection, we must explain the nature of the soul. We must at the outset hold fast the meaning of the Greek scripture, which has afflatus, not spirit. Some interpreters of the Greek, without reflecting on the difference of the words, and careless about their exact meaning, put spirit for afflatus; they thus afford to heretics an opportunity of tarnishing the Spirit of God, that is to say, God Himself, with default. And now comes the question. Afflatus, observe then, is less than spirit, although it comes from spirit; it is the spirit’s gentle breeze, but it is not the spirit. Now a breeze is rarer than the wind; and although it proceeds from wind, yet a breeze is not the wind. One may call a breeze the image of the spirit. In the same manner, man is the image of God, that is, of spirit; for God is spirit. Afflatus is therefore the image of the spirit. Now the image is not in any case equal to the very thing. It is one thing to be like the reality, and another thing to be the reality itself. So, although the afflatus is the image of the spirit, it is yet not possible to compare the image of God in such a way, that, because the reality—that is, the spirit, or in other words, the Divine Being—is faultless, therefore the afflatus also, that is to say, the image, ought not by any possibility to have done wrong. In this respect will the image be less than the reality, and the afflatus inferior to the spirit, in that, while it possesses beyond doubt the true lineaments of divinity, such as an immortal soul, freedom and its own mastery over itself, foreknowledge in a great degree, reasonableness, capacity of understanding and knowledge, it is even in these respects an image still, and never amounts to the actual power of Deity, nor to absolute exemption from fault,—a property which is only conceded to God, that is, to the reality, and which is simply incompatible with an image. An image, although it may express all the lineaments of the reality, is yet wanting in its intrinsic power; it is destitute of motion. In like manner, the soul, the image of the spirit, is unable to express the simple power thereof, that is to say, its happy exemption from sinning. Were it otherwise, it would not be soul, but spirit; not man, who received a soul, but God. Besides, to take another view of the matter, not everything which pertains to God will be regarded as God, so that you would not maintain that His afflatus was God, that is, exempt from fault, because it is the breath of God. And in an act of your own, such as blowing into a flute, you would not thereby make the flute human, although it was your own human breath which you breathed into it, precisely as God breathed of His own Spirit. In fact, the Scripture, by expressly saying that God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, and that man became thereby a living soul, not a life-giving spirit, has distinguished that soul from the condition of the Creator. The work must necessarily be distinct from the workman, and it is inferior to him. The pitcher will not be the potter, although made by the potter; nor in like manner, will the afflatus, because made by the spirit, be on that account the spirit. The soul has often been called by the same name as the breath. You should also take care that no descent be made from the breath to a still lower quality. So you have granted (you say) the infirmity of the soul, which you denied before! Undoubtedly, when you demand for it an equality with God, that is, a freedom from fault, I contend that it is infirm. But when the comparison is challenged with an angel, I am compelled to maintain that the head over all things is the stronger of the two, to whom the angels are ministers, who is destined to be the judge of angels, if he shall stand fast in the law of God—an obedience which he refused at first. Now this disobedience it was possible for the afflatus of God to commit: it was possible, but it was not proper. The possibility lay in its slenderness of nature, as being the breath and not the spirit; the impropriety, however, arose from its power of will, as being free, and not a slave. It was furthermore assisted by the warning against committing sin under the threat of incurring death, which was meant to be a support for its slender nature, and a direction for its liberty of choice. So that the soul can no longer appear to have sinned, because it has an affinity with God, that is to say, through the afflatus, but rather through that which was an addition to its nature, that is, through its free-will, which was indeed given to it by God in accordance with His purpose and reason, but recklessly employed by man according as he chose. This, then, being the case, the entire course of God’s action is purged from all imputation to evil. For the liberty of the will will not retort its own wrong on Him by whom it was bestowed, but on him by whom it was improperly used. What is the evil, then, which you want to impute to the Creator? If it is man’s sin, it will not be God’s fault, because it is man’s doing; nor is that Being to be regarded as the author of the sin, who turns out to be its forbidder, nay, its condemner. If death is the evil, death will not give the reproach of being its own author to Him who threatened it, but to him who despised it. For by his contempt he introduced it, which assuredly would not have appeared had man not despised it.

Chapter X

Another Cavil Met, I.e., the Devil Who Instigated Man to Sin Himself the Creature of God. Nay, the Primeval Cherub Only Was God’s Work. The Devilish Nature Superadded by Wilfulness. In Man’s Recovery the Devil is Vanquished in a Conflict on His Own Ground

If, however, you choose to transfer the account of evil from man to the devil as the instigator of sin, and in this way, too, throw the blame on the Creator, inasmuch as He created the devil,—for He maketh those spiritual beings, the angels—then it will follow that what was made, that is to say, the angel, will belong to Him who made it; while that which was not made by God, even the devil, or accuser, cannot but have been made by itself; and this by false detraction from God: first, how that God had forbidden them to eat of every tree; then, with the pretence that they should not die if they ate; thirdly, as if God grudged them the property of divinity. Now, whence originated this malice of lying and deceit towards man, and slandering of God? Most certainly not from God, who made the angel good after the fashion of His good works. Indeed, before he became the devil, he stands forth the wisest of creatures; and wisdom is no evil. If you turn to the prophecy of Ezekiel, you will at once perceive that this angel was both by creation good and by choice corrupt. For in the person of the prince of Tyre it is said in reference to the devil: “Moreover, the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God: Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty” (this belongs to him as the highest of the angels, the archangel, the wisest of all); “amidst the delights of the paradise of thy God wast thou born” (for it was there, where God had made the angels in a shape which resembled the figure of animals). “Every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, the topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle; and with gold hast thou filled thy barns and thy treasuries. From the day when thou wast created, when I set thee, a cherub, upon the holy mountain of God, thou wast in the midst of stones of fire, thou wast irreproachable in thy days, from the day of thy creation, until thine iniquities were discovered. By the abundance of thy merchandise thou hast filled thy storehouses, and thou hast sinned,” etc. This description, it is manifest, properly belongs to the transgression of the angel, and not to the prince’s: for none among human beings was either born in the paradise of God, not even Adam himself, who was rather translated thither; nor placed with a cherub upon God’s holy mountain, that is to say, in the heights of heaven, from which the Lord testifies that Satan fell; nor detained amongst the stones of fire, and the flashing rays of burning constellations, whence Satan was cast down like lightning. No, it is none else than the very author of sin who was denoted in the person of a sinful man: he was once irreproachable, at the time of his creation, formed for good by God, as by the good Creator of irreproachable creatures, and adorned with every angelic glory, and associated with God, good with the Good; but afterwards of his own accord removed to evil. From the day when thine iniquities, says he, were discovered,—attributing to him those injuries wherewith he injured man when he was expelled from his allegiance to God,—even from that time did he sin, when he propagated his sin, and thereby plied “the abundance of his merchandise,” that is, of his Wickedness, even the tale of his transgressions, because he was himself as a spirit no less (than man) created, with the faculty of free-will. For God would in nothing fail to endow a being who was to be next to Himself with a liberty of this kind. Nevertheless, by precondemning him, God testified that he had departed from the condition of his created nature, through his own lusting after the wickedness which was spontaneously conceived within him; and at the same time, by conceding a permission for the operation of his designs, He acted consistently with the purpose of His own goodness, deferring the devil’s destruction for the self-same reason as He postponed the restitution of man. For He afforded room for a conflict, wherein man might crush his enemy with the same freedom of his will as had made him succumb to him (proving that the fault was all his own, not God’s), and so worthily recover his salvation by a victory; wherein also the devil might receive a more bitter punishment, through being vanquished by him whom he had previously injured; and wherein God might be discovered to be so much the more good, as waiting for man to return from his present life to a more glorious paradise, with a right to pluck of the tree of life.

Chapter XI

If, After Man’s Sin, God Exercised His Attribute of Justice and Judgment, This Was Compatible with His Goodness, and Enhances the True Idea of the Perfection of God’s Character

Up to the fall of man, therefore, from the beginning God was simply good; after that He became a judge both severe and, as the Marcionites will have it, cruel. Woman is at once condemned to bring forth in sorrow, and to serve her husband, although before she had heard without pain the increase of her race proclaimed with the blessing, Increase and multiply, and although she had been destined to be a help and not a slave to her male partner. Immediately the earth is also cursed, which before was blessed. Immediately spring up briers and thorns, where once had grown grass, and herbs, and fruitful trees. Immediately arise sweat and labour for bread, where previously on every tree was yielded spontaneous food and untilled nourishment. Thenceforth it is “man to the ground,” and not as before, “from the ground”; to death thenceforth, but before, to life; thenceforth with coats of skins, but before, nakedness without a blush. Thus God’s prior goodness was from nature, His subsequent severity from a cause. The one was innate, the other accidental; the one His own, the other adapted; the one issuing from Him, the other admitted by Him. But then nature could not have rightly permitted His goodness to have gone on inoperative, nor the cause have allowed His severity to have escaped in disguise or concealment. God provided the one for Himself, the other for the occasion. You should now set about showing also that the position of a judge is allied with evil, who have been dreaming of another god as a purely good one—solely because you cannot understand the Deity to be a judge; although we have proved God to be also a judge. Or if not a judge, at any rate a perverse and useless originator of a discipline which is not to be vindicated—in other words, not to be judged. You do not, however, disprove God’s being a judge, who have no proof to show that He is a judge. You will undoubtedly have to accuse justice herself, which provides the judge, or else to reckon her among the species of evil, that is, to add injustice to the titles of goodness. But then justice is an evil, if injustice is a good. And yet you are forced to declare injustice to be one of the worst of things, and by the same rule are constrained to class justice amongst the most excellent. Since there is nothing hostile to evil which is not good, and no enemy of good which is not evil. It follows, then, that as injustice is an evil, so in the same degree is justice a good. Nor should it be regarded as simply a species of goodness, but as the practical observance of it, because goodness (unless justice be so controlled as to be just) will not be goodness, if it be unjust. For nothing is good which is unjust; while everything, on the other hand, which is just is good.

Chapter XII

The Attributes of Goodness and Justice Should Not Be Separated. They are Compatible in the True God. The Function of Justice in the Divine Being Described

Since, therefore, there is this union and agreement between goodness and justice, you cannot prescribe their separation. With what face will you determine the separation of your two Gods, regarding in their separate condition one as distinctively the good God, and the other as distinctively the just God? Where the just is, there also exists the good. In short, from the very first the Creator was both good and also just. And both His attributes advanced together. His goodness created, His justice arranged, the world; and in this process it even then decreed that the world should be formed of good materials, because it took counsel with goodness. The work of justice is apparent, in the separation which was pronounced between light and darkness, between day and night, between heaven and earth, between the water above and the water beneath, between the gathering together of the sea and the mass of the dry land, between the greater lights and the lesser, between the luminaries of the day and those of the night, between male and female, between the tree of knowledge of death and of life, between the world and paradise, between the aqueous and the earth-born animals. As goodness conceived all things, so did justice discriminate them. With the determination of the latter, everything was arranged and set in order. Every site and quality of the elements, their effect, motion, and state, the rise and setting of each, are the judicial determinations of the Creator. Do not suppose that His function as a judge must be defined as beginning when evil began, and so tarnish His justice with the cause of evil. By such considerations, then, do we show that this attribute advanced in company with goodness, the author of all things,—worthy of being herself, too, deemed innate and natural, and not as accidentally accruing to God, inasmuch as she was found to be in Him, her Lord, the arbiter of His works.

Chapter XIII

Further Description of the Divine Justice; Since the Fall of Man It Has Regulated the Divine Goodness. God’s Claims on Our Love and Our Fear Reconciled

But yet, when evil afterwards broke out, and the goodness of God began now to have an adversary to contend against, God’s justice also acquired another function, even that of directing His goodness according to men’s application for it. And this is the result: the divine goodness, being interrupted in that free course whereby God was spontaneously good, is now dispensed according to the deserts of every man; it is offered to the worthy, denied to the unworthy, taken away from the unthankful, and also avenged on all its enemies. Thus the entire office of justice in this respect becomes an agency for goodness: whatever it condemns by its judgment, whatever it chastises by its condemnation, whatever (to use your phrase) it ruthlessly pursues, it, in fact, benefits with good instead of injuring. Indeed, the fear of judgment contributes to good, not to evil. For good, now contending with an enemy, was not strong enough to recommend itself by itself alone. At all events, if it could do so much, it could not keep its ground; for it had lost its impregnability through the foe, unless some power of fear supervened, such as might compel the very unwilling to seek after good, and take care of it. But who, when so many incentives to evil were assailing him, would desire that good, which he could despise with impunity? Who, again, would take care of what he could lose without danger? You read how broad is the road to evil, how thronged in comparison with the opposite: would not all glide down that road were there nothing in it to fear? We dread the Creator’s tremendous threats, and yet scarcely turn away from evil. What, if He threatened not? Will you call this justice an evil, when it is all unfavourable to evil? Will you deny it to be a good, when it has its eye towards good? What sort of being ought you to wish God to be? Would it be right to prefer that He should be such, that sins might flourish under Him, and the devil make mock at Him? Would you suppose Him to be a good God, who should be able to make a man worse by security in sin? Who is the author of good, but He who also requires it? In like manner who is a stranger to evil, except Him who is its enemy? Who its enemy, besides Him who is its conqueror? Who else its conqueror, than He who is its punisher? Thus God is wholly good, because in all things He is on the side of good. In fact, He is omnipotent, because able both to help and to hurt. Merely to profit is a comparatively small matter, because it can do nothing else than a good turn. From such a conduct with what confidence can I hope for good, if this is its only ability? How can I follow after the reward of innocence, if I have no regard to the requital of wrong-doing? I must needs have my doubts whether he might not fail in recompensing one or other alternative, who was unequal in his resources to meet both. Thus far, then, justice is the very fulness of the Deity Himself, manifesting God as both a perfect father and a perfect master: a father in His mercy, a master in His discipline; a father in the mildness of His power, a master in its severity; a father who must be loved with dutiful affection, a master who must needs be feared; be loved, because He prefers mercy to sacrifice; be feared because He dislikes sin; be loved, because He prefers the sinner’s repentance to his death; be feared, because He dislikes the sinners who do not repent. Accordingly, the divine law enjoins duties in respect of both these attributes: Thou shalt love God, and, Thou shalt fear God. It proposed one for the obedient man, the other for the transgressor.

Chapter XIV

Evil of Two Kinds, Penal and Criminal. It is Not of the Latter Sort that God is the Author, But Only of the Former, Which are Penal, and Included in His Justice

On all occasions does God meet you: it is He who smites, but also heals; who kills, but also makes alive; who humbles, and yet exalts; who “creates evil,” but also “makes peace;”—so that from these very (contrasts of His providence) I may get an answer to the heretics. Behold, they say, how He acknowledges Himself to be the creator of evil in the passage, “It is I who create evil.” They take a word whose one form reduces to confusion and ambiguity two kinds of evils (because both sins and punishments are called evils), and will have Him in every passage to be understood as the creator of all evil things, in order that He may be designated the author of evil. We, on the contrary, distinguish between the two meanings of the word in question, and, by separating evils of sin from penal evils, mala culpae from mala poenae, confine to each of the two classes its own author,—the devil as the author of the sinful evils (culpae), and God as the creator of penal evils (poenae); so that the one class shall be accounted as morally bad, and the other be classed as the operations of justice passing penal sentences against the evils of sin. Of the latter class of evils which are compatible with justice, God is therefore avowedly the creator. They are, no doubt, evil to those by whom they are endured, but still on their own account good, as being just and defensive of good and hostile to sin. In this respect they are, moreover, worthy of God. Else prove them to be unjust, in order to show them deserving of a place in the sinful class, that is to say, evils of injustice; because if they turn out to belong to justice, they will be no longer evil things, but good—evil only to the bad, by whom even directly good things are condemned as evil. In this case, you must decide that man, although the wilful contemner of the divine law, unjustly bore the doom which he would like to have escaped; that the wickedness of those days was unjustly smitten by the deluge, afterwards by the fire (of Sodom); that Egypt, although most depraved and superstitious, and, worse still, the harasser of its guest-population, was unjustly stricken with the chastisement of its ten plagues. God hardens the heart of Pharaoh. He deserved, however, to be influenced to his destruction, who had already denied God, already in his pride so often rejected His ambassadors, accumulated heavy burdens on His people, and (to sum up all) as an Egyptian, had long been guilty before God of Gentile idolatry, worshipping the ibis and the crocodile in preference to the living God. Even His own people did God visit in their ingratitude. Against young lads, too, did He send forth bears, for their irreverence to the prophet.

Chapter XV

The Severity of God Compatible with Reason and Justice. When Inflicted, Not Meant to Be Arbitrary, But Remedial

Consider well, then, before all things the justice of the Judge; and if its purpose be clear, then the severity thereof, and the operations of the severity in its course, will appear compatible with reason and justice. Now, that we may not linger too long on the point, (I would challenge you to) assert the other reasons also, that you may condemn the Judge’s sentences; extenuate the delinquencies of the sinner, that you may blame his judicial conviction. Never mind censuring the Judge; rather prove Him to be an unjust one. Well, then, even though He required the sins of the fathers at the hands of the children, the hardness of the people made such remedial measures necessary for them, in order that, having their posterity in view, they might obey the divine law. For who is there that feels not a greater care for his children than for himself? Again, if the blessing of the fathers was destined likewise for their offspring, previous to any merit on the part of these, why might not the guilt of the fathers also redound to their children? As was the grace, so was the offence; so that the grace and the offence equally ran down through the whole race, with the reservation, indeed, of that subsequent ordinance by which it became possible to refrain from saying, that “the fathers had eaten a sour grape, and the children’s teeth were set on edge:” in other words, that the father should not bear the iniquity of the son, nor the son the iniquity of the father, but that every man should be chargeable with his own sin; so that the harshness of the law having been reduced after the hardness of the people, justice was no longer to judge the race, but individuals. If, however, you accept the gospel of truth, you will discover on whom recoils the sentence of the Judge, when requiting on sons the sins of their fathers, even on those who had been (hardened enough) to imprecate spontaneously on themselves this condemnation: “His blood be on us, and on our children.” This, therefore, the providence of God has ordered throughout its course, even as it had heard it.

Chapter XVI

To the Severity of God There Belong Accessory Qualities, Compatible with Justice. If Human Passions are Predicated of God, They Must Not Be Measured on the Scale of Human Imperfection

Even His severity then is good, because just: when the judge is good, that is just. Other qualities likewise are good, by means of which the good work of a good severity runs out its course, whether wrath, or jealousy, or sternness. For all these are as indispensable to severity as severity is to justice. The shamelessness of an age, which ought to have been reverent, had to be avenged. Accordingly, qualities which pertain to the judge, when they are actually free from blame, as the judge himself is, will never be able to be charged upon him as a fault. What would be said, if, when you thought the doctor necessary, you were to find fault with his instruments, because they cut, or cauterize, or amputate, or tighten; whereas there could be no doctor of any value without his professional tools? Censure, if you please, the practitioner who cuts badly, amputates clumsily, is rash in his cautery; and even blame his implements as rough tools of his art. Your conduct is equally unreasonable, when you allow indeed that God is a judge, but at the same time destroy those operations and dispositions by which He discharges His judicial functions. We are taught God by the prophets, and by Christ, not by the philosophers nor by Epicurus. We who believe that God really lived on earth, and took upon Him the low estate of human form, for the purpose of man’s salvation, are very far from thinking as those do who refuse to believe that God cares for anything. Whence has found its way to the heretics an argument of this kind: If God is angry, and jealous, and roused, and grieved, He must therefore be corrupted, and must therefore die. Fortunately, however, it is a part of the creed of Christians even to believe that God did die, and yet that He is alive for evermore. Superlative is their folly, who prejudge divine things from human; so that, because in man’s corrupt condition there are found passions of this description, therefore there must be deemed to exist in God also sensations of the same kind. Discriminate between the natures, and assign to them their respective senses, which are as diverse as their natures require, although they seem to have a community of designations. We read, indeed, of God’s right hand, and eyes, and feet: these must not, however, be compared with those of human beings, because they are associated in one and the same name. Now, as great as shall be the difference between the divine and the human body, although their members pass under identical names, so great will also be the diversity between the divine and the human soul, notwithstanding that their sensations are designated by the same names. These sensations in the human being are rendered just as corrupt by the corruptibility of man’s substance, as in God they are rendered incorruptible by the incorruption of the divine essence. Do you really believe the Creator to be God? By all means, is your reply. How then do you suppose that in God there is anything human, and not that all is divine? Him whom you do not deny to be God, you confess to be not human; because, when you confess Him to be God, you have, in fact, already determined that He is undoubtedly diverse from every sort of human conditions. Furthermore, although you allow, with others, that man was inbreathed by God into a living soul, not God by man, it is yet palpably absurd of you to be placing human characteristics in God rather than divine ones in man, and clothing God in the likeness of man, instead of man in the image of God. And this, therefore, is to be deemed the likeness of God in man, that the human soul have the same emotions and sensations as God, although they are not of the same kind; differing as they do both in their conditions and their issues according to their nature. Then, again, with respect to the opposite sensations,—I mean meekness, patience, mercy, and the very parent of them all, goodness,—why do you form your opinion of the divine displays of these (from the human qualities)? For we indeed do not possess them in perfection, because it is God alone who is perfect. So also in regard to those others,—namely, anger and irritation, we are not affected by them in so happy a manner, because God alone is truly happy, by reason of His property of incorruptibility. Angry He will possibly be, but not irritated, nor dangerously tempted; He will be moved, but not subverted. All appliances He must needs use, because of all contingencies; as many sensations as there are causes: anger because of the wicked, and indignation because of the ungrateful, and jealousy because of the proud, and whatsoever else is a hinderance to the evil. So, again, mercy on account of the erring, and patience on account of the impenitent, and pre-eminent resources on account of the meritorious, and whatsoever is necessary to the good. All these affections He is moved by in that peculiar manner of His own, in which it is profoundly fit that He should be affected; and it is owing to Him that man is also similarly affected in a way which is equally his own.

Chapter XVII

Trace God’s Government in History and in His Precepts, and You Will Find It Full of His Goodness

These considerations show that the entire order of God as Judge is an operative one, and (that I may express myself in worthier words) protective of His Catholic and supreme goodness, which, removed as it is from judiciary emotions, and pure in its own condition, the Marcionites refuse to acknowledge to be in one and the same Deity, “raining on the just and on the unjust, and making His sun to rise on the evil and on the good,”—a bounty which no other god at all exercises. It is true that Marcion has been bold enough to erase from the gospel this testimony of Christ to the Creator; but yet the world itself is inscribed with the goodness of its Maker, and the inscription is read by each man’s conscience. Nay, this very long-suffering of the Creator will tend to the condemnation of Marcion; that patience, (I mean,) which waits for the sinner’s repentance rather than his death, which prefers mercy to sacrifice, averting from the Ninevites the ruin which had been already denounced against them, and vouchsafing to Hezekiah’s tears an extension of his life, and restoring his kingly state to the monarch of Babylon after his complete repentance; that mercy, too, which conceded to the devotion of the people the son of Saul when about to die, and gave free forgiveness to David on his confessing his sins against the house of Uriah; which also restored the house of Israel as often as it condemned it, and addressed to it consolation no less frequently than reproof. Do not therefore look at God simply as Judge, but turn your attention also to examples of His conduct as the Most Good. Noting Him, as you do, when He takes vengeance, consider Him likewise when He shows mercy. In the scale, against His severity place His gentleness. When you shall have discovered both qualities to co-exist in the Creator, you will find in Him that very circumstance which induces you to think there is another God. Lastly, come and examine into His doctrine, discipline, precepts, and counsels. You will perhaps say that there are equally good prescriptions in human laws. But Moses and God existed before all your Lycurguses and Solons. There is not one after-age which does not take from primitive sources. At any rate, my Creator did not learn from your God to issue such commandments as: Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness; thou shalt not covet what is thy neighbour’s; honour thy father and thy mother; and, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. To these prime counsels of innocence, chastity, and justice, and piety, are also added prescriptions of humanity, as when every seventh year slaves are released for liberty; when at the same period the land is spared from tillage; a place is also granted to the needy; and from the treading ox’s mouth the muzzle is removed, for the enjoyment of the fruit of his labour before him, in order that kindness first shown in the case of animals might be raised from such rudiments to the refreshment of men.

Chapter XVIII

Some of God’s Laws Defended as Good, Which the Marcionites Impeached, Such as the Lex Talionis. Useful Purposes in a Social and Moral Point of View of This, and Sundry Other Enactments

But what parts of the law can I defend as good with a greater confidence than those which heresy has shown such a longing for?—as the statute of retaliation, requiring eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and stripe for stripe. Now there is not here any smack of a permission to mutual injury; but rather, on the whole, a provision for restraining violence. To a people which was very obdurate, and wanting in faith towards God, it might seem tedious, and even incredible, to expect from God that vengeance which was subsequently to be declared by the prophet: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” Therefore, in the meanwhile, the commission of wrong was to be checked by the fear of a retribution immediately to happen; and so the permission of this retribution was to be the prohibition of provocation, that a stop might thus be put to all hot-blooded injury, whilst by the permission of the second the first is prevented by fear, and by this deterring of the first the second fails to be committed. By the same law another result is also obtained, even the more ready kindling of the fear of retaliation by reason of the very savour of passion which is in it. There is no more bitter thing, than to endure the very suffering which you have inflicted upon others. When, again, the law took somewhat away from men’s food, by pronouncing unclean certain animals which were once blessed, you should understand this to be a measure for encouraging continence, and recognise in it a bridle imposed on that appetite which, while eating angels’ food, craved after the cucumbers and melons of the Egyptians. Recognise also therein a precaution against those companions of the appetite, even lust and luxury, which are usually chilled by the chastening of the appetite. For “the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.” Furthermore, that an eager wish for money might be restrained, so far as it is caused by the need of food, the desire for costly meat and drink was taken out of their power. Lastly, in order that man might be more readily educated by God for fasting, he was accustomed to such articles of food as were neither plentiful nor sumptuous, and not likely to pamper the appetite of the luxurious. Of course the Creator deserved all the greater blame, because it was from His own people that He took away food, rather than from the more ungrateful Marcionites. As for the burdensome sacrifices also, and the troublesome scrupulousness of their ceremonies and oblations, no one should blame them, as if God specially required them for Himself: for He plainly asks, “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?” and, “Who hath required them at your hand?” But he should see herein a careful provision on God’s part, which showed His wish to bind to His own religion a people who were prone to idolatry and transgression by that kind of services wherein consisted the superstition of that period; that He might call them away therefrom, while requesting it to be performed to Himself, as if He desired that no sin should be committed in making idols.

Chapter XIX

The Minute Prescriptions of the Law Meant to Keep the People Dependent on God. The Prophets Sent by God in Pursuance of His Goodness. Many Beautiful Passages from Them Quoted in Illustration of This Attribute

But even in the common transactions of life, and of human intercourse at home and in public, even to the care of the smallest vessels, He in every possible manner made distinct arrangement; in order that, when they everywhere encountered these legal instructions, they might not be at any moment out of the sight of God. For what could better tend to make a man happy, than having “his delight in the law of the Lord?” “In that law would he meditate day and night.” It was not in severity that its Author promulgated this law, but in the interest of the highest benevolence, which rather aimed at subduing the nation’s hardness of heart, and by laborious services hewing out a fealty which was (as yet) untried in obedience: for I purposely abstain from touching on the mysterious senses of the law, considered in its spiritual and prophetic relation, and as abounding in types of almost every variety and sort. It is enough at present, that it simply bound a man to God, so that no one ought to find fault with it, except him who does not choose to serve God. To help forward this beneficent, not onerous, purpose of the law, the prophets were also ordained by the self-same goodness of God, teaching precepts worthy of God, how that men should “cease to do evil, learn to do well, seek judgment, judge the fatherless, and plead for the widow:” be fond of the divine expostulations: avoid contact with the wicked: “let the oppressed go free:” dismiss the unjust sentence, “deal their bread to the hungry; bring the outcast into their house; cover the naked, when they see him; nor hide themselves from their own flesh and kin:” “keep their tongue from evil, and their lips from speaking guile: depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it:” be angry, and sin not; that is, not persevere in anger, or be enraged: “walk not in the counsel of the ungodly; nor stand in the way of sinners; nor sit in the seat of the scornful.” Where then? “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity;” meditating (as they do) day and night in the law of the Lord, because “it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man; better to hope in the Lord than in man.” For what recompense shall man receive from God? “He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.” “He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, who hath not taken God’s name in vain, nor sworn deceitfully to his neighbour, he shall receive blessing from the Lord, and mercy from the God of his salvation.” “For the eyes of the Lord are upon them that fear Him, upon them that hope in His mercy, to deliver their souls from death,” even eternal death, “and to nourish them in their hunger,” that is, after eternal life. “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth them out of them all.” “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” “The Lord keepeth all their bones; not one of them shall be broken.” The Lord will redeem the souls of His servants. We have adduced these few quotations from a mass of the Creator’s Scriptures; and no more, I suppose, are wanted to prove Him to be a most good God, for they sufficiently indicate both the precepts of His goodness and the first-fruits thereof.

Chapter XX

The Marcionites Charged God with Having Instigated the Hebrews to Spoil the Egyptians. Defence of the Divine Dispensation in that Matter

But these “saucy cuttles” (of heretics) under the figure of whom the law about things to be eaten prohibited this very kind of piscatory aliment, as soon as they find themselves confuted, eject the black venom of their blasphemy, and so spread about in all directions the object which (as is now plain) they severally have in view, when they put forth such assertions and protestations as shall obscure and tarnish the rekindled light of the Creator’s bounty. We will, however, follow their wicked design, even through these black clouds, and drag to light their tricks of dark calumny, laying to the Creator’s charge with especial emphasis the fraud and theft of gold and silver which the Hebrews were commanded by Him to practise against the Egyptians. Come, unhappy heretic, I cite even you as a witness; first look at the case of the two nations, and then you will form a judgment of the Author of the command. The Egyptians put in a claim on the Hebrews for these gold and silver vessels. The Hebrews assert a counter claim, alleging that by the bond of their respective fathers, attested by the written engagement of both parties, there were due to them the arrears of that laborious slavery of theirs, for the bricks they had so painfully made, and the cities and palaces which they had built. What shall be your verdict, you discoverer of the most good God? That the Hebrews must admit the fraud, or the Egyptians the compensation? For they maintain that thus has the question been settled by the advocates on both sides, of the Egyptians demanding their vessels, and the Hebrews claiming the requital of their labours. But for all they say, the Egyptians justly renounced their restitution-claim then and there; while the Hebrews to this day, in spite of the Marcionites, re-assert their demand for even greater damages, insisting that, however large was their loan of the gold and silver, it would not be compensation enough, even if the labour of six hundred thousand men should be valued at only “a farthing” a day a piece. Which, however, were the more in number—those who claimed the vessel, or those who dwelt in the palaces and cities? Which, too, the greater—the grievance of the Egyptians against the Hebrews, or “the favour” which they displayed towards them? Were free men reduced to servile labour, in order that the Hebrews might simply proceed against the Egyptians by action at law for injuries; or in order that their officers might on their benches sit and exhibit their backs and shoulders shamefully mangled by the fierce application of the scourge? It was not by a few plates and cup—in all cases the property, no doubt, of still fewer rich men—that any one would pronounce that compensation should have been awarded to the Hebrews, but both by all the resources of these and by the contributions of all the people. If, therefore, the case of the Hebrews be a good one, the Creator’s case must likewise be a good one; that is to say, his command, when He both made the Egyptians unconsciously grateful, and also gave His own people their discharge in full at the time of their migration by the scanty comfort of a tacit requital of their long servitude. It was plainly less than their due which He commanded to be exacted. The Egyptians ought to have given back their men-children also to the Hebrews.

Chapter XXI

The Law of the Sabbath-Day Explained. The Eight Days’ Procession Around Jericho. The Gathering of Sticks a Violation

Similarly on other points also, you reproach Him with fickleness and instability for contradictions in His commandments, such as that He forbade work to be done on Sabbath-days, and yet at the siege of Jericho ordered the ark to be carried round the walls during eight days; in other words, of course, actually on a Sabbath. You do not, however, consider the law of the Sabbath: they are human works, not divine, which it prohibits. For it says, “Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work.” What work? Of course your own. The conclusion is, that from the Sabbath-day He removes those works which He had before enjoined for the six days, that is, your own works; in other words, human works of daily life. Now, the carrying around of the ark is evidently not an ordinary daily duty, nor yet a human one; but a rare and a sacred work, and, as being then ordered by the direct precept of God, a divine one. And I might fully explain what this signified, were it not a tedious process to open out the forms of all the Creator’s proofs, which you would, moreover, probably refuse to allow. It is more to the point, if you be confuted on plain matters by the simplicity of truth rather than curious reasoning. Thus, in the present instance, there is a clear distinction respecting the Sabbath’s prohibition of human labours, not divine ones. Accordingly, the man who went and gathered sticks on the Sabbath-day was punished with death. For it was his own work which he did; and this the law forbade. They, however, who on the Sabbath carried the ark round Jericho, did it with impunity. For it was not their own work, but God’s, which they executed, and that too, from His express commandment.

Chapter XXII

The Brazen Serpent and the Golden Cherubim Were Not Violations of the Second Commandment. Their Meaning

Likewise, when forbidding the similitude to be made of all things which are in heaven, and in earth, and in the waters, He declared also the reasons, as being prohibitory of all material exhibition of a latent idolatry. For He adds: “Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor serve them.” The form, however, of the brazen serpent which the Lord afterwards commanded Moses to make, afforded no pretext for idolatry, but was meant for the cure of those who were plagued with the fiery serpents. I say nothing of what was figured by this cure. Thus, too, the golden Cherubim and Seraphim were purely an ornament in the figured fashion of the ark; adapted to ornamentation for reasons totally remote from all condition of idolatry, on account of which the making a likeness is prohibited; and they are evidently not at variance with this law of prohibition, because they are not found in that form of similitude, in reference to which the prohibition is given. We have spoken of the rational institution of the sacrifices, as calling off their homage from idols to God; and if He afterwards rejected this homage, saying, “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?”—He meant nothing else than this to be understood, that He had never really required such homage for Himself. For He says, “I will not eat the flesh of bulls;” and in another passage: “The everlasting God shall neither hunger nor thirst.” Although He had respect to the offerings of Abel, and smelled a sweet savour from the holocaust of Noah, yet what pleasure could He receive from the flesh of sheep, or the odour of burning victims? And yet the simple and God-fearing mind of those who offered what they were receiving from God, both in the way of food and of a sweet smell, was favourably accepted before God, in the sense of respectful homage to God, who did not so much want what was offered, as that which prompted the offering. Suppose now, that some dependant were to offer to a rich man or a king, who was in want of nothing, some very insignificant gift, will the amount and quality of the gift bring dishonour to the rich man and the king; or will the consideration of the homage give them pleasure? Were, however, the dependant, either of his own accord or even in compliance with a command, to present to him gifts suitably to his rank, and were he to observe the solemnities due to a king, only without faith and purity of heart, and without any readiness for other acts of obedience, will not that king or rich man consequently exclaim: “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? I am full of your solemnities, your feast-days, and your Sabbaths.” By calling them yours, as having been performed after the giver’s own will, and not according to the religion of God (since he displayed them as his own, and not as God’s), the Almighty in this passage, demonstrated how suitable to the conditions of the case, and how reasonable, was His rejection of those very offerings which He had commanded to be made to Him.

Chapter XXIII

God’s Purposes in Election and Rejection of the Same Men, Such as King Saul, Explained, in Answer to the Marcionite Cavil

Now, although you will have it that He is inconstant in respect of persons, sometimes disapproving where approbation is deserved; or else wanting in foresight, bestowing approbation on men who ought rather to be reprobated, as if He either censured His own past judgments, or could not forecast His future ones; yet nothing is so consistent for even a good judge as both to reject and to choose on the merits of the present moment. Saul is chosen, but he is not yet the despiser of the prophet Samuel. Solomon is rejected; but he is now become a prey to foreign women, and a slave to the idols of Moab and Sidon. What must the Creator do, in order to escape the censure of the Marcionites? Must He prematurely condemn men, who are thus far correct in their conduct, because of future delinquencies? But it is not the mark of a good God to condemn beforehand persons who have not yet deserved condemnation. Must He then refuse to eject sinners, on account of their previous good deeds? But it is not the characteristic of a just judge to forgive sins in consideration of former virtues which are no longer practised. Now, who is so faultless among men, that God could always have him in His choice, and never be able to reject him? Or who, on the other hand, is so void of any good work, that God could reject him for ever, and never be able to choose him? Show me, then, the man who is always good, and he will not be rejected; show me, too, him who is always evil, and he will never be chosen. Should, however, the same man, being found on different occasions in the pursuit of both (good and evil) be recompensed in both directions by God, who is both a good and judicial Being, He does not change His judgments through inconstancy or want of foresight, but dispenses reward according to the deserts of each case with a most unwavering and provident decision.

Chapter XXIV

Instances of God’s Repentance, and Notably in the Case of the Ninevites, Accounted for and Vindicated

Furthermore, with respect to the repentance which occurs in His conduct, you interpret it with similar perverseness just as if it were with fickleness and improvidence that He repented, or on the recollection of some wrong-doing; because He actually said, “It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king,” very much as if He meant that His repentance savoured of an acknowledgment of some evil work or error. Well, this is not always implied. For there occurs even in good works a confession of repentance, as a reproach and condemnation of the man who has proved himself unthankful for a benefit. For instance, in this case of Saul, the Creator, who had made no mistake in selecting him for the kingdom, and endowing him with His Holy Spirit, makes a statement respecting the goodliness of his person, how that He had most fitly chosen him as being at that moment the choicest man, so that (as He says) there was not his fellow among the children of Israel. Neither was He ignorant how he would afterwards turn out. For no one would bear you out in imputing lack of foresight to that God whom, since you do not deny Him to be divine, you allow to be also foreseeing; for this proper attribute of divinity exists in Him. However, He did, as I have said, burden the guilt of Saul with the confession of His own repentance; but as there is an absence of all error and wrong in His choice of Saul, it follows that this repentance is to be understood as upbraiding another rather than as self-incriminating. Look here then, say you: I discover a self-incriminating case in the matter of the Ninevites, when the book of Jonah declares, “And God repented of the evil that He had said that He would do unto them; and He did it not.” In accordance with which Jonah himself says unto the Lord, “Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish; for I knew that Thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest Thee of the evil.” It is well, therefore, that he premised the attribute of the most good God as most patient over the wicked, and most abundant in mercy and kindness over such as acknowledged and bewailed their sins, as the Ninevites were then doing. For if He who has this attribute is the Most Good, you will have first to relinquish that position of yours, that the very contact with evil is incompatible with such a Being, that is, with the most good God. And because Marcion, too, maintains that a good tree ought not to produce bad fruit; but yet he has mentioned “evil” (in the passage under discussion), which the most good God is incapable of, is there forthcoming any explanation of these “evils,” which may render them compatible with even the most Good? There is. We say, in short, that evil in the present case means, not what may be attributed to the Creator’s nature as an evil being, but what may be attributed to His power as a judge. In accordance with which He declared, “I create evil,” and, “I frame evil against you;” meaning not to sinful evils, but avenging ones. What sort of stigma pertains to these, congruous as they are with God’s judicial character, we have sufficiently explained. Now although these are called “evils,” they are yet not reprehensible in a judge; nor because of this their name do they show that the judge is evil: so in like manner will this particular evil be understood to be one of this class of judiciary evils, and along with them to be compatible with (God as) a judge. The Greeks also sometimes use the word “evils” for troubles and injuries (not malignant ones), as in this passage of yours is also meant. Therefore, if the Creator repented of such evil as this, as showing that the creature deserve decondemnation, and ought to be punished for his sin, then, in the present instance no fault of a criminating nature will be imputed to the Creator, for having deservedly and worthily decreed the destruction of a city so full of iniquity. What therefore He had justly decreed, having no evil purpose in His decree, He decreed from the principle of justice, not from malevolence. Yet He gave it the name of “evil,” because of the evil and desert involved in the very suffering itself. Then, you will say, if you excuse the evil under name of justice, on the ground that He had justly determined destruction against the people of Nineveh, He must even on this argument be blameworthy, for having repented of an act of justice, which surely should not be repented of. Certainly not, my reply is; God will never repent of an act of justice. And it now remains that we should understand what God’s repentance means. For although man repents most frequently on the recollection of a sin, and occasionally even from the unpleasantness of some good action, this is never the case with God. For, inasmuch as God neither commits sin nor condemns a good action, in so far is there no room in Him for repentance of either a good or an evil deed. Now this point is determined for you even in the scripture which we have quoted. Samuel says to Saul, “The Lord hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbour of thine that is better than thou;” and into two parts shall Israel be divided: “for He will not turn Himself, nor repent; for He does not repent as a man does.” According, therefore, to this definition, the divine repentance takes in all cases a different form from that of man, in that it is never regarded as the result of improvidence or of fickleness, or of any condemnation of a good or an evil work. What, then, will be the mode of God’s repentance? It is already quite clear, if you avoid referring it to human conditions. For it will have no other meaning than a simple change of a prior purpose; and this is admissible without any blame even in a man, much more in God, whose every purpose is faultless. Now in Greek the word for repentance (metanoia) is formed, not from the confession of a sin, but from a change of mind, which in God we have shown to be regulated by the occurrence of varying circumstances.

Chapter XXV

God’s Dealings with Adam at the Fall, and with Cain After His Crime, Admirably Explained and Defended

It is now high time that I should, in order to meet all objections of this kind, proceed to the explanation and clearing up of the other trifles, weak points, and inconsistencies, as you deemed them. God calls out to Adam, Where art thou? as if ignorant where he was; and when he alleged that the shame of his nakedness was the cause (of his hiding himself), He inquired whether he had eaten of the tree, as if He were in doubt. By no means; God was neither uncertain about the commission of the sin, nor ignorant of Adam’s whereabouts. It was certainly proper to summon the offender, who was concealing himself from the consciousness of his sin, and to bring him forth into the presence of his Lord, not merely by the calling out of his name, but with a home-thrust blow at the sin which he had at that moment committed. For the question ought not to be read in a merely interrogative tone, Where art thou, Adam? but with an impressive and earnest voice, and with an air of imputation, Oh, Adam, where art thou?—as much as to intimate: thou art no longer here, thou art in perdition—so that the voice is the utterance of One who is at once rebuking and sorrowing. But of course some part of paradise had escaped the eye of Him who holds the universe in His hand as if it were a bird’s nest, and to whom heaven is a throne and earth a footstool; so that He could not see, before He summoned him forth, where Adam was, both while lurking and when eating of the forbidden fruit! The wolf or the paltry thief escapes not the notice of the keeper of your vineyard or your garden! And God, I suppose, with His keener vision, from on high was unable to miss the sight of aught which lay beneath Him! Foolish heretic, who treat with scorn so fine an argument of God’s greatness and man’s instruction! God put the question with an appearance of uncertainty, in order that even here He might prove man to be the subject of a free will in the alternative of either a denial or a confession, and give to him the opportunity of freely acknowledging his transgression, and, so far, of lightening it. In like manner He inquires of Cain where his brother was, just as if He had not yet heard the blood of Abel crying from the ground, in order that he too might have the opportunity from the same power of the will of spontaneously denying, and to this degree aggravating, his crime; and that thus there might be supplied to us examples of confessing sins rather than of denying them: so that even then was initiated the evangelic doctrine, “By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” Now, although Adam was by reason of his condition under law subject to death, yet was hope preserved to him by the Lord’s saying, “Behold, Adam is become as one of us;” that is, in consequence of the future taking of the man into the divine nature. Then what follows? “And now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, (and eat), and live for ever.” Inserting thus the particle of present time, “And now,” He shows that He had made for a time, and at present, a prolongation of man’s life. Therefore He did not actually curse Adam and Eve, for they were candidates for restoration, and they had been relieved by confession. Cain, however, He not only cursed; but when he wished to atone for his sin by death, He even prohibited his dying, so that he had to bear the load of this prohibition in addition to his crime. This, then, will prove to be the ignorance of our God, which was simulated on this account, that delinquent man should not be unaware of what he ought to do. Coming down to the case of Sodom and Gomorrha, he says: “I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.” Well, was He in this instance also uncertain through ignorance, and desiring to know? Or was this a necessary tone of utterance, as expressive of a minatory and not a dubious sense, under the colour of an inquiry? If you make merry at God’s “going down,” as if He could not except by the descent have accomplished His judgment, take care that you do not strike your own God with as hard a blow. For He also came down to accomplish what He wished.

Chapter XXVI

The Oath of God: Its Meaning. Moses, When Deprecating God’s Wrath Against Israel, a Type of Christ

But God also swears. Well, is it, I wonder, by the God of Marcion? No, no, he says; a much vainer oath—by Himself! What was He to do, when He knew of no other God; especially when He was swearing to this very point, that besides himself there was absolutely no God? Is it then of swearing falsely that you convict Him, or of swearing a vain oath? But it is not possible for him to appear to have sworn falsely, when he was ignorant, as you say he was, that there was another God. For when he swore by that which he knew, he really committed no perjury. But it was not a vain oath for him to swear that there was no other God. It would indeed be a vain oath, if there had been no persons who believed that there were other Gods, like the worshippers of idols then, and the heretics of the present day. Therefore He swears by Himself, in order that you may believe God, even when He swears that there is besides Himself no other God at all. But you have yourself, O Marcion, compelled God to do this. For even so early as then were you foreseen. Hence, if He swears both in His promises and His threatenings, and thus extorts faith which at first was difficult, nothing is unworthy of God which causes men to believe in God. But (you say) God was even then mean enough in His very fierceness, when, in His wrath against the people for their consecration of the calf, He makes this request of His servant Moses: “Let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them; and I will make of thee a great nation.” Accordingly, you maintain that Moses is better than his God, as the deprecator, nay the averter, of His anger. “For,” said he, “Thou shalt not do this; or else destroy me along with them.” Pitiable are ye also, as well as the people, since you know not Christ, prefigured in the person of Moses as the deprecator of the Father, and the offerer of His own life for the salvation of the people. It is enough, however, that the nation was at the instant really given to Moses. That which he, as a servant, was able to ask of the Lord, the Lord required of Himself. For this purpose did He say to His servant, “Let me alone, that I may consume them,” in order that by his entreaty, and by offering himself, he might hinder (the threatened judgment), and that you might by such an instance learn how much privilege is vouchsafed with God to a faithful man and a prophet.

Chapter XXVII

Other Objections Considered. God’s Condescension in the Incarnation. Nothing Derogatory to the Divine Being in This Economy. The Divine Majesty Worthily Sustained by the Almighty Father, Never Visible to Man. Perverseness of the Marcionite Cavils

And now, that I may briefly pass in review the other points which you have thus far been engaged in collecting, as mean, weak, and unworthy, for demolishing the Creator, I will propound them in a simple and definite statement: that God would have been unable to hold any intercourse with men, if He had not taken on Himself the emotions and affections of man, by means of which He could temper the strength of His majesty, which would no doubt have been incapable of endurance to the moderate capacity of man, by such a humiliation as was indeed degrading to Himself, but necessary for man, and such as on this very account became worthy of God, because nothing is so worthy of God as the salvation of man. If I were arguing with heathens, I should dwell more at length on this point; although with heretics too the discussion does not stand on very different grounds. Inasmuch as ye yourselves have now come to the belief that God moved about in the form and all other circumstances of man’s nature, you will of course no longer require to be convinced that God conformed Himself to humanity, but feel yourselves bound by your own faith. For if the God (in whom ye believe,) even from His higher condition, prostrated the supreme dignity of His majesty to such a lowliness as to undergo death, even the death of the cross, why can you not suppose that some humiliations are becoming to our God also, only more tolerable than Jewish contumelies, and crosses, and sepulchres? Are these the humiliations which henceforth are to raise a prejudice against Christ (the subject as He is of human passions ) being a partaker of that Godhead against which you make the participation in human qualities a reproach? Now we believe that Christ did ever act in the name of God the Father; that He actually from the beginning held intercourse with (men); actually communed with patriarchs and prophets; was the Son of the Creator; was His Word; whom God made His Son by emitting Him from His own self, and thenceforth set Him over every dispensation and (administration of) His will, making Him a little lower than the angels, as is written in David. In which lowering of His condition He received from the Father a dispensation in those very respects which you blame as human; from the very beginning learning, even then, (that state of a) man which He was destined in the end to become. It is He who descends, He who interrogates, He who demands, He who swears. With regard, however, to the Father, the very gospel which is common to us will testify that He was never visible, according to the word of Christ: “No man knoweth the Father, save the Son.” For even in the Old Testament He had declared, “No man shall see me, and live.” He means that the Father is invisible, in whose authority and in whose name was He God who appeared as the Son of God. But with us Christ is received in the person of Christ, because even in this manner is He our God. Whatever attributes therefore you require as worthy of God, must be found in the Father, who is invisible and unapproachable, and placid, and (so to speak) the God of the philosophers; whereas those qualities which you censure as unworthy must be supposed to be in the Son, who has been seen, and heard, and encountered, the Witness and Servant of the Father, uniting in Himself man and God, God in mighty deeds, in weak ones man, in order that He may give to man as much as He takes from God. What in your esteem is the entire disgrace of my God, is in fact the sacrament of man’s salvation. God held converse with man, that man might learn to act as God. God dealt on equal terms with man, that man might be able to deal on equal terms with God. God was found little, that man might become very great. You who disdain such a God, I hardly know whether you ex fidebelieve that God was crucified. How great, then, is your perversity in respect of the two characters of the Creator! You designate Him as Judge, and reprobate as cruelty that severity of the Judge which only acts in accord with the merits of cases. You require God to be very good, and yet despise as meanness that gentleness of His which accorded with His kindness, (and) held lowly converse in proportion to the mediocrity of man’s estate. He pleases you not, whether great or little, neither as your judge nor as your friend! What if the same features should be discovered in your God? That He too is a judge, we have already shown in the proper section: that from being a judge He must needs be severe; and from being severe He must also be cruel, if indeed cruel.

Chapter XXVIII

The Tables Turned Upon Marcion, by Contrasts, in Favour of the True God

Now, touching the weaknesses and malignities, and the other (alleged), notes (of the Creator), I too shall advance antitheses in rivalry to Marcion’s. If my God knew not of any other superior to Himself, your god also was utterly unaware that there was any beneath himself. It is just what Heraclitus “the obscure” said; whether it be up or down, it comes to the same thing. If, indeed, he was not ignorant (of his position), it must have occurred to Him from the beginning. Sin and death, and the author of sin too—the devil—and all the evil which my God permitted to be, this also, did your god permit; for he allowed Him to permit it. Our God changed His purposes; in like manner yours did also. For he who cast his look so late in the human race, changed that purpose, which for so long a period had refused to cast that look. Our God repented Him of the evil in a given case; so also did yours. For by the fact that he at last had regard to the salvation of man, he showed such a repentance of his previous disregard as was due for a wrong deed. But neglect of man’s salvation will be accounted a wrong deed, simply because it has been remedied by his repentance in the conduct of your god. Our God you say commanded a fraudulent act, but in a matter of gold and silver. Now, inasmuch as man is more precious than gold and silver, in so far is your god more fraudulent still, because he robs man of his Lord and Creator. Eye for eye does our God require; but your god does even a greater injury, (in your ideas,) when he prevents an act of retaliation. For what man will not return a blow, without waiting to be struck a second time. Our God (you say) knows not whom He ought to choose. Nor does your god, for if he had foreknown the issue, he would not have chosen the traitor Judas. If you allege that the Creator practised deception in any instance, there was a far greater mendacity in your Christ, whose very body was unreal. Many were consumed by the severity of my God. Those also who were not saved by your god are verily disposed by him to ruin. My God ordered a man to be slain. Your god willed himself to be put to death; not less a homicide against himself than in respect of him by whom he meant to be slain. I will moreover prove to Marcion that they were many who were slain by his god; for he made every one a homicide: in other words, he doomed him to perish, except when people failed in no duty towards Christ. But the straightforward virtue of truth is contented with few resources. Many things will be necessary for falsehood.

Chapter XXIX

Marcion’s Own Antitheses, If Only the Title and Object of the Work Be Excepted, Afford Proofs of the Consistent Attributes of the True God

But I would have attacked Marcion’s own Antitheses in closer and fuller combat, if a more elaborate demolition of them were required in maintaining for the Creator the character of a good God and a Judge, after the examples of both points, which we have shown to be so worthy of God. Since, however, these two attributes of goodness and justice do together make up the proper fulness of the Divine Being as omnipotent, I am able to content myself with having now compendiously refuted his Antitheses, which aim at drawing distinctions out of the qualities of the (Creator’s) artifices, or of His laws, or of His great works; and thus sundering Christ from the Creator, as the most Good from the Judge, as One who is merciful from Him who is ruthless, and One who brings salvation from Him who causes ruin. The truth is, they rather unite the two Beings whom they arrange in those diversities (of attribute), which yet are compatible in God. For only take away the title of Marcion’s book, and the intention and purpose of the work itself, and you could get no better demonstration that the self-same God was both very good and a Judge, inasmuch as these two characters are only competently found in God. Indeed, the very effort which is made in the selected examples to oppose Christ to the Creator, conduces all the more to their union. For so entirely one and the same was the nature of the Divine Beings, the good and the severe, as shown both by the same examples and in similar proofs, that It willed to display Its goodness to those on whom It had first inflicted Its severity. The difference in time was no matter of surprise, when the same God was afterwards merciful in presence of evils which had been subdued, who had once been so austere whilst they were as yet unsubdued. Thus, by help of the Antitheses, the dispensation of the Creator can be more readily shown to have been reformed by Christ, rather than destroyed; restored, rather than abolished; especially as you sever your own god from everything like acrimonious conduct, even from all rivalry whatsoever with the Creator. Now, since this is the case, how comes it to pass that the Antitheses demonstrate Him to have been the Creator’s rival in every disputed cause? Well, even here, too, I will allow that in these causes my God has been a jealous God, who has in His own right taken especial care that all things done by Him should be in their beginning of a robuster growth; and this in the way of a good, because rational emulation, which tends to maturity. In this sense the world itself will acknowledge His “antitheses,” from the contrariety of its own elements, although it has been regulated with the very highest reason. Wherefore, most thoughtless Marcion, it was your duty to have shown that one (of the two Gods you teach) was a God of light, and the other a God of darkness; and then you would have found it an easier task to persuade us that one was a God of goodness, the other a God of severity. How ever, the “antithesis” (or variety of administration) will rightly be His property, to whom it actually belongs in (the government of) the world.

Book III

Wherein Christ is shown to be the Son of God, Who created the world; to have been predicted by the prophets; to have taken human flesh like our own, by a real incarnation

Chapter I

Introductory; A Brief Statement of the Preceding Argument in Connection with the Subject of This Book

Following the track of my original treatise, the loss of which we are steadily proceeding to restore, we come now, in the order of our subject, to treat of Christ, although this be a work of supererogation, after the proof which we have gone through that there is but one only God. For no doubt it has been already ruled with sufficient clearness, that Christ must be regarded as pertaining to no other God than the Creator, when it has been determined that no other God but the Creator should be the object of our faith. Him did Christ so expressly preach, whilst the apostles one after the other also so clearly affirmed that Christ belonged to no other God than Him whom He Himself preached—that is, the Creator—that no mention of a second God (nor, accordingly, of a second Christ) was ever agitated previous to Marcion’s scandal. This is most easily proved by an examination of both the apostolic and the heretical churches, from which we are forced to declare that there is undoubtedly a subversion of the rule (of faith), where any opinion is found of later date,—a point which I have inserted in my first book. A discussion of it would unquestionably be of value even now, when we are about to make a separate examination into (the subject of) Christ; because, whilst proving Christ to be the Creator’s Son, we are effectually shutting out the God of Marcion. Truth should employ all her available resources, and in no limping way. In our compendious rules of faith, however, she has it all her own way. But I have resolved, like an earnest man, to meet my adversary every way and everywhere in the madness of his heresy, which is so great, that he has found it easier to assume that that Christ has come who was never heard of, than He who has always been predicted.

Chapter II

Why Christ’s Coming Should Be Previously Announced

Coming then at once to the point, I have to encounter the question, Whether Christ ought to have come so suddenly? (I answer, No.) First, because He was the Son of God His Father. For this was a point of order, that the Father should announce the Son before the Son should the Father, and that the Father should testify of the Son before the Son should testify of the Father. Secondly, because, in addition to the title of Son, He was the Sent. The authority, therefore, of the Sender must needs have first appeared in a testimony of the Sent; because none who comes in the authority of another does himself set it forth for himself on his own assertion, but rather looks out for protection from it, for first comes the support of him who gives him his authority. Now (Christ) will neither be acknowledged as Son if the Father never named Him, nor be believed in as the Sent One if no Sender gave Him a commission: the Father, if any, purposely naming Him; and the Sender, if any, purposely commissioning Him. Everything will be open to suspicion which transgresses a rule. Now the primary order of all things will not allow that the Father should come after the Son in recognition, or the Sender after the Sent, or God after Christ. Nothing can take precedence of its own original in being acknowledged, nor in like manner can it in its ordering. Suddenly a Son, suddenly Sent, and suddenly Christ! On the contrary, I should suppose that from God nothing comes suddenly, because there is nothing which is not ordered and arranged by God. And if ordered, why not also foretold, that it may be proved to have been ordered by the prediction, and by the ordering to be divine? And indeed so great a work, which (we may be sure) required preparation, as being for the salvation of man, could not have been on that very account a sudden thing, because it was through faith that it was to be of avail. Inasmuch, then, as it had to be believed in order to be of use, so far did it require, for the securing of this faith, a preparation built upon the foundations of pro-arrangement and fore-announcement. Faith, when informed by such a process, might justly be required of man by God, and by man be reposed in God; it being a duty, after that knowledge has made it a possibility, to believe those things which a man had learned indeed to believe from the fore-announcement.

Chapter III

Miracles Alone, Without Prophecy, an Insufficient Evidence of Christ’s Mission

A procedure of this kind, you say, was not necessary, because He was forthwith to prove Himself the Son and the Sent One, and the Christ of God in very deed, by means of the evidence of His wonderful works. On my side, however, I have to deny that evidence simply of this sort was sufficient as a testimony to Him. He Himself afterwards deprived it of its authority, because when He declared that many would come and “show great signs and wonders,” so as to turn aside the very elect, and yet for all that were not to be received, He showed how rash was belief in signs and wonders, which were so very easy of accomplishment by even false christs. Else how happens it, if He meant Himself to be approved and understood, and received on a certain evidence—I mean that of miracles—that He forbade the recognition of those others who had the very same sort of proof to show, and whose coming was to be quite as sudden and unannounced by any authority? If, because He came before them, and was beforehand with them in displaying the signs of His mighty deeds, He therefore seized the first right to men’s faith,—just as the firstcomers do the first place in the baths,—and so forestalled all who came after Him in that right, take care that He, too, be not caught in the condition of the later comers, if He be found to be behindhand with the Creator, who had already been made known, and had already worked miracles like Him, and like Him had forewarned men not to believe in others, even such as should come after Him. If, therefore, to have been the first to come and utter this warning, is to bar and limit faith, He will Himself have to be condemned, because He was later in being acknowledged; and authority to prescribe such a rule about later comers will belong to the Creator alone, who could have been posterior to none. And now, when I am about to prove that the Creator sometimes displayed by His servants of old, and in other cases reserved for His Christ to display, the self-same miracles which you claim as solely due to faith in your Christ, I may fairly even from this maintain that there was so much the greater reason wherefore Christ should not be believed in simply on account of His miracles, inasmuch as these would have shown Him to belong to none other (God) than the Creator, because answering to the mighty deeds of the Creator, both as performed by His servants and reserved for His Christ; although, even if some other proofs should be found in your Christ—new ones, to wit—we should more readily believe that they, too, belong to the same God as do the old ones, rather than to him who has no other than new proofs, such as are wanting in the evidences of that antiquity which wins the assent of faith, so that even on this ground he ought to have come announced as much by prophecies of his own building up faith in him, as by miracles, especially in opposition to the Creator’s Christ who was to come fortified by signs and prophets of His own, in order that he might shine forth as the rival of Christ by help of evidence of different kinds. But how was his Christ to be foretold by a god who was himself never predicted? This, therefore, is the unavoidable inference, that neither your god nor your Christ is an object of faith, because God ought not to have been unknown, and Christ ought to have been made known through God.

Chapter IV

Marcion’s Christ Not the Subject of Prophecy. The Absurd Consequences of This Theory of the Heretic

He disdained, I suppose, to imitate the order of our God, as one who was displeasing to him, and was by all means to be vanquished. He wished to come, as a new being in a new way—a son previous to his father’s announcement, a sent one before the authority of the sender; so that he might in person propagate a most monstrous faith, whereby it should come to be believed that Christ was come before it should be known that He had an existence. It is here convenient to me to treat that other point: Why he came not after Christ? For when I observe that, during so long a period, his lord bore with the greatest patience the very ruthless Creator who was all the while announcing His Christ to men, I say, that whatever reason impelled him to do so, postponing thereby his own revelation and interposition, the self-same reason imposed on him the duty of bearing with the Creator (who had also in His Christ dispensations of His own to carry out); so that, after the completion and accomplishment of the entire plan of the rival God and the rival Christ, he might then superinduce his own proper dispensation. But he grew weary of so long an endurance, and so failed to wait till the end of the Creator’s course. It was of no use, his enduring that his Christ should be predicted, when he refused to permit him to be manifested. Either it was without just cause that he interrupted the full course of his rival’s time, or without just cause did he so long refrain from interrupting it. What held him back at first? Or what disturbed him at last? As the case now stands, however, he has committed himself in respect of both, having revealed himself so tardily after the Creator, so hurriedly before His Christ; whereas he ought long ago to have encountered the one with a confutation, the other to have forborne encountering as yet—not to have borne with the one so long in His ruthless hostility, nor to have disquieted the other, who was as yet quiescent! In the case of both, while depriving them of their title to be considered the most good God, he showed himself at least capricious and uncertain; lukewarm (in his resentment) towards the Creator, but fervid against His Christ, and powerless in respect of them both! For he no more restrained the Creator than he resisted His Christ. The Creator still remains such as He really is. His Christ also will come, just as it is written of Him. Why did he come after the Creator, since he was unable to correct Him by punishment? Why did he reveal himself before Christ, whom he could not hinder from appearing? If, on the contrary, he did chastise the Creator, he revealed himself, (I suppose,) after Him in order that things which require correction might come first. On which account also, (of course,) he ought to have waited for Christ to appear first, whom he was going to chastise in like manner; then he would be His punisher coming after Him, just as he had been in the case of the Creator. There is another consideration: since he will at his second advent come after Him, that as he at His first coming took hostile proceedings against the Creator, destroying the law and the prophets, which were His, so he may, to be sure, at his second coming proceed in opposition to Christ, upsetting His kingdom. Then, no doubt, he would terminate his course, and then (if ever) be worthy of belief; for else, if his work has been already perfected, it would be in vain for him to come, for there would indeed be nothing that he could further accomplish.

Chapter V

Sundry Features of the Prophetic Style: Principles of Its Interpretation

These preliminary remarks I have ventured to make at this first step of the discussion and while the conflict is, as it were, from a distance. But inasmuch as I shall now from this point have to grapple with my opponent on a distinct issue and in close combat, I perceive that I must advance even here some lines, at which the battle will have to be delivered; they are the Scriptures of the Creator. For as I shall have to prove that Christ was from the Creator, according to these (Scriptures), which were afterwards accomplished in the Creator’s Christ, I find it necessary to set forth the form and, so to speak, the nature of the Scriptures themselves, that they may not distract the reader’s attention by being called into controversy at the moment of their application to subjects of discussion, and by their proof being confounded with the proof of the subjects themselves. Now there are two conditions of prophetic announcement which I adduce, as requiring the assent of our adversaries in the future stages of the discussion. One, that future events are sometimes announced as if they were already passed. For it is consistent with Deity to regard as accomplished facts whatever It has determined on, because there is no difference of time with that Being in whom eternity itself directs a uniform condition of seasons. It is indeed more natural to the prophetic divination to represent as seen and already brought to pass, even while forseeing it, that which it foresees; in other words, that which is by all means future. As for instance, in Isaiah: “I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks (I exposed) to their hands. I hid not my face from shame and spitting.” For whether it was Christ even then, as we hold, or the prophet, as the Jews say, who pronounced these words concerning himself, in either case, that which as yet had not happened sounded as if it had been already accomplished. Another characteristic will be, that very many events are figuratively predicted by means of enigmas and allegories and parables, and that they must be understood in a sense different from the literal description. For we both read of “the mountains dropping down new wine,” but not as if one might expect “must” from the stones, or its decoction from the rocks; and also hear of “a land flowing with milk and honey,” but not as if you were to suppose that you would ever gather Samian cakes from the ground; nor does God, forsooth, offer His services as a water-bailiff or a farmer when He says, “I will open rivers in a land; I will plant in the wilderness the cedar and the box-tree.” In like manner, when, foretelling the conversion of the Gentiles, He says, “The beasts of the field shall honour me, the dragons and the owls,” He surely never meant to derive His fortunate omens from the young of birds and foxes, and from the songsters of marvel and fable. But why enlarge on such a subject? When the very apostle whom our heretics adopt, interprets the law which allows an unmuzzled mouth to the oxen that tread out the corn, not of cattle, but of ourselves; and also alleges that the rock which followed (the Israelites) and supplied them with drink was Christ; teaching the Galatians, moreover, that the two narratives of the sons of Abraham had an allegorical meaning in their course; and to the Ephesians giving an intimation that, when it was declared in the beginning that a man should leave his father and mother and become one flesh with his wife, he applied this to Christ and the church.

