Old and New Continuity

But let us see if this people is the heir, or the former, and if the covenant belongs to us or to them. Hear now what the Scripture says concerning the people. Isaac prayed for Rebecca his wife, because she was barren; and she conceived. Genesis 25:21 Furthermore also, Rebecca went forth to inquire of the Lord; and the Lord said to her, Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples in your belly; and the one people shall surpass the other, and the elder shall serve the younger. Genesis 25:23 You ought to understand who was Isaac, who Rebecca, and concerning what persons He declared that this people should be greater than that. And in another prophecy Jacob speaks more clearly to his son Joseph, saying, Behold, the Lord has not deprived me of your presence; bring your sons to me, that I may bless them.

And he brought Manasseh and Ephraim, desiring that Manasseh should be blessed, because he was the elder. With this view Joseph led him to the right hand of his father Jacob. But Jacob saw in spirit the type of the people to arise afterwards. And what says [the Scripture ]? And Jacob changed the direction of his hands, and laid his right hand upon the head of Ephraim, the second and younger, and blessed him. And Joseph said to Jacob, Transfer your right hand to the head of Manasseh, for he is my first-born son. Genesis 48:18 And Jacob said, I know it, my son, I know it; but the elder shall serve the younger: yet he also shall be blessed. Genesis 48:19 You see on whom he laid [his hands], that this people should be first, and heir of the covenant.

If then, still further, the same thing was intimated through Abraham , we reach the perfection of our knowledge . What, then, says He to Abraham ? Because you have believed , it is imputed to you for righteousness: behold, I have made you the father of those nations who believe in the Lord while in [a state of] uncircumcision.

Yes [it is even so]; but let us inquire if the Lord has really given that testament which He swore to the fathers that He would give to the people. He did give it; but they were not worthy to receive it, on account of their sins . For the prophet declares, And Moses was fasting forty days and forty nights on Mount Sinai, that he might receive the testament of the Lord for the people. Exodus 24:18 And he received from the Lord Exodus 31:18 two tables, written in the spirit by the finger of the hand of the Lord. And Moses having received them, carried them down to give to the people. And the Lord said to Moses , Moses , Moses , go down quickly; for your people has sinned , whom you brought out of the land of Egypt .

Exodus 32:7 ; Deuteronomy 9:12 And Moses understood that they had again made molten images; and he threw the tables out of his hands, and the tables of the testament of the Lord were broken. Moses then received it, but they proved themselves unworthy. Learn now how we have received it. Moses , as a servant, Hebrews 3:5 received it; but the Lord himself, having suffered in our behalf, has given it to us, that we should be the people of inheritance.

But He was manifested, in order that they might be perfected in their iniquities, and that we, being constituted heirs through Him, might receive the testament of the Lord Jesus , who was prepared for this end, that by His personal manifestation, redeeming our hearts (which were already wasted by death, and given over to the iniquity of error ) from darkness, He might by His word enter into a covenant with us. For it is written how the Father , about to redeem us from darkness, commanded Him to prepare a holy people for Himself.

The prophet therefore declares, I, the Lord Your God , have called You in righteousness, and will hold Your hand, and will strengthen You; and I have given You for a covenant to the people, for a light to the nations , to open the eyes of the blind, and to bring forth from fetters them that are bound, and those that sit in darkness out of the prison-house. Isaiah 42:6-7 You perceive, then, whence we have been redeemed. And again, the prophet says, Behold, I have appointed You as a light to the nations , that You might be for salvation even to the ends of the earth, says the Lord God that redeems you.

1. John, the disciple of the Lord, preaches this faith , and seeks, by the proclamation of the Gospel , to remove that error which by Cerinthus had been disseminated among men , and a long time previously by those termed Nicolaitans , who are an offset of that knowledge falsely so called, that he might confound them, and persuade them that there is but one God , who made all things by His Word; and not, as they allege, that the Creator was one, but the Father of the Lord another; and that the Son of the Creator was, forsooth, one, but the Christ from above another, who also continued impassible, descending upon Jesus , the Son of the Creator, and flew back again into His Pleroma; and that Monogenes was the beginning, but Logos was the true son of Monogenes; and that this creation to which we belong was not made by the primary God , but by some power lying far below Him, and shut off from communion with the things invisible and ineffable. The disciple of the Lord therefore desiring to put an end to all such doctrines, and to establish the rule of truth in the Church , that there is one Almighty God , who made all things by His Word, both visible and invisible; showing at the same time, that by the Word, through whom God made the creation, He also bestowed salvation on the men included in the creation; thus commenced His teaching in the Gospel : In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God , and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God . All things…

2. John, however, does himself put this matter beyond all controversy on our part, when he says, He was in this world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own [things], and His own [people] received Him not. John 1:10-11 But according to Marcion , and those like him, neither was the world made by Him; nor did He come to His own things, but to those of another. And, according to certain of the Gnostics , this world was made by angels , and not by the Word of God . But according to the followers of Valentinus , the world was not made by Him, but by the Demiurge . For he (Soter) caused such similitudes to be made, after the pattern of things above, as they allege; but the Demiurge accomplished the work of creation. For they say that he, the Lord and Creator of the plan of creation, by whom they hold that this world was made, was produced from the Mother; while the Gospel affirms plainly, that by the Word, which was in the beginning with God , all things were made, which Word, he says, was made flesh, and dwelt among us. John 1:14

