Tertullian — Against Marcion 2.4

So when the goodness of God himself had looked ahead to man for knowing God, it also added this to its own proclamation: that it first designed for man a dwelling — some greatest mass, and afterward also a greater — so that in the great he might practice and grow as in a lesser and so be advanced from God’s good, that is the great, also to his best, that is the greater dwelling. For the good work it also employs the best servant, his Word: My heart, he says, has uttered a best word. Let Marcion recognize from here first the best fruit, of course of the best tree. A most ignorant rustic indeed has grafted a bad into a good. But the shoot of blasphemy will not hold; it will dry with its craftsman, and so the nature of the good tree will testify to itself.

Look to the sum: what sort of things the Word has fruited: And God said, Let it be, and it was, and God saw that it was good — not as if not knowing the good unless he saw, but because it was good, therefore seeing, honoring and sealing and checking off the goodness of the works by the dignity of his gaze. So also he was blessing what he was doing well, so that the whole God would be recommended to you, good both to speak and to do. The Word still did not know how to speak ill, because neither to do ill. We will see the causes that also required this from God. Meanwhile the world stood from all goods, showing enough how much good was being prepared for the one for whom this whole was prepared. Who finally is worthy to inhabit God’s works other than his own image and likeness?

That too goodness — and a more working goodness — worked: not by an imperial word but by a familiar hand, even with a coaxing word first: Let us make man toward our image and likeness. Goodness spoke; goodness shaped from mud into so great a substance of flesh, built from one matter into so many qualities; goodness breathed into a soul, not dead but living; goodness set him over all things to enjoy and rule, even to name; goodness further added delights for man so that, though possessing the whole world, he might stay in more pleasant places, transferred into paradise — already then from the world into the church —; the same goodness also looked ahead to a helper, lest anything not be good. For it is not, he says, good for the man to be alone. It knew the sex of Mary would profit him and afterward the church. But even the law you accuse, which you twist into controversies, goodness laid on, consulting for man so he would cling to God, lest he seem not so much free as cast off, to be equated with his servants, the other animals, loose from God and free from disdain — but so that man alone would glory that he alone had been worthy to take a law from God, and so that a rational animal, capable of understanding and knowledge, would also be held by rational freedom itself, subject to him who had subjected all things to him. The counsel of observing that law goodness likewise wrote on: But on the day you eat, you will die by death. Most kindly it showed the exit of transgression, lest ignorance of the danger aid neglect of obedience. Further, if the reason for imposing the law went first, there also followed that of observing it, so that a penalty would be written for transgression — which yet he who predicted it beforehand did not want to happen. Recognize therefore the goodness of our God at least this far from good works, from good blessings, from indulgences, from providences, from laws and good and kind forewarnings.