Chapter VI

Community in Certain Points of Marcionite and Jewish Error. Prophecies of Christ’s Rejection Examined

Since, therefore, there clearly exist these two characteristics in the Jewish prophetic literature, let the reader remember, whenever we adduce any evidence therefrom, that, by mutual consent, the point of discussion is not the form of the scripture, but the subject it is called in to prove. When, therefore, our heretics in their phrenzy presumed to say that that Christ was come who had never been fore-announced, it followed that, on their assumption, that Christ had not yet appeared who had always been predicted; and thus they are obliged to make common cause with Jewish error, and construct their arguments with its assistance, on the pretence that the Jews were themselves quite certain that it was some other who came: so they not only rejected Him as a stranger, but slew Him as an enemy, although they would without doubt have acknowledged Him, and with all religious devotion followed Him, if He had only been one of themselves. Our shipmaster of course got his craft-wisdom not from the Rhodian law, but from the Pontic, which cautioned him against believing that the Jews had no right to sin against their Christ; whereas (even if nothing like their conduct had been predicted against them) human nature alone, liable to error as it is, might well have induced him to suppose that it was quite possible for the Jews to have committed such a sin, considered as men, without assuming any unfair prejudice regarding their feelings, whose sin was antecedently so credible. Since, however, it was actually foretold that they would not acknowledge Christ, and therefore would even put Him to death, it will therefore follow that He was both ignored and slain by them, who were beforehand pointed out as being about to commit such offences against Him. If you require a proof of this, instead of turning out those passages of Scripture which, while they declare Christ to be capable of suffering death, do thereby also affirm the possibility of His being rejected (for if He had not been rejected, He could not really suffer anything), but rather reserving them for the subject of His sufferings, I shall content myself at the present moment with adducing those which simply show that there was a probability of Christ’s rejection. This is quickly done, since the passages indicate that the entire power of understanding was by the Creator taken from the people. “I will take away,” says He, “the wisdom of their wise men; and the understanding of their prudent men will I hide;” and again: “With your ear ye shall hear, and not understand; and with your eyes ye shall see, but not perceive: for the heart of this people hath growth fat, and with their ears they hear heavily, and their eyes have they shut; lest they hear with their ears, and see with their eyes, and understand with the heart, and be converted, and I heal them.” Now this blunting of their sound senses they had brought on themselves, loving God with their lips, but keeping far away from Him in their heart. Since, then, Christ was announced by the Creator, “who formeth the lightning, and createth the wind, and declareth unto man His Christ,” as the prophet Joel says, since the entire hope of the Jews, not to say of the Gentiles too, was fixed on the manifestation of Christ,—it was demonstrated that they, by their being deprived of those powers of knowledge and understanding—wisdom and prudence, would fail to know and understand that which was predicted, even Christ; when the chief of their wise men should be in error respecting Him—that is to say, their scribes and prudent ones, or Pharisees; and when the people, like them, should hear with their ears and not understand Christ while teaching them, and see with their eyes and not perceive Christ, although giving them signs. Similarly it is said elsewhere: “Who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, but he who ruleth over them?” Also when He upbraids them by the same Isaiah: “I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know; my people doth not consider.” We indeed, who know for certain that Christ always spoke in the prophets, as the Spirit of the Creator (for so says the prophet: “The person of our Spirit, Christ the Lord,” who from the beginning was both heard and seen as the Father’s vicegerent in the name of God), are well aware that His words, when actually upbraiding Israel, were the same as those which it was foretold that He should denounce against him: “Ye have forsaken the Lord, and have provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger.” If, however, you would rather refer to God Himself, instead of to Christ, the whole imputation of Jewish ignorance from the first, through an unwillingness to allow that even anciently the Creator’s word and Spirit—that is to say, His Christ—was despised and not acknowledged by them, you will even in this subterfuge be defeated. For when you do not deny that the Creator’s Son and Spirit and Substance is also His Christ, you must needs allow that those who have not acknowledged the Father have failed likewise to acknowledge the Son through the identity of their natural substance; for if in Its fulness It has baffled man’s understanding, much more has a portion of It, especially when partaking of the fulness. Now, when these things are carefully considered, it becomes evident how the Jews both rejected Christ and slew Him; not because they regarded Him as a strange Christ, but because they did not acknowledge Him, although their own. For how could they have understood the strange One, concerning whom nothing had ever been announced, when they failed to understand Him about whom there had been a perpetual course of prophecy? That admits of being understood or being not understood, which, by possessing a substantial basis for prophecy, will also have a subject-matter for either knowledge or error; whilst that which lacks such matter admits not the issue of wisdom. So that it was not as if He belonged to another god that they conceived an aversion for Christ, and persecuted Him, but simply as a man whom they regarded as a wonder-working juggler, and an enemy in His doctrines. They brought Him therefore to trial as a mere man, and one of themselves too—that is, a Jew (only a renegade and a destroyer of Judaism)—and punished Him according to their law. If He had been a stranger, indeed, they would not have sat in judgment over Him. So far are they from appearing to have understood Him to be a strange Christ, that they did not even judge Him to be a stranger to their own human nature.

Chapter VII

Prophecy Sets Forth Two Different Conditions of Christ, One Lowly, the Other Majestic. This Fact Points to Two Advents of Christ

Our heretic will now have the fullest opportunity of learning the clue of his errors along with the Jew himself, from whom he has borrowed his guidance in this discussion. Since, however, the blind leads the blind, they fall into the ditch together. We affirm that, as there are two conditions demonstrated by the prophets to belong to Christ, so these presignified the same number of advents; one, and that the first, was to be in lowliness, when He had to be led as a sheep to be slain as a victim, and to be as a lamb dumb before the shearer, not opening His mouth, and not fair to look upon. For, says (the prophet), we have announced concerning Him: “He is like a tender plant, like a root out of a thirsty ground; He hath no form nor comeliness; and we beheld Him, and He was without beauty: His form was disfigured;” “marred more than the sons of men; a man stricken with sorrows, and knowing how to bear our infirmity;” “placed by the Father as a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence;” “made by Him a little lower than the angels;” declaring Himself to be “a worm and not a man, a reproach of men, and despised of the people.” Now these signs of degradation quite suit His first coming, just as the tokens of His majesty do His second advent, when He shall no longer remain “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence,” but after His rejection become “the chief corner-stone,” accepted and elevated to the top place of the temple, even His church, being that very stone in Daniel, cut out of the mountain, which was to smite and crush the image of the secular kingdom. Of this advent the same prophet says: “Behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days; and they brought Him before Him, and there was given Him dominion and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away; and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.” Then indeed He shall have both a glorious form, and an unsullied beauty above the sons of men. “Thou art fairer,” says (the Psalmist), “than the children of men; grace is poured into Thy lips; therefore God hath blessed Thee for ever. Gird Thy sword upon Thy thigh, O most mighty, with Thy glory and Thy majesty.” For the Father, after making Him a little lower than the angels, “will crown Him with glory and honour, and put all things under His feet.” “Then shall they look on Him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, tribe after tribe;” because, no doubt, they once refused to acknowledge Him in the lowliness of His human condition. He is even a man, says Jeremiah, and who shall recognise Him. Therefore, asks Isaiah, “who shall declare His generation?” So also in Zechariah, Christ Jesus, the true High Priest of the Father, in the person of Joshua, nay, in the very mystery of His name, is portrayed in a twofold dress with reference to both His advents. At first He is clad in sordid garments, that is to say, in the lowliness of suffering and mortal flesh: then the devil resisted Him, as the instigator of the traitor Judas, not to mention his tempting Him after His baptism: afterwards He was stripped of His first filthy raiment, and adorned with the priestly robe and mitre, and a pure diadem; in other words, with the glory and honour of His second advent. If I may offer, moreover, an interpretation of the two goats which were presented on “the great day of atonement,” do they not also figure the two natures of Christ? They were of like size, and very similar in appearance, owing to the Lord’s identity of aspect; because He is not to come in any other form, having to be recognised by those by whom He was also wounded and pierced. One of these goats was bound with scarlet, and driven by the people out of the camp into the wilderness, amid cursing, and spitting, and pulling, and piercing, being thus marked with all the signs of the Lord’s own passion; while the other, by being offered up for sins, and given to the priests of the temple for meat, afforded proofs of His second appearance, when (after all sins have been expiated) the priests of the spiritual temple, that is, the church, are to enjoy the flesh, as it were, of the Lord’s own grace, whilst the residue go away from salvation without tasting it. Since, therefore, the first advent was prophetically declared both as most obscure in its types, and as deformed with every kind of indignity, but the second as glorious and altogether worthy of God, they would on this very account, while confining their regards to that which they were easily able both to understand and to believe, even the second advent, be not undeservedly deceived respecting the more obscure, and, at any rate, the more lowly first coming. Accordingly, to this day they deny that their Christ has come, because He has not appeared in majesty, while they ignore the fact that He was to come also in lowliness.

Chapter VIII

Absurdity of Marcion’s Docetic Opinions; Reality of Christ’s Incarnation

Our heretic must now cease to borrow poison from the Jew—”the asp,” as the adage runs, “from the viper”—and henceforth vomit forth the virulence of his own disposition, as when he alleges Christ to be a phantom. Except, indeed, that this opinion of his will be sure to have others to maintain it in his precocious and somewhat abortive Marcionites, whom the Apostle John designated as antichrists, when they denied that Christ was come in the flesh; not that they did this with the view of establishing the right of the other god (for on this point also they had been branded by the same apostle), but because they had started with assuming the incredibility of an incarnate God. Now, the more firmly the antichrist Marcion had seized this assumption, the more prepared was he, of course, to reject the bodily substance of Christ, since he had introduced his very god to our notice as neither the author nor the restorer of the flesh; and for this very reason, to be sure, as pre-eminently good, and most remote from the deceits and fallacies of the Creator. His Christ, therefore, in order to avoid all such deceits and fallacies, and the imputation, if possible, of belonging to the Creator, was not what he appeared to be, and feigned himself to be what he was not—incarnate without being flesh, human without being man, and likewise a divine Christ without being God! But why should he not have propagated also the phantom of God? Can I believe him on the subject of the internal nature, who was all wrong touching the external substance? How will it be possible to believe him true on a mystery, when he has been found so false on a plain fact? How, moreover, when he confounds the truth of the spirit with the error of the flesh, could he combine within himself that communion of light and darkness, or truth and error, which the apostle says cannot co-exist? Since however, Christ’s being flesh is now discovered to be a lie, it follows that all things which were done by the flesh of Christ were done untruly,—every act of intercourse, of contact, of eating or drinking, yea, His very miracles. If with a touch, or by being touched, He freed any one of a disease, whatever was done by any corporeal act cannot be believed to have been truly done in the absence of all reality in His body itself. Nothing substantial can be allowed to have been effected by an unsubstantial thing; nothing full by a vacuity. If the habit were putative, the action was putative; if the worker were imaginary, the works were imaginary. On this principle, too, the sufferings of Christ will be found not to warrant faith in Him. For He suffered nothing who did not truly suffer; and a phantom could not truly suffer. God’s entire work, therefore, is subverted. Christ’s death, wherein lies the whole weight and fruit of the Christian name, is denied although the apostle asserts it so expressly as undoubtedly real, making it the very foundation of the gospel, of our salvation and of his own preaching. “I have delivered unto you before all things,” says he, “how that Christ died for our sins, and that he was buried, and that He rose again the third day.” Besides, if His flesh is denied, how is His death to be asserted; for death is the proper suffering of the flesh, which returns through death back to the earth out of which it was taken, according to the law of its Maker? Now, if His death be denied, because of the denial of His flesh, there will be no certainty of His resurrection. For He rose not, for the very same reason that He died not, even because He possessed not the reality of the flesh, to which as death accrues, so does resurrection likewise. Similarly, if Christ’s resurrection be nullified, ours also is destroyed. If Christ’s resurrection be not realized, neither shall that be for which Christ came. For just as they, who said that there is no resurrection of the dead, are refuted by the apostle from the resurrection of Christ, so, if the resurrection of Christ falls to the ground, the resurrection of the dead is also swept away. And so our faith is vain, and vain also is the preaching of the apostles. Moreover, they even show themselves to be false witnesses of God, because they testified that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise. And we remain in our sins still. And those who have slept in Christ have perished; destined, forsooth, to rise again, but peradventure in a phantom state, just like Christ.

Chapter IX

Refutation of Marcion’s Objections Derived from the Cases of the Angels, and the Pre-Incarnate Manifestations of the Son of God

Now, in this discussion of yours, when you suppose that we are to be met with the case of the Creator’s angels, as if they held intercourse with Abraham and Lot in a phantom state, that of merely putative flesh, and yet did truly converse, and eat, and work, as they had been commissioned to do, you will not, to begin with, be permitted to use as examples the acts of that God whom you are destroying. For by how much you make your god a better and more perfect being, by just so much will all examples be unsuitable to him of that God from whom he totally differs, and without which difference he would not be at all better or more perfect. But then, secondly, you must know that it will not be conceded to you, that in the angels there was only a putative flesh, but one of a true and solid human substance. For if (on your terms) it was no difficulty to him to manifest true sensations and actions in a putative flesh, it was much more easy for him still to have assigned the true substance of flesh to these true sensations and actions, as the proper maker and former thereof. But your god, perhaps on the ground of his having produced no flesh at all, was quite right in introducing the mere phantom of that of which he had been unable to produce the reality. My God, however, who formed that which He had taken out of the dust of the ground in the true quality of flesh, although not issuing as yet from conjugal seed, was equally able to apply to angels too a flesh of any material whatsoever, who built even the world out of nothing, into so many and so various bodies, and that at a word! And, really, if your god promises to men some time or other the true nature of angels (for he says, “They shall be like the angels”), why should not my God also have fitted on to angels the true substance of men, from whatever source derived? For not even you will tell me, in reply, whence is obtained that angelic nature on your side; so that it is enough for me to define this as being fit and proper to God, even the verity of that thing which was objective to three senses—sight, touch, and hearing. It is more difficult for God to practise deception than to produce real flesh from any material whatever, even without the means of birth. But for other heretics, also, who maintain that the flesh in the angels ought to have been born of flesh, if it had been really human, we have an answer on a sure principle, to the effect that it was truly human flesh, and yet not born. It was truly human, because of the truthfulness of God, who can neither lie nor deceive, and because (angelic beings) cannot be dealt with by men in a human way except in human substance: it was withal unborn, because none but Christ could become incarnate by being born of the flesh in order that by His own nativity He might regenerate our birth, and might further by His death also dissolve our death, by rising again in that flesh in which, that He might even die, He was born. Therefore on that occasion He did Himself appear with the angels to Abraham in the verity of the flesh, which had not as yet undergone birth, because it was not yet going to die, although it was even now learning to hold intercourse amongst men. Still greater was the propriety in angels, who never received a dispensation to die for us, not having assumed even a brief experience of flesh by being born, because they were not destined to lay it down again by dying; but, from whatever quarter they obtained it, and by what means soever they afterwards entirely divested themselves of it, they yet never pretended it to be unreal flesh. Since the Creator “maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire”—as truly spirits as also fire—so has He truly made them flesh likewise; wherefore we can now recall to our own minds, and remind the heretics also, that He has promised that He will one day form men into angels, who once formed angels into men.

Chapter X

The Truly Incarnate State More Worthy of God Than Marcion’s Fantastic Flesh

Therefore, since you are not permitted to resort to any instances of the Creator, as alien from the subject, and possessing special causes of their own, I should like you to state yourself the design of your god, in exhibiting his Christ not in the reality of flesh. If he despised it as earthly, and (as you express it) full of dung, why did he not on that account include the likeness of it also in his contempt? For no honour is to be attributed to the image of anything which is itself unworthy of honour. As the natural state is, so will the likeness be. But how could he hold converse with men except in the image of human substance? Why, then, not rather in the reality thereof, that his intercourse might be real, since he was under the necessity of holding it? And to how much better account would this necessity have been turned by ministering to faith rather than to a fraud! The god whom you make is miserable enough, for this very reason that he was unable to display his Christ except in the effigy of an unworthy, and indeed an alien, thing. In some instances, it will be convenient to use even unworthy things, if they be only our own, as it will also be quite improper to use things, be they ever so worthy, if they be not our own. Why, then, did he not come in some other worthier substance, and especially his own, that he might not seem as if he could not have done without an unworthy and an alien one? Now, since my Creator held intercourse with man by means of even a bush and fire, and again afterwards by means of a cloud and column, and in representations of Himself used bodies composed of the elements, these examples of divine power afford sufficient proof that God did not require the instrumentality of false or even of real flesh. But yet, if we look steadily into the subject, there is really no substance which is worthy of becoming a vestment for God. Whatsoever He is pleased to clothe Himself withal, He makes worthy of Himself—only without untruth. Therefore how comes it to pass that he should have thought the verity of the flesh, rather than its unreality, a disgrace? Well, but he honoured it by his fiction of it. How great, then, is that flesh, the very phantasy of which was a necessity to the superior God!

Chapter XI

Christ Was Truly Born; Marcion’s Absurd Cavil in Defence of a Putative Nativity

All these illusions of an imaginary corporeity in (his) Christ, Marcion adopted with this view, that his nativity also might not be furnished with any evidence from his human substance, and that thus the Christ of the Creator might be free to have assigned to Him all predictions which treated of Him as one capable of human birth, and therefore fleshly. But most foolishly did our Pontic heresiarch act in this too. As if it would not be more readily believed that flesh in the Divine Being should rather be unborn than untrue, this belief having in fact had the way mainly prepared for it by the Creator’s angels when they conversed in flesh which was real, although unborn. For indeed the notorious Philumena persuaded Apelles and the other seceders from Marcion rather to believe that Christ did really carry about a body of flesh; not derived to Him, however, from birth, but one which He borrowed from the elements. Now, as Marcion was apprehensive that a belief of the fleshly body would also involve a belief of birth, undoubtedly He who seemed to be man was believed to be verily and indeed born. For a certain woman had exclaimed, “Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the paps which Thou hast sucked!” And how else could they have said that His mother and His brethren were standing without? But we shall see more of this in the proper place. Surely, when He also proclaimed Himself as the Son of man, He, without doubt, confessed that He had been born. Now I would rather refer all these points to an examination of the gospel; but still, as I have already stated, if he, who seemed to be man, had by all means to pass as having been born, it was vain for him to suppose that faith in his nativity was to be perfected by the device of an imaginary flesh. For what advantage was there in that being not true which was held to be true, whether it were his flesh or his birth? Or if you should say, let human opinion go for nothing; you are then honouring your god under the shelter of a deception, since he knew himself to be something different from what he had made men to think of him. In that case you might possibly have assigned to him a putative nativity even, and so not have hung the question on this point. For silly women fancy themselves pregnant sometimes, when they are corpulent either from their natural flux or from some other malady. And, no doubt, it had become his duty, since he had put on the mere mask of his substance, to act out from its earliest scene the play of his phantasy, lest he should have failed in his part at the beginning of the flesh. You have, of course, rejected the sham of a nativity, and have produced true flesh itself. And, no doubt, even the real nativity of a God is a most mean thing. Come then, wind up your cavils against the most sacred and reverend works of nature; inveigh against all that you are; destroy the origin of flesh and life; call the womb a sewer of the illustrious animal—in other words, the manufactory for the production of man; dilate on the impure and shameful tortures of parturition, and then on the filthy, troublesome, contemptible issues of the puerperal labour itself! But yet, after you have pulled all these things down to infamy, that you may affirm them to be unworthy of God, birth will not be worse for Him than death, infancy than the cross, punishment than nature, condemnation than the flesh. If Christ truly suffered all this, to be born was a less thing for Him. If Christ suffered evasively, as a phantom; evasively, too, might He have been born. Such are Marcion’s chief arguments by which he makes out another Christ; and I think that we show plainly enough that they are utterly irrelevant, when we teach how much more truly consistent with God is the reality rather than the falsehood of that condition in which He manifested His Christ. Since He was “the truth,” He was flesh; since He was flesh, He was born. For the points which this heresy assaults are confirmed, when the means of the assault are destroyed. Therefore if He is to be considered in the flesh, because He was born; and born, because He is in the flesh, and because He is no phantom,—it follows that He must be acknowledged as Himself the very Christ of the Creator, who was by the Creator’s prophets foretold as about to come in the flesh, and by the process of human birth.

Chapter XII

Isaiah’s Prophecy of Emmanuel. Christ Entitled to that Name

And challenge us first, as is your wont, to consider Isaiah’s description of Christ, while you contend that in no point does it suit. For, to begin with, you say that Isaiah’s Christ will have to be called Emmanuel; then, that He takes the riches of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of Assyria. But yet He who is come was neither born under such a name, nor ever engaged in any warlike enterprise. I must, however, remind you that you ought to look into the contexts of the two passages. For there is immediately added the interpretation of Emmanuel, “God with us;” so that you have to consider not merely the name as it is uttered, but also its meaning. The utterance is Hebrew, Emmanuel, of the prophet’s own nation; but the meaning of the word, God with us, is by the interpretation made common property. Inquire, then, whether this name, God-with-us, which is Emmanuel, be not often used for the name of Christ, from the fact that Christ has enlightened the world. And I suppose you will not deny it, inasmuch as you do yourself admit that He is called God-with-us, that is, Emmanuel. Else if you are so foolish, that, because with you He gets the designation God-with-us, not Emmanuel, you therefore are unwilling to grant that He is come whose property it is to be called Emmanuel, as if this were not the same name as God-with-us, you will find among the Hebrew Christians, and amongst Marcionites too, that they name Him Emmanuel when they mean Him to be called God-with-us; just indeed as every nation, by whatever word they would express God-with-us, has called Him Emmanuel, completing the sound in its sense. Now since Emmanuel is God-with-us, and God-with-us is Christ, who is in us (for “as many of you as are baptized into Christ, have put on Christ” ), Christ is as properly implied in the meaning of the name, which is God-with-us, as He is in the pronunciation of the name, which is Emmanuel. And thus it is evident that He is now come who was foretold as Emmanuel, because what Emmanuel signifies is come, that is to say, God-with-us.

Chapter XIII

Isaiah’s Prophecies Considered. The Virginity of Christ’s Mother a Sign. Other Prophecies Also Signs. Metaphorical Sense of Proper Names in Sundry Passages of the Prophets

You are equally led away by the sound of names, when you so understand the riches of Damascus, and the spoils of Samaria, and the king of Assyria, as if they portended that the Creator’s Christ was a warrior, not attending to the promise contained in the passage, “For before the Child shall have knowledge to cry, My father and My mother, He shall take away the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria before the king of Assyria.” You should first examine the point of age, whether it can be taken to represent Christ as even yet a man, much less a warrior. Although, to be sure, He might be about to call to arms by His cry as an infant; might be about to sound the alarm of war not with a trumpet, but with a little rattle; might be about to seek His foe, not on horseback, or in chariot, or from parapet, but from nurse’s neck or nursemaid’s back, and so be destined to subjugate Damascus and Samaria from His mother’s breasts! It is a different matter, of course, when the babes of your barbarian Pontus spring forth to the fight. They are, I ween, taught to lance before they lacerate; swathed at first in sunshine and ointment, afterwards armed with the satchel, and rationed on bread and butter! Now, since nature, certainly, nowhere grants to man to learn warfare before life, to pillage the wealth of a Damascus before he knows his father and mother’s name, it follows that the passage in question must be deemed to be a figurative one. Well, but nature, says he, does not permit “a virgin to conceive,” and still the prophet is believed. And indeed very properly; for he has paved the way for the incredible thing being believed, by giving a reason for its occurrence, in that it was to be for a sign. “Therefore,” says he, “the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son.” Now a sign from God would not have been a sign, unless it had been some novel and prodigious thing. Then, again, Jewish cavillers, in order to disconcert us, boldly pretend that Scripture does not hold that a virgin, but only a young woman, is to conceive and bring forth. They are, however, refuted by this consideration, that nothing of the nature of a sign can possibly come out of what is a daily occurrence, the pregnancy and child-bearing of a young woman. A virgin mother is justly deemed to be proposed by God as a sign, but a warlike infant has no like claim to the distinction; for even in such a case there does not occur the character of a sign. But after the sign of the strange and novel birth has been asserted, there is immediately afterwards declared as a sign the subsequent course of the Infant, who was to eat butter and honey. Not that this indeed is of the nature of a sign, nor is His “refusing the evil;” for this, too, is only a characteristic of infancy. But His destined capture of the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria before the king of Assyria is no doubt a wonderful sign. Keep to the measure of His age, and seek the purport of the prophecy, and give back also to the truth of the gospel what you have taken away from it in the lateness of your heresy, and the prophecy at once becomes intelligible and declares its own accomplishment. Let those eastern magi wait on the new-born Christ, presenting to Him, (although) in His infancy, their gifts of gold and frankincense; and surely an Infant will have received the riches of Damascus without a battle, and unarmed.

For besides the generally known fact, that the riches of the East, that is to say, its strength and resources, usually consist of gold and spices, it is certainly true of the Creator, that He makes gold the riches of the other nations also. Thus He says by Zechariah: “And Judah shall also fight at Jerusalem and shall gather together all the wealth of the nations round about, gold and silver.” Moreover, respecting that gift of gold, David also says: “And there shall be given to Him of the gold of Arabia;” and again: “The kings of Arabia and Saba shall offer to Him gifts.” For the East generally regarded the magi as kings; and Damascus was anciently deemed to belong to Arabia, before it was transferred to Syrophoenicia on the division of the Syrias (by Rome). Its riches Christ then received, when He received the tokens thereof in the gold and spices; while the spoils of Samaria were the magi themselves. These having discovered Him and honoured Him with their gifts, and on bended knee adored Him as their God and King, through the witness of the star which led their way and guided them, became the spoils of Samaria, that is to say, of idolatry, because, as it is easy enough to see, they believed in Christ. He designated idolatry under the name of Samaria, as that city was shameful for its idolatry, through which it had then revolted from God from the days of king Jeroboam. Nor is this an unusual manner for the Creator, (in His Scriptures ) figuratively to employ names of places as a metaphor derived from the analogy of their sins. Thus He calls the chief men of the Jews “rulers of Sodom,” and the nation itself “people of Gomorrah.” And in another passage He also says: “Thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite,” by reason of their kindred iniquity; although He had actually called them His sons: “I have nourished and brought up children.” So likewise by Egypt is sometimes understood, in His sense, the whole world as being marked out by superstition and a curse. By a similar usage Babylon also in our (St.) John is a figure of the city of Rome, as being like (Babylon) great and proud in royal power, and warring down the saints of God. Now it was in accordance with this style that He called the magi by the name of Samaritans, because (as we have said) they had practised idolatry as did the Samaritans. Moreover, by the phrase “before or against the king of Assyria,” understand “against Herod;” against whom the magi then opposed themselves, when they refrained from carrying him back word concerning Christ, whom he was seeking to destroy.

Chapter XIV

Figurative Style of Certain Messianic Prophecies in the Psalms. Military Metaphors Applied to Christ

This interpretation of ours will derive confirmation, when, on your supposing that Christ is in any passage called a warrior, from the mention of certain arms and expressions of that sort, you weigh well the analogy of their other meanings, and draw your conclusions accordingly. “Gird on Thy sword,” says David, “upon Thy thigh.” But what do you read about Christ just before? “Thou art fairer than the children of men; grace is poured forth upon Thy lips.” It amuses me to imagine that blandishments of fair beauty and graceful lips are ascribed to one who had to gird on His sword for war! So likewise, when it is added, “Ride on prosperously in Thy majesty,” the reason is subjoined: “Because of truth, and meekness, and righteousness.” But who shall produce these results with the sword, and not their opposites rather—deceit, and harshness, and injury—which, it must be confessed, are the proper business of battles? Let us see, therefore, whether that is not some other sword, which has so different an action. Now the Apostle John, in the Apocalypse, describes a sword which proceeded from the mouth of God as “a doubly sharp, two-edged one.” This may be understood to be the Divine Word, who is doubly edged with the two testaments of the law and the gospel—sharpened with wisdom, hostile to the devil, arming us against the spiritual enemies of all wickedness and concupiscence, and cutting us off from the dearest objects for the sake of God’s holy name. If, however, you will not acknowledge John, you have our common master Paul, who “girds our loins about with truth, and puts on us the breastplate of righteousness, and shoes us with the preparation of the gospel of peace, not of war; who bids us take the shield of faith, wherewith we may be able to quench all the fiery darts of the devil, and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which (he says) is the word of God.” This sword the Lord Himself came to send on earth, and not peace. If he is your Christ, then even he is a warrior. If he is not a warrior, and the sword he brandishes is an allegorical one, then the Creator’s Christ in the psalm too may have been girded with the figurative sword of the Word, without any martial gear. The above-mentioned “fairness” of His beauty and “grace of His lips” would quite suit such a sword, girt as it even then was upon His thigh in the passage of David, and sent as it would one day be by Him on earth. For this is what He says: “Ride on prosperously in Thy majesty “—advancing His word into every land, so as to call all nations: destined to prosper in the success of that faith which received Him, and reigning, from the fact that He conquered death by His resurrection. “Thy right hand,” says He, “shall wonderfully lead Thee forth,” even the might of Thy spiritual grace, whereby the knowledge of Christ is spread. “Thine arrows are sharp;” everywhere Thy precepts fly about, Thy threatenings also, and convictions of heart, pricking and piercing each conscience. “The people shall fall under Thee,” that is, in adoration. Thus is the Creator’s Christ mighty in war, and a bearer of arms; thus also does He now take the spoils, not of Samaria alone, but of all nations. Acknowledge, then, that His spoils are figurative, since you have learned that His arms are allegorical. Since, therefore, both the Lord speaks and His apostle writes such things in a figurative style, we are not rash in using His interpretations, the records of which even our adversaries admit; and thus in so far will it be Isaiah’s Christ who has come, in as far as He was not a warrior, because it is not of such a character that He is described by Isaiah.

Chapter XV

The Title Christ Suitable as a Name of the Creator’s Son, But Unsuited to Marcion’s Christ

Touching then the discussion of His flesh, and (through that) of His nativity, and incidentally of His name Emmanuel, let this suffice. Concerning His other names, however, and especially that of Christ, what has the other side to say in reply? If the name of Christ is as common with you as is the name of God—so that as the Son of both Gods may be fitly called Christ, so each of the Fathers may be called Lord—reason will certainly be opposed to this argument. For the name of God, as being the natural designation of Deity, may be ascribed to all those beings for whom a divine nature is claimed,—as, for instance, even to idols. The apostle says: “For there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth.” The name of Christ, however, does not arise from nature, but from dispensation; and so becomes the proper name of Him to whom it accrues in consequence of the dispensation. Nor is it subject to be shared in by any other God, especially a rival, and one that has a dispensation of His own, to whom it will be also necessary that He should possess names apart from all others. For how happens it that, after they have devised different dispensations for two Gods they admit into this diversity of dispensation a community of names; whereas no proof could be more useful of two Gods being rival ones, than if there should be found coincident with their (diverse) dispensations a diversity also of names? For that is not a state of diverse qualities, which is not distinctly indicated in the specific meanings of their designations. Whenever these are wanting, there occurs what the Greeks call the katachresis of a term, by its improper application to what does not belong to it. In God, however, there ought, I suppose, to be no defect, no setting up of His dispensations by katachrestic abuse of words. Who is this god, that claims for his son names from the Creator? I say not names which do not belong to him, but ancient and well-known names, which even in this view of them would be unsuitable for a novel and unknown god. How is it, again, that he tells us that “a piece of new cloth is not sewed on to an old garment,” or that “new wine is not trusted to old bottles,” when he is himself patched and clad in an old suit of names? How is it he has rent off the gospel from the law, when he is wholly invested with the law,—in the name, forsooth, of Christ? What hindered his calling himself by some other name, seeing that he preached another (gospel), came from another source, and refused to take on him a real body, for the very purpose that he might not be supposed to be the Creator’s Christ? Vain, however, was his unwillingness to seem to be He whose name he was willing to assume; since, even if he had been truly corporeal, he would more certainly escape being taken for the Christ of the Creator, if he had not taken on him His name. But, as it is, he rejects the substantial verity of Him whose name he has assumed, even though he should give a proof of that verity by his name. For Christ means anointed, and to be anointed is certainly an affair of the body. He who had not a body, could not by any possibility have been anointed; he who could not by any possibility have been anointed, could not in any wise have been called Christ. It is a different thing (quite), if he only assumed the phantom of a name too. But how, he asks, was he to insinuate himself into being believed by the Jews, except through a name which was usual and familiar amongst them? Then ’tis a fickle and tricksty God whom you describe! To promote any plan by deception, is the resource of either distrust or of maliciousness. Much more frank and simple was the conduct of the false prophets against the Creator, when they came in His name as their own God. But I do not find that any good came of this proceeding, since they were more apt to suppose either that Christ was their own, or rather was some deceiver, than that He was the Christ of the other god; and this the gospel will show.

Chapter XVI

The Sacred Name Jesus Most Suited to the Christ of the Creator. Joshua a Type of Him

Now if he caught at the name Christ, just as the pickpocket clutches the dole-basket, why did he wish to be called Jesus too, by a name which was not so much looked for by the Jews? For although we, who have by God’s grace attained to the understanding of His mysteries, acknowledge that this name also was destined for Christ, yet, for all that, the fact was not known to the Jews, from whom wisdom was taken away. To this day, in short, it is Christ that they are looking for, not Jesus; and they interpret Elias to be Christ rather than Jesus. He, therefore, who came also in a name in which Christ was not expected, might have come only in that name which was solely anticipated for Him. But since he has mixed up the two, the expected one and the unexpected, his twofold project is defeated. For if he be Christ for the very purpose of insinuating himself as the Creator’s, then Jesus opposes him, because Jesus was not looked for in the Christ of the Creator; or if he be Jesus, in order that he might pass as belonging to the other (God), then Christ hinders him, because Christ was not expected to belong to any other than the Creator. I know not which one of these names may be able to hold its ground. In the Christ of the Creator, however, both will keep their place, for in Him a Jesus too is found. Do you ask, how? Learn it then here, with the Jews also who are partakers of your heresy. When Oshea the son of Nun was destined to be the successor of Moses, is not his old name then changed, and for the first time he is called Joshua? It is true, you say. This, then, we first observe, was a figure of Him who was to come. For inasmuch as Jesus Christ was to introduce a new generation (because we are born in the wilderness of this world) into the promised land which flows with milk and honey, that is, into the possession of eternal life, than which nothing can be sweeter; inasmuch, too, as this was to be brought about not by Moses, that is to say, not by the discipline of the law, but by Joshua, by the grace of the gospel, our circumcision being effected by a knife of stone, that is, (by the circumcision) of Christ, for Christ is a rock (or stone), therefore that great man, who was ordained as a type of this mystery, was actually consecrated with the figure of the Lord’s own name, being called Joshua. This name Christ Himself even then testified to be His own, when He talked with Moses. For who was it that talked with him, but the Spirit of the Creator, which is Christ? When He therefore spake this commandment to the people, “Behold, I send my angel before thy face, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the land which I have prepared for thee; attend to him, and obey his voice and do not provoke him; for he has not shunned you, since my name is upon him,” He called him an angel indeed, because of the greatness of the powers which he was to exercise, and because of his prophetic office, while announcing the will of God; but Joshua also (Jesus), because it was a type of His own future name. Often did He confirm that name of His which He had thus conferred upon (His servant); because it was not the name of angel, nor Oshea, but Joshua (Jesus), which He had commanded him to bear as his usual appellation for the time to come. Since, therefore, both these names are suitable to the Christ of the Creator, they are proportionately unsuitable to the non-Creator’s Christ; and so indeed is all the rest of (our Christ’s) destined course. In short, there must now for the future be made between us that certain and equitable rule, necessary to both sides, which shall determine that there ought to be absolutely nothing at all in common between the Christ of the other god and the Creator’s Christ. For you will have as great a necessity to maintain their diversity as we have to resist it, inasmuch as you will be as unable to show that the Christ of the other god has come, until you have proved him to be a far different being from the Creator’s Christ, as we, to claim Him (who has come) as the Creator’s, until we have shown Him to be such a one as the Creator has appointed. Now respecting their names, such is our conclusion against (Marcion). I claim for myself Christ; I maintain for myself Jesus.

Chapter XVII

Prophecies in Isaiah and the Psalms Respecting Christ’s Humiliation

Let us compare with Scripture the rest of His dispensation. Whatever that poor despised body may be, because it was an object of touch and sight, it shall be my Christ, be He inglorious, be He ignoble, be He dishonoured; for such was it announced that He should be, both in bodily condition and aspect. Isaiah comes to our help again: “We have announced (His way) before Him,” says he; “He is like a servant, like a root in a dry ground; He hath no form nor comeliness; we saw Him, and He had neither form nor beauty; but His form was despised, marred above all men.” Similarly the Father addressed the Son just before: “Inasmuch as many will be astonished at Thee, so also will Thy beauty be without glory from men.” For although, in David’s words, He is fairer than the children of men,” yet it is in that figurative state of spiritual grace, when He is girded with the sword of the Spirit, which is verily His form, and beauty, and glory. According to the same prophet, however, He is in bodily condition “a very worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and an outcast of the people.” But no internal quality of such a kind does He announce as belonging to Him. In Him dwelt the fulness of the Spirit; therefore I acknowledge Him to be “the rod of the stem of Jesse.” His blooming flower shall be my Christ, upon whom hath rested, according to Isaiah, “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of piety, and of the fear of the Lord.” Now to no man, except Christ, would the diversity of spiritual proofs suitably apply. He is indeed like a flower for the Spirit’s grace, reckoned indeed of the stem of Jesse, but thence to derive His descent through Mary. Now I purposely demand of you, whether you grant to Him the destination of all this humiliation, and suffering, and tranquillity, from which He will be the Christ of Isaiah,—a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, who was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and who, like a lamb before the shearer, opened not His mouth; who did not struggle nor cry, nor was His voice heard in the street who broke not the bruised reed—that is, the shattered faith of the Jews—nor quenched the smoking flax—that is, the freshly-kindled ardour of the Gentiles. He can be none other than the Man who was foretold. It is right that His conduct be investigated according to the rule of Scripture, distinguishable as it is unless I am mistaken, by the twofold operation of preaching and of miracle. But the treatment of both these topics I shall so arrange as to postpone, to the chapter wherein I have determined to discuss the actual gospel of Marcion, the consideration of His wonderful doctrines and miracles—with a view, however, to our present purpose. Let us here, then, in general terms complete the subject which we had entered upon, by indicating, as we pass on, how Christ was fore-announced by Isaiah as a preacher: “For who is there among you,” says he, “that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of His Son?” And likewise as a healer: “For,” says he, “He hath taken away our infirmities, and carried our sorrows.”

Chapter XVIII

Types of the Death of Christ. Isaac; Joseph; Jacob Against Simeon and Levi; Moses Praying Against Amalek; The Brazen Serpent

On the subject of His death, I suppose, you endeavour to introduce a diversity of opinion, simply because you deny that the suffering of the cross was predicted of the Christ of the Creator, and because you contend, moreover, that it is not to be believed that the Creator would expose His Son to that kind of death on which He had Himself pronounced a curse. “Cursed,” says He, “is every one who hangeth on a tree.” But what is meant by this curse, worthy as it is of the simple prediction of the cross, of which we are now mainly inquiring, I defer to consider, because in another passage we have given the reason of the thing preceded by proof. First, I shall offer a full explanation of the types. And no doubt it was proper that this mystery should be prophetically set forth by types, and indeed chiefly by that method: for in proportion to its incredibility would it be a stumbling-block, if it were set forth in bare prophecy; and in proportion too, to its grandeur, was the need of obscuring it in shadow, that the difficulty of understanding it might lead to prayer for the grace of God. First, then, Isaac, when he was given up by his father as an offering, himself carried the wood for his own death. By this act he even then was setting forth the death of Christ, who was destined by His Father as a sacrifice, and carried the cross whereon He suffered. Joseph likewise was a type of Christ, not indeed on this ground (that I may not delay my course ), that he suffered persecution for the cause of God from his brethren, as Christ did from His brethren after the flesh, the Jews; but when he is blessed by his father in these words: “His glory is that of a bullock; his horns are the horns of a unicorn; with them shall he push the nations to the very ends of the earth,”—he was not, of course, designated as a mere unicorn with its one horn, or a minotaur with two; but Christ was indicated in him—a bullock in respect of both His characteristics: to some as severe as a Judge, to others gentle as a Saviour, whose horns were the extremities of His cross. For of the antenna, which is a part of a cross, the ends are called horns; while the midway stake of the whole frame is the unicorn. By this virtue, then, of His cross, and in this manner “horned,” He is both now pushing all nations through faith, bearing them away from earth to heaven; and will then push them through judgment, casting them down from heaven to earth. He will also, according to another passage in the same scripture, be a bullock, when He is spiritually interpreted to be Jacob against Simeon and Levi, which means against the scribes and the Pharisees; for it was from them that these last derived their origin. Like Simeon and Levi, they consummated their wickedness by their heresy, with which they persecuted Christ. “Into their counsel let not my soul enter; to their assembly let not my heart be united: for in their anger they slew men,” that is, the prophets; “and in their self-will they hacked the sinews of a bullock,” that is, of Christ. For against Him did they wreak their fury after they had slain His prophets, even by affixing Him with nails to the cross. Otherwise, it is an idle thing when, after slaying men, he inveighs against them for the torture of a bullock! Again, in the case of Moses, wherefore did he at that moment particularly, when Joshua was fighting Amalek, pray in a sitting posture with outstretched hands, when in such a conflict it would surely have been more seemly to have bent the knee, and smitten the breast, and to have fallen on the face to the ground, and in such prostration to have offered prayer? Wherefore, but because in a battle fought in the name of that Lord who was one day to fight against the devil, the shape was necessary of that very cross through which Jesus was to win the victory? Why, once more, did the same Moses, after prohibiting the likeness of everything, set up the golden serpent on the pole; and as it hung there, propose it as an object to be looked at for a cure? Did he not here also intend to show the power of our Lord’s cross, whereby that old serpent the devil was vanquished,—whereby also to every man who was bitten by spiritual serpents, but who yet turned with an eye of faith to it, was proclaimed a cure from the bite of sin, and health for evermore?

Chapter XIX

Prophecies of the Death of Christ

Come now, when you read in the words of David, how that “the Lord reigneth from the tree,” I want to know what you understand by it. Perhaps you think some wooden king of the Jews is meant!—and not Christ, who overcame death by His suffering on the cross, and thence reigned! Now, although death reigned from Adam even to Christ, why may not Christ be said to have reigned from the tree, from His having shut up the kingdom of death by dying upon the tree of His cross? Likewise Isaiah also says: “For unto us a child is born.” But what is there unusual in this, unless he speaks of the Son of God? “To us is given He whose government is upon His shoulder.” Now, what king is there who bears the ensign of his dominion upon his shoulder, and not rather upon his head as a diadem, or in his hand as a sceptre, or else as a mark in some royal apparel? But the one new King of the new ages, Jesus Christ, carried on His shoulder both the power and the excellence of His new glory, even His cross; so that, according to our former prophecy, He might thenceforth reign from the tree as Lord. This tree it is which Jeremiah likewise gives you intimation of, when he prophesies to the Jews, who should say, “Come, let us destroy the tree with the fruit, (the bread) thereof,” that is, His body. For so did God in your own gospel even reveal the sense, when He called His body bread; so that, for the time to come, you may understand that He has given to His body the figure of bread, whose body the prophet of old figuratively turned into bread, the Lord Himself designing to give by and by an interpretation of the mystery. If you require still further prediction of the Lord’s cross, the twenty-first Psalm is sufficiently able to afford it to you, containing as it does the entire passion of Christ, who was even then prophetically declaring His glory. “They pierced,” says He, “my hands and my feet,” which is the special cruelty of the cross. And again, when He implores His Father’s help, He says, “Save me from the lion’s mouth,” that is, the jaws of death, “and my humiliation from the horns of the unicorns;” in other words, from the extremities of the cross, as we have shown above. Now, David himself did not suffer this cross, nor did any other king of the Jews; so that you cannot suppose that this is the prophecy of any other’s passion than His who alone was so notably crucified by the nation. Now should the heretics, in their obstinacy, reject and despise all these interpretations, I will grant to them that the Creator has given us no signs of the cross of His Christ; but they will not prove from this concession that He who was crucified was another (Christ), unless they could somehow show that this death was predicted as His by their own god, so that from the diversity of predictions there might be maintained to be a diversity of sufferers, and thereby also a diversity of persons. But since there is no prophecy of even Marcion’s Christ, much less of his cross, it is enough for my Christ that there is a prophecy merely of death. For, from the fact that the kind of death is not declared, it was possible for the death of the cross to have been still intended, which would then have to be assigned to another (Christ), if the prophecy had had reference to another. Besides, if he should be unwilling to allow that the death of my Christ was predicted, his confusion must be the greater if he announces that his own Christ indeed died, whom he denies to have had a nativity, whilst denying that my Christ is mortal, though he allows Him to be capable of birth. However, I will show him the death, and burial, and resurrection of my Christ all indicated in a single sentence of Isaiah, who says, “His sepulture was removed from the midst of them.” Now there could have been no sepulture without death, and no removal of sepulture except by resurrection. Then, finally, he added: “Therefore He shall have many for his inheritance, and He shall divide the spoil of the many, because He poured out His soul unto death.” For there is here set forth the cause of this favour to Him, even that it was to recompense Him for His suffering of death. It was equally shown that He was to obtain this recompense for His death, was certainly to obtain it after His death by means of the resurrection.

Chapter XX

The Subsequent Influence of Christ’s Death in the World Predicted. The Sure Mercies of David. What These are

It is sufficient for my purpose to have traced thus far the course of Christ’s dispensation in these particulars. This has proved Him to be such a one as prophecy announced He should be, so that He ought not to be regarded in any other character than that which prediction assigned to Him; and the result of this agreement between the facts of His course and the Scriptures of the Creator should be the restoration of belief in them from that prejudice which has, by contributing to diversity of opinion, either thrown doubt upon, or led to a denial of, a considerable part of them. And now we go further and build up the superstructure of those kindred events out of the Scriptures of the Creator which were predicted and destined to happen after Christ. For the dispensation would not be found complete, if He had not come after whom it had to run on its course. Look at all nations from the vortex of human error emerging out of it up to the Divine Creator, the Divine Christ, and deny Him to be the object of prophecy, if you dare. At once there will occur to you the Father’s promise in the Psalms: “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee. Ask of me, and I shall give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.” You will not be able to put in a claim for some son of David being here meant, rather than Christ; or for the ends of the earth being promised to David, whose kingdom was confined to the Jewish nation simply, rather than to Christ, who now embraces the whole world in the faith of His gospel. So again He says by Isaiah: “I have given Thee for a dispensation of the people, for a light of the Gentiles, to open the eyes of the blind,” that is, those that be in error, “to bring out the prisoners from the prison,” that is, to free them from sin, “and from the prison-house,” that is, of death, “those that sit in darkness”—even that of ignorance. If these things are accomplished through Christ, they would not have been designed in prophecy for any other than Him through whom they have their accomplishment. In another passage He also says: “Behold, I have set Him as a testimony to the nations, a prince and commander to the nations; nations which know Thee not shall invoke Thee, and peoples shall run together unto Thee.” You will not interpret these words of David, because He previously said, “I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.” Indeed, you will be obliged from these words all the more to understand that Christ is reckoned to spring from David by carnal descent, by reason of His birth of the Virgin Mary. Touching this promise of Him, there is the oath to David in the psalm, “Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne.” What body is meant? David’s own? Certainly not. For David was not to give birth to a son. Nor his wife’s either. For instead of saying, “Of the fruit of thy body,” he would then have rather said, “Of the fruit of thy wife’s body.” But by mentioning his body, it follows that He pointed to some one of his race of whose body the flesh of Christ was to be the fruit, which bloomed forth from Mary’s womb. He named the fruit of the body (womb) alone, because it was peculiarly fruit of the womb, of the womb only in fact, and not of the husband also; and he refers the womb (body) to David, as to the chief of the race and father of the family. Because it could not consist with a virgin’s condition to consort her with a husband, He therefore attributed the body (womb) to the father. That new dispensation, then, which is found in Christ now, will prove to be what the Creator then promised under the appellation of “the sure mercies of David,” which were Christ’s, inasmuch as Christ sprang from David, or rather His very flesh itself was David’s “sure mercies,” consecrated by religion, and “sure” after its resurrection. Accordingly the prophet Nathan, in the first of Kings, makes a promise to David for his seed, “which shall proceed,” says he, “out of thy bowels.” Now, if you explain this simply of Solomon, you will send me into a fit of laughter. For David will evidently have brought forth Solomon! But is not Christ here designated the seed of David, as of that womb which was derived from David, that is, Mary’s? Now, because Christ rather than any other was to build the temple of God, that is to say, a holy manhood, wherein God’s Spirit might dwell as in a better temple, Christ rather than David’s son Solomon was to be looked for as the Son of God. Then, again, the throne for ever with the kingdom for ever is more suited to Christ than to Solomon, a mere temporal king. From Christ, too, God’s mercy did not depart, whereas on Solomon even God’s anger alighted, after his luxury and idolatry. For Satan stirred up an Edomite as an enemy against him. Since, therefore, nothing of these things is compatible with Solomon, but only with Christ, the method of our interpretations will certainly be true; and the very issue of the facts shows that they were clearly predicted of Christ. And so in Him we shall have “the sure mercies of David.” Him, not David, has God appointed for a testimony to the nations; Him, for a prince and commander to the nations, not David, who ruled over Israel alone. It is Christ whom all nations now invoke, which knew Him not; Christ to whom all races now betake themselves, whom they were ignorant of before. It is impossible that that should be said to be future, which you see (daily) coming to pass.

Chapter XXI

The Call of the Gentiles Under the Influence of the Gospel Foretold

So you cannot get out of this notion of yours a basis for your difference between the two Christs, as if the Jewish Christ were ordained by the Creator for the restoration of the people alone from its dispersion, whilst yours was appointed by the supremely good God for the liberation of the whole human race. Because, after all, the earliest Christians are found on the side of the Creator, not of Marcion, all nations being called to His kingdom, from the fact that God set up that kingdom from the tree (of the cross), when no Cerdon was yet born, much less a Marcion. However, when you are refuted on the call of the nations, you betake yourself to proselytes. You ask, who among the nations can turn to the Creator, when those whom the prophet names are proselytes of individually different and private condition? “Behold,” says Isaiah, “the proselytes shall come unto me through Thee,” showing that they were even proselytes who were to find their way to God through Christ. But nations (Gentiles) also, like ourselves, had likewise their mention (by the prophet) as trusting in Christ. “And in His name,” says he, “shall the Gentiles trust.” Besides, the proselytes whom you substitute for the nations in prophecy, are not in the habit of trusting in Christ’s name, but in the dispensation of Moses, from whom comes their instruction. But it was in the last days that the choice of the nations had its commencement. In these very words Isaiah says: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord,” that is, God’s eminence, “and the house of God,” that is, Christ, the Catholic temple of God, in which God is worshipped, “shall be established upon the mountains,” over all the eminences of virtues and powers; “and all nations shall come unto it; and many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us His way, and we will walk in it: for out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” The gospel will be this “way,” of the new law and the new word in Christ, no longer in Moses. “And He shall judge among the nations,” even concerning their error. “And these shall rebuke a large nation,” that of the Jews themselves and their proselytes. “And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks;” in other words, they shall change into pursuits of moderation and peace the dispositions of injurious minds, and hostile tongues, and all kinds of evil, and blasphemy. “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,” shall not stir up discord. “Neither shall they learn war any more,” that is, the provocation of hostilities; so that you here learn that Christ is promised not as powerful in war, but pursuing peace. Now you must deny either that these things were predicted, although they are plainly seen, or that they have been accomplished, although you read of them; else, if you cannot deny either one fact or the other, they must have been accomplished in Him of whom they were predicted. For look at the entire course of His call up to the present time from its beginning, how it is addressed to the nations (Gentiles) who are in these last days approaching to God the Creator, and not to proselytes, whose election was rather an event of the earliest days. Verily the apostles have annulled that belief of yours.

Chapter XXII

The Success of the Apostles, and Their Sufferings in the Cause of the Gospel, Foretold

You have the work of the apostles also predicted: “How beautiful are the feet of them which preach the gospel of peace, which bring good tidings of good,” not of war nor evil tidings. In response to which is the psalm, “Their sound is gone through all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world;” that is, the words of them who carry round about the law that proceeded from Sion and the Lord’s word from Jerusalem, in order that that might come to pass which was written: “They who were far from my righteousness, have come near to my righteousness and truth.” When the apostles girded their loins for this business, they renounced the elders and rulers and priests of the Jews. Well, says he, but was it not above all things that they might preach the other god? Rather (that they might preach) that very self-same God, whose scripture they were with all their might fulfilling! “Depart ye, depart ye,” exclaims Isaiah; “go ye out from thence, and touch not the unclean thing,” that is blasphemy against Christ; “Go ye out of the midst of her,” even of the synagogue. “Be ye separate who bear the vessels of the Lord.” For already had the Lord, according to the preceding words (of the prophet), revealed His Holy One with His arm, that is to say, Christ by His mighty power, in the eyes of the nations, so that all the nations and the utmost parts of the earth have seen the salvation, which was from God. By thus departing from Judaism itself, when they exchanged the obligations and burdens of the law for the liberty of the gospel, they were fulfilling the psalm, “Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast away their yoke from us;” and this indeed (they did) after that “the heathen raged, and the people imagined vain devices;” after that “the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers took their counsel together against the Lord, and against His Christ.” What did the apostles thereupon suffer? You answer: Every sort of iniquitous persecutions, from men that belonged indeed to that Creator who was the adversary of Him whom they were preaching. Then why does the Creator, if an adversary of Christ, not only predict that the apostles should incur this suffering, but even express His displeasure thereat? For He ought neither to predict the course of the other god, whom, as you contend, He knew not, nor to have expressed displeasure at that which He had taken care to bring about. “See how the righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart; and how merciful men are taken away, and no man considereth. For the righteous man has been removed from the evil person.” Who is this but Christ? “Come, say they, let us take away the righteous, because He is not for our turn, (and He is clean contrary to our doings).” Premising, therefore, and likewise subjoining the fact that Christ suffered, He foretold that His just ones should suffer equally with Him—both the apostles and all the faithful in succession; and He signed them with that very seal of which Ezekiel spake: “The Lord said unto me, Go through the gate, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set the mark Tau upon the foreheads of the men.” Now the Greek letter Tau and our own letter T is the very form of the cross, which He predicted would be the sign on our foreheads in the true Catholic Jerusalem, in which, according to the twenty-first Psalm, the brethren of Christ or children of God would ascribe glory to God the Father, in the person of Christ Himself addressing His Father; “I will declare Thy name unto my brethren; in the midst of the congregation will I sing praise unto Thee.” For that which had to come to pass in our day in His name, and by His Spirit, He rightly foretold would be of Him. And a little afterwards He says: “My praise shall be of Thee in the great congregation.” In the sixty-seventh Psalm He says again: “In the congregations bless ye the Lord God.” So that with this agrees also the prophecy of Malachi: “I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord; neither will I accept your offerings: for from the rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place sacrifice shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering”—such as the ascription of glory, and blessing, and praise, and hymns. Now, inasmuch as all these things are also found amongst you, and the sign upon the forehead, and the sacraments of the church, and the offerings of the pure sacrifice, you ought now to burst forth, and declare that the Spirit of the Creator prophesied of your Christ.

Chapter XXIII

The Dispersion of the Jews, and Their Desolate Condition for Rejecting Christ, Foretold

Now, since you join the Jews in denying that their Christ has come, recollect also what is that end which they were predicted as about to bring on themselves after the time of Christ, for the impiety wherewith they both rejected and slew Him. For it began to come to pass from that day, when, according to Isaiah, “a man threw away his idols of gold and of silver, which they made into useless and hurtful objects of worship;” in other words, from the time when he threw away his idols after the truth had been made clear by Christ. Consider whether what follows in the prophet has not received its fulfilment: “The Lord of hosts hath taken away from Judah and from Jerusalem, amongst other things, both the prophet and the wise artificer;” that is, His Holy Spirit, who builds the church, which is indeed the temple, and household and city of God. For thenceforth God’s grace failed amongst them; and “the clouds were commanded to rain no rain upon the vineyard” of Sorech; to withhold, that is, the graces of heaven, that they shed no blessing upon “the house of Israel,” which had but produced “the thorns” wherewith it had crowned the Lord, and “instead of righteousness, the cry” wherewith it had hurried Him away to the cross. And so in this manner the law and the prophets were until John, but the dews of divine grace were withdrawn from the nation. After his time their madness still continued, and the name of the Lord was blasphemed by them, as saith the Scripture: “Because of you my name is continually blasphemed amongst the nations” (for from them did the blasphemy originate); neither in the interval from Tiberius to Vespasian did they learn repentance. Therefore “has their land become desolate, their cities are burnt with fire, their country strangers are devouring before their own eyes; the daughter of Sion has been deserted like a cottage in a vineyard, or a lodge in a garden of cucumbers,” ever since the time when “Israel acknowledged not the Lord, and the people understood Him not, but forsook Him, and provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger.” So likewise that conditional threat of the sword, “If ye refuse and hear me not, the sword shall devour you,” has proved that it was Christ, for rebellion against whom they have perished. In the fifty-eighth Psalm He demands of the Father their dispersion: “Scatter them in Thy power.” By Isaiah He also says, as He finishes a prophecy of their consumption by fire: “Because of me has this happened to you; ye shall lie down in sorrow.” But all this would be unmeaning enough, if they suffered this retribution not on account of Him, who had in prophecy assigned their suffering to His own cause, but for the sake of the Christ of the other god. Well, then, although you affirm that it is the Christ of the other god who was driven to the cross by the powers and authorities of the Creator, as it were by hostile beings, still I have to say, See how manifestly He was defended by the Creator: there were given to Him both “the wicked for His burial,” even those who had strenuously maintained that His corpse had been stolen, “and the rich for His death,” even those who had redeemed Him from the treachery of Judas, as well as from the lying report of the soldiers that His body had been taken away. Therefore these things either did not happen to the Jews on His account, in which case you will be refuted by the sense of the Scriptures tallying with the issue of the facts and the order of the times, or else they did happen on His account, and then the Creator could not have inflicted the vengeance except for His own Christ; nay, He must have rather had a reward for Judas, if it had been his master’s enemy whom they put to death. At all events, if the Creator’s Christ has not come yet, on whose account the prophecy dooms them to such sufferings, they will have to endure the sufferings when He shall have come. Then where will there be a daughter of Sion to be reduced to desolation, for there is none now to be found? Where will there be cities to be burnt with fire, for they are now in heaps? Where a nation to be dispersed, which is already in banishment? Restore to Judaea its former state, that the Creator’s Christ may find it, and then you may contend that another Christ has come. But then, again, how is it that He can have permitted to range through His own heaven one whom He was some day to put to death on His own earth, after the more noble and glorious region of His kingdom had been violated, and His own very palace and sublimest height had been trodden by him? Or was it only in appearance rather that he did this? God is no doubt a jealous God! Yet he gained the victory. You should blush with shame, who put your faith in a vanquished god! What have you to hope for from him, who was not strong enough to protect himself? For it was either through his infirmity that he was crushed by the powers and human agents of the Creator, or else through maliciousness, in order that he might fasten so great a stigma on them by his endurance of their wickedness.

Chapter XXIV

Christ’s Millennial and Heavenly Glory in Company with His Saints

Yes, certainly, you say, I do hope from Him that which amounts in itself to a proof of the diversity (of Christs), God’s kingdom in an everlasting and heavenly possession. Besides, your Christ promises to the Jews their primitive condition, with the recovery of their country; and after this life’s course is over, repose in Hades in Abraham’s bosom. Oh, most excellent God, when He restores in amnesty what He took away in wrath! Oh, what a God is yours, who both wounds and heals, creates evil and makes peace! Oh, what a God, that is merciful even down to Hades! I shall have something to say about Abraham’s bosom in the proper place. As for the restoration of Judaea, however, which even the Jews themselves, induced by the names of places and countries, hope for just as it is described, it would be tedious to state at length how the figurative interpretation is spiritually applicable to Christ and His church, and to the character and fruits thereof; besides, the subject has been regularly treated in another work, which we entitle De Spe Fidelium. At present, too, it would be superfluous for this reason, that our inquiry relates to what is promised in heaven, not on earth. But we do confess that a kingdom is promised to us upon the earth, although before heaven, only in another state of existence; inasmuch as it will be after the resurrection for a thousand years in the divinely-built city of Jerusalem, “let down from heaven,” which the apostle also calls “our mother from above;” and, while declaring that our politeuma , or citizenship, is in heaven, he predicates of it that it is really a city in heaven. This both Ezekiel had knowledge of and the Apostle John beheld. And the word of the new prophecy which is a part of our belief, attests how it foretold that there would be for a sign a picture of this very city exhibited to view previous to its manifestation. This prophecy, indeed, has been very lately fulfilled in an expedition to the East. For it is evident from the testimony of even heathen witnesses, that in Judaea there was suspended in the sky a city early every morning for forty days. As the day advanced, the entire figure of its walls would wane gradually, and sometimes it would vanish instantly. We say that this city has been provided by God for receiving the saints on their resurrection, and refreshing them with the abundance of all really spiritual blessings, as a recompense for those which in the world we have either despised or lost; since it is both just and God-worthy that His servants should have their joy in the place where they have also suffered affliction for His name’s sake. Of the heavenly kingdom this is the process. After its thousand years are over, within which period is completed the resurrection of the saints, who rise sooner or later according to their deserts there will ensue the destruction of the world and the conflagration of all things at the judgment: we shall then be changed in a moment into the substance of angels, even by the investiture of an incorruptible nature, and so be removed to that kingdom in heaven of which we have now been treating, just as if it had not been predicted by the Creator, and as if it were proving Christ to belong to the other god and as if he were the first and sole revealer of it. But now learn that it has been, in fact, predicted by the Creator, and that even without prediction it has a claim upon our faith in respect of the Creator. What appears to be probable to you, when Abraham’s seed, after the primal promise of being like the sand of the sea for multitude, is destined likewise to an equality with the stars of heaven—are not these the indications both of an earthly and a heavenly dispensation? When Isaac, in blessing his son Jacob, says, “God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth,” are there not in his words examples of both kinds of blessing? Indeed, the very form of the blessing is in this instance worthy of notice. For in relation to Jacob, who is the type of the later and more excellent people, that is to say ourselves, first comes the promise of the heavenly dew, and afterwards that about the fatness of the earth. So are we first invited to heavenly blessings when we are separated from the world, and afterwards we thus find ourselves in the way of obtaining also earthly blessings. And your own gospel likewise has it in this wise: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and these things shall be added unto you.” But to Esau the blessing promised is an earthly one, which he supplements with a heavenly, after the fatness of the earth, saying, “Thy dwelling shall be also of the dew of heaven.” For the dispensation of the Jews (who were in Esau, the prior of the sons in birth, but the later in affection ) at first was imbued with earthly blessings through the law, and afterwards brought round to heavenly ones through the gospel by faith. When Jacob sees in his dream the steps of a ladder set upon the earth, and reaching to heaven, with angels ascending and descending thereon, and the Lord standing above, we shall without hesitation venture to suppose, that by this ladder the Lord has in judgment appointed that the way to heaven is shown to men, whereby some may attain to it, and others fall therefrom. For why, as soon as he awoke out of his sleep, and shook through a dread of the spot, does he fall to an interpretation of his dream? He exclaims, “How terrible is this place!” And then adds, “This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven!” For he had seen Christ the Lord, the temple of God, and also the gate by whom heaven is entered. Now surely he would not have mentioned the gate of heaven, if heaven is not entered in the dispensation of the Creator. But there is now a gate provided by Christ, which admits and conducts to glory. Of this Amos says: “He buildeth His ascensions into heaven;” certainly not for Himself alone, but for His people also, who will be with Him. “And Thou shalt bind them about Thee,” says he, “like the adornment of a bride.” Accordingly the Spirit, admiring such as soar up to the celestial realms by these ascensions, says, “They fly, as if they were kites; they fly as clouds, and as young doves, unto me”—that is, simply like a dove. For we shall, according to the apostle, be caught up into the clouds to meet the Lord (even the Son of man, who shall come in the clouds, according to Daniel ) and so shall we ever be with the Lord, so long as He remains both on the earth and in heaven, who, against such as are thankless for both one promise and the other, calls the elements themselves to witness: “Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth.” Now, for my own part indeed, even though Scripture held out no hand of heavenly hope to me (as, in fact, it so often does), I should still possess a sufficient presumption of even this promise, in my present enjoyment of the earthly gift; and I should look out for something also of the heavenly, from Him who is the God of heaven as well as of earth. I should thus believe that the Christ who promises the higher blessings is (the Son) of Him who had also promised the lower ones; who had, moreover, afforded proofs of greater gifts by smaller ones; who had reserved for His Christ alone this revelation of a (perhaps ) unheard of kingdom, so that, while the earthly glory was announced by His servants, the heavenly might have God Himself for its messenger. You, however, argue for another Christ, from the very circumstance that He proclaims a new kingdom. You ought first to bring forward some example of His beneficence, that I may have no good reason for doubting the credibility of the great promise, which you say ought to be hoped for; nay, it is before all things necessary that you should prove that a heaven belongs to Him, whom you declare to be a promiser of heavenly things. As it is, you invite us to dinner, but do not point out your house; you assert a kingdom, but show us no royal state. Can it be that your Christ promises a kingdom of heaven, without having a heaven; as He displayed Himself man, without having flesh? O what a phantom from first to last! O hollow pretence of a mighty promise!