3. But, according to these men, neither was the Word made flesh, nor Christ, nor the Saviour (Soter), who was produced from [the joint contributions of] all [the Æons ]. For they will have it, that the Word and Christ never came into this world; that the Saviour , too, never became incarnate, nor suffered, but that He descended like a dove upon the dispensational Jesus; and that, as soon as He had declared the unknown Father, He did again ascend into the Pleroma. Some, however, make the assertion, that this dispensational Jesus did become incarnate, and suffered, whom they represent as having passed through Mary just as water through a tube; but others allege him to be the Son of the Demiurge , upon whom the dispensational Jesus descended; while others, again, say that Jesus was born from Joseph and Mary , and that the Christ from above descended upon him, being without flesh, and impassible. But according to the opinion of no one of the heretics was the Word of God made flesh. For if anyone carefully examines the systems of them all, he will find that the Word of God is brought in by all of them as not having become incarnate ( sine carne ) and impassible, as is also the Christ from above. Others consider Him to have been manifested as a transfigured man; but they maintain Him to have been neither born nor to have become incarnate; while others [hold] that He did not assume a human form at all, but that, as a dove, He did descend upon that Jesus who was born from Mary.…

4. And that we may not have to ask, Of what God was the Word made flesh? He does himself previously teach us, saying, There was a man sent from God , whose name was John. The same came as a witness , that he might bear witness of that Light. He was not that Light, but [came] that he might testify of the Light. John 1:6 By what God , then, was John, the forerunner, who testifies of the Light, sent [into the world]? Truly it was by Him, of whom Gabriel is the angel , who also announced the glad tidings of his birth: [that God] who also had promised by the prophets that He would send His messenger before the face of His Son, Malachi 3:1 who should prepare His way, that is, that he should bear witness of that Light in the spirit and power of Elias. Luke 1:17 But, again, of what God was Elias the servant and the prophet ? Of Him who made heaven and earth, as he does himself confess. John, therefore, having been sent by the founder and maker of this world, how could he testify of that Light, which came down from things unspeakable and invisible? For all the heretics have decided that the Demiurge was ignorant of that Power above him, whose witness and herald John is found to be. Wherefore the Lord said that He deemed him more than a prophet . Matthew 11:9 ; Luke 7:26 For all the other prophets preached the advent of the paternal Light, and desired to be worthy of seeing Him whom they preached; but John did both announce [the advent] beforehand, in a like manner as did the others,…

Since therefore we have such proofs , it is not necessary to seek the truth among others which it is easy to obtain from the Church ; since the apostles , like a rich man [depositing his money] in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth : so that every man, whosoever will, can draw from her the water of life. Revelation 22:17 For she is the entrance to life; all others are thieves and robbers . On this account are we bound to avoid them , but to make choice of the thing pertaining to the Church with the utmost diligence, and to lay hold of the tradition of the truth . For how stands the case? Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important question among us, should we not have recourse to the most ancient Churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question? For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary, [in that case,] to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the Churches?

2. To which course many nations of those barbarians who believe in Christ do assent, having salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit , without paper or ink, and, carefully preserving the ancient tradition, believing in one God , the Creator of heaven and earth, and all things therein, by means of Christ Jesus , the Son of God ; who, because of His surpassing love towards His creation, condescended to be born of the virgin, He Himself uniting man through Himself to God , and having suffered under Pontius Pilate , and rising again, and having been received up in splendour, shall come in glory , the Saviour of those who are saved, and the Judge of those who are judged, and sending into eternal fire those who transform the truth , and despise His Father and His advent. Those who, in the absence of written documents, have believed this faith , are barbarians, so far as regards our language; but as regards doctrine, manner, and tenor of life, they are, because of faith , very wise indeed; and they do please God , ordering their conversation in all righteousness, chastity , and wisdom. If any one were to preach to these men the inventions of the heretics , speaking to them in their own language, they would at once stop their ears, and flee as far off as possible, not enduring even to listen to the blasphemous address. Thus, by means of that ancient tradition of the apostles , they do not suffer their mind to conceive anything of the [doctrines suggested by the] portentous…

3. For, prior to Valentinus , those who follow Valentinus had no existence ; nor did those from Marcion exist before Marcion ; nor, in short, had any of those malignant-minded people, whom I have above enumerated, any being previous to the initiators and inventors of their perversity. For Valentinus came to Rome in the time of Hyginus , flourished under Pius , and remained until Anicetus . Cerdon, too, Marcion's predecessor, himself arrived in the time of Hyginus , who was the ninth bishop . Coming frequently into the Church , and making public confession, he thus remained, one time teaching in secret, and then again making public confession; but at last, having been denounced for corrupt teaching, he was excommunicated from the assembly of the brethren. Marcion , then, succeeding him, flourished under Anicetus , who held the tenth place of the episcopate . But the rest, who are called Gnostics , take rise from Menander, Simon's disciple , as I have shown; and each one of them appeared to be both the father and the high priest of that doctrine into which he has been initiated. But all these (the Marcosians) broke out into their apostasy much later, even during the intermediate period of the Church .

