Tertullian — Against Marcion 1.16
No other world therefore appearing, just as neither its god, it follows that they divide two species of things, visibles and invisibles, between two author-gods and so defend invisibles for their god. But who will be able to bring into mind, except a heretical spirit, that invisibles belong to him who has sent ahead nothing visible—rather than to him who, having wrought visibles, has also made faith of invisibles—when it is far more just to assent to some examples than to none? We shall see also to which author the apostle assigns invisibles, when we have examined him too. For now by common senses mostly and just argumentations we spread faith also for the coming advocacy of the scriptures, confirming that this diversity of visibles and invisibles is to be assigned to God the Creator, just as his whole operation consists of diversities—of bodily and unbodily, of animate and inanimate, of vocal and mute, of mobile and stationary, of fertile and sterile, of dry and moist, of hot and cold.
So also diversity has tempered the human himself, as much in body as in sense. Some members strong, others weak; some honorable, others less honorable; some twin, others single; some matched, others unmatched. Likewise also in sense—now joy, now anxiety, now love, now hate, now anger, now mildness. But if it is so, that this universe of the condition has been modulated by rivals among themselves, already therefore invisibles are also owed to visibles, not to be assigned to another author than to him to whom also their rivals belong. Those who mark the Creator himself as diverse—commanding what he forbade and forbidding what he commanded, striking and healing—why in this species alone do they take him as uniform, founder only of visibles, whom it should likewise be believed to have founded both visibles and invisibles just as both life and death, and evils and peace? And assuredly, if those invisibles are greater than the Creator’s visibles—great in their own place—thus too it fits that the greater things are his whose also the great are, because neither great things, still less greater, suit him whose not even modest things appear.
Latin
Non comparente igitur mundo alio sicut nec deo eius. consequens est, ut duas species rerum, uisibilia et inuisibilia. duobus auctoribus deis diuidant et ita suo deo inuisibilia defendant. quis autem poterit inducere in animum, nisi spiritus haereticus, eius esse inuisibilia. qui nihil uisibile praemiserit. quam eius, qui uisibilia operatus inuisibilium quoque fidem fecerit, cum iustius multo sit aliquibus exemplariis adnuere quam nullis? uidebimus et apostolus cui auctori inuisibilia deputet, cum et illum explorauerimus. nunc enim communibus plurimum sensibus et argumentationibus iustis secuturae scripturarum quoque aduocationi fidem sternimus, confirmantes diuersitatem hanc uisibilium et inuisibilium deo creatori deputandam, sicuti tota operatio eius ex diuersitatibus constat, ex corporalibus et incorporalibus, ex animalibus et inanimalibus, ex uocalibus et mutis, ex mobilibus et statiuis, ex genitalibus et sterilibus, ex aridis et sucidis, ex calidis et frigidis. sic et hominem ipsum diuersitas temperauit, tam in corpore quam in sensu. alia membra fortia alia infirma, alia honesta alia inhonesta. alia gemina alia unica, alia comparia alia disparia. proinde et in sensu nunc laetitia nunc anxietas nunc amor nunc odium nunc ira nunc lenitas. quod si ita est, ut aemula inter se conditionis uniuersitas ista modulata sit, iam igitur et uisibilibus inuisibilia debentur, non alteri auctori deputanda quam cui et aemula eorum. (qui) ipsum creatorem diuersum notant, iubentem quae prohibuit et prohibentem quae iussit, percutientem et sanantem, cur in hac sola specie uniformem eum capiunt, uisibilium solummodo conditorem, quem proinde credendum sit et uisibilia et inuisibilia condidisse quemadmodum et uitam et mortem, et mala et pacem? et utique, si illa inuisibilia maiora sunt uisibilibus creatoris suo loco magnis, sic quoque congruit eius esse maiora, cuius et magna, quia nec magna, nedum maiora, ei competant, cuius nec modica comparent.