Book IV

In Which Tertullian Pursues His Argument. Jesus is the Christ of the Creator. He Derives His Proofs from St. Luke’s Gospel; That Being the Only Historical Portion of the New Testament Partially Accepted by Marcion. This Book May Also Be Regarded as a Commentary on St. Luke. It Gives Remarkable Proof of Tertullian’s Grasp of Scripture, and Proves that “The Old Testament is Not Contrary to the New.” It Also Abounds in Striking Expositions of Scriptural Passages, Embracing Profound Views of Revelation, in Connection with the Nature of Man

Chapter I

Examination of the Antitheses of Marcion, Bringing Them to the Test of Marcion’s Own Gospel. Certain True Antitheses in the Dispensations of the Old and the New Testaments. These Variations Quite Compatible with One and the Same God, Who Ordered Them

Every opinion and the whole scheme of the impious and sacrilegious Marcion we now bring to the test of that very Gospel which, by his process of interpolation, he has made his own. To encourage a belief of this Gospel he has actually devised for it a sort of dower, in a work composed of contrary statements set in opposition, thence entitled Antitheses, and compiled with a view to such a severance of the law from the gospel as should divide the Deity into two, nay, diverse, gods—one for each Instrument, or Testament as it is more usual to call it; that by such means he might also patronize belief in “the Gospel according to the Antitheses.” These, however, I would have attacked in special combat, hand to hand; that is to say, I would have encountered singly the several devices of the Pontic heretic, if it were not much more convenient to refute them in and with that very gospel to which they contribute their support. Although it is so easy to meet them at once with a peremptory demurrer, yet, in order that I may both make them admissible in argument, and account them valid expressions of opinion, and even contend that they make for our side, that so there may be all the redder shame for the blindness of their author, we have now drawn out some antitheses of our own in opposition to Marcion. And indeed I do allow that one order did run its course in the old dispensation under the Creator, and that another is on its way in the new under Christ. I do not deny that there is a difference in the language of their documents, in their precepts of virtue, and in their teachings of the law; but yet all this diversity is consistent with one and the same God, even Him by whom it was arranged and also foretold. Long ago did Isaiah declare that “out of Sion should go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem”—some other law, that is, and another word. In short, says he, “He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people;” meaning not those of the Jewish people only, but of the nations which are judged by the new law of the gospel and the new word of the apostles, and are amongst themselves rebuked of their old error as soon as they have believed. And as the result of this, “they beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears (which are a kind of hunting instruments) into pruning-hooks;” that is to say, minds, which once were fierce and cruel, are changed by them into good dispositions productive of good fruit. And again: “Hearken unto me, hearken unto me, my people, and ye kings, give ear unto me; for a law shall proceed from me, and my judgment for a light to the nations;” wherefore He had determined and decreed that the nations also were to be enlightened by the law and the word of the gospel. This will be that law which (according to David also) is unblameable, because “perfect, converting the soul” from idols unto God. This likewise will be the word concerning which the same Isaiah says, “For the Lord will make a decisive word in the land.” Because the New Testament is compendiously short, and freed from the minute and perplexing burdens of the law. But why enlarge, when the Creator by the same prophet foretells the renovation more manifestly and clearly than the light itself? “Remember not the former things, neither consider the things of old” (the old things have passed away, and new things are arising). “Behold, I will do new things, which shall now spring forth.” So by Jeremiah: “Break up for yourselves new pastures, and sow not among thorns, and circumcise yourselves in the foreskin of your heart.” And in another passage: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Jacob, and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I arrested their dispensation, in order to bring them out of the land of Egypt.” He thus shows that the ancient covenant is temporary only, when He indicates its change; also when He promises that it shall be followed by an eternal one. For by Isaiah He says: “Hear me, and ye shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you,” adding “the sure mercies of David,” in order that He might show that that covenant was to run its course in Christ. That He was of the family of David, according to the genealogy of Mary, He declared in a figurative way even by the rod which was to proceed out of the stem of Jesse. Forasmuch then as he said, that from the Creator there would come other laws, and other words, and new dispensations of covenants, indicating also that the very sacrifices were to receive higher offices, and that amongst all nations, by Malachi when he says: “I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord, neither will I accept your sacrifices at your hands. For from the rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place a sacrifice is offered unto my name, even a pure offering”—meaning simple prayer from a pure conscience,—it is of necessity that every change which comes as the result of innovation, introduces a diversity in those things of which the change is made, from which diversity arises also a contrariety. For as there is nothing, after it has undergone a change, which does not become different, so there is nothing different which is not contrary. Of that very thing, therefore, there will be predicated a contrariety in consequence of its diversity, to which there accrued a change of condition after an innovation. He who brought about the change, the same instituted the diversity also; He who foretold the innovation, the same announced beforehand the contrariety likewise. Why, in your interpretation, do you impute a difference in the state of things to a difference of powers? Why do you wrest to the Creator’s prejudice those examples from which you draw your antitheses, when you may recognise them all in His sensations and affections? “I will wound,” He says, “and I will heal;” “I will kill,” He says again, “and I will make alive”—even the same “who createth evil and maketh peace;” from which you are used even to censure Him with the imputation of fickleness and inconstancy, as if He forbade what He commanded, and commanded what He forbade. Why, then, have you not reckoned up the Antitheses also which occur in the natural works of the Creator, who is for ever contrary to Himself? You have not been able, unless I am misinformed, to recognise the fact, that the world, at all events, even amongst your people of Pontus, is made up of a diversity of elements which are hostile to one another. It was therefore your bounden duty first to have determined that the god of the light was one being, and the god of darkness was another, in such wise that you might have been able to have distinctly asserted one of them to be the god of the law and the other the god of the gospel. It is, however, the settled conviction already of my mind from manifest proofs, that, as His works and plans exist in the way of Antitheses, so also by the same rule exist the mysteries of His religion.

Chapter II

St. Luke’s Gospel, Selected by Marcion as His Authority, and Mutilated by Him. The Other Gospels Equally Authoritative. Marcion’s Terms of Discussion, However, Accepted, and Grappled with on the Footing of St. Luke’s Gospel Alone

You have now our answer to the Antitheses compendiously indicated by us. I pass on to give a proof of the Gospel—not, to be sure, of Jewry, but of Pontus—having become meanwhile adulterated; and this shall indicate the order by which we proceed. We lay it down as our first position, that the evangelical Testament has apostles for its authors, to whom was assigned by the Lord Himself this office of publishing the gospel. Since, however, there are apostolic men also, they are yet not alone, but appear with apostles and after apostles; because the preaching of disciples might be open to the suspicion of an affectation of glory, if there did not accompany it the authority of the masters, which means that of Christ, for it was that which made the apostles their masters. Of the apostles, therefore, John and Matthew first instil faith into us; whilst of apostolic men, Luke and Mark renew it afterwards. These all start with the same principles of the faith, so far as relates to the one only God the Creator and His Christ, how that He was born of the Virgin, and came to fulfil the law and the prophets. Never mind if there does occur some variation in the order of their narratives, provided that there be agreement in the essential matter of the faith, in which there is disagreement with Marcion. Marcion, on the other hand, you must know, ascribes no author to his Gospel, as if it could not be allowed him to affix a title to that from which it was no crime (in his eyes) to subvert the very body. And here I might now make a stand, and contend that a work ought not to be recognised, which holds not its head erect, which exhibits no consistency, which gives no promise of credibility from the fulness of its title and the just profession of its author. But we prefer to join issue on every point; nor shall we leave unnoticed what may fairly be understood to be on our side. Now, of the authors whom we possess, Marcion seems to have singled out Luke for his mutilating process. Luke, however, was not an apostle, but only an apostolic man; not a master, but a disciple, and so inferior to a master—at least as far subsequent to him as the apostle whom he followed (and that, no doubt, was Paul ) was subsequent to the others; so that, had Marcion even published his Gospel in the name of St. Paul himself, the single authority of the document, destitute of all support from preceding authorities, would not be a sufficient basis for our faith. There would be still wanted that Gospel which St. Paul found in existence, to which he yielded his belief, and with which he so earnestly wished his own to agree, that he actually on that account went up to Jerusalem to know and consult the apostles, “lest he should run, or had been running in vain;” in other words, that the faith which he had learned, and the gospel which he was preaching, might be in accordance with theirs. Then, at last, having conferred with the (primitive) authors, and having agreed with them touching the rule of faith, they joined their hands in fellowship, and divided their labours thenceforth in the office of preaching the gospel, so that they were to go to the Jews, and St. Paul to the Jews and the Gentiles. Inasmuch, therefore, as the enlightener of St. Luke himself desired the authority of his predecessors for both his own faith and preaching, how much more may not I require for Luke’s Gospel that which was necessary for the Gospel of his master.

Chapter III

Marcion Insinuated the Untrustworthiness of Certain Apostles Whom St. Paul Rebuked. The Rebuke Shows that It Cannot Be Regarded as Derogating from Their Authority. The Apostolic Gospels Perfectly Authentic

In the scheme of Marcion, on the contrary, the mystery of the Christian religion begins from the discipleship of Luke. Since, however, it was on its course previous to that point, it must have had its own authentic materials, by means of which it found its own way down to St. Luke; and by the assistance of the testimony which it bore, Luke himself becomes admissible. Well, but Marcion, finding the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians (wherein he rebukes even apostles ) for “not walking uprightly according to the truth of the gospel,” as well as accuses certain false apostles of perverting the gospel of Christ), labours very hard to destroy the character of those Gospels which are published as genuine and under the name of apostles, in order, forsooth, to secure for his own Gospel the credit which he takes away from them. But then, even if he censures Peter and John and James, who were thought to be pillars, it is for a manifest reason. They seemed to be changing their company from respect of persons. And yet as Paul himself “became all things to all men,” that he might gain all, it was possible that Peter also might have betaken himself to the same plan of practising somewhat different from what he taught. And, in like manner, if false apostles also crept in, their character too showed itself in their insisting upon circumcision and the Jewish ceremonies. So that it was not on account of their preaching, but of their conversation, that they were marked by St. Paul, who would with equal impartiality have marked them with censure, if they had erred at all with respect to God the Creator or His Christ. Each several case will therefore have to be distinguished. When Marcion complains that apostles are suspected (for their prevarication and dissimulation) of having even depraved the gospel, he thereby accuses Christ, by accusing those whom Christ chose. If, then, the apostles, who are censured simply for inconsistency of walk, composed the Gospel in a pure form, but false apostles interpolated their true record; and if our own copies have been made from these, where will that genuine text of the apostle’s writings be found which has not suffered adulteration? Which was it that enlightened Paul, and through him Luke? It is either completely blotted out, as if by some deluge—being obliterated by the inundation of falsifiers—in which case even Marcion does not possess the true Gospel; or else, is that very edition which Marcion alone possesses the true one, that is, of the apostles? How, then, does that agree with ours, which is said not to be (the work) of apostles, but of Luke? Or else, again, if that which Marcion uses is not to be attributed to Luke simply because it does agree with ours (which, of course, is, also adulterated in its title), then it is the work of apostles. Our Gospel, therefore, which is in agreement with it, is equally the work of apostles, but also adulterated in its title.

Chapter IV

Each Side Claims to Possess the True Gospel. Antiquity the Criterion of Truth in Such a Matter. Marcion’s Pretensions as an Amender of the Gospel

We must follow, then, the clue of our discussion, meeting every effort of our opponents with reciprocal vigor. I say that my Gospel is the true one; Marcion, that his is. I affirm that Marcion’s Gospel is adulterated; Marcion, that mine is. Now what is to settle the point for us, except it be that principle of time, which rules that the authority lies with that which shall be found to be more ancient; and assumes as an elemental truth, that corruption (of doctrine) belongs to the side which shall be convicted of comparative lateness in its origin. For, inasmuch as error is falsification of truth, it must needs be that truth therefore precede error. A thing must exist prior to its suffering any casualty; and an object must precede all rivalry to itself. Else how absurd it would be, that, when we have proved our position to be the older one, and Marcion’s the later, ours should yet appear to be the false one, before it had even received from truth its objective existence; and Marcion’s should also be supposed to have experienced rivalry at our hands, even before its publication; and, in fine, that that should be thought to be the truer position which is the later one—a century later than the publication of all the many and great facts and records of the Christian religion, which certainly could not have been published without, that is to say, before, the truth of the gospel. With regard, then, to the pending question, of Luke’s Gospel (so far as its being the common property of ourselves and Marcion enables it to be decisive of the truth, ) that portion of it which we alone receive is so much older than Marcion, that Marcion himself once believed it, when in the first warmth of faith he contributed money to the Catholic church, which along with himself was afterwards rejected, when he fell away from our truth into his own heresy. What if the Marcionites have denied that he held the primitive faith amongst ourselves, in the face even of his own letter? What, if they do not acknowledge the letter? They, at any rate, receive his Antitheses; and more than that, they make ostentatious use of them. Proof out of these is enough for me. For if the Gospel, said to be Luke’s which is current amongst us (we shall see whether it be also current with Marcion), is the very one which, as Marcion argues in his Antitheses, was interpolated by the defenders of Judaism, for the purpose of such a conglomeration with it of the law and the prophets as should enable them out of it to fashion their Christ, surely he could not have so argued about it, unless he had found it (in such a form). No one censures things before they exist, when he knows not whether they will come to pass. Emendation never precedes the fault. To be sure, an amender of that Gospel, which had been all topsy-turvy from the days of Tiberius to those of Antoninus, first presented himself in Marcion alone—so long looked for by Christ, who was all along regretting that he had been in so great a hurry to send out his apostles without the support of Marcion! But for all that, heresy, which is for ever mending the Gospels, and corrupting them in the act, is an affair of man’s audacity, not of God’s authority; and if Marcion be even a disciple, he is yet not “above his master;” if Marcion be an apostle, still as Paul says, “Whether it be I or they, so we preach;” if Marcion be a prophet, even “the spirits of the prophets will be subject to the prophets,” for they are not the authors of confusion, but of peace; or if Marcion be actually an angel, he must rather be designated “as anathema than as a preacher of the gospel,” because it is a strange gospel which he has preached. So that, whilst he amends, he only confirms both positions: both that our Gospel is the prior one, for he amends that which he has previously fallen in with; and that that is the later one, which, by putting it together out of the emendations of ours, he has made his own Gospel, and a novel one too.

Chapter V

By the Rule of Antiquity, the Catholic Gospels are Found to Be True, Including the Real St. Luke’s. Marcion’s Only a Mutilated Edition. The Heretic’s Weakness and Inconsistency in Ignoring the Other Gospels

On the whole, then, if that is evidently more true which is earlier, if that is earlier which is from the very beginning, if that is from the beginning which has the apostles for its authors, then it will certainly be quite as evident, that that comes down from the apostles, which has been kept as a sacred deposit in the churches of the apostles. Let us see what milk the Corinthians drank from Paul; to what rule of faith the Galatians were brought for correction; what the Philippians, the Thessalonians, the Ephesians read by it; what utterance also the Romans give, so very near (to the apostles), to whom Peter and Paul conjointly bequeathed the gospel even sealed with their own blood. We have also St. John’s foster churches. For although Marcion rejects his Apocalypse, the order of the bishops (thereof), when traced up to their origin, will yet rest on John as their author. In the same manner is recognised the excellent source of the other churches. I say, therefore, that in them (and not simply such of them as were founded by apostles, but in all those which are united with them in the fellowship of the mystery of the gospel of Christ ) that Gospel of Luke which we are defending with all our might has stood its ground from its very first publication; whereas Marcion’s Gospel is not known to most people, and to none whatever is it known without being at the same time condemned. It too, of course, has its churches, but specially its own—as late as they are spurious; and should you want to know their original, you will more easily discover apostasy in it than apostolicity, with Marcion forsooth as their founder, or some one of Marcion’s swarm. Even wasps make combs; so also these Marcionites make churches. The same authority of the apostolic churches will afford evidence to the other Gospels also, which we possess equally through their means, and according to their usage—I mean the Gospels of John and Matthew—whilst that which Mark published may be affirmed to be Peter’s whose interpreter Mark was. For even Luke’s form of the Gospel men usually ascribe to Paul. And it may well seem that the works which disciples publish belong to their masters. Well, then, Marcion ought to be called to a strict account concerning these (other Gospels) also, for having omitted them, and insisted in preference on Luke; as if they, too, had not had free course in the churches, as well as Luke’s Gospel, from the beginning. Nay, it is even more credible that they existed from the very beginning; for, being the work of apostles, they were prior, and coeval in origin with the churches themselves. But how comes it to pass, if the apostles published nothing, that their disciples were more forward in such a work; for they could not have been disciples, without any instruction from their masters? If, then, it be evident that these (Gospels) also were current in the churches, why did not Marcion touch them—either to amend them if they were adulterated, or to acknowledge them if they were uncorrupt? For it is but natural that they who were perverting the gospel, should be more solicitous about the perversion of those things whose authority they knew to be more generally received. Even the false apostles (were so called) on this very account, because they imitated the apostles by means of their falsification. In as far, then, as he might have amended what there was to amend, if found corrupt, in so far did he firmly imply that all was free from corruption which he did not think required amendment. In short, he simply amended what he thought was corrupt; though, indeed, not even this justly, because it was not really corrupt. For if the (Gospels) of the apostles have come down to us in their integrity, whilst Luke’s, which is received amongst us, so far accords with their rule as to be on a par with them in permanency of reception in the churches, it clearly follows that Luke’s Gospel also has come down to us in like integrity until the sacrilegious treatment of Marcion. In short, when Marcion laid hands on it, it then became diverse and hostile to the Gospels of the apostles. I will therefore advise his followers, that they either change these Gospels, however late to do so, into a conformity with their own, whereby they may seem to be in agreement with the apostolic writings (for they are daily retouching their work, as daily they are convicted by us); or else that they blush for their master, who stands self-condemned either way—when once he hands on the truth of the gospel conscience smitten, or again subverts it by shameless tampering. Such are the summary arguments which we use, when we take up arms against heretics for the faith of the gospel, maintaining both that order of periods, which rules that a late date is the mark of forgers, and that authority of churches which lends support to the tradition of the apostles; because truth must needs precede the forgery, and proceed straight from those by whom it has been handed on.

Chapter VI

Marcion’s Object in Adulterating the Gospel. No Difference Between the Christ of the Creator and the Christ of the Gospel. No Rival Christ Admissible. The Connection of the True Christ with the Dispensation of the Old Testament Asserted

But we now advance a step further on, and challenge (as we promised to do) the very Gospel of Marcion, with the intention of thus proving that it has been adulterated. For it is certain that the whole aim at which he has strenuously laboured even in the drawing up of his Antitheses, centres in this, that he may establish a diversity between the Old and the New Testaments, so that his own Christ may be separate from the Creator, as belonging to this rival god, and as alien from the law and the prophets. It is certain, also, that with this view he has erased everything that was contrary to his own opinion and made for the Creator, as if it had been interpolated by His advocates, whilst everything which agreed with his own opinion he has retained. The latter statements we shall strictly examine; and if they shall turn out rather for our side, and shatter the assumption of Marcion, we shall embrace them. It will then become evident, that in retaining them he has shown no less of the defect of blindness, which characterizes heresy, than he displayed when he erased all the former class of subjects. Such, then, is to be the drift and form of my little treatise; subject, of course, to whatever condition may have become requisite on both sides of the question. Marcion has laid down the position, that Christ who in the days of Tiberius was, by a previously unknown god, revealed for the salvation of all nations, is a different being from Him who was ordained by God the Creator for the restoration of the Jewish state, and who is yet to come. Between these he interposes the separation of a great and absolute difference—as great as lies between what is just and what is good; as great as lies between the law and the gospel; as great, (in short,) as is the difference between Judaism and Christianity. Hence will arise also our rule, by which we determine that there ought to be nothing in common between the Christ of the rival god and the Creator; but that (Christ) must be pronounced to belong to the Creator, if He has administered His dispensations, fulfilled His prophecies, promoted His laws, given reality to His promises, revived His mighty power, remoulded His determinations, expressed His attributes, His properties. This law and this rule I earnestly request the reader to have ever in his mind, and so let him begin to investigate whether Christ be Marcion’s or the Creator’s.

Chapter VII

Marcion Rejected the Preceding Portion of St. Luke’s Gospel. Therefore This Review Opens with an Examination of the Case of the Evil Spirit in the Synagogue of Capernaum. He Whom the Demon Acknowledged Was the Creator’s Christ

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius (for such is Marcion’s proposition) he “came down to the Galilean city of Capernaum,” of course meaning from the heaven of the Creator, to which he had previously descended from his own. What then had been his course, for him to be described as first descending from his own heaven to the Creator’s? For why should I abstain from censuring those parts of the statement which do not satisfy the requirement of an ordinary narrative, but always end in a falsehood? To be sure, our censure has been once for all expressed in the question, which we have already suggested: Whether, when descending through the Creator’s domain, and indeed in hostility to him, he could possibly have been admitted by him, and by him been transmitted to the earth, which was equally his territory? Now, however, I want also to know the remainder of his course down, assuming that he came down. For we must not be too nice in inquiring whether it is supposed that he was seen in any place. To come into view indicates a sudden unexpected glance, which for a moment fixed the eye upon the object that passed before the view, without staying. But when it happens that a descent has been effected, it is apparent, and comes under the notice of the eyes. Moreover, it takes account of fact, and thus obliges one to examine in what condition with what preparation, with how much violence or moderation, and further, at what time of the day or night, the descent was made; who, again, saw the descent, who reported it, who seriously avouched the fact, which certainly was not easy to be believed, even after the asseveration. It is, in short, too bad that Romulus should have had in Proculus an avoucher of his ascent to heaven, when the Christ of (this) god could not find any one to announce his descent from heaven; just as if the ascent of the one and the descent of the other were not effected on one and the same ladder of falsehood! Then, what had he to do with Galilee, if he did not belong to the Creator by whom that region was destined (for His Christ) when about to enter on His ministry? As Isaiah says: “Drink in this first, and be prompt, O region of Zabulon and land of Nephthalim, and ye others who (inhabit) the sea-coast, and that of Jordan, Galilee of the nations, ye people who sit in darkness, behold a great light; upon you, who inhabit (that) land, sitting in the shadow of death, the light hath arisen.” It is, however, well that Marcion’s god does claim to be the enlightener of the nations, that so he might have the better reason for coming down from heaven; only, if it must needs be, he should rather have made Pontus his place of descent than Galilee. But since both the place and the work of illumination according to the prophecy are compatible with Christ, we begin to discern that He is the subject of the prophecy, which shows that at the very outset of His ministry, He came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but rather to fulfil them; for Marcion has erased the passage as an interpolation. It will, however, be vain for him to deny that Christ uttered in word what He forthwith did partially indeed. For the prophecy about place He at once fulfilled. From heaven straight to the synagogue. As the adage runs: “The business on which we are come, do at once.” Marcion must even expunge from the Gospel, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel;” and, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs,”—in order, forsooth, that Christ may not appear to be an Israelite. But facts will satisfy me instead of words. Withdraw all the sayings of my Christ, His acts shall speak. Lo, He enters the synagogue; surely (this is going) to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Behold, it is to Israelites first that He offers the “bread” of His doctrine; surely it is because they are “children” that He shows them this priority. Observe, He does not yet impart it to others; surely He passes them by as “dogs.” For to whom else could He better have imparted it, than to such as were strangers to the Creator, if He especially belonged not to the Creator? And yet how could He have been admitted into the synagogue—one so abruptly appearing, so unknown; one, of whom no one had as yet been apprised of His tribe, His nation, His family, and lastly, His enrolment in the census of Augustus—that most faithful witness of the Lord’s nativity, kept in the archives of Rome? They certainly would have remembered, if they did not know Him to be circumcised, that He must not be admitted into their most holy places. And even if He had the general right of entering the synagogue (like other Jews), yet the function of giving instruction was allowed only to a man who was extremely well known, and examined and tried, and for some time invested with the privilege after experience duly attested elsewhere. But “they were all astonished at His doctrine.” Of course they were; “for, says (St. Luke), “His word was with power—not because He taught in opposition to the law and the prophets. No doubt, His divine discourse gave forth both power and grace, building up rather than pulling down the substance of the law and the prophets. Otherwise, instead of “astonishment, they would feel horror. It would not be admiration, but aversion, prompt and sure, which they would bestow on one who was the destroyer of law and prophets, and the especial propounder as a natural consequence of a rival god; for he would have been unable to teach anything to the disparagement of the law and the prophets, and so far of the Creator also, without premising the doctrine of a different and rival divinity. Inasmuch, then, as the Scripture makes no other statement on the matter than that the simple force and power of His word produced astonishment, it more naturally shows that His teaching was in accordance with the Creator by not denying (that it was so), than that it was in opposition to the Creator, by not asserting (such a fact). And thus He will either have to be acknowledged as belonging to Him, in accordance with whom He taught; or else will have to be adjudged a deceiver since He taught in accordance with One whom He had come to oppose. In the same passage, “the spirit of an unclean devil” exclaims: “What have we to do with Thee, Thou Jesus? Art Thou come to destroy us? I know Thee who Thou art, the Holy One of God.” I do not here raise the question whether this appellation was suitable to one who ought not to be called Christ, unless he were sent by the Creator. Elsewhere there has been already given a full consideration of His titles.

My present discussion is, how the evil spirit could have known that He was called by such a name, when there had never at any time been uttered about Him a single prophecy by a god who was unknown, and up to that time silent, of whom it was not possible for Him to be attested as “the Holy One,” as (of a god) unknown even to his own Creator. What similar event could he then have published of a new deity, whereby he might betoken for “the holy one” of the rival god? Simply that he went into the synagogue, and did nothing even in word against the Creator? As therefore he could not by any means acknowledge him, whom he was ignorant of, to be Jesus and the Holy One of God; so did he acknowledge Him whom he knew (to be both). For he remembered how that the prophet had prophesied of “the Holy One” of God, and how that God’s name of “Jesus” was in the son of Nun. These facts he had also received from the angel, according to our Gospel: “Wherefore that which shall be born of thee shall be called the Holy One, the Son of God;” and, “Thou shalt call his name Jesus.” Thus he actually had (although only an evil spirit) some idea of the Lord’s dispensation, rather than of any strange and heretofore imperfectly understood one. Because he also premised this question: “What have we to do with Thee?”—not as if referring to a strange Jesus, to whom pertain the evil spirits of the Creator. Nor did he say, What hast Thou to do with us? but, “What have we to do with Thee?” as if deploring himself, and deprecating his own calamity; at the prospect of which he adds: “Art Thou come to destroy us?” So completely did he acknowledge in Jesus the Son of that God who was judicial and avenging, and (so to speak) severe, and not of him who was simply good, and knew not how to destroy or how to punish! Now for what purpose have we adduced his passage first? In order to show that Jesus was neither acknowledged by the evil spirit, nor affirmed by Himself, to be any other than the Creator’s. Well, but Jesus rebuked him, you say. To be sure he did, as being an envious (spirit), and in his very confession only petulant, and evil in adulation—just as if it had been Christ’s highest glory to have come for the destruction of demons, and not for the salvation of mankind; whereas His wish really was that His disciples should not glory in the subjection of evil spirits but in the fair beauty of salvation. Why else did He rebuke him? If it was because he was entirely wrong (in his invocation), then He was neither Jesus nor the Holy One of God; if it was because he was partially wrong—for having supposed him to be, rightly enough, Jesus and the Holy One of God, but also as belonging to the Creator—most unjustly would He have rebuked him for thinking what he knew he ought to think (about Him), and for not supposing that of Him which he knew not that he ought to suppose—that he was another Jesus, and the holy one of the other god. If, however, the rebuke has not a more probable meaning than that which we ascribe to it, it follows that the evil spirit made no mistake, and was not rebuked for lying; for it was Jesus Himself, besides whom it was impossible for the evil spirit to have acknowledged any other, whilst Jesus affirmed that He was He whom the evil spirit had acknowledged, by not rebuking him for uttering a lie.

Chapter VIII

Other Proofs from the Same Chapter, that Jesus, Who Preached at Nazareth, and Was Acknowledged by Certain Demons as Christ the Son of God, Was the Creator’s Christ. As Occasion Offers, the Docetic Errors of Marcion are Exposed

The Christ of the Creator had to be called a Nazarene according to prophecy; whence the Jews also designate us, on that very account, Nazerenes after Him. For we are they of whom it is written, “Her Nazarites were whiter than snow;” even they who were once defiled with the stains of sin, and darkened with the clouds of ignorance. But to Christ the title Nazarene was destined to become a suitable one, from the hiding-place of His infancy, for which He went down and dwelt at Nazareth, to escape from Archelaus the son of Herod. This fact I have not refrained from mentioning on this account, because it behoved Marcion’s Christ to have forborne all connection whatever with the domestic localities of the Creator’s Christ, when he had so many towns in Judaea which had not been by the prophets thus assigned to the Creator’s Christ. But Christ will be (the Christ) of the prophets, wheresoever He is found in accordance with the prophets. And yet even at Nazareth He is not remarked as having preached anything new, whilst in another verse He is said to have been rejected by reason of a simple proverb. Here at once, when I observe that they laid their hands on Him, I cannot help drawing a conclusion respecting His bodily substance, which cannot be believed to have been a phantom, since it was capable of being touched and even violently handled, when He was seized and taken and led to the very brink of a precipice. For although He escaped through the midst of them, He had already experienced their rough treatment, and afterwards went His way, no doubt because the crowd (as usually happens) gave way, or was even broken through; but not because it was eluded as by an impalpable disguise, which, if there had been such, would not at all have submitted to any touch.

“Tangere enim et tangi, nisi corpus, nulla potest res,”

is even a sentence worthy of a place in the world’s wisdom. In short, He did himself touch others, upon whom He laid His hands, which were capable of being felt, and conferred the blessings of healing, which were not less true, not less unimaginary, than were the hands wherewith He bestowed them. He was therefore the very Christ of Isaiah, the healer of our sicknesses. “Surely,” says he, “He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” Now the Greeks are accustomed to use for carry a word which also signifies to take away. A general promise is enough for me in passing. Whatever were the cures which Jesus effected, He is mine. We will come, however, to the kinds of cures. To liberate men, then, from evil spirits, is a cure of sickness. Accordingly, wicked spirits (just in the manner of our former example) used to go forth with a testimony, exclaiming, “Thou art the Son of God,”—of what God, is clear enough from the case itself. But they were rebuked, and ordered not to speak; precisely because Christ willed Himself to be proclaimed by men, not by unclean spirits, as the Son of God—even that Christ alone to whom this was befitting, because He had sent beforehand men through whom He might become known, and who were assuredly worthier preachers. It was natural to Him to refuse the proclamation of an unclean spirit, at whose command there was an abundance of saints. He, however, who had never been foretold (if, indeed, he wished to be acknowledged; for if he did not wish so much, his coming was in vain), would not have spurned the testimony of an alien or any sort of substance, who did not happen to have a substance of his own, but had descended in an alien one. And now, too, as the destroyer also of the Creator, he would have desired nothing better than to be acknowledged by His spirits, and to be divulged for the sake of being feared: only that Marcion says that his god is not feared; maintaining that a good being is not an object of fear, but only a judicial being, in whom reside the grounds of fear—anger, severity, judgments, vengeance, condemnation. But it was from fear, undoubtedly, that the evil spirits were cowed. Therefore they confessed that (Christ) was the Son of a God who was to be feared, because they would have an occasion of not submitting if there were none for fearing. Besides, He showed that He was to be feared, because He drave them out, not by persuasion like a good being, but by command and reproof. Or else did he reprove them, because they were making him an object of fear, when all the while he did not want to be feared? And in what manner did he wish them to go forth, when they could not do so except with fear? So that he fell into the dilemma of having to conduct himself contrary to his nature, whereas he might in his simple goodness have at once treated them with leniency. He fell, too, into another false position—of prevarication, when he permitted himself to be feared by the demons as the Son of the Creator, that he might drive them out, not indeed by his own power, but by the authority of the Creator. “He departed, and went into a desert place.” This was, indeed, the Creator’s customary region. It was proper that the Word should there appear in body, where He had aforetime, wrought in a cloud. To the gospel also was suitable that condition of place which had once been determined on for the law. “Let the wilderness and the solitary place, therefore, be glad and rejoice;” so had Isaiah promised. When “stayed” by the crowds, He said, “I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also.” Had He displayed His God anywhere yet? I suppose as yet nowhere. But was He speaking of those who knew of another god also? I do not believe so. If, therefore, neither He had preached, nor they had known, any other God but the Creator, He was announcing the kingdom of that God whom He knew to be the only God known to those who were listening to Him.

Chapter IX

Out of St. Luke’s Fifth Chapter are Found Proofs of Christ’s Belonging to the Creator, E.g. In the Call of Fishermen to the Apostolic Office, and in the Cleansing of the Leper. Christ Compared with the Prophet Elisha

Out of so many kinds of occupations, why indeed had He such respect for that of fishermen, as to select from it for apostles Simon and the sons of Zebedee (for it cannot seem to be the mere fact itself for which the narrative was meant to be drawn out ), saying to Peter, when he trembled at the very large draught of the fishes, “Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men?” By saying this, He suggested to them the meaning of the fulfilled prophecy, that it was even He who by Jeremiah had foretold, “Behold, I will send many fishers; and they shall fish them,” that is, men. Then at last they left their boats, and followed Him, understanding that it was He who had begun to accomplish what He had declared. It is quite another case, when he affected to choose from the college of shipmasters, intending one day to appoint the shipmaster Marcion his apostle. We have indeed already laid it down, in opposition to his Antitheses, that the position of Marcion derives no advantage from the diversity which he supposes to exist between the Law and the Gospel, inasmuch as even this was ordained by the Creator, and indeed predicted in the promise of the new Law, and the new Word, and the new Testament. Since, however, he quotes with especial care, as a proof in his domain, a certain companion in misery (suntalaiporon), and associate in hatred (summisoumenon ), with himself, for the cure of leprosy, I shall not be sorry to meet him, and before anything else to point out to him the force of the law figuratively interpreted, which, in this example of a leper (who was not to be touched, but was rather to be removed from all intercourse with others), prohibited any communication with a person who was defiled with sins, with whom the apostle also forbids us even to eat food, forasmuch as the taint of sins would be communicated as if contagious, wherever a man should mix himself with the sinner. The Lord, therefore, wishing that the law should be more profoundly understood as signifying spiritual truths by carnal facts—and thus not destroying, but rather building up, that law which He wanted to have more earnestly acknowledged—touched the leper, by whom (even although as man He might have been defiled) He could not be defiled as God, being of course incorruptible. The prescription, therefore, could not be meant for Him, that He was bound to observe the law and not touch the unclean person, seeing that contact with the unclean would not cause defilement to Him. I thus teach that this (immunity) is consistent in my Christ, the rather when I show that it is not consistent in yours. Now, if it was as an enemy of the law that He touched the leper—disregarding the precept of the law by a contempt of the defilement—how could he be defiled, when he possessed not a body which could be defiled? For a phantom is not susceptible of defilement. He therefore, who could not be defiled, as being a phantom, will not have an immunity from pollution by any divine power, but owing to his fantastic vacuity; nor can he be regarded as having despised pollution, who had not in fact any material capacity for it; nor, in like manner, as having destroyed the law, who had escaped defilement from the occasion of his phantom nature, not from any display of virtue. If, however, the Creator’s prophet Elisha cleansed Naaman the Syrian alone, to the exclusion of so many lepers in Israel, this fact contributes nothing to the distinction of Christ, as if he were in this way the better one for cleansing this Israelite leper, although a stranger to him, whom his own Lord had been unable to cleanse. The cleansing of the Syrian rather was significant throughout the nations of the world of their own cleansing in Christ their light, steeped as they were in the stains of the seven deadly sins: idolatry, blasphemy, murder, adultery, fornication, false-witness, and fraud. Seven times, therefore, as if once for each, did he wash in Jordan; both in order that he might celebrate the expiation of a perfect hebdomad; and because the virtue and fulness of the one baptism was thus solemnly imputed to Christ, alone, who was one day to establish on earth not only a revelation, but also a baptism, endued with compendious efficacy. Even Marcion finds here an antithesis: how that Elisha indeed required a material resource, applied water, and that seven times; whereas Christ, by the employment of a word only, and that but once for all, instantly effected the cure. And surely I might venture to claim the Very Word also as of the Creator’s substance. There is nothing of which He who was the primitive Author is not also the more powerful one. Forsooth, it is incredible that that power of the Creator should have, by a word, produced a remedy for a single malady, which once by a word brought into being so vast a fabric as the world! From what can the Christ of the Creator be better discerned, than from the power of His word? But Christ is on this account another (Christ), because He acted differently from Elisha—because, in fact, the master is more powerful than his servant! Why, Marcion, do you lay down the rule, that things are done by servants just as they are by their very masters? Are you not afraid that it will turn to your discredit, if you deny that Christ belongs to the Creator, on the ground that He was once more powerful than a servant of the Creator—since, in comparison with the weakness of Elisha, He is acknowledged to be the greater, if indeed greater! For the cure is the same, although there is a difference in the working of it. What has your Christ performed more than my Elisha? Nay, what great thing has the word of your Christ performed, when it has simply done that which a river of the Creator effected? On the same principle occurs all the rest. So far as renouncing all human glory went, He forbade the man to publish abroad the cure; but so far as the honour of the law was concerned, He requested that the usual course should be followed: “Go, show thyself to the priest, and present the offering which Moses commanded.” For the figurative signs of the law in its types He still would have observed, because of their prophetic import. These types signified that a man, once a sinner, but afterwards purified from the stains thereof by the word of God, was bound to offer unto God in the temple a gift, even prayer and thanksgiving in the church through Christ Jesus, who is the Catholic Priest of the Father. Accordingly He added: “that it may be for a testimony unto you”—one, no doubt, whereby He would testify that He was not destroying the law, but fulfilling it; whereby, too, He would testify that it was He Himself who was foretold as about to undertake their sicknesses and infirmities. This very consistent and becoming explanation of “the testimony,” that adulator of his own Christ, Marcion seeks to exclude under the cover of mercy and gentleness. For, being both good (such are his words), and knowing, besides, that every man who had been freed from leprosy would be sure to perform the solemnities of the law, therefore He gave this precept. Well, what then? Has He continued in his goodness (that is to say, in his permission of the law) or not? For if he has persevered in his goodness, he will never become a destroyer of the law; nor will he ever be accounted as belonging to another god, because there would not exist that destruction of the law which would constitute his claim to belong to the other god. If, however, he has not continued good, by a subsequent destruction of the law, it is a false testimony which he has since imposed upon them in his cure of the leper; because he has forsaken his goodness, in destroying the law. If, therefore, he was good whilst upholding the law, he has now become evil as a destroyer of the law. However, by the support which he gave to the law, he affirmed that the law was good. For no one permits himself in the support of an evil thing. Therefore he is not only bad if he has permitted obedience to a bad law; but even worse still, if he has appeared as the destroyer of a good law. So that if he commanded the offering of the gift because he knew that every cured leper would be sure to bring one; he possibly abstained from commanding what he knew would be spontaneously done. In vain, therefore, was his coming down, as if with the intention of destroying the law, when he makes concessions to the keepers of the law. And yet, because he knew their disposition, he ought the more earnestly to have prevented their neglect of the law, since he had come for this purpose. Why then did he not keep silent, that man might of his own simple will obey the law? For then might he have seemed to some extent to have persisted in his patience. But he adds also his own authority increased by the weight of this “testimony.” Of what testimony, I ask, if not that of the assertion of the law? Surely it matters not in what way he asserted the law—whether as good, or as supererogatory, or as patient, or as inconstant—provided, Marcion, I drive you from your position. Observe, he commanded that the law should be fulfilled. In whatever way he commanded it, in the same way might he also have first uttered that sentiment: “I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it.” What business, therefore, had you to erase out of the Gospel that which was quite consistent in it? For you have confessed that, in his goodness, he did in act what you deny that he did in word. We have therefore good proof that He uttered the word, in the fact that He did the deed; and that you have rather expunged the Lord’s word, than that our (evangelists) have inserted it.

Chapter X

Further Proofs of the Same Truth in the Same Chapter, from the Healing of the Paralytic, and from the Designation Son of Man Which Jesus Gives Himself. Tertullian Sustains His Argument by Several Quotations from the Prophets

The sick of the palsy is healed, and that in public, in the sight of the people. For, says Isaiah, “they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God.” What glory, and what excellency? “Be strong, ye weak hands, and ye feeble knees:” this refers to the palsy. “Be strong; fear not.” Be strong is not vainly repeated, nor is fear not vainly added; because with the renewal of the limbs there was to be, according to the promise, a restoration also of bodily energies: “Arise, and take up thy couch;” and likewise moral courage not to be afraid of those who should say, “Who can forgive sins, but God alone?” So that you have here not only the fulfilment of the prophecy which promised a particular kind of healing, but also of the symptoms which followed the cure. In like manner, you should also recognise Christ in the same prophet as the forgiver of sins. “For,” he says, “He shall remit to many their sins, and shall Himself take away our sins.” For in an earlier passage, speaking in the person of the Lord himself, he had said: “Even though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them as white as snow; even though they be like crimson, I will whiten them as wool.” In the scarlet colour He indicates the blood of the prophets; in the crimson, that of the Lord, as the brighter. Concerning the forgiveness of sins, Micah also says: “Who is a God like unto Thee? pardoning iniquity, and passing by the transgressions of the remnant of Thine heritage. He retaineth not His anger as a testimony against them, because He delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, and will have compassion upon us; He wipeth away our iniquities, and casteth our sins into the depths of the sea.” Now, if nothing of this sort had been predicted of Christ, I should find in the Creator examples of such a benignity as would hold out to me the promise of similar affections also in the Son of whom He is the Father. I see how the Ninevites obtained forgiveness of their sins from the Creator—not to say from Christ, even then, because from the beginning He acted in the Father’s name. I read, too, how that, when David acknowledged his sin against Uriah, the prophet Nathan said unto him, “The Lord hath cancelled thy sin, and thou shalt not die;” how king Ahab in like manner, the husband of Jezebel, guilty of idolatry and of the blood of Naboth, obtained pardon because of his repentance; and how Jonathan the son of Saul blotted out by his deprecation the guilt of a violated fast. Why should I recount the frequent restoration of the nation itself after the forgiveness of their sins?—by that God, indeed, who will have mercy rather than sacrifice, and a sinner’s repentance rather than his death. You will first have to deny that the Creator ever forgave sins; then you must in reason show that He never ordained any such prerogative for His Christ; and so you will prove how novel is that boasted benevolence of the, of course, novel Christ when you shall have proved that it is neither compatible with the Creator nor predicted by the Creator. But whether to remit sins can appertain to one who is said to be unable to retain them, and whether to absolve can belong to him who is incompetent even to condemn, and whether to forgive is suitable to him against whom no offence can be committed, are questions which we have encountered elsewhere, when we preferred to drop suggestions rather than treat them anew. Concerning the Son of man our rule is a twofold one: that Christ cannot lie, so as to declare Himself the Son of man, if He be not truly so; nor can He be constituted the Son of man, unless He be born of a human parent, either father or mother. And then the discussion will turn on the point, of which human parent He ought to be accounted the son—of the father or the mother? Since He is (begotten) of God the Father, He is not, of course, (the son) of a human father. If He is not of a human father, it follows that He must be (the son) of a human mother. If of a human mother, it is evident that she must be a virgin. For to whom a human father is not ascribed, to his mother a husband will not be reckoned; and then to what mother a husband is not reckoned, the condition of virginity belongs. But if His mother be not a virgin, two fathers will have to be reckoned to Him—a divine and a human one. For she must have a husband, not to be a virgin; and by having a husband, she would cause two fathers—one divine, the other human—to accrue to Him, who would thus be Son both of God and of a man. Such a nativity (if one may call it so) the mythic stories assign to Castor or to Hercules. Now, if this distinction be observed, that is to say, if He be Son of man as born of His mother, because not begotten of a father, and His mother be a virgin, because His father is not human—He will be that Christ whom Isaiah foretold that a virgin should conceive, on what principle you, Marcion, can admit Him Son of man, I cannot possibly see. If through a human father, then you deny him to be Son of God; if through a divine one also, then you make Christ the Hercules of fable; if through a human mother only, then you concede my point; if not through a human father also, then He is not the son of any man, and He must have been guilty of a lie for having declared Himself to be what He was not. One thing alone can help you in your difficulty: boldness on your part either to surname your God as actually the human father of Christ, as Valentinus did with his AEon; or else to deny that the Virgin was human, which even Valentinus did not do. What now, if Christ be described in Daniel by this very title of “Son of man?” Is not this enough to prove that He is the Christ of prophecy? For if He gives Himself that appellation which was provided in the prophecy for the Christ of the Creator, He undoubtedly offers Himself to be understood as Him to whom (the appellation) was assigned by the prophet. But perhaps it can be regarded as a simple identity of names; and yet we have maintained that neither Christ nor Jesus ought to have been called by these names, if they possessed any condition of diversity. But as regards the appellation “Son of man,” in as far as it occurs by accident, in so far there is a difficulty in its occurrence along with a casual identity of names. For it is of pure accident, especially when the same cause does not appear whereby the identity may be occasioned. And therefore, if Marcion’s Christ be also said to be born of man, then he too would receive an identical appellation, and there would be two Sons of man, as also two Christs and two Jesuses. Therefore, since the appellation is the sole right of Him in whom it has a suitable reason, if it be claimed for another in whom there is an identity of name, but not of appellation, then the identity of name even looks suspicious in him for whom is claimed without reason the identity of appellation. And it follows that He must be believed to be One and the Same, who is found to be the more fit to receive both the name and the appellation; while the other is excluded, who has no right to the appellation, because he has no reason to show for it. Nor will any other be better entitled to both than He who is the earlier, and has had allotted to Him the name of Christ and the appellation of Son of man, even the Jesus of the Creator. It was He who was seen by the king of Babylon in the furnace with His martyrs: “the fourth, who was like the Son of man.” He also was revealed to Daniel himself expressly as “the Son of man, coming in the clouds of heaven” as a Judge, as also the Scripture shows. What I have advanced might have been sufficient concerning the designation in prophecy of the Son of man. But the Scripture offers me further information, even in the interpretation of the Lord Himself. For when the Jews, who looked at Him as merely man, and were not yet sure that He was God also, as being likewise the Son of God, rightly enough said that a man could not forgive sins, but God alone, why did He not, following up their point about man, answer them, that He had power to remit sins; inasmuch as, when He mentioned the Son of man, He also named a human being? except it were because He wanted, by help of the very designation “Son of man” from the book of Daniel, so to induce them to reflect as to show them that He who remitted sins was God and man—that only Son of man, indeed, in the prophecy of Daniel, who had obtained the power of judging, and thereby, of course, of forgiving sins likewise (for He who judges also absolves); so that, when once that objection of theirs was shattered to pieces by their recollection of Scripture, they might the more easily acknowledge Him to be the Son of man Himself by His own actual forgiveness of sins. I make one more observation, how that He has nowhere as yet professed Himself to be the Son of God—but for the first time in this passage, in which for the first time He has remitted sins; that is, in which for the first time He has used His function of judgment, by the absolution. All that the opposite side has to allege in argument against these things, (I beg you) carefully weigh what it amounts to. For it must needs strain itself to such a pitch of infatuation as, on the one hand, to maintain that (their Christ) is also Son of man, in order to save Him from the charge of falsehood; and, on the other hand, to deny that He was born of woman, lest they grant that He was the Virgin’s son. Since, however, the divine authority and the nature of the case, and common sense, do not admit this insane position of the heretics, we have here the opportunity of putting in a veto in the briefest possible terms, on the substance of Christ’s body, against Marcion’s phantoms. Since He is born of man, being the Son of man. He is body derived from body. You may, I assure you, more easily find a man born without a heart or without brains, like Marcion himself, than without a body, like Marcion’s Christ. And let this be the limit to your examination of the heart, or, at any rate, the brains of the heretic of Pontus.

Chapter XI

The Call of Levi the Publican. Christ in Relation to the Baptist. Christ as the Bridegroom. The Parable of the Old Wine and the New. Arguments Connecting Christ with the Creator

The publican who was chosen by the Lord, he adduces for a proof that he was chosen as a stranger to the law and uninitiated in Judaism, by one who was an adversary to the law. The case of Peter escaped his memory, who, although he was a man of the law, was not only chosen by the Lord, but also obtained the testimony of possessing knowledge which was given to him by the Father. He had nowhere read of Christ’s being foretold as the light, and hope, and expectation of the Gentiles! He, however, rather spoke of the Jews in a favourable light, when he said, “The whole needed not a physician, but they that are sick.” For since by “those that are sick” he meant that the heathens and publicans should be understood, whom he was choosing, he affirmed of the Jews that they were “whole” for whom he said that a physician was not necessary. This being the case, he makes a mistake in coming down to destroy the law, as if for the remedy of a diseased condition. because they who were living under it were “whole,” and “not in want of a physician.” How, moreover, does it happen that he proposed the similitude of a physician, if he did not verify it? For, just as nobody uses a physician for healthy persons, so will no one do so for strangers, in so far as he is one of Marcion’s god-made men, having to himself both a creator and preserver, and a specially good physician, in his Christ. This much the comparison predetermines, that a physician is more usually furnished by him to whom the sick people belong. Whence, too, does John come upon the scene? Christ, suddenly; and just as suddenly, John! After this fashion occur all things in Marcion’s system. They have their own special and plenary course in the Creator’s dispensation. Of John, however, what else I have to say will be found in another passage. To the several points which now come before us an answer must be given. This, then, I will take care to do—demonstrate that, reciprocally, John is suitable to Christ, and Christ to John, the latter, of course, as a prophet of the Creator, just as the former is the Creator’s Christ; and so the heretic may blush at frustrating, to his own frustration, the mission of John the Baptist. For if there had been no ministry of John at all—”the voice,” as Isaiah calls him, “of one crying in the wilderness,” and the preparer of the ways of the Lord by denunciation and recommendation of repentance; if, too, he had not baptized (Christ) Himself along with others, nobody could have challenged the disciples of Christ, as they ate and drank, to a comparison with the disciples of John, who were constantly fasting and praying; because, if there existed any diversity between Christ and John, and their followers respectively, no exact comparison would be possible, nor would there be a single point where it could be challenged. For nobody would feel surprise, and nobody would be perplexed, although there should arise rival predictions of a diverse deity, which should also mutually differ about modes of conduct, having a prior difference about the authorities upon which they were based. Therefore Christ belonged to John, and John to Christ; while both belonged to the Creator, and both were of the law and the prophets, preachers and masters. Else Christ would have rejected the discipline of John, as of the rival god, and would also have defended the disciples, as very properly pursuing a different walk, because consecrated to the service of another and contrary deity. But as it is, while modestly giving a reason why “the children of the bridegroom are unable to fast during the time the bridegroom is with them,” but promising that “they should afterwards fast, when the bridegroom was taken away from them,” He neither defended the disciples, (but rather excused them, as if they had not been blamed without some reason), nor rejected the discipline of John, but rather allowed it, referring it to the time of John, although destining it for His own time. Otherwise His purpose would have been to reject it, and to defend its opponents, if He had not Himself already belonged to it as then in force. I hold also that it is my Christ who is meant by the bridegroom, of whom the psalm says: “He is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber; His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and His return is back to the end of it again.” By the mouth of Isaiah He also says exultingly of the Father: “Let my soul rejoice in the Lord; for He hath clothed me with the garment of salvation and with the tunic of joy, as a bridegroom. He hath put a mitre round about my head, as a bride.” To Himself likewise He appropriates the church, concerning which the same Spirit says to Him: “Thou shalt clothe Thee with them all, as with a bridal ornament.” This spouse Christ invites home to Himself also by Solomon from the call of the Gentiles, because you read: “Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse.” He elegantly makes mention of Lebanon (the mountain, of course) because it stands for the name of frankincense with the Greeks; for it was from idolatry that He betrothed Himself the church. Deny now, Marcion, your utter madness, (if you can)! Behold, you impugn even the law of your god. He unites not in the nuptial bond, nor, when contracted, does he allow it; no one does he baptize but a caelebs or a eunuch; until death or divorce does he reserve baptism. Wherefore, then, do you make his Christ a bridegroom? This is the designation of Him who united man and woman, not of him who separated them. You have erred also in that declaration of Christ, wherein He seems to make a difference between things new and old. You are inflated about the old bottles, and brain-muddled with the new wine; and therefore to the old (that is to say, to the prior) gospel you have sewed on the patch of your new-fangled heresy. I should like to know in what respect the Creator is inconsistent with Himself. When by Jeremiah He gave this precept, “Break up for yourselves new pastures,” does He not turn away from the old state of things? And when by Isaiah He proclaims how “old things were passed away; and, behold, all things, which I am making, are new,” does He not advert to a new state of things? We have generally been of opinion that the destination of the former state of things was rather promised by the Creator, and exhibited in reality by Christ, only under the authority of one and the same God, to whom appertain both the old things and the new. For new wine is not put into old bottles, except by one who has the old bottles; nor does anybody put a new piece to an old garment, unless the old garment be forthcoming to him. That person only does not do a thing when it is not to be done, who has the materials wherewithal to do it if it were to be done. And therefore, since His object in making the comparison was to show that He was separating the new condition of the gospel from the old state of the law, He proved that that from which He was separating His own ought not to have been branded as a separation of things which were alien to each other; for nobody ever unites his own things with things that are alien to them, in order that he may afterwards be able to separate them from the alien things. A separation is possible by help of the conjunction through which it is made. Accordingly, the things which He separated He also proved to have been once one; as they would have remained, were it not for His separation. But still we make this concession, that there is a separation, by reformation, by amplification, by progress; just as the fruit is separated from the seed, although the fruit comes from the seed. So likewise the gospel is separated from the law, whilst it advances from the law—a different thing from it, but not an alien one; diverse, but not contrary. Nor in Christ do we even find any novel form of discourse. Whether He proposes similitudes or refute questions, it comes from the seventy-seventh Psalm. “I will open,” says He, “my mouth in a parable” (that is, in a similitude); “I will utter dark problems” (that is, I will set forth questions). If you should wish to prove that a man belonged to another race, no doubt you would fetch your proof from the idiom of his language.

Chapter XII

Christ’s Authority Over the Sabbath. As Its Lord He Recalled It from Pharisaic Neglect to the Original Purpose of Its Institution by the Creator the Case of the Disciples Who Plucked the Ears of Corn on the Sabbath. The Withered Hand Healed on the Sabbath

Concerning the Sabbath also I have this to premise, that this question could not have arisen, if Christ did not publicly proclaim the Lord of the Sabbath. Nor could there be any discussion about His annulling the Sabbath, if He had a right to annul it. Moreover, He would have the right, if He belonged to the rival god; nor would it cause surprise to any one that He did what it was right for Him to do. Men’s astonishment therefore arose from their opinion that it was improper for Him to proclaim the Creator to be God and yet to impugn His Sabbath. Now, that we may decide these several points first, lest we should be renewing them at every turn to meet each argument of our adversary which rests on some novel institution of Christ, let this stand as a settled point, that discussion concerning the novel character of each institution ensued on this account, because as nothing was as yet advanced by Christ touching any new deity, so discussion thereon was inadmissible; nor could it be retorted, that from the very novelty of each several institution another deity was clearly enough demonstrated by Christ, inasmuch as it was plain that novelty was not in itself a characteristic to be wondered at in Christ, because it had been foretold by the Creator. And it would have been, of course, but right that a new god should first be expounded, and his discipline be introduced afterwards; because it would be the god that would impart authority to the discipline, and not the discipline to the god; except that (to be sure) it has happened that Marcion acquired his very perverse opinions not from a master, but his master from his opinion! All other points respecting the Sabbath I thus rule. If Christ interfered with the Sabbath, He simply acted after the Creator’s example; inasmuch as in the siege of the city of Jericho the carrying around the walls of the ark of the covenant for eight days running, and therefore on a Sabbath-day, actually annulled the Sabbath, by the Creator’s command—according to the opinion of those who think this of Christ in this passage of St. Luke, in their ignorance that neither Christ nor the Creator violated the Sabbath, as we shall by and by show. And yet the Sabbath was actually then broken by Joshua, so that the present charge might be alleged also against Christ. But even if, as being not the Christ of the Jews, He displayed a hatred against the Jews’ most solemn day, He was only professedly following the Creator, as being His Christ, in this very hatred of the Sabbath; for He exclaims by the mouth of Isaiah: “Your new moons and your Sabbaths my soul hateth.” Now, in whatever sense these words were spoken, we know that an abrupt defence must, in a subject of this sort, be used in answer to an abrupt challenge. I shall now transfer the discussion to the very matter in which the teaching of Christ seemed to annul the Sabbath. The disciples had been hungry; on that the Sabbath day they had plucked some ears and rubbed them in their hands; by thus preparing their food, they had violated the holy day. Christ excuses them, and became their accomplice in breaking the Sabbath. The Pharisees bring the charge against Him. Marcion sophistically interprets the stages of the controversy (if I may call in the aid of the truth of my Lord to ridicule his arts), both in the scriptural record and in Christ’s purpose. For from the Creator’s Scripture, and from the purpose of Christ, there is derived a colourable precedent—as from the example of David, when he went into the temple on the Sabbath, and provided food by boldly breaking up the shew-bread. Even he remembered that this privilege (I mean the dispensation from fasting) was allowed to the Sabbath from the very beginning, when the Sabbath-day itself was instituted. For although the Creator had forbidden that the manna should be gathered for two days, He yet permitted it on the one occasion only of the day before the Sabbath, in order that the yesterday’s provision of food might free from fasting the feast of the following Sabbath-day. Good reason, therefore, had the Lord for pursuing the same principle in the annulling of the Sabbath (since that is the word which men will use); good reason, too, for expressing the Creator’s will, when He bestowed the privilege of not fasting on the Sabbath-day. In short, He would have then and there put an end to the Sabbath, nay, to the Creator Himself, if He had commanded His disciples to fast on the Sabbath-day, contrary to the intention of the Scripture and of the Creator’s will. But because He did not directly defend His disciples, but excuses them; because He interposes human want, as if deprecating censure; because He maintains the honour of the Sabbath as a day which is to be free from gloom rather than from work; because he puts David and his companions on a level with His own disciples in their fault and their extenuation; because He is pleased to endorse the Creator’s indulgence: because He is Himself good according to His example—is He therefore alien from the Creator? Then the Pharisees watch whether He would heal on the Sabbath-day, that they might accuse Him—surely as a violator of the Sabbath, not as the propounder of a new god; for perhaps I might be content with insisting on all occasions on this one point, that another Christ is nowhere proclaimed. The Pharisees, however, were in utter error concerning the law of the Sabbath, not observing that its terms were conditional, when it enjoined rest from labour, making certain distinctions of labour. For when it says of the Sabbath-day, “In it thou shalt not do any work of thine,” by the word thine it restricts the prohibition to human work—which every one performs in his own employment or business—and not to divine work. Now the work of healing or preserving is not proper to man, but to God. So again, in the law it says, “Thou shalt not do any manner of work in it,” except what is to be done for any soul, that is to say, in the matter of delivering the soul; because what is God’s work may be done by human agency for the salvation of the soul. By God, however, would that be done which the man Christ was to do, for He was likewise God. Wishing, therefore, to initiate them into this meaning of the law by the restoration of the withered hand, He requires, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath-days to do good, or not? to save life, or to destroy it?” In order that He might, whilst allowing that amount of work which He was about to perform for a soul, remind them what works the law of the Sabbath forbade—even human works; and what it enjoined—even divine works, which might be done for the benefit of any soul, He was called “Lord of the Sabbath,” because He maintained the Sabbath as His own institution. Now, even if He had annulled the Sabbath, He would have had the right to do so, as being its Lord, (and) still more as He who instituted it. But He did not utterly destroy it, although its Lord, in order that it might henceforth be plain that the Sabbath was not broken by the Creator, even at the time when the ark was carried around Jericho. For that was really God’s work, which He commanded Himself, and which He had ordered for the sake of the lives of His servants when exposed to the perils of war. Now, although He has in a certain place expressed an aversion of Sabbaths, by calling them your Sabbaths, reckoning them as men’s Sabbaths, not His own, because they were celebrated without the fear of God by a people full of iniquities, and loving God “with the lip, not the heart,” He has yet put His own Sabbaths (those, that is, which were kept according to His prescription) in a different position; for by the same prophet, in a later passage, He declared them to be “true, and delightful, and inviolable.” Thus Christ did not at all rescind the Sabbath: He kept the law thereof, and both in the former case did a work which was beneficial to the life of His disciples, for He indulged them with the relief of food when they were hungry, and in the present instance cured the withered hand; in each case intimating by facts, “I came not to destroy, the law, but to fulfil it,” although Marcion has gagged His mouth by this word. For even in the case before us He fulfilled the law, while interpreting its condition; moreover, He exhibits in a clear light the different kinds of work, while doing what the law excepts from the sacredness of the Sabbath and while imparting to the Sabbath-day itself, which from the beginning had been consecrated by the benediction of the Father, an additional sanctity by His own beneficent action. For He furnished to this day divine safeguards,—a course which His adversary would have pursued for some other days, to avoid honouring the Creator’s Sabbath, and restoring to the Sabbath the works which were proper for it. Since, in like manner, the prophet Elisha on this day restored to life the dead son of the Shunammite woman, you see, O Pharisee, and you too, O Marcion, how that it was proper employment for the Creator’s Sabbaths of old to do good, to save life, not to destroy it; how that Christ introduced nothing new, which was not after the example, the gentleness, the mercy, and the prediction also of the Creator. For in this very example He fulfils the prophetic announcement of a specific healing: “The weak hands are strengthened,” as were also “the feeble knees” in the sick of the palsy.

Chapter XIII

Christ’s Connection with the Creator Shown. Many Quotations Out of the Old Testament Prophetically Bear on Certain Events of the Life of Jesus—Such as His Ascent to Praying on the Mountain; His Selection of Twelve Apostles; His Changing Simon’s Name to Peter, and Gentiles from Tyre and Sidon Resorting to Him

Surely to Sion He brings good tidings, and to Jerusalem peace and all blessings; He goes up into a mountain, and there spends a night in prayer, and He is indeed heard by the Father. Accordingly turn over the prophets, and learn therefrom His entire course. “Into the high mountain,” says Isaiah, “get Thee up, who bringest good tidings to Sion; lift up Thy voice with strength, who bringest good tidings to Jerusalem.” “They were mightily astonished at His doctrine; for He was teaching as one who had power.” And again: “Therefore, my people shall know my name in that day.” What name does the prophet mean, but Christ’s? “That I am He that doth speak—even I.” For it was He who used to speak in the prophets—the Word, the Creator’s Son. “I am present, while it is the hour, upon the mountains, as one that bringeth glad tidings of peace, as one that publisheth good tidings of good.” So one of the twelve (minor prophets), Nahum: “For behold upon the mountain the swift feet of Him that bringeth glad tidings of peace.” Moreover, concerning the voice of His prayer to the Father by night, the psalm manifestly says: “O my God, I will cry in the day-time, and Thou shalt hear; and in the night season, and it shall not be in vain to me.” In another passage touching the same voice and place, the psalm says: “I cried unto the Lord with my voice, and He heard me out of His holy mountain.” You have a representation of the name; you have the action of the Evangelizer; you have a mountain for the site; and the night as the time; and the sound of a voice; and the audience of the Father: you have, (in short,) the Christ of the prophets. But why was it that He chose twelve apostles, and not some other number? In truth, I might from this very point conclude of my Christ, that He was foretold not only by the words of prophets, but by the indications of facts. For of this number I find figurative hints up and down the Creator’s dispensation in the twelve springs of Elim; in the twelve gems of Aaron’s priestly vestment; and in the twelve stones appointed by Joshua to be taken out of the Jordan, and set up for the ark of the covenant. Now, the same number of apostles was thus portended, as if they were to be fountains and rivers which should water the Gentile world, which was formerly dry and destitute of knowledge (as He says by Isaiah: “I will put streams in the unwatered ground” ); as if they were to be gems to shed lustre upon the church’s sacred robe, which Christ, the High Priest of the Father, puts on; as if, also, they were to be stones massive in their faith, which the true Joshua took out of the laver of the Jordan, and placed in the sanctuary of His covenant. What equally good defence of such a number has Marcion’s Christ to show? It is impossible that anything can be shown to have been done by him unconnectedly, which cannot be shown to have been done by my Christ in connection (with preceding types). To him will appertain the event in whom is discovered the preparation for the same. Again, He changes the name of Simon to Peter, inasmuch as the Creator also altered the names of Abram, and Sarai, and Oshea, by calling the latter Joshua, and adding a syllable to each of the former. But why Peter? If it was because of the vigour of his faith, there were many solid materials which might lend a name from their strength. Was it because Christ was both a rock and a stone? For we read of His being placed “for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence.” I omit the rest of the passage. Therefore He would fain impart to the dearest of His disciples a name which was suggested by one of His own especial designations in figure; because it was, I suppose, more peculiarly fit than a name which might have been derived from no figurative description of Himself. There come to Him from Tyre, and from other districts even, a transmarine multitude. This fact the psalm had in view: “And behold tribes of foreign people, and Tyre, and the people of the Ethiopians; they were there. Sion is my mother, shall a man say; and in her was born a man” (forasmuch as the God-man was born), and He built her by the Father’s will; that you may know how Gentiles then flocked to Him, because He was born the God-man who was to build the church according to the Father’s will—even of other races also. So says Isaiah too: “Behold, these come from far; and these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of the Persians.” Concerning whom He says again: “Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold, all these have gathered themselves together.” And yet again: “Thou seest these unknown and strange ones; and thou wilt say in thine heart, Who hath begotten me these? But who hath brought me up these? And these, where have they been?” Will such a Christ not be (the Christ) of the prophets? And what will be the Christ of the Marcionites? Since perversion of truth is their pleasure, he could not be (the Christ) of the prophets.