1. But that it was not only the prophets and many righteous men, who, foreseeing through the Holy Spirit His advent, prayed that they might attain to that period in which they should see their Lord face to face, and hear His words, the Lord has made manifest, when He says to His disciples , Many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which you see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which you hear, and have not heard them. Matthew 13:17 In what way, then, did they desire both to hear and to see, unless they had foreknowledge of His future advent? But how could they have foreknown it, unless they had previously received foreknowledge from Himself? And how do the Scriptures testify of Him, unless all things had ever been revealed and shown to believers by one and the same God through the Word; He at one time conferring with His creature, and at another propounding His law; at one time, again, reproving, at another exhorting, and then setting free His servant, and adopting him as a son ( in filium ); and, at the proper time, bestowing an incorruptible inheritance, for the purpose of bringing man to perfection? For He formed him for growth and increase, as the Scripture says: Increase and multiply. Genesis 1:28

2. And in this respect God differs from man, that God indeed makes, but man is made; and truly , He who makes is always the same; but that which is made must receive both beginning, and middle, and addition, and increase. And God does indeed create after a skilful manner, while, [as regards] man, he is created skilfully. God also is truly perfect in all things, Himself equal and similar to Himself, as He is all light, and all mind , and all substance, and the fount of all good; but man receives advancement and increase towards God. For as God is always the same, so also man, when found in God , shall always go on towards God. For neither does God at any time cease to confer benefits upon, or to enrich man; nor does man ever cease from receiving the benefits, and being enriched by God . For the receptacle of His goodness, and the instrument of His glorification, is the man who is grateful to Him that made him; and again, the receptacle of His just judgment is the ungrateful man, who both despises his Maker and is not subject to His Word; who has promised that He will give very much to those always bringing forth fruit, and more [and more] to those who have the Lord's money. Well done, He says, good and faithful servant: because you have been faithful in little, I will appoint you over many things; enter into the joy of your Lord. Matthew 25:21 , etc. The Lord Himself thus promises very much.

3. As, therefore, He has promised to give very much to those who do now bring forth fruit, according to the gift of His grace , but not according to the changeableness of knowledge ; for the Lord remains the same, and the same Father is revealed; thus, therefore, has the one and the same Lord granted, by means of His advent, a greater gift of grace to those of a later period, than what He had granted to those under the Old Testament dispensation. For they indeed used to hear, by means of [His] servants, that the King would come, and they rejoiced to a certain extent, inasmuch as they hoped for His coming; but those who have beheld Him actually present, and have obtained liberty, and been made partakers of His gifts, do possess a greater amount of grace , and a higher degree of exultation, rejoicing because of the King's arrival: as also David says, My soul shall rejoice in the Lord; it shall be glad in His salvation . And for this cause , upon His entrance into Jerusalem, all those who were in the way recognised David their king in His sorrow of soul , and spread their garments for Him, and ornamented the way with green boughs, crying out with great joy and gladness , Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord: hosanna in the highest. Matthew 21:8 But to the envious wicked stewards, who circumvented those under them, and ruled over those that had no great intelligence, and for this reason were unwilling that the king should come, and who…

4. If, therefore, the self-same person is present who was announced by the prophets , our Lord Jesus Christ , and if His advent has brought in a fuller [measure of] grace and greater gifts to those who have received Him, it is plain that the Father also is Himself the same who was proclaimed by the prophets , and that the Son , on His coming, did not spread the knowledge of another Father, but of the same who was preached from the beginning; from whom also He has brought down liberty to those who, in a lawful manner, and with a willing mind , and with all the heart, do Him service; whereas to scoffers, and to those not subject to God , but who follow outward purifications for the praise of men (which observances had been given as a type of future things — the law typifying, as it were, certain things in a shadow, and delineating eternal things by temporal, celestial by terrestrial), and to those who pretend that they do themselves observe more than what has been prescribed, as if preferring their own zeal to God Himself, while within they are full of hypocrisy, and covetousness , and all wickedness — [to such] has He assigned everlasting perdition by cutting them off from life.

1. As regards His greatness, therefore, it is not possible to know God , for it is impossible that the Father can be measured; but as regards His love (for this it is which leads us to God by His Word), when we obey Him, we do always learn that there is so great a God , and that it is He who by Himself has established, and selected, and adorned, and contains all things; and among the all things, both ourselves and this our world. We also then were made, along with those things which are contained by Him. And this is He of whom the Scripture says, And God formed man, taking clay of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life. Genesis 2:7 It was not angels , therefore, who made us, nor who formed us, neither had angels power to make an image of God , nor any one else, except the Word of the Lord, nor any Power remotely distant from the Father of all things. For God did not stand in need of these [beings], in order to the accomplishing of what He had Himself determined with Himself beforehand should be done, as if He did not possess His own hands. For with Him were always present the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit , by whom and in whom, freely and spontaneously, He made all things, to whom also He speaks, saying, Let Us make man after Our image and likeness; Genesis 1:26 He taking from Himself the substance of the creatures [formed], and the pattern of things made, and the type of all the adornments in the world.