Chapter XIV

Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. In Manner and Contents It So Resembles the Creator’s Dispensational Words and Deeds. It Suggests Therefore the Conclusion that Jesus is the Creator’s Christ. The Beatitudes

I now come to those ordinary precepts of His, by means of which He adapts the peculiarity of His doctrine to what I may call His official proclamation as the Christ. “Blessed are the needy” (for no less than this is required for interpreting the word in the Greek, “because theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Now this very fact, that He begins with beatitudes, is characteristic of the Creator, who used no other voice than that of blessing either in the first fiat or the final dedication of the universe: for “my heart,” says He, “hath indited a very good word.” This will be that “very good word” of blessing which is admitted to be the initiating principle of the New Testament, after the example of the Old. What is there, then, to wonder at, if He entered on His ministry with the very attributes of the Creator, who ever in language of the same sort loved, consoled, protected, and avenged the beggar, and the poor, and the humble, and the widow, and the orphan? So that you may believe this private bounty as it were of Christ to be a rivulet streaming from the springs of salvation. Indeed, I hardly know which way to turn amidst so vast a wealth of good words like these; as if I were in a forest, or a meadow, or an orchard of apples. I must therefore look out for such matter as chance may present to me.

In the psalm he exclaims: “Defend the fatherless and the needy; do justice to the humble and the poor; deliver the poor, and rid the needy out of the hand of the wicked.” Similarly in the seventy-first Psalm: “In righteousness shall He judge the needy amongst the people, and shall save the children of the poor.” And in the following words he says of Christ: “All nations shall serve Him.” Now David only reigned over the Jewish nation, so that nobody can suppose that this was spoken of David; whereas He had taken upon Himself the condition of the poor, and such as were oppressed with want, “Because He should deliver the needy out of the hand of the mighty man; He shall spare the needy and the poor, and shall deliver the souls of the poor. From usury and injustice shall He redeem their souls, and in His sight shall their name be honoured.” Again: “The wicked shall be turned into hell, even all the nations that forget God; because the needy shall not alway be forgotten; the endurance of the poor shall not perish for ever.” Again: “Who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on high, and yet looketh on the humble things that are in heaven and on earth!—who raiseth up the needy from off the ground, and out of the dunghill exalteth the poor; that He may set him with the princes of His people,” that is, in His own kingdom. And likewise earlier, in the book of Kings, Hannah the mother of Samuel gives glory to God in these words: “He raiseth the poor man from the ground, and the beggar, that He may set him amongst the princes of His people (that is, in His own kingdom), and on thrones of glory” (even royal ones). And by Isaiah how He inveighs against the oppressors of the needy! “What mean ye that ye set fire to my vineyard, and that the spoil of the poor is in your houses? Wherefore do ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the face of the needy?” And again: “Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees; for in their decrees they decree wickedness, turning aside the needy from judgment, and taking away their rights from the poor of my people.” These righteous judgments He requires for the fatherless also, and the widows, as well as for consolation to the very needy themselves. “Do justice to the fatherless, and deal justly with the widow; and come, let us be reconciled, saith the Lord.” To him, for whom in every stage of lowliness there is provided so much of the Creator’s compassionate regard, shall be given that kingdom also which is promised by Christ, to whose merciful compassion belong, and for a great while have belonged, those to whom the promise is made. For even if you suppose that the promises of the Creator were earthly, but that Christ’s are heavenly, it is quite clear that heaven has been as yet the property of no other God whatever, than Him who owns the earth also; quite clear that the Creator has given even the lesser promises (of earthly blessing), in order that I may more readily believe Him concerning His greater promises (of heavenly blessings) also, than (Marcion’s god), who has never given proof of his liberality by any preceding bestowal of minor blessings. “Blessed are they that hunger, for they shall be filled.” I might connect this clause with the former one, because none but the poor and needy suffer hunger, if the Creator had not specially designed that the promise of a similar blessing should serve as a preparation for the gospel, that so men might know it to be His. For thus does He say, by Isaiah, concerning those whom He was about to call from the ends of the earth—that is, the Gentiles: “Behold, they shall come swiftly with speed:” swiftly, because hastening towards the fulness of the times; with speed, because unclogged by the weights of the ancient law. They shall neither hunger nor thirst. Therefore they shall be filled,—a promise which is made to none but those who hunger and thirst. And again He says: “Behold, my servants shall be filled, but ye shall be hungry; behold, my servants shall drink, but ye shall be thirsty.” As for these oppositions, we shall see whether they are not premonitors of Christ. Meanwhile the promise of fulness to the hungry is a provision of God the Creator. “Blessed are they that weep, for they shall laugh.” Turn again to the passage of Isaiah: “Behold, my servants shall exult with joy, but ye shall be ashamed; behold, my servants shall be glad, but ye shall cry for sorrow of heart.” And recognise these oppositions also in the dispensation of Christ. Surely gladness and joyous exultation is promised to those who are in an opposite condition—to the sorrowful, and sad, and anxious. Just as it is said in the 125th Psalm: “They who sow in tears shall reap in joy.” Moreover, laughter is as much an accessory to the exulting and glad, as weeping is to the sorrowful and grieving. Therefore the Creator, in foretelling matters for laughter and tears, was the first who said that those who mourned should laugh. Accordingly, He who began (His course) with consolation for the poor, and the humble, and the hungry, and the weeping, was at once eager to represent Himself as Him whom He had pointed out by the mouth of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the poor.” “Blessed are the needy, because theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” “He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted.” “Blessed are they that hunger, for they shall be filled.” “To comfort all that mourn.” “Blessed are they that weep, for they shall laugh.” “To give unto them that mourn in Sion, beauty (or glory) for ashes, and the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.” Now since Christ, as soon as He entered on His course, fulfilled such a ministration as this, He is either, Himself, He who predicted His own coming to do all this; or else if he is not yet come who predicted this, the charge to Marcion’s Christ must be a ridiculous one (although I should perhaps add a necessary one), which bade him say, “Blessed shall ye be, when men shall hate you, and shall reproach you, and shall cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.” In this declaration there is, no doubt, an exhortation to patience. Well, what did the Creator say otherwise by Isaiah? “Fear ye not the reproach of men, nor be diminished by their contempt.” What reproach? what contempt? That which was to be incurred for the sake of the Son of man. What Son of man? He who (is come) according to the Creator’s will. Whence shall we get our proof? From the very cutting off, which was predicted against Him; as when He says by Isaiah to the Jews, who were the instigators of hatred against Him: “Because of you, my name is blasphemed amongst the Gentiles;” and in another passage: “Lay the penalty on Him who surrenders His own life, who is held in contempt by the Gentiles, whether servants or magistrates.” Now, since hatred was predicted against that Son of man who has His mission from the Creator, whilst the Gospel testifies that the name of Christians, as derived from Christ, was to be hated for the Son of man’s sake, because He is Christ, it determines the point that that was the Son of man in the matter of hatred who came according to the Creator’s purpose, and against whom the hatred was predicted. And even if He had not yet come, the hatred of His name which exists at the present day could not in any case have possibly preceded Him who was to bear the name. But He has both suffered the penalty in our presence, and surrendered His life, laying it down for our sakes, and is held in contempt by the Gentiles. And He who was born (into the world) will be that very Son of man on whose account our name also is rejected.

Chapter XV

Sermon on the Mount Continued. Its Woes in Strict Agreement with the Creator’s Disposition. Many Quotations Out of the Old Testament in Proof of This

“In the like manner,” says He, “did their fathers unto the prophets.” What a turncoat is Marcion’s Christ! Now the destroyer, now the advocate of the prophets! He destroyed them as their rival, by converting their disciples; he took up their cause as their friend, by stigmatizing their persecutors. But, in as far as the defence of the prophets could not be consistent in the Christ of Marcion, who came to destroy them; in so far is it becoming to the Creator’s Christ that He should stigmatize those who persecuted the prophets, for He in all things accomplished their predictions. Again, it is more characteristic of the Creator to upbraid sons with their fathers’ sins, than it is of that god who chastizes no man for even his own misdeeds. But you will say, He cannot be regarded as defending the prophets simply because He wished to affirm the iniquity of the Jews for their impious dealings with their own prophets. Well, then, in this case, no sin ought to have been charged against the Jews: they were rather deserving of praise and approbation when they maltreated those whom the absolutely good god of Marcion, after so long a time, bestirred himself to destroy. I suppose, however, that by this time he had ceased to be the absolutely good god; he had now sojourned a considerable while even with the Creator, and was no longer (like) the god of Epicurus purely and simply. For see how he condescends to curse, and proves himself capable of taking offence and feeling anger! He actually pronounces a woe! But a doubt is raised against us as to the import of this word, as if it carried with it less the sense of a curse than of an admonition. Where, however, is the difference, since even an admonition is not given without the sting of a threat, especially when it is embittered with a woe? Moreover, both admonition and threatening will be the resources of him who knows how to feel angry. For no one will forbid the doing of a thing with an admonition or a threat, except him who will inflict punishment for the doing of it. No one would inflict punishment, except him who was susceptible of anger. Others, again, admit that the word implies a curse; but they will have it that Christ pronounced the woe, not as if it were His own genuine feeling, but because the woe is from the Creator, and He wanted to set forth to them the severity of the Creator in order that He might the more commend His own long-suffering in His beatitudes. Just as if it were not competent to the Creator, in the pre-eminence of both His attributes as the good God and Judge, that, as He had made clemency the preamble of His benediction so He should place severity in the sequel of His curses; thus fully developing His discipline in both directions, both in following out the blessing and in providing against the curse. He had already said of old, “Behold, I have set before you blessing and cursing.” Which statement was really a presage of this temper of the gospel. Besides, what sort of being is that who, to insinuate a belief in his own goodness, invidiously contrasted with it the Creator’s severity? Of little worth is the recommendation which has for its prop the defamation of another. And yet by thus setting forth the severity of the Creator, he, in fact, affirmed Him to be an object of fear. Now if He be an object of fear, He is of course more worthy of being obeyed than slighted; and thus Marcion’s Christ begins to teach favourably to the Creator’s interests. Then, on the admission above mentioned, since the woe which has regard to the rich is the Creator’s, it follows that it is not Christ, but the Creator, who is angry with the rich; while Christ approves of the incentives of the rich—I mean, their pride, their pomp, their love of the world, and their contempt of God, owing to which they deserve the woe of the Creator. But how happens it that the reprobation of the rich does not proceed from the same God who had just before expressed approbation of the poor? There is nobody but reprobates the opposite of that which he has approved. If, therefore, there be imputed to the Creator the woe pronounced against the rich, there must be claimed for Him also the promise of the blessing upon the poor; and thus the entire work of the Creator devolves on Christ.—If to Marcion’s god there be ascribed the blessing of the poor, he must also have imputed to him the malediction of the rich; and thus will he become the Creator’s equal, both good and judicial; nor will there be left any room for that distinction whereby two gods are made; and when this distinction is removed, there will remain the verity which pronounces the Creator to be the one only God. Since, therefore, “woe” is a word indicative of malediction, or of some unusually austere exclamation; and since it is by Christ uttered against the rich, I shall have to show that the Creator is also a despiser of the rich, as I have shown Him to be the defender of the poor, in order that I may prove Christ to be on the Creator’s side in this matter, even when He enriched Solomon. But with respect to this man, since, when a choice was left to him, he preferred asking for what he knew to be well-pleasing to God—even wisdom—he further merited the attainment of the riches, which he did not prefer. The endowing of a man indeed with riches, is not an incongruity to God, for by the help of riches even rich men are comforted and assisted; moreover, by them many a work of justice and charity is carried out. But yet there are serious faults which accompany riches; and it is because of these that woes are denounced on the rich, even in the Gospel. “Ye have received,” says He, “your consolation;” that is, of course, from their riches, in the pomps and vanities of the world which these purchase for them. Accordingly, in Deuteronomy, Moses says: “Lest, when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, as well as thy silver and thy gold, thine heart be then lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God.” In similar terms, when king Hezekiah became proud of his treasures, and gloried in them rather than in God before those who had come on an embassy from Babylon, (the Creator) breaks forth against him by the mouth of Isaiah: “Behold, the days come when all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store, shall be carried to Babylon.” So by Jeremiah likewise did He say: “Let not the rich man glory in his riches but let him that glorieth even glory in the Lord.” Similarly against the daughters of Sion does He inveigh by Isaiah, when they were haughty through their pomp and the abundance of their riches, just as in another passage He utters His threats against the proud and noble: “Hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth, and down to it shall descend the illustrious, and the great, and the rich (this shall be Christ’s woe to the rich’); and man shall be humbled,” even he that exalts himself with riches; “and the mighty man shall be dishonoured,” even he who is mighty from his wealth. Concerning whom He says again: “Behold, the Lord of hosts shall confound the pompous together with their strength: those that are lifted up shall be hewn down, and such as are lofty shall fall by the sword.” And who are these but the rich? Because they have indeed received their consolation, glory, and honour and a lofty position from their wealth. In Psalm xlviii. He also turns off our care from these and says: “Be not thou afraid when one is made rich, and when his glory is increased: for when he shall die, he shall carry nothing away; nor shall his glory descend along with him.” So also in Psalm lxi.: “Do not desire riches; and if they do yield you their lustre, do not set your heart upon them.” Lastly, this very same woe is pronounced of old by Amos against the rich, who also abounded in delights. “Woe unto them,” says he, “who sleep upon beds of ivory, and deliciously stretch themselves upon their couches; who eat the kids from the flocks of the goats, and sucking calves from the flocks of the heifers, while they chant to the sound of the viol; as if they thought they should continue long, and were not fleeting; who drink their refined wines, and anoint themselves with the costliest ointments.” Therefore, even if I could do nothing else than show that the Creator dissuades men from riches, without at the same time first condemning the rich, in the very same terms in which Christ also did, no one could doubt that, from the same authority, there was added a commination against the rich in that woe of Christ, from whom also had first proceeded the dissuasion against the material sin of these persons, that is, their riches. For such commination is the necessary sequel to such a dissuasive. He inflicts a woe also on “the full, because they shall hunger; on those too which laugh now, because they shall mourn.” To these will correspond these opposites which occur, as we have seen above, in the benedictions of the Creator: “Behold, my servants shall be full, but ye shall be hungry”—even because ye have been filled; “behold, my servants shall rejoice, but ye shall be ashamed”—even ye who shall mourn, who now are laughing. For as it is written in the psalm, “They who sow in tears shall reap in joy,” so does it run in the Gospel: They who sow in laughter, that is, in joy, shall reap in tears. These principles did the Creator lay down of old; and Christ has renewed them, by simply bringing them into prominent view, not by making any change in them. “Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets.” With equal stress does the Creator, by His prophet Isaiah, censure those who seek after human flattery and praise: “O my people, they who call you happy mislead you, and disturb the paths of your feet.” In another passage He forbids all implicit trust in man, and likewise in the applause of man; as by the prophet Jeremiah: “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man.” Whereas in Psalm cxvii. it is said: “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man; it is better to trust in the Lord than to place hope in princes.” Thus everything which is caught at by men is adjured by the Creator, down to their good words. It is as much His property to condemn the praise and flattering words bestowed on the false prophets by their fathers, as to condemn their vexatious and persecuting treatment of the (true) prophets. As the injuries suffered by the prophets could not be imputed to their own God, so the applause bestowed on the false prophets could not have been displeasing to any other god but the God of the true prophets.

Chapter XVI

The Precept of Loving One’s Enemies. It is as Much Taught in the Creator’s Scriptures of the Old Testament as in Christ’s Sermon. The Lex Talionis of Moses Admirably Explained in Consistency with the Kindness and Love Which Jesus Christ Came to Proclaim and Enforce in Behalf of the Creator. Sundry Precepts of Charity Explained

“But I say unto you which hear” (displaying here that old injunction, of the Creator: “Speak to the ears of those who lend them to you” ), “Love your enemies, and bless those which hate you, and pray for them which calumniate you.” These commands the Creator included in one precept by His prophet Isaiah: “Say, Ye are our brethren, to those who hate you.” For if they who are our enemies, and hate us, and speak evil of us, and calumniate us, are to be called our brethren, surely He did in effect bid us bless them that hate us, and pray for them who calumniate us, when He instructed us to reckon them as brethren. Well, but Christ plainly teaches a new kind of patience, when He actually prohibits the reprisals which the Creator permitted in requiring “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” and bids us, on the contrary, “to him who smiteth us on the one cheek, to offer the other also, and to give up our coat to him that taketh away our cloak.” No doubt these are supplementary additions by Christ, but they are quite in keeping with the teaching of the Creator. And therefore this question must at once be determined, Whether the discipline of patience be enjoined by the Creator? When by Zechariah He commanded, “Let none of you imagine evil against his brother,” He did not expressly include his neighbour; but then in another passage He says, “Let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbour.” He who counselled that an injury should be forgotten, was still more likely to counsel the patient endurance of it. But then, when He said, “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay,” He thereby teaches that patience calmly waits for the infliction of vengeance. Therefore, inasmuch as it is incredible that the same (God) should seem to require “a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye,” in return for an injury, who forbids not only all reprisals, but even a revengeful thought or recollection of an injury, in so far does it become plain to us in what sense He required “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,”—not, indeed, for the purpose of permitting the repetition of the injury by retaliating it, which it virtually prohibited when it forbade vengeance; but for the purpose of restraining the injury in the first instance, which it had forbidden on pain of retaliation or reciprocity; so that every man, in view of the permission to inflict a second (or retaliatory) injury, might abstain from the commission of the first (or provocative) wrong. For He knows how much more easy it is to repress violence by the prospect of retaliation, than by the promise of (indefinite) vengeance. Both results, however, it was necessary to provide, in consideration of the nature and the faith of men, that the man who believed in God might expect vengeance from God, while he who had no faith (to restrain him) might fear the laws which prescribed retaliation. This purpose of the law, which it was difficult to understand, Christ, as the Lord of the Sabbath and of the law, and of all the dispensations of the Father, both revealed and made intelligible, when He commanded that “the other cheek should be offered (to the smiter),” in order that He might the more effectually extinguish all reprisals of an injury, which the law had wished to prevent by the method of retaliation, (and) which most certainly revelation had manifestly restricted, both by prohibiting the memory of the wrong, and referring the vengeance thereof to God. Thus, whatever (new provision) Christ introduced, He did it not in opposition to the law, but rather in furtherance of it, without at all impairing the prescription of the Creator. If, therefore, one looks carefully into the very grounds for which patience is enjoined (and that to such a full and complete extent), one finds that it cannot stand if it is not the precept of the Creator, who promises vengeance, who presents Himself as the judge (in the case). If it were not so,—if so vast a weight of patience—which is to refrain from giving blow for blow; which is to offer the other cheek; which is not only not to return railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing; and which, so far from keeping the coat, is to give up the cloak also—is laid upon me by one who means not to help me,—(then all I can say is,) he has taught me patience to no purpose, because he shows me no reward to his precept—I mean no fruit of such patience. There is revenge which he ought to have permitted me to take, if he meant not to inflict it himself; if he did not give me that permission, then he should himself have inflicted it; since it is for the interest of discipline itself that an injury should be avenged. For by the fear of vengeance all iniquity is curbed. But if licence is allowed to it without discrimination, it will get the mastery—it will put out (a man’s) both eyes; it will knock out every tooth in the safety of its impunity. This, however, is (the principle) of your good and simply beneficent god—to do a wrong to patience, to open the door to violence, to leave the righteous undefended, and the wicked unrestrained! “Give to every one that asketh of thee”—to the indigent of course, or rather to the indigent more especially, although to the affluent likewise. But in order that no man may be indigent, you have in Deuteronomy a provision commanded by the Creator to the creditor. “There shall not be in thine hand an indigent man; so that the Lord thy God shall bless thee with blessings,”—thee meaning the creditor to whom it was owing that the man was not indigent. But more than this. To one who does not ask, He bids a gift to be given. “Let there be, not,” He says, “a poor man in thine hand;” in other words, see that there be not, so far as thy will can prevent; by which command, too, He all the more strongly by inference requires men to give to him that asks, as in the following words also: “If there be among you a poor man of thy brethren, thou shalt not turn away thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother. But thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him as much as he wanteth.” Loans are not usually given, except to such as ask for them. On this subject of lending, however, more hereafter. Now, should any one wish to argue that the Creator’s precepts extended only to a man’s brethren, but Christ’s to all that ask, so as to make the latter a new and different precept, (I have to reply) that one rule only can be made out of those principles, which show the law of the Creator to be repeated in Christ. For that is not a different thing which Christ enjoined to be done towards all men, from that which the Creator prescribed in favour of a man’s brethren. For although that is a greater charity, which is shown to strangers, it is yet not preferable to that which was previously due to one’s neighbours. For what man will be able to bestow the love (which proceeds from knowledge of character, upon strangers? Since, however, the second step in charity is towards strangers, while the first is towards one’s neighbours, the second step will belong to him to whom the first also belongs, more fitly than the second will belong to him who owned no first. Accordingly, the Creator, when following the course of nature, taught in the first instance kindness to neighbours, intending afterwards to enjoin it towards strangers; and when following the method of His dispensation, He limited charity first to the Jews, but afterwards extended it to the whole race of mankind. So long, therefore, as the mystery of His government was confined to Israel, He properly commanded that pity should be shown only to a man’s brethren; but when Christ had given to Him “the Gentiles for His heritage, and the ends of the earth for His possession,” then began to be accomplished what was said by Hosea: “Ye are not my people, who were my people; ye have not obtained mercy, who once obtained mercy”—that is, the (Jewish) nation. Thenceforth Christ extended to all men the law of His Father’s compassion, excepting none from His mercy, as He omitted none in His invitation. So that, whatever was the ampler scope of His teaching, He received it all in His heritage of the nations. “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” In this command is no doubt implied its counterpart: “And as ye would not that men should do to you, so should ye also not do to them likewise.” Now, if this were the teaching of the new and previously unknown and not yet fully proclaimed deity, who had favoured me with no instruction beforehand, whereby I might first learn what I ought to choose or to refuse for myself, and to do to others what I would wish done to myself, not doing to them what I should be unwilling to have done to myself, it would certainly be nothing else than the chance-medley of my own sentiments which he would have left to me, binding me to no proper rule of wish or action, in order that I might do to others what I would like for myself, or refrain from doing to others what I should dislike to have done to myself. For he has not, in fact, defined what I ought to wish or not to wish for myself as well as for others, so that I shape my conduct according to the law of my own will, and have it in my power not to render to another what I would like to have rendered to myself—love, obedience, consolation, protection, and such like blessings; and in like manner to do to another what I should be unwilling to have done to myself—violence, wrong, insult, deceit, and evils of like sort. Indeed, the heathen who have not been instructed by God act on this incongruous liberty of the will and the conduct. For although good and evil are severally known by nature, yet life is not thereby spent under the discipline of God, which alone at last teaches men the proper liberty of their will and action in faith, as in the fear of God. The god of Marcion, therefore, although specially revealed, was, in spite of his revelation, unable to publish any summary of the precept in question, which had hitherto been so confined, and obscure, and dark, and admitting of no ready interpretation, except according to my own arbitrary thought, because he had provided no previous discrimination in the matter of such a precept. This, however, was not the case with my God, for He always and everywhere enjoined that the poor, and the orphan, and the widow should be protected, assisted, refreshed; thus by Isaiah He says: “Deal thy bread to the hungry, and them that are houseless bring into thine house; when thou seest the naked, cover him.” By Ezekiel also He thus describes the just man: “His bread will he give to the hungry, and the naked will he cover with a garment.” That teaching was even then a sufficient inducement to me to do to others what I would that they should do unto me. Accordingly, when He uttered such denunciations as, “Thou shalt do no murder; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness,”—He taught me to refrain from doing to others what I should be unwilling to have done to myself; and therefore the precept developed in the Gospel will belong to Him alone, who anciently drew it up, and gave it distinctive point, and arranged it after the decision of His own teaching, and has now reduced it, suitably to its importance, to a compendious formula, because (as it was predicted in another passage) the Lord—that is, Christ—”was to make (or utter) a concise word on earth.”

Chapter XVII

Concerning Loans. Prohibition of Usury and the Usurious Spirit. The Law Preparatory to the Gospel in Its Provisions; So in the Present Instance. On Reprisals. Christ’s Teaching Throughout Proves Him to Be Sent by the Creator

And now, on the subject of a loan, when He asks, “And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye?” compare with this the following words of Ezekiel, in which He says of the before-mentioned just man, “He hath not given his money upon usury, nor will he take any increase”—meaning the redundance of interest, which is usury. The first step was to eradicate the fruit of the money lent, the more easily to accustom a man to the loss, should it happen, of the money itself, the interest of which he had learnt to lose. Now this, we affirm, was the function of the law as preparatory to the gospel. It was engaged in forming the faith of such as would learn, by gradual stages, for the perfect light of the Christian discipline, through the best precepts of which it was capable, inculcating a benevolence which as yet expressed itself but falteringly. For in the passage of Ezekiel quoted above He says, “And thou shalt restore the pledge of the loan”—to him, certainly, who is incapable of repayment, because, as a matter of course, He would not anyhow prescribe the restoration of a pledge to one who was solvent. Much more clearly is it enjoined in Deuteronomy: “Thou shalt not sleep upon his pledge; thou shalt be sure to return to him his garment about sunset, and he shall sleep in his own garment.” Clearer still is a former passage: “Thou shalt remit every debt which thy neighbour oweth thee; and of thy brother thou shalt not require it, because it is called the release of the Lord thy God.” Now, when He commands that a debt be remitted to a man who shall be unable to pay it (for it is a still stronger argument when He forbids its being asked for from a man who is even able to repay it), what else does He teach than that we should lend to those of whom we cannot receive again, inasmuch as He has imposed so great a loss on lending? “And ye shall be the children of God.” What can be more shameless, than for him to be making us his children, who has not permitted us to make children for ourselves by forbidding marriage? How does he propose to invest his followers with a name which he has already erased? I cannot be the son of a eunuch especially when I have for my Father the same great Being whom the universe claims for its! For is not the Founder of the universe as much a Father, even of all men, as (Marcion’s) castrated deity, who is the maker of no existing thing? Even if the Creator had not united male and female, and if He had not allowed any living creature whatever to have children, I yet had this relation to Him before Paradise, before the fall, before the expulsion, before the two became one. I became His son a second time, as soon as He fashioned me with His hands, and gave me motion with His inbreathing. Now again He names me His son, not begetting me into natural life, but into spiritual life. “Because,” says He, “He is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.” Well done, Marcion! how cleverly have you withdrawn from Him the showers and the sunshine, that He might not seem to be a Creator! But who is this kind being which hitherto has not been even known? How can he be kind who had previously shown no evidences of such a kindness as this, which consists of the loan to us of sunshine and rain?—who is not destined to receive from the human race (the homage due to that) Creator,—who, up to this very moment, in return for His vast liberality in the gift of the elements, bears with men while they offer to idols, more readily than Himself, the due returns of His graciousness. But God is truly kind even in spiritual blessings. “The utterances of the Lord are sweeter than honey and honeycombs.” He then has taunted men as ungrateful who deserved to have their gratitude—even He, whose sunshine and rain even you, O Marcion, have enjoyed, but without gratitude! Your god, however, had no right to complain of man’s ingratitude, because he had used no means to make them grateful. Compassion also does He teach: “Be ye merciful,” says He, “as your Father also that had mercy upon you.” This injunction will be of a piece with, “Deal thy bread to the hungry; and if he be houseless, bring him into thine house; and if thou seest the naked, cover him;” also with, “Judge the fatherless, plead with the widow.” I recognise here that ancient doctrine of Him who “prefers mercy to sacrifice.” If, however, it be now some other being which teaches mercy, on the ground of his own mercifulness, how happens it that he has been wanting in mercy to me for so vast an age? “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged; condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned; forgive, and ye shall be forgiven; give, and it shall be given unto you: good measure, pressed down, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye measure withal, it shall be measured to you again.” As it seems to me, this passage announces a retribution proportioned to the merits. But from whom shall come the retribution? If only from men, in that case he teaches a merely human discipline and recompense; and in everything we shall have to obey man: if from the Creator, as the Judge and the Recompenser of merits, then He compels our submission to Him, in whose hands He has placed a retribution which will be acceptable or terrible according as every man shall have judged or condemned, acquitted or dealt with, his neighbour; if from (Marcion’s god) himself, he will then exercise a judicial function which Marcion denies. Let the Marcionites therefore make their choice: Will it not be just the same inconsistency to desert the prescription of their master, as to have Christ teaching in the interest of men or of the Creator? But “a blind man will lead a blind man into the ditch.” Some persons believe Marcion. But “the disciple is not above his master.” Apelles ought to have remembered this—a corrector of Marcion, although his disciple. The heretic ought to take the beam out of his own eye, and then he may convict the Christian, should he suspect a mote to be in his eye. Just as a good tree cannot produce evil fruit, so neither can truth generate heresy; and as a corrupt tree cannot yield good fruit, so heresy will not produce truth. Thus, Marcion brought nothing good out of Cerdon’s evil treasure; nor Apelles out of Marcion’s. For in applying to these heretics the figurative words which Christ used of men in general, we shall make a much more suitable interpretation of them than if we were to deduce out of them two gods, according to Marcion’s grievous exposition. I think that I have the best reason possible for insisting still upon the position which I have all along occupied, that in no passage to be anywhere found has another God been revealed by Christ. I wonder that in this place alone Marcion’s hands should have felt benumbed in their adulterating labour. But even robbers have their qualms now and then. There is no wrong-doing without fear, because there is none without a guilty conscience. So long, then, were the Jews cognisant of no other god but Him, beside whom they knew none else; nor did they call upon any other than Him whom alone they knew. This being the case, who will He clearly be that said, “Why callest thou me Lord, Lord?” Will it be he who had as yet never been called on, because never yet revealed; or He who was ever regarded as the Lord, because known from the beginning—even the God of the Jews? Who, again, could possibly have added, “and do not the things which I say?” Could it have been he who was only then doing his best to teach them? Or He who from the beginning had addressed to them His messages both by the law and the prophets? He could then upbraid them with disobedience, even if He had no ground at any time else for His reproof. The fact is, that He who was then imputing to them their ancient obstinacy was none other than He who, before the coming of Christ, had addressed to them these words, “This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart standeth far off from me.” Otherwise, how absurd it were that a new god, a new Christ, the revealer of a new and so grand a religion should denounce as obstinate and disobedient those whom he had never had it in his power to make trial of!

Chapter XVIII

Concerning the Centurion’s Faith. The Raising of the Widow’s Son. John Baptist, and His Message to Christ; And the Woman Who Was a Sinner. Proofs Extracted from All of the Relation of Christ to the Creator

Likewise, when extolling the centurion’s faith, how incredible a thing it is, that He should confess that He had “found so great a faith not even in Israel,” to whom Israel’s faith was in no way interesting! But not from the fact (here stated by Christ) could it have been of any interest to Him to approve and compare what was hitherto crude, nay, I might say, hitherto naught. Why, however, might He not have used the example of faith in another god? Because, if He had done so, He would have said that no such faith had ever had existence in Israel; but as the case stands, He intimates that He ought to have found so great a faith in Israel, inasmuch as He had indeed come for the purpose of finding it, being in truth the God and Christ of Israel, and had now stigmatized it, only as one who would enforce and uphold it. If, indeed, He had been its antagonist, He would have preferred finding it to be such faith, having come to weaken and destroy it rather than to approve of it. He raised also the widow’s son from death. This was not a strange miracle. The Creator’s prophets had wrought such; then why not His Son much rather? Now, so evidently had the Lord Christ introduced no other god for the working of so momentous a miracle as this, that all who were present gave glory to the Creator, saying: “A great prophet is risen up among us, and God hath visited His people.” What God? He, of course, whose people they were, and from whom had come their prophets. But if they glorified the Creator, and Christ (on hearing them, and knowing their meaning) refrained from correcting them even in their very act of invoking the Creator in that vast manifestation of His glory in this raising of the dead, undoubtedly He either announced no other God but Him, whom He thus permitted to be honoured in His own beneficent acts and miracles, or else how happens it that He quietly permitted these persons to remain so long in their error, especially as He came for the very purpose to cure them of their error? But John is offended when he hears of the miracles of Christ, as of an alien god. Well, I on my side will first explain the reason of his offence, that I may the more easily explode the scandal of our heretic. Now, that the very Lord Himself of all might, the Word and Spirit of the Father, was operating and preaching on earth, it was necessary that the portion of the Holy Spirit which, in the form of the prophetic gift, had been through John preparing the ways of the Lord, should now depart from John, and return back again of course to the Lord, as to its all-embracing original. Therefore John, being now an ordinary person, and only one of the many, was offended indeed as a man, but not because he expected or thought of another Christ as teaching or doing nothing new, for he was not even expecting such a one. Nobody will entertain doubts about any one whom (since he knows him not to exist) he has no expectation or thought of. Now John was quite sure that there was no other God but the Creator, even as a Jew, especially as a prophet. Whatever doubt he felt was evidently rather entertained about Him whom he knew indeed to exist but knew not whether He were the very Christ. With this fear, therefore, even John asks the question, “Art thou He that should come, or look we for another?”—simply inquiring whether He was come as He whom he was looking for. “Art thou He that should come?” i.e. Art thou the coming One? “or look we for another?” i.e. Is He whom we are expecting some other than Thou, if Thou art not He whom we expect to come? For he was supposing, as all men then thought, from the similarity of the miraculous evidences, that a prophet might possibly have been meanwhile sent, from whom the Lord Himself, whose coming was then expected, was different, and to whom He was superior. And there lay John’s difficulty. He was in doubt whether He was actually come whom all men were looking for; whom, moreover, they ought to have recognised by His predicted works, even as the Lord sent word to John, that it was by means of these very works that He was to be recognised. Now, inasmuch as these predictions evidently related to the Creator’s Christ—as we have proved in the examination of each of them—it was perverse enough, if he gave himself out to be not the Christ of the Creator, and rested the proof of his statement on those very evidences whereby he was urging his claims to be received as the Creator’s Christ. Far greater still is his perverseness when, not being the Christ of John, he yet bestows on John his testimony, affirming him to be a prophet, nay more, his messenger, applying to him the Scripture, “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.” He graciously adduced the prophecy in the superior sense of the alternative mentioned by the perplexed John, in order that, by affirming that His own precursor was already come in the person of John, He might quench the doubt which lurked in his question: “Art thou He that should come, or look we for another?” Now that the forerunner had fulfilled his mission, and the way of the Lord was prepared, He ought now to be acknowledged as that (Christ) for whom the forerunner had made ready the way. That forerunner was indeed “greater than all of women born;” but for all that, He who was least in the kingdom of God was not subject to him; as if the kingdom in which the least person was greater than John belonged to one God, while John, who was greater than all of women born, belonged himself to another God. For whether He speaks of any “least person” by reason of his humble position, or of Himself, as being thought to be less than John—since all were running into the wilderness after John rather than after Christ (“What went ye out into the wilderness to see?” )—the Creator has equal right to claim as His own both John, greater than any born of women, and Christ, or every “least person in the kingdom of heaven,” who was destined to be greater than John in that kingdom, although equally pertaining to the Creator, and who would be so much greater than the prophet, because he would not have been offended at Christ, an infirmity which then lessened the greatness of John. We have already spoken of the forgiveness of sins. The behaviour of “the woman which was a sinner,” when she covered the Lord’s feet with her kisses, bathed them with her tears, wiped them with the hairs of her head, anointed them with ointment, produced an evidence that what she handled was not an empty phantom, but a really solid body, and that her repentance as a sinner deserved forgiveness according to the mind of the Creator, who is accustomed to prefer mercy to sacrifice. But even if the stimulus of her repentance proceeded from her faith, she heard her justification by faith through her repentance pronounced in the words, “Thy faith hath saved thee,” by Him who had declared by Habakkuk, “The just shall live by his faith.”

Chapter XIX

The Rich Women of Piety Who Followed Jesus Christ’s Teaching by Parables. The Marcionite Cavil Derived from Christ’s Remark, When Told of His Mother and His Brethren. Explanation of Christ’s Apparent Rejection Them

The fact that certain rich women clave to Christ, “which ministered unto Him of their substance,” amongst whom was the wife of the king’s steward, is a subject of prophecy. By Isaiah the Lord called these wealthy ladies—”Rise up, ye women that are at ease, and hear my voice”—that He might prove them first as disciples, and then as assistants and helpers: “Daughters, hear my words in hope; this day of the year cherish the memory of, in labour with hope.” For it was “in labour” that they followed Him, and “with hope” did they minister to Him. On the subject of parables, let it suffice that it has been once for all shown that this kind of language was with equal distinctness promised by the Creator. But there is that direct mode of His speaking to the people—”Ye shall hear with the ear, but ye shall not understand”—which now claims notice as having furnished to Christ that frequent form of His earnest instruction: “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” Not as if Christ, actuated with a diverse spirit, permitted a hearing which the Creator had refused; but because the exhortation followed the threatening. First came, “Ye shall hear with the ear, but shall not understand;” then followed, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” For they wilfully refused to hear, although they had ears. He, however, was teaching them that it was the ears of the heart which were necessary; and with these the Creator had said that they would not hear. Therefore it is that He adds by His Christ, “Take heed how ye hear,” and hear not,—meaning, of course, with the hearing of the heart, not of the ear. If you only attach a proper sense to the Creator’s admonition, suitable to the meaning of Him who was rousing the people to hear by the words, “Take heed how ye hear,” it amounted to a menace to such as would not hear. In fact, that most merciful god of yours, who judges not, neither is angry, is minatory. This is proved even by the sentence which immediately follows: “Whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have.” What shall be given? The increase of faith, or understanding, or even salvation. What shall be taken away? That, of course, which shall be given. By whom shall the gift and the deprivation be made? If by the Creator it be taken away, by Him also shall it be given. If by Marcion’s god it be given, by Marcion’s god also will it be taken away. Now, for whatever reason He threatens the “deprivation,” it will not be the work of a god who knows not how to threaten, because incapable of anger. I am, moreover, astonished when he says that “a candle is not usually hidden,” who had hidden himself—a greater and more needful light—during so long a time; and when he promises that “everything shall be brought out of its secrecy and made manifest,” who hitherto has kept his god in obscurity, waiting (I suppose) until Marcion be born. We now come to the most strenuously-plied argument of all those who call in question the Lord’s nativity. They say that He testifies Himself to His not having been born, when He asks, “Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?” In this manner heretics either wrest plain and simple words to any sense they choose by their conjectures, or else they violently resolve by a literal interpretation words which imply a conditional sense and are incapable of a simple solution, as in this passage. We, for our part, say in reply, first, that it could not possibly have been told Him that His mother and His brethren stood without, desiring to see Him, if He had had no mother and no brethren. They must have been known to him who announced them, either some time previously, or then at that very time, when they desired to see Him, or sent Him their message. To this our first position this answer is usually given by the other side. But suppose they sent Him the message for the purpose of tempting Him? Well, but the Scripture does not say so; and inasmuch as it is usual for it to indicate what is done in the way of temptation (“Behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted Him;” again, when inquiring about tribute, the Pharisees came to Him, tempting Him ), so, when it makes no mention of temptation, it does not admit the interpretation of temptation. However, although I do not allow this sense, I may as well ask, by way of a superfluous refutation, for the reasons of the alleged temptation, To what purpose could they have tempted Him by naming His mother and His brethren? If it was to ascertain whether He had been born or not—when was a question raised on this point, which they must resolve by tempting Him in this way? Who could doubt His having been born, when they saw Him before them a veritable man?—whom they had heard call Himself “Son of man?”—of whom they doubted whether He were God or Son of God, from seeing Him, as they did, in the perfect garb of human quality?—supposing Him rather to be a prophet, a great one indeed, but still one who had been born as man? Even if it had been necessary that He should thus be tried in the investigation of His birth, surely any other proof would have better answered the trial than that to be obtained from mentioning those relatives which it was quite possible for Him, in spite of His true nativity, not at that moment to have had. For tell me now, does a mother live on contemporaneously with her sons in every case? Have all sons brothers born for them? May a man rather not have fathers and sisters (living), or even no relatives at all? But there is historical proof that at this very time a census had been taken in Judaea by Sentius Saturninus, which might have satisfied their inquiry respecting the family and descent of Christ. Such a method of testing the point had therefore no consistency whatever in it and they “who were standing without” were really “His mother and His brethren.” It remains for us to examine His meaning when He resorts to non-literal words, saying “Who is my mother or my brethren?” It seems as if His language amounted to a denial of His family and His birth; but it arose actually from the absolute nature of the case, and the conditional sense in which His words were to be explained. He was justly indignant, that persons so very near to Him “stood without,” while strangers were within hanging on His words, especially as they wanted to call Him away from the solemn work He had in hand. He did not so much deny as disavow them. And therefore, when to the previous question, “Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?” He added the answer “None but they who hear my words and do them,” He transferred the names of blood-relationship to others, whom He judged to be more closely related to Him by reason of their faith. Now no one transfers a thing except from him who possesses that which is transferred. If, therefore, He made them “His mother and His brethren” who were not so, how could He deny them these relationships who really had them? Surely only on the condition of their deserts, and not by any disavowal of His near relatives; teaching them by His own actual example, that “whosoever preferred father or mother or brethren to the Word of God, was not a disciple worthy of Him.” Besides, His admission of His mother and His brethren was the more express, from the fact of His unwillingness to acknowledge them. That He adopted others only confirmed those in their relationship to Him whom He refused because of their offence, and for whom He substituted the others, not as being truer relatives, but worthier ones. Finally, it was no great matter if He did prefer to kindred (that) faith which it did not possess.

Chapter XX

Comparison of Christ’s Power Over Winds and Waves with Moses’ Command of the Waters of the Red Sea and the Jordan. Christ’s Power Over Unclean Spirits. The Case of the Legion. The Cure of the Issue of Blood. The Mosaic Uncleanness on This Point Explained

But “what manner of man is this? for He commandeth even the winds and water!” Of course He is the new master and proprietor of the elements, now that the Creator is deposed, and excluded from their possession! Nothing of the kind. But the elements own their own Maker, just as they had been accustomed to obey His servants also. Examine well the Exodus, Marcion; look at the rod of Moses, as it waves His command to the Red Sea, ampler than all the lakes of Judaea. How the sea yawns from its very depths, then fixes itself in two solidified masses, and so, out of the interval between them, makes a way for the people to pass dry-shod across; again does the same rod vibrate, the sea returns in its strength, and in the concourse of its waters the chivalry of Egypt is engulphed! To that consummation the very winds subserved! Read, too, how that the Jordan was as a sword, to hinder the emigrant nation in their passage across its stream; how that its waters from above stood still, and its current below wholly ceased to run at the bidding of Joshua, when his priests began to pass over! What will you say to this? If it be your Christ that is meant above, he will not be more potent than the servants of the Creator. But I should have been content with the examples I have adduced without addition, if a prediction of His present passage on the sea had not preceded Christ’s coming. As psalm is, in fact, accomplished by this crossing over the lake. “The Lord,” says the psalmist, “is upon many waters.” When He disperses its waves, Habakkuk’s words are fulfilled, where he says, “Scattering the waters in His passage.” When at His rebuke the sea is calmed, Nahum is also verified: He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry,” including the winds indeed, whereby it was disquieted. With what evidence would you have my Christ vindicated? Shall it come from the examples, or from the prophecies, of the Creator? You suppose that He is predicted as a military and armed warrior, instead of one who in a figurative and allegorical sense was to wage a spiritual warfare against spiritual enemies, in spiritual campaigns, and with spiritual weapons: come now, when in one man alone you discover a multitude of demons calling itself Legion, of course comprised of spirits, you should learn that Christ also must be understood to be an exterminator of spiritual foes, who wields spiritual arms and fights in spiritual strife; and that it was none other than He, who now had to contend with even a legion of demons. Therefore it is of such a war as this that the Psalm may evidently have spoken: “The Lord is strong, The Lord is mighty in battle.” For with the last enemy death did He fight, and through the trophy of the cross He triumphed. Now of what God did the Legion testify that Jesus was the Son? No doubt, of that God whose torments and abyss they knew and dreaded. It seems impossible for them to have remained up to this time in ignorance of what the power of the recent and unknown god was working in the world, because it is very unlikely that the Creator was ignorant thereof. For if He had been at any time ignorant that there was another god above Himself, He had by this time at all events discovered that there was one at work below His heaven. Now, what their Lord had discovered had by this time become notorious to His entire family within the same world and the same circuit of heaven, in which the strange deity dwelt and acted. As therefore both the Creator and His creatures must have had knowledge of him, if he had been in existence, so, inasmuch as he had no existence, the demons really knew none other than the Christ of their own God. They do not ask of the strange god, what they recollected they must beg of the Creator—not to be plunged into the Creator’s abyss. They at last had their request granted. On what ground? Because they had lied? Because they had proclaimed Him to be the Son of a ruthless God? And what sort of god will that be who helped the lying, and upheld his detractors? However, no need of this thought, for, inasmuch as they had not lied, inasmuch as they had acknowledged that the God of the abyss was also their God, so did He actually Himself affirm that He was the same whom these demons acknowledged—Jesus, the Judge and Son of the avenging God. Now, behold an inkling of the Creator’s failings and infirmities in Christ; for I on my side mean to impute to Him ignorance. Allow me some indulgence in my effort against the heretic. Jesus is touched by the woman who had an issue of blood, He knew not by whom. “Who touched me?” He asks, when His disciples alleged an excuse. He even persists in His assertion of ignorance: “Somebody hath touched me,” He says, and advances some proof: “For I perceive that virtue is gone out of me.” What says our heretic? Could Christ have known the person? And why did He speak as if He were ignorant? Why? Surely it was to challenge her faith, and to try her fear. Precisely as He had once questioned Adam, as if in ignorance: Adam, where art thou?” Thus you have both the Creator excused in the same way as Christ, and Christ acting similarly to the Creator. But in this case He acted as an adversary of the law; and therefore, as the law forbids contact with a woman with an issue, He desired not only that this woman should touch Him, but that He should heal her. Here, then, is a God who is not merciful by nature, but in hostility! Yet, if we find that such was the merit of this woman’s faith, that He said unto her, Thy faith hath saved thee,” what are you, that you should detect an hostility to the law in that act, which the Lord Himself shows us to have been done as a reward of faith? But will you have it that this faith of the woman consisted in the contempt which she had acquired for the law? Who can suppose, that a woman who had been. hitherto unconscious of any God, uninitiated as yet in any new law, should violently infringe that law by which she was up to this time bound? On what faith, indeed, was such an infringement hazarded? In what God believing? Whom despising? The Creator? Her touch at least was an act of faith. And if of faith in the Creator, how could she have violated His law, when she was ignorant of any other God? Whatever her infringement of the law amounted to, it proceeded from and was proportionate to her faith in the Creator. But how can these two things be compatible? That she violated the law, and violated it in faith, which ought to have restrained her from such violation? I will tell you how her faith was this above all: it made her believe that her God preferred mercy even to sacrifice; she was certain that her God was working in Christ; she touched Him, therefore, nor as a holy man simply, nor as a prophet, whom she knew to be capable of contamination by reason of his human nature, but as very God, whom she assumed to be beyond all possibility of pollution by any uncleanness. She therefore, not without reason, interpreted for herself the law, as meaning that such things as are susceptible of defilement become defiled, but not so God, whom she knew for certain to be in Christ. But she recollected this also, that what came under the prohibition of the law was that ordinary and usual issue of blood which proceeds from natural functions every month, and in childbirth, not that which was the result of disordered health. Her case, however, was one of long abounding ill health, for which she knew that the succour of God’s mercy was needed, and not the natural relief of time. And thus she may evidently be regarded as having discerned the law, instead of breaking it. This will prove to be the faith which was to confer intelligence likewise. “If ye will not believe,” says (the prophet), “ye shall not understand.” When Christ approved of the faith of this woman, which simply rested in the Creator, He declared by His answer to her, that He was Himself the divine object of the faith of which He approved. Nor can I overlook the fact that His garment, by being touched, demonstrated also the truth of His body; for of course” it was a body, and not a phantom, which the garment clothed. This indeed is not our point now; but the remark has a natural bearing on the question we are discussing. For if it were not a veritable body, but only a fantastic one, it could not for certain have received contamination, as being an unsubstantial thing. He therefore, who, by reason of this vacuity of his substance, was incapable of contamination, how could he possibly have desired this touch? As an adversary of the law, his conduct was deceitful, for he was not susceptible of a real pollution.

Chapter XXI

Christ’s Connection with the Creator Shown from Several Incidents in the Old Testament, Compared with St. Luke’s Narrative of the Mission of the Disciples. The Feeding of the Multitude. The Confession of St. Peter. Being Ashamed of Christ. This Shame is Only Possible of the True Christ. Marcionite Pretensions Absurd

He sends forth His disciples to preach the kingdom of God. Does He here say of what God? He forbids their taking anything for their journey, by way of either food or raiment. Who would have given such a commandment as this, but He who feeds the ravens and clothes the flowers of the field? Who anciently enjoined for the treading ox an unmuzzled mouth, that he might be at liberty to gather his fodder from his labour, on the principle that the worker is worthy of his hire? Marcion may expunge such precepts, but no matter, provided the sense of them survives. But when He charges them to shake off the dust of their feet against such as should refuse to receive them, He also bids that this be done as a witness. Now no one bears witness except in a case which is decided by judicial process; and whoever orders inhuman conduct to be submitted to the trial by testimony, does really threaten as a judge. Again, that it was no new god which recommended by Christ, was clearly attested by the opinion of all men, because some maintained to Herod that Jesus was the Christ; others, that He was John; some, that He was Elias; and others, that He was one of the old prophets. Now, whosoever of all these He might have been, He certainly was not raised up for the purpose of announcing another god after His resurrection. He feeds the multitude in the desert place; this, you must know was after the manner of the Old Testament. Or else, if there was not the same grandeur, it follows that He is now inferior to the Creator. For He, not for one day, but during forty years, not on the inferior aliment of bread and fish, but with the manna of heaven, supported the lives of not five thousand, but of six hundred thousand human beings. However, such was the greatness of His miracle, that He willed the slender supply of food, not only to be enough, but even to prove superabundant; and herein He followed the ancient precedent. For in like manner, during the famine in Elijah’s time, the scanty and final meal of the widow of Sarepta was multiplied by the blessing of the prophet throughout the period of the famine. You have the third book of the Kings. If you also turn to the fourth book, you will discover all this conduct of Christ pursued by that man of God, who ordered ten barley loaves which had been given him to be distributed among the people; and when his servitor, after contrasting the large number of the persons with the small supply of the food, answered, “What, shall I set this before a hundred men?” he said again, “Give them, and they shall eat: for thus saith the Lord, They shall eat, and shall leave thereof, according to the word of the Lord.” O Christ, even in Thy novelties Thou art old! Accordingly, when Peter, who had been an eye-witness of the miracle, and had compared it with the ancient precedents, and had discovered in them prophetic intimations of what should one day come to pass, answered (as the mouthpiece of them all) the Lord’s inquiry, “Whom say ye that I am?” in the words, “Thou art the Christ,” he could not but have perceived that He was that Christ, beside whom he knew of none else in the Scriptures, and whom he was now surveying in His wonderful deeds. This conclusion He even Himself confirms by thus far bearing with it, nay, even enjoining silence respecting it. For if Peter was unable to acknowledge Him to be any other than the Creator’s Christ, while He commanded them “to tell no man that saying,” surely He was unwilling to have the conclusion promulged which Peter had drawn. No doubt of that, you say; but as Peter’s conclusion was a wrong one, therefore He was unwilling to have a lie disseminated. It was, however, a different reason which He assigned for the silence, even because “the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and scribes, and priests, and be slain, and be raised again the third day.” Now, inasmuch as these sufferings were actually foretold for the Creator’s Christ (as we shall fully show in the proper place ), so by this application of them to His own case does He prove that it is He Himself of whom they were predicted. At all events, even if they had not been predicted, the reason which He alleged for imposing silence (on the disciples) was such as made it clear enough that Peter had made no mistake, that reason being the necessity of His undergoing these sufferings. “Whosoever,” says He, “will save his life, shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.” Surely it is the Son of man who uttered this sentence. Look carefully, then, along with the king of Babylon, into his burning fiery furnace, and there you will discover one “like the Son of man” (for He was not yet really Son of man, because not yet born of man), even as early as then appointing issues such as these. He saved the lives of the three brethren, who had agreed to lose them for God’s sake; but He destroyed those of the Chaldaeans, when they had preferred to save them by the means of their idolatry. Where is that novelty, which you pretend in a doctrine which possesses these ancient proofs? But all the predictions have been fulfilled concerning martyrdoms which were to happen, and were to receive the recompenses of their reward from God. “See,” says Isaiah, “how the righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart; and just men are taken away, and no man considereth.” When does this more frequently happen than in the persecution of His saints? This, indeed, is no ordinary matter, no common casualty of the law of nature; but it is that illustrious devotion, that fighting for the faith, wherein whosoever loses his life for God saves it, so that you may here again recognize the Judge who recompenses the evil gain of life with its destruction, and the good loss thereof with its salvation. It is, however, a jealous God whom He here presents to me; one who returns evil for evil. “For whosoever,” says He, “shall be ashamed of me, of him will I also be ashamed.” Now to none but my Christ can be assigned the occasion of such a shame as this. His whole course was so exposed to shame as to open a way for even the taunts of heretics, declaiming with all the bitterness in their power against the utter disgrace of His birth and bringing-up, and the unworthiness of His very flesh. But how can that Christ of yours be liable to a shame, which it is impossible for him to experience? Since he was never condensed into human flesh in the womb of a woman, although a virgin; never grew from human seed, although only after the law of corporeal substance, from the fluids of a woman; was never deemed flesh before shaped in the womb; never called foetus after such shaping; was never delivered from a ten months’ writhing in the womb; was never shed forth upon the ground, amidst the sudden pains of parturition, with the unclean issue which flows at such a time through the sewerage of the body, forthwith to inaugurate the light of life with tears, and with that primal wound which severs the child from her who bears him; never received the copious ablution, nor the meditation of salt and honey; nor did he initiate a shroud with swaddling clothes; nor afterwards did he ever wallow in his own uncleanness, in his mother’s lap; nibbling at her breast; long an infant; gradually a boy; by slow degrees a man. But he was revealed from heaven, full-grown at once, at once complete; immediately Christ; simply spirit, and power, and god. But as withal he was not true, because not visible; therefore he was no object to be ashamed of from the curse of the cross, the real endurance of which he escaped, because wanting in bodily substance. Never, therefore, could he have said, “Whosoever shall be ashamed of me.” But as for our Christ, He could do no otherwise than make such a declaration; “made” by the Father “a little lower than the angels,” “a worm and no man, a reproach of men, and despised of the people;” seeing that it was His will that “with His stripes we should be healed,” that by His humiliation our salvation should be established. And justly did He humble Himself for His own creature man, for the image and likeness of Himself, and not of another, in order that man, since he had not felt ashamed when bowing down to a stone or a stock, might with similar courage give satisfaction to God for the shamelessness of his idolatry, by displaying an equal degree of shamelessness in his faith, in not being ashamed of Christ. Now, Marcion, which of these courses is better suited to your Christ, in respect of a meritorious shame? Plainly, you ought yourself to blush with shame for having given him a fictitious existence.

Chapter XXII

The Same Conclusion Supported by the Transfiguration. Marcion Inconsistent in Associating with Christ in Glory Two Such Eminent Servants of the Creator as Moses and Elijah. St. Peter’s Ignorance Accounted for on Montanist Principle

You ought to be very much ashamed of yourself on this account too, for permitting him to appear on the retired mountain in the company of Moses and Elias, whom he had come to destroy. This, to be sure, was what he wished to be understood as the meaning of that voice from heaven: “This is my beloved Son, hear Him”—Him, that is, not Moses or Elias any longer. The voice alone, therefore, was enough, without the display of Moses and Elias; for, by expressly mentioning whom they were to hear, he must have forbidden all others from being heard. Or else, did he mean that Isaiah and Jeremiah and the others whom he did not exhibit were to be heard, since he prohibited those whom he did display? Now, even if their presence was necessary, they surely should not be represented as conversing together, which is a sign of familiarity; nor as associated in glory with him, for this indicates respect and graciousness; but they should be shown in some slough as a sure token of their ruin, or even in that darkness of the Creator which Christ was sent to disperse, far removed from the glory of Him who was about to sever their words and writings from His gospel. This, then, is the way how he demonstrates them to be aliens, even by keeping them in his own company! This is how he shows they ought to be relinquished: he associates them with himself instead! This is how he destroys them: he irradiates them with his glory! How would their own Christ act? I suppose He would have imitated the frowardness (of heresy), and revealed them just as Marcion’s Christ was bound to do, or at least as having with Him any others rather than His own prophets! But what could so well befit the Creator’s Christ, as to manifest Him in the company of His own foreannouncers?—to let Him be seen with those to whom He had appeared in revelations?—to let Him be speaking with those who had spoken of Him?—to share His glory with those by whom He used to be called the Lord of glory; even with those chief servants of His, one of whom was once the moulder of His people, the other afterwards the reformer thereof; one the initiator of the Old Testament, the other the consummator of the New? Well therefore does Peter, when recognizing the companions of his Christ in their indissoluble connection with Him, suggest an expedient: “It is good for us to be here” (good: that evidently means to be where Moses and Elias are); “and let us make three tabernacles, one for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. But he knew not what he said.” How knew not? Was his ignorance the result of simple error? Or was it on the principle which we maintain in the cause of the new prophecy, that to grace ecstasy or rapture is incident. For when a man is rapt in the Spirit, especially when he beholds the glory of God, or when God speaks through him, he necessarily loses his sensation, because he is overshadowed with the power of God,—a point concerning which there is a question between us and the carnally-minded. Now, it is no difficult matter to prove the rapture of Peter. For how could he have known Moses and Elias, except (by being) in the Spirit? People could not have had their images, or statues, or likenesses; for that the law forbade. How, if it were not that he had seen them in the Spirit? And therefore, because it was in the Spirit that he had now spoken, and not in his natural senses, he could not know what he had said. But if, on the other hand, he was thus ignorant, because he erroneously supposed that (Jesus) was their Christ, it is then evident that Peter, when previously asked by Christ, “Whom they thought Him to be,” meant the Creator’s Christ, when he answered, “Thou art the Christ;” because if he had been then aware that He belonged to the rival god, he would not have made a mistake here. But if he was in error here because of his previous erroneous opinion, then you may be sure that up to that very day no new divinity had been revealed by Christ, and that Peter had so far made no mistake, because hitherto Christ had revealed nothing of the kind; and that Christ accordingly was not to be regarded as belonging to any other than the Creator, whose entire dispensation he, in fact, here described. He selects from His disciples three witnesses of the impending vision and voice. And this is just the way of the Creator. “In the mouth of three witnesses,” says He, “shall every word be established.” He withdraws to a mountain. In the nature of the place I see much meaning. For the Creator had originally formed His ancient people on a mountain both with visible glory and His voice. It was only right that the New Testament should be attested on such an elevated spot as that whereon the Old Testament had been composed; under a like covering of cloud also, which nobody will doubt, was condensed out of the Creator’s air. Unless, indeed, he had brought down his own clouds thither, because he had himself forced his way through the Creator’s heaven; or else it was only a precarious cloud, as it were, of the Creator which he used. On the present (as also on the former) occasion, therefore, the cloud was not silent; but there was the accustomed voice from heaven, and the Father’s testimony to the Son; precisely as in the first Psalm He had said, “Thou art my Son, today have I begotten thee.” By the mouth of Isaiah also He had asked concerning Him, “Who is there among you that feareth God? Let him hear the voice of His Son.” When therefore He here presents Him with the words, “This is my (beloved) Son,” this clause is of course understood, “whom I have promised.” For if He once promised, and then afterwards says, “This is He,” it is suitable conduct for one who accomplishes His purpose that He should utter His voice in proof of the promise which He had formerly made; but unsuitable in one who is amenable to the retort, Can you, indeed, have a right to say, “This is my son,” concerning whom you have given us no previous information, any more than you have favoured us with a revelation about your own prior existence? “Hear ye Him,” therefore, whom from the beginning (the Creator) had declared entitled to be heard in the name of a prophet, since it was as a prophet that He had to be regarded by the people. “A prophet,” says Moses, “shall the Lord your God raise up unto you, of your sons” (that is, of course, after a carnal descent ); “unto Him shall ye hearken, as unto me.” “Every one who will not hearken unto Him, his soul shall be cut off from amongst his people.” So also Isaiah: “Who is there among you that feareth God? Let him hear the voice of His Son.” This voice the Father was going Himself to recommend. For, says he, He establishes the words of His Son, when He says, “This is my beloved Son, hear ye Him.” Therefore, even if there be made a transfer of the obedient “hearing” from Moses and Elias to Christ, it is still not from another God, or to another Christ; but from the Creator to His Christ, in consequence of the departure of the old covenant and the supervening of the new. “Not an ambassador, nor an angel, but He Himself,” says Isaiah, “shall save them;” for it is He Himself who is now declaring and fulfilling the law and the prophets. The Father gave to the Son new disciples, after that Moses and Elias had been exhibited along with Him in the honour of His glory, and had then been dismissed as having fully discharged their duty and office, for the express purpose of affirming for Marcion’s information the fact that Moses and Elias had a share in even the glory of Christ. But we have the entire structure of this same vision in Habakkuk also, where the Spirit in the person of some of the apostles says, “O Lord, I have heard Thy speech, and was afraid.” What speech was this, other than the words of the voice from heaven, This is my beloved Son, hear ye Him? “I considered thy works, and was astonished.” When could this have better happened than when Peter, on seeing His glory, knew not what he was saying? “In the midst of the two Thou shalt be known”—even Moses and Elias. These likewise did Zechariah see under the figure of the two olive trees and olive branches. For these are they of whom he says, “They are the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth.” And again Habakkuk says, “His glory covered the heavens” (that is, with that cloud), “and His splendour shall be like the light—even the light, wherewith His very raiment glistened.” And if we would make mention of the promise to Moses, we shall find it accomplished here. For when Moses desired to see the Lord, saying, “If therefore I have found grace in Thy sight, manifest Thyself to me, that I may see Thee distinctly,” the sight which he desired to have was of that condition which he was to assume as man, and which as a prophet he knew was to occur. Respecting the face of God, however, he had already heard, “No man shall see me, and live.” “This thing,” said He, “which thou hast spoken, will I do unto thee.” Then Moses said, “Show me Thy glory.” And the Lord, with like reference to the future, replied, “I will pass before thee in my glory,” etc. Then at the last He says, “And then thou shalt see my back.” Not loins, or calves of the legs, did he want to behold, but the glory which was to be revealed in the latter days. He had promised that He would make Himself thus face to face visible to him, when He said to Aaron, “If there shall be a prophet among you, I will make myself known to him by vision, and by vision will I speak with him; but not so is my manner to Moses; with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently” (that is to say, in the form of man which He was to assume), “and not in dark speeches.” Now, although Marcion has denied that he is here represented as speaking with the Lord, but only as standing, yet, inasmuch as he stood “mouth to mouth,” he must also have stood “face to face” with him, to use his words, not far from him, in His very glory—not to say, in His presence. And with this glory he went away enlightened from Christ, just as he used to do from the Creator; as then to dazzle the eyes of the children of Israel, so now to smite those of the blinded Marcion, who has failed to see how this argument also makes against him.