2. Truly, then, the Scripture declared, which says, First of all believe that there is one God , who has established all things, and completed them, and having caused that from what had no being, all things should come into existence : He who contains all things, and is Himself contained by no one. Rightly also has Malachi said among the prophets : Is it not one God who has established us? Have we not all one Father? Malachi 2:10 In accordance with this, too, does the apostle say, There is one God , the Father , who is above all, and in us all. Ephesians 4:6 Likewise does the Lord also say: All things are delivered to Me by My Father; Matthew 11:27 manifestly by Him who made all things; for He did not deliver to Him the things of another, but His own. But in all things [it is implied that] nothing has been kept back [from Him], and for this reason the same person is the Judge of the living and the dead; having the key of David: He shall open, and no man shall shut: He shall shut, and no man shall open. Revelation 3:7 For no one was able, either in heaven or in earth, or under the earth, to open the book of the Father , or to behold Him, with the exception of the Lamb who was slain, and who redeemed us with His own blood, receiving power over all things from the same God who made all things by the Word, and adorned them by [His] Wisdom, when the Word was made flesh ; that even as the Word of God had the sovereignty in the heavens, so also might He have the sovereignty in…

3. I have also largely demonstrated, that the Word, namely the Son , was always with the Father; and that Wisdom also, which is the Spirit , was present with Him, anterior to all creation, He declares by Solomon: God by Wisdom founded the earth, and by understanding has He established the heaven. By His knowledge the depths burst forth, and the clouds dropped down the dew. Proverbs 3:19-20 And again: The Lord created me the beginning of His ways in His work: He set me up from everlasting, in the beginning, before He made the earth, before He established the depths, and before the fountains of waters gushed forth; before the mountains were made strong, and before all the hills, He brought me forth. And again: When He prepared the heaven, I was with Him, and when He established the fountains of the deep; when He made the foundations of the earth strong, I was with Him preparing [them]. I was He in whom He rejoiced, and throughout all time I was daily glad before His face, when He rejoiced at the completion of the world, and was delighted in the sons of men. Proverbs 8:27-31

4. There is therefore one God , who by the Word and Wisdom created and arranged all things; but this is the Creator ( Demiurge ) who has granted this world to the human race , and who, as regards His greatness, is indeed unknown to all who have been made by Him (for no man has searched out His height, either among the ancients who have gone to their rest, or any of those who are now alive); but as regards His love , He is always known through Him by whose means He ordained all things. Now this is His Word, our Lord Jesus Christ , who in the last times was made a man among men , that He might join the end to the beginning, that is, man to God . Wherefore the prophets , receiving the prophetic gift from the same Word, announced His advent according to the flesh, by which the blending and communion of God and man took place according to the good pleasure of the Father , the Word of God foretelling from the beginning that God should be seen by men , and hold converse with them upon earth, should confer with them, and should be present with His own creation, saving it, and becoming capable of being perceived by it, and freeing us from the hands of all that hate us, that is, from every spirit of wickedness ; and causing us to serve Him in holiness and righteousness all our days, Luke 1:71, 75 in order that man, having embraced the Spirit of God , might pass into the glory of the Father.

1. All things therefore are of one and the same substance, that is, from one and the same God ; as also the Lord says to the disciples Therefore every scribe, which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven , is like a man that is an householder, which brings forth out of his treasure things new and old. Matthew 13:52 He did not teach that he who brought forth the old was one, and he that brought forth the new, another; but that they were one and the same. For the Lord is the good man of the house, who rules the entire house of His Father; and who delivers a law suited both for slaves and those who are as yet undisciplined; and gives fitting precepts to those that are free, and have been justified by faith , as well as throws His own inheritance open to those that are sons. And He called His disciples scribes and teachers of the kingdom of heaven ; of whom also He elsewhere says to the Jews : Behold, I send unto you wise men, and scribes , and teachers; and some of them you shall kill, and persecute from city to city. Matthew 23:34 Now, without contradiction, He means by those things which are brought forth from the treasure new and old, the two covenants; the old, that giving of the law which took place formerly; and He points out as the new, that manner of life required by the Gospel , of which David says, Sing unto the Lord a new song; and Esaias, Sing unto the Lord a new hymn. His beginning ( initium ), His name is glorified from the height of the earth: they declare His…

2. He declares: For in this place is One greater than the temple. Matthew 12:6 But [the words] greater and less are not applied to those things which have nothing in common between themselves, and are of an opposite nature, and mutually repugnant; but are used in the case of those of the same substance, and which possess properties in common, but merely differ in number and size; such as water from water, and light from light, and grace from grace . Greater, therefore, is that legislation which has been given in order to liberty than that given in order to bondage; and therefore it has also been diffused, not throughout one nation [only], but over the whole world. For one and the same Lord, who is greater than the temple, greater than Solomon, and greater than Jonah, confers gifts upon men, that is, His own presence, and the resurrection from the dead ; but He does not change God , nor proclaim another Father, but that very same one, who always has more to measure out to those of His household. And as their love towards God increases, He bestows more and greater [gifts]; as also the Lord said to His disciples : You shall see greater things than these. John 1:50 And Paul declares: Not that I have already attained, or that I am justified, or already have been made perfect. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect has come, the things which are in part shall be done away. As, therefore, when that which is perfect has come, we shall not see…