Chapter XXIII

Impossible that Marcion’s Christ Should Reprove the Faithless Generation. Such Loving Consideration for Infants as the True Christ Was Apt to Shew, Also Impossible for the Other. On the Three Different Characters Confronted and Instructed by Christ in Samaria

I take on myself the character of Israel. Let Marcion’s Christ stand forth, and exclaim, “O faithless generation! how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?” He will immediately have to submit to this remonstrance from me: “Whoever you are, O stranger, first tell us who you are, from whom you come, and what right you have over us. Thus far, all you possess belongs to the Creator. Of course, if you come from Him, and are acting for Him, we will bear your reproof. But if you come from some other god, I should wish you to tell us what you have ever committed to us belonging to yourself, which it was our duty to believe, seeing that you are upbraiding us with faithlessness,’ who have never yet revealed to us your own self. How long ago did you begin to treat with us, that you should be complaining of the delay? On what points have you borne with us, that you should adduce your patience? Like AEsop’s ass, you are just come from the well, and are filling every place with your braying.” I assume, besides, the person of the disciple, against whom he has inveighed: “O perverse nation! how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?” This outburst of his I might, of course, retort upon him most justly in such words as these: “Whoever you are, O stranger, first tell us who you are, from whom you come, what right you have over us. Thus far, I suppose, you belong to the Creator, and so we have followed you, recognising in you all things which are His. Now, if you come from Him, we will bear your reproof. If, however, you are acting for another, prythee tell us what you have ever conferred upon us that is simply your own, which it had become our duty to believe, seeing that you reproach us with faithlessness,’ although up to this moment you show us no credentials. How long since did you begin to plead with us, that you are charging us with delay? Wherein have you borne with us, that you should even boast of your patience? The ass has only just arrived from AEsop’s well, and he is already braying.” Now who would not thus have rebutted the unfairness of the rebuke, if he had supposed its author to belong to him who had had no right as yet to complain? Except that not even He would have inveighed against them, if He had not dwelt among them of old in the law and by the prophets, and with mighty deeds and many mercies, and had always experienced them to be “faithless.” But, behold, Christ takes infants, and teaches how all ought to be like them, if they ever wish to be greater. The Creator, on the contrary, let loose bears against children, in order to avenge His prophet Elisha, who had been mocked by them. This antithesis is impudent enough, since it throws together things so different as infants and children,—an age still innocent, and one already capable of discretion—able to mock, if not to blaspheme. As therefore God is a just God, He spared not impious children, exacting as He does honour for every time of life, and especially, of course, from youth. And as God is good, He so loves infants as to have blessed the midwives in Egypt, when they protected the infants of the Hebrews which were in peril from Pharaoh’s command. Christ therefore shares this kindness with the Creator. As indeed for Marcion’s god, who is an enemy to marriage, how can he possibly seem to be a lover of little children, which are simply the issue of marriage? He who hates the seed must needs also detest the fruit. Yea, he ought to be deemed more ruthless than the king of Egypt. For whereas Pharaoh forbade infants to be brought up, he will not allow them even to be born, depriving them of their ten months’ existence in the womb. And how much more credible it is, that kindness to little children should be attributed to Him who blessed matrimony for the procreation of mankind, and in such benediction included also the promise of connubial fruit itself, the first of which is that of infancy! The Creator, at the request of Elias, inflicts the blow of fire from heaven in the case of that false prophet (of Baalzebub). I recognise herein the severity of the Judge. And I, on the contrary, the severe rebuke of Christ on His disciples, when they were for inflicting a like visitation on that obscure village of the Samaritans. The heretic, too, may discover that this gentleness of Christ was promised by the selfsame severest Judge. “He shall not contend,” says He, “nor shall His voice be heard in the street; a bruised reed shall He not crush, and smoking flax shall He not quench.” Being of such a character, He was of course much the less disposed to burn men. For even at that time the Lord said to Elias, “He was not in the fire, but in the still small voice.” Well, but why does this most humane and merciful God reject the man who offers himself to Him as an inseparable companion? If it were from pride or from hypocrisy that he had said, “I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest,’ then, by judicially reproving an act of either pride or hypocrisy as worthy of rejection, He performed the office of a Judge. And, of course, him whom He rejected He condemned to the loss of not following the Saviour. For as He calls to salvation him whom He does not reject, or him whom He voluntarily invites, so does He consign to perdition him whom He rejects. When, however, He answers the man, who alleged as an excuse his father’s burial, “Let the dead bury their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of God,” He gave a clear confirmation to those two laws of the Creator—that in Leviticus, which concerns the sacerdotal office, and forbids the priests to be present at the funerals even of their parents. “The priest,” says He, “shall not enter where there is any dead person; and for his father he shall not be defiled” ; as well as that in Numbers, which relates to the (Nazarite) vow of separation; for there he who devotes himself to God, among other things, is bidden “not to come at any dead body,” not even of his father, or his mother, or his brother. Now it was, I suppose, for the Nazarite and the priestly office that He intended this man whom He had been inspiring to preach the kingdom of God. Or else, if it be not so, he must be pronounced impious enough who, without the intervention of any precept of the law, commanded that burials of parents should be neglected by their sons. When, indeed, in the third case before us, (Christ) forbids the man “to look back” who wanted first “to bid his family farewell,” He only follows out the rule of the Creator. For this (retrospection) He had been against their making, whom He had rescued out of Sodom.

Chapter XXIV

On the Mission of the Seventy Disciples, and Christ’s Charge to Them. Precedents Drawn from the Old Testament. Absurdity of Supposing that Marcion’s Christ Could Have Given the Power of Treading on Serpents and Scorpions

He chose also seventy other missionaries besides the twelve. Now why, if the twelve followed the number of the twelve fountains of Elim, should not the seventy correspond to the like number of the palms of that place? Whatever be the Antitheses of the comparison, it is a diversity in the causes, not in the powers, which has mainly produced them. But if one does not keep in view the diversity of the causes, he is very apt to infer a difference of powers. When the children of Israel went out of Egypt, the Creator brought them forth laden with their spoils of gold and silver vessels, and with loads besides of raiment and unleavened dough; whereas Christ commanded His disciples not to carry even a staff for their journey. The former were thrust forth into a desert, but the latter were sent into cities. Consider the difference presented in the occasions, and you will understand how it was one and the same power which arranged the mission of His people according to their poverty in the one case, and their plenty in the other. He cut down their supplies when they could be replenished through the cities, just as He had accumulated them when exposed to the scantiness of the desert. Even shoes He forbade them to carry. For it was He under whose very protection the people wore not out a shoe, even in the wilderness for the space of so many years. “No one,” says He, “shall ye salute by the way.” What a destroyer of the prophets, forsooth, is Christ, seeing it is from them that He received his precept also! When Elisha sent on his servant Gehazi before him to raise the Shunammite’s son from death, I rather think he gave him these instructions: “Gird up thy loins, and take my staff in thine hand, and go thy way: if thou meet any man, salute him not; and if any salute thee, answer him not again.” For what is a wayside blessing but a mutual salutation as men meet? So also the Lord commands: “Into whatsoever house they enter, let them say, Peace be to it.” Herein He follows the very same example. For Elisha enjoined upon his servant the same salutation when he met the Shunammite; he was to say to her: “Peace to thine husband, peace to thy child.” Such will be rather our Antitheses; they compare Christ with, instead of sundering Him from, the Creator. “The labourer is worthy of his hire.” Who could better pronounce such a sentence than the Judge? For to decide that the workman deserves his wages, is in itself a judicial act. There is no award which consists not in a process of judgment. The law of the Creator on this point also presents us with a corroboration, for He judges that labouring oxen are as labourers worthy of their hire: “Thou shalt not muzzle,” says He, “the ox when he treadeth out the corn.” Now, who is so good to man as He who is also merciful to cattle? Now, when Christ pronounced labourers to be worthy of their hire, He, in fact, exonerated from blame that precept of the Creator about depriving the Egyptians of their gold and silver vessels. For they who had built for the Egyptians their houses and cities, were surely workmen worthy of their hire, and were not instructed in a fraudulent act, but only set to claim compensation for their hire, which they were unable in any other way to exact from their masters. That the kingdom of God was neither new nor unheard of, He in this way affirmed, whilst at the same time He bids them announce that it was near at hand. Now it is that which was once far off, which can be properly said to have become near. If, however, a thing had never existed previous to its becoming near, it could never have been said to have approached, because it had never existed at a distance. Everything which is new and unknown is also sudden. Everything which is sudden, then, first receives the accident of time when it is announced, for it then first puts on appearance of form. Besides it will be impossible for a thing either to have been tardy all the while it remained unannounced, or to have approached from the time it shall begin to be announced.

He likewise adds, that they should say to such as would not receive them: “Notwithstanding be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.” If He does not enjoin this by way of a commination, the injunction is a most useless one. For what mattered it to them that the kingdom was at hand, unless its approach was accompanied with judgment?—even for the salvation of such as received the announcement thereof. How, if there can be a threat without its accomplishment, can you have in a threatening god, one that executes also, and in both, one that is a judicial being? So, again, He commands that the dust be shaken off against them, as a testimony,—the very particles of their ground which might cleave to the sandal, not to mention any other sort of communication with them. But if their churlishness and inhospitality were to receive no vengeance from Him, for what purpose does He premise a testimony, which surely forbodes some threats? Furthermore, when the Creator also, in the book of Deuteronomy, forbids the reception of the Ammonites and the Moabites into the church, because, when His people came from Egypt, they fraudulently withheld provisions from them with inhumanity and inhospitality, it will be manifest that the prohibition of intercourse descended to Christ from Him. The form of it which He uses—”He that despiseth you, despiseth me”—the Creator had also addressed to Moses: “Not against thee have they murmured, but against me.” Moses, indeed, was as much an apostle as the apostles were prophets. The authority of both offices will have to be equally divided, as it proceeds from one and the same Lord, (the God) of apostles and prophets. Who is He that shall bestow “the power of treading on serpents and scorpions?” Shall it be He who is the Lord of all living creatures or he who is not god over a single lizard? Happily the Creator has promised by Isaiah to give this power even to little children, of putting their hand in the cockatrice den and on the hole of the young asps without at all receiving hurt. And, indeed, we are aware (without doing violence to the literal sense of the passage, since even these noxious animals have actually been unable to do hurt where there has been faith) that under the figure of scorpions and serpents are portended evil spirits, whose very prince is described by the name of serpent, dragon, and every other most conspicuous beast in the power of the Creator. This power the Creator conferred first of all upon His Christ, even as the ninetieth Psalm says to Him: “Upon the asp and the basilisk shalt Thou tread; the lion and the dragon shalt Thou trample under foot.” So also Isaiah: “In that day the Lord God shall draw His sacred, great, and strong sword” (even His Christ) “against that dragon, that great and tortuous serpent; and He shall slay him in that day.” But when the same prophet says, “The way shall be called a clean and holy way; over it the unclean thing shall not pass, nor shall be there any unclean way; but the dispersed shall pass over it, and they shall not err therein; no lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon; it shall not be found there,” he points out the way of faith, by which we shall reach to God; and then to this way of faith he promises this utter crippling and subjugation of all noxious animals. Lastly, you may discover the suitable times of the promise, if you read what precedes the passage: “Be strong, ye weak hands and ye feeble knees: then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear; then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall be articulate.” When, therefore, He proclaimed the benefits of His cures, then also did He put the scorpions and the serpents under the feet of His saints—even He who had first received this power from the Father, in order to bestow it upon others and then manifested it forth conformably to the order of prophecy.

Chapter XXV

Christ Thanks the Father for Revealing to Babes What He Had Concealed from the Wise. This Concealment Judiciously Effected by the Creator. Other Points in St. Luke’s Chap. X. Shown to Be Only Possible to the Creator’s Christ

Who shall be invoked as the Lord of heaven, that does not first show Himself to have been the maker thereof? For He says, “I thank thee, (O Father,) and own Thee, Lord of heaven, because those things which had been hidden from the wise and prudent, Thou has revealed unto babes.” What things are these? And whose? And by whom hidden? And by whom revealed? If it was by Marcion’s god that they were hidden and revealed, it was an extremely iniquitous proceeding; for nothing at all had he ever produced in which anything could have been hidden—no prophecies, no parables, no visions, no evidences of things, or words, or names, obscured by allegories and figures, or cloudy enigmas, but he had concealed the greatness even of himself, which he was with all his might revealing by his Christ. Now in what respect had the wise and prudent done wrong, that God should be hidden from them, when their wisdom and prudence had been insufficient to come to the knowledge of Him? No way had been provided by himself, by any declaration of his works, or any vestiges whereby they might become wise and prudent. However, if they had even failed in any duty towards a god whom they knew not, suppose him now at last to be known still they ought not to have found a jealous god in him who is introduced as unlike the Creator. Therefore, since he had neither provided any materials in which he could have hidden anything, nor had any offenders from whom he could have hidden himself: since, again, even if he had had any, he ought not to have hidden himself from them, he will not now be himself the revealer, who was not previously the concealer; so neither will any be the Lord of heaven nor the Father of Christ but He in whom all these attributes consistently meet. For He conceals by His preparatory apparatus of prophetic obscurity, the understanding of which is open to faith (for “if ye will not believe, ye shall not understand” ); and He had offenders in those wise and prudent ones who would not seek after God, although He was to be discovered in His so many and mighty works, or who rashly philosophized about Him, and thereby furnished to heretics their arts; and lastly, He is a jealous God. Accordingly, that which Christ thanks God for doing, He long ago announced by Isaiah: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the prudent will I hide.” So in another passage He intimates both that He has concealed, and that He will also reveal: “I will give unto them treasures that have been hidden, and secret ones will I discover to them.” And again: “Who else shall scatter the tokens of ventriloquists, and the devices of those who divine out of their own heart; turning wise men backward, and making their counsels foolish?” Now, if He has designated His Christ as an enlightener of the Gentiles, saying, “I have set thee for a light of the Gentiles;” and if we understand these to be meant in the word babes—as having been once dwarfs in knowledge and infants in prudence, and even now also babes in their lowliness of faith—we shall of course more easily understand how He who had once hidden “these things,” and promised a revelation of them through Christ, was the same God as He who had now revealed them unto babes. Else, if it was Marcion’s god who revealed the things which had been formerly hidden by the Creator, it follows that he did the Creator’s work by setting forth His deeds. But he did it, say you, for His destruction, that he might refute them. Therefore he ought to have refuted them to those from whom the Creator had hidden them, even the wise and prudent. For if he had a kind intention in what he did, the gift of knowledge was due to those from whom the Creator had detained it, instead of the babes, to whom the Creator had grudged no gift. But after all, it is, I presume, the edification rather than the demolition of the law and the prophets which we have thus far found effected in Christ. “All things,” He says, “are delivered unto me of my Father.” You may believe Him, if He is the Christ of the Creator to whom all things belong; because the Creator has not delivered to a Son who is less than Himself all things, which He created by Him, that is to say, by His Word. If, on the contrary, he is the notorious stranger, what are the “all things” which have been delivered to him by the Father? Are they the Creator’s? Then the things which the Father delivered to the Son are good, and the Creator is therefore good, since all His “things” are good; whereas he is no longer good who has invaded another’s good (domains) to deliver it to his son, thus teaching robbery of another’s goods. Surely he must be a most mendacious being, who had no other means of enriching his son than by helping himself to another’s property! Or else, if nothing of the Creator’s has been delivered to him by the Father, by what right does he claim for himself (authority over) man? Or again, if man has been delivered to him, and man alone, then man is not “all things.” But Scripture clearly says that a transfer of all things has been made to the Son. If, however, you should interpret this “all” of the whole human race, that is, all nations, then the delivery of even these to the Son is within the purpose of the Creator: “I will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.” If, indeed, he has some things of his own, the whole of which he might give to his son, along with the man of the Creator, then show some one thing of them all, as a sample, that I may believe; lest I should have as much reason not to believe that all things belong to him, of whom I see nothing, as I have ground for believing that even the things which I see not are His, to whom belongs the universe, which I see. But “no man knoweth who the Father is, but the Son; and who the Son is, but the Father, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him.” And so it was an unknown god that Christ preached! And other heretics, too, prop themselves up by this passage; alleging in opposition to it that the Creator was known to all, both to Israel by familiar intercourse, and to the Gentiles by nature. Well, how is it He Himself testifies that He was not known to Israel? “But Israel doth not know me, and my people doth not consider me;” nor to the Gentiles: “For, behold,” says He, “of the nations I have no man.” Therefore He reckoned them “as the drop of a bucket,” while “Sion He left as a look-out in a vineyard.” See, then, whether there be not here a confirmation of the prophet’s word, when he rebukes that ignorance of man toward God which continued to the days of the Son of man. For it was on this account that he inserted the clause that the Father is known by him to whom the Son has revealed Him, because it was even He who was announced as set by the Father to be a light to the Gentiles, who of course required to be enlightened concerning God, as well as to Israel, even by imparting to it a fuller knowledge of God. Arguments, therefore, will be of no use for belief in the rival god which may be suitable for the Creator, because it is only such as are unfit for the Creator which will be able to advance belief in His rival. If you look also into the next words, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things which ye see, for I tell you that prophets have not seen the things which ye see,” you will find that they follow from the sense above, that no man indeed had come to the knowledge of God as he ought to have done, since even the prophets had not seen the things which were being seen under Christ. Now if He had not been my Christ, He would not have made any mention of the prophets in this passage. For what was there to wonder at, if they had not seen the things of a god who had been unknown to them, and was only revealed a long time after them? What blessedness, however, could theirs have been, who were then seeing what others were naturally unable to see, since it was of things which they had never predicted that they had not obtained the sight; if it were not because they might justly have seen the things pertaining to their God, which they had even predicted, but which they at the same time had not seen? This, however, will be the blessedness of others, even of such as were seeing the things which others had only foretold. We shall by and by show, nay, we have already shown, that in Christ those things were seen which had been foretold, but yet had been hidden from the very prophets who foretold them, in order that they might be hidden also from the wise and the prudent. In the true Gospel, a certain doctor of the law comes to the Lord and asks, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” In the heretical gospel life only is mentioned, without the attribute eternal; so that the lawyer seems to have consulted Christ simply about the life which the Creator in the law promises to prolong, and the Lord to have therefore answered him according to the law, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength,” since the question was concerning the conditions of mere life. But the lawyer of course knew very well in what way the life which the law meant was to be obtained, so that his question could have had no relation to the life whose rules he was himself in the habit of teaching. But seeing that even the dead were now raised by Christ, and being himself excited to the hope of an eternal life by these examples of a restored one, he would lose no more time in merely looking on (at the wonderful things which had made him) so high in hope. He therefore consulted him about the attainment of eternal life. Accordingly, the Lord, being Himself the same, and introducing no new precept other than that which relates above all others to (man’s) entire salvation, even including the present and the future life, places before him the very essence of the law—that he should in every possible way love the Lord his God. If, indeed, it were only about a lengthened life, such as is at the Creator’s disposal, that he inquired and Christ answered, and not about the eternal life, which is at the disposal of Marcion’s god, how is he to obtain the eternal one? Surely not in the same manner as the prolonged life. For in proportion to the difference of the reward must be supposed to be also the diversity of the services. Therefore your disciple, Marcion, will not obtain his eternal life in consequence of loving your God, in the same way as the man who loves the Creator will secure the lengthened life. But how happens it that, if He is to be loved who promises the prolonged life, He is not much more to be loved who offers the eternal life? Therefore both one and the other life will be at the disposal of one and the same Lord; because one and the same discipline is to be followed for one and the other life. What the Creator teaches to be loved, that must He necessarily maintain also by Christ, for that rule holds good here, which prescribes that greater things ought to be believed of Him who has first lesser proofs to show, than of him for whom no preceding smaller presumptions have secured a claim to be believed in things of higher import. It matters not then, whether the word eternal has been interpolated by us. It is enough for me, that the Christ who invited men to the eternal—not the lengthened—life, when consulted about the temporal life which he was destroying, did not choose to exhort the man rather to that eternal life which he was introducing. Pray, what would the Creator’s Christ have done, if He who had made man for loving the Creator did not belong to the Creator? I suppose He would have said that the Creator was not to be loved!

Chapter XXVI

From St. Luke’s Eleventh Chapter Other Evidence that Christ Comes from the Creator. The Lord’s Prayer and Other Words of Christ. The Dumb Spirit and Christ’s Discourse on Occasion of the Expulsion. The Exclamation of the Woman in the Crowd

When in a certain place he had been praying to that Father above, looking up with insolent and audacious eyes to the heaven of the Creator, by whom in His rough and cruel nature he might have been crushed with hail and lightning—just as it was by Him contrived that he was (afterwards) attached to a cross at Jerusalem—one of his disciples came to him and said, “Master, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.” This he said, forsooth, because he thought that different prayers were required for different gods! Now, he who had advanced such a conjecture as this should first show that another god had been proclaimed by Christ. For nobody would have wanted to know how to pray, before he had learned whom he was to pray to. If, however, he had already learned this, prove it. If you find nowhere any proof, let me tell you that it was to the Creator that he asked for instruction in prayer, to whom John’s disciples also used to pray. But, inasmuch as John had introduced some new order of prayer, this disciple had not improperly presumed to think that he ought also to ask of Christ whether they too must not (according to some special rule of their Master) pray, not indeed to another god, but in another manner. Christ accordingly would not have taught His disciple prayer before He had given him the knowledge of God Himself. Therefore what He actually taught was prayer to Him whom the disciple had already known. In short, you may discover in the import of the prayer what God is addressed therein. To whom can I say, “Father?” To him who had nothing to do with making me, from whom I do not derive my origin? Or to Him, who, by making and fashioning me, became my parent? Of whom can I ask for His Holy Spirit? Of him who gives not even the mundane spirit; or of Him “who maketh His angels spirits,” and whose Spirit it was which in the beginning hovered upon the waters. Whose kingdom shall I wish to come—his, of whom I never heard as the king of glory; or His, in whose hand are even the hearts of kings? Who shall give me my daily bread? Shall it be he who produces for me not a grain of millet-seed; or He who even from heaven gave to His people day by day the bread of angels? Who shall forgive me my trespasses? He who, by refusing to judge them, does not retain them; or He who, unless He forgives them, will retain them, even to His judgment? Who shall suffer us not to be led into temptation? He before whom the tempter will never be able to tremble; or He who from the beginning has beforehand condemned the angel tempter? If any one, with such a form, invokes another god and not the Creator, he does not pray; he only blasphemes. In like manner, from whom must I ask that I may receive? Of whom seek, that I may find? To whom knock, that it may be opened to me? Who has to give to him that asks, but He to whom all things belong, and whose am I also that am the asker? What, however, have I lost before that other god, that I should seek of him and find it. If it be wisdom and prudence, it is the Creator who has hidden them. Shall I resort to him, then, in quest of them? If it be health and life, they are at the disposal of the Creator. Nor must anything be sought and found anywhere else than there, where it is kept in secret that it may come to light. So, again, at no other door will I knock than at that out of which my privilege has reached me. In fine, if to receive, and to find, and to be admitted, is the fruit of labour and earnestness to him who has asked, and sought, and knocked, understand that these duties have been enjoined, and results promised, by the Creator. As for that most excellent god of yours, coming as he professes gratuitously to help man, who was not his (creature), he could not have imposed upon him any labour, or (endowed him with) any earnestness. For he would by this time cease to be the most excellent god, were he not spontaneously to give to every one who does not ask, and permit every one who seeks not to find, and open to every one who does not knock. The Creator, on the contrary, was able to proclaim these duties and rewards by Christ, in order that man, who by sinning had offended his God, might toil on (in his probation), and by his perseverance in asking might receive, and in seeking might find, and in knocking might enter. Accordingly, the preceding similitude represents the man who went at night and begged for the loaves, in the light of a friend and not a stranger, and makes him knock at a friend’s house and not at a stranger’s. But even if he has offended, man is more of a friend with the Creator than with the god of Marcion. At His door, therefore, does he knock to whom he had the right of access; whose gate he had found; whom he knew to possess bread; in bed now with His children, whom He had willed to be born. Even though the knocking is late in the day, it is yet the Creator’s time. To Him belongs the latest hour who owns an entire age and the end thereof. As for the new god, however, no one could have knocked at his door late, for he has hardly yet seen the light of morning. It is the Creator, who once shut the door to the Gentiles, which was then knocked at by the Jews, that both rises and gives, if not now to man as a friend, yet not as a stranger, but, as He says, “because of his importunity.” Importunate, however, the recent god could not have permitted any one to be in the short time (since his appearance). Him, therefore, whom you call the Creator recognise also as “Father.” It is even He who knows what His children require. For when they asked for bread, He gave them manna from heaven; and when they wanted flesh, He sent them abundance of quails—not a serpent for a fish, nor for an egg a scorpion. It will, however, appertain to Him not to give evil instead of good, who has both one and the other in His power. Marcion’s god, on the contrary, not having a scorpion, was unable to refuse to give what he did not possess; only He (could do so), who, having a scorpion, yet gives it not. In like manner, it is He who will give the Holy Spirit, at whose command is also the unholy spirit. When He cast out the “demon which was dumb” (and by a cure of this sort verified Isaiah), and having been charged with casting out demons by Beelzebub, He said, “If I by Beelzebub cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out?” By such a question what does He otherwise mean, than that He ejects the spirits by the same power by which their sons also did—that is, by the power of the Creator? For if you suppose the meaning to be, “If I by Beelzebub, etc., by whom your sons?”—as if He would reproach them with having the power of Beelzebub,—you are met at once by the preceding sentence, that “Satan cannot be divided against himself.” So that it was not by Beelzebub that even they were casting out demons, but (as we have said) by the power of the Creator; and that He might make this understood, He adds: “But if I with the finger of God cast out demons, is not the kingdom of God come near unto you?” For the magicians who stood before Pharaoh and resisted Moses called the power of the Creator “the finger of God.” It was the finger of God, because it was a sign that even a thing of weakness was yet abundant in strength. This Christ also showed, when, recalling to notice (and not obliterating) those ancient wonders which were really His own, He said that the power of God must be understood to be the finger of none other God than Him, under whom it had received this appellation. His kingdom, therefore, was come near to them, whose power was called His “finger.” Well, therefore, did He connect with the parable of “the strong man armed,” whom “a stronger man still overcame,” the prince of the demons, whom He had already called Beelzebub and Satan; signifying that it was he who was overcome by the finger of God, and not that the Creator had been subdued by another god. Besides, how could His kingdom be still standing, with its boundaries, and laws, and functions, whom, even if the whole world were left entire to Him, Marcion’s god could possibly seem to have overcome as “the stronger than He,” if it were not in consequence of His law that even Marcionites were constantly dying, by returning in their dissolution to the ground, and were so often admonished by even a scorpion, that the Creator had by no means been overcome? “A (certain) mother of the company exclaims, Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the paps which Thou hast sucked;’ but the Lord said, Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.’“ Now He had in precisely similar terms rejected His mother or His brethren, whilst preferring those who heard and obeyed God. His mother, however, was not here present with Him. On that former occasion, therefore, He had not denied that He was her son by birth. On hearing this (salutation) the second time, He the second time transferred, as He had done before, the “blessedness” to His disciples from the womb and the paps of His mother, from whom, however, unless He had in her (a real mother) He could not have transferred it.

Chapter XXVII

Christ’s Reprehension of the Pharisees Seeking a Sign. His Censure of Their Love of Outward Show Rather Than Inward Holiness. Scripture Abounds with Admonitions of a Similar Purport. Proofs of His Mission from the Creator

I prefer elsewhere refuting the faults which the Marcionites find in the Creator. It is here enough that they are also found in Christ. Behold how unequal, inconsistent, and capricious he is! Teaching one thing and doing another, he enjoins “giving to every one that seeks;” and yet he himself refuses to give to those “who seek a sign.” For a vast age he hides his own light from men, and yet says that a candle must not be hidden, but affirms that it ought to be set upon a candlestick, that it may give light to all. He forbids cursing again, and cursing much more of course; and yet he heaps his woe upon the Pharisees and doctors of the law. Who so closely resembles my God as His own Christ? We have often already laid it down for certain, that He could not have been branded as the destroyer of the law if He had promulged another god. Therefore even the Pharisee, who invited Him to dinner in the passage before us, expressed some surprise in His presence that He had not washed before He sat down to meat, in accordance with the law, since it was the God of the law that He was proclaiming. Jesus also interpreted the law to him when He told him that they “made clean the outside of the cup and the platter, whereas their inward part was full of ravening and wickedness.” This He said, to signify that by the cleansing of vessels was to be understood before God the purification of men, inasmuch as it was about a man, and not about an unwashed vessel, that even this Pharisee had been treating in His presence. He therefore said: “You wash the outside of the cup,” that is, the flesh, “but you do not cleanse your inside part,” that is, the soul; adding: “Did not He that made the outside,” that is, the flesh, “also make the inward part,” that is to say, the soul?—by which assertion He expressly declared that to the same God belongs the cleansing of a man’s external and internal nature, both alike being in the power of Him who prefers mercy not only to man’s washing, but even to sacrifice. For He subjoins the command: “Give what ye possess as alms, and all things shall be clean unto you.” Even if another god could have enjoined mercy, he could not have done so previous to his becoming known. Furthermore, it is in this passage evident that they were not reproved concerning their God, but concerning a point of His instruction to them, when He prescribed to them figuratively the cleansing of their vessels, but really the works of merciful dispositions. In like manner, He upbraids them for tithing paltry herbs, but at the same time “passing over hospitality and the love of God.” The vocation and the love of what God, but Him by whose law of tithes they used to offer their rue and mint? For the whole point of the rebuke lay in this, that they cared about small matters in His service of course, to whom they failed to exhibit their weightier duties when He commanded them: “Thou shalt love with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, the Lord thy God, who hath called thee out of Egypt.” Besides, time enough had not yet passed to admit of Christ’s requiring so premature—nay, as yet so distasteful—a love towards a new and recent, not to say a hardly yet developed, deity. When, again, He upbraids those who caught at the uppermost places and the honour of public salutations, He only follows out the Creator’s course, who calls ambitious persons of this character “rulers of Sodom,” who forbids us “to put confidence even in princes,” and pronounces him to be altogether wretched who places his confidence in man. But whoever aims at high position, because he would glory in the officious attentions of other people, (in every such case,) inasmuch as He forbade such attentions (in the shape) of placing hope and confidence in man, He at the same time censured all who were ambitious of high positions. He also inveighs against the doctors of the law themselves, because they were “lading men with burdens grievous to be borne, which they did not venture to touch with even a finger of their own;” but not as if He made a mock of the burdens of the law with any feeling of detestation towards it. For how could He have felt aversion to the law, who used with so much earnestness to upbraid them for passing over its weightier matters, alms—giving, hospitality, and the love of God? Nor, indeed, was it only these great things (which He recognized), but even the tithes of rue and the cleansing of cups. But, in truth, He would rather have deemed them excusable for being unable to carry burdens which could not be borne. What, then, are the burdens which He censures? None but those which they were accumulating of their own accord, when they taught for commandments the doctrines of men; for the sake of private advantage joining house to house, so as to deprive their neighbour of his own; cajoling the people, loving gifts, pursuing rewards, robbing the poor of the rights of judgment, that they might have the widow for a prey and the fatherless for a spoil. Of these Isaiah also says, “Woe unto them that are strong in Jerusalem!” and again, “They that demand you shall rule over you.” And who did this more than the lawyers? Now, if these offended Christ, it was as belonging to Him that they offended Him. He would have aimed no blow at the teachers of an alien law. But why is a “woe” pronounced against them for “building the sepulchres of the prophets whom their fathers had killed?” They rather deserved praise, because by such an act of piety they seemed to show that they did not allow the deeds of their fathers. Was it not because (Christ) was jealous of such a disposition as the Marcionites denounce, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the fourth generation? What “key,” indeed, was it which these lawyers had, but the interpretation of the law? Into the perception of this they neither entered themselves, even because they did not believe (for “unless ye believe, ye shall not understand”); nor did they permit others to enter, because they preferred to teach them for commandments even the doctrines of men. When, therefore, He reproached those who did not themselves enter in, and also shut the door against others, must He be regarded as a disparager of the law, or as a supporter of it? If a disparager, those who were hindering the law ought to have been pleased; if a supporter, He is no longer an enemy of the law. But all these imprecations He uttered in order to tarnish the Creator as a cruel Being, against whom such as offended were destined to have a “woe.” And who would not rather have feared to provoke a cruel Being, by withdrawing allegiance from Him? Therefore the more He represented the Creator to be an object of fear, the more earnestly would He teach that He ought to be served. Thus would it behove the Creator’s Christ to act.

Chapter XXVIII

Examples from the Old Testament, Balaam, Moses, and Hezekiah, to Show How Completely the Instruction and Conduct of Christ Are in Keeping with the Will and Purpose of the Creator

Justly, therefore, was the hypocrisy of the Pharisees displeasing to Him, loving God as they did with their lips, but not with their heart. “Beware,” He says to the disciples, “of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy,” not the proclamation of the Creator. The Son hates those who refused obedience to the Father; nor does He wish His disciples to show such a disposition towards Him—not (let it be observed) towards another god, against whom such hypocrisy indeed might have been admissible, as that which He wished to guard His disciples against. It is the example of the Pharisees which He forbids. It was in respect of Him against whom the Pharisees were sinning that (Christ) now forbade His disciples to offend. Since, then, He had censured their hypocrisy, which covered the secrets of the heart, and obscured with superficial offices the mysteries of unbelief, because (while holding the key of knowledge) it would neither enter in itself, nor permit others to enter in, He therefore adds, “There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed; neither hid, which shall not be known,” in order that no one should suppose that He was attempting the revelation and the recognition of an hitherto unknown and hidden god. When He remarks also on their murmurs and taunts, in saying of Him, “This man casteth out devils only through Beelzebub,” He means that all these imputations would come forth to the light of day, and be in the mouths of men in consequence of the promulgation of the Gospel. He then turns to His disciples with these words, “I say unto you, my friends, Be not afraid of them which can only kill the body, and after that have no more power over you.” They will, however, find Isaiah had already said, “See how the just man is taken away, and no man layeth it to heart.” “But I will show you whom ye shall fear: fear Him who, after He hath killed, hath power to cast into hell” (meaning, of course, the Creator); “yea, I say unto you, fear Him.” Now, it would here be enough for my purpose that He forbids offence being given to Him whom He orders to be feared; and that He orders Him to be respected whom He forbids to be offended; and that He who gives these commands belongs to that very God for whom He procures this fear, this absence of offence, and this respect. But this conclusion I can draw also from the following words: “For I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before God.” Now they who shall confess Christ will have to be slain before men, but they will have nothing more to suffer after they have been put to death by them. These therefore will be they whom He forewarns above not to be afraid of being only killed; and this forewarning He offers, in order that He might subjoin a clause on the necessity of confessing Him: “Every one that denieth me before men shall be denied before God”—by Him, of course, who would have confessed him, if he had only confessed God. Now, He who will confess the confessor is the very same God who will also deny the denier of Himself. Again, if it is the confessor who will have nothing to fear after his violent death, it is the denier to whom everything will become fearful after his natural death. Since, therefore, that which will have to be feared after death, even the punishment of hell, belongs to the Creator, the denier, too, belongs to the Creator. As with the denier, however, so with the confessor: if he should deny God, he will plainly have to suffer from God, although from men he had nothing more to suffer after they had put him to death. And so Christ is the Creator’s, because He shows that all those who deny Him ought to fear the Creator’s hell. After deterring His disciples from denial of Himself, He adds an admonition to fear blasphemy: “Whosoever shall speak against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him.” Now, if both the remission and the retention of sin savour of a judicial God, the Holy Ghost, who is not to be blasphemed, will belong to Him, who will not forgive the blasphemy; just as He who, in the preceding passage, was not to be denied, belonged to, Him who would, after He had killed, also cast into hell. Now, since it is Christ who averts blasphemy from the Creator, I am at a loss to know in what manner His adversary could have come. Else, if by these sayings He throws a black cloud of censure over the severity of Him who will not forgive blasphemy and will kill even to hell, it follows that the very spirit of that rival god may be blasphemed with impunity, and his Christ denied; and that there is no difference, in fact, between worshipping and despising him; but that, as there is no punishment for the contempt, so there is no reward for the worship, which men need expect. When “brought before magistrates,” and examined, He forbids them “to take thought how they shall answer;” “for,” says He, “the Holy Ghost shall teach you in that very hour what ye ought to say.” If such an injunction as this comes from the Creator, the precept will only be His by whom an example was previously given. The prophet Balaam, in Numbers, when sent forth by king Balak to curse Israel, with whom he was commencing war, was at the same moment filled with the Spirit. Instead of the curse which he was come to pronounce, he uttered the blessing which the Spirit at that very hour inspired him with; having previously declared to the king’s messengers, and then to the king himself, that he could only speak forth that which God should put into his mouth. The novel doctrines of the new Christ are such as the Creator’s servants initiated long before! But see how clear a difference there is between the example of Moses and of Christ. Moses voluntarily interferes with brothers who were quarrelling, and chides the offender: “Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?” He is, however, rejected by him: “Who made thee a prince or a judge over us?” Christ, on the contrary, when requested by a certain man to compose a strife between him and his brother about dividing an inheritance, refused His assistance, although in so honest a cause. Well, then, my Moses is better than your Christ, aiming as he did at the peace of brethren, and obviating their wrong. But of course the case must be different with Christ, for he is the Christ of the simply good and non-judicial god. “Who,” says he, “made me a judge over you?” No other word of excuse was he able to find, without using that with which the wicked, man and impious brother had rejected the defender of probity and piety! In short, he approved of the excuse, although a bad one, by his use of it; and of the act, although a bad one, by his refusal to make peace between brothers. Or rather, would He not show His resentment at the rejection of Moses with such a word? And therefore did He not wish in a similar case of contentious brothers, to confound them with the recollection of so harsh a word? Clearly so. For He had Himself been present in Moses, who heard such a rejection—even He, the Spirit of the Creator. I think that we have already, in another passage, sufficiently shown that the glory of riches is condemned by our God, “who putteth down the mighty from their throne, and exalts the poor from the dunghill.” From Him, therefore, will proceed the parable of the rich man, who flattered himself about the increase of his fields, and to Whom God said: “Thou fool, this night shall they require thy soul of thee; then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?” It was just in the like manner that the king Hezekiah heard from Isaiah the sad doom of his kingdom, when he gloried, before the envoys of Babylon, in his treasures and the deposits of his precious things.

Chapter XXIX

Parallels from the Prophets to Illustrate Christ’s Teaching in the Rest of This Chapter of St. Luke. The Sterner Attributes of Christ, in His Judicial Capacity, Show Him to Have Come from the Creator. Incidental Rebukes of Marcion’s Doctrine of Celibacy, and of His Altering of the Text of the Gospel

Who would be unwilling that we should distress ourselves about sustenance for our life, or clothing for our body, but He who has provided these things already for man; and who, therefore, while distributing them to us, prohibits all anxiety respecting them as an outrage against his liberality?—who has adapted the nature of “life” itself to a condition “better than meat,” and has fashioned the material of “the body,” so as to make it “more than raiment;” whose “ravens, too, neither sow nor reap, nor gather into storehouses, and are yet fed” by Himself; whose “lilies and grass also toil not, nor spin, and yet are clothed” by Him; whose “Solomon, moreover, was transcendent in glory, and yet was not arrayed like” the humble flower. Besides, nothing can be more abrupt than that one God should be distributing His bounty, while the other should bid us take no thought about (so kindly a) distribution—and that, too, with the intention of derogating (from his liberality). Whether, indeed, it is as depreciating the Creator that he does not wish such trifles to be thought of, concerning which neither the crows nor the lilies labour, because, forsooth, they come spontaneously to hand by reason of their very worthlessness, will appear a little further on. Meanwhile, how is it that He chides them as being “of little faith?” What faith? Does He mean that faith which they were as yet unable to manifest perfectly in a god who has hardly yet revealed, and whom they were in process of learning as well as they could; or that faith which they for this express reason owed to the Creator, because they believed that He was of His own will supplying these wants of the human race, and therefore took no thought about them? Now, when He adds, “For all these things do the nations of the world seek after,” even by their not believing in God as the Creator and Giver of all things, since He was unwilling that they should be like these nations, He therefore upbraided them as being defective of faith in the same God, in whom He remarked that the Gentiles were quite wanting in faith. When He further adds, “But your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things,” I would first ask, what Father Christ would have to be here understood? If He points to their own Creator, He also affirms Him to be good, who knows what His children have need of; but if He refers to that other god, how does he know that food and raiment are necessary to man, seeing that he has made no such provision for him? For if he had known the want, he would have made the provision. If, however, he knows what things man has need of, and yet has failed to supply them, he is in the failure guilty of either malignity or weakness. But when he confessed that these things are necessary to man, he really affirmed that they are good. For nothing that is evil is necessary. So that he will not be any longer a depreciator of the works and the indulgences of the Creator, that I may here complete the answer which I deferred giving above. Again, if it is another god who has foreseen man’s wants, and is supplying them, how is it that Marcion’s Christ himself promises them? Is he liberal with another’s property? “Seek ye,” says he, “the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you”—by himself, of course. But if by himself, what sort of being is he, who shall bestow the things of another? If by the Creator, whose all things are, then who is he that promises what belongs to another? If these things are “additions” to the kingdom, they must be placed in the second rank; and the second rank belongs to Him to whom the first also does; His are the food and raiment, whose is the kingdom. Thus to the Creator belongs the entire promise, the full reality of its parables, the perfect equalization of its similitudes; for these have respect to none other than Him to whom they have a parity of relation in every point. We are servants because we have a Lord in our God. We ought “to have our loins girded:” in other words, we are to be free from the embarrassments of a perplexed and much occupied life; “to have our lights burning,” that is, our minds kindled by faith, and resplendent with the works of truth. And thus “to wait for our Lord,” that is, Christ. Whence “returning?” If “from the wedding,” He is the Christ of the Creator, for the wedding is His. If He is not the Creator’s, not even Marcion himself would have gone to the wedding, although invited, for in his god he discovers one who hates the nuptial bed. The parable would therefore have failed in the person of the Lord, if He were not a Being to whom a wedding is consistent. In the next parable also he makes a flagrant mistake, when he assigns to the person of the Creator that “thief, whose hour, if the father of the family had only known, he would not have suffered his house to be broken through.” How can the Creator wear in any way the aspect of a thief, Lord as He is of all mankind? No one pilfers or plunders his own property, but he rather acts the part of one who swoops down on the things of another, and alienates man from his Lord. Again, when He indicates to us that the devil is “the thief,” whose hour at the very beginning of the world, if man had known, he would never have been broken in upon by him, He warns us “to be ready,” for this reason, because “we know not the hour when the Son of man shall come”—not as if He were Himself the thief, but rather as being the judge of those who prepared not themselves, and used no precaution against the thief. Since, then, He is the Son of man, I hold Him to be the Judge, and in the Judge I claim the Creator. If then in this passage he displays the Creator’s Christ under the title “Son of man,” that he may give us some presage of the thief, of the period of whose coming we are ignorant, you still have it ruled above, that no one is the thief of his own property; besides which, there is our principle also unimpaired—that in as far as He insists on the Creator as an object of fear, in so far does He belong to the Creator, and does the Creator’s work. When, therefore, Peter asked whether He had spoken the parable “unto them, or even to all,” He sets forth for them, and for all who should bear rule in the churches, the similitude of stewards. That steward who should treat his fellow-servants well in his Lord’s absence, would on his return be set as ruler over all his property; but he who should act otherwise should be severed, and have his portion with the unbelievers, when his lord should return on the day when he looked not for him, at the hour when he was not aware—even that Son of man, the Creator’s Christ, not a thief, but a Judge. He accordingly, in this passage, either presents to us the Lord as a Judge, and instructs us in His character, or else as the simply good god; if the latter, he now also affirms his judicial attribute, although the heretic refuses to admit it. For an attempt is made to modify this sense when it is applied to his god,—as if it were an act of serenity and mildness simply to sever the man off, and to assign him a portion with the unbelievers, under the idea that he was not summoned (before the judge), but only returned to his own state! As if this very process did not imply a judicial act! What folly! What will be the end of the severed ones? Will it not be the forfeiture of salvation, since their separation will be from those who shall attain salvation? What, again, will be the condition of the unbelievers? Will it not be damnation? Else, if these severed and unfaithful ones shall have nothing to suffer, there will, on the other hand, be nothing for the accepted and the believers to obtain. If, however, the accepted and the believers shall attain salvation, it must needs be that the rejected and the unbelieving should incur the opposite issue, even the loss of salvation. Now here is a judgment, and He who holds it out before us belongs to the Creator. Whom else than the God of retribution can I understand by Him who shall “beat His servants with stripes,” either “few or many,” and shall exact from them what He had committed to them? Whom is it suitable for me to obey, but Him who remunerates? Your Christ proclaims, “I am come to send fire on the earth.” That most lenient being, the lord who has no hell, not long before had restrained his disciples from demanding fire on the churlish village. Whereas He burnt up Sodom and Gomorrah with a tempest of fire. Of Him the psalmist sang, “A fire shall go out before Him, and burn up His enemies round about.” By Hoses He uttered the threat, “I will send a fire upon the cities of Judah;” and by Isaiah, “A fire has been kindled in mine anger.” He cannot lie. If it is not He who uttered His voice out of even the burning bush, it can be of no importance what fire you insist upon being understood. Even if it be but figurative fire, yet, from the very fact that he takes from my element illustrations for His own sense, He is mine, because He uses what is mine. The similitude of fire must belong to Him who owns the reality thereof. But He will Himself best explain the quality of that fire which He mentioned, when He goes on to say, “Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division.” It is written “a sword,” but Marcion makes an emendation of the word, just as if a division were not the work of the sword. He, therefore, who refused to give peace, intended also the fire of destruction. As is the combat, so is the burning. As is the sword, so is the flame. Neither is suitable for its lord. He says at last, “The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against the daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against the mother-in-law.” Since this battle among the relatives was sung by the prophet’s trumpet in the very words, I fear that Micah must have predicted it to Marcion’s Christ! On this account He pronounced them “hypocrites,” because they could “discern the face of the sky and the earth, but could not distinguish this time,” when of course He ought to have been recognised, fulfilling (as he was) all things which had been predicted concerning them, and teaching them so. But then who could know the times of him of whom he had no evidence to prove his existence? Justly also does He upbraid them for “not even of themselves judging what is right.” Of old does He command by Zechariah, “Execute the judgment of truth and peace;” by Jeremiah, “Execute judgment and righteousness;” by Isaiah, “Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow,” charging it as a fault upon the vine of Sorech, that when “He looked for righteousness therefrom, there was only a cry” (of oppression). The same God who had taught them to act as He commanded them, was now requiring that they should act of their own accord. He who had sown the precept, was now pressing to an abundant harvest from it. But how absurd, that he should now be commanding them to judge righteously, who was destroying God the righteous Judge! For the Judge, who commits to prison, and allows no release out of it without the payment of “the very last mite,” they treat of in the person of the Creator, with the view of disparaging Him. Which cavil, however, I deem it necessary to meet with the same answer. For as often as the Creator’s severity is paraded before us, so often is Christ (shown to be) His, to whom He urges submission by the motive of fear.

Chapter XXX

Parables of the Mustard-Seed, and of the Leaven. Transition to the Solemn Exclusion Which Will Ensue When the Master of the House Has Shut the Door. This Judicial Exclusion Will Be Administered by Christ, Who is Shown Thereby to Possess the Attribute of the Creator

When the question was again raised concerning a cure performed on the Sabbath-day, how did He discuss it: “Doth not each of you on the Sabbath loose his ass or his ox from the stall, and lead him away to watering?” When, therefore, He did a work according to the condition prescribed by the law, He affirmed, instead of breaking, the law, which commanded that no work should be done, except what might be done for any living being; and if for any one, then how much more for a human life? In the case of the parables, it is allowed that I everywhere require a congruity. “The kingdom of God,” says He, “is like a grain of mustard-seed which a man took and cast into his garden.” Who must be understood as meant by the man? Surely Christ, because (although Marcion’s) he was called “the Son of man.” He received from the Father the seed of the kingdom, that is, the word of the gospel, and sowed it in his garden—in the world, of course—in man at the present day, for instance. Now, whereas it is said, “in his garden,” but neither the world nor man is his property, but the Creator’s, therefore He who sowed seed in His own ground is shown to be the Creator. Else, if, to evade this snare, they should choose to transfer the person of the man from Christ to any person who receives the seed of the kingdom and sows it in the garden of his own heart, not even this meaning would suit any other than the Creator. For how happens it, if the kingdom belong to the most lenient god, that it is closely followed up by a fervent judgment, the severity of which brings weeping? With regard, indeed, to the following similitude, I have my fears lest it should somehow presage the kingdom of the rival god! For He compared it, not to the unleavened bread which the Creator is more familiar with, but to leaven. Now this is a capital conjecture for men who are begging for arguments. I must, however, on my side, dispel one fond conceit by another, and contend with even leaven is suitable for the kingdom of the Creator, because after it comes the oven, or, if you please, the furnace of hell. How often has He already displayed Himself as a Judge, and in the Judge the Creator? How often, indeed, has He repelled, and in the repulse condemned? In the present passage, for instance, He says, “When once the master of the house is risen up;” but in what sense except that in which Isaiah said, “When He ariseth to shake terribly the earth?” “And hath shut to the door,” thereby shutting out the wicked, of course; and when these knock, He will answer, “I know you not whence ye are;” and when they recount how “they have eaten and drunk in His presence,” He will further say to them, “Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” But where? Outside, no doubt, when they shall have been excluded with the door shut on them by Him. There will therefore be punishment inflicted by Him who excludes for punishment, when they shall behold the righteous entering the kingdom of God, but themselves detained without. By whom detained outside? If by the Creator, who shall be within receiving the righteous into the kingdom? The good God. What, therefore, is the Creator about, that He should detain outside for punishment those whom His adversary shut out, when He ought rather to have kindly received them, if they must come into His hands, for the greater irritation of His rival? But when about to exclude the wicked, he must, of course, either be aware that the Creator would detain them for punishment, or not be aware. Consequently either the wicked will be detained by the Creator against the will of the excluder, in which case he will be inferior to the Creator, submitting to Him unwillingly; or else, if the process is carried out with his will, then he himself has judicially determined its execution; and then he who is the very originator of the Creator’s infamy, will not prove to be one whit better than the Creator. Now, if these ideas be incompatible with reason—of one being supposed to punish, and the other to liberate—then to one only power will appertain both the judgment and the kingdom and while they both belong to one, He who executeth judgment can be none else than the Christ of the Creator.

Chapter XXXI

Christ’s Advice to Invite the Poor in Accordance with Isaiah. The Parable of the Great Supper a Pictorial Sketch of the Creator’s Own Dispensations of Mercy and Grace. The Rejections of the Invitation Paralleled by Quotations from the Old Testament. Marcion’s Christ Could Not Fulfil the Conditions Indicated in This Parable. The Absurdity of the Marcionite Interpretation

What kind of persons does He bid should be invited to a dinner or a supper? Precisely such as he had pointed out by Isaiah: “Deal thy bread to the hungry man; and the beggars—even such as have no home—bring in to thine house,” because, no doubt, they are “unable to recompense” your act of humanity. Now, since Christ forbids the recompense to be expected now, but promises it “at the resurrection,” this is the very plan of the Creator, who dislikes those who love gifts and follow after reward. Consider also to which deity is better suited the parable of him who issued invitations: “A certain man made a great supper, and bade many.” The preparation for the supper is no doubt a figure of the abundant provision of eternal life. I first remark, that strangers, and persons unconnected by ties of relationship, are not usually invited to a supper; but that members of the household and family are more frequently the favoured guests. To the Creator, then, it belonged to give the invitation, to whom also appertained those who were to be invited—whether considered as men, through their descent from Adam, or as Jews, by reason of their fathers; not to him who possessed no claim to them either by nature or prerogative. My next remark is, if He issues the invitations who has prepared the supper, then, in this sense the supper is the Creator’s, who sent to warn the guests. These had been indeed previously invited by the fathers, but were to be admonished by the prophets. It certainly is not the feast of him who never sent a messenger to warn—who never did a thing before towards issuing an invitation, but came down himself on a sudden—only then beginning to be known, when already giving his invitation; only then inviting, when already compelling to his banquet; appointing one and the same hour both for the supper and the invitation. But when invited, they excuse themselves. And fairly enough, if the invitation came from the other god, because it was so sudden; if, however, the excuse was not a fair one, then the invitation was not a sudden one. Now, if the invitation was not a sudden one, it must have been given by the Creator—even by Him of old time, whose call they had at last refused. They first refused it when they said to Aaron, “Make us gods, which shall go before us;” and again, afterwards, when “they heard indeed with the ear, but did not understand” their calling of God. In a manner most germane to this parable, He said by Jeremiah: “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people; and ye shall walk in all my ways, which I have commanded you.” This is the invitation of God. “But,” says He, “they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear.” This is the refusal of the people. “They departed, and walked every one in the imagination of their evil heart.” “I have bought a field—and I have bought some oxen—and I have married a wife.” And still He urges them: “I have sent unto you all my servants the prophets, rising early even before daylight.” The Holy Spirit is here meant, the admonisher of the guests. “Yet my people hearkened not unto me, nor inclined their ear, but hardened their neck.” This was reported to the Master of the family. Then He was moved (He did well to be moved; for, as Marcion denies emotion to his god, He must be therefore my God), and commanded them to invite out of “the streets and lanes of the city.” Let us see whether this is not the same in purport as His words by Jeremiah: “Have I been a wilderness to the house of Israel, or a land left uncultivated?” That is to say: “Then have I none whom I may call to me; have I no place whence I may bring them?” “Since my people have said, We will come no more unto thee.” Therefore He sent out to call others, but from the same city. My third remark is this, that although the place abounded with people, He yet commanded that they gather men from the highways and the hedges. In other words, we are now gathered out of the Gentile strangers; with that jealous resentment, no doubt, which He expressed in Deuteronomy: “I will hide my face from them, and I will show them what shall happen in the last days (how that others shall possess their place); for they are a froward generation, children in whom is no faith. They have moved me to jealousy by that which is no god, and they have provoked me to anger with their idols; and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people: I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation”—even with us, whose hope the Jews still entertain. But this hope the Lord says they should not realize; “Sion being left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers,” since the nation rejected the latest invitation to Christ. (Now, I ask,) after going through all this course of the Creator’s dispensation and prophecies, what there is in it which can possibly be assigned to him who has done all his work at one hasty stroke, and possesses neither the Creator’s course nor His dispensation in harmony with the parable? Or, again in what will consist his first invitation, and what his admonition at the second stage? Some at first would surely decline; others afterwards must have accepted.” But now he comes to invite both parties promiscuously out of the city, out of the hedges, contrary to the drift of the parable. It is impossible for him now to condemn as scorners of his invitation those whom he has never yet invited, and whom he is approaching with so much earnestness. If, however, he condemns them beforehand as about to reject his call, then beforehand he also predicts the election of the Gentiles in their stead. Certainly he means to come the second time for the very purpose of preaching to the heathen. But even if he does mean to come again, I imagine it will not be with the intention of any longer inviting guests, but of giving to them their places. Meanwhile, you who interpret the call to this supper as an invitation to a heavenly banquet of spiritual satiety and pleasure, must remember that the earthly promises also of wine and oil and corn, and even of the city, are equally employed by the Creator as figures of spiritual things.

Chapter XXXII

A Sort of Sorites, as the Logicians Call It, to Show that the Parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Drachma Have No Suitable Application to the Christ of Marcion

Who sought after the lost sheep and the lost piece of silver? Was it not the loser? But who was the loser? Was it not he who once possessed them? Who, then, was that? Was it not he to whom they belonged? Since, then, man is the property of none other than the Creator, He possessed Him who owned him; He lost him who once possessed him; He sought him who lost him; He found him who sought him; He rejoiced who found him. Therefore the purport of neither parable has anything whatever to do with him to whom belongs neither the sheep nor the piece of silver, that is to say, man. For he lost him not, because he possessed him not; and he sought him not, because he lost him not; and he found him not, because he sought him not; and he rejoiced not, because he found him not. Therefore, to rejoice over the sinner’s repentance—that is, at the recovery of lost man—is the attribute of Him who long ago professed that He would rather that the sinner should repent and not die.

Chapter XXXIII

The Marcionite Interpretation of God and Mammon Refuted. The Prophets Justify Christ’s Admonition Against Covetousness and Pride. John Baptist the Link Between the Old and the New Dispensations of the Creator. So Said Christ—But So Also Had Isaiah Said Long Before. One Only God, the Creator, by His Own Will Changed the Dispensations. No New God Had a Hand in the Change

What the two masters are who, He says, cannot be served, on the ground that while one is pleased the other must needs be displeased, He Himself makes clear, when He mentions God and mammon. Then, if you have no interpreter by you, you may learn again from Himself what He would have understood by mammon. For when advising us to provide for ourselves the help of friends in worldly affairs, after the example of that steward who, when removed from his office, relieves his lord’s debtors by lessening their debts with a view to their recompensing him with their help, He said, “And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,” that is to say, of money, even as the steward had done. Now we are all of us aware that money is the instigator of unrighteousness, and the lord of the whole world. Therefore, when he saw the covetousness of the Pharisees doing servile worship to it, He hurled this sentence against them, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” Then the Pharisees, who were covetous of riches, derided Him, when they understood that by mammon He meant money. Let no one think that under the word mammon the Creator was meant, and that Christ called them off from the service of the Creator. What folly! Rather learn therefrom that one God was pointed out by Christ. For they were two masters whom He named, God and mammon—the Creator and money. You cannot indeed serve God—Him, of course whom they seemed to serve—and mammon to whom they preferred to devote themselves. If, however, he was giving himself out as another god, it would not be two masters, but three, that he had pointed out. For the Creator was a master, and much more of a master, to be sure, than mammon, and more to be adored, as being more truly our Master. Now, how was it likely that He who had called mammon a master, and had associated him with God, should say nothing of Him who was really the Master of even these, that is, the Creator? Or else, by this silence respecting Him did He concede that service might be rendered to Him, since it was to Himself alone and to mammon that He said service could not be (simultaneously) rendered? When, therefore, He lays down the position that God is one, since He would have been sure to mention the Creator if He were Himself a rival to Him, He did (virtually) name the Creator, when He refrained from insisting” that He was Master alone, without a rival god. Accordingly, this will throw light upon the sense in which it was said, “If ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?” “In the unrighteous mammon,” that is to say, in unrighteous riches, not in the Creator; for even Marcion allows Him to be righteous: “And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who will give to you that which is mine?” For whatever is unrighteous ought to be foreign to the servants of God. But in what way was the Creator foreign to the Pharisees, seeing that He was the proper God of the Jewish nation? Forasmuch then as the words, “Who will entrust to you the truer riches?” and, “Who will give you that which is mine?” are only suitable to the Creator and not to mammon, He could not have uttered them as alien to the Creator, and in the interest of the rival god. He could only seem to have spoken them in this sense, if, when remarking their unfaithfulness to the Creator and not to mammon, He had drawn some distinctions between the Creator (in his manner of mentioning Him) and the rival god—how that the latter would not commit his own truth to those who were unfaithful to the Creator. How then can he possibly seem to belong to another god, if He be not set forth, with the express intention of being separated from the very thing which is in question. But when the Pharisees “justified themselves before men,” and placed their hope of reward in man, He censured them in the sense in which the prophet Jeremiah said, “Cursed is the man that trusteth in man.” Since the prophet went on to say, “But the Lord knoweth your hearts,” he magnified the power of that God who declared Himself to be as a lamp, “searching the reins and the heart.” When He strikes at pride in the words: “That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God,” He recalls Isaiah: “For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is arrogant and lifted up, and they shall be brought low.” I can now make out why Marcion’s god was for so long an age concealed. He was, I suppose, waiting until he had learnt all these things from the Creator. He continued his pupillage up to the time of John, and then proceeded forthwith to announce the kingdom of God, saying: “The law and the prophets were until John; since that time the kingdom of God is proclaimed.” Just as if we also did not recognise in John a certain limit placed between the old dispensation and the new, at which Judaism ceased and Christianity began—without, however, supposing that it was by the power of another god that there came about a cessation of the law and the prophets and the commencement of that gospel in which is the kingdom of God, Christ Himself. For although, as we have shown, the Creator foretold that the old state of things would pass away and a new state would succeed, yet, inasmuch as John is shown to be both the forerunner and the preparer of the ways of that Lord who was to introduce the gospel and publish the kingdom of God, it follows from the very fact that John has come, that Christ must be that very Being who was to follow His harbinger John. So that, if the old course has ceased and the new has begun, with John intervening between them, there will be nothing wonderful in it, because it happens according to the purpose of the Creator; so that you may get a better proof for the kingdom of God from any quarter, however anomalous, than from the conceit that the law and the prophets ended in John, and a new state of things began after him. “More easily, therefore, may heaven and earth pass away—as also the law and the prophets—than that one tittle of the Lord’s words should fail.” “For,” as says Isaiah: “the word of our God shall stand for ever.” Since even then by Isaiah it was Christ, the Word and Spirit of the Creator, who prophetically described John as “the voice of one crying in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord,” and as about to come for the purpose of terminating thenceforth the course of the law and the prophets; by their fulfilment and not their extinction, and in order that the kingdom of God might be announced by Christ, He therefore purposely added the assurance that the elements would more easily pass away than His words fail; affirming, as He did, the further fact, that what He had said concerning John had not fallen to the ground.

Chapter XXXIV

Moses, Allowing Divorce, and Christ Prohibiting It, Explained. John Baptist and Herod. Marcion’s Attempt to Discover an Antithesis in the Parable of the Rich Man and the Poor Man in Hades Confuted. The Creator’s Appointment Manifested in Both States

But Christ prohibits divorce, saying, “Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery; and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband, also committeth adultery.” In order to forbid divorce, He makes it unlawful to marry a woman that has been put away. Moses, however, permitted repudiation in Deuteronomy: “When a man hath taken a wife, and hath lived with her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found unchastity in her; then let him write her a bill of divorcement and give it in her hand, and send her away out of his house.” You see, therefore, that there is a difference between the law and the gospel—between Moses and Christ? To be sure there is! But then you have rejected that other gospel which witnesses to the same verity and the same Christ. There, while prohibiting divorce, He has given us a solution of this special question respecting it: “Moses,” says He, “because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to give a bill of divorcement; but from the beginning it was not so”—for this reason, indeed, because He who had “made them male and female” had likewise said, “They twain shall become one flesh; what therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” Now, by this answer of His (to the Pharisees), He both sanctioned the provision of Moses, who was His own (servant), and restored to its primitive purpose the institution of the Creator, whose Christ He was. Since, however, you are to be refuted out of the Scriptures which you have received, I will meet you on your own ground, as if your Christ were mine. When, therefore, He prohibited divorce, and yet at the same time represented the Father, even Him who united male and female, must He not have rather exculpated than abolished the enactment of Moses? But, observe, if this Christ be yours when he teaches contrary to Moses and the Creator, on the same principle must He be mine if I can show that His teaching is not contrary to them. I maintain, then, that there was a condition in the prohibition which He now made of divorce; the case supposed being, that a man put away his wife for the express purpose of marrying another. His words are: “Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery; and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband, also committeth adultery,”—”put away,” that is, for the reason wherefore a woman ought not to be dismissed, that another wife may be obtained. For he who marries a woman who is unlawfully put away is as much of an adulterer as the man who marries one who is un-divorced. Permanent is the marriage which is not rightly dissolved; to marry, therefore, whilst matrimony is undissolved, is to commit adultery. Since, therefore, His prohibition of divorce was a conditional one, He did not prohibit absolutely; and what He did not absolutely forbid, that He permitted on some occasions, when there is an absence of the cause why He gave His prohibition. In very deed His teaching is not contrary to Moses, whose precept He partially defends, I will not say confirms. If, however, you deny that divorce is in any way permitted by Christ, how is it that you on your side destroy marriage, not uniting man and woman, nor admitting to the sacrament of baptism and of the eucharist those who have been united in marriage anywhere else, unless they should agree together to repudiate the fruit of their marriage, and so the very Creator Himself? Well, then, what is a husband to do in your sect, if his wife commit adultery? Shall he keep her? But your own apostle, you know, does not permit “the members of Christ to be joined to a harlot.” Divorce, therefore, when justly deserved, has even in Christ a defender. So that Moses for the future must be considered as being confirmed by Him, since he prohibits divorce in the same sense as Christ does, if any unchastity should occur in the wife. For in the Gospel of Matthew he says, “Whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery.” He also is deemed equally guilty of adultery, who marries a woman put away by her husband. The Creator, however, except on account of adultery, does not put asunder what He Himself joined together, the same Moses in another passage enacting that he who had married after violence to a damsel, should thenceforth not have it in his power to put away his wife. Now, if a compulsory marriage contracted after violence shall be permanent, how much rather shall a voluntary one, the result of agreement! This has the sanction of the prophet: “Thou shalt not forsake the wife of thy youth.” Thus you have Christ following spontaneously the tracks of the Creator everywhere, both in permitting divorce and in forbidding it. You find Him also protecting marriage, in whatever direction you try to escape. He prohibits divorce when He will have the marriage inviolable; He permits divorce when the marriage is spotted with unfaithfulness. You should blush when you refuse to unite those whom even your Christ has united; and repeat the blush when you disunite them without the good reason why your Christ would have them separated. I have now to show whence the Lord derived this decision of His, and to what end He directed it. It will thus become more fully evident that His object was not the abolition of the Mosaic ordinance by any suddenly devised proposal of divorce; because it was not suddenly proposed, but had its root in the previously mentioned John. For John reproved Herod, because he had illegally married the wife of his deceased brother, who had a daughter by her (a union which the law permitted only on the one occasion of the brother dying childless, when it even prescribed such a marriage, in order that by his own brother, and from his own wife, seed might be reckoned to the deceased husband), and was in consequence cast into prison, and finally, by the same Herod, was even put to death. The Lord having therefore made mention of John, and of course of the occurrence of his death, hurled His censure against Herod in the form of unlawful marriages and of adultery, pronouncing as an adulterer even the man who married a woman that had been put away from her husband. This he said in order the more severely to load Herod with guilt, who had taken his brother’s wife, after she had been loosed from her husband not less by death than by divorce; who had been impelled thereto by his lust, not by the prescription of the (Levirate) law—for, as his brother had left a daughter, the marriage with the widow could not be lawful on that very account; and who, when the prophet asserted against him the law, had therefore put him to death. The remarks I have advanced on this case will be also of use to me in illustrating the subsequent parable of the rich man tormented in hell, and the poor man resting in Abraham’s bosom. For this passage, so far as its letter goes, comes before us abruptly; but if we regard its sense and purport, it naturally fits in with the mention of John wickedly slain, and of Herod, who had been condemned by him for his impious marriage. It sets forth in bold outline the end of both of them, the “torments” of Herod and the “comfort” of John, that even now Herod might hear that warning: “They have there Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.” Marcion, however, violently turns the passage to another end, and decides that both the torment and the comfort are retributions of the Creator reserved in the next life for those who have obeyed the law and the prophets; whilst he defines the heavenly bosom and harbour to belong to Christ and his own god. Our answer to this is, that the Scripture itself which dazzles his sight expressly distinguishes between Abraham’s bosom, where the poor man dwells, and the infernal place of torment. “Hell” (I take it) means one thing, and “Abraham’s bosom” another. “A great gulf” is said to separate those regions, and to hinder a passage from one to the other. Besides, the rich man could not have “lifted up his eyes,” and from a distance too, except to a superior height, and from the said distance all up through the vast immensity of height and depth. It must therefore be evident to every man of intelligence who has ever heard of the Elysian fields, that there is some determinate place called Abraham’s bosom, and that it is designed for the reception of the souls of Abraham’s children, even from among the Gentiles (since he is “the father of many nations,” which must be classed amongst his family), and of the same faith as that wherewithal he himself believed God, without the yoke of the law and the sign of circumcision. This region, therefore, I call Abraham’s bosom. Although it is not in heaven, it is yet higher than hell, and is appointed to afford an interval of rest to the souls of the righteous, until the consummation of all things shall complete the resurrection of all men with the “full recompense of their reward.” This consummation will then be manifested in heavenly promises, which Marcion, however, claims for his own god, just as if the Creator had never announced them. Amos, however, tells us of “those stories towards heaven” which Christ “builds”—of course for His people. There also is that everlasting abode of which Isaiah asks, “Who shall declare unto you the eternal place, but He (that is, of course, Christ) who walketh in righteousness, speaketh of the straight path, hateth injustice and iniquity?” Now, although this everlasting abode is promised, and the ascending stories (or steps) to heaven are built by the Creator, who further promises that the seed of Abraham shall be even as the stars of heaven, by virtue certainly of the heavenly promise, why may it not be possible, without any injury to that promise, that by Abraham’s bosom is meant some temporary receptacle of faithful souls, wherein is even now delineated an image of the future, and where is given some foresight of the glory of both judgments? If so, you have here, O heretics, during your present lifetime, a warning that Moses and the prophets declare one only God, the Creator, and His only Christ, and how that both awards of everlasting punishment and eternal salvation rest with Him, the one only God, who kills and who makes alive. Well, but the admonition, says Marcion, of our God from heaven has commanded us not to hear Moses and the prophets, but Christ; Hear Him is the command. This is true enough. For the apostles had by that time sufficiently heard Moses and the prophets, for they had followed Christ, being persuaded by Moses and the prophets. For even Peter would not have been able to say, “Thou art the Christ,” unless he had beforehand heard and believed Moses and the prophets, by whom alone Christ had been hitherto announced. Their faith, indeed, had deserved this confirmation by such a voice from heaven as should bid them hear Him, whom they had recognized as preaching peace, announcing glad tidings, promising an everlasting abode, building for them steps upwards into heaven. Down in hell, however, it was said concerning them: “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them!”—even those who did not believe them or at least did not sincerely believe that after death there were punishments for the arrogance of wealth and the glory of luxury, announced indeed by Moses and the prophets, but decreed by that God, who deposes princes from their thrones, and raiseth up the poor from dunghills. Since, therefore, it is quite consistent in the Creator to pronounce different sentences in the two directions of reward and punishment, we shall have to conclude that there is here no diversity of gods, but only a difference in the actual matters before us.

Chapter XXXV

The Judicial Severity of Christ and the Tenderness of the Creator, Asserted in Contradiction to Marcion. The Cure of the Ten Lepers. Old Testament Analogies. The Kingdom of God Within You; This Teaching Similar to that of Moses. Christ, the Stone Rejected by the Builders. Indications of Severity in the Coming of Christ. Proofs that He is Not the Impassible Being Marcion Imagined

Then, turning to His disciples, He says: “Woe unto him through whom offences come! It were better for him if he had not been born, or if a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones,” that is, one of His disciples. Judge, then, what the sort of punishment is which He so severely threatens. For it is no stranger who is to avenge the offence done to His disciples. Recognise also in Him the Judge, and one too, who expresses Himself on the safety of His followers with the same tenderness as that which the Creator long ago exhibited: “He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of my eye.” Such identity of care proceeds from one and the same Being. A trespassing brother He will have rebuked. If one failed in this duty of reproof, he in fact sinned, either because out of hatred he wished his brother to continue in sin, or else spared him from mistaken friendship, although possessing the injunction in Leviticus: “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart; thy neighbor thou shalt seriously rebuke, and on his account shalt not contract sin.” Nor is it to be wondered at, if He thus teaches who forbids your refusing to bring back even your brother’s cattle, if you find them astray in the road; much more should you bring back your erring brother to himself. He commands you to forgive your brother, should he trespass against you even “seven times.” But that surely, is a small matter; for with the Creator there is a larger grace, when He sets no limits to forgiveness, indefinitely charging you “not to bear any malice against your brother,” and to give not merely to him who asks, but even to him who does not ask. For His will is, not that you should forgive an offence, but forget it. The law about lepers had a profound meaning as respects the forms of the disease itself, and of the inspection by the high priest. The interpretation of this sense it will be our task to ascertain. Marcion’s labour, however, is to object to us the strictness of the law, with the view of maintaining that here also Christ is its enemy—forestalling its enactments even in His cure of the ten lepers. These He simply commanded to show themselves to the priest; “and as they went, He cleansed them”—without a touch, and without a word, by His silent power and simple will. Well, but what necessity was there for Christ, who had been once for all announced as the healer of our sicknesses and sins, and had proved Himself such by His acts, to busy Himself with inquiries into the qualities and details of cures; or for the Creator to be summoned to the scrutiny of the law in the person of Christ? If any part of this healing was effected by Him in a way different from the law, He yet Himself did it to perfection; for surely the Lord may by Himself, or by His Son, produce after one manner, and after another manner by His servants the prophets, those proofs of His power and might especially, which (as excelling in glory and strength, because they are His own acts) rightly enough leave in the distance behind them the works which are done by His servants. But enough has been already said on this point in a former passage. Now, although He said in a preceding chapter, that “there were many lepers in Israel in the days of Eliseus the prophet, and none of them was cleansed saving Naaman the Syrian,” yet of course the mere number proves nothing towards a difference in the gods, as tending to the abasement of the Creator in curing only one, and the pre-eminence of Him who healed ten. For who can doubt that many might have been cured by Him who cured one more easily than ten by him who had never healed one before? But His main purpose in this declaration was to strike at the unbelief or the pride of Israel, in that (although there were many lepers amongst them, and a prophet was not wanting to them) not one had been moved even by so conspicuous an example to betake himself to God who was working in His prophets. Forasmuch, then, as He was Himself the veritable High Priest of God the Father, He inspected them according to the hidden purport of the law, which signified that Christ was the true distinguisher and extinguisher of the defilements of mankind. However, what was obviously required by the law He commanded should be done: “Go,” said He, “show yourselves to the priests.” Yet why this, if He meant to cleanse them first? Was it as a despiser of the law, in order to prove to them that, having been cured already on the road, the law was now nothing to them, nor even the priests? Well, the matter must of course pass as it best may, if anybody supposes that Christ had such views as these! But there are certainly better interpretations to be found of the passage, and more deserving of belief: how that they were cleansed on this account, because they were obedient, and went as the law required, when they were commanded to go to the priests; and it is not to be believed that persons who observed the law could have found a cure from a god that was destroying the law. Why, however, did He not give such a command to the leper who first returned? Because Elisha did not in the case of Naaman the Syrian, and yet was not on that account less the Creator’s agent? This is a sufficient answer. But the believer knows that there is a profounder reason. Consider, therefore, the true motives. The miracle was performed in the district of Samaria, to which country also belonged one of the lepers. Samaria, however, had revolted from Israel, carrying with it the disaffected nine tribes, which, having been alienated by the prophet Ahijah, Jeroboam settled in Samaria. Besides, the Samaritans were always pleased with the mountains and the wells of their ancestors. Thus, in the Gospel of John, the woman of Samaria, when conversing with the Lord at the well, says, “No doubt Thou art greater,” etc.; and again, “Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; but ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Accordingly, He who said, “Woe unto them that trust in the mountain of Samaria,” vouchsafing now to restore that very region, purposely requests the men “to go and show themselves to the priests,” because these were to be found only there where the temple was; submitting the Samaritan to the Jew, inasmuch as “salvation was of the Jews,” whether to the Israelite or the Samaritan. To the tribe of Judah, indeed, wholly appertained the promised Christ, in order that men might know that at Jerusalem were both the priests and the temple; that there also was the womb of religion, and its living fountain, not its mere “well.” Seeing, therefore, that they recognised the truth that at Jerusalem the law was to be fulfilled, He healed them, whose salvation was to come of faith without the ceremony of the law. Whence also, astonished that one only out of the ten was thankful for his release to the divine grace, He does not command him to offer a gift according to the law, because he had already paid his tribute of gratitude when “he glorified God”; for thus did the Lord will that the law’s requirement should be interpreted. And yet who was the God to whom the Samaritan gave thanks, because thus far not even had an Israelite heard of another god? Who else but He by whom all had hitherto been healed through Christ? And therefore it was said to him, “Thy faith hath made thee whole,” because he had discovered that it was his duty to render the true oblation to Almighty God—even thanksgiving—in His true temple, and before His true High Priest Jesus Christ. But it is impossible either that the Pharisees should seem to have inquired of the Lord about the coming of the kingdom of the rival god, when no other god has ever yet been announced by Christ; or that He should have answered them concerning the kingdom of any other god than Him of whom they were in the habit of asking Him. “The kingdom of God,” He says, “cometh not with observation; neither do they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” Now, who will not interpret the words “within you” to mean in your hand, within your power, if you hear, and do the commandment of God? If, however, the kingdom of God lies in His commandment, set before your mind Moses on the other side, according to our antitheses, and you will find the self-same view of the case. “The commandment is not a lofty one, neither is it far off from thee. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it?’ nor is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it?’ But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, and in thy hands, to do it.” This means, “Neither in this place nor that place is the kingdom of God; for, behold, it is within you.” And if the heretics, in their audacity, should contend that the Lord did not give an answer about His own kingdom, but only about the Creator’s kingdom, concerning which they had inquired, then the following words are against them. For He tells them that “the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected,” before His coming, at which His kingdom will be really revealed. In this statement He shows that it was His own kingdom which His answer to them had contemplated, and which was now awaiting His own sufferings and rejection. But having to be rejected and afterwards to be acknowledged, and taken up and glorified, He borrowed the very word “rejected” from the passage, where, under the figure of a stone, His twofold manifestation was celebrated by David—the first in rejection, the second in honour: “The stone,” says He, “which the builders rejected, is become the head-stone of the corner. This is the Lord’s doing.” Now it would be idle, if we believed that God had predicted the humiliation, or even the glory, of any Christ at all, that He could have signed His prophecy for any but Him whom He had foretold under the figure of a stone, and a rock, and a mountain. If, however, He speaks of His own coming, why does He compare it with the days of Noe and of Lot, which were dark and terrible—a mild and gentle God as He is? Why does He bid us “remember Lot’s wife,” who despised the Creator’s command, and was punished for her contempt, if He does not come with judgment to avenge the infraction of His precepts? If He really does punish, like the Creator, if He is my Judge, He ought not to have adduced examples for the purpose of instructing me from Him whom He yet destroys, that He might not seem to be my instructor. But if He does not even here speak of His own coming, but of the coming of the Hebrew Christ, let us still wait in expectation that He will vouchsafe to us some prophecy of His own advent; meanwhile we will continue to believe that He is none other than He whom He reminds us of in every passage.

Chapter XXXVI

The Parables of the Importunate Widow, and of the Pharisee and the Publican. Christ’s Answer to the Rich Ruler, the Cure of the Blind Man. His Salutation—Son of David. All Proofs of Christ’s Relation to the Creator, Marcion’s Antithesis Between David and Christ Confuted

When He recommends perseverance and earnestness in prayer, He sets before us the parable of the judge who was compelled to listen to the widow, owing to the earnestness and importunity of her requests. He show us that it is God the judge whom we must importune with prayer, and not Himself, if He is not Himself the judge. But He added, that “God would avenge His own elect.” Since, then, He who judges will also Himself be the avenger, He proved that the Creator is on that account the specially good God, whom He represented as the avenger of His own elect, who cry day and night to Him. And yet, when He introduces to our view the Creator’s temple, and describes two men worshipping therein with diverse feelings—the Pharisee in pride, the publican in humility—and shows us how they accordingly went down to their homes, one rejected, the other justified, He surely, by thus teaching us the proper discipline of prayer, has determined that that God must be prayed to from whom men were to receive this discipline of prayer—whether condemnatory of pride, or justifying in humility. I do not find from Christ any temple, any suppliants, any sentence (of approval or condemnation) belonging to any other god than the Creator. Him does He enjoin us to worship in humility, as the lifter-up of the humble, not in pride, because He brings down the proud. What other god has He manifested to me to receive my supplications? With what formula of worship, with what hope (shall I approach him?) I trow, none. For the prayer which He has taught us suits, as we have proved, none but the Creator. It is, of course, another matter if He does not wish to be prayed to, because He is the supremely and spontaneously good God! But who is this good God? There is, He says, “none but one.” It is not as if He had shown us that one of two gods was the supremely good; but He expressly asserts that there is one only good God, who is the only good, because He is the only God. Now, undoubtedly, He is the good God who “sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust, and maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good;” sustaining and nourishing and assisting even Marcionites themselves! When afterwards “a certain man asked him, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’“ (Jesus) inquired whether he knew (that is, in other words, whether he kept) the commandments of the Creator, in order to testify that it was by the Creator’s precepts that eternal life is acquired. Then, when he affirmed that from his youth up he had kept all the principal commandments, (Jesus) said to him: “One thing thou yet lackest: sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Well now, Marcion, and all ye who are companions in misery, and associates in hatred with that heretic, what will you dare say to this? Did Christ rescind the forementioned commandments: “Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother?” Or did He both keep them, and then add what was wanting to them? This very precept, however, about giving to the poor, was very largely diffused through the pages of the law and the prophets. This vainglorious observer of the commandments was therefore convicted of holding money in much higher estimation (than charity). This verity of the gospel then stands unimpaired: “I am not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but rather to fulfil them.” He also dissipated other doubts, when He declared that the name of God and of the Good belonged to one and the same being, at whose disposal were also the everlasting life and the treasure in heaven and Himself too—whose commandments He both maintained and augmented with His own supplementary precepts. He may likewise be discovered in the following passage of Micah, saying: “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to be ready to follow the Lord thy God?” Now Christ is the man who tells us what is good, even the knowledge of the law. “Thou knowest,” says He, “the commandments.” “To do justly”—”Sell all that thou hast;” “to love mercy”—”Give to the poor:” “and to be ready to walk with God”—”And come,” says He, “follow me.” The Jewish nation was from its beginning so carefully divided into tribes and clans, and families and houses, that no man could very well have been ignorant of his descent—even from the recent assessments of Augustus, which were still probably extant at this time. But the Jesus of Marcion (although there could be no doubt of a person’s having been born, who was seen to be a man), as being unborn, could not, of course, have possessed any public testimonial of his descent, but was to be regarded as one of that obscure class of whom nothing was in any way known. Why then did the blind man, on hearing that He was passing by, exclaim, “Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me?” unless he was considered, in no uncertain manner, to be the Son of David (in other words, to belong to David’s family) through his mother and his brethren, who at some time or other had been made known to him by public notoriety? “Those, however, who went before rebuked the blind man, that he should hold his peace.” And properly enough; because he was very noisy, not because he was wrong about the son of David. Else you must show me, that those who rebuked him were aware that Jesus was not the Son of David, in order that they may be supposed to have had this reason for imposing silence on the blind man. But even if you could show me this, still (the blind man) would more readily have presumed that they were ignorant, than that the Lord could possibly have permitted an untrue exclamation about Himself. But the Lord “stood patient.” Yes; but not as confirming the error, for, on the contrary, He rather displayed the Creator. Surely He could not have first removed this man’s blindness, in order that he might afterwards cease to regard Him as the Son of David! However, that you may not slander His patience, nor fasten on Him any charge of dissimulation, nor deny Him to be the Son of David, He very pointedly confirmed the exclamation of the blind man—both by the actual gift of healing, and by bearing testimony to his faith: “Thy faith,” say Christ, “hath made thee whole.” What would you have the blind man’s faith to have been? That Jesus was descended from that (alien) god (of Marcion), to subvert the Creator and overthrow the law and the prophets? That He was not the destined offshoot from the root of Jesse, and the fruit of David’s loins, the restorer also of the blind? But I apprehend there were at that time no such stone-blind persons as Marcion, that an opinion like this could have constituted the faith of the blind man, and have induced him to confide in the mere name, of Jesus, the Son of David. He, who knew all this of Himself, and wished others to know it also, endowed the faith of this man—although it was already gifted with a better sight, and although it was in possession of the true light—with the external vision likewise, in order that we too might learn the rule of faith, and at the same time find its recompense. Whosoever wishes to see Jesus the Son of David must believe in Him; through the Virgin’s birth. He who will not believe this will not hear from Him the salutation, “Thy faith hath saved thee.” And so he will remain blind, falling into Antithesis after Antithesis, which mutually destroy each other, just as “the blind man leads the blind down into the ditch.” For (here is one of Marcion’s Antitheses): whereas David in old time, in the capture of Sion, was offended by the blind who opposed his admission (into the stronghold)—in which respect (I should rather say) that they were a type of people equally blind, who in after-times would not admit Christ to be the son of David—so, on the contrary, Christ succoured the blind man, to show by this act that He was not David’s son, and how different in disposition He was, kind to the blind, while David ordered them to be slain. If all this were so, why did Marcion allege that the blind man’s faith was of so worthless a stamp? The fact is, the Son of David so acted, that the Antithesis must lose its point by its own absurdity. Those persons who offended David were blind, and the man who now presents himself as a suppliant to David’s son is afflicted with the same infirmity. Therefore the Son of David was appeased with some sort of satisfaction by the blind man when He restored him to sight, and added His approval of the faith which had led him to believe the very truth, that he must win to his help the Son of David by earnest entreaty. But, after all, I suspect that it was the audacity (of the old Jebusites) which offended David, and not their malady.

Chapter XXXVII

Christ and Zacchaeus. The Salvation of the Body as Denied by Marcion. The Parable of the Ten Servants Entrusted with Ten Pounds. Christ a Judge, Who is to Administer the Will of the Austere Man, I.e. The Creator

“Salvation comes to the house” of Zacchaeus even. For what reason? Was it because he also believed that Christ came by Marcion? But the blind man’s cry was still sounding in the ears of all: “Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.” And “all the people gave praise unto God”—not Marcion’s, but David’s. Now, although Zacchaeus was probably a Gentile, he yet from his intercourse with Jews had obtained a smattering of their Scriptures, and, more than this, had, without knowing it, fulfilled the precepts of Isaiah: “Deal thy bread,” said the prophet, “to the hungry, and bring the poor that are cast out into thine house.” This he did in the best possible way, by receiving the Lord, and entertaining Him in his house. “When thou seest the naked cover him.” This he promised to do, in an equally satisfactory way, when he offered the half of his goods for all works of mercy. So also “he loosened the bands of wickedness, undid the heavy burdens, let the oppressed go free, and broke every yoke,” when he said, “If I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.” Therefore the Lord said, “This day is salvation come to this house.” Thus did He give His testimony, that the precepts of the Creator spoken by the prophet tended to salvation. But when He adds, “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost,” my present contention is not whether He was come to save what was lost, to whom it had once belonged, and from whom what He came to save had fallen away; but I approach a different question. Man, there can be no doubt of it, is here the subject of consideration. Now, since he consists of two parts, body and soul, the point to be inquired into is, in which of these two man would seem to have been lost? If in his body, then it is his body, not his soul, which is lost. What, however, is lost, the Son of man saves. The body, therefore, has the salvation. If, (on the other hand,) it is in his soul that man is lost, salvation is designed for the lost soul; and the body which is not lost is safe. If, (to take the only other supposition,) man is wholly lost, in both his natures, then it necessarily follows that salvation is appointed for the entire man; and then the opinion of the heretics is shivered to pieces, who say that there is no salvation of the flesh. And this affords a confirmation that Christ belongs to the Creator, who followed the Creator in promising the salvation of the whole man. The parable also of the (ten) servants, who received their several recompenses according to the manner in which they had increased their lord’s money by trading proves Him to be a God of judgment—even a God who, in strict account, not only bestows honour, but also takes away what a man seems to have. Else, if it is the Creator whom He has here delineated as the “austere man,” who “takes up what he laid not down, and reaps what he did not sow,” my instructor even here is He, (whoever He may be,) to whom belongs the money He teaches me fruitfully to expend.

Chapter XXXVIII

Christ’s Refutations of the Pharisees. Rendering Dues to Caesar and to God. Next of the Sadducees, Respecting Marriage in the Resurrection. These Prove Him Not to Be Marcion’s But the Creator’s Christ. Marcion’s Tamperings in Order to Make Room for His Second God, Exposed and Confuted

Christ knew “the baptism of John, whence it was.” Then why did He ask them, as if He knew not? He knew that the Pharisees would not give Him an answer; then why did He ask in vain? Was it that He might judge them out of their own mouth, or their own heart? Suppose you refer these points to an excuse of the Creator, or to His comparison with Christ; then consider what would have happened if the Pharisees had replied to His question. Suppose their answer to have been, that John’s baptism was “of men,” they would have been immediately stoned to death. Some Marcion, in rivalry to Marcion, would have stood up and said: O most excellent God; how different are his ways from the Creator’s! Knowing that men would rush down headlong over it, He placed them actually on the very precipice. For thus do men treat of the Creator respecting His law of the tree. But John’s baptism was “from heaven.” “Why, therefore,” asks Christ, “did ye not believe him?” He therefore who had wished men to believe John, purposing to censure them because they had not believed him, belonged to Him whose sacrament John was administering. But, at any rate, when He actually met their refusal to say what they thought, with such reprisals as, “Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things,” He returned evil for evil! “Render unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s.” What will be “the things which are God’s?” Such things as are like Caesar’s denarius—that is to say, His image and similitude. That, therefore, which he commands to be “rendered unto God,” the Creator, is man, who has been stamped with His image, likeness, name, and substance. Let Marcion’s god look after his own mint. Christ bids the denarius of man’s imprint to be rendered to His Caesar, (His Caesar I say,) not the Caesar of a strange god. The truth, however, must be confessed, this god has not a denarius to call his own! In every question the just and proper rule is, that the meaning of the answer ought to be adapted to the proposed inquiry. But it is nothing short of madness to return an answer altogether different from the question submitted to you. God forbid, then, that we should expect from Christ conduct which would be unfit even to an ordinary man! The Sadducees, who said there was no resurrection, in a discussion on that subject, had proposed to the Lord a case of law touching a certain woman, who, in accordance with the legal prescription, had been married to seven brothers who had died one after the other. The question therefore was, to which husband must she be reckoned to belong in the resurrection? This, (observe,) was the gist of the inquiry, this was the sum and substance of the dispute. And to it Christ was obliged to return a direct answer. He had nobody to fear; that it should seem advisable for Him either to evade their questions, or to make them the occasion of indirectly mooting a subject which He was not in the habit of teaching publicly at any other time. He therefore gave His answer, that “the children of this world marry.” You see how pertinent it was to the case in point. Because the question concerned the next world, and He was going to declare that no one marries there, He opens the way by laying down the principles that here, where there is death, there is also marriage. “But they whom God shall account worthy of the possession of that world and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; forasmuch as they cannot die any more, since they become equal to the angels, being made the children of God and of the resurrection.” If, then, the meaning of the answer must not turn on any other point than on the proposed question, and since the question proposed is fully understood from this sense of the answer, then the Lord’s reply admits of no other interpretation than that by which the question is clearly understood. You have both the time in which marriage is permitted, and the time in which it is said to be unsuitable, laid before you, not on their own account, but in consequence of an inquiry about the resurrection. You have likewise a confirmation of the resurrection itself, and the whole question which the Sadducees mooted, who asked no question about another god, nor inquired about the proper law of marriage. Now, if you make Christ answer questions which were not submitted to Him, you, in fact, represent Him as having been unable to solve the points on which He was really consulted, and entrapped of course by the cunning of the Sadducees. I shall now proceed, by way of supererogation, and after the rule (I have laid down about questions and answers), to deal with the arguments which have any consistency in them. They procured then a copy of the Scripture, and made short work with its text, by reading it thus: “Those whom the god of that world shall account worthy.” They add the phrase “of that world” to the word “god,” whereby they make another god “the god of that world;” whereas the passage ought to be read thus: “Those whom God shall account worthy of the possession of that world” (removing the distinguishing phrase “of this world” to the end of the clause, in other words, “Those whom God shall account worthy of obtaining and rising to that world.” For the question submitted to Christ had nothing to do with the god, but only with the state, of that world. It was: “Whose wife should this woman be in that world after the resurrection?” They thus subvert His answer respecting the essential question of marriage, and apply His words, “The children of this world marry and are given in marriage,” as if they referred to the Creator’s men, and His permission to them to marry; whilst they themselves whom the god of that world—that is, the rival god—accounted worthy of the resurrection, do not marry even here, because they are not children of this world. But the fact is, that, having been consulted about marriage in that world, not in this present one, He had simply declared the non-existence of that to which the question related. They, indeed, who had caught the very force of His voice, and pronunciation, and expression, discovered no other sense than what had reference to the matter of the question. Accordingly, the Scribes exclaimed, “Master, Thou hast well said.” For He had affirmed the resurrection, by describing the form thereof in opposition to the opinion of the Sadducees. Now, He did not reject the attestation of those who had assumed His answer to bear this meaning. If, however, the Scribes thought Christ was David’s Son, whereas (David) himself calls Him Lord, what relation has this to Christ? David did not literally confute an error of the Scribes, yet David asserted the honour of Christ, when he more prominently affirmed that He was his Lord than his Son,—an attribute which was hardly suitable to the destroyer of the Creator. But how consistent is the interpretation on our side of the question! For He, who had been a little while ago invoked by the blind man as “the Son of David,” then made no remark on the subject, not having the Scribes in His presence; whereas He now purposely moots the point before them, and that of His own accord, in order that He might show Himself whom the blind man, following the doctrine of the Scribes, had simply declared to be the Son of David, to be also his Lord. He thus honoured the blind man’s faith which had acknowledged His Sonship to David; but at the same time He struck a blow at the tradition of the Scribes, which prevented them from knowing that He was also (David’s) Lord. Whatever had relation to the glory of the Creator’s Christ, no other would thus guard and maintain but Himself the Creator’s Christ.

Chapter XXXIX

Concerning Those Who Come in the Name of Christ. The Terrible Signs of His Coming. He Whose Coming is So Grandly Described Both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, is None Other Than the Christ of the Creator. This Proof Enhanced by the Parable of the Fig-Tree and All the Trees. Parallel Passages of Prophecy

As touching the propriety of His names, it has already been seen that both of them are suitable to Him who was the first both to announce His Christ to mankind, and to give Him the further name of Jesus. The impudence, therefore, of Marcion’s Christ will be evident, when he says that many will come in his name, whereas this name does not at all belong to him, since he is not the Christ and Jesus of the Creator, to whom these names do properly appertain; and more especially when he prohibits those to be received whose very equal in imposture he is, inasmuch as he (equally with them ) comes in a name which belongs to another—unless it was his business to warn off from a mendaciously assumed name the disciples (of One) who, by reason of His name being properly given to Him, possessed also the verity thereof. But when “they shall by and by come and say, I am Christ,” they will be received by you, who have already received one altogether like them. Christ, however, comes in His own name. What will you do, then, when He Himself comes who is the very Proprietor of these names, the Creator’s Christ and Jesus? Will you reject Him? But how iniquitous, how unjust and disrespectful to the good God, that you should not receive Him who comes in His own name, when you have received another in His name! Now, let us see what are the signs which He ascribes to the times. “Wars,” I observe, “and kingdom against kingdom, and nation against nation, and pestilence, and famines, and earthquakes, and fearful sights, and great signs from heaven”—all which things are suitable for a severe and terrible God. Now, when He goes on to say that “all these things must needs come to pass,” what does He represent Himself to be? The Destroyer, or the Defender of the Creator? For He affirms that these appointments of His must fully come to pass; but surely as the good God, He would have frustrated rather than advanced events so sad and terrible, if they had not been His own (decrees). “But before all these,” He foretells that persecutions and sufferings were to come upon them, which indeed were “to turn for a testimony to them,” and for their salvation. Hear what is predicted in Zechariah: “The Lord of hosts shall protect them; and they shall devour them, and subdue them with sling-stones; and they shall drink their blood like wine, and they shall fill the bowls as it were of the altar. And the Lord shall save them in that day, even His people, like sheep; because as sacred stones they roll,” etc. And that you may not suppose that these predictions refer to such sufferings as await them from so many wars with strangers, consider the nature (of the sufferings). In a prophecy of wars which were to be waged with legitimate arms, no one would think of enumerating stones as weapons, which are better known in popular crowds and unarmed tumults. Nobody measures the copious streams of blood which flow in war by bowlfuls, nor limits it to what is shed upon a single altar. No one gives the name of sheep to those who fall in battle with arms in hand, and while repelling force with force, but only to those who are slain, yielding themselves up in their own place of duty and with patience, rather than fighting in self-defence. In short, as he says, “they roll as sacred stones,” and not like soldiers fight. Stones are they, even foundation stones, upon which we are ourselves edified—”built,” as St. Paul says, “upon the foundation of the apostles,” who, like “consecrated stones,” were rolled up and down exposed to the attack of all men. And therefore in this passage He forbids men “to meditate before what they answer” when brought before tribunals, even as once He suggested to Balaam the message which he had not thought of, nay, contrary to what he had thought; and promised “a mouth” to Moses, when he pleaded in excuse the slowness of his speech, and that wisdom which, by Isaiah, He showed to be irresistible: “One shall say, I am the Lord’s, and shall call himself by the name of Jacob, and another shall subscribe himself by the name of Israel.” Now, what plea is wiser and more irresistible than the simple and open confession made in a martyr’s cause, who “prevails with God”—which is what “Israel” means? Now, one cannot wonder that He forbade “premeditation,” who actually Himself received from the Father the ability of uttering words in season: “The Lord hath given to me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season (to him that is weary);” except that Marcion introduces to us a Christ who is not subject to the Father. That persecutions from one’s nearest friends are predicted, and calumny out of hatred to His name, I need not again refer to. But “by patience,” says He, “ye shall yourselves be saved.” Of this very patience the Psalm says, “The patient endurance of the just shall not perish for ever;” because it is said in another Psalm, “Precious (in the sight of the Lord) is the death of the just”—arising, no doubt, out of their patient endurance, so that Zechariah declares: “A crown shall be to them that endure.” But that you may not boldly contend that it was as announcers of another god that the apostles were persecuted by the Jews, remember that even the prophets suffered the same treatment of the Jews, and that they were not the heralds of any other god than the Creator. Then, having shown what was to be the period of the destruction, even “when Jerusalem should begin to be compassed with armies,” He described the signs of the end of all things: “portents in the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity—like the sea roaring—by reason of their expectation of the evils which are coming on the earth.”

That “the very powers also of heaven have to be shaken,” you may find in Joel: “And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth—blood and fire, and pillars of smoke; the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come.” In Habakkuk also you have this statement: “With rivers shall the earth be cleaved; the nations shall see thee, and be in pangs. Thou shalt disperse the waters with thy step; the deep uttered its voice; the height of its fear was raised; the sun and the moon stood still in their course; into light shall thy coruscations go; and thy shield shall be (like) the glittering of the lightning’s flash; in thine anger thou shalt grind the earth, and shalt thresh the nations in thy wrath.” There is thus an agreement, I apprehend, between the sayings of the Lord and of the prophets touching the shaking of the earth, and the elements, and the nations thereof. But what does the Lord say afterwards? “And then shall they see the Son of man coming from the heavens with very great power. And when these things shall come to pass, ye shall look up, and raise your heads; for your redemption hath come near,” that is, at the time of the kingdom, of which the parable itself treats. “So likewise ye, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand.” This will be the great day of the Lord, and of the glorious coming of the Son of man from heaven, of which Daniel wrote: “Behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven,” etc. “And there was given unto Him the kingly power,” which (in the parable) “He went away into a far country to receive for Himself,” leaving money to His servants wherewithal to trade and get increase—even (that universal kingdom of) all nations, which in the Psalm the Father had promised to give to Him: Ask of me, and I will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance.” “And all that glory shall serve Him; His dominion shall be an everlasting one, which shall not be taken from Him, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed,” because in it “men shall not die, neither shall they marry, but be like the angels.” It is about the same advent of the Son of man and the benefits thereof that we read in Habakkuk: “Thou wentest forth for the salvation of Thy people, even to save Thine anointed ones,”—in other words, those who shall look up and lift their heads, being redeemed in the time of His kingdom. Since, therefore, these descriptions of the promises, on the one hand, agree together, as do also those of the great catastrophes, on the other—both in the predictions of the prophets and the declarations of the Lord, it will be impossible for you to interpose any distinction between them, as if the catastrophes could be referred to the Creator, as the terrible God, being such as the good god (of Marcion) ought not to permit, much less expect—whilst the promises should be ascribed to the good god, being such as the Creator, in His ignorance of the said god, could not have predicted. If, however, He did predict these promises as His own, since they differ in no respect from the promises of Christ, He will be a match in the freeness of His gifts with the good god himself; and evidently no more will have been promised by your Christ than by my Son of man. (If you examine) the whole passage of this Gospel Scripture, from the inquiry of the disciples down to the parable of the fig-tree you will find the sense in its connection suit in every point the Son of man, so that it consistently ascribes to Him both the sorrows and the joys, and the catastrophes and the promises; nor can you separate them from Him in either respect. For as much, then, as there is but one Son of man whose advent is placed between the two issues of catastrophe and promise, it must needs follow that to that one Son of man belong both the judgments upon the nations, and the prayers of the saints. He who thus comes in midway so as to be common to both issues, will terminate one of them by inflicting judgment on the nations at His coming; and will at the same time commence the other by fulfilling the prayers of His saints: so that if (on the one hand) you grant that the coming of the Son of man is (the advent) of my Christ, then, when you ascribe to Him the infliction of the judgments which precede His appearance, you are compelled also to assign to Him the blessings which issue from the same. If (on the other hand) you will have it that it is the coming of your Christ, then, when you ascribe to him the blessings which are to be the result of his advent, you are obliged to impute to him likewise the infliction of the evils which precede his appearance. For the evils which precede, and the blessings which immediately follow, the coming of the Son of man, are both alike indissolubly connected with that event. Consider, therefore, which of the two Christs you choose to place in the person of the Son of man, to whom you may refer the execution of the two dispensations. You make either the Creator a most beneficent God, or else your own god terrible in his nature! Reflect, in short, on the picture presented in the parable: “Behold the fig-tree, and all the trees; when they produce their fruit, men know that summer is at hand. So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is very near.” Now, if the fructification of the common trees be an antecedent sign of the approach of summer, so in like manner do the great conflicts of the world indicate the arrival of that kingdom which they precede. But every sign is His, to whom belong the thing of which it is the sign; and to everything is appointed its sign by Him to whom the thing belongs. If, therefore, these tribulations are the signs of the kingdom, just as the maturity of the trees is of the summer, it follows that the kingdom is the Creator’s to whom are ascribed the tribulations which are the signs of the kingdom. Since the beneficent Deity had premised that these things must needs come to pass, although so terrible and dreadful, as they had been predicted by the law and the prophets, therefore He did not destroy the law and the prophets, when He affirmed that what had been foretold therein must be certainly fulfilled. He further declares, “that heaven and earth shall not pass away till all things be fulfilled.” What things, pray, are these? Are they the things which the Creator made? Then the elements will tractably endure the accomplishment of their Maker’s dispensation. If, however, they emanate from your excellent god, I much doubt whether the heaven and earth will peaceably allow the completion of things which their Creator’s enemy has determined! If the Creator quietly submits to this, then He is no “jealous God.” But let heaven and earth pass away, since their Lord has so determined; only let His word remain for evermore! And so Isaiah predicted that it should. Let the disciples also be warned, “lest their hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and cares of this world; and so that day come upon them unawares, like a snare”—if indeed they should forget God amidst the abundance and occupation of the world. Like this will be found the admonition of Moses,—so that He who delivers from “the snare” of that day is none other than He who so long before addressed to men the same admonition. Some places there were in Jerusalem where to teach; other places outside Jerusalem whither to retire—”in the day-time He was teaching in the temple;” just as He had foretold by Hosea: “In my house did they find me, and there did I speak with them.” “But at night He went out to the Mount of Olives.” For thus had Zechariah pointed out: “And His feet shall stand in that day on the Mount of Olives.” Fit hours for an audience there also were. “Early in the morning” must they resort to Him, who (having said by Isaiah, “The Lord giveth me the tongue of the learned”) added, “He hath appointed me the morning, and hath also given me an ear to hear.” Now if this is to destroy the prophets, what will it be to fulfil them?

Chapter XL

How the Steps in the Passion of the Saviour Were Predetermined in Prophecy. The Passover. The Treachery of Judas. The Institution of the Lord’s Supper. The Docetic Error of Marcion Confuted by the Body and the Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ

In like manner does He also know the very time it behoved Him to suffer, since the law prefigures His passion. Accordingly, of all the festal days of the Jews He chose the passover. In this Moses had declared that there was a sacred mystery: “It is the Lord’s passover.” How earnestly, therefore, does He manifest the bent of His soul: “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer.” What a destroyer of the law was this, who actually longed to keep its passover! Could it be that He was so fond of Jewish lamb? But was it not because He had to be “led like a lamb to the slaughter; and because, as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so was He not to open His mouth,” that He so profoundly wished to accomplish the symbol of His own redeeming blood? He might also have been betrayed by any stranger, did I not find that even here too He fulfilled a Psalm: “He who did eat bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.” And without a price might He have been betrayed. For what need of a traitor was there in the case of one who offered Himself to the people openly, and might quite as easily have been captured by force as taken by treachery? This might no doubt have been well enough for another Christ, but would not have been suitable in One who was accomplishing prophecies. For it was written, “The righteous one did they sell for silver.” The very amount and the destination of the money, which on Judas’ remorse was recalled from its first purpose of a fee, and appropriated to the purchase of a potter’s field, as narrated in the Gospel of Matthew, were clearly foretold by Jeremiah: “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of Him who was valued and gave them for the potter’s field.” When He so earnestly expressed His desire to eat the passover, He considered it His own feast; for it would have been unworthy of God to desire to partake of what was not His own. Then, having taken the bread and given it to His disciples, He made it His own body, by saying, “This is my body,” that is, the figure of my body. A figure, however, there could not have been, unless there were first a veritable body. An empty thing, or phantom, is incapable of a figure. If, however, (as Marcion might say,) He pretended the bread was His body, because He lacked the truth of bodily substance, it follows that He must have given bread for us. It would contribute very well to the support of Marcion’s theory of a phantom body, that bread should have been crucified! But why call His body bread, and not rather (some other edible thing, say) a melon, which Marcion must have had in lieu of a heart! He did not understand how ancient was this figure of the body of Christ, who said Himself by Jeremiah: “I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter, and I knew not that they devised a device against me, saying, Let us cast the tree upon His bread,” which means, of course, the cross upon His body. And thus, casting light, as He always did, upon the ancient prophecies, He declared plainly enough what He meant by the bread, when He called the bread His own body. He likewise, when mentioning the cup and making the new testament to be sealed “in His blood,” affirms the reality of His body. For no blood can belong to a body which is not a body of flesh. If any sort of body were presented to our view, which is not one of flesh, not being fleshly, it would not possess blood. Thus, from the evidence of the flesh, we get a proof of the body, and a proof of the flesh from the evidence of the blood. In order, however, that you may discover how anciently wine is used as a figure for blood, turn to Isaiah, who asks, “Who is this that cometh from Edom, from Bosor with garments dyed in red, so glorious in His apparel, in the greatness of his might? Why are thy garments red, and thy raiment as his who cometh from the treading of the full winepress?” The prophetic Spirit contemplates the Lord as if He were already on His way to His passion, clad in His fleshly nature; and as He was to suffer therein, He represents the bleeding condition of His flesh under the metaphor of garments dyed in red, as if reddened in the treading and crushing process of the wine-press, from which the labourers descend reddened with the wine-juice, like men stained in blood. Much more clearly still does the book of Genesis foretell this, when (in the blessing of Judah, out of whose tribe Christ was to come according to the flesh) it even then delineated Christ in the person of that patriarch, saying, “He washed His garments in wine, and His clothes in the blood of grapes”—in His garments and clothes the prophecy pointed out his flesh, and His blood in the wine. Thus did He now consecrate His blood in wine, who then (by the patriarch) used the figure of wine to describe His blood.

Chapter XLI

The Woe Pronounced on the Traitor a Judicial Act, Which Disproves Christ to Be Such as Marcion Would Have Him to Be. Christ’s Conduct Before the Council Explained. Christ Even Then Directs the Minds of His Judges to the Prophetic Evidences of His Own Mission. The Moral Responsibility of These Men Asserted

“Woe,” says He, “to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed!” Now it is certain that in this woe must be understood the imprecation and threat of an angry and incensed Master, unless Judas was to escape with impunity after so vast a sin. If he were meant to escape with impunity, the “woe” was an idle word; if not, he was of course to be punished by Him against whom he had committed the sin of treachery. Now, if He knowingly permitted the man, whom He deliberately elected to be one of His companions, to plunge into so great a crime, you must no longer use an argument against the Creator in Adam’s case, which may now recoil on your own God: either that he was ignorant, and had no foresight to hinder the future sinner; or that he was unable to hinder him, even if he was ignorant; or else that he was unwilling, even if he had the foreknowledge and the ability; and so deserved the stigma of maliciousness, in having permitted the man of his own choice to perish in his sin. I advise you therefore (willingly) to acknowledge the Creator in that god of yours, rather than against your will to be assimilating your excellent god to Him. For in the case of Peter, too, he gives you proof that he is a jealous God, when he destined the apostle, after his presumptuous protestations of zeal, to a flat denial of him, rather than prevent his fall. The Christ of the prophets was destined, moreover, to be betrayed with a kiss, for He was the Son indeed of Him who was “honoured with the lips” by the people. When led before the council, He is asked whether He is the Christ. Of what Christ could the Jews have inquired but their own? Why, therefore, did He not, even at that moment, declare to them the rival (Christ)? You reply, In order that He might be able to suffer. In other words, that this most excellent god might plunge men into crime, whom he was still keeping in ignorance. But even if he had told them, he would yet have to suffer. For he said, “If I tell you, ye will not believe.” And refusing to believe, they would have continued to insist on his death. And would he not even more probably still have had to suffer, if had announced himself as sent by the rival god, and as being, therefore, the enemy of the Creator? It was not, then, in order that He might suffer, that He at that critical moment refrained from proclaiming Himself the other Christ, but because they wanted to extort a confession from His mouth, which they did not mean to believe even if He had given it to them, whereas it was their bounden duty to have acknowledged Him in consequence of His works, which were fulfilling their Scriptures. It was thus plainly His course to keep Himself at that moment unrevealed, because a spontaneous recognition was due to Him. But yet for all this, He with a solemn gesture says, “Hereafter shall the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power of God.” For it was on the authority of the prophecy of Daniel that He intimated to them that He was “the Son of man,” and of David’s Psalm, that He would “sit at the right hand of God.” Accordingly, after He had said this, and so suggested a comparison of the Scripture, a ray of light did seem to show them whom He would have them understand Him to be; for they say: “Art thou then the Son of God?” Of what God, but of Him whom alone they knew? Of what God but of Him whom they remembered in the Psalm as having said to His Son, “Sit Thou on my right hand?” Then He answered, “Ye say that I am;” as if He meant: It is ye who say this—not I. But at the same time He allowed Himself to be all that they had said, in this their second question. By what means, however, are you going to prove to us that they pronounced the sentence “Ergo tu filius Dei es” interrogatively, and not affirmatively? Just as, (on the one hand,) because He had shown them in an indirect manner, by passages of Scripture, that they ought to regard Him as the Son of God, they therefore meant their own words, “Thou art then the Son of God,” to be taken in a like (indirect) sense, as much as to say, “You do not wish to say this of yourself plainly,” so, (on the other hand,) He likewise answered them, “Ye say that I am,” in a sense equally free from doubt, even affirmatively; and so completely was His statement to this effect, that they insisted on accepting that sense which His statement indicated.

Chapter XLII

Other Incidents of the Passion Minutely Compared with Prophecy. Pilate and Herod. Barabbas Preferred to Jesus. Details of the Crucifixion. The Earthquake and the Mid-Day Darkness. All Wonderfully Foretold in the Scriptures of the Creator. Christ’s Giving Up the Ghost No Evidence of Marcion’s Docetic Opinions. In His Sepulture There is a Refutation Thereof

For when He was brought before Pilate, they proceeded to urge Him with the serious charge , of declaring Himself to be Christ the King; that is, undoubtedly, as the Son of God, who was to sit at God’s right hand. They would, however, have burdened Him with some other title, if they had been uncertain whether He had called Himself the Son of God—if He had not pronounced the words, “Ye say that I am,” so as (to admit) that He was that which they said He was. Likewise, when Pirate asked Him, “Art thou Christ (the King)?” He answered, as He had before (to the Jewish council) “Thou sayest that I am” in order that He might not seem to have been driven by a fear of his power to give him a fuller answer. “And so the Lord hath stood on His trial.” And he placed His people on their trial. The Lord Himself comes to a trial with “the elders and rulers of the people,” as Isaiah predicted. And then He fulfilled all that had been written of His passion. At that time “the heathen raged, and the people imagined vain things; the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers gathered themselves together against the Lord and against His Christ.” The heathen were Pilate and the Romans; the people were the tribes of Israel; the kings were represented in Herod, and the rulers in the chief priests. When, indeed, He was sent to Herod gratuitously by Pilate, the words of Hosea were accomplished, for he had prophesied of Christ: “And they shall carry Him bound as a present to the king.” Herod was “exceeding glad” when he saw Jesus, but he heard not a word from Him. For, “as a lamb before the shearer is dumb, so He opened not His mouth,” because “the Lord had given to Him a disciplined tongue, that he might know how and when it behoved Him to speak”—even that “tongue which clove to His jaws,” as the Psalm said it should, through His not speaking. Then Barabbas, the most abandoned criminal, is released, as if he were the innocent man; while the most righteous Christ is delivered to be put to death, as if he were the murderer. Moreover two malefactors are crucified around Him, in order that He might be reckoned amongst the transgressors. Although His raiment was, without doubt, parted among the soldiers, and partly distributed by lot, yet Marcion has erased it all (from his Gospel), for he had his eye upon the Psalm: “They parted my garments amongst them, and cast lots upon my vesture.” You may as well take away the cross itself! But even then the Psalm is not silent concerning it: “They pierced my hands and my feet.” Indeed, the details of the whole event are therein read: “Dogs compassed me about; the assembly of the wicked enclosed me around. All that looked upon me laughed me to scorn; they did shoot out their lips and shake their heads, (saying,) He hoped in God, let Him deliver Him.” Of what use now is (your tampering with) the testimony of His garments? If you take it as a booty for your false Christ, still all the Psalm (compensates) the vesture of Christ. But, behold, the very elements are shaken. For their Lord was suffering. If, however, it was their enemy to whom all this injury was done, the heaven would have gleamed with light, the sun would have been even more radiant, and the day would have prolonged its course—gladly gazing at Marcion’s Christ suspended on his gibbet! These proofs would still have been suitable for me, even if they had not been the subject of prophecy. Isaiah says: “I will clothe the heavens with blackness.” This will be the day, concerning which Amos also writes: And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord, that the sun shall go down at noon and the earth shall be dark in the clear day.” (At noon) the veil of the temple was rent” by the escape of the cherubim, which “left the daughter of Sion as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers.” With what constancy has He also, in Psalm xxx., laboured to present to us the very Christ! He calls with a loud voice to the Father, “Into Thine hands I commend my spirit,” that even when dying He might expend His last breath in fulfilling the prophets. Having said this, He gave up the ghost.” Who? Did the spirit give itself up; or the flesh the spirit? But the spirit could not have breathed itself out. That which breathes is one thing, that which is breathed is another. If the spirit is breathed it must needs be breathed by another. If, however, there had been nothing there but spirit, it would be said to have departed rather than expired. What, however, breathes out spirit but the flesh, which both breathes the spirit whilst it has it, and breathes it out when it loses it? Indeed, if it was not flesh (upon the cross), but a phantom of flesh (and a phantom is but spirit, and so the spirit breathed its own self out, and departed as it did so), no doubt the phantom departed, when the spirit which was the phantom departed: and so the phantom and the spirit disappeared together, and were nowhere to be seen. Nothing therefore remained upon the cross, nothing hung there, after “the giving up of the ghost;” there was nothing to beg of Pilate, nothing to take down from the cross, nothing to wrap in the linen, nothing to lay in the new sepulchre. Still it was not nothing that was there. What was there, then? If a phantom Christ was yet there. If Christ had departed, He had taken away the phantom also. The only shift left to the impudence of the heretics, is to admit that what remained there was the phantom of a phantom! But what if Joseph knew that it was a body which he treated with so much piety? That same Joseph “who had not consented” with the Jews in their crime? The “happy man who walked not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of the scornful.”

Chapter XLIII

Conclusions. Jesus as the Christ of the Creator Proved from the Events of the Last Chapter of St. Luke. The Pious Women at the Sepulchre. The Angels at the Resurrection. The Manifold Appearances of Christ After the Resurrection. His Mission of the Apostles Amongst All Nations. All Shown to Be in Accordance with the Wisdom of the Almighty Father, as Indicated in Prophecy. The Body of Christ After Death No Mere Phantom. Marcion’s Manipulation of the Gospel on This Point

It was very meet that the man who buried the Lord should thus be noticed in prophecy, and thenceforth be “blessed;” since prophecy does not omit the (pious) office of the women who resorted before day-break to the sepulchre with the spices which they had prepared. For of this incident it is said by Hosea: “To seek my face they will watch till day-light, saying unto me, Come, and let us return to the Lord: for He hath taken away, and He will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will bind us up; after two days will He revive us: in the third day He will raise us up.” For who can refuse to believe that these words often revolved in the thought of those women between the sorrow of that desertion with which at present they seemed to themselves to have been smitten by the Lord, and the hope of the resurrection itself, by which they rightly supposed that all would be restored to them? But when “they found not the body (of the Lord Jesus),” “His sepulture was removed from the midst of them,” according to the prophecy of Isaiah. “Two angels however, appeared there.” For just so many honorary companions were required by the word of God, which usually prescribes “two witnesses.” Moreover, the women, returning from the sepulchre, and from this vision of the angels, were foreseen by Isaiah, when he says, “Come, ye women, who return from the vision;” that is, “come,” to report the resurrection of the Lord. It was well, however, that the unbelief of the disciples was so persistent, in order that to the last we might consistently maintain that Jesus revealed Himself to the disciples as none other than the Christ of the prophets. For as two of them were taking a walk, and when the Lord had joined their company, without its appearing that it was He, and whilst He dissembled His knowledge of what had just taken place, they say: “But we trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel,”—meaning their own, that is, the Creator’s Christ. So far had He been from declaring Himself to them as another Christ! They could not, however, deem Him to be the Christ of the Creator; nor, if He was so deemed by them, could He have tolerated this opinion concerning Himself, unless He were really He whom He was supposed to be. Otherwise He would actually be the author of error, and the prevaricator of truth, contrary to the character of the good God. But at no time even after His resurrection did He reveal Himself to them as any other than what, on their own showing, they had always thought Him to be. He pointedly reproached them: “O fools, and slow of heart in not believing that which He spake unto you.” By saying this, He proves that He does not belong to the rival god, but to the same God. For the same thing was said by the angels to the women: “Remember how He spake unto you when He was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of man must be delivered up, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” “Must be delivered up;” and why, except that it was so written by God the Creator? He therefore upbraided them, because they were offended solely at His passion, and because they doubted of the truth of the resurrection which had been reported to them by the women, whereby (they showed that) they had not believed Him to have been the very same as they had thought Him to be. Wishing, therefore, to be believed by them in this wise, He declared Himself to be just what they had deemed Him to be—the Creator’s Christ, the Redeemer of Israel. But as touching the reality of His body, what can be plainer? When they were doubting whether He were not a phantom—nay, were supposing that He was one—He says to them, “Why are ye troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; for a spirit hath not bones, as ye see me have.” Now Marcion was unwilling to expunge from his Gospel some statements which even made against him—I suspect, on purpose, to have it in his power from the passages which he did not suppress, when he could have done so, either to deny that he had expunged anything, or else to justify his suppressions, if he made any. But he spares only such passages as he can subvert quite as well by explaining them away as by expunging them from the text. Thus, in the passage before us, he would have the words, “A spirit hath not bones, as ye see me have,” so transposed, as to mean, “A spirit, such as ye see me to be, hath not bones;” that is to say, it is not the nature of a spirit to have bones. But what need of so tortuous a construction, when He might have simply said, “A spirit hath not bones, even as you observe that I have not?” Why, moreover, does He offer His hands and His feet for their examination—limbs which consist of bones—if He had no bones? Why, too, does He add, “Know that it is I myself,” when they had before known Him to be corporeal? Else, if He were altogether a phantom, why did He upbraid them for supposing Him to be a phantom? But whilst they still believed not, He asked them for some meat, for the express purpose of showing them that He had teeth.

And now, as I would venture to believe, we have accomplished our undertaking. We have set forth Jesus Christ as none other than the Christ of the Creator. Our proofs we have drawn from His doctrines, maxims, affections, feelings, miracles, sufferings, and even resurrection—as foretold by the prophets. Even to the last He taught us (the same truth of His mission), when He sent forth His apostles to preach His gospel “among all nations;” for He thus fulfilled the psalm: “Their sound is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.” Marcion, I pity you; your labour has been in vain. For the Jesus Christ who appears in your Gospel is mine.

Book V

Wherein Tertullian proves, with respect to St. Paul’s epistles, what he had proved in the preceding book with respect to St. Luke’s gospel. Far from being at variance, they were in perfect unison with the writings of the Old Testament, and therefore testified that the Creator was the only God, and that the Lord Jesus was his Christ. As in the preceding books, Tertullian supports his argument with profound reasoning, and many happy illustrations of Holy Scripture

Chapter I

Introductory. The Apostle Paul Himself Not the Preacher of a New God. Called by Jesus Christ, Although After the Other Apostles, His Mission Was from the Creator. States How. The Argument, as in the Case of the Gospel, Confining Proofs to Such Portions of St. Paul’s Writings as Marcion Allowed

There is nothing without a beginning but God alone. Now, inasmuch as the beginning occupies the first place in the condition of all things, so it must necessarily take precedence in the treatment of them, if a clear knowledge is to be arrived at concerning their condition; for you could not find the means of examining even the quality of anything, unless you were certain of its existence, and that after discovering its origin. Since therefore I am brought, in the course of my little work, to this point, I require to know of Marcion the origin of his apostle even—I, who am to some degree a new disciple, the follower of no other master; who at the same time can believe nothing, except that nothing ought to be believed hastily (and that I may further say is hastily believed, which is believed without any examination of its beginning); in short, I who have the best reason possible for bringing this inquiry to a most careful solution, since a man is affirmed to me to be an apostle whom I do not find mentioned in the Gospel in the catalogue of the apostles. Indeed, when I hear that this man was chosen by the Lord after He had attained His rest in heaven, I feel that a kind of improvidence is imputable to Christ, for not knowing before that this man was necessary to Him; and because He thought that he must be added to the apostolic body in the way of a fortuitous encounter rather than a deliberate selection; by necessity (so to speak), and not voluntary choice, although the members of the apostolate had been duly ordained, and were now dismissed to their several missions. Wherefore, O shipmaster of Pontus, if you have never taken on board your small craft any contraband goods or smuggler’s cargo, if you have never thrown overboard or tampered with a freight, you are still more careful and conscientious, I doubt not, in divine things; and so I should be glad if you would inform us under what bill of lading you admitted the Apostle Paul on board, who ticketed him, what owner forwarded him, who handed him to you, that so you may land him without any misgiving, lest he should turn out to belong to him, who can substantiate his claim to him by producing all his apostolic writings. He professes himself to be “an apostle”—to use his own, words—”not of men, nor by man, but by Jesus Christ.” Of course, any one may make a profession concerning himself; but his profession is only rendered valid by the authority of a second person. One man signs, another countersigns; one man appends his seal, another registers in the public records. No one is at once a proposer and a seconder to himself. Besides, you have read, no doubt, that “many shall come, saying, I am Christ.” Now if any one can pretend that he is Christ, how much more might a man profess to be an apostle of Christ! But still, for my own part, I appear in the character of a disciple and an inquirer; that so I may even thus both refute your belief, who have nothing to support it, and confound your shamelessness, who make claims without possessing the means of establishing them. Let there be a Christ, let there be an apostle, although of another god; but what matter? since they are only to draw their proofs out of the Testament of the Creator. Because even the book of Genesis so long ago promised me the Apostle Paul. For among the types and prophetic blessings which he pronounced over his sons, Jacob, when he turned his attention to Benjamin, exclaimed, “Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf; in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall impart nourishment.” He foresaw that Paul would arise out of the tribe of Benjamin, a voracious wolf, devouring his prey in the morning: in order words, in the early period of his life he would devastate the Lord’s sheep, as a persecutor of the churches; but in the evening he would give them nourishment, which means that in his declining years he would educate the fold of Christ, as the teacher of the Gentiles. Then, again, in Saul’s conduct towards David, exhibited first in violent persecution of him, and then in remorse and reparation, on his receiving from him good for evil, we have nothing else than an anticipation of Paul in Saul—belonging, too, as they did, to the same tribe—and of Jesus in David, from whom He descended according to the Virgin’s genealogy. Should you, however, disapprove of these types, the Acts of the Apostles, at all events, have handed down to me this career of Paul, which you must not refuse to accept. Thence I demonstrate that from a persecutor he became “an apostle, not of men, neither by man;” thence am I led to believe the Apostle himself; thence do I find reason for rejecting your defence of him, and for bearing fearlessly your taunt. “Then you deny the Apostle Paul.” I do not calumniate him whom I defend. I deny him, to compel you to the proof of him. I deny him, to convince you that he is mine. If you have regard to our belief you should admit the particulars which comprise it. If you challenge us to your belief, (pray) tell us what things constitute its basis. Either prove the truth of what you believe, or failing in your proof, (tell us) how you believe. Else what conduct is yours, believing in opposition to Him from whom alone comes the proof of that which you believe? Take now from my point of view the apostle, in the same manner as you have received the Christ—the apostle shown to be as much mine as the Christ is. And here, too, we will fight within the same lines, and challenge our adversary on the mere ground of a simple rule, that even an apostle who is said not to belong to the Creator—nay, is displayed as in actual hostility to the Creator—can be fairly regarded as teaching nothing, knowing nothing, wishing nothing in favour of the Creator whilst it would be a first principle with him to set forth another god with as much eagerness as he would use in withdrawing us from the law of the Creator. It is not at all likely that he would call men away from Judaism without showing them at the same time what was the god in whom he invited them to believe; because nobody could possibly pass from allegiance to the Creator without knowing to whom he had to cross over. For either Christ had already revealed another god—in which case the apostle’s testimony would also follow to the same effect, for fear of his not being else regarded as an apostle of the god whom Christ had revealed, and because of the impropriety of his being concealed by the apostle who had been already revealed by Christ—or Christ had made no such revelation concerning God; then there was all the greater need why the apostle should reveal a God who could now be made known by no one else, and who would undoubtedly be left without any belief at all, if he were revealed not even by an apostle. We have laid down this as our first principle, because we wish at once to profess that we shall pursue the same method here in the apostle’s case as we adopted before in Christ’s case, to prove that he proclaimed no new god; that is, we shall draw our evidence from the epistles of St. Paul himself. Now, the garbled form in which we have found the heretic’s Gospel will have already prepared us to expect to find the epistles also mutilated by him with like perverseness—and that even as respects their number.

Chapter II

On the Epistle to the Galatians. The Abolition of the Ordinances of the Mosaic Law No Proof of Another God. The Divine Lawgiver, the Creator Himself, Was the Abrogator. The Apostle’s Doctrine in the First Chapter Shown to Accord with the Teaching of the Old Testament. The Acts of the Apostles Shown to Be Genuine Against Marcion. This Book Agrees with the Pauline Epistles

The epistle which we also allow to be the most decisive against Judaism, is that wherein the apostle instructs the Galatians. For the abolition of the ancient law we fully admit, and hold that it actually proceeds from the dispensation of the Creator,—a point which we have already often treated in the course of our discussion, when we showed that the innovation was foretold by the prophets of our God. Now, if the Creator indeed promised that “the ancient things should pass away,” to be superseded by a new course of things which should arise, whilst Christ marks the period of the separation when He says, “The law and the prophets were until John”—thus making the Baptist the limit between the two dispensations of the old things then terminating—and the new things then beginning, the apostle cannot of course do otherwise, (coming as he does) in Christ, who was revealed after John, than invalidate “the old things” and confirm “the new,” and yet promote thereby the faith of no other god than the Creator, at whose instance it was foretold that the ancient things should pass away. Therefore both the abrogation of the law and the establishment of the gospel help my argument even in this epistle, wherein they both have reference to the fond assumption of the Galatians, which led them to suppose that faith in Christ (the Creator’s Christ, of course) was obligatory, but without annulling the law, because it still appeared to them a thing incredible that the law should be set aside by its own author. Again, if they had at all heard of any other god from the apostle, would they not have concluded at once, of themselves, that they must give up the law of that God whom they had left, in order to follow another? For what man would be long in learning, that he ought to pursue a new discipline, after he had taken up with a new god? Since, however, the same God was declared in the gospel which had always been so well known in the law, the only change being in the dispensation, the sole point of the question to be discussed was, whether the law of the Creator ought by the gospel to be excluded in the Christ of the Creator? Take away this point, and the controversy falls to the ground. Now, since they would all know of themselves, on the withdrawal of this point, that they must of course renounce all submission to the Creator by reason of their faith in another god, there could have been no call for the apostle to teach them so earnestly that which their own belief must have spontaneously suggested to them. Therefore the entire purport of this epistle is simply to show us that the supersession of the law comes from the appointment of the Creator—a point, which we shall still have to keep in mind. Since also he makes mention of no other god (and he could have found no other opportunity of doing so, more suitable than when his purpose was to set forth the reason for the abolition of the law—especially as the prescription of a new god would have afforded a singularly good and most sufficient reason), it is clear enough in what sense he writes, “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from Him who hath called you to His grace to another gospel”—He means) “another” as to the conduct it prescribes, not in respect of its worship; “another” as to the discipline it teaches, not in respect of its divinity; because it is the office of Christ’s gospel to call men from the law to grace, not from the Creator to another god. For nobody had induced them to apostatize from the Creator, that they should seem to “be removed to another gospel,” simply when they return again to the Creator. When he adds, too, the words, “which is not another,” he confirms the fact that the gospel which he maintains is the Creator’s. For the Creator Himself promises the gospel, when He says by Isaiah: “Get thee up into the high mountain, thou that bringest to Sion good tidings; lift up thy voice with strength, thou that bringest the gospel to Jerusalem.” Also when, with respect to the apostles personally, He says, “How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, that bring good tidings of good”—even proclaiming the gospel to the Gentiles, because He also says, “In His name shall the Gentiles trust;” that is, in the name of Christ, to whom He says, “I have given thee as a light of the Gentiles.” However, you will have it that it is the gospel of a new god which was then set forth by the apostle. So that there are two gospels for two gods; and the apostle made a great mistake when he said that “there is not another” gospel, since there is (on the hypothesis) another; and so he might have made a better defence of his gospel, by rather demonstrating this, than by insisting on its being but one. But perhaps, to avoid this difficulty, you will say that he therefore added just afterwards, “Though an angel from heaven preach any other gospel, let him be accursed,” because he was aware that the Creator was going to introduce a gospel! But you thus entangle yourself still more. For this is now the mesh in which you are caught. To affirm that there are two gospels, is not the part of a man who has already denied that there is another. His meaning, however, is clear, for he has mentioned himself first (in the anathema): “But though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel.” It is by way of an example that he has expressed himself. If even he himself might not preach any other gospel, then neither might an angel. He said “angel” in this way, that he might show how much more men ought not to be believed, when neither an angel nor an apostle ought to be; not that he meant to apply an angel to the gospel of the Creator. He then cursorily touches on his own conversion from a persecutor to an apostle—confirming thereby the Acts of the Apostles, in which book may be found the very subject of this epistle, how that certain persons interposed, and said that men ought to be circumcised, and that the law of Moses was to be observed; and how the apostles, when consulted, determined, by the authority of the Holy Ghost, that “a yoke should not be put upon men’s necks which their fathers even had not been able to bear.” Now, since the Acts of the Apostles thus agree with Paul, it becomes apparent why you reject them. It is because they declare no other God than the Creator, and prove Christ to belong to no other God than the Creator; whilst the promise of the Holy Ghost is shown to have been fulfilled in no other document than the Acts of the Apostles. Now, it is not very likely that these should be found in agreement with the apostle, on the one hand, when they described his career in accordance with his own statement; but should, on the other hand, be at variance with him when they announce the (attribute of) divinity in the Creator’s Christ—as if Paul did not follow the preaching of the apostles when he received from them the prescription of not teaching the Law.

Chapter III

St. Paul Quite in Accordance with St. Peter and Other Apostles of the Circumcision. His Censure of St. Peter Explained, and Rescued from Marcion’s Misapplication. The Strong Protests of This Epistle Against Judaizers. Yet Its Teaching is Shown to Be in Keeping with the Law and the Prophets. Marcion’s Tampering with St. Paul’s Writings Censured

But with regard to the countenance of Peter and the rest of the apostles, he tells us that “fourteen years after he went up to Jerusalem,” in order to confer with them about the rule which he followed in his gospel, lest perchance he should all those years have been running, and be running still, in vain, (which would be the case,) of course, if his preaching of the gospel fell short of their method. So great had been his desire to be approved and supported by those whom you wish on all occasions to be understood as in alliance with Judaism! When indeed he says, that “neither was Titus circumcised,” he for the first time shows us that circumcision was the only question connected with the maintenance of the law, which had been as yet agitated by those whom he therefore calls “false brethren unawares brought in.” These persons went no further than to insist on a continuance of the law, retaining unquestionably a sincere belief in the Creator. They perverted the gospel in their teaching, not indeed by such a tampering with the Scripture as should enable them to expunge the Creator’s Christ, but by so retaining the ancient regime as not to exclude the Creator’s law. Therefore he says: “Because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ, that they might bring us into bondage, to whom we gave place by subjection not even for an hour.” Let us only attend to the clear sense and to the reason of the thing, and the perversion of the Scripture will be apparent. When he first says, “Neither Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised,” and then adds, “And that because of false brethren unawares brought in,” etc., he gives us an insight into his reason for acting in a clean contrary way, showing us wherefore he did that which he would neither have done nor shown to us, if that had not happened which induced him to act as he did. But then I want you to tell us whether they would have yielded to the subjection that was demanded, if these false brethren had not crept in to spy out their liberty? I apprehend not. They therefore gave way (in a partial concession), because there were persons whose weak faith required consideration. For their rudimentary belief, which was still in suspense about the observance of the law, deserved this concessive treatment, when even the apostle himself had some suspicion that he might have run, and be still running, in vain. Accordingly, the false brethren who were the spies of their Christian liberty must be thwarted in their efforts to bring it under the yoke of their own Judaism before that Paul discovered whether his labour had been in vain, before that those who preceded him in the apostolate gave him their right hands of fellowship, before that he entered on the office of preaching to the Gentiles, according to their arrangement with him. He therefore made some concession, as was necessary, for a time; and this was the reason why he had Timothy circumcised, and the Nazarites introduced into the temple, which incidents are described in the Acts. Their truth may be inferred from their agreement with the apostle’s own profession, how “to the Jews he became as a Jew, that he might gain the Jews, and to them that were under the law, as under the law,”—and so here with respect to those who come in secretly,—”and lastly, how he became all things to all men, that he might gain all.” Now, inasmuch as the circumstances require such an interpretation as this, no one will refuse to admit that Paul preached that God and that Christ whose law he was excluding all the while, however much he allowed it, owing to the times, but which he would have had summarily to abolish if he had published a new god. Rightly, then, did Peter and James and John give their right hand of fellowship to Paul, and agree on such a division of their work, as that Paul should go to the heathen, and themselves to the circumcision. Their agreement, also, “to remember the poor” was in complete conformity with the law of the Creator, which cherished the poor and needy, as has been shown in our observations on your Gospel. It is thus certain that the question was one which simply regarded the law, while at the same time it is apparent what portion of the law it was convenient to have observed. Paul, however, censures Peter for not walking straightforwardly according to the truth of the gospel. No doubt he blames him; but it was solely because of his inconsistency in the matter of “eating,” which he varied according to the sort of persons (whom he associated with) “fearing them which were of the circumcision,” but not on account of any perverse opinion touching another god. For if such a question had arisen, others also would have been “resisted face to face” by the man who had not even spared Peter on the comparatively small matter of his doubtful conversation. But what do the Marcionites wish to have believed (on the point)? For the rest, the apostle must (be permitted to) go on with his own statement, wherein he says that “a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith:” faith, however, in the same God to whom belongs the law also. For of course he would have bestowed no labour on severing faith from the law, when the difference of the god would, if there had only been any, have of itself produced such a severance. Justly, therefore, did he refuse to “build up again (the structure of the law) which he had overthrown.” The law, indeed, had to be overthrown, from the moment when John “cried in the wilderness, Prepare ye the ways of the Lord,” that valleys and hills and mountains may be filled up and levelled, and the crooked and the rough ways be made straight and smooth—in other words, that the difficulties of the law might be changed into the facilities of the gospel.

For he remembered that the time was come of which the Psalm spake, “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast off their yoke from us;” since the time when “the nations became tumultuous, and the people imagined vain counsels;” when “the kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against His Christ,” in order that thenceforward man might be justified by the liberty of faith, not by servitude to the law, “because the just shall live by his faith.” Now, although the prophet Habakkuk first said this, yet you have the apostle here confirming the prophets, even as Christ did. The object, therefore, of the faith whereby the just man shall live, will be that same God to whom likewise belongs the law, by doing which no man is justified. Since, then, there equally are found the curse in the law and the blessing in faith, you have both conditions set forth by the Creator: “Behold,” says He, “I have set before you a blessing and a curse.” You cannot establish a diversity of authors because there happens to be one of things; for the diversity is itself proposed by one and the same author. Why, however, “Christ was made a curse for us,” is declared by the apostle himself in a way which quite helps our side, as being the result of the Creator’s appointment. But yet it by no means follows, because the Creator said of old, “Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree,” that Christ belonged to another god, and on that account was accursed even then in the law. And how, indeed, could the Creator have cursed by anticipation one whom He knew not of? Why, however, may it not be more suitable for the Creator to have delivered His own Son to His own curse, than to have submitted Him to the malediction of that god of yours,—in behalf, too, of man, who is an alien to him? Now, if this appointment of the Creator respecting His Son appears to you to be a cruel one, it is equally so in the case of your own god; if, on the contrary, it be in accordance with reason in your god, it is equally so—nay, much more so—in mine. For it would be more credible that that God had provided blessing for man, through the curse of Christ, who formerly set both a blessing and a curse before man, than that he had done so, who, according to you, never at any time pronounced either. “We have received therefore, the promise of the Spirit,” as the apostle says, “through faith,” even that faith by which the just man lives, in accordance with the Creator’s purpose. What I say, then, is this, that that God is the object of faith who prefigured the grace of faith. But when he also adds, “For ye are all the children of faith,” it becomes clear that what the heretic’s industry erased was the mention of Abraham’s name; for by faith the apostle declares us to be “children of Abraham,” and after mentioning him he expressly called us “children of faith” also. But how are we children of faith? and of whose faith, if not Abraham’s? For since “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness;” since, also, he deserved for that reason to be called “the father of many nations,” whilst we, who are even more like him in believing in God, are thereby justified as Abraham was, and thereby also obtain life—since the just lives by his faith,—it therefore happens that, as he in the previous passage called us “sons of Abraham,” since he is in faith our (common) father, so here also he named us “children of faith,” for it was owing to his faith that it was promised that Abraham should be the father of (many) nations. As to the fact itself of his calling off faith from circumcision, did he not seek thereby to constitute us the children of Abraham, who had believed previous to his circumcision in the flesh? In short, faith in one of two gods cannot possibly admit us to the dispensation of the other, so that it should impute righteousness to those who believe in him, and make the just live through him, and declare the Gentiles to be his children through faith. Such a dispensation as this belongs wholly to Him through whose appointment it was already made known by the call of this self-same Abraham, as is conclusively shown by the natural meaning.

Chapter IV

Another Instance of Marcion’s Tampering with St. Paul’s Text. The Fulness of Time, Announced by the Apostle, Foretold by the Prophets. Mosaic Rites Abrogated by the Creator Himself. Marcion’s Tricks About Abraham’s Name. The Creator, by His Christ, the Fountain of the Grace and the Liberty Which St. Paul Announced. Marcion’s Docetism Refuted

“But,” says he, “I speak after the manner of men: when we were children, we were placed in bondage under the elements of the world.” This, however, was not said “after the manner of men.” For there is no figure here, but literal truth. For (with respect to the latter clause of this passage), what child (in the sense, that is, in which the Gentiles are children) is not in bondage to the elements of the world, which he looks up to in the light of a god? With regard, however, to the former clause, there was a figure (as the apostle wrote it); because after he had said, “I speak after the manner of men,” he adds), “Though it be but a man’s covenant, no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto.” For by the figure of the permanency of a human covenant he was defending the divine testament. “To Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed. He said not to seeds,’ as of many; but as of one, to thy seed,’ which is Christ.” Fie on Marcion’s sponge! But indeed it is superfluous to dwell on what he has erased, when he may be more effectually confuted from that which he has retained. “But when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son”—the God, of course, who is the Lord of that very succession of times which constitutes an age; who also ordained, as “signs” of time, suns and moons and constellations and stars; who furthermore both predetermined and predicted that the revelation of His Son should be postponed to the end of the times. “It shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain (of the house) of the Lord shall be manifested”; “and in the last days I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh” as Joel says. It was characteristic of Him (only) to wait patiently for the fulness of time, to whom belonged the end of time no less than the beginning. But as for that idle god, who has neither any work nor any prophecy, nor accordingly any time, to show for himself, what has he ever done to bring about the fulness of time, or to wait patiently its completion? If nothing, what an impotent state to have to wait for the Creator’s time, in servility to the Creator! But for what end did He send His Son? “To redeem them that were under the law,” in other words, to “make the crooked ways straight, and the rough places smooth,” as Isaiah says—in order that old things might pass away, and a new course begin, even “the new law out of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem,” and “that we might receive the adoption of sons,” that is, the Gentiles, who once were not sons. For He is to be “the light of the Gentiles,” and “in His name shall the Gentiles trust.” That we may have, therefore the assurance that we are the children of God, “He hath sent forth His Spirit into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” For “in the last days,” saith He, “I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh.”

Now, from whom comes this grace, but from Him who proclaimed the promise thereof? Who is (our) Father, but He who is also our Maker? Therefore, after such affluence (of grace), they should not have returned “to weak and beggarly elements.” By the Romans, however, the rudiments of learning are wont to be called elements. He did not therefore seek, by any depreciation of the mundane elements, to turn them away from their god, although, when he said just before, “Howbeit, then, ye serve them which by nature are no gods,” he censured the error of that physical or natural superstition which holds the elements to be god; but at the God of those elements he aimed not in this censure. He tells us himself clearly enough what he means by “elements,” even the rudiments of the law: “Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years”—the sabbaths, I suppose, and “the preparations,” and the fasts, and the “high days.” For the cessation of even these, no less than of circumcision, was appointed by the Creator’s decrees, who had said by Isaiah, “Your new moons, and your sabbaths, and your high days I cannot bear; your fasting, and feasts, and ceremonies my soul hateth;” also by Amos, “I hate, I despise your feast-days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies;” and again by Hosea, “I will cause to cease all her mirth, and her feast-days, and her sabbaths, and her new moons, and all her solemn assemblies.” The institutions which He set up Himself, you ask, did He then destroy? Yes, rather than any other. Or if another destroyed them, he only helped on the purpose of the Creator, by removing what even He had condemned. But this is not the place to discuss the question why the Creator abolished His own laws. It is enough for us to have proved that He intended such an abolition, that so it may be affirmed that the apostle determined nothing to the prejudice of the Creator, since the abolition itself proceeds from the Creator. But as, in the case of thieves, something of the stolen goods is apt to drop by the way, as a clue to their detection; so, as it seems to me, it has happened to Marcion: the last mention of Abraham’s name he has left untouched (in the epistle), although no passage required his erasure more than this, even his partial alteration of the text. “For (it is written) that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond maid, the other by a free woman; but he who was of the bond maid was born after the flesh, but he of the free woman was by promise: which things are allegorized” (that is to say, they presaged something besides the literal history); “for these are the two covenants,” or the two exhibitions (of the divine plans), as we have found the word interpreted, “the one from the Mount Sinai,” in relation to the synagogue of the Jews, according to the law, “which gendereth to bondage”—”the other gendereth” (to liberty, being raised) above all principality, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but in that which is to come, “which is the mother of us all,” in which we have the promise of (Christ’s) holy church; by reason of which he adds in conclusion: “So then, brethren, we are not children of the bond woman, but of the free.” In this passage he has undoubtedly shown that Christianity had a noble birth, being sprung, as the mystery of the allegory indicates, from that son of Abraham who was born of the free woman; whereas from the son of the bond maid came the legal bondage of Judaism. Both dispensations, therefore, emanate from that same God by whom, as we have found, they were both sketched out beforehand. When he speaks of “the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free,” does not the very phrase indicate that He is the Liberator who was once the Master? For Galba himself never liberated slaves which were not his own, even when about to restore free men to their liberty. By Him, therefore, will liberty be bestowed, at whose command lay the enslaving power of the law. And very properly. It was not meet that those who had received liberty should be “entangled again with the yoke of bondage”—that is, of the law; now that the Psalm had its prophecy accomplished: “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us, since the rulers have gathered themselves together against the Lord and against His Christ.” All those, therefore, who had been delivered from the yoke of slavery he would earnestly have to obliterate the very mark of slavery—even circumcision, on the authority of the prophet’s prediction. He remembered how that Jeremiah had said, “Circumcise the foreskins of your heart;” as Moses likewise had enjoined, “Circumcise your hard hearts”—not the literal flesh. If, now, he were for excluding circumcision, as the messenger of a new god, why does he say that “in Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision?” For it was his duty to prefer the rival principle of that which he was abolishing, if he had a mission from the god who was the enemy of circumcision.

Furthermore, since both circumcision and uncircumcision were attributed to the same Deity, both lost their power in Christ, by reason of the excellency of faith—of that faith concerning which it had been written, “And in His name shall the Gentiles trust?”—of that faith “which,” he says “worketh by love.” By this saying he also shows that the Creator is the source of that grace. For whether he speaks of the love which is due to God, or that which is due to one’s neighbor—in either case, the Creator’s grace is meant: for it is He who enjoins the first in these words, “Thou shalt love God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength;” and also the second in another passage: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” “But he that troubleth you shall have to bear judgment.” From what God? From (Marcion’s) most excellent god? But he does not execute judgment. From the Creator? But neither will He condemn the maintainer of circumcision. Now, if none other but the Creator shall be found to execute judgment, it follows that only He, who has determined on the cessation of the law, shall be able to condemn the defenders of the law; and what, if he also affirms the law in that portion of it where it ought (to be permanent)? “For,” says he, “all the law is fulfilled in you by this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’“ If, indeed, he will have it that by the words “it is fulfilled” it is implied that the law no longer has to be fulfilled, then of course he does not mean that I should any more love my neighbour as myself, since this precept must have ceased together with the law. But no! we must evermore continue to observe this commandment. The Creator’s law, therefore, has received the approval of the rival god, who has, in fact, bestowed upon it not the sentence of a summary dismissal, but the favour of a compendious acceptance; the gist of it all being concentrated in this one precept! But this condensation of the law is, in fact, only possible to Him who is the Author of it. When, therefore, he says, “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ,” since this cannot be accomplished except a man love his neighbour as himself, it is evident that the precept, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (which, in fact, underlies the injunction, “Bear ye one another’s burdens”), is really “the law of Christ,” though literally the law of the Creator. Christ, therefore, is the Creator’s Christ, as Christ’s law is the Creator’s law. “Be not deceived, God is not mocked.” But Marcion’s god can be mocked; for he knows not how to be angry, or how to take vengeance. “For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” It is then the God of recompense and judgment who threatens this. “Let us not be weary in well-doing;” and “as we have opportunity, let us do good.” Deny now that the Creator has given a commandment to do good, and then a diversity of precept may argue a difference of gods. If, however, He also announces recompense, then from the same God must come the harvest both of death and of life. But “in due time we shall reap;” because in Ecclesiastes it is said, “For everything there will be a time.” Moreover, “the world is crucified unto me,” who am a servant of the Creator—”the world,” (I say,) but not the God who made the world—”and I unto the world,” not unto the God who made the world. The world, in the apostle’s sense, here means life and conversation according to worldly principles; it is in renouncing these that we and they are mutually crucified and mutually slain. He calls them “persecutors of Christ.” But when he adds, that “he bare in his body the scars of Christ”—since scars, of course, are accidents of body—he therefore expressed the truth, that the flesh of Christ is not putative, but real and substantial, the scars of which he represents as borne upon his body.

Chapter V

The First Epistle to the Corinthians. The Pauline Salutation of Grace and Peace Shown to Be Anti-Marcionite. The Cross of Christ Purposed by the Creator. Marcion Only Perpetuates the Offence and Foolishness of Christ’s Cross by His Impious Severance of the Gospel from the Creator. Analogies Between the Law and the Gospel in the Matter of Weak Things, and Foolish Things and Base Things

My preliminary remarks on the preceding epistle called me away from treating of its superscription, for I was sure that another opportunity would occur for considering the matter, it being of constant recurrence, and in the same form too, in every epistle. The point, then, is, that it is not (the usual) health which the apostle prescribes for those to whom he writes, but “grace and peace.” I do not ask, indeed, what a destroyer of Judaism has to do with a formula which the Jews still use. For to this day they salute each other with the greeting of “peace,” and formerly in their Scriptures they did the same. But I understand him by his practice plainly enough to have corroborated the declaration of the Creator: “How beautiful are the feet of them that bring glad tidings of good, who preach the gospel of peace!” For the herald of good, that is, of God’s “grace” was well aware that along with it “peace” also was to be proclaimed. Now, when he announces these blessings as “from God the Father and the Lord Jesus,” he uses titles that are common to both, and which are also adapted to the mystery of our faith; and I suppose it to be impossible accurately to determine what God is declared to be the Father and the Lord Jesus, unless (we consider) which of their accruing attributes are more suited to them severally. First, then, I assert that none other than the Creator and Sustainer of both man and the universe can be acknowledged as Father and Lord; next, that to the Father also the title of Lord accrues by reason of His power, and that the Son too receives the same through the Father; then that “grace and peace” are not only His who had them published, but His likewise to whom offence had been given. For neither does grace exist, except after offence; nor peace, except after war. Now, both the people (of Israel) by their transgression of His laws, and the whole race of mankind by their neglect of natural duty, had both sinned and rebelled against the Creator. Marcion’s god, however, could not have been offended, both because he was unknown to everybody, and because he is incapable of being irritated. What grace, therefore, can be had of a god who has not been offended? What peace from one who has never experienced rebellion? “The cross of Christ,” he says, “is to them that perish foolishness; but unto such as shall obtain salvation, it is the power of God and the wisdom of God.” And then, that we may know from whence this comes, he adds: “For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.’“ Now, since these are the Creator’s words, and since what pertains to the doctrine of the cross he accounts as foolishness, therefore both the cross, and also Christ by reason of the cross, will appertain to the Creator, by whom were predicted the incidents of the cross. But if the Creator, as an enemy, took away their wisdom in order that the cross of Christ, considered as his adversary, should be accounted foolishness, how by any possibility can the Creator have foretold anything about the cross of a Christ who is not His own, and of whom He knew nothing, when He published the prediction? But, again, how happens it, that in the system of a Lord who is so very good, and so profuse in mercy, some carry off salvation, when they believe the cross to be the wisdom and power of God, whilst others incur perdition, to whom the cross of Christ is accounted folly;—(how happens it, I repeat,) unless it is in the Creator’s dispensation to have punished both the people of Israel and the human race, for some great offence committed against Him, with the loss of wisdom and prudence? What follows will confirm this suggestion, when he asks, “Hath not God infatuated the wisdom of this world?” and when he adds the reason why: “For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” But first a word about the expression “the world;” because in this passage particularly, the heretics expend a great deal of their subtlety in showing that by world is meant the lord of the world. We, however, understand the term to apply to any person that is in the world, by a simple idiom of human language, which often substitutes that which contains for that which is contained. “The circus shouted,” “The forum spoke,” and “The basilica murmured,” are well-known expressions, meaning that the people in these places did so. Since then the man, not the god, of the world in his wisdom knew not God, whom indeed he ought to have known (both the Jew by his knowledge of the Scriptures, and all the human race by their knowledge of God’s works), therefore that God, who was not acknowledged in His wisdom, resolved to smite men’s knowledge with His foolishness, by saving all those who believe in the folly of the preached cross. “Because the Jews require signs,” who ought to have already made up their minds about God, “and the Greeks seek after wisdom,” who rely upon their own wisdom, and not upon God’s. If, however, it was a new god that was being preached, what sin had the Jews committed, in seeking after signs to believe; or the Greeks, when they hunted after a wisdom which they would prefer to accept? Thus the very retribution which overtook both Jews and Greeks proves that God is both a jealous God and a Judge, inasmuch as He infatuated the world’s wisdom by an angry and a judicial retribution. Since, then, the causes are in the hands of Him who gave us the Scriptures which we use, it follows that the apostle, when treating of the Creator, (as Him whom both Jew and Gentile as yet have) not known, means undoubtedly to teach us, that the God who is to become known (in Christ) is the Creator. The very “stumbling-block” which he declares Christ to be “to the Jews,” points unmistakeably to the Creator’s prophecy respecting Him, when by Isaiah He says: “Behold I lay in Sion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence.” This rock or stone is Christ. This stumbling-stone Marcion retains still. Now, what is that “foolishness of God which is wiser than men,” but the cross and death of Christ? What is that “weakness of God which is stronger than men,” but the nativity and incarnation of God? If, however, Christ was not born of the Virgin, was not constituted of human flesh, and thereby really suffered neither death nor the cross, there was nothing in Him either of foolishness or weakness; nor is it any longer true, that “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise;” nor, again, hath “God chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty;” nor “the base things” and the least things “in the world, and things which are despised, which are even as nothing” (that is, things which really are not), “to bring to nothing things which are” (that is, which really are). For nothing in the dispensation of God is found to be mean, and ignoble, and contemptible. Such only occurs in man’s arrangement. The very Old Testament of the Creator itself, it is possible, no doubt, to charge with foolishness, and weakness, and dishonour and meanness, and contempt. What is more foolish and more weak than God’s requirement of bloody sacrifices and of savoury holocausts? What is weaker than the cleansing of vessels and of beds? What more dishonourable than the discoloration of the reddening skin? What so mean as the statute of retaliation? What so contemptible as the exception in meats and drinks? The whole of the Old Testament, the heretic, to the best of my belief, holds in derision. For God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound its wisdom. Marcion’s god has no such discipline, because he does not take after (the Creator) in the process of confusing opposites by their opposites, so that “no flesh shall glory; but, as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” In what Lord? Surely in Him who gave this precept. Unless, forsooth, the Creator enjoined us to glory in the god of Marcion.

Chapter VI

The Divine Way of Wisdom, and Greatness, and Might. God’s Hiding of Himself, and Subsequent Revelation. To Marcion’s God Such a Concealment and Manifestation Impossible. God’s Predestination. No Such Prior System of Intention Possible to a God Previously Unknown as Was Marcion’s. The Powers of the World Which Crucified Christ. St. Paul, as a Wise Master-Builder, Associated with Prophecy. Sundry Injunctions of the Apostle Parallel with the Teaching of the Old Testament

By all these statements, therefore, does he show us what God he means, when he says, “We speak the wisdom of God among them that are perfect.” It is that God who has confounded the wisdom of the wise, who has brought to nought the understanding of the prudent, who has reduced to folly the world’s wisdom, by choosing its foolish things, and disposing them to the attainment of salvation. This wisdom, he says, once lay hidden in things that were foolish, weak, and lacking in honour; once also was latent under figures, allegories, and enigmatical types; but it was afterwards to be revealed in Christ, who was set “as a light to the Gentiles,” by the Creator who promised through the mouth of Isaiah that He would discover “the hidden treasures, which eye had not seen.” Now, that that god should have ever hidden anything who had never made a cover wherein to practise concealment, is in itself a wholly incredible idea. If he existed, concealment of himself was out of the question—to say nothing of any of his religious ordinances. The Creator, on the contrary, was as well known in Himself as His ordinances were. These, we know, were publicly instituted in Israel; but they lay overshadowed with latent meanings, in which the wisdom of God was concealed, to be brought to light by and by amongst “the perfect,” when the time should come, but “pre-ordained in the counsels of God before the ages.” But whose ages, if not the Creator’s? For because ages consist of times, and times are made up of days, and months, and years; since also days, and months, and years are measured by suns, and moons, and stars, which He ordained for this purpose (for “they shall be,” says He, “for signs of the months and the years”), it clearly follows that the ages belong to the Creator, and that nothing of what was fore-ordained before the ages can be said to be the property of any other being than Him who claims the ages also as His own. Else let Marcion show that the ages belong to his god. He must then also claim the world itself for him; for it is in it that the ages are reckoned, the vessel as it were of the times, as well as the signs thereof, or their order. But he has no such demonstration to show us. I go back therefore to the point, and ask him this question: Why did (his god) fore-ordain our glory before the ages of the Creator? I could understand his having predetermined it before the ages, if he had revealed it at the commencement of time. But when he does this almost at the very expiration of all the ages of the Creator, his predestination before the ages, and not rather within the ages, was in vain, because he did not mean to make any revelation of his purpose until the ages had almost run out their course. For it is wholly inconsistent in him to be so forward in planning purposes, who is so backward in revealing them.

In the Creator, however, the two courses were perfectly compatible—both the predestination before the ages and the revelation at the end thereof, because that which He both fore-ordained and revealed He also in the intermediate space of time announced by the pre-ministration of figures, and symbols, and allegories. But because (the apostle) subjoins, on the subject of our glory, that “none of the princes of this world knew it, for had they known it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory,” the heretic argues that the princes of this world crucified the Lord (that is, the Christ of the rival god) in order that this blow might even recoil on the Creator Himself. Any one, however, who has seen from what we have already said how our glory must be regarded as issuing from the Creator, will already have come to the conclusion that, inasmuch as the Creator settled it in His own secret purpose, it properly enough was unknown to all the princes and powers of the Creator, on the principle that servants are not permitted to know their masters’ plans, much less the fallen angels and the leader of transgression himself, the devil; for I should contend that these, on account of their fall, were greater strangers still to any knowledge of the Creator’s dispensations. But it is no longer open to me even to interpret the princes and powers of this world as the Creator’s, since the apostle imputes ignorance to them, whereas even the devil according to our Gospel recognised Jesus in the temptation, and, according to the record which is common to both (Marcionites and ourselves) the evil spirit knew that Jesus was the Holy One of God, and that Jesus was His name, and that He was come to destroy them. The parable also of the strong man armed, whom a stronger than he overcame and seized his goods, is admitted by Marcion to have reference to the Creator: therefore the Creator could not have been ignorant any longer of the God of glory, since He is overcome by him; nor could He have crucified him whom He was unable to cope with. The inevitable inference, therefore, as it seems to me, is that we must believe that the princes and powers of the Creator did knowingly crucify the God of glory in His Christ, with that desperation and excessive malice with which the most abandoned slaves do not even hesitate to slay their masters. For it is written in my Gospel that “Satan entered into Judas.” According to Marcion, however, the apostle in the passage under consideration does not allow the imputation of ignorance, with respect to the Lord of glory, to the powers of the Creator; because, indeed, he will have it that these are not meant by “the princes of this world.” But (the apostle) evidently did not speak of spiritual princes; so that he meant secular ones, those of the princely people, (chief in the divine dispensation, although) not, of course, amongst the nations of the world, and their rulers, and king Herod, and even Pilate, and, as represented by him, that power of Rome which was the greatest in the world, and then presided over by him. Thus the arguments of the other side are pulled down, and our own proofs are thereby built up. But you still maintain that our glory comes from your god, with whom it also lay in secret. Then why does your god employ the self-same Scripture which the apostle also relies on? What has your god to do at all with the sayings of the prophets? “Who hath discovered the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counsellor?” So says Isaiah. What has he also to do with illustrations from our God? For when (the apostle) calls himself “a wise master-builder,” we find that the Creator by Isaiah designates the teacher who sketches out the divine discipline by the same title, “I will take away from Judah the cunning artificer,” etc. And was it not Paul himself who was there foretold, destined “to be taken away from Judah”—that is, from Judaism—for the erection of Christianity, in order “to lay that only foundation, which is Christ?” Of this work the Creator also by the same prophet says, “Behold, I lay in Sion for a foundation a precious stone and honourable; and he that resteth thereon shall not be confounded.” Unless it be, that God professed Himself to be the builder up of an earthly work, that so He might not give any sign of His Christ, as destined to be the foundation of such as believe in Him, upon which every man should build at will the superstructure of either sound or worthless doctrine; forasmuch as it is the Creator’s function, when a man’s work shall be tried by fire, (or) when a reward shall be recompensed to him by fire; because it is by fire that the test is applied to the building which you erect upon the foundation which is laid by Him, that is, the foundation of His Christ. “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” Now, since man is the property, and the work, and the image and likeness of the Creator, having his flesh, formed by Him of the ground, and his soul of His afflatus, it follows that Marcion’s god wholly dwells in a temple which belongs to another, if so be we are not the Creator’s temple. But “if any man defile the temple of God, he shall be himself destroyed”—of course, by the God of the temple. If you threaten an avenger, you threaten us with the Creator. “Ye must become fools, that ye may be wise.” Wherefore? “Because the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” With what God? Even if the ancient Scriptures have contributed nothing in support of our view thus far, an excellent testimony turns up in what (the apostle) here adjoins: “For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness; and again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.” For in general we may conclude for certain that he could not possibly have cited the authority of that God whom he was bound to destroy, since he would not teach for Him. “Therefore,” says he, “let no man glory in man;” an injunction which is in accordance with the teaching of the Creator, “wretched is the man that trusteth in man;” again, “It is better to trust in the Lord than to confide in man;” and the same thing is said about glorying (in princes).

Chapter VII

St. Paul’s Phraseology Often Suggested by the Jewish Scriptures. Christ Our Passover—A Phrase Which Introduces Us to the Very Heart of the Ancient Dispensation. Christ’s True Corporeity. Married and Unmarried States. Meaning of the Time is Short. In His Exhortations and Doctrine, the Apostle Wholly Teaches According to the Mind and Purposes of the God of the Old Testament. Prohibition of Meats and Drinks Withdrawn by the Creator

“And the hidden things of darkness He will Himself bring to light,” even by Christ; for He has promised Christ to be a Light, and Himself He has declared to be a lamp, “searching the hearts and reins.” From Him also shall “praise be had by every man,” from whom proceeds, as from a judge, the opposite also of praise. But here, at least, you say he interprets the world to be the God thereof, when he says: “We are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.” For if by world he had meant the people thereof, he would not have afterwards specially mentioned “men.” To prevent, however, your using such an argument as this, the Holy Ghost has providentially explained the meaning of the passage thus: “We are made a spectacle to the world,” i.e. “both to angels,” who minister therein, “and to men,” who are the objects of their ministration. Of course, a man of the noble courage of our apostle (to say nothing of the Holy Ghost) was afraid, when writing to the children whom he had begotten in the gospel, to speak freely of the God of the world; for against Him he could not possibly seem to have a word to say, except only in a straightforward manner! I quite admit, that, according to the Creator’s law, the man was an offender “who had his father’s wife.” He followed, no doubt, the principles of natural and public law. When, however, he condemns the man “to be delivered unto Satan,” he becomes the herald of an avenging God. It does not matter that he also said, “For the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord,” since both in the destruction of the flesh and in the saving of the spirit there is, on His part, judicial process; and when he bade “the wicked person be put away from the midst of them,” he only mentioned what is a very frequently recurring sentence of the Creator. “Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened.” The unleavened bread was therefore, in the Creator’s ordinance, a figure of us (Christians). “For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.” But why is Christ our passover, if the passover be not a type of Christ, in the similitude of the blood which saves, and of the Lamb, which is Christ? Why does (the apostle) clothe us and Christ with symbols of the Creator’s solemn rites, unless they had relation to ourselves? When, again, he warns us against fornication, he reveals the resurrection of the flesh. “The body,” says he, “is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body,” just as the temple is for God, and God for the temple. A temple will therefore pass away with its god, and its god with the temple. You see, then, how that “He who raised up the Lord will also raise us up.” In the body will He raise us, because the body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And suitably does he add the question: “Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?” What has the heretic to say? That these members of Christ will not rise again, for they are no longer our own? “For,” he says, “ye are bought with a price.” A price! surely none at all was paid, since Christ was a phantom, nor had He any corporeal substance which He could pay for our bodies! But, in truth, Christ had wherewithal to redeem us; and since He has redeemed, at a great price, these bodies of ours, against which fornication must not be committed (because they are now members of Christ, and not our own), surely He will secure, on His own account, the safety of those whom He made His own at so much cost! Now, how shall we glorify, how shall we exalt, God in our body, which is doomed to perish? We must now encounter the subject of marriage, which Marcion, more continent than the apostle, prohibits. For the apostle, although preferring the grace of continence, yet permits the contraction of marriage and the enjoyment of it, and advises the continuance therein rather than the dissolution thereof. Christ plainly forbids divorce, Moses unquestionably permits it.

Now, when Marcion wholly prohibits all carnal intercourse to the faithful (for we will say nothing about his catechumens), and when he prescribes repudiation of all engagements before marriage, whose teaching does he follow, that of Moses or of Christ? Even Christ, however, when He here commands “the wife not to depart from her husband, or if she depart, to remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband,” both permitted divorce, which indeed He never absolutely prohibited, and confirmed (the sanctity) of marriage, by first forbidding its dissolution; and, if separation had taken place, by wishing the nuptial bond to be resumed by reconciliation. But what reasons does (the apostle) allege for continence? Because “the time is short.” I had almost thought it was because in Christ there was another god! And yet He from whom emanates this shortness of the time, will also send what suits the said brevity. No one makes provision for the time which is another’s. You degrade your god, O Marcion, when you make him circumscribed at all by the Creator’s time. Assuredly also, when (the apostle) rules that marriage should be “only in the Lord,” that no Christian should intermarry with a heathen, he maintains a law of the Creator, who everywhere prohibits marriage with strangers. But when he says, “although there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth,” the meaning of his words is clear—not as if there were gods in reality, but as if there were some who are called gods, without being truly so. He introduces his discussion about meats offered to idols with a statement concerning idols (themselves): “We know that an idol is nothing in the world.” Marcion, however, does not say that the Creator is not God; so that the apostle can hardly be thought to have ranked the Creator amongst those who are called gods, without being so; since, even if they had been gods, “to us there is but one God, the Father.” Now, from whom do all things come to us, but from Him to whom all things belong? And pray, what things are these? You have them in a preceding part of the epistle: “All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come.” He makes the Creator, then the God of all things, from whom proceed both the world and life and death, which cannot possibly belong to the other god. From Him, therefore, amongst the “all things” comes also Christ. When he teaches that every man ought to live of his own industry, he begins with a copious induction of examples—of soldiers, and shepherds, and husbandmen. But he wanted divine authority. What was the use, however, of adducing the Creator’s, which he was destroying? It was vain to do so; for his god had no such authority! (The apostle) says: “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn,” and adds: “Doth God take care of oxen?” Yes, of oxen, for the sake of men! For, says he, “it is written for our sakes.” Thus he showed that the law had a symbolic reference to ourselves, and that it gives its sanction in favour of those who live of the gospel. (He showed) also, that those who preach the gospel are on this account sent by no other god but Him to whom belongs the law, which made provision for them, when he says: “For our sakes was this written.” Still he declined to use this power which the law gave him, because he preferred working without any restraint. Of this he boasted, and suffered no man to rob him of such glory—certainly with no view of destroying the law, which he proved that another man might use. For behold Marcion, in his blindness, stumbled at the rock whereof our fathers drank in the wilderness. For since “that rock was Christ,” it was, of course, the Creator’s, to whom also belonged the people. But why resort to the figure of a sacred sign given by an extraneous god? Was it to teach the very truth, that ancient things prefigured the Christ who was to be educed out of them? For, being about to take a cursory view of what befell the people (of Israel) he begins with saying: “Now these things happened as examples for us.” Now, tell me, were these examples given by the Creator to men belonging to a rival god? Or did one god borrow examples from another, and a hostile one too? He withdraws me to himself in alarm from Him from whom he transfers my allegiance. Will his antagonist make me better disposed to him? Should I now commit the same sins as the people, shall I have to suffer the same penalties, or not? But if not the same, how vainly does he propose to me terrors which I shall not have to endure! From whom, again, shall I have to endure them? If from the Creator, What evils does it appertain to Him to inflict? And how will it happen that, jealous God as He is, He shall punish the man who offends His rival, instead of rather encouraging him. If, however, from the other god—but he knows not how to punish. So that the whole declaration of the apostle lacks a reasonable basis, if it is not meant to relate to the Creator’s discipline. But the fact is, the apostle’s conclusion corresponds to the beginning: “Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples; and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” What a Creator! how prescient already, and considerate in warning Christians who belong to another god! Whenever cavils occur the like to those which have been already dealt with, I pass them by; certain others I despatch briefly. A great argument for another god is the permission to eat of all kinds of meats, contrary to the law. Just as if we did not ourselves allow that the burdensome ordinances of the law were abrogated—but by Him who imposed them, who also promised the new condition of things. The same, therefore, who prohibited meats, also restored the use of them, just as He had indeed allowed them from the beginning. If, however, some strange god had come to destroy our God, his foremost prohibition would certainly have been, that his own votaries should abstain from supporting their lives on the resources of his adversary.

Chapter VIII

Man the Image of the Creator, and Christ the Head of the Man. Spiritual Gifts. The Sevenfold Spirit Described by Isaiah. The Apostle and the Prophet Compared. Marcion Challenged to Produce Anything Like These Gifts of the Spirit Foretold in Prophecy in His God

“The head of every man is Christ.” What Christ, if He is not the author of man? The head he has here put for authority; now “authority” will accrue to none else than the “author.” Of what man indeed is He the head? Surely of him concerning whom he adds soon afterwards: “The man ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image of God.” Since then he is the image of the Creator (for He, when looking on Christ His Word, who was to become man, said, “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness” ), how can I possibly have another head but Him whose image I am? For if I am the image of the Creator there is no room in me for another head. But wherefore “ought the woman to have power over her head, because of the angels?” If it is because “she was created for the man,” and taken out of the man, according to the Creator’s purpose, then in this way too has the apostle maintained the discipline of that God from whose institution he explains the reasons of His discipline. He adds: “Because of the angels.” What angels? In other words, whose angels? If he means the fallen angels of the Creator, there is great propriety in his meaning. It is right that that face which was a snare to them should wear some mark of a humble guise and obscured beauty. If, however, the angels of the rival god are referred to, what fear is there for them? for not even Marcion’s disciples, (to say nothing of his angels,) have any desire for women. We have often shown before now, that the apostle classes heresies as evil among “works of the flesh,” and that he would have those persons accounted estimable who shun heresies as an evil thing. In like manner, when treating of the gospel, we have proved from the sacrament of the bread and the cup the verity of the Lord’s body and blood in opposition to Marcion’s phantom; whilst throughout almost the whole of my work it has been contended that all mention of judicial attributes points conclusively to the Creator as to a God who judges. Now, on the subject of “spiritual gifts,” I have to remark that these also were promised by the Creator through Christ; and I think that we may derive from this a very just conclusion that the bestowal of a gift is not the work of a god other than Him who is proved to have given the promise. Here is a prophecy of Isaiah: “There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a flower shall spring up from his root; and upon Him shall rest the Spirit of the Lord.” After which he enumerates the special gifts of the same: “The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of religion. And with the fear of the Lord shall the Spirit fill Him.” In this figure of a flower he shows that Christ was to arise out of the rod which sprang from the stem of Jesse; in other words, from the virgin of the race of David, the son of Jesse. In this Christ the whole substantia of the Spirit would have to rest, not meaning that it would be as it were some subsequent acquisition accruing to Him who was always, even before His incarnation, the Spirit of God; so that you cannot argue from this that the prophecy has reference to that Christ who (as mere man of the race only of David) was to obtain the Spirit of his God. (The prophet says,) on the contrary, that from the time when (the true Christ) should appear in the flesh as the flower predicted, rising from the root of Jesse, there would have to rest upon Him the entire operation of the Spirit of grace, which, so far as the Jews were concerned, would cease and come to an end. This result the case itself shows; for after this time the Spirit of the Creator never breathed amongst them. From Judah were taken away “the wise man, and the cunning artificer, and the counsellor, and the prophet;” that so it might prove true that “the law and the prophets were until John.” Now hear how he declared that by Christ Himself, when returned to heaven, these spiritual gifts were to be sent: “He ascended up on high,” that is, into heaven; “He led captivity captive,” meaning death or slavery of man; “He gave gifts to the sons of men,” that is, the gratuities, which we call charismata. He says specifically “sons of men,” and not men promiscuously; thus exhibiting to us those who were the children of men truly so called, choice men, apostles. “For,” says he, “I have begotten you through the gospel;” and “Ye are my children, of whom I travail again in birth.” Now was absolutely fulfilled that promise of the Spirit which was given by the word of Joel: “In the last days will I pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh, and their sons and their daughters shall prophesy; and upon my servants and upon my handmaids will I pour out of my Spirit.” Since, then, the Creator promised the gift of His Spirit in the latter days; and since Christ has in these last days appeared as the dispenser of spiritual gifts (as the apostle says, “When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son;” and again, “This I say, brethren, that the time is short” ), it evidently follows in connection with this prediction of the last days, that this gift of the Spirit belongs to Him who is the Christ of the predicters. Now compare the Spirit’s specific graces, as they are described by the apostle, and promised by the prophet Isaiah. “To one is given,” says he, “by the Spirit the word of wisdom;” this we see at once is what Isaiah declared to be “the spirit of wisdom.” “To another, the word of knowledge;” this will be “the (prophet’s) spirit of understanding and counsel.” “To another, faith by the same Spirit;” this will be “the spirit of religion and the fear of the Lord.” “To another, the gifts of healing, and to another the working of miracles;” this will be “the spirit of might.” “To another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another divers kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues;” this will be “the spirit of knowledge.” See how the apostle agrees with the prophet both in making the distribution of the one Spirit, and in interpreting His special graces. This, too, I may confidently say: he who has likened the unity of our body throughout its manifold and divers members to the compacting together of the various gifts of the Spirit, shows also that there is but one Lord of the human body and of the Holy Spirit. This Spirit, (according to the apostle’s showing,) meant not that the service of these gifts should be in the body, nor did He place them in the human body); and on the subject of the superiority of love above all these gifts, He even taught the apostle that it was the chief commandment, just as Christ has shown it to be: “Thou shalt love the Lord with all thine heart and soul, with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thine own self.” When he mentions the fact that “it is written in the law,” how that the Creator would speak with other tongues and other lips, whilst confirming indeed the gift of tongues by such a mention, he yet cannot be thought to have affirmed that the gift was that of another god by his reference to the Creator’s prediction. In precisely the same manner, when enjoining on women silence in the church, that they speak not for the mere sake of learning (although that even they have the right of prophesying, he has already shown when he covers the woman that prophesies with a veil), he goes to the law for his sanction that woman should be under obedience. Now this law, let me say once for all, he ought to have made no other acquaintance with, than to destroy it. But that we may now leave the subject of spiritual gifts, facts themselves will be enough to prove which of us acts rashly in claiming them for his God, and whether it is possible that they are opposed to our side, even if the Creator promised them for His Christ who is not yet revealed, as being destined only for the Jews, to have their operations in His time, in His Christ, and among His people. Let Marcion then exhibit, as gifts of his god, some prophets, such as have not spoken by human sense, but with the Spirit of God, such as have both predicted things to come, and have made manifest the secrets of the heart; let him produce a psalm, a vision, a prayer—only let it be by the Spirit, in an ecstasy, that is, in a rapture, whenever an interpretation of tongues has occurred to him; let him show to me also, that any woman of boastful tongue in his community has ever prophesied from amongst those specially holy sisters of his. Now all these signs (of spiritual gifts) are forthcoming from my side without any difficulty, and they agree, too, with the rules, and the dispensations, and the instructions of the Creator; therefore without doubt the Christ, and the Spirit, and the apostle, belong severally to my God. Here, then, is my frank avowal for any one who cares to require it.

Chapter IX

The Doctrine of the Resurrection. The Body Will Rise Again. Christ’s Judicial Character. Jewish Perversions of Prophecy Exposed and Confuted. Messianic Psalms Vindicated. Jewish and Rationalistic Interpretations on This Point Similar. Jesus—Not Hezekiah or Solomon—The Subject of These Prophecies in the Psalms. None But He is the Christ of the Old and the New Testaments

Meanwhile the Marcionite will exhibit nothing of this kind; he is by this time afraid to say which side has the better right to a Christ who is not yet revealed. Just as my Christ is to be expected, who was predicted from the beginning, so his Christ therefore has no existence, as not having been announced from the beginning. Ours is a better faith, which believes in a future Christ, than the heretic’s, which has none at all to believe in. Touching the resurrection of the dead, let us first inquire how some persons then denied it. No doubt in the same way in which it is even now denied, since the resurrection of the flesh has at all times men to deny it. But many wise men claim for the soul a divine nature, and are confident of its undying destiny, and even the multitude worship the dead in the presumption which they boldly entertain that their souls survive. As for our bodies, however, it is manifest that they perish either at once by fire or the wild beasts, or even when most carefully kept by length of time. When, therefore, the apostle refutes those who deny the resurrection of the flesh, he indeed defends, in opposition to them, the precise matter of their denial, that is, the resurrection of the body. You have the whole answer wrapped up in this. All the rest is superfluous. Now in this very point, which is called the resurrection of the dead, it is requisite that the proper force of the words should be accurately maintained. The word dead expresses simply what has lost the vital principle, by means of which it used to live. Now the body is that which loses life, and as the result of losing it becomes dead. To the body, therefore, the term dead is only suitable. Moreover, as resurrection accrues to what is dead, and dead is a term applicable only to a body, therefore the body alone has a resurrection incidental to it. So again the word Resurrection, or (rising again), embraces only that which has fallen down. “To rise,” indeed, can be predicated of that which has never fallen down, but had already been always lying down. But “to rise again” is predicable only of that which has fallen down; because it is by rising again, in consequence of its having fallen down, that it is said to have re-risen. For the syllable RE always implies iteration (or happening again). We say, therefore, that the body falls to the ground by death, as indeed facts themselves show, in accordance with the law of God. For to the body it was said, (“Till thou return to the ground, for out of it wast thou taken; for) dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” That, therefore, which came from the ground shall return to the ground. Now that falls down which returns to the ground; and that rises again which falls down. “Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection.” Here in the word man, who consists of bodily substance, as we have often shown already, is presented to me the body of Christ. But if we are all so made alive in Christ, as we die in Adam, it follows of necessity that we are made alive in Christ as a bodily substance, since we died in Adam as a bodily substance. The similarity, indeed, is not complete, unless our revival in Christ concur in identity of substance with our mortality in Adam. But at this point (the apostle) has made a parenthetical statement concerning Christ, which, bearing as it does on our present discussion, must not pass unnoticed. For the resurrection of the body will receive all the better proof, in proportion as I shall succeed in showing that Christ belongs to that God who is believed to have provided this resurrection of the flesh in His dispensation. When he says, “For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet,” we can see at once from this statement that he speaks of a God of vengeance, and therefore of Him who made the following promise to Christ: “Sit Thou at my right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool. The rod of Thy strength shall the Lord send forth from Sion, and He shall rule along with Thee in the midst of Thine enemies.” It is necessary for me to lay claim to those Scriptures which the Jews endeavour to deprive us of, and to show that they sustain my view. Now they say that this Psalm was a chant in honour of Hezekiah, because “he went up to the house of the Lord,” and God turned back and removed his enemies. Therefore, (as they further hold,) those other words, “Before the morning star did I beget thee from the womb,” are applicable to Hezekiah, and to the birth of Hezekiah. We on our side have published Gospels (to the credibility of which we have to thank them for having given some confirmation, indeed, already in so great a subject ); and these declare that the Lord was born at night, that so it might be “before the morning star,” as is evident both from the star especially, and from the testimony of the angel, who at night announced to the shepherds that Christ had at that moment been born, and again from the place of the birth, for it is towards night that persons arrive at the (eastern) “inn.” Perhaps, too, there was a mystic purpose in Christ’s being born at night, destined, as He was, to be the light of the truth amidst the dark shadows of ignorance. Nor, again, would God have said, “I have begotten Thee,” except to His true Son. For although He says of all the people (Israel), “I have begotten children,” yet He added not “from the womb.” Now, why should He have added so superfluously this phrase “from the womb” (as if there could be any doubt about any one’s having been born from the womb), unless the Holy Ghost had wished the words to be with especial care understood of Christ? “I have begotten Thee from the womb,” that is to say, from a womb only, without a man’s seed, making it a condition of a fleshly body that it should come out of a womb. What is here added (in the Psalm), “Thou art a priest for ever,” relates to (Christ) Himself. Hezekiah was no priest; and even if he had been one, he would not have been a priest for ever. “After the order,” says He, “of Melchizedek.” Now what had Hezekiah to do with Melchizedek, the priest of the most high God, and him uncircumcised too, who blessed the circumcised Abraham, after receiving from him the offering of tithes? To Christ, however, “the order of Melchizedek” will be very suitable; for Christ is the proper and legitimate High Priest of God. He is the Pontiff of the priesthood of the uncircumcision, constituted such, even then, for the Gentiles, by whom He was to be more fully received, although at His last coming He will favour with His acceptance and blessing the circumcision also, even the race of Abraham, which by and by is to acknowledge Him. Well, then, there is also another Psalm, which begins with these words: “Give Thy judgments, O God, to the King,” that is, to Christ who was to come as King, “and Thy righteousness unto the King’s son,” that is, to Christ’s people; for His sons are they who are born again in Him. But it will here be said that this Psalm has reference to Solomon. However, will not those portions of the Psalm which apply to Christ alone, be enough to teach us that all the rest, too, relates to Christ, and not to Solomon? “He shall come down,” says He, “like rain upon a fleece, and like dropping showers upon the earth,” describing His descent from heaven to the flesh as gentle and unobserved. Solomon, however, if he had indeed any descent at all, came not down like a shower, because he descended not from heaven. But I will set before you more literal points. “He shall have dominion,” says the Psalmist, “from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.” To Christ alone was this given; whilst Solomon reigned over only the moderately-sized kingdom of Judah. “Yea, all kings shall fall down before Him.” Whom, indeed, shall they all thus worship, except Christ? “All nations shall serve Him.” To whom shall all thus do homage, but Christ? “His name shall endure for ever.” Whose name has this eternity of fame, but Christ’s? “Longer than the sun shall His name remain,” for longer than the sun shall be the Word of God, even Christ. “And in Him shall all nations be blessed.” In Solomon was no nation blessed; in Christ every nation. And what if the Psalm proves Him to be even God? “They shall call Him blessed.” (On what ground?) Because blessed is the Lord God of Israel, who only doeth wonderful things.” “Blessed also is His glorious name, and with His glory shall all the earth be filled.” On the contrary, Solomon (as I make bold to affirm) lost even the glory which he had from God, seduced by his love of women even into idolatry. And thus, the statement which occurs in about the middle of this Psalm, “His enemies shall lick the dust” (of course, as having been, (to use the apostle’s phrase,) “put under His feet” ), will bear upon the very object which I had in view, when I both introduced the Psalm, and insisted on my opinion of its sense,—namely, that I might demonstrate both the glory of His kingdom and the subjection of His enemies in pursuance of the Creator’s own plans, with the view of laying down this conclusion, that none but He can be believed to be the Christ of the Creator.

Chapter X

Doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body, Continued. How are the Dead Raised? and with What Body Do They Come? These Questions Answered in Such a Sense as to Maintain the Truth of the Raised Body, Against Marcion. Christ as the Second Adam Connected with the Creator of the First Man. Let Us Bear the Image of the Heavenly. The Triumph Over Death in Accordance with the Prophets. Hosea and St. Paul Compared

Let us now return to the resurrection, to the defence of which against heretics of all sorts we have given indeed sufficient attention in another work of ours. But we will not be wanting (in some defence of the doctrine) even here, in consideration of such persons as are ignorant of that little treatise. “What,” asks he, “shall they do who are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not?” Now, never mind that practice, (whatever it may have been.) The Februarian lustrations will perhaps answer him (quite as well), by praying for the dead. Do not then suppose that the apostle here indicates some new god as the author and advocate of this (baptism for the dead. His only aim in alluding to it was) that he might all the more firmly insist upon the resurrection of the body, in proportion as they who were vainly baptized for the dead resorted to the practice from their belief of such a resurrection. We have the apostle in another passage defining “but one baptism.” To be “baptized for the dead” therefore means, in fact, to be baptized for the body; for, as we have shown, it is the body which becomes dead. What, then, shall they do who are baptized for the body, if the body rises not again? We stand, then, on firm ground (when we say) that the next question which the apostle has discussed equally relates to the body. But “some man will say, How are the dead raised up? With what body do they come?’“ Having established the doctrine of the resurrection which was denied, it was natural to discuss what would be the sort of body (in the resurrection), of which no one had an idea. On this point we have other opponents with whom to engage. For Marcion does not in any wise admit the resurrection of the flesh, and it is only the salvation of the soul which he promises; consequently the question which he raises is not concerning the sort of body, but the very substance thereof. Notwithstanding, he is most plainly refuted even from what the apostle advances respecting the quality of the body, in answer to those who ask, “How are the dead raised up? with what body do they come?” For as he treated of the sort of body, he of course ipso facto proclaimed in the argument that it was a body which would rise again. Indeed, since he proposes as his examples “wheat grain, or some other grain, to which God giveth a body, such as it hath pleased Him;” since also he says, that “to every seed is its own body;” that, consequently, “there is one kind of flesh of men, whilst there is another of beasts, and (another) of birds; that there are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial; and that there is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars”—does he not therefore intimate that there is to be a resurrection of the flesh or body, which he illustrates by fleshly and corporeal samples? Does he not also guarantee that the resurrection shall be accomplished by that God from whom proceed all the (creatures which have served him for) examples? “So also,” says he, “is the resurrection of the dead.” How? Just as the grain, which is sown a body, springs up a body. This sowing of the body he called the dissolving thereof in the ground, “because it is sown in corruption,” (but “is raised) to honour and power.” Now, just as in the case of the grain, so here: to Him will belong the work in the revival of the body, who ordered the process in the dissolution thereof. If, however, you remove the body from the resurrection which you submitted to the dissolution, what becomes of the diversity in the issue? Likewise, “although it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” Now, although the natural principle of life and the spirit have each a body proper to itself, so that the “natural body” may fairly be taken to signify the soul, and “the spiritual body” the spirit, yet that is no reason for supposing the apostle to say that the soul is to become spirit in the resurrection, but that the body (which, as being born along with the soul, and as retaining its life by means of the soul, admits of being called animal (or natural ) will become spiritual, since it rises through the Spirit to an eternal life. In short, since it is not the soul, but the flesh which is “sown in corruption,” when it turns to decay in the ground, it follows that (after such dissolution) the soul is no longer the natural body, but the flesh, which was the natural body, (is the subject of the future change), forasmuch as of a natural body it is made a spiritual body, as he says further down, “That was not first which is spiritual.” For to this effect he just before remarked of Christ Himself: “The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” Our heretic, however, in the excess of his folly, being unwilling that the statement should remain in this shape, altered “last Adam” into “last Lord;” because he feared, of course, that if he allowed the Lord to be the last (or second) Adam, we should contend that Christ, being the second Adam, must needs belong to that God who owned also the first Adam. But the falsification is transparent. For why is there a first Adam, unless it be that there is also a second Adam? For things are not classed together unless they be severally alike, and have an identity of either name, or substance, or origin. Now, although among things which are even individually diverse, one must be first and another last, yet they must have one author. If, however, the author be a different one, he himself indeed may be called the last. But the thing which he introduces is the first, and that only can be the last, which is like this first in nature. It is, however, not like the first in nature, when it is not the work of the same author. In like manner (the heretic) will be refuted also with the word “man: “ “The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.” Now, since the first was a man, how can there be a second, unless he is a man also? Or, else, if the second is “Lord,” was the first “Lord” also? It is, however, quite enough for me, that in his Gospel he admits the Son of man to be both Christ and Man; so that he will not be able to deny Him (in this passage), in the “Adam” and the “man” (of the apostle). What follows will also be too much for him. For when the apostle says, “As is the earthy,” that is, man, “such also are they that are earthy”—men again, of course; “therefore as is the heavenly,” meaning the Man, from heaven, “such are the men also that are heavenly.” For he could not possibly have opposed to earthly men any heavenly beings that were not men also; his object being the more accurately to distinguish their state and expectation by using this name in common for them both. For in respect of their present state and their future expectation he calls men earthly and heavenly, still reserving their parity of name, according as they are reckoned (as to their ultimate condition ) in Adam or in Christ. Therefore, when exhorting them to cherish the hope of heaven, he says: “As we have borne the image of the earthy, so let us also bear the image of the heavenly,”—language which relates not to any condition of resurrection life, but to the rule of the present time. He says, Let us bear, as a precept; not We shall bear, in the sense of a promise—wishing us to walk even as he himself was walking, and to put off the likeness of the earthly, that is, of the old man, in the works of the flesh. For what are this next words? “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” He means the works of the flesh and blood, which, in his Epistle to the Galatians, deprive men of the kingdom of God. In other passages also he is accustomed to put the natural condition instead of the works that are done therein, as when he says, that “they who are in the flesh cannot please God.” Now, when shall we be able to please God except whilst we are in this flesh? There is, I imagine, no other time wherein a man can work. If, however, whilst we are even naturally living in the flesh, we yet eschew the deeds of the flesh, then we shall not be in the flesh; since, although we are not absent from the substance of the flesh, we are notwithstanding strangers to the sin thereof. Now, since in the word flesh we are enjoined to put off, not the substance, but the works of the flesh, therefore in the use of the same word the kingdom of God is denied to the works of the flesh, not to the substance thereof. For not that is condemned in which evil is done, but only the evil which is done in it. To administer poison is a crime, but the cup in which it is given is not guilty. So the body is the vessel of the works of the flesh, whilst the soul which is within it mixes the poison of a wicked act. How then is it, that the soul, which is the real author of the works of the flesh, shall attain to the kingdom of God, after the deeds done in the body have been atoned for, whilst the body, which was nothing but (the soul’s) ministering agent, must remain in condemnation? Is the cup to be punished, but the poisoner to escape? Not that we indeed claim the kingdom of God for the flesh: all we do is, to assert a resurrection for the substance thereof, as the gate of the kingdom through which it is entered. But the resurrection is one thing, and the kingdom is another. The resurrection is first, and afterwards the kingdom. We say, therefore, that the flesh rises again, but that when changed it obtains the kingdom. “For the dead shall be raised incorruptible,” even those who had been corruptible when their bodies fell into decay; “and we shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. For this corruptible”—and as he spake, the apostle seemingly pointed to his own flesh—”must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality,” in order, indeed, that it may be rendered a fit substance for the kingdom of God. “For we shall be like the angels.” This will be the perfect change of our flesh—only after its resurrection. Now if, on the contrary, there is to be no flesh, how then shall it put on incorruption and immortality? Having then become something else by its change, it will obtain the kingdom of God, no longer the (old) flesh and blood, but the body which God shall have given it. Rightly then does the apostle declare, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;” for this (honour) does he ascribe to the changed condition which ensues on the resurrection. Since, therefore, shall then be accomplished the word which was written by the Creator, “O death, where is thy victory”—or thy struggle? “O death, where is thy sting?”—written, I say, by the Creator, for He wrote them by His prophet—to Him will belong the gift, that is, the kingdom, who proclaimed the word which is to be accomplished in the kingdom. And to none other God does he tell us that “thanks” are due, for having enabled us to achieve “the victory” even over death, than to Him from whom he received the very expression of the exulting and triumphant challenge to the mortal foe.

Chapter XI

The Second Epistle to the Corinthians. The Creator the Father of Mercies. Shown to Be Such in the Old Testament, and Also in Christ. The Newness of the New Testament. The Veil of Obdurate Blindness Upon Israel, Not Reprehensible on Marcion’s Principles. The Jews Guilty in Rejecting the Christ of the Creator. Satan, the God of This World. The Treasure in Earthen Vessels Explained Against Marcion. The Creator’s Relation to These Vessels, I.e. Our Bodies

If, owing to the fault of human error, the word God has become a common name (since in the world there are said and believed to be “gods many” ), yet “the blessed God,” (who is “the Father) of our Lord Jesus Christ,” will be understood to be no other God than the Creator, who both blessed all things (that He had made), as you find in Genesis, and is Himself “blessed by all things,” as Daniel tells us. Now, if the title of Father may be claimed for (Marcion’s) sterile god, how much more for the Creator? To none other than Him is it suitable, who is also “the Father of mercies,” and (in the prophets) has been described as “full of compassion, and gracious, and plenteous in mercy.” In Jonah you find the signal act of His mercy, which He showed to the praying Ninevites. How inflexible was He at the tears of Hezekiah! How ready to forgive Ahab, the husband of Jezebel, the blood of Naboth, when he deprecated His anger. How prompt in pardoning David on his confession of his sin—preferring, indeed, the sinner’s repentance to his death, of course because of His gracious attribute of mercy. Now, if Marcion’s god has exhibited or proclaimed any such thing as this, I will allow him to be “the Father of mercies.” Since, however, he ascribes to him this title only from the time he has been revealed, as if he were the father of mercies from the time only when he began to liberate the human race, then we on our side, too, adopt the same precise date of his alleged revelation; but it is that we may deny him! It is then not competent to him to ascribe any quality to his god, whom indeed he only promulged by the fact of such an ascription; for only if it were previously evident that his god had an existence, could he be permitted to ascribe an attribute to him. The ascribed attribute is only an accident; but accidents are preceded by the statement of the thing itself of which they are predicated, especially when another claims the attribute which is ascribed to him who has not been previously shown to exist. Our denial of his existence will be all the more peremptory, because of the fact that the attribute which is alleged in proof of it belongs to that God who has been already revealed. Therefore “the New Testament” will appertain to none other than Him who promised it—if not “its letter, yet its spirit;” and herein will lie its newness. Indeed, He who had engraved its letter in stones is the same as He who had said of its spirit, “I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh.” Even if “the letter killeth, yet the Spirit giveth life;” and both belong to Him who says: “I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal.” We have already made good the Creator’s claim to this twofold character of judgment and goodness—”killing in the letter” through the law, and “quickening in the Spirit” through the Gospel. Now these attributes, however different they be, cannot possibly make two gods; for they have already (in the prevenient dispensation of the Old Testament) been found to meet in One. He alludes to Moses’ veil, covered with which “his face could not be stedfastly seen by the children of Israel.” Since he did this to maintain the superiority of the glory of the New Testament, which is permanent in its glory, over that of the Old, “which was to be done away,” this fact gives support to my belief which exalts the Gospel above the law and you must look well to it that it does not even more than this. For only there is superiority possible where was previously the thing over which superiority can be affirmed. But then he says, “But their minds were blinded”—of the world; certainly not the Creator’s mind, but the minds of the people which are in the world. Of Israel he says, Even unto this day the same veil is upon their heart;” showing that the veil which was on the face of Moses was a figure of the veil which is on the heart of the nation still; because even now Moses is not seen by them in heart, just as he was not then seen by them in eye. But what concern has Paul with the veil which still obscures Moses from their view, if the Christ of the Creator, whom Moses predicted, is not yet come? How are the hearts of the Jews represented as still covered and veiled, if the predictions of Moses relating to Christ, in whom it was their duty to believe through him, are as yet unfulfilled? What had the apostle of a strange Christ to complain of, if the Jews failed in understanding the mysterious announcements of their own God, unless the veil which was upon their hearts had reference to that blindness which concealed from their eyes the Christ of Moses? Then, again, the words which follow, But when it shall turn to the Lord, the evil shall be taken away,” properly refer to the Jew, over whose gaze Moses’ veil is spread, to the effect that, when he is turned to the faith of Christ, he will understand how Moses spoke of Christ. But how shall the veil of the Creator be taken away by the Christ of another god, whose mysteries the Creator could not possibly have veiled—unknown mysteries, as they were of an unknown god? So he says that “we now with open face” (meaning the candour of the heart, which in the Jews had been covered with a veil), “beholding Christ, are changed into the same image, from that glory” (wherewith Moses was transfigured as by the glory of the Lord) “to another glory.” By thus setting forth the glory which illumined the person of Moses from his interview with God, and the veil which concealed the same from the infirmity of the people, and by superinducing thereupon the revelation and the glory of the Spirit in the person of Christ—”even as,” to use his words, “by the Spirit of the Lord”—he testifies that the whole Mosaic system was a figure of Christ, of whom the Jews indeed were ignorant, but who is known to us Christians. We are quite aware that some passages are open to ambiguity, from the way in which they are read, or else from their punctuation, when there is room for these two causes of ambiguity. The latter method has been adopted by Marcion, by reading the passage which follows, “in whom the God of this world,” as if it described the Creator as the God of this world, in order that he may, by these words, imply that there is another God for the other world. We, however, say that the passage ought to be punctuated with a comma after God, to this effect: “In whom God hath blinded the eyes of the unbelievers of this world.” “In whom” means the Jewish unbelievers, from some of whom the gospel is still hidden under Moses’ veil. Now it is these whom God had threatened for “loving Him indeed with the lip, whilst their heart was far from Him,” in these angry words: “Ye shall hear with your ears, and not understand; and see with your eyes, but not perceive;” and, “If ye will not believe, ye shall not understand;” and again, “I will take away the wisdom of their wise men, and bring to nought the understanding of their prudent ones.” But these words, of course, He did not pronounce against them for concealing the gospel of the unknown God. At any rate, if there is a God of this world, He blinds the heart of the unbelievers of this world, because they have not of their own accord recognised His Christ, who ought to be understood from His Scriptures. Content with my advantage, I can willingly refrain from noticing to any greater length this point of ambiguous punctuation, so as not to give my adversary any advantage, indeed, I might have wholly omitted the discussion. A simpler answer I shall find ready to hand in interpreting “the god of this world” of the devil, who once said, as the prophet describes him: “I will be like the Most High; I will exalt my throne in the clouds.” The whole superstition, indeed, of this world has got into his hands, so that he blinds effectually the hearts of unbelievers, and of none more than the apostate Marcion’s. Now he did not observe how much this clause of the sentence made against him: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to (give) the light of the knowledge (of His glory) in the face of (Jesus) Christ.” Now who was it that said; “Let there be light?” And who was it that said to Christ concerning giving light to the world: “I have set Thee as a light to the Gentiles”—to them, that is, “who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death?” (None else, surely, than He), to whom the Spirit in the Psalm answers, in His foresight of the future, saying, “The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, hath been displayed upon us.” Now the countenance (or person ) of the Lord here is Christ. Wherefore the apostle said above: “Christ, who is the image of God.” Since Christ, then, is the person of the Creator, who said, “Let there be light,” it follows that Christ and the apostles, and the gospel, and the veil, and Moses—nay, the whole of the dispensations—belong to the God who is the Creator of this world, according to the testimony of the clause (above adverted to), and certainly not to him who never said, “Let there be light.” I here pass over discussion about another epistle, which we hold to have been written to the Ephesians, but the heretics to the Laodiceans. In it he tells them to remember, that at the time when they were Gentiles they were without Christ, aliens from (the commonwealth of) Israel, without intercourse, without the covenants and any hope of promise, nay, without God, even in his own world, as the Creator thereof. Since therefore he said, that the Gentiles were without God, whilst their god was the devil, not the Creator, it is clear that he must be understood to be the lord of this world, whom the Gentiles received as their god—not the Creator, of whom they were in ignorance. But how does it happen, that “the treasure which we have in these earthen vessels of ours” should not be regarded as belonging to the God who owns the vessels? Now since God’s glory is, that so great a treasure is contained in earthen vessels, and since these earthen vessels are of the Creator’s make, it follows that the glory is the Creator’s; nay, since these vessels of His smack so much of the excellency of the power of God, that power itself must be His also! Indeed, all these things have been consigned to the said “earthen vessels” for the very purpose that His excellence might be manifested forth. Henceforth, then, the rival god will have no claim to the glory, and consequently none to the power. Rather, dishonour and weakness will accrue to him, because the earthen vessels with which he had nothing to do have received all the excellency! Well, then, if it be in these very earthen vessels that he tells us we have to endure so great sufferings, in which we bear about with us the very dying of God, (Marcion’s) god is really ungrateful and unjust, if he does not mean to restore this same substance of ours at the resurrection, wherein so much has been endured in loyalty to him, in which Christ’s very death is borne about, wherein too the excellency of his power is treasured. For he gives prominence to the statement, “That the life also of Christ may be manifested in our body,” as a contrast to the preceding, that His death is borne about in our body. Now of what life of Christ does he here speak? Of that which we are now living? Then how is it, that in the words which follow he exhorts us not to the things which are seen and are temporal, but to those which are not seen and are eternal—in other words, not to the present, but to the future? But if it be of the future life of Christ that he speaks, intimating that it is to be made manifest in our body, then he has clearly predicted the resurrection of the flesh. He says, too, that “our outward man perishes,” not meaning by an eternal perdition after death, but by labours and sufferings, in reference to which he previously said, “For which cause we will not faint.” Now, when he adds of “the inward man” also, that it “is renewed day by day,” he demonstrates both issues here—the wasting away of the body by the wear and tear of its trials, and the renewal of the soul by its contemplation of the promises.

Chapter XII

The Eternal Home in Heaven. Beautiful Exposition by Tertullian of the Apostle’s Consolatory Teaching Against the Fear of Death, So Apt to Arise Under Anti-Christian Oppression. The Judgment-Seat of Christ—The Idea, Anti-Marcionite. Paradise. Judicial Characteristics of Christ Which are Inconsistent with the Heretical Views About Him; The Apostle’s Sharpness, or Severity, Shows Him to Be a Fit Preacher of the Creator’s Christ

As to the house of this our earthly dwelling-place, when he says that “we have an eternal home in heaven, not made with hands,” he by no means would imply that, because it was built by the Creator’s hand, it must perish in a perpetual dissolution after death. He treats of this subject in order to offer consolation against the fear of death and the dread of this very dissolution, as is even more manifest from what follows, when he adds, that “in this tabernacle of our earthly body we do groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with the vesture which is from heaven, if so be, that having been unclothed, we shall not be found naked;” in other words, shall regain that of which we have been divested, even our body. And again he says: “We that are in this tabernacle do groan, not as if we were oppressed with an unwillingness to be unclothed, but (we wish) to be clothed upon.” He here says expressly, what he touched but lightly in his first epistle, where he wrote:) “The dead shall be raised incorruptible (meaning those who had undergone mortality), “and we shall be changed” (whom God shall find to be yet in the flesh). Both those shall be raised incorruptible, because they shall regain their body—and that a renewed one, from which shall come their incorruptibility; and these also shall, in the crisis of the last moment, and from their instantaneous death, whilst encountering the oppressions of anti-christ, undergo a change, obtaining therein not so much a divestiture of body as “a clothing upon” with the vesture which is from heaven. So that whilst these shall put on over their (changed) body this, heavenly raiment, the dead also shall for their part recover their body, over which they too have a supervesture to put on, even the incorruption of heaven; because of these it was that he said: “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” The one put on this (heavenly) apparel, when they recover their bodies; the others put it on as a supervesture, when they indeed hardly lose them (in the suddenness of their change). It was accordingly not without good reason that he described them as “not wishing indeed to be unclothed,” but (rather as wanting) “to be clothed upon;” in other words, as wishing not to undergo death, but to be surprised into life, “that this moral (body) might be swallowed up of life,” by being rescued from death in the supervesture of its changed state. This is why he shows us how much better it is for us not to be sorry, if we should be surprised by death, and tells us that we even hold of God “the earnest of His Spirit” (pledged as it were thereby to have “the clothing upon,” which is the object of our hope), and that “so long as we are in the flesh, we are absent from the Lord;” moreover, that we ought on this account to prefer “rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord,” and so to be ready to meet even death with joy. In this view it is that he informs us how “we must all appear before the judgement-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according as he hath done either good or bad.” Since, however, there is then to be a retribution according to men’s merits, how will any be able to reckon with God? But by mentioning both the judgment-seat and the distinction between works good and bad, he sets before us a Judge who is to award both sentences, and has thereby affirmed that all will have to be present at the tribunal in their bodies. For it will be impossible to pass sentence except on the body, for what has been done in the body. God would be unjust, if any one were not punished or else rewarded in that very condition, wherein the merit was itself achieved. “If therefore any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new;” and so is accomplished the prophecy of Isaiah. When also he (in a later passage) enjoins us “to cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and blood” (since this substance enters not the kingdom of God ); when, again, he “espouses the church as a chaste virgin to Christ,” a spouse to a spouse in very deed, an image cannot be combined and compared with what is opposed to the real nature of the thing (with which it is compared). So when he designates “false apostles, deceitful workers transforming themselves” into likenesses of himself, of course by their hypocrisy, he charges them with the guilt of disorderly conversation, rather than of false doctrine. The contrariety, therefore, was one of conduct, not of gods. If “Satan himself, too, is transformed into an angel of light,” such an assertion must not be used to the prejudice of the Creator. The Creator is not an angel, but God. Into a god of light, and not an angel of light, must Satan then have been said to be transformed, if he did not mean to call him “the angel,” which both we and Marcion know him to be. On Paradise is the title of a treatise of ours, in which is discussed all that the subject admits of. I shall here simply wonder, in connection with this matter, whether a god who has no dispensation of any kind on earth could possibly have a paradise to call his own—without perchance availing himself of the paradise of the Creator, to use it as he does His world—much in the character of a mendicant. And yet of the removal of a man from earth to heaven we have an instance afforded us by the Creator in Elijah. But what will excite my surprise still more is the case (next supposed by Marcion), that a God so good and gracious, and so averse to blows and cruelty, should have suborned the angel Satan—not his own either, but the Creator’s—”to buffet” the apostle, and then to have refused his request, when thrice entreated to liberate him! It would seem, therefore, that Marcion’s god imitates the Creator’s conduct, who is an enemy to the proud, even “putting down the mighty from their seats.” Is he then the same God as He who gave Satan power over the person of Job that his “strength might be made perfect in weakness?” How is it that the censurer of the Galatians still retains the very formula of the law: “In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established?” How again is it that he threatens sinners “that he will not spare” them—he, the preacher of a most gentle god? Yea, he even declares that “the Lord hath given to him the power of using sharpness in their presence!” Deny now, O heretic, (at your cost,) that your god is an object to be feared, when his apostle was for making himself so formidable!

Chapter XIII

The Epistle to the Romans. St. Paul Cannot Help Using Phrases Which Bespeak the Justice of God, Even When He is Eulogizing the Mercies of the Gospel. Marcion Particularly Hard in Mutilation of This Epistle. Yet Our Author Argues on Common Ground. The Judgment at Last Will Be in Accordance with the Gospel. The Justified by Faith Exhorted to Have Peace with God. The Administration of the Old and the New Dispensations in One and the Same Hand

Since my little work is approaching its termination, I must treat but briefly the points which still occur, whilst those which have so often turned up must be put aside. I regret still to have to contend about the law—after I have so often proved that its replacement (by the gospel) affords no argument for another god, predicted as it was indeed in Christ, and in the Creator’s own plans ordained for His Christ. (But I must revert to that discussion) so far as (the apostle leads me, for) this very epistle looks very much as if it abrogated the law. We have, however, often shown before now that God is declared by the apostle to be a Judge; and that in the Judge is implied an Avenger; and in the Avenger, the Creator. And so in the passage where he says: “I am not ashamed of the gospel (of Christ): for it is the power of god unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek; for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith,” he undoubtedly ascribes both the gospel and salvation to Him whom (in accordance with our heretic’s own distinction) I have called the just God, not the good one. It is He who removes (men) from confidence in the law to faith in the gospel—that is to say, His own law and His own gospel. When, again, he declares that “the wrath (of God) is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness,” (I ask) the wrath of what God? Of the Creator certainly. The truth, therefore, will be His, whose is also the wrath, which has to be revealed to avenge the truth. Likewise, when adding, “We are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth,” he both vindicated that wrath from which comes this judgment for the truth, and at the same time afforded another proof that the truth emanates from the same God whose wrath he attested, by witnessing to His judgment. Marcion’s averment is quite a different matter, that the Creator in anger avenges Himself on the truth of the rival god which had been detained in unrighteousness. But what serious gaps Marcion has made in this epistle especially, by withdrawing whole passages at his will, will be clear from the unmutilated text of our own copy. It is enough for my purpose to accept in evidence of its truth what he has seen fit to leave unerased, strange instances as they are also of his negligence and blindness. If, then, God will judge the secrets of men—both of those who have sinned in the law, and of those who have sinned without law (inasmuch as they who know not the law yet do by nature the things contained in the law)—surely the God who shall judge is He to whom belong both the law, and that nature which is the rule to them who know not the law. But how will He conduct this judgment? “According to my gospel,” says (the apostle), “by (Jesus) Christ.” So that both the gospel and Christ must be His, to whom appertain the law and the nature which are to be vindicated by the gospel and Christ—even at that judgment of God which, as he previously said, was to be according to truth. The wrath, therefore, which is to vindicate truth, can only be revealed from heaven by the God of wrath; so that this sentence, which is quite in accordance with that previous one wherein the judgment is declared to be the Creator’s, cannot possibly be ascribed to another god who is not a judge, and is incapable of wrath. It is only consistent in Him amongst whose attributes are found the judgment and the wrath of which I am speaking, and to whom of necessity must also appertain the media whereby these attributes are to be carried into effect, even the gospel and Christ. Hence his invective against the transgressors of the law, who teach that men should not steal, and yet practise theft themselves. (This invective he utters) in perfect homage to the law of God, not as if he meant to censure the Creator Himself with having commanded a fraud to be practised against the Egyptians to get their gold and silver at the very time when He was forbidding men to steal,—adopting such methods as they are apt (shamelessly) to charge upon Him in other particulars also. Are we then to suppose that the apostle abstained through fear from openly calumniating God, from whom notwithstanding He did not hesitate to withdraw men? Well, but he had gone so far in his censure of the Jews, as to point against them the denunciation of the prophet, “Through you the name of God is blasphemed (among the Gentiles).” But how absurd, that he should himself blaspheme Him for blaspheming whom he upbraids them as evil-doers! He prefers even circumcision of heart to neglect of it in the flesh. Now it is quite within the purpose of the God of the law that circumcision should be that of the heart, not in the flesh; in the spirit, and not in the letter. Since this is the circumcision recommended by Jeremiah: “Circumcise (yourselves to the Lord, and take away) the foreskins of your heart;” and even of Moses: “Circumcise, therefore, the hardness of your heart,”—the Spirit which circumcises the heart will proceed from Him who prescribed the letter also which clips the flesh; and “the Jew which is one inwardly” will be a subject of the self-same God as he also is who is “a Jew outwardly;” because the apostle would have preferred not to have mentioned a Jew at all, unless he were a servant of the God of the Jews. It was once the law; now it is “the righteousness of God which is by the faith of (Jesus) Christ.” What means this distinction? Has your god been subserving the interests of the Creator’s dispensation, by affording time to Him and to His law? Is the “Now” in the hands of Him to whom belonged the “Then”? Surely, then, the law was His, whose is now the righteousness of God. It is a distinction of dispensations, not of gods. He enjoins those who are justified by faith in Christ and not by the law to have peace with God. With what God? Him whose enemies we have never, in any dispensation, been? Or Him against whom we have rebelled, both in relation to His written law and His law of nature? Now, as peace is only possible towards Him with whom there once was war, we shall be both justified by Him, and to Him also will belong the Christ, in whom we are justified by faith, and through whom alone God’s enemies can ever be reduced to peace. “Moreover,” says he, “the law entered, that the offence might abound.” And wherefore this? “In order,” he says, “that (where sin abounded), grace might much more abound.” Whose grace, if not of that God from whom also came the law? Unless it be, forsooth, that the Creator intercalated His law for the mere purpose of producing some employment for the grace of a rival god, an enemy to Himself (I had almost said, a god unknown to Him), “that as sin had” in His own dispensation “reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto (eternal) life by Jesus Christ,” His own antagonist! For this (I suppose it was, that) the law of the Creator had “concluded all under sin,” and had brought in “all the world as guilty (before God),” and had “stopped every mouth,” so that none could glory through it, in order that grace might be maintained to the glory of the Christ, not of the Creator, but of Marcion! I may here anticipate a remark about the substance of Christ, in the prospect of a question which will now turn up. For he says that “we are dead to the law.” It may be contended that Christ’s body is indeed a body, but not exactly flesh. Now, whatever may be the substance, since he mentions “the body of Christ,” whom he immediately after states to have been “raised from the dead,” none other body can be understood than that of the flesh, in respect of which the law was called (the law) of death. But, behold, he bears testimony to the law, and excuses it on the ground of sin: “What shall we say, therefore? Is the law sin? God forbid.” Fie on you, Marcion. “God forbid!” (See how) the apostle recoils from all impeachment of the law. I, however, have no acquaintance with sin except through the law. But how high an encomium of the law (do we obtain) from this fact, that by it there comes to light the latent presence of sin! It was not the law, therefore, which led me astray, but “sin, taking occasion by the commandment.” Why then do you, (O Marcion,) impute to the God of the law what His apostle dares not impute even to the law itself? Nay, he adds a climax: “The law is holy, and its commandment just and good.” Now if he thus reverences the Creator’s law, I am at a loss to know how he can destroy the Creator Himself. Who can draw a distinction, and say that there are two gods, one just and the other good, when He ought to be believed to be both one and the other, whose commandment is both “just and good?” Then, again, when affirming the law to be “spiritual” he thereby implies that it is prophetic, and that it is figurative. Now from even this circumstance I am bound to conclude that Christ was predicted by the law but figuratively, so that indeed He could not be recognised by all the Jews.

Chapter XIV

The Divine Power Shown in Christ’s Incarnation. Meaning of St. Paul’s Phrase. Likeness of Sinful Flesh. No Docetism in It. Resurrection of Our Real Bodies. A Wide Chasm Made in the Epistle by Marcion’s Erasure. When the Jews are Upbraided by the Apostle for Their Misconduct to God; Inasmuch as that God Was the Creator, a Proof is in Fact Given that St. Paul’s God Was the Creator. The Precepts at the End of the Epistle, Which Marcion Allowed, Shown to Be in Exact Accordance with the Creator’s Scriptures

If the Father “sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh,” it must not therefore be said that the flesh which He seemed to have was but a phantom. For he in a previous verse ascribed sin to the flesh, and made it out to be “the law of sin dwelling in his members,” and “warring against the law of the mind.” On this account, therefore, (does he mean to say that) the Son was sent in the likeness of sinful flesh, that He might redeem this sinful flesh by a like substance, even a fleshly one, which bare a resemblance to sinful flesh, although it was itself free from sin. Now this will be the very perfection of divine power to effect the salvation (of man) in a nature like his own. For it would be no great matter if the Spirit of God remedied the flesh; but when a flesh, which is the very copy of the sinning substance—itself flesh also—only without sin, (effects the remedy, then doubtless it is a great thing). The likeness, therefore, will have reference to the quality of the sinfulness, and not to any falsity of the substance. Because he would not have added the attribute “sinful,” if he meant the “likeness” to be so predicated of the substance as to deny the verity thereof; in that case he would only have used the word “flesh,” and omitted the “sinful.” But inasmuch as he has put the two together, and said “sinful flesh,” (or “flesh of sin,”) he has both affirmed the substance, that is, the flesh and referred the likeness to the fault of the substance, that is, to its sin. But even suppose that the likeness was predicated of the substance, the truth of the said substance will not be thereby denied. Why then call the true substance like? Because it is indeed true, only not of a seed of like condition with our own; but true still, as being of a nature not really unlike ours. And again, in contrary things there is no likeness. Thus the likeness of flesh would not be called spirit, because flesh is not susceptible of any likeness to spirit; but it would be called phantom, if it seemed to be that which it really was not. It is, however, called likeness, since it is what it seems to be. Now it is (what it seems to be), because it is on a par with the other thing (with which it is compared). But a phantom, which is merely such and nothing else, is not a likeness. The apostle, however, himself here comes to our aid; for, while explaining in what sense he would not have us “live in the flesh,” although in the flesh—even by not living in the works of the flesh—he shows that when he wrote the words, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” it was not with the view of condemning the substance (of the flesh), but the works thereof; and because it is possible for these not to be committed by us whilst we are still in the flesh, they will therefore be properly chargeable, not on the substance of the flesh, but on its conduct. Likewise, if “the body indeed is dead because of sin” (from which statement we see that not the death of the soul is meant, but that of the body), “but the spirit is life because of righteousness,” it follows that this life accrues to that which incurred death because of sin, that is, as we have just seen, the body. Now the body is only restored to him who had lost it; so that the resurrection of the dead implies the resurrection of their bodies. He accordingly subjoins: “He that raised up Christ from the dead, shall also quicken your mortal bodies.” In these words he both affirmed the resurrection of the flesh (without which nothing can rightly be called body, nor can anything be properly regarded as mortal), and proved the bodily substance of Christ; inasmuch as our own mortal bodies will be quickened in precisely the same way as He was raised; and that was in no other way than in the body. I have here a very wide gulf of expunged Scripture to leap across; however, I alight on the place where the apostle bears record of Israel “that they have a zeal of God”—their own God, of course—”but not according to knowledge. For,” says he, “being ignorant of (the righteousness of) God, and going about to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God; for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.” Hereupon we shall be confronted with an argument of the heretic, that the Jews were ignorant of the superior God, since, in opposition to him, they set up their own righteousness—that is, the righteousness of their law—not receiving Christ, the end (or finisher) of the law. But how then is it that he bears testimony to their zeal for their own God, if it is not in respect of the same God that he upbraids them for their ignorance? They were affected indeed with zeal for God, but it was not an intelligent zeal: they were, in fact, ignorant of Him, because they were ignorant of His dispensations by Christ, who was to bring about the consummation of the law; and in this way did they maintain their own righteousness in opposition to Him. But so does the Creator Himself testify to their ignorance concerning Him: “Israel hath not known me; my people have not understood me;” and as to their preferring the establishment of their own righteousness, (the Creator again describes them as) “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men;” moreover, as “having gathered themselves together against the Lord and against His Christ”—from ignorance of Him, of course. Now nothing can be expounded of another god which is applicable to the Creator; otherwise the apostle would not have been just in reproaching the Jews with ignorance in respect of a god of whom they knew nothing. For where had been their sin, if they only maintained the righteousness of their own God against one of whom they were ignorant? But he exclaims: “O the depth of the riches and the wisdom of God; how unsearchable also are His ways!” Whence this outburst of feeling? Surely from the recollection of the Scriptures, which he had been previously turning over, as well as from his contemplation of the mysteries which he had been setting forth above, in relation to the faith of Christ coming from the law. If Marcion had an object in his erasures, why does his apostle utter such an exclamation, because his god has no riches for him to contemplate? So poor and indigent was he, that he created nothing, predicted nothing—in short, possessed nothing; for it was into the world of another God that he descended. The truth is, the Creator’s resources and riches, which once had been hidden, were now disclosed. For so had He promised: “I will give to them treasures which have been hidden, and which men have not seen will I open to them.” Hence, then, came the exclamation, “O the depth of the riches and the wisdom of God!” For His treasures were now opening out. This is the purport of what Isaiah said, and of (the apostle’s own) subsequent quotation of the self-same passage, of the prophet: “Who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor? Who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed to him again?” Now, (Marcion,) since you have expunged so much from the Scriptures, why did you retain these words, as if they too were not the Creator’s words? But come now, let us see without mistake the precepts of your new god: “Abhor that which is evil, and cleave to that which is good.” Well, is the precept different in the Creator’s teaching? “Take away the evil from you, depart from it, and be doing good.” Then again: “Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love.” Now is not this of the same import as: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self?” (Again, your apostle says:) “Rejoicing in hope;” that is, of God. So says the Creator’s Psalmist: “It is better to hope in the Lord, than to hope even in princes.” “Patient in tribulation.” You have (this in) the Psalm: “The Lord hear thee in the day of tribulation.” “Bless, and curse not,” (says your apostle.) But what better teacher of this will you find than Him who created all things, and blessed them? “Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits.” For against such a disposition Isaiah pronounces a woe. “Recompense to no man evil for evil.” (Like unto which is the Creator’s precept:) “Thou shalt not remember thy brother’s evil against thee.” (Again:) “Avenge not yourselves;” for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.” “Live peaceably with all men.” The retaliation of the law, therefore, permitted not retribution for an injury; it rather repressed any attempt thereat by the fear of a recompense. Very properly, then, did he sum up the entire teaching of the Creator in this precept of His: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Now, if this is the recapitulation of the law from the very law itself, I am at a loss to know who is the God of the law. I fear He must be Marcion’s god (after all). If also the gospel of Christ is fulfilled in this same precept, but not the Creator’s Christ, what is the use of our contending any longer whether Christ did or did not say, “I am not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil it?” In vain has (our man of) Pontus laboured to deny this statement. If the gospel has not fulfilled the law, then all I can say is, the law has fulfilled the gospel. But it is well that in a later verse he threatens us with “the judgment-seat of Christ,”—the Judge, of course, and the Avenger, and therefore the Creator’s (Christ). This Creator, too, however much he may preach up another god, he certainly sets forth for us as a Being to be served, if he holds Him thus up as an object to be feared.

Chapter XV

The First Epistle to the Thessalonians. The Shorter Epistles Pungent in Sense and Very Valuable. St. Paul Upbraids the Jews for the Death First of Their Prophets and Then of Christ. This a Presumption that Both Christ and the Prophets Pertained to the Same God. The Law of Nature, Which is in Fact the Creator’s Discipline, and the Gospel of Christ Both Enjoin Chastity. The Resurrection Provided for in the Old Testament by Christ. Man’s Compound Nature

I shall not be sorry to bestow attention on the shorter epistles also. Even in brief works there is much pungency. The Jews had slain their prophets. I may ask, What has this to do with the apostle of the rival god, one so amiable withal, who could hardly be said to condemn even the failings of his own people; and who, moreover, has himself some hand in making away with the same prophets whom he is destroying? What injury did Israel commit against him in slaying those whom he too has reprobated, since he was the first to pass a hostile sentence on them? But Israel sinned against their own God. He upbraided their iniquity to whom the injured God pertains; and certainly he is anything but the adversary of the injured Deity. Else he would not have burdened them with the charge of killing even the Lord, in the words, “Who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets,” although (the pronoun) their own be an addition of the heretics. Now, what was there so very acrimonious in their killing Christ the proclaimer of the new god, after they had put to death also the prophets of their own god? The fact, however, of their having slain the Lord and His servants, is put as a case of climax. Now, if it were the Christ of one god and the prophets of another god whom they slew, he would certainly have placed the impious crimes on the same level, instead of mentioning them in the way of a climax; but they did not admit of being put on the same level: the climax, therefore, was only possible by the sin having been in fact committed against one and the same Lord in the two respective circumstances. To one and the same Lord, then, belonged Christ and the prophets. What that “sanctification of ours” is, which he declares to be “the will of God,” you may discover from the opposite conduct which he forbids. That we should “abstain from fornication,” not from marriage; that every one “should know how to possess his vessel in honour.” In what way? “Not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles.” Concupiscence, however, is not ascribed to marriage even among the Gentiles, but to extravagant, unnatural, and enormous sins. The law of nature is opposed to luxury as well as to grossness and uncleanness; it does not forbid connubial intercourse, but concupiscence; and it takes care of our vessel by the honourable estate of matrimony. This passage (of the apostle) I would treat in such a way as to maintain the superiority of the other and higher sanctity, preferring continence and virginity to marriage, but by no means prohibiting the latter. For my hostility is directed against those who are for destroying the God of marriage, not those who follow after chastity. He says that those who “remain unto the coming of Christ,” along with “the dead in Christ, shall rise first,” being “caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” I find it was in their foresight of all this, that the heavenly intelligences gazed with admiration on “the Jerusalem which is above,” and by the mouth of Isaiah said long ago: “Who are these that fly as clouds, and as doves with their young ones, unto me?” Now, as Christ has prepared for us this ascension into heaven, He must be the Christ of whom Amos spoke: “It is He who builds His ascent up to the heavens,” even for Himself and His people. Now, from whom shall I expect (the fulfilment of) all this, except from Him whom I have heard give the promise thereof? What “spirit” does he forbid us to “quench,” and what “prophesyings” to “despise?” Not the Creator’s spirit, nor the Creator’s prophesyings, Marcion of course replies. For he has already quenched and despised the thing which he destroys, and is unable to forbid what he has despised. It is then incumbent on Marcion now to display in his church that spirit of his god which must not be quenched, and the prophesyings which must not be despised. And since he has made such a display as he thinks fit, let him know that we shall challenge it whatever it may be to the rule of the grace and power of the Spirit and the prophets—namely, to foretell the future, to reveal the secrets of the heart, and to explain mysteries. And when he shall have failed to produce and give proof of any such criterion, we will then on our side bring out both the Spirit and the prophecies of the Creator, which utter predictions according to His will. Thus it will be clearly seen of what the apostle spoke, even of those things which were to happen in the church of his God; and as long as He endures, so long also does His Spirit work, and so long are His promises repeated. Come now, you who deny the salvation of the flesh, and who, whenever there occurs the specific mention of body in a case of this sort, interpret it as meaning anything rather than the substance of the flesh, (tell me) how is it that the apostle has given certain distinct names to all (our faculties), and has comprised them all in one prayer for their safety, desiring that our “spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord and Saviour (Jesus) Christ?” Now he has here propounded the soul and the body as two several and distinct things. For although the soul has a kind of body of a quality of its own, just as the spirit has, yet as the soul and the body are distinctly named, the soul has its own peculiar appellation, not requiring the common designation of body. This is left for “the flesh,” which having no proper name (in this passage), necessarily makes use of the common designation. Indeed, I see no other substance in man, after spirit and soul, to which the term body can be applied except “the flesh.” This, therefore, I understand to be meant by the word “body”—as often as the latter is not specifically named. Much more do I so understand it in the present passage, where the flesh is expressly called by the name “body.”

Chapter XVI

The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. An Absurd Erasure of Marcion; Its Object Transparent. The Final Judgment on the Heathen as Well as the Jews Could Not Be Administered by Marcion’s Christ. The Man of Sin—What? Inconsistency of Marcion’s View. The Antichrist. The Great Events of the Last Apostasy Within the Providence and Intention of the Creator, Whose are All Things from the Beginning. Similarity of the Pauline Precepts with Those of the Creator

We are obliged from time to time to recur to certain topics in order to affirm truths which are connected with them. We repeat then here, that as the Lord is by the apostle proclaimed as the awarder of both weal and woe, He must be either the Creator, or (as Marcion would be loth to admit) One like the Creator—”with whom it is a righteous thing to recompense tribulation to them who afflict us, and to ourselves, who are afflicted, rest, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed as coming from heaven with the angels of His might and in flaming fire.” The heretic, however, has erased the flaming fire, no doubt that he might extinguish all traces herein of our own God. But the folly of the obliteration is clearly seen. For as the apostle declares that the Lord will come “to take vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel, who,” he says, “shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power”—it follows that, as He comes to inflict punishment, He must require “the flaming fire.” Thus on this consideration too we must, notwithstanding Marcion’s opposition, conclude that Christ belongs to a God who kindles the flames (of vengeance), and therefore to the Creator, inasmuch as He takes vengeance on such as know not the Lord, that is, on the heathen. For he has mentioned separately “those who obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,” whether they be sinners among Christians or among Jews. Now, to inflict punishment on the heathen, who very likely have never heard of the Gospel, is not the function of that God who is naturally unknown, and who is revealed nowhere else than in the Gospel, and therefore cannot be known by all men. The Creator, however, ought to be known even by (the light of) nature, for He may be understood from His works, and may thereby become the object of a more widely spread knowledge. To Him, therefore, does it appertain to punish such as know not God, for none ought to be ignorant of Him. In the (apostle’s) phrase, “From the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power,” he uses the words of Isaiah who for the express reason makes the self-same Lord “arise to shake terribly the earth.” Well, but who is the man of sin, the son of perdition,” who must first be revealed before the Lord comes; “who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; who is to sit in the temple of God, and boast himself as being God?” According indeed to our view, he is Antichrist; as it is taught us in both the ancient and the new prophecies, and especially by the Apostle John, who says that “already many false prophets are gone out into the world,” the fore-runners of Antichrist, who deny that Christ is come in the flesh, and do not acknowledge Jesus (to be the Christ), meaning in God the Creator. According, however, to Marcion’s view, it is really hard to know whether He might not be (after all) the Creator’s Christ; because according to him He is not yet come. But whichsoever of the two it is, I want to know why he comes “in all power, and with lying signs and wonders?” “Because,” he says, “they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved; for which cause God shall send them an instinct of delusion (to believe a lie), that they all might be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” If therefore he be Antichrist, (as we hold), and comes according to the Creator’s purpose, it must be God the Creator who sends him to fasten in their error those who did not believe the truth, that they might be saved; His likewise must be the truth and the salvation, who avenges (the contempt of) them by sending error as their substitute—that is, the Creator, to whom that very wrath is a fitting attribute, which deceives with a lie those who are not captivated with truth. If, however, he is not Antichrist, as we suppose (him to be) then He is the Christ of the Creator, as Marcion will have it. In this case how happens it that he can suborn the Creator’s Christ to avenge his truth? But should he after all agree with us, that Antichrist is here meant, I must then likewise ask how it is that he finds Satan, an angel of the Creator, necessary to his purpose? Why, too, should Antichrist be slain by Him, whilst commissioned by the Creator to execute the function of inspiring men with their love of untruth? In short, it is incontestable that the emissary, and the truth, and the salvation belong to Him to whom also appertain the wrath, and the jealousy, and “the sending of the strong delusion,” on those who despise and mock, as well as upon those who are ignorant of Him; and therefore even Marcion will now have to come down a step, and concede to us that his god is “a jealous god.” (This being then an unquestionable position, I ask) which God has the greater right to be angry? He, as I suppose, who from the beginning of all things has given to man, as primary witnesses for the knowledge of Himself, nature in her (manifold) works, kindly providences, plagues, and indications (of His divinity), but who in spite of all this evidence has not been acknowledged; or he who has been brought out to view once for all in one only copy of the gospel—and even that without any sure authority—which actually makes no secret of proclaiming another god? Now He who has the right of inflicting the vengeance, has also sole claim to that which occasions the vengeance, I mean the Gospel; (in other words,) both the truth and (its accompanying) salvation. The charge, that “if any would not work, neither should he eat,” is in strict accordance with the precept of Him who ordered that “the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn should not be muzzled.”

Chapter XVII

The Epistle to the Laodiceans. The Proper Designation is to the Ephesians. Recapitulation of All Things in Christ from the Beginning of the Creation. No Room for Marcion’s Christ Here. Numerous Parallels Between This Epistle and Passages in the Old Testament. The Prince of the Power of the Air, and the God of This World—Who? Creation and Regeneration the Work of One God. How Christ Has Made the Law Obsolete. A Vain Erasure of Marcion’s. The Apostles as Well as the Prophets from the Creator

We have it on the true tradition of the Church, that this epistle was sent to the Ephesians, not to the Laodiceans. Marcion, however, was very desirous of giving it the new title (of Laodicean), as if he were extremely accurate in investigating such a point. But of what consequence are the titles, since in writing to a certain church the apostle did in fact write to all? It is certain that, whoever they were to whom he wrote, he declared Him to be God in Christ with whom all things agree which are predicted. Now, to what god will most suitably belong all those things which relate to “that good pleasure, which God hath purposed in the mystery of His will, that in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might recapitulate” (if I may so say, according to the exact meaning of the Greek word ) “all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth,” but to Him whose are all things from their beginning, yea the beginning itself too; from whom issue the times and the dispensation of the fulness of times, according to which all things up to the very first are gathered up in Christ? What beginning, however, has the other god; that is to say, how can anything proceed from him, who has no work to show? And if there be no beginning, how can there be times? If no times, what fulness of times can there be? And if no fulness, what dispensation? Indeed, what has he ever done on earth, that any long dispensation of times to be fulfilled can be put to his account, for the accomplishment of all things in Christ, even of things in heaven? Nor can we possibly suppose that any things whatever have been at any time done in heaven by any other God than Him by whom, as all men allow, all things have been done on earth. Now, if it is impossible for all these things from the beginning to be reckoned to any other God than the Creator, who will believe that an alien god has recapitulated them in an alien Christ, instead of their own proper Author in His own Christ? If, again, they belong to the Creator, they must needs be separate from the other god; and if separate, then opposed to him. But then how can opposites be gathered together into him by whom they are in short destroyed? Again, what Christ do the following words announce, when the apostle says: “That we should be to the praise of His glory, who first trusted in Christ?” Now who could have first trusted—i.e. previously trusted—in God, before His advent, except the Jews to whom Christ was previously announced, from the beginning? He who was thus foretold, was also foretrusted. Hence the apostle refers the statement to himself, that is, to the Jews, in order that he may draw a distinction with respect to the Gentiles, (when he goes on to say:) “In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel (of your salvation); in whom ye believed, and were sealed with His Holy Spirit of promise.” Of what promise? That which was made through Joel: “In the last days will I pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh,” that is, on all nations. Therefore the Spirit and the Gospel will be found in the Christ, who was foretrusted, because foretold. Again, “the Father of glory” is He whose Christ, when ascending to heaven, is celebrated as “the King of Glory” in the Psalm: “Who is this King of Glory? the Lord of Hosts, He is the King of Glory.” From Him also is besought “the spirit of wisdom,” at whose disposal is enumerated that sevenfold distribution of the spirit of grace by Isaiah. He likewise will grant “the enlightenment of the eyes of the understanding,” who has also enriched our natural eyes with light; to whom, moreover, the blindness of the people is offensive: “And who is blind, but my servants? . . . yea, the servants of God have become blind.” In His gift, too, are “the riches (of the glory) of His inheritance in the saints,” who promised such an inheritance in the call of the Gentiles: “Ask of me, and I will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance.” It was He who “wrought in Christ His mighty power, by raising Him from the dead, and setting Him at His own right hand, and putting all things under His feet”—even the same who said: “Sit Thou on my right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.” For in another passage the Spirit says to the Father concerning the Son: “Thou hast put all things under His feet.” Now, if from all these facts which are found in the Creator there is yet to be deduced another god and another Christ, let us go in quest of the Creator. I suppose, forsooth, we find Him, when he speaks of such as “were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein they had walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, who worketh in the children of disobedience.” But Marcion must not here interpret the world as meaning the God of the world. For a creature bears no resemblance to the Creator; the thing made, none to its Maker; the world, none to God. He, moreover, who is the Prince of the power of the ages must not be thought to be called the prince of the power of the air; for He who is chief over the higher powers derives no title from the lower powers, although these, too, may be ascribed to Him. Nor, again, can He possibly seem to be the instigator of that unbelief which He Himself had rather to endure at the hand of the Jews and the Gentiles alike. We may therefore simply conclude that these designations are unsuited to the Creator. There is another being to whom they are more applicable—and the apostle knew very well who that was. Who then is he? Undoubtedly he who has raised up “children of disobedience” against the Creator Himself ever since he took possession of that “air” of His; even as the prophet makes him say: “I will set my throne above the stars; . . . I will go up above the clouds; I will be like the Most High.” This must mean the devil, whom in another passage (since such will they there have the apostle’s meaning to be) we shall recognize in the appellation the god of this world. For he has filled the whole world with the lying pretence of his own divinity. To be sure, if he had not existed, we might then possibly have applied these descriptions to the Creator. But the apostle, too, had lived in Judaism; and when he parenthetically observed of the sins (of that period of his life), “in which also we all had our conversation in times past,” he must not be understood to indicate that the Creator was the lord of sinful men, and the prince of this air; but as meaning that in his Judaism he had been one of the children of disobedience, having the devil as his instigator—when he persecuted the church and the Christ of the Creator. Therefore he says: “We also were the children of wrath,” but “by nature.” Let the heretic, however, not contend that, because the Creator called the Jews children, therefore the Creator is the lord of wrath. For when (the apostle) says, “We were by nature the children of wrath,” inasmuch as the Jews were not the Creator’s children by nature, but by the election of their fathers, he (must have) referred their being children of wrath to nature, and not to the Creator, adding this at last, “even as others,” who, of course, were not children of God. It is manifest that sins, and lusts of the flesh, and unbelief, and anger, are ascribed to the common nature of all mankind, the devil however leading that nature astray, which he has already infected with the implanted germ of sin. “We,” says he, “are His workmanship, created in Christ.” It is one thing to make (as a workman), another thing to create. But he assigns both to One. Man is the workmanship of the Creator. He therefore who made man (at first), created him also in Christ. As touching the substance of nature, He “made” him; as touching the work of grace, He “created” him. Look also at what follows in connection with these words: “Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by that which has the name of circumcision in the flesh made by the hand—that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world.” Now, without what God and without what Christ were these Gentiles? Surely, without Him to whom the commonwealth of Israel belonged, and the covenants and the promise. “But now in Christ,” says he, “ye who were sometimes far off are made nigh by His blood.” From whom were they far off before? From the (privileges) whereof he speaks above, even from the Christ of the Creator, from the commonwealth of Israel, from the covenants, from the hope of the promise, from God Himself. Since this is the case, the Gentiles are consequently now in Christ made nigh to these (blessings), from which they were once far off. But if we are in Christ brought so very nigh to the commonwealth of Israel, which comprises the religion of the divine Creator, and to the covenants and to the promise, yea to their very God Himself, it is quite ridiculous (to suppose that) the Christ of the other god has brought us to this proximity to the Creator from afar. The apostle had in mind that it had been predicted concerning the call of the Gentiles from their distant alienation in words like these: “They who were far off from me have come to my righteousness.” For the Creator’s righteousness no less than His peace was announced in Christ, as we have often shown already. Therefore he says: “He is our peace, who hath made both one”—that is, the Jewish nation and the Gentile world. What is near, and what was far off now that “the middle wall has been broken down” of their “enmity,” (are made one) “in His flesh.” But Marcion erased the pronoun His, that he might make the enmity refer to flesh, as if (the apostle spoke) of a carnal enmity, instead of the enmity which was a rival to Christ. And thus you have (as I have said elsewhere) exhibited the stupidity of Pontus, rather than the adroitness of a Marrucinian, for you here deny him flesh to whom in the verse above you allowed blood! Since, however, He has made the law obsolete by His own precepts, even by Himself fulfilling the law (for superfluous is, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” when He says, “Thou shalt not look on a woman to lust after her;” superfluous also is, “Thou shalt do no murder,” when He says, “Thou shalt not speak evil of thy neighbour,”) it is impossible to make an adversary of the law out of one who so completely promotes it. “For to create in Himself of twain,” for He who had made is also the same who creates (just as we have found it stated above: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus”), “one new man, making peace” (really new, and really man—no phantom—but new, and newly born of a virgin by the Spirit of God), “that He might reconcile both unto God” (even the God whom both races had offended—both Jew and Gentile), “in one body,” says he, “having in it slain the enmity by the cross.” Thus we find from this passage also, that there was in Christ a fleshly body, such as was able to endure the cross. “When, therefore, He came and preached peace to them that were near and to them which were afar off,” we both obtained “access to the Father,” being “now no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (even of Him from whom, as we have shown above, we were aliens, and placed far off), “built upon the foundation of the apostles”—(the apostle added), “and the prophets;” these words, however, the heretic erased, forgetting that the Lord had set in His Church not only apostles, but prophets also. He feared, no doubt, that our building was to stand in Christ upon the foundation of the ancient prophets, since the apostle himself never fails to build us up everywhere with (the words of) the prophets. For whence did he learn to call Christ “the chief corner-stone,” but from the figure given him in the Psalm: “The stone which the builders rejected is become the head (stone) of the corner?”

Chapter XVIII

Another Foolish Erasure of Marcion’s Exposed. Certain Figurative Expressions of the Apostle, Suggested by the Language of the Old Testament. Collation of Many Passages of This Epistle, with Precepts and Statements in the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and the Prophets. All Alike Teach Us the Will and Purpose of the Creator

As our heretic is so fond of his pruning-knife, I do not wonder when syllables are expunged by his hand, seeing that entire pages are usually the matter on which he practises his effacing process. The apostle declares that to himself, “less than the least of all saints, was the grace given” of enlightening all men as to “what was the fellowship of the mystery, which during the ages had been hid in God, who created all things.” The heretic erased the preposition in, and made the clause run thus: (“what is the fellowship of the mystery) which hath for ages been hidden from the God who created all things.” The falsification, however, is flagrantly absurd. For the apostle goes on to infer (from his own statement): “in order that unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might become known through the church the manifold wisdom of God.” Whose principalities and powers does he mean? If the Creator’s, how does it come to pass that such a God as He could have meant His wisdom to be displayed to the principalities and powers, but not to Himself? For surely no principalities could possibly have understood anything without their sovereign Lord. Or if (the apostle) did not mention God in this passage, on the ground that He (as their chief) is Himself reckoned among these (principalities), then he would have plainly said that the mystery had been hidden from the principalities and powers of Him who had created all things, including Him amongst them. But if he states that it was hidden from them, he must needs be understood as having meant that it was manifest to Him. From God, therefore, the mystery was not hidden; but it was hidden in God, the Creator of all things, from His principalities and powers. For “who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counsellor?” Caught in this trap, the heretic probably changed the passage, with the view of saying that his god wished to make known to his principalities and powers the fellowship of his own mystery, of which God, who created all things, had been ignorant. But what was the use of his obtruding this ignorance of the Creator, who was a stranger to the superior god, and far enough removed from him, when even his own servants had known nothing about him? To the Creator, however, the future was well known. Then why was not that also known to Him, which had to be revealed beneath His heaven, and on His earth? From this, therefore, there arises a confirmation of what we have already laid down. For since the Creator was sure to know, some time or other, that hidden mystery of the superior god, even on the supposition that the true reading was (as Marcion has it)—”hidden from the God who created all things”—he ought then to have expressed the conclusion thus: “in order that the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to Him, and then to the principalities and powers of God, whosoever He might be, with whom the Creator was destined to share their knowledge.” So palpable is the erasure in this passage, when thus read, consistently with its own true bearing. I, on my part, now wish to engage with you in a discussion on the allegorical expressions of the apostle. What figures of speech could the novel god have found in the prophets (fit for himself)? “He led captivity captive,” says the apostle. With what arms? In what conflicts? From the devastation of what country? From the overthrow of what city? What women, what children, what princes did the Conqueror throw into chains? For when by David Christ is sung as “girded with His sword upon His thigh,” or by Isaiah as “taking away the spoils of Samaria and the power of Damascus,” you make Him out to be really and truly a warrior confest to the eye. Learn then now, that His is a spiritual armour and warfare, since you have already discovered that the captivity is spiritual, in order that you may further learn that this also belongs to Him, even because the apostle derived the mention of the captivity from the same prophets as suggested to him his precepts likewise: “Putting away lying,” (says he,) “speak every man truth with his neighbour;” and again, using the very words in which the Psalm expresses his meaning, (he says,) “Be ye angry, and sin not;” “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness;” for (in the Psalm it is written,) “With the holy man thou shalt be holy, and with the perverse thou shalt be perverse;” and, “Thou shalt put away evil from among you.” Again, “Go ye out from the midst of them; touch not the unclean thing; separate yourselves, ye that bear the vessels of the Lord.” (The apostle says further:) “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess,”—a precept which is suggested by the passage (of the prophet), where the seducers of the consecrated (Nazarites) to drunkenness are rebuked: “Ye gave wine to my holy ones to drink.” This prohibition from drink was given also to the high priest Aaron and his sons, “when they went into the holy place.” The command, to “sing to the Lord with psalms and hymns,” comes suitably from him who knew that those who “drank wine with drums and psalteries” were blamed by God. Now, when I find to what God belong these precepts, whether in their germ or their development, I have no difficulty in knowing to whom the apostle also belongs. But he declares that “wives ought to be in subjection to their husbands:” what reason does he give for this? “Because,” says he, “the husband is the head of the wife.” Pray tell me, Marcion, does your god build up the authority of his law on the work of the Creator? This, however, is a comparative trifle; for he actually derives from the same source the condition of his Christ and his Church; for he says: “even as Christ is the head of the Church;” and again, in like manner: “He who loveth his wife, loveth his own flesh, even as Christ loved the Church.” You see how your Christ and your Church are put in comparison with the work of the Creator. How much honour is given to the flesh in the name of the church! “No man,” says the apostle, “ever yet hated his own flesh” (except, of course, Marcion alone), “but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord doth the Church.” But you are the only man that hates his flesh, for you rob it of its resurrection. It will be only right that you should hate the Church also, because it is loved by Christ on the same principle. Yea, Christ loved the flesh even as the Church. For no man will love the picture of his wife without taking care of it, and honouring it and crowning it. The likeness partakes with the reality in the privileged honour. I shall now endeavour, from my point of view, to prove that the same God is (the God) of the man and of Christ, of the woman and of the Church, of the flesh and the spirit, by the apostle’s help who applies the Creator’s injunction, and adds even a comment on it: “For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, (and shall be joined unto his wife), and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery.” In passing, (I would say that) it is enough for me that the works of the Creator are great mysteries in the estimation of the apostle, although they are so vilely esteemed by the heretics. “But I am speaking,” says he, “of Christ and the Church.” This he says in explanation of the mystery, not for its disruption. He shows us that the mystery was prefigured by Him who is also the author of the mystery. Now what is Marcion’s opinion? The Creator could not possibly have furnished figures to an unknown god, or, if a known one, an adversary to Himself. The superior god, in fact, ought to have borrowed nothing from the inferior; he was bound rather to annihilate Him. “Children should obey their parents.” Now, although Marcion has erased (the next clause), “which is the first commandment with promise,” still the law says plainly, “Honour thy father and thy mother.” Again, (the apostle writes:) “Parents, bring up your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.” For you have heard how it was said to them of old time: “Ye shall relate these things to your children; and your children in like manner to their children.” Of what use are two gods to me, when the discipline is but one? If there must be two, I mean to follow Him who was the first to teach the lesson. But as our struggle lies against “the rulers of this world,” what a host of Creator Gods there must be! For why should I not insist upon this point here, that he ought to have mentioned but one “ruler of this world,” if he meant only the Creator to be the being to whom belonged all the powers which he previously mentioned? Again, when in the preceding verse he bids us “put on the whole armour of God, that we may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil,” does he not show that all the things which he mentions after the devil’s name really belong to the devil—”the principalities and the powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world,” which we also ascribe to the devil’s authority? Else, if “the devil” means the Creator, who will be the devil in the Creator’s dispensation? As there are two gods, must there also be two devils, and a plurality of powers and rulers of this world? But how is the Creator both a devil and a god at the same time, when the devil is not at once both god and devil? For either they are both of them gods, if both of them are devils; or else He who is God is not also devil, as neither is he god who is the devil. I want to know indeed by what perversion the word devil is at all applicable to the Creator. Perhaps he perverted some purpose of the superior god—conduct such as He experienced Himself from the archangel, who lied indeed for the purpose. For He did not forbid (our first parents) a taste of the miserable tree, from any apprehension that they would become gods; His prohibition was meant to prevent their dying after the transgression. But “the spiritual wickedness” did not signify the Creator, because of the apostle’s additional description, “in heavenly places;” for the apostle was quite aware that “spiritual wickedness” had been at work in heavenly places, when angels were entrapped into sin by the daughters of men. But how happened it that (the apostle) resorted to ambiguous descriptions, and I know not what obscure enigmas, for the purpose of disparaging the Creator, when he displayed to the Church such constancy and plainness of speech in “making known the mystery of the gospel for which he was an ambassador in bonds,” owing to his liberty in preaching—and actually requested (the Ephesians) to pray to God that this “open-mouthed utterance” might be continued to him?

Chapter XIX

The Epistle to the Colossians. Time the Criterion of Truth and Heresy. Application of the Canon. The Image of the Invisible God Explained. Pre-Existence of Our Christ in the Creator’s Ancient Dispensations. What is Included in the Fulness of Christ. The Epicurean Character of Marcion’s God. The Catholic Truth in Opposition Thereto. The Law is to Christ What the Shadow is to the Substance

I am accustomed in my prescription against all heresies, to fix my compendious criterion (of truth) in the testimony of time; claiming priority therein as our rule, and alleging lateness to be the characteristic of every heresy. This shall now be proved even by the apostle, when he says: “For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel; which is come unto you, as it is unto all the world.” For if, even at that time, the tradition of the gospel had spread everywhere, how much more now! Now, if it is our gospel which has spread everywhere, rather than any heretical gospel, much less Marcion’s, which only dates from the reign of Antoninus, then ours will be the gospel of the apostles. But should Marcion’s gospel succeed in filling the whole world, it would not even in that case be entitled to the character of apostolic. For this quality, it will be evident, can only belong to that gospel which was the first to fill the world; in other words, to the gospel of that God who of old declared this of its promulgation: “Their sound is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.” He calls Christ “the image of the invisible God.” We in like manner say that the Father of Christ is invisible, for we know that it was the Son who was seen in ancient times (whenever any appearance was vouchsafed to men in the name of God) as the image of (the Father) Himself. He must not be regarded, however, as making any difference between a visible and an invisible God; because long before he wrote this we find a description of our God to this effect: “No man can see the Lord, and live.” If Christ is not “the first-begotten before every creature,” as that “Word of God by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made;” if “all things were” not “in Him created, whether in heaven or on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, or principalities, or powers;” if “all things were” not “created by Him and for Him” (for these truths Marcion ought not to allow concerning Him), then the apostle could not have so positively laid it down, that “He is before all.” For how is He before all, if He is not before all things? How, again, is He before all things, if He is not “the first-born of every creature”—if He is not the Word of the Creator? Now how will he be proved to have been before all things, who appeared after all things? Who can tell whether he had a prior existence, when he has found no proof that he had any existence at all? In what way also could it have “pleased (the Father) that in Him should all fulness dwell?” For, to begin with, what fulness is that which is not comprised of the constituents which Marcion has removed from it,—even those that were “created in Christ, whether in heaven or on earth,” whether angels or men? which is not made of the things that are visible and invisible? which consists not of thrones and dominions and principalities and powers? If, on the other hand, our false apostles and Judaizing gospellers have introduced all these things out of their own stores, and Marcion has applied them to constitute the fulness of his own god, (this hypothesis, absurd though it be, alone would justify him;) for how, on any other supposition, could the rival and the destroyer of the Creator have been willing that His fulness should dwell in his Christ? To whom, again, does He “reconcile all things by Himself, making peace by the blood of His cross,” but to Him whom those very things had altogether offended, against whom they had rebelled by transgression, (but) to whom they had at last returned? Conciliated they might have been to a strange god; but reconciled they could not possibly have been to any other than their own God. Accordingly, ourselves “who were sometime alienated and enemies in our mind by wicked works” does He reconcile to the Creator, against whom we had committed offence—worshipping the creature to the prejudice of the Creator. As, however, he says elsewhere, that the Church is the body of Christ, so here also (the apostle) declares that he “fills up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in his flesh for His body’s sake, which is the Church.” But you must not on this account suppose that on every mention of His body the term is only a metaphor, instead of meaning real flesh. For he says above that we are “reconciled in His body through death;” meaning, of course, that He died in that body wherein death was possible through the flesh: (therefore he adds,) not through the Church (per ecclesiam), but expressly for the sake of the Church (proper ecclesiam), exchanging body for body—one of flesh for a spiritual one. When, again, he warns them to “beware of subtle words and philosophy,” as being “a vain deceit,” such as is “after the rudiments of the world” (not understanding thereby the mundane fabric of sky and earth, but worldly learning, and “the tradition of men,” subtle in their speech and their philosophy), it would be tedious, and the proper subject of a separate work, to show how in this sentence (of the apostle’s) all heresies are condemned, on the ground of their consisting of the resources of subtle speech and the rules of philosophy. But (once for all) let Marcion know that the principle term of his creed comes from the school of Epicurus, implying that the Lord is stupid and indifferent; wherefore he refuses to say that He is an object to be feared. Moreover, from the porch of the Stoics he brings out matter, and places it on a par with the Divine Creator. He also denies the resurrection of the flesh,—a truth which none of the schools of philosophy agreed together to hold. But how remote is our (Catholic) verity from the artifices of this heretic, when it dreads to arouse the anger of God, and firmly believes that He produced all things out of nothing, and promises to us a restoration from the grave of the same flesh (that died) and holds without a blush that Christ was born of the virgin’s womb! At this, philosophers, and heretics, and the very heathen, laugh and jeer. For “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise”—that God, no doubt, who in reference to this very dispensation of His threatened long before that He would “destroy the wisdom of the wise.” Thanks to this simplicity of truth, so opposed to the subtlety and vain deceit of philosophy, we cannot possibly have any relish for such perverse opinions. Then, if God “quickens us together with Christ, forgiving us our trespasses,” we cannot suppose that sins are forgiven by Him against whom, as having been all along unknown, they could not have been committed. Now tell me, Marcion, what is your opinion of the apostle’s language, when he says, “Let no man judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath, which is a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ?” We do not now treat of the law, further than (to remark) that the apostle here teaches clearly how it has been abolished, even by passing from shadow to substance—that is, from figurative types to the reality, which is Christ. The shadow, therefore, is His to whom belongs the body also; in other words, the law is His, and so is Christ. If you separate the law and Christ, assigning one to one god and the other to another, it is the same as if you were to attempt to separate the shadow from the body of which it is the shadow. Manifestly Christ has relation to the law, if the body has to its shadow. But when he blames those who alleged visions of angels as their authority for saying that men must abstain from meats—”you must not touch, you must not taste”—in a voluntary humility, (at the same time) “vainly puffed up in the fleshly mind, and not holding the Head,” (the apostle) does not in these terms attack the law or Moses, as if it was at the suggestion of superstitious angels that he had enacted his prohibition of sundry aliments. For Moses had evidently received the law from God. When, therefore, he speaks of their “following the commandments and doctrines of men,” he refers to the conduct of those persons who “held not the Head,” even Him in whom all things are gathered together; for they are all recalled to Christ, and concentrated in Him as their initiating principle—even the meats and drinks which were indifferent in their nature. All the rest of his precepts, as we have shown sufficiently, when treating of them as they occurred in another epistle, emanated from the Creator, who, while predicting that “old things were to pass away,” and that He would “make all things new,” commanded men “to break up fresh ground for themselves,” and thereby taught them even then to put off the old man and put on the new.

Chapter XX

The Epistle to the Philippians. The Variances Amongst the Preachers of Christ No Argument that There Was More Than One Only Christ. St. Paul’s Phrases—Form of a Servant, Likeness, and Fashion of a Man—No Sanction of Docetism. No Antithesis (Such as Marcion Alleged) in the God of Judaism and the God of the Gospel Deducible from Certain Contrasts Mentioned in This Epistle. A Parallel with a Passage in Genesis. The Resurrection of the Body, and the Change Thereof

When (the apostle) mentions the several motives of those who were preaching the gospel, how that some, “waxing confident by his bonds, were more fearless in speaking the word,” while others “preached Christ even out of envy and strife, and again others out of good-will,” many also “out of love,” and certain “out of contention,” and some “in rivalry to himself,” he had a favourable opportunity, no doubt, of taxing what they preached with a diversity of doctrine, as if it were no less than this which caused so great a variance in their tempers. But while he exposes these tempers as the sole cause of the diversity, he avoids inculpating the regular mysteries of the faith, and affirms that there is, notwithstanding, but one Christ and His one God, whatever motives men had in preaching Him. Therefore, says he, it matters not to me “whether it be in pretence or in truth that Christ is preached,” because one Christ alone was announced, whether in their “pretentious” or their “truthful” faith. For it was to the faithfulness of their preaching that he applied the word truth, not to the rightness of the rule itself, because there was indeed but one rule; whereas the conduct of the preachers varied: in some of them it was true, i.e. single-minded, while in others it was sophisticated with over-much learning. This being the case, it is manifest that that Christ was the subject of their preaching who was always the theme of the prophets. Now, if it were a completely different Christ that was being introduced by the apostle, the novelty of the thing would have produced a diversity (in belief.). For there would not have been wanting, in spite of the novel teaching, men to interpret the preached gospel of the Creator’s Christ, since the majority of persons everywhere now-a-days are of our way of thinking, rather than on the heretical side. So that the apostle would not in such a passage as the present one have refrained from remarking and censuring the diversity. Since, however, there is no blame of a diversity, there is no proof of a novelty. Of course the Marcionites suppose that they have the apostle on their side in the following passage in the matter of Christ’s substance—that in Him there was nothing but a phantom of flesh. For he says of Christ, that, “being in the form of God, He thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but emptied Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant,” not the reality, “and was made in the likeness of man,” not a man, “and was found in fashion as a man,” not in his substance, that is to say, his flesh; just as if to a substance there did not accrue both form and likeness and fashion. It is well for us that in another passage (the apostle) calls Christ “the image of the invisible God.” For will it not follow with equal force from that passage, that Christ is not truly God, because the apostle places Him in the image of God, if, (as Marcion contends,) He is not truly man because of His having taken on Him the form or image of a man? For in both cases the true substance will have to be excluded, if image (or “fashion”) and likeness and form shall be claimed for a phantom. But since he is truly God, as the Son of the Father, in His fashion and image, He has been already by the force of this conclusion determined to be truly man, as the Son of man, “found in the fashion” and image “of a man.” For when he propounded Him as thus “found” in the manner of a man, he in fact affirmed Him to be most certainly human. For what is found, manifestly possesses existence. Therefore, as He was found to be God by His mighty power, so was He found to be man by reason of His flesh, because the apostle could not have pronounced Him to have “become obedient unto death,” if He had not been constituted of a mortal substance. Still more plainly does this appear from the apostle’s additional words, “even the death of the cross.” For he could hardly mean this to be a climax to the human suffering, to extol the virtue of His obedience, if he had known it all to be the imaginary process of a phantom, which rather eluded the cross than experienced it, and which displayed no virtue in the suffering, but only illusion. But “those things which he had once accounted gain,” and which he enumerates in the preceding verse—”trust in the flesh,” the sign of “circumcision,” his origin as “an Hebrew of the Hebrews,” his descent from “the tribe of Benjamin,” his dignity in the honours of the Pharisee—he now reckons to be only “loss” to himself; (in other words,) it was not the God of the Jews, but their stupid obduracy, which he repudiates. These are also the things “which he counts but dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ” (but by no means for the rejection of God the Creator); “whilst he has not his own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through Him,” i.e. Christ, “the righteousness which is of God.” Then, say you, according to this distinction the law did not proceed from the God of Christ. Subtle enough! But here is something still more subtle for you. For when (the apostle) says, “Not (the righteousness) which is of the law, but that which is through Him,” he would not have used the phrase through Him of any other than Him to whom the law belonged. “Our conversation,” says he, “is in heaven.” I here recognise the Creator’s ancient promise to Abraham: “I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven.” Therefore “one star differeth from another star in glory.” If, again, Christ in His advent from heaven “shall change the body of our humiliation, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body,” it follows that this body of ours shall rise again, which is now in a state of humiliation in its sufferings and according to the law of mortality drops into the ground. But how shall it be changed, if it shall have no real existence? If, however, this is only said of those who shall be found in the flesh at the advent of God, and who shall have to be changed,” what shall they do who will rise first? They will have no substance from which to undergo a change. But he says (elsewhere), “We shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord (in the air).” Then, if we are to be caught up alone with them, surely we shall likewise be changed together with them.

Chapter XXI

The Epistle to Philemon. This Epistle Not Mutilated. Marcion’s Inconsistency in Accepting This, and Rejecting Three Other Epistles Addressed to Individuals. Conclusions. Tertullian Vindicates the Symmetry and Deliberate Purpose of His Work Against Marcion

To this epistle alone did its brevity avail to protect it against the falsifying hands of Marcion. I wonder, however, when he received (into his Apostolicon) this letter which was written but to one man, that he rejected the two epistles to Timothy and the one to Titus, which all treat of ecclesiastical discipline. His aim, was, I suppose, to carry out his interpolating process even to the number of (St. Paul’s) epistles. And now, reader, I beg you to remember that we have here adduced proofs out of the apostle, in support of the subjects which we previously had to handle, and that we have now brought to a close the topics which we deferred to this (portion of our) work. (This favour I request of you,) that you may not think that any repetition here has been superfluous, for we have only fulfilled our former engagement to you; nor look with suspicion on any postponement there, where we merely set forth the essential points (of the argument). If you carefully examine the entire work, you will acquit us of either having been redundant here, or diffident there, in your own honest judgment.