3. For the new covenant having been known and preached by the prophets , He who was to carry it out according to the good pleasure of the Father was also preached, having been revealed to men as God pleased; that they might always make progress through believing in Him, and by means of the [successive] covenants, should gradually attain to perfect salvation . For there is one salvation and one God ; but the precepts which form the man are numerous, and the steps which lead man to God are not a few. It is allowable for an earthly and temporal king, though he is [but] a man , to grant to his subjects greater advantages at times: shall not this then be lawful for God , since He is [ever] the same, and is always willing to confer a greater [degree of] grace upon the human race , and to honour continually with many gifts those who please Him? But if this be to make progress, [namely,] to find out another Father besides Him who was preached from the beginning; and again, besides him who is imagined to have been discovered in the second place, to find out a third other, — then the progress of this man will consist in his also proceeding from a third to a fourth; and from this, again, to another and another: and thus he who thinks that he is always making progress of such a kind, will never rest in one God. For, being driven away from Him who truly is [God], and being turned backwards, he shall be for ever seeking, yet shall never find out God ; 2 Timothy 3:7 but shall continually…

Where was Marcion then , that shipmaster of Pontus , the zealous student of Stoicism? Where was Valentinus then , the disciple of Platonism? For it is evident that those men lived not so long ago — in the reign of Antoninus for the most part, — and that they at first were believers in the doctrine of the Catholic Church , in the church of Rome under the episcopate of the blessed Eleutherus , until on account of their ever restless curiosity, with which they even infected the brethren, they were more than once expelled. Marcion , indeed, [went] with the two hundred sesterces which he had brought into the church, and, when banished at last to a permanent excommunication , they scattered abroad the poisons of their doctrines.

Afterwards, it is true , Marcion professed repentance, and agreed to the conditions granted to him — that he should receive reconciliation if he restored to the church all the others whom he had been training for perdition: he was prevented, however, by death. It was indeed necessary that there should be heresies ; 1 Corinthians 11:19 and yet it does not follow from that necessity, that heresies are a good thing. As if it has not been necessary also that there should be evil ! It was even necessary that the Lord should be betrayed; but woe to the traitor! Mark 14:21 So that no man may from this defend heresies .

If we must likewise touch the descent of Apelles , he is far from being one of the old school, like his instructor and moulder, Marcion ; he rather forsook the continence of Marcion , by resorting to the company of a woman , and withdrew to Alexandria , out of sight of his most abstemious master. Returning therefrom, after some years, unimproved, except that he was no longer a Marcionite, he clave to another woman , the maiden Philumene (whom we have already mentioned), who herself afterwards became an enormous prostitute. Having been imposed on by her vigorous spirit, he committed to writing the revelations which he had learned of her. Persons are still living who remember them — their own actual disciples and successors — who cannot therefore deny the lateness of their date.

But, in fact, by their own works they are convicted, even as the Lord said. Matthew 7:16 For since Marcion separated the New Testament from the Old, he is (necessarily) subsequent to that which he separated, inasmuch as it was only in his power to separate what was (previously) united. Having then been united previous to its separation, the fact of its subsequent separation proves the subsequence also of the man who effected the separation. In like manner Valentinus , by his different expositions and acknowledged emendations, makes these changes on the express ground of previous faultiness, and therefore demonstrates the difference of the documents. These corrupters of the truth we mention as being more notorious and more public than others.

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 among 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.

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.

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 .

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; while 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 aërial 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.

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 2 Corinthians 12:5 — 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 whatever element you shall be dissolved. How hard is this obstinacy of yours! You vilify the things in which you both live and die.

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 Cæsar , 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.

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 Colossians 1:16 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 among 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 bore so many years with this interference with Your revelation, until Marcion forsooth came to Your 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.

1 Corinthians 15:11 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.

Isaiah 43:19 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. Jeremiah 4:4 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. Hosea 2:11 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 hates .

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 among 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.

But how shall (this) Antichrist be fully overthrown unless we relax our defense 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.

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.

But as God is eternal and rational, so, I think, He is perfect in all things. Be perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. Matthew 5:48 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.

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.

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 offense. 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 offense 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 offense. He takes no offense, 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.

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, you sinners; and you 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 offense, 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, while 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?

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?

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, Genesis 1:28 but also, You shall not commit adultery , and, You shall not covet your 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 remains that they who have wives be as though they had none, 1 Corinthians 7:29 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 grain reaped, as if it were to be condemned — but simply because their time has come.

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 brings 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 creates evil , Isaiah 45:7 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.

When the question was again raised concerning a cure performed on the Sabbath day , how did He discuss it: Does not each of you on the Sabbath loose his ass or his ox from the stall, and lead him away to watering? Luke 13:15 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 . Luke 13:20-21 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; Luke 13:25 but in what sense except that in which Isaiah said, When He arises to shake terribly the earth? Isaiah 2:19 And has shut to the door, thereby shutting out the wicked , of course; and when these knock, He will answer, I know you not whence you are; and when they recount how they have eaten and drunk in His presence, He will further say to them, Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Luke 13:25-28 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.

What kind of persons does He bid should be invited to a dinner or a supper? Luke 14:12-14 Precisely such as he had pointed out by Isaiah: Deal your bread to the hungry man; and the beggars — even such as have no home — bring in to your house, Isaiah 58:7 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. Luke 14:16 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. Luke 14:18 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; Exodus 32:1 and again, afterwards, when they heard indeed with the ear, but did not understand Isaiah 6:10 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 you shall be my people; and you shall walk in all my ways, which I have commanded you. Jeremiah 7:23 This is the invitation of God . But, says He, they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear. Jeremiah 7:24 This is the refusal of the people. They departed, and walked every one in the imagination of their evil heart. Jeremiah 11:8 I have bought a field — and I have bought some oxen — and I have married a wife.

Who sought after the lost sheep and the lost piece of silver? Luke 15:1-10 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.

What the two masters are who, He says, cannot be served, Luke 16:13 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, You cannot serve God and mammon . Luke 16:13 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 you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon , who will commit to your trust the true riches? Luke 16:11 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 you 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?

But Christ prohibits divorce , saying, Whosoever puts away his wife, and marries another, commits adultery ; and whosoever marries her that is put away from her husband, also commits adultery . Luke 16:18 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 has taken a wife, and has lived with her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he has 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. Deuteronomy 24:1 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 Matthew 19:8 — for this reason, indeed, because He who had made them male and female had likewise said, They two shall become one flesh; what therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder. Matthew 19:4, 6 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 puts away his wife, and marries another, commits adultery ; and whosoever marries her that is put away from her husband, also commits adultery , Luke 16:18 — 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, while 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.

Then, turning to His disciples , He says: Woe unto him through whom offenses 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, Luke 17:1-2 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 offense 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 touches you touches the apple of my eye. Zechariah 2:8 Such identity of care proceeds from one and the same Being. A trespassing brother He will have rebuked.

Luke 17:3 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: You shall not hate your brother in your heart; your neighbor you shall seriously rebuke, and on his account shall 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.

Luke 17:4 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, Leviticus 19:18 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 offense, 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 Luke 17:11-19 — 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?

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. Luke 18:1-8 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. Luke 18:7-8 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, Luke 18:10-14 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. Luke 18:19 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 sends rain on the just and on the unjust , and makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good; Matthew 5:45 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. Luke 18:18-20 Then, when he affirmed that from his youth up he had kept all the principal commandments, (Jesus) said to him: One thing you yet lack: sell all that you have, and give to the poor , and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me. Luke 18:21-22 Well now, Marcion , and all you who are companions in misery, and associates in hatred with that heretic , what will you dare say to this?

Salvation comes to the house of Zacchæus even. Luke 19:9 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, You Son of David, have mercy on me. And all the people gave praise unto God — not Marcion's , but David's. Now, although Zacchæus 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 your bread, said the prophet , to the hungry, and bring the poor that are cast out into your house. Isaiah 58:7 This he did in the best possible way, by receiving the Lord, and entertaining Him in his house. When you see 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, Isaiah 58:6 when he said, If I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. Luke 19:8 Therefore the Lord said, This day is salvation come to this house. Luke 19:9 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 has come to seek and to save that which was lost, Luke 19:10 my present contention is not whether He had 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, Luke 19:22 my instructor even here is He, (whoever He may be,) to whom belongs the money He teaches me fruitfully to expend.

Christ knew the baptism of John, whence it was. Luke 20:4 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 . Luke 20:6 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 you not believe him? Luke 20:5 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, Luke 20:8 He returned evil for evil ! Render unto Cæsar the things which be Cæsar's, and unto God the things which be God's. Luke 20:25 What will be the things which are God's? Such things as are like Cæsar'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 Cæsar, (His Cæsar I say,) not the Cæsar 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? Luke 20:27-33 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.

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, Luke 21:8 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 Luke 21:9-11 — 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-defense.

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.

In like manner does He also know the very time it behooved Him to suffer, since the law prefigures His passion . Accordingly, of all the festal days of the Jews He chose the passover. Luke 22:i In this Moses had declared that there was a sacred mystery : It is the Lord's passover. Leviticus 23:5 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. Luke 22:15 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, Isaiah 53:7 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 ate bread with me has 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.

Amos 2:6 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.

Woe, says He, to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! Luke 22:22 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 , Luke 22:47-49 for He was the Son indeed of Him who was honoured with the lips by the people. Isaiah 29:13 When led before the council, He is asked whether He is the Christ. Luke 22:66-67 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, you will not believe . Luke 22:67 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.

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, You say that I am, so as (to admit) that He was that which they said He was. Likewise, when Pirate asked Him, Are you Christ (the King)? He answered, as He had before (to the Jewish council) You say that I am Luke 23:3 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 has 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 , Luke 23:7 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.

Luke 23:8-9 For, as a lamb before the shearer is dumb, so He opened not His mouth, Isaiah 53:7 because the Lord had given to Him a disciplined tongue, that he might know how and when it behooved 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. Luke 23:25 Moreover two malefactors are crucified around Him, in order that He might be reckoned among 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 among 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 .

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. Luke 24:1 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 has taken away, and He will heal us; He has 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), Luke 24:3 His sepulture was removed from the midst of them, according to the prophecy of Isaiah. Two angels however, appeared there. Luke 24:4 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, you 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 while He dissembled His knowledge of what had just taken place, Luke 24:13-19 they say: But we trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel , Luke 24:21 — 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 spoke unto you. Luke 24:25 By saying this, He proves that He does not belong to the rival god, but to the same God.

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 you 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.

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 Æons , like the sow of Æneas. 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.

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.

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 stands in the congregation of the mighty; He judges among the gods. And again, I have said, You 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, Cæsars, 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.

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.

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 .

There are, to be sure, other things also quite as foolish (as the birth of Christ), which have reference to the humiliations and sufferings of God . Or else, let them call a crucified God wisdom. But Marcion will apply the knife to this doctrine also, and even with greater reason. For which is more unworthy of God , which is more likely to raise a blush of shame, that God should be born, or that He should die? That He should bear the flesh, or the cross? Be circumcised , or be crucified? Be cradled, or be coffined? be laid in a manger , or in a tomb? Talk of wisdom ! You will show more of that if you refuse to believe this also. But, after all, you will not be wise unless you become a fool to the world, by believing the foolish things of God .

Have you, then, cut away all sufferings from Christ, on the ground that, as a mere phantom, He was incapable of experiencing them? We have said above that He might possibly have undergone the unreal mockeries of an imaginary birth and infancy. But answer me at once, you that murder truth : Was not God really crucified? And, having been really crucified, did He not really die? And, having indeed really died, did He not really rise again? Falsely did Paul determine to know nothing among us but Jesus and Him crucified; 1 Corinthians 2:2 falsely has he impressed upon us that He was buried; falsely inculcated that He rose again. False, therefore, is our faith also. And all that we hope for from Christ will be a phantom. O you most infamous of men , who acquits of all guilt the murderers of God!

For nothing did Christ suffer from them, if He really suffered nothing at all. Spare the whole world's one only hope, you who are destroying the indispensable dishonour of our faith . Whatsoever is unworthy of God , is of gain to me. I am safe, if I am not ashamed of my Lord. Whosoever, says He, shall be ashamed of me, of him will I also be ashamed. Other matters for shame find I none which can prove me to be shameless in a good sense, and foolish in a happy one, by my own contempt of shame. The Son of God was crucified; I am not ashamed because men must needs be ashamed of it . And the Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed , because it is absurd. And He was buried, and rose again; the fact is certain, because it is impossible.

But how will all this be true in Him, if He was not Himself true — if He really had not in Himself that which might be crucified, might die, might be buried, and might rise again? I mean this flesh suffused with blood, built up with bones, interwoven with nerves, entwined with veins, a flesh which knew how to be born, and how to die, human without doubt , as born of a human being. It will therefore be mortal in Christ , because Christ is man and the Son of man . Else why is Christ man and the Son of man , if he has nothing of man , and nothing from man? Unless it be either that man is anything else than flesh, or man's flesh comes from any other source than man, or Mary is anything else than a human being, or Marcion's man is as Marcion's god.

1. Since, in our investigation of matters of such importance, not satisfied with the common opinions, and with the clear evi­dence of visible things, we take in addition, for the proof of our statements, testimonies from what are believed by us to be divine writings, viz., from that which is called the Old Testament , and that which is styled the New, and endeavour by reason to con­firm our faith ; and as we have not yet spoken of the Scriptures as divine, come and let us, as if by way of an epitome, treat of a few points respecting them, lay­ing down those reasons which lead us to regard them as divine writings. And be­fore making use of the words of the writ­ings themselves, and of the things which are exhibited in them, we must make the following statement regarding Moses and Jesus Christ — the lawgiver of the Hebrews, and the Introducer of the sav­ing doctrines according to Christianity . For, although there have been very many legislators among the Greeks and Barbari­ans, and teachers who announced opinions which professed to be the truth , we have heard of no legislator who was able to imbue other nations with a zeal for the reception of his words; and although those who professed to philosophize about truth brought forward a great apparatus of apparent logical demonstration, no one has been able to impress what was deemed by him the truth upon other na­tions, or even on any number of persons worth mentioning in a single nation. And yet not only would the legislators…

2. And if we observe how powerful the word has become in a very few years, notwithstanding that against those who acknowledged Christianity conspiracies were formed, and some of them on its account put to death , and others of them lost their property, and that, notwithstand­ing the small number of its teachers, it was preached everywhere throughout the world, so that Greeks and Barbarians, wise and foolish, gave themselves up to the worship that is through Jesus, we have no difficulty in saying that the result is be­yond any human power, Jesus having taught with all authority and persuasive­ness that His word should not be over­come; so that we may rightly regard as oracular responses those utterances of His, such as, You shall be brought before governors and kings for My sake, for a testimony against them and the Gen­tiles; and, Many shall say unto Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not eaten in Your name, and drunk in Your name, and in Your name cast out devils? And I shall say unto them, Depart from Me, you work­ers of iniquity, I never knew you. Now it was perhaps (once) probable that, in uttering these words, He spoke them in vain, so that they were not true ; but when that which was delivered with so much authority has come to pass, it shows that God , having really become man, delivered to men the doctrines of salvation .

3. And what need is there to mention also that it was predicted of Christ that then would the rulers fail from Judah, and the leaders from his thighs, when He came for whom it is reserved (the king­dom, namely); and that the expectation of the Gentiles should dwell in the land? For it is clearly manifest from the history, and from what is seen at the present day, that from the times of Jesus there were no longer any who were called kings of the Jews ; all those Jewish institutions on which they prided themselves — I mean those arrangements relating to the temple and the altar, and the offering of the service, and the robes of the high priest ­having been destroyed. For the prophecy was fulfilled which said, The children of Israel shall sit many days, there being no king, nor ruler, nor sacrifice , nor altar, nor priesthood , nor responses. And these predictions we employ to answer those who, in their perplexity as to the words spoken in Genesis by Jacob to Judah, as­sert that the Ethnarch, being of the race of Judah, is the ruler of the people, and that there will not fail some of his seed, until the advent of that Christ whom they figure to their imagination. But if the children of Israel are to sit many days without a king, or ruler, or altar, or priest­hood, or responses; and if, since the temple was destroyed, there exists no longer sacrifice , nor altar, nor priesthood , it is manifest that the ruler has failed out of Judah, and the leader from between his thighs. And…

4. And in the song in Deuteronomy, also, it is prophetically made known that, on account of the sins of the former peo­ple, there was to be an election of foolish nations, which has been brought to pass by no other than by Jesus. For they, He says, moved Me to jealousy with that which is not God , they have provoked Me to anger with their idols ; and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people, and will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. Now it is possi­ble to understand with all clearness how the Hebrews, who are said to have moved God to jealousy by that which is not God , and to have provoked Him to anger by their idols , were (themselves) aroused to jealousy by that which was not a people — the foolish nation, namely, which God chose by the advent of Jesus Christ and His disciples . We see, indeed, our call­ing, that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble (are called); but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and base things, and things that are de­spised, has God chosen, and things that are not, to bring to nought the things which formerly existed ; and let not the Israel according to the flesh, which is called by the apostle flesh, boast in the presence of God .

In Fine, Notwithstanding the Said Heretics Have Gathered the Origin of Their Error from Consideration of What is Written: Although We Call Christ God, and the Father God, Still Scripture Does Not Set Forth Two Gods, Any More Than Two Lords or Two Teachers. And now, indeed, concerning the Father , and the Son , and the Holy Spirit , let it be sufficient to have briefly said thus much, and to have laid down these points concisely, without carrying them out in a lengthened argument. For they could be presented more diffusely and continued in a more expanded disputation, since the whole of the Old and New Testaments might be adduced in testimony that thus the true faith stands.

But because heretics , ever struggling against the truth , are accustomed to prolong the controversy of pure tradition and Catholic faith , being offended against Christ; because He is, moreover, asserted to be God by the Scriptures also, and this is believed to be so by us; we must rightly — that every heretical calumny may be removed from our faith — contend, concerning the fact that Christ is God also, in such a way as that it may not militate against the truth of Scripture; nor yet against our faith , how there is declared to be one God by the Scriptures , and how it is held and believed by us.

For as well they who say that Jesus Christ Himself is God the Father , as moreover they who would have Him to be only man, have gathered thence the sources and reasons of their error and perversity; because when they perceived that it was written that God is one, they thought that they could not otherwise hold such an opinion than by supposing that it must be believed either that Christ was man only, or really God the Father. And they were accustomed in such a way to connect their sophistries as to endeavour to justify their own error . And thus they who say that Jesus Christ is the Father argue as follows:— If God is one, and Christ is God , Christ is the Father , since God is one. If Christ be not the Father , because Christ is God the Son , there appear to be two Gods introduced, contrary to the Scriptures .

And they who contend that Christ is man only, conclude on the other hand thus:— If the Father is one, and the Son another, but the Father is God and Christ is God , then there is not one God , but two Gods are at once introduced, the Father and the Son ; and if God is one, by consequence Christ must be a man , so that rightly the Father may be one God. Thus indeed the Lord is, as it were, crucified between two thieves, even as He was formerly placed; and thus from either side He receives the sacrilegious reproaches of such heretics as these. But neither the Holy Scriptures nor we suggest to them the reasons of their perdition and blindness, if they either will not, or cannot, see what is evidently written in the midst of the divine